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Video News

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    Sometimes, we just want to share some news, without much fanfare. Here are some of the little bits we’ve collected over the last two weeks you might find interesting.

    • Microsoft has clarified its position on third-party codecs in Windows 7. The problem is that in Windows 7, if the video you want to watch is naively supported by Windows, there’s no easy way choose a different codec. You’ll be able to add third-party support for a codec not supported initially, but replacing the defaults will apparently be difficult. On a positive note, we are certain someone will come up with an easy codec tweaker program to solve this, bt Microsoft clearly isn’t concerned.
    • MythBuntu is testing the beta of its Jaunty Jackalope 9.04 version. MythBuntu is a version of Ubuntu that is bundled with the software and setup for the MythTV suite, which is a Linux-based DVR.
    • Disney may end up with a stake in Hulu, the online streaming site, in exchange for adding ABC(which they own) content to the site. More Disney content may has been discussed but it centers on ABC; other possibilities could include ESPN, and, if not the Disney Channel, some offshoots of it. We’ll see what comes of that.
    • If not that, Youtube and Disney have announced a deal for the launch of multiple ad-supported U.S.-only channels featuring content from ESPN and Disney/ABC Television. Previews are up now, and the ESPN channel will launch mid-April, ABC in mid-May. There is no deal with Youtube on full episodes though links will be made back to the various channel homepages where additional content may be available.
    • Speaking of online content, the Times reported last week that some broadcasters and cable networks are worried that their push to put some of their programs online may be threatening the revenue they get from showing it on TV. This is why the cable companies are getting involved, by offering the content online people demand, but only as part of their subscription process. The networks may license the content to other organizations on a more ala carte basis, but only if their revenue is maintained.
    • ZeeVee released a retooled Internet video browser. Named Zinc, it appears to be a competitor to Boxee, the open-source media center/video browser. It works for Windows and a Mac version is scheduled for sometime this month.
    • Cox Communications is planning on rolling out tru2way set top cable boxes starting this summer. For those of you unfamiliar with the technology, tru2way is meant to expand the Cablecard system to allow a full range of options, including program guide and on demand, on televisions equipped with the techology, which includes a Cablecard for decryption. Unfortunately, like Cablecards, there is a lack of TVs equipped for this technology.
    • Hulu is now the fourth largest video site in the U.S., as statistics for the month of February prove. Since last May, Hulu has grown the number of videos it streams by 277 percent, and its audience has grown 410 percent.
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    Published on April 5, 2009
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    64-Bit Support

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    Arch Linux announced that a previous announcement that they were discontinuing support for the 32-bit/i686 architecture in their distribution was, in fact, a an April Fool’s joke.

    On a positive note, some users discovered that they were, in fact, running 64-bit processors, and many of them switched to the Arch Linux 64-bit version. As they put it in their original post, “the overall opinion of the developers is that the x86_64 port is now complete enough to justify this decision and that this is in keeping with Arch’s philosophy of supporting current generation hardware. The x86_64 architecture has been available since 2002 (compared to i686 which is from 1995), and we believe most of our i686 users have x86_64 compatible hardware.”

    If you are running a 64-bit processor, why shouldn’t you run the 64-bit version of your operatng system? While 64-bit Windows is still, for some reason, immature and undersupported, it is very mature on Linux, although some software has not be retooled to compile under it…Boxee comes to mind.

    Fedora 11, the next version of Fedora we’re so enthused about, they are revisiting their architecture support. The 32-bit version of Fedora will now be built for i586 by default, instead of i386, indicating a removal of official Fedora support for older 32-bit processors. Realistically, anyone who is still running an older processor…you should upgrade. The update should produce speed increases.

    The biggest advantage of 64-bit operating system is that it allows addressing of more than 3.5GB of RAM. With RAM becoming more and more affordable(Our first megabyte cost $80, now that’ll get you several gigabytes), the speed boost is a useful one. Further support under 32-bit Fedora for PAE-supporting 32-bit hardware(Pentium II/III/4, or Atom) will allow some support for more RAM under these processors.

    And finally, 64-bit OSes can run 32-bit software. Backward compatibility is assured.

    So, why not? Someone tell us.

