Thursday, July 1, 2010

Latest Instant Watch

I've been watching a bunch of the old John Pertwee Doctor Who series lately:
Carnival Of Monsters
Spearhead From Space
The Green Death

Pertwee really grows on you after a while. Carnival Of Monsters is a surprisingly complex story.

Netflix added one of my all time favorite series, Veronica Mars:
Season 1
Season 2

Veronica Mars is a perfect combination of the Rockford Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Beverly Hills 90210, if you can imagine such a thing.

There's also the wonderful Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, season 1, alas cut down in its prime. (With a BH90210 tie in as well)

The other day I was listening to Serge Gainsbourg in the van and remembered where I had first heard him, in the insane and wonderful satire, Irma Vep. If you love and/or hate French cinema, then this will certainly make you laugh hysterically.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Party Down

Yes, I’m still here. Been very busy and honestly I don’t care.

I’ve been too busy of late to watch as much video as I’d like. I did watch a few episodes of Yes Minister though. There are a ton of new channels on the Roku that I haven’t even had time to check out. They did roll out the new UI which seems to load more slowly but has a search function and allows browsing titles besides those in your instant queue.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Ren & Stimpy

All three seasons of Ren & Stimpy are available on Netflix!
Ren & Stimpy: Vol. 1
Ren & Stimpy: Vol. 2
Ren & Stimpy: Vol. 3

Otherwise I don't have much, been way too busy. I did set up a PC in the kitchen, the LCD TV has a PC input so I figured what the heck? I'm trying out Clicker for finding stuff to watch while doing the dishes, etc. It works well, although there are too many options.

Roku did add the Tech Podcast Network but I haven't spent much time checking it out.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Latest Instant Watching

Besides working my way through "24", I watched a few other things recently.

"Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention: In the 1960s". is a cut rate documentary on one of my favorite musicians. The footage and history was interesting but there wasn't enough music and no sources from within the Zappa corporation.

"Party Down, Season 2" is the work of Rob Thomas and follows the continuing story of the hilarious, raunchy and depressing lives of a team of caterers in Hollywood. Obviously watch the fist season if you haven't. They're rolling out a new episode of season 2 every week as it airs on Starz.

Max has been watching "The Hilarious House of Frightenstein" on the Wii Netflix interface. Demented early 70's Canadian children's show. Has Vincent Price!

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Blubrry, BOL, 24

All I've been watching lately is episodes of 24 on Netflix. It's a ridiculous show but incredibly addictive. So that's why I haven't posted lately.

Roku has a new channel, Blubrry. It's a lot like Blip.tv, with a variety of medium to poor quality podcasts. Haven't found anything compelling on it so far. But hey, it's free...

I have been enjoying cnet's Buzz Out Loud on Mediafly, easiest to search for it or add it to your Mediafly account. There's an audio and a video version.

We also got the Wii Netflix disk. It's perfect for the kids.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Instant Watch I've Watched Already

Some new Instant Watch releases I've watched prior to their release but you may want to watch. Or not.

A huge dump of Joss Wheedon's ouvre:
Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 1
Vampires and valley girls...
Angel, Season 1
Buffy spinoff, watch Buffy first
Firefly, the Complete Series
Best sci-fi TV show ever.
Dollhouse, Season 1
Misunderstood. It builds slowly and by the second season takes us in a very dark direction.
My one quibble is the unaired episode "Epitaph One" isn't available except on DVD.

Arrested Development, Season 1
One of the funniest shows on TV this decade.
Better Off Ted, Season 1
Sort of like Dilbert and Arrested Development mashed together. It even has Portia Del Rossi.

The Riches, Season 1
Well done series about a family of Travellers (not actually Irish...) who try and make a new life.
Lost, Season 1
What? You haven't watched LOST? The only sci-fi Felice will watch with me. Trust me, nothing in season one makes any sense until you get to season 10, and even then I have no idea what's going on. But it's a heck of a ride.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends, Season 1
I'd never seen the earlier episodes. Boris and Natasha are far more sinister.

