April 2005 – Page 15 – Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

April 3, 2005

The Idiots Over at DirecTV Are at it Again

DirecTV’s High-Definition TiVo; Blocking Spam (washingtonpost.com) Well here’s a sure fire way to piss off your high end customers. After they spend $1,000 buying hardware to subscribe to your HDTV signal change your HDTV format so that their hardware doesn’t work anymore.

It looks like DirecTV plans later this year to change the way that they broadcast network high def so that your high def DirecTV TiVo won’t work with network HDTV anymore.

Apparently they are going to give HDTV TiVo users an “offer” to upgrade — no doubt to the piece of crap NDS DVR that they are developing in house.

If DirecTV is going to be offering an “upgrade” then it ought to be an upgrade that still allows me the ability to use my TiVo. And if they can continue to offer HDTV from ESPN, HBO, etc. that the current HDTV TiVo can receive then they ought to also broadcast the network programming in that format as well.

Thanks for pointing out the screwing that Rupert Murdoch is about to give us all discfree.

Update: Discfee is NSFW.

April 3, 2005

Today’s 20 Random Songs From Thomas Hawk’s Windows Media Player 5 Star Playlist

1. Don’t Look Back in Anger (live), Oasis, Live on the Howard Stern show (bootleg)
2. Like a Rolling Stone (live), Bob Dylan, Stuck Inside of New York, Disc 2 (bootleg)
3. Runaway, Del Shannon, Platinum Series, Disc 22
4. Girl from Mars, Ash, 1977
5. Can’t Help Falling in Love, UB40, Promises and Lies
6. Welcome to the Working Week, Elvis Costello, My Aim is True
7. Tombstone Blues, Bob Dylan, Biograph, Disc 1
8. A Damn Good Country Song, Jerry Lee Lewis, Killer Country
9. I’ll Keep it With Mine, Oh Susanna, Oh Susanna
10. The Weight, Jimmy Barnes, The Best of Jimmy Barnes, Disc 1
11. The Fall of the World’s Own Optimist, Aimee Mann, Bachelor #2
12. Down Along the Lea, Mary Lou Lord, Got No Shadow
13. I Threw it All Away, Yo La Tengo, President Yo La Tengo / New Wave Hotdogs
14. Penny Lane, The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour
15. Just Like This Train, Joni Mitchell, Rare on Air, Volume 2
16. Baby, Robert Bradley’s Backwater Surprise, KFOG Live From the Archives, Volume 8
17. A Train Not Running, Chris Knight, The Jealous Kind
18. Keep on the Sunny Side, Iris Dement, Other Recordings (bootleg)
19. Nobody Slides My Friend, Willie Nelson, Revolutions in Time, The Journey, 1973 – 1993
20. Fruit Loop Dreams (Acoustic Version), Shonen Knife, Birds and the B Sides

April 2, 2005

Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant — Thomas Hawk Seal of Approval, Two Corks Up

The Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant offers an outstanding selection of good value wines personally selected by a knowledgable and dedicated staff.

Well for those of you who have read thomashawk.com for a while you know that every now and again I just can’t help but go off on a good tangent about wine. I love wine — particularly white Burgundies from Montrachat, full bodied California cabs, non malolactic processed California Chardonnays, Tuscan Brunellos, and of course the sweet nectar of the god’s also known as Sauternes. I drink wine, collect wine, savor the wine / food combinations of the world and I’ll let you in on a little secret, if you are reading a pm post on thomashawk.com there is a good chance I’ve already had a few glasses as I settle down at the keyboard. So off on one of my wine tangents I just have to take a few minutes out to blog about one of my favorite places to buy wine in San Francisco, The Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant.

The Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant (FPWM) is located in the recently renovated historic San Francisco Ferry Building downtown on the Embarcadero. If you are one of the few remaining individuals who still has not visited the Ferry Building you should. It’s a fantastic smorgosbord of gourmet food, specialty products, the Slanted Door, Taylor’s Automatic Refresher (mmmm..) and yes wine.

FPWM is a wine lover’s paradise. The store is an interesting wine concept project — one half retail store, one half wine bar — and boy does it work. The store is overseen by the very capable managing partners Debbie Zachareas, Peter Granoff and Bo Thompson.