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    Published on April 2, 2009
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    Here a Netbook, There a Netbook, Everywhere a Netbook

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    CNet reports that the netbook is a hit with consumers, and likely will continue to be so for the foreseaable future. According to Displaysearch, they will comprise 20% of the 133 million notebooks to be shipped this year, amazing considering the netbook category had no market share in 2008. however, they predict consumers will return to buying notebooks with more features as the economy turns around.

    We, and many others disagree with the idea that netbooks are popular because of the economy. That’s certainly a small part of it, but we bought one, and we are not alone, for the portability. For many years, a tiny, reasonably powerful notebook costs big bucks. A 14″ laptop always cost us more than the same laptop in a 15″.

    Then comes the Eee, and launches the netbook category. We hate carrying around a 14-17″ laptop. It is portable, but most of the time, it is a pain to carry around. We don’t need a mobile computer for gaming. And even if we were gamers, we can have a computer at home to handle that. Netbooks are for productivity…perhaps video/sound on the go as well.

    We wonder if the manufacturers see these machines differently than we do. Asus announced the upcoming Eee 1004DN, the first of the netbooks to offer a built-in optical drive. One of the best things about the netbook is the form factor. Adding an optical drive will turn it into a more efficient video playback system, if that is what someone wants, but it endangers the form factor. Already, the netbook has grown. Going from a 7″ screen to 9″ and 10″ was a good improvement, and did not increase the size incredibly, but additional weight of continually adding features, as well as increased costs, will eliminate the distinctiveness of the class.

    Personally, we’ll just rip something and load it onto the hard drive or onto a flash card and stick it in the side. Otherwise, we have an external USB DVD burner we made out of a liberated notebook DVD drive and a converter case we bought online. It keps the equipment we have to carry to a minimum. We’re not the only ones who are concerned about the manufacturers destroying the idea of the netbook. The net is full of thoughts on the subject.

    Continue to push the envelope, add in better low-power processors as they become available…improve the graphics, the screen build quality, the battery life. But keep the size and price points.

    Meanwhile, OCZ launched a DIY netbook called the Neutrino. It has the standard netbook accoutrements…10 inch 1024×600 screen, Atrom N270, etc. Missing is a hard drive, RAM, multicard reader and an operating system, all of which you add as you wish. We’re in favor of customization, but the price point of $300 is a bit much for a system that doesn’t work out of the box considering the competition.

    However, that said, many of the netbooks are not geared toward upgrades. The MSI Wind we bought has no slots on the bottom to open. You have to remove the whole bottom to access the hard drive. Some of the systems have the SSD drives or the RAM soldered onto the main board. Upgrade paths allow users to buy now, improve later.

    Speaking of the Wind, MSI has announced the U123, a three pound laptop with a 6 or 9 cell battery, powered by the Atom N280 1.66Ghz CPU and the Intel 945GSE chipset. There’s 1GB of RAM expandable to 2GB, wireless, Bluetooth , camera, and a card reader. Essentially, the equivalent of the Eee 1000HE, although likely less expensive, as the Wind has been.

    There’s more to say about netbooks. Next time, we’ll discuss how we outfitted our MSI Wind in more detail to make it the best it could be.

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    Published on April 2, 2009
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    Ubuntu 9.04 vs. Fedora 10

    The Big Green Tree
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    We came across a post from last week comparing the features of the upcoming Fedora 11 with the upcoming Ubuntu 9.04 and decided that the comparison was worth making. Ubuntu 9.04, codenamed Jaunty Jackalope, scheduled to be released April 23th, followed on May 26th by Fedora 11, codenamed Leonidas.

    In version terms, Fedora is ahead. Kernel 2.6.29 vs. 2.6.28, Firefox 3.1 instead of 3.0, Thunderbird 3.0 instead of 2.0, OpenOffice 3.1 vs. 3.0 and filesystem ext4 instead of ext3. Both ship with Gnome 2.26, KDE 4.2 and XFCE 4.6. But, we admit, new versions are not always better. Well, they are, that is the point. But sometimes new features result in new problems.

    Fedora is cutting edge. They are always going for better features, but despite what some critics say, that doesn’t always mean instability. Ubuntu’s focus is ease of use, not that Fedora in our opinion doesn’t have that as well, but it is Ubuntu’s most attractive feature to most…it focuses on ease of use for new users. Many features first tested in Fedora now are part of Ubuntu.