Mongol
An interesting and somewhat brutal movie about Ghengis Khan. I can hardly wait for the sequels.

They've also released most of the seasons of 24 which I haven't watched yet as I was waiting for them to release it.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Netflix Instant Watch Activity

Latest Netflix Choices

Arj Barker: LYAO
It wasn't funny enough. Barely a chortle.

Green for Danger
A good mystery.

Doctor Who: The Armageddon Factor
Classic Who.

Doctor Who: The Talons of Weng-Chiang
Even classic-er Who. Giant rat puppet and Deep Roy as a homunculus.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

The Wood Whisperer

I started watching The Wood Whisperer a liitle while ago. The episodes range in content and length, between 4 minutes on fixing knots to 20 minutes on achieving a mahogany finish and 36 minutes on oil finishes. There are a bunch of odd promotional/sale videos stuck in there as well.
The content is professionally presented and well done.

Blip.tv>Genres>Home&Garden>The Wood Whisperer

Monday, March 15, 2010

Netflix Instant Watch Activity

More of the latest.

Dirty Love
You would probably hate it. For whatever reason, we enjoyed it although I thought it lost steam towards the end. Don't blame me if you find it unwatchable.
Creature Comforts America: Season 1
The US version of the British series. Hilarous in small doses.
Wrong Is Right
Half thriller, half satire. Without Connery it would have sucked.
First Men in the Moon
Didn't finish it, maybe I will. Victorian Sci-fi.
Bad Company
Average thriller made better with Rock and Hopkins. The CIA is completely incompetent.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Netflix Instant Watch Activity

Latest movies I've watched:

John Caparulo: Meet Cap
I enjoy his style of lowbrow comedy.

World War II: When Lions Roared
Basically a play built around Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, set against newsreel footage. Not exciting but well acted and interesting.

The Call of Cthulhu
I haven't watched it all yet as silent films tend to make me fall asleep. I enjoyed what I saw before I saw the inside of my eyelids.

Overlord
A maudlin, depressing movie from 1975 about a young british lad inducted into the army just in time for D-Day. It is redeemed by the fact that there's a bunch of cool newsreel footage in it that I haven't seen before.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Amazon Biathlon on Amazon

I decied to check out what free content was available on Amazon via the Roku. You have to link your Amazon account with the Roku via a computer, just as with Netflix.
If you go to Amazon Video on Demand>Free TV>Biathlon: Women's 7.5km Sprint you can watch a beautiful HD 7 minute recap of the end of that Olympic contest. Most of the other free content is lame but there are a few show premiers, etc. available. Overall Amazon is pay as you go...

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Freezer Burns

Freezer Burns on Blip.tv is a one man frozen food review series. The reviews are entertaining and if you eat frozen foodstuffs they are useful.
I found the menus for Blip.tv to be somewhat laggy, not as polished as Mediafly but easier to find stuff. They have a ton of content in general.
To get to Freezer Burns:
Main Menu>Blip.tv>Genres>Food&Leisure>Freezer Burns

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Cranky Geeks

Watched an episode of Cranky Geeks last night. It's basically John C. Dvorak sitting around a table with some other technorati ragging on the various tech stories of the week. For a grumpy and jaundiced view of the tech world it can't be beat. Video quality isn't great compared to Twit or Revision3. It's easiest to add it to your Mediafly channel on the Mediafly site, Technology>Cranky Geeks. Then watch on the Mediafly Roku channel.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Netflix Instant Watch Activity

Latest instant watch movies I've, um, watched:

The Night of the Generals
A clever crime movie, with more than a few twists, great acting.

The Anderson Tapes
Sean Connery, a very young Christopher Walken, exceptionally 70's movie. Soundtrack is a bit irritating.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
It worked because it was only about 45 minutes. Longer would have grated. Cheesy and well sung.

