I’ve neglected the blog over the past month. I have simply had no time to really put any effort into a post. What I have been messing around with is Twitter. It is easy to update on twitter and not have to write out something long that may never be seen by anyone.

My twitter URL is http://twitter.com/nickcatal

I am looking at getting a new phone to replace my BlackBerry Pearl. I sorta want an iPhone, but I don’t want to a) Switch over to AT&T and… well… that is the primary reason.

I am looking for another phone and I am finding something unfortunately: You cannot buy a phone nowadays that doesn’t have a camera.

Many places will not allow you to have a cameraphone (Court Houses, some other event venues, etc) which means there are times when I would have to leave the phone elsewhere and basically be SOL if someone needs to get ahold of me.

You would think BlackBerry would release one of their new phones without a camera.

It is standard practice for a political campaign to provide the press pool with at least 1 riser and access to an XLR audio breakout box of whatever is going on onstage. If you run the event and don’t provide them with an audio breakout box they will otherwise rely 100% on the mics on their cameras, which pick up a lot of background noise (you later mix this in with the audio feed from the campaign so you aren’t hearing JUST the mic on the podium).

Back during the DNC convention (and really every main event covered by all the networks since then) you may have noticed that all the broadcast networks were actually using the same cameras. It is pointless to have 10 organizations (CNN, NBC, Fox, CBS, ABC, PBS, C-SPAN, etc) fighting over the best angle to watch the podium, so they just have their trucks tap into a ‘pool’ feed of general purpose cameras.

This year was a big deal, because it was covered 100% in HD by the networks, which causes a whole host of problems when it comes to staging/lighting/bandwidth/etc. So there needed to be a member network that would coordinate this entire HD production.

And, of all the networks that could have been responsible for the HD feed of the Democratic National Convention, the network group that organized the HD feed for DNCC was Fox News.

I ordered this Samsung 50″ 1080p Plasma (model PN50A550) a few months ago after saving up for quite some time. Cost me like $2k and I thought “this is going to be awesome! I always wanted this!”

And it is.

Until part of the screen turned pink

3 service calls and a replaced panel later, no change. The same part of the screen is still pink.

I created a post about it on AVSForum and it turns out I am not the only one to have this problem.

The tint makes watching Citizen Kane unacceptable… Black & White needs to be Black and White… Not Black, White and Pink.

DAMN YOU!

NBC is recording 3600 hours of 2008 Beijing Olympics coverage, most recorded in HD and most only available online.

And I hate watching this stuff online.

Lets do a quick overview of the offerings. NBC is using 7 networks to display everything. Lets go down the list: Standard NBC (HD Version Available), USA (HD Simulcast on DirecTV), CNBC (HD Simulcast Available*), MSNBC (No HD), Oxygen (no HD), Telemundo (HD?), and *Universal HD (Simulcast of CNBC)

Now there is also NBC Olympics Soccer and NBC Olympics Basketball (both with HD simulcast) available on Time Warner and other select providers in some markets (not RCN Chicago or Time Warner Milwaukee)

But they have other networks that NBC/Universal owns outright that they could be broadcasting on. And both have HD simulcast versions.

Scifi and Bravo.

I mean, Scifi has no original programing running right now (you can only watch Battlestar Galactica/Stargate reruns so many times) and while Bravo does have its own core audience, I think you can pre-empt it for the Olympics.

The worst part of it all is that CNBC/CNBC HD/Universal HD seems to be almost exclusively boxing. I hate boxing.