    Today, Phoronix released the results of its tests of the betas of each of the new distributions. Ubuntu, as of now, won 10 out of 15 of the tests they used, although they admitted that development builds of Fedora have debugging options enabled, which may slow its overall performance. We agree a more definitive result will be interesting once the two are in final release. Hopefully they’ll wait a few weeks after both are issued, to iron out any early issues.

    All Linux distributions have their issues. Take this blog post we found from one dissatisfied Linux tester who tried out a LiveCD. An issue with a network card, one likely easily fixed with a simple keyword search online, turned the author off to adopting the Linux lifestyle. But, compared to years ago, when everything had to be manually configured, 99% of hardware works under Ubuntu, Fedora, or the other major distributions out of the box. It has been a goal of them to get to this point.

    Many improvements are coming under the hood, so to speak. More efficient booting is a goal on both distributions, as is adoption of the ext4 filesystem and new versions of various softwares they have in common. We’ll be watching, either way.

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    Published on March 31, 2009
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    Sirius Radio Impresses Us With its Customer Service

    Sirius Satellite Radio
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    One of the mixed joys of being tech people is being called upon to help other people with their technical problems. So, when a family member returned from a long vacation to discover that their Sirius Satellite Radio in their automobile was not working, telling them to call, they asked us to take over.

    We had called while they were away to negotiate their contract renewal. The first year came free with the car, and when it was time to sign an extension and actually give Sirius money, we spoke to them, analyzing their usage, and determined how to save them a little money by eliminating channels they weren’t even using. Ala Carte is a wonderful thing(we wish our cable company would see that).

    We weren’t sure how long the thing had been disconnected from the service, due to the vacation. When we called, after a technical support technician had us sitting in the car, we discovered the identification number the radio unit displayed didn’t match up with the one they had on file.

    And then we remembered that the dealership had taken the car in that summer because of a stuck CD in the slot-loading CD player on the same radio unit. They must have swapped out the unit. But if they did, how did the radio continue to work for months after that?

    Ultimately, they promised to transfer the renewal to the new radio that we didn’t know we had, and for our inconvenience, which we also didn’t know we had from them, an extra year of service. Since they technically did nothing wrong, we’re impressed they did something like this. Although, considering the reports of their financial situation, they may need the money.

    This extra year may cause us to consider additional radios and services. Certainly, we have a better view of the company than we did before. Now, if they could only get something for us to watch on their Backseat TV service.

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    Published on March 26, 2009
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    Back from the Boxee NYC Meetup

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    As you know, Gadget Wisdom was represented at tonight’s Boxee New York City meetup. We did a little tweeting from there, but tried to focus on the presentation.

    Now, this meet was chock full of goodies, networking and general wonder. Direct link to the video.

    • Boxee is unveiling a new API(application programming interface) “The new API enables developers to build apps using XML pages and Python scripts. developers can now do pretty much whatever they want UI-wise and control the data and metadata around the media.” This will be developed more over time, but it simplifies third-party development in Boxee, making it a community where anyone can contribute.
    • The new version includes an enhanced version of the Boxee browser. It is based in the XUL Framework…the basis for the Firefox and related Mozilla products. It will display any full web page, and try to play the video on it, and try to do so in full screen.
    • The launch of additional content, including Pandora radio, which was apparently its number one most requested music site to integrate.
    • The CEO of Boxee promised the application would be free forever, although extensions that allow access to paid content may come.
    • He also said they are not interested in sharing user data for profit.
    • Adult Filters and Privacy controls will be enhanced in the future.

    Now, you can read the CNet report of the event if you’d like an alternate view.

    We did get a chance to ask a question, got a free Size M t-shirt, and almost sung on stage during the talent competition for a free Mac Mini. Our question is bad news for us. Supporting alternate Linux distributions is not in the Boxee gameplan. They’ll be leaving that up to third-parties. So much for Boxee on Fedora support. We’d hope they’d express willingness to incorporate specific fixes for that into the Boxee source code…so Boxee under alternate distributions can find the libraries it is looking for without a whole bunch of symbolic links.

    Even worse, the Linux version is behind the other versions, as the Boxee developers seem to be focusing on the Mac version…not surprising considering Mac users appear to be their largest group. Boxee hopes to move from Alpha software to Beta by the end of the third quarter. Beta means increased stability, and a redesign of the basic elements of Boxee. Once the framework is at a certain level, it will be declared ready to move closer to the mainstream.