The Strip: The Complete Series
Fell asleep ten minutes into it last night. Because I was tired. Terrible camera effects, like a drunk Miami Vice.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Hot For Words

On with exploring the various Roku channels. Mediafly is a big confusing mess, at least it is to me. You can register with mediafly.com and build up various shows in your account that will then show up on the Roku if you link your accounts on the Roku (Mediafly>Manage Users). You can also browse popular video and audio shows and search for shows via the Roku.

So Mediafly>Search
brings you to a alpha-numeric input screen so you can type in your search terms. If you type in "hot for words" you will get some results (the first of which was not "hot for words", but "One word review of hot pockets barbeque beef" = FAIL)

So then if you click on one of the episodes of Hot For Words you can either play that episode, or more importantly "view other episodes". Then you can watch any of the episodes of "Hot For Words". The "Onomatopoeia" episode is as good a place to start as any.

There doesn't seem to be a way to add the episodes to your account via the Roku. There's a lot of content on Mediafly so it's a good idea to check it out at your leisure. But start with Hot For Words, you (probably) won't be sorry.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Netflix Instant Watch Activity

These types of posts will be pretty terse.

We watched Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion over the past two nights. Not bad, he can be funny but there's a certain laziness to his comedy.

Just added Green For Danger to my instant watch queue. Which means I haven't watched it yet.

I did not add The World of Suzie Wong as I've already watched it twice, but I recommend it. At the very least for the wonderful views of Hong Kong.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Detective Montalbano

Roku added the MHz Network last update. It's listed as a premium channel and their roku page says:
"MHz Networks On Demand has launched in Beta on the family of Roku players, with free news and news magazine programming from premier international broadcasters, exclusive music interviews, Detective Montalbano, MHz Networks originals, AFL matches and more.Additional content will be added, including premium and pay services, throughout Spring 2010."
So a mix of free and pay content. I surfed around and found the aforementioned "Detective Montalbano".

Let me pause for a second and explain my notation for finding the shows I blog about within the Roku menus. Using "Detective Montalbano as an example, assuming you start from the main menu showing all the channels you are subscribed to, which also includes the settings menu and the channel store, select "MHz Networks On Demand". If you don't see that channel, go to the channel store and add it.

Then within the MHz Networks menu, scroll sideways using the right and left arrows until you are on the "Entertainment" tab, select it, then scroll sideways again until you see the "Series" tab. Select that tab and then you will see one series available, "Detective Montalbano Season 1"'. Select that and you will see all the episodes available for watching on the Roku!

Rather than write all that out I instead can write:
Home>MHz Networks>Entertainment>Series>Detective Montalbano>"The Snack Thief" (which is the title of the episode I watched).
Much clearer?

Back to Detective Montalbano, the series is from 1999 and is actually titled "Il commissario Montalbano". The series is in Italian and has English subtitles. It's an entertaining mystery/procedural set in Sicily and well acted. A nice change from BBC mysteries and CSI clones. Heck, it's just nice to hear Italian sometimes.

Nick Loves His Roku

There's nothing like that new blog smell, is there? I've had a Roku for a year and now that Roku has added a slew of new channels I thought it would be a good idea to start a blog where I post what I've been watching. Back when Netflix was the only option there wasn't much point as it was fairly easy to find new streaming titles. With the new channels it's a bit difficult to find and figure out what's worth watching.

This won't be a generalist blog, I'll only be posting what I've watched, so if you have tastes like mine you might find this blog interesting. If not? Well maybe it'll help you enjoy the Roku anyway. I'm not a media professional, I don't have any insider perspective and I'm not even that smart. So don't expect hot gossip or scintillating and prosaic reviews.

I hope Roku is fine with my use of Roku in the title, if not expect the title to change to "Nick Loves Hisro Ku!" or "OMG, Really?". But we'll cross that bridge when and if I come to it. You'll notice that I've larded up the sidebar with ads, and the actual first post is a privacy policy about those ads. Sorry about that, but if I'm going to spend time writing I need to offset the time with a possibility of recompense. I should probably also add that I hold a whopping 15 shares of Netflix stock.

Anyway, I feel like I've prepared the ground for the blog, so get prepared for a glimpse of my exciting, media rich, lifestyle.

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