Inside the FPWM you will find an amazing collection of the some of the finest wines in the world. Whatever your palate or budget you will find something just right for you. The partners have put significant thought into their collection

But as good of a retail store as FPWM is, here is where it gets interesting. It is also at present the best wine bar in San Francisco. Each week Debbie, Paul and Bo and their staff put together a rotating wine list in a relaxed contemporary atmosphere. They sell wine by the half glass or taste, the glass, the half bottle and the bottle. And they have all kinds of good and interesting relatively inexpensive wines for you to try.

Tasting Wine at the Ferry Plaza Wine Bar

In addition to the wines on the tasting list though, in my opinion the best feature of the wine bar is that they will allow you to purchase any bottle of wine in the store and will uncork it for you for a $6 charge and let you enjoy it there. Now I know what you are thinking, $6 corkage, yeah right, on marked up wine. But the wine is really priced well and is as cheap as you are going to find anywhere even with the store being in the high profile Ferry Building.

For example last week I stopped by there with a few colleagues and drank a very nice bottle of the 2002 Shafer Firebreak. Firebreak is mostly sangiovese and is a really remarkable wine. I’ve been a huge Shafer fan for a while am lucky enough to have a coveted spot on the Hillside Select mailing list.

So the price on the Shafer at FPWM was $36. Just for fun I pulled out my Audiovox SMT 5600 smartphone and while sitting at FPWM logged on to K&L;’s website. K&L; is one of the cheapest places to buy wine in the United States and as a deep discounter I was curious at how much more I was paying for a bottle at a place as nice as FPWM. So K&L; was selling the same bottle of wine for $35. $1 more.

I also tasted a remarkable Sauterne, the 2003 Chateau Hallet at the rock bottom price of $15 a bottle — a great bargain and huge value that had been culled out and placed on the wine tasting list by the capable staff at FPWM.

FPWM also has wonderful tastings and special events at their store as well. Recently I had a unique opportunity to taste 5 different bottlings of Grace Family Vineyards’s cabernets at the store. Now that is something that you will not see pretty much ever anywhere. Patz and Hall recently was there pouring wines and many Wednesday afternoons they feature winemakers and their wines.

By the way Businessweek online did a nice write up on Peter and his business a while back.

The store is open from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Mondays, 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Saturday and 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Sunday. The tasting bar has a limited food menu but the store is also fine with you bringing in food that you’ve purchased from other vendors there in the Ferry Building as well. Try some Cow Girl Creamery Cheese with you ACME Bread company loaf to complement your bottle of wine at FPWM.

So if you are in the mood to do some great wine tasting and exploring make it a point to stop by The Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant. You won’t be disappointed

The Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant, One Ferry Building, Shop 23, San Francisco. Phone: 415.391.9400. email: info@fpwm.com

April 2, 2005

The Early Morning Bustle of Union Square

April 2, 2005

The Complications of Being MCE

Michael Gartenberg – What’s missing in the digital hubs of today Gartenberg writes, “I’ve been using a Media Center PC as one of the hubs in the house and it works well for the most part. It serves content to other devices and even acts as a media server to the Orb client on my mobile devices. Except when it doesn’t work. Like for the last two days when my extender kept losing the link to my MCE for no apparent reason.”

Gartenberg gets it right. The complexity of the Media PC is what scares the pants off the average consumer. He adds, “On the other hand, my TiVo is rock solid.” and goes on to say, “I want both flexibility of content, the ability to add new features and rock solid reliability. I can’t seem to get those things today which is what’s leading to an ad-hoc series of solutions.”

Couldn’t’ agree more Michael. As someone with a dual system in my living room (an MCE box for media and some tv and a separate HDTV TiVo for HDTV) I can feel your pain.

Microsoft needs to seriously step up the bug fixes in Media Center and Windows Media Player. But even more important than developing a path to a bugless PC (will such a thing ever exist?) is that support is handled properly. In my own opinion people become much less hostile when they have someone who can help them.

While Microsoft certainly can’t have every blow hard (blow harder Hawk, blow harder) calling up their software engineers the current system of outsourcing aftermarket support to the OEM is quite frankly pathetic.