    In the meantime, if you have a Mac or Ubuntu, try it out. It should work mostly out of the box with these OSes. The Mac seems best supported though.

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    Published on March 24, 2009
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    The Future of Video

    Back of a Blu-ray Disc. I took this.
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    Our two pet interests right now seem to be netbooks and video, although there are a lot of other things we find interesting.

    Engadget HD asked yesterday whether or not people are still buying DVDs. A poll of people reading a site with HD in the name, indicating the bulk of the readers are likely serious video enthusiasts, more likely to be new technology adopters. However, that said, why are people not buying DVDs in such numbers as they once did?

    Some of that is definitely blu-ray. But the price point for blu-ray, especially in this economy, is still not at the level where everything would buy one. A DVD player can be had for dirt cheap. So, yes, people are still buying DVDs. Those economizing are renting them, with Netflix, or even using their computer to watch free or paid content.

    Avner Ronen, the CEO of Boxee, commented on Thursday that content companies and cable and IPTV service providers alike are trying to “use their leverage to better survive or avoid change” that is coming to the media industry. “No one likes change except Obama,” he quipped.

    Cable programmers receive $22 billion in subscriber fees each year, which makes those providers, and the cable companies who pay the fees to ensure their customers have access to such content, reluctant to change. Recognizing that the web won’t wait for them indefinitely, many cable companies are planning to offer access to online content as part of their subscription-based plans. Private companies like Netflix could even buy those rights as well, allowing them to get into this market.

    Mark Cuban responded to Ronen’s comments about how the future of video programming is ala carte with his own thoughts. Mark Cuban is the chairman of HDNet, an all HD programming network, among other things. (Please forgive me for the disjointed nature of the rest of this post, as I try to consolidate a lot of blog comments into a coherent thread)

    Why does he, like so many other internet people think content producers are stupid ? Has he, along with so many others pushing internet video not noticed what is happening to the revenues of the content and distribution industries ? Ad Revenues are falling. Quickly. DVD sales are slowing. The per subscriber fees they are getting paid are going up. Not only are they going up, they are consistent.

    Now I dont know about you, but for HDNet and my other content companies, we tend to be very nice to those of our customers who pay us every month. Commentary from cable networks and their content producers are saying the same thing. They can’t afford to upset the people who pay the bills.

    We agree, the cable company initiative to bring things online for subscribers has a good chance of success because it makes these service contingent on cable subscriptions, and the content providers are very likely to agree to that unless another way to make more money on streaming media is offered. And the cable company keeps increasing rates, perhaps because of falling revenues. But if they don’t get it under control, more and more subscribers will flee.

    Cuban goes on the endorse metered Internet, which is a likely alternative manner that cable companies who act as broadband service providers might use to ensure their revenues.

    Ronen responded, with a post on the Boxee Blog, maintaining it is not the bundled offering that is going away, but the concept of a channel and the idea that the cable company is the one deciding what content is included in the bundle. As he puts it(we cleaned it up a bit for readability):

    As a cable channel your primary concern is your ability to negotiate your way into the basic cable package with as many cable operators, and to get the highest fee for it.

    In an Internet/on-demand world your primary concern is the quality of your content, since you are held accountable by the consumer. if consumers want your content they will be willing to pay for it either with cash or with their time (watching ads).

    I understand it is a lucrative business. You invest in 1-3 originally produced (or exclusively licensed) core programs, come up with 5-7 cheap to produce shows, license a bunch of syndicated content, get cable companies to carry it and voila! you’ve got a great business. But this model breaks in an on-demand world, and while it may take a few years, the change is inevitable.

    Cuban shot back his own reply, pointing out that the Video-On-Demand model works better if the cable company is delivering it with unlimited bandwidth to your device. We tend to agree that the limiting factor on the future of IPTV is bandwidth, but bandwidth to the house continues to increase as user demand encourages infrastructure increase. We have no good way of summarizing his thoughts on why channels will always exist, so we include an excerpt of it here.

    The concept of “users always want choice” really really sounds nice. It makes for a great panel argument. But the reality is that its not true. Ultimate choice requires work. Consumers like to think they have choice, but their consumption habits say they prefer easy. Youtube is the perfect example. Millions upon millions of choices that never get seen. The videos that get posted and expected to be seen are the ones from traditional media and providers that already have an audience, ala jon stewart. The rest have to fight for an audience.

