So I have finally found something else worth blogging about besides movies. It is just unfortunate for Comcast that it had to come to this. Chris and I have had a DVR now for 5 years or more and I honestly don't think that I can survive without it now. I still remember pre-DVR days and the agony associated with trying to watch a weekly show and have kids. It is not a pleasant experience. We had service with one of the satellite companies in Dallas (I forget which one) and everything was fine. But then we got FIOS with Verizon and all of a sudden it could record the program whenever it came on, only new episodes, and priority recording and our DVR experience was taken to a whole new level.
When we chose Comcast Cable, we found that all DVRs are not the same. The ComCast DVR interface sucks for several reasons.
1. The software does not function properly. It claims to be able to record new only, but that is not always the case. This is annoying, but ultimately a minor issue. It does mean that I have to be sure to not leave the default "Save until space is needed" on shows that are important to me. But that is a setting choice easily handled if it actually works as it should.
2. The HD flickers off and on between a black screen quite frequently when watching live TV.
3. The DVR often records and plays back as if it were a scratched DVD. Whether this is a DVR issue (I doubt) or a cable issue (likely) is irrelevant. It is highly annoying when you are watching a show where every minute matters and you miss several due to it skipping. Digital should not have this issue.
4. It is much easier to accidentally erase a program on this DVR than on the others that we have had. I have honestly had it jump to the screen to delete Heroes (unviewed) right after we finished watching Prison Break one night. If Chris had not read the screen, I was about to press delete, because it should have been on Prison Break instead of Heroes.
5. Shows that do not start at conventional times are often cut off early or started late. Like SNL never starts at the beginning, it is always one or two minutes after the start time and the previews for the next show are always cut off after the first 30 seconds.
And then the piece de resistance happened last night. Monday night is my favorite night of TV. Prison Break and Heroes are both on that night. So I see around 8:00 that my DVR is recording as it should be. When Chris and I sit down to watch our shows last night, Heroes is on the list, but Prison Break is nowhere to be found. They recently had two weeks without new episodes, so I thought maybe that happened again. Chris checks the web and it says there was a new show. I call my mom and she says yes, and torments me that I missed it. I am fuming, now not only does their interface suck, their sucky software has malfunctioned and caused me to miss one of my favorite shows. I decide to deal with it after Heroes. So we watch Heroes and it is 43 minutes into the show and it stops. Heroes is arguably the best show on TV right now (granted, 24 hasn't started yet). At this point, I am livid. So I get on the phone with ComCast. They claim that there is an outage reported in my area. Yet, I saw the DVR recording at some point at least during 8 pm. Then Heroes recorded for 43 minutes and Chris was watching Leno for a few minutes then it blacked shortly after she said that. I tell her that their equipment sucks quite honestly and she says that she can send a technician out. I am unsure what a technician is going to do to fix the problem of their software sucking, but I say why not. So we will see what he says tomorrow. Basically Comcast has ired me to the point that once DirecTv has their backlog filled of HD DVRs, I am switching. (Dish Network lied to Chris about the availability of HD locals and so we can't go with them.)
In the meantime, Chris finds that Prison Break episodes are available to watch on demand on the FOX website. So I get to see my show, although I have to watch it on the computer. I really have to commend FOX on demand though. There is one 15-second commercial for the whole program, played at the beginning of the show. The rest is interrruption free. I did not find anyway to pause or otherwise control the playback and there was a malfunction (unsure of the cause) that caused it to start over, but that was not that bad, since I enjopy the show. I was really impressed. It appears that only the latest episode is available, so you can't catch up on the whole season, but it was definitely better than watching some YouTube type version on the web. It almost made up for the fact that I missed the show initially.
So then I decided to check NBC for Heroes and sure enough, the same type service was available. Come to find out, only about 1 minute was cut off the show (see #5 above), although I fail to see how it only recorded for 43 minutes, but I digress. NBC's on demand is slightly more conventional with a status bar that allows you to fast forward and rewind and shows the time. The show was divided into 6 segments of varying lengths and a commercial showed before each segment. I personally liked the FOX presentation better (it seemed more polished and fewer commercials are always better), but NBC's version is probably more functional with the user controls.