I’ve often thought about putting out a podcast series of bad tech support calls for the sheer humor of it. You know, you’ll be waiting for the PC to copy something and while you’re sitting there chatting with the HP guy you’ll throw something out there like do you use Firefox or IE — just to pass the time and you get an answer back like I don’t know anything about what, Firefox? I think that’s some kind of spyware (I’m not even kidding).

Or, (me to an HP tech support guy): “So are you familiar with the Media Center operating system?” Answer: “to be honest, not really, but I’ve heard it’s going to be coming out soon.” Again, I’m not even kidding.

A long time ago I bought a Microsoft wireless router. I don’t know if you remember it or not but before abandoning the product Microsoft briefly was out there competing directly with Linksys and the rest of them. Of course as might be expected after I hooked it up I had all kinds of problems — but do you know what? With that product for some reason Microsoft provided actual Microsoft tech support. And do you know what. It was good. Very good. They quickly troubleshot my problems and were extremely bright and competent professionals.

So how about that Microsoft? How about taking the tech support back from HP and Gateway and Dell and the rest of the bozos who don’t know the difference between a driver and mouse? This way you won’t have Michael Gartenberg and Thomas Hawk and the rest of us telling the rest of the world how buggy and complex a Media Center PC is adding to the problem of your message. Think of it as proactive marketing but in a round about way.

I honestly think that the bugs are only about 15% of the problem. People expect bugs. But if you have someone competent to walk you through fixing the problem that’s really the more important 85% of it.

Instead of having Gartenberg spend two days screwing around with his Media Center PC and blogging about it, how about having him blog about how you guys solved his problem for him in 15 minutes. As far as I’m concerned, the marketing message that a Media Center PC is too complicated and complex is of your own making until you do something to adequately address support.

Yes, it will cost money to do this, but trust me, it will be money better spent than the $20 million that you and Intel laid down for “Digital Joy.” And if you sell a boatload more copies of the MCE software it will pay for itself in the long run.

And you could, by the way, even charge for it. I paid $99 for an extended warranty with HP that included lifetime telephone support. I’d much have preferred to give this money directly to Microsoft and had you guys fixing my wagon instead.

April 2, 2005

Chris Lanier is Really Down on Windows Media Player 10

Microsoft: Fix WMP Or Trash It! Chris Lanier is really down on Windows Media Player 10 and writes:

“Not only was Windows Media Player 10 a huge disappointment for WMP users, MCE users are feeling it now. There are over 100+ bugs in Windows Media Player 10. Over 100 bugs people, 100. Why in the world was a product released as final with that many bugs? Microsoft just doesn?t care or something? Seems like that to me and countless others.”

and

“My personal advice to people would be not to use WMP unless you have too. Go find another program that fits your needs and that works! When and if Microsoft can figure out how to get their act together, come back, if you want to. I sure as hell would not still be using WMP if it was not for MCE, which forces you to use WMP. Use another player that works as advertised.”

Wow, these are pretty strong words and not necessarily good things to hear about your product. I don’t think that I feel quite as strongly as Chris does but there is indeed work to do on Windows Media Player. Besides lack of satellite or cable HDTV support my biggest gripe with MCE is the fact that it can take upwards of 5 to 10 minutes for me to move around in the media library due to the massive performance limitations for large libraries in Windows Media Player.

The problem is that I see the potential that WMP can be — and it’s nothing short of amazing. It’s like when you have an A student that is doing B or C+ work. It’s not that B or C+ work is necessarily bad but it’s just that you know the student is capable of so much more.

Windows Media Player truly could be amazing but Chris is right, bugs need to be fixed, the library needs to be fixed and I can see where in a fit of frustration Chris might kind of come down hard on Microsoft and the product.

But here is the bigger gripe for me. How about a little communication here? I am really really fine when someone says you know, we are aware of the problem and we plan on having it fixed by X date. And even if it can’t be fixed by X date I’m ok with that too. But I think that Microsoft needs to better communicate the fixes that may or may not be coming with regards to Windows Media Player.

I don’t think that Microsoft simply doesn’t care as Chris suggests, but I think that there is a misguided sense that to acknowledge weakness in a product is somehow bad. And there seems to be hesitancy to announce fixes most likely due to disappointment that might arise if they can’t meet the stated time frame.

Still I think that to open up the fixes to a certain degree of transparency — especially with WMP — would be a good thing.

April 2, 2005