    TV Guide and guide listings provided onscreen by the cable company allow people to plan what they want to watch, coupled with DVRs to allow them to decided when to watch it. That means people are already migrating to ala carte. Millions of choices may not be seen on TV as well. We know we can’t devote the time to search through 24 hours of programming on the hundreds of channels our cable company bundles in to get the ones we really want.

    Having online content as part of a cable subscription is good, but having it as the only option is bad. Competition and variety encourages not only innovation, but keeps prices from being overly inflated. As Avner put it…

    I would love for my Cable/Telco providers to focus on being great network providers rather than try to decide what content i should or should not have access to, what application i should or should not run, invent new standards for Interactive TV, Enhanced TV, whatever TV. all with the goal of trying to maintain control, so they don’t lose a grip of their lucrative business model.

    Their network infrastructure is a great asset. Their billing relationship with the user is another one. They should try to build their future business around these two foundations.

    Innovation in the living room will not come from the set-top makers or the networks. If you would like to see the wild creativity of the Internet come to the TV screen, well you need to let the Internet come to the TV screen..

    The arguments and comments seem to go on forever. But what it boils down to is this: no content provider would hurt their profit margins partnering for a subscription-based internet alternative to cable as cable subscribers look for less expensive alternatives. Cable isn’t dead and likely won’t be if they change and grow with the times. People are willing to watch commercials on their computer to get content legally, ala Hulu. US internet infrastructure needs to keep up with the increased bandwidth demand this technology is generating. And finally…things will change. We just have to wait and see how.

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    Published on March 22, 2009
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    Linux for Netbooks

    Knoppix to the rescue / Knoppix al rescate
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    We’ve been expanding our reading to include a variety of new information sources daily. After our recent thoughts on netbooks, we did a little research and found out that Knoppix released a new version last month.

    We admire Knoppix, which was the original bootable live Linux CD, and did a lot to advance the cause. Now every distribution offers a live CD, but Knoppix is still known for its flexibility. Recently, Dmitri Popov of Linux Magazine said that due to its excellent hardware detection, blazingly fast boot process, and the lightweight LXDE desktop environment(which we previously mentioned), Knoppix 6.0 makes a perfect distro for netbooks.

    Even though it isn’t designed specifically for netbooks, Knoppix can be installed to a USB key and offers a variety of boot options that would work. Also, the replacement of KDE with LXDE lightens the load considerably. Popov follows up in an additional article here. In that article, one of the commenters points out that most standard distributions are not optimized for the Atom processor, nor are they customized for the Solid State Drives(SSD) common on some systems.

    Solid State Drives are limited in the number of writes compared to a conventional hard drive, but offer fast reads. Originally the primary drive type in netbooks, they have been replaced with more convention hard drives due to various problems in their longevity and reliability. One only need to read reviews of these items over at Newegg to see some complaints, leading us to believe that until further notice, SSD drives should not be relied on as a primary drive. There are ways to partition your drives to reduce wear, however.

    A few distributions customized for netbooks are available. Easy Peasy is a customized distribution of Ubuntu for netbooks. Ubuntu has a Netbook Remix shipped with several netbooks based on the Moblin Project. The Moblin Project, sponsored by Intel, aims to create a netbook OS based on Linux and optimized for its Atom processor. Intel switched from an Ubuntu to a Fedora base for the project, claiming the move to Fedora was largely a “technical decision based on the desire to adopt RPM (Red Hat Package Manager) for package management” instead of Ubuntu’s Debian DEB extension. RPM offers the advantage of containing license information, thereby enabling developers to create collections of software by license type or exclude software by license type.

    An alternative is Eeebuntu, another customized Ubuntu distribution specifically for the Eee, possessing a custom kernel for those machines. For additional distributions, check out Linux Netbook, or similiar sites.  Our favorite distribution, Fedora, is behind, although there is a SIG for Fedora Mini, which may pop up as a future spin. They are already focused on reducing dependencies so Fedora could fit into the smallest space possible for netbooks, mobile internet devices, and possibly future set top box hardware.

    We look forward to more, as more distributions create optimized versions for the Atom Processors and special spins designed to work with these netbooks. Keep reading.

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    Published on March 22, 2009
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    Calling on Linux

    The results of Lifehacker‘s Hive Five for Best Linux Distributions came out this week. Taking the lead are Debian-based distributions Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint. Mint is a version of Ubuntu which is a version of Debian. Behind them was Fedora, our distribution of choice, then Gentoo. Fedora, is, of course, the distribution used by Linus Torvalds, the Father of Linux. We’ve stated and continue to state our thought about Linux on many occasions.