Bottom line: ComCast: F, for sucky products and sucky service
FOX: A, for providing on demand for free and having a nice interface
NBC: A, for providing on demand for free and having better functionality
So the only thing that I have found worth benchmarking at this point are movies. My mother came into town, so Chris and I got to see some movies this weekend. We love Jet Li and are very disappointed that Fearless will be his last movie. We enjoyed the movie, but there are a few caveats before you go see it. No spoilers are ahead on this movie, so read freely. First, know that it is in Chinese and subtitled. This does not bother us at all and we actually prefer foreign films this way, as opposed to the mouths not matching the words. However, I did not know that this was the case. The preview I saw made me think that it was in English, so just be warned. Second, the movie seems longer than it actually is. There are a few slow parts of the movie, but I think that they are all necessary for the story. Lastly, the movie is a docudrama, but it sticks much more closely to the foreign film genre than a traditional American movie. Some people do not enjoy this, but we love Jet Li and this movie is along the same lines as his other Chinese films. So Fearless ends up with...
Grade: A-
On to Flyboys... I don't like war movies, and I like World War I movies even less, so I really did not want to see this movie at all. But Chris wanted to go see this, so I obliged, begrudgingly. The basic problems with this movie are: the love story is underdeveloped; it is nearly impossible to keep up with who is shooting whom and who is dying by being shot down; character development is shoddy at best, because you do not feel connected to all of them, and the ones you do feel connected to is a tenuous relationship at best. After the movie, I wished that we could have just caught the documentary on the History Channel (I don't know if it actually exists, but they often do the story when a movie comes out). It would have been 1 hour of my time and much better done. If you want to know specifics of the reasoning, you can read ahead, but there will be spoilers.
Grade: D
WARNING: THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
So let's attack the love story to begin with. So James Franco, I forget his character name, meets Lucienne and she speaks very limited English. He is immediately smitten, fine. He goes and sees her repeatedly, but her English/his French is only minutely improved at each meeting shown, until after she is hospitalized. While the scenes are sweet, it is too hard to believe that their relationship is anything other than lust when they can barely communicate. Then they end the movie with the 'he never found her in Paris' line. I think that they should have taken a few liberties with the story and advanced the English/French to give them actual communication scenes. Then concluded by showing him searching/waiting in Paris for her and then the line that he never found her. It would have helped the story a lot. Or they should have eliminated the love story completely. It helped add to the likability of his character, but it detracts from the whole story due to the underdevelopment.
Next is the biggest challenge to a World War I movie, keeping the fighters straight in their planes during a fight scene. World War I movies always have this problem, because you have to try to remember the emblem on the side that each pilot has placed on there, or you are completely lost on who did what during the battle scene until they discuss it afterwards. While you do remember a couple of the emblems, like Cassidy's eagle and the rich boy's top hat emblem, the others fall by the wayside. The one that they seem to make the biggest deal about, "the knights of the air", is actually flown by the guy that goes into shock after the first mission and does not fly again until the end. Even Chris was lost during the fight scenes as to who shot down whom and who was going down. After the fight scene, you have to wait until they land to see who is gone.
We see a few scenes from characters before they enlist and learn about others through various methods, but character development is shoddy. There is no sitting around the fire at night and let's all meet. And you stay detached from the characters initially due to the fact that you know so many of them will be eliminated after that first mission. After that shakes out, you start develop some tenuous relationships with characters, but it is too far into the movie at this point. Part of a successful war movie is getting you attached to characters that ultimately die, some early on. The rich boy dies, but you really have a hard time liking him throughout the movie, so it is hard to really get worked up about his death.
Now for my favorite parts of the movie:
1. Cutting off the guy's hand when he is trapped. It was necessary before they got blown up and took a lot of gumption to do it. The scene is not graphic, but very well done.
2. The kamikaze move to take down the Zepplin once Cassidy has been shot. That was just awesome that he hung on long enough to do that.
3. My absolute favorite was the Top Gun move. Cassidy (I think, it was hard to tell) slows his plane and causes the landing gear to tear into the German plane and take it down. It was awesome and so reminiscent of Top Gun.
Chris thought that I would like the shooting of the Black Falcon with Franco's suicide gun, but it was too predictable. Overall the movie was not worth seeing in the theater, maybe on DVD, but I would have waited for it to show for free on TV. I was less than impressed.