    Coming in, interestingly enough, on the heels of the announcement was the release of Presto Beta. Presto is a $20 paid(or will be when it moves out of beta on April 13th) distribution of Linux based on Xandros, and is billed as a fast-loading Linux desktop you install from Windows. It was built for boot-up speed, and intends to give laptop users an alternative system to jump into when they really just want to do something quick without having to wait for a full OS to boot up. Manufacturers have been offering an alternate instant-on Linux-based system called Splashtop, which they have embedded into chips on many motherboards.

    We are looking forward to the next version of Fedora, where they are trying to achieve a goal of a 20-second to login-screen startup. They may not reach it, but we’re sure they’ll get the time down as much as they can. We also, despite our interest in out-of-the-box bundles, can suggest a variety of tweaks for many Linux distributions to scale them down.

    For example, Fedora and Ubuntu defaultly use Gnome as its desktop manager. Gnome can be replaced, for example, with XFCE or LXDE, both more lightweight. LXDE is recommended for netbooks for that reason. Openbox is a lightweight Window manager that will work under Gnome and offers many memory improvements and simplifications over alternatives. XFCE is another lightweight desktop manager, offered as the primary desktop on a special custom spin of Fedora.

    With a few simple tweaks, one can get good results out of any Linux distribution on one’s hard drive. And the distributions, not just Fedora, are working on the issue as well, looking for places the default configuration can be altered to remove unnecessary or redundant commands that slow it, or for places to optimize.

    For those of you with netbooks, check out this review of several custom spins of various Linux distributions optimized for netbooks. We have yet to see a community supported distribution of Fedora for netbooks, but we are sure someone will jump on that. Until then, we also wonder if there is a way to configure the boot loader to offer booting up into a stripped down desktop/window manager and configuration or a full Gnome launch, allowing you to switch between the two on the same OS from startup. If there isn’t, might be worth setting up.

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    Published on March 20, 2009
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    Streaming Video Update

    Boxee iPhone app
    Image by nwistheone via Flickr

    On Tuesday, we’re heading down to the Boxee NYC meetup. For those of you not coming(probably a lot of people), they will stream it live here. We’ll blog a bit about the experience of hanging out with 650+ Boxee enthusiasts when we get back from it. The meetup will launch a new version of the Boxee Alpha, as well as discussing some of the changes planned for when the product moves into beta. seveal guest content providers, such as Blip.tv, a surprise guest, and a q&a session.

    A few other things that we’ve spotted:

    • Boxee released an iPhone app to allow the iPhone to act as a remote control. For those of you with iPhones, the screenshots look like this is a wonderful addition to their offerings.
    • In a recent post, we mentioned that Windows Media Center users were having trouble with guide data. Engadget reports that some, but not all of that has been resolved after they blogged about it. They have restored analog guide data which was used to populate digital channels, which means it is still not entirely accurate.
    • In our search for new media hardware and apps, we cannot always present our own reviews, as we don’t have the money to buy everything we like the sound of(Someone can send us free things though, and we guarantee we’ll review them fully). Engadget reviewed the Popcorn Hour A-110. The Popcorn Hour line of products sounds very promising, even if used only as a media streamer from your computer. The final line of their review of the item sums it up: “While it can do just about anything, we didn’t find it super easy and wouldn’t expect those without a fundamental knowledge of networking and video to be able figure how to make it do anything useful. But for those who like to tinker, you’re in for a real treat.” We like to tinker, but we hope firmware and future updates will enhance the product offering.  If so, we are in the market for a set top device that can play all the stuff we normally use an HTPC to play.
    • iPlayer, the BBC’s internet streaming player, may bump itself up to HD offerings as soon as April. Unfortunately, the BBC doesn’t allow us here in the US to stream using their player…at least not officially.
    • The daughter of a Spanish city councilor used her mom’s 3G modem to download episodes of Lost, not realizing that the size of the episodes would end up costing $40,000 in data fees, or $300 an episode.

    Otherwise, we continue to look for new news on easy streaming video, and to make plans to enhance our broadcast offerings, mostly by trying to pick up stations farther away.

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    Published on March 20, 2009
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