The Big Picture | Television

BMO's Don Coxe on Food Prices and Shortages

Thursday, May 01, 2008 | 01:30 PM

in Commodities | Inflation | Television | Video

BMO Financial Group global portfolio strategist Don Coxe discusses Food prices, shortages, and the appropriate investment strategy in the face of the recent food crisis:

click for video

courtesy of BNN

Source:
Market Morning
Global Portfolio Strategy [04-30-08 10:10 AM]
BNN, April 30, 2008
http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip49664

Business Video

Tuesday, April 29, 2008 | 08:30 PM

in Television | Video

You may have noticed that I run a bit of video a few days a week on the site, usually overnight.

As part of the redesign, I am setting up a tab for Video (hence, the slow loading video won't impact the main page). As such, I have been compiling a list of Business-related Video for the update, and this is what I came up with.

(Have I missed anything significant?)

Video Reports:

Financial Times (FT)
http://www.ft.com/multimedia

Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/av/

WSJ
http://online.wsj.com/video

Economist
http://audiovideo.economist.com/

CNBC
http://www.cnbc.com/?id=15839263&tabid=15839798&tabheader=false&t=0.9244770663790405

Business of Innovation
http://innovation.cnbc.com/en

Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/video/

The Street.com
http://www.thestreet.com/video/index.html

Barron's
http://online.barrons.com/public/main?mod=DNH_WSJ#

Marketwatch
http://www.marketwatch.com/tvradio/bcPlayer.asp

Yahoo Finance Tech Ticker TV
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker

CNN Money
http://money.cnn.com/video/

New York Times
http://video.on.nytimes.com/index.jsp

BBC tv
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/video_and_audio/default.stm

Fox Business
http://www.foxbusiness.com/

PBS
http://www.pbs.org/nbr/info/video.html

60 Minutes
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml

CNET Video
http://www.cnettv.com/

Wallstrip
http://www.wallstrip.com/

Cognitive Surplus

Sunday, April 27, 2008 | 07:30 PM

in Psychology/Sentiment | Television | Web/Tech

NYU Professor Clay Shirky asks, "What are you doing with your Cognitive Surplus?"

"I was being interviewed by a TV producer to see whether I should be on their show, and she asked me, "What are you seeing out there that's interesting?"

I started telling her about the Wikipedia article on Pluto. You may remember that Pluto got kicked out of the planet club a couple of years ago, so all of a sudden there was all of this activity on Wikipedia. The talk pages light up, people are editing the article like mad, and the whole community is in an ruckus--"How should we characterize this change in Pluto's status?" And a little bit at a time they move the article--fighting offstage all the while--from, "Pluto is the ninth planet," to "Pluto is an odd-shaped rock with an odd-shaped orbit at the edge of the solar system."

So I tell her all this stuff, and I think, "Okay, we're going to have a conversation about authority or social construction or whatever." That wasn't her question. She heard this story and she shook her head and said, "Where do people find the time?" That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, "No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you've been masking for 50 years."

So how big is that surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project--every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in--that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it's a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it's the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.

And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus. People asking, "Where do they find the time?" when they're looking at things like Wikipedia don't understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of this asset that's finally being dragged into what Tim calls an architecture of participation.

Now, the interesting thing about a surplus like that is that society doesn't know what to do with it at first--hence the gin, hence the sitcoms. Because if people knew what to do with a surplus with reference to the existing social institutions, then it wouldn't be a surplus, would it? It's precisely when no one has any idea how to deploy something that people have to start experimenting with it, in order for the surplus to get integrated, and the course of that integration can transform society.

The early phase for taking advantage of this cognitive surplus, the phase I think we're still in, is all special cases. The physics of participation is much more like the physics of weather than it is like the physics of gravity. We know all the forces that combine to make these kinds of things work: there's an interesting community over here, there's an interesting sharing model over there, those people are collaborating on open source software. But despite knowing the inputs, we can't predict the outputs yet because there's so much complexity."

Fascinating stuff . . .

Source:
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus
Clay Shirky
Web 2.0 conference, April 23, 2008 http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html

Real Scoop: Television Pundit Analyzer

Monday, April 21, 2008 | 10:00 AM

in Psychology/Sentiment | Television | Video | Web/Tech

How would you like to have this attachment on your TV ?

"RealScoop utilizes leading voice analysis technology to analyze statements made by public figures. The BELIEVABILITY METER™ analyzes each video second by second, displaying the real-time results in a color-coded manner from left to right. The most believable statements are green, gradually turning red as they become more questionable.

Here's what it looks like in action:

>
CEO of Bear Stearns (3 Days Before Collapse)
click for video

If I were philosopher king, I would mandate that be installed on every television set.

Is the Bush Admin Trying to Kill Us ?

Thursday, April 10, 2008 | 03:00 AM

in Politics | Television | Video

Too funny:

Mocking Finance Web Videos

Thursday, April 03, 2008 | 02:15 PM

in Television | Video | Weblogs

OMG, this is frickin' hysterical:

Thanks, Aaron

Bloomberg vs CNBC Video: Bleccch

Thursday, March 27, 2008 | 07:07 AM

in Financial Press | Television | Video | Web/Tech

Yesterday, I noted how pokey and bug laden the videos are on CNBC.com, saying "I sure wish CNBC would get hip to embeddable flash media, like BrightCove. The klunky old windows media players crash all the time. (I don't understand why they went with this 10 year old technology)."

Turns out there is an even worse Video feed from a major news organization than CNBC.com: Its Bloomberg.com/news/av/

At least CNBC -- crash-prone, buggy, ugly and slow -- will play on a Mac.

The Bloomberg video -- also crash-prone, buggy, ugly and slow -- is Windows only! I can play the video, but not the audio, on a Safari or Firefox browser for OSX.

And speaking of bugs, Bloomberg is the one of that odd collection of web based video that can't/won't be captured by a screen grab on a Windows machine. That means that any Bloomberg video you see here (like this one) is the result of watching and coding it on a Dell in the office, than grabbing the (silent audio) video part on the Mac at home, and combining the two.

Don't you want people promoting your brand and your content?

Its not like Bloomie doesn't know what embeddable flash is -- if you go to this page, their promotional video is not WMP -- its flash based! No loading delay, no glitches, just straight up video.

~~~

Hey Bloomberg.com & CNBC.com:

You folks are paying for the shooting, editing, storing, hosting and bandwidth usage of all this video. I assume you actually want people to see it -- to sell subscriptions, to roll adverts, to brand your product. You are spending all of this money for a product that sends people running in the opposite direction.

Every time I post a video from either of your sites, I get email telling me it crashed their browser, or even worse their computer. It is slow, ugly and to be blunt, unprofessional. Your online video product is in fact damaging your brands. (CNN/Money's video auto roll is another bit of annoyance, but we'll save that for another day).

Of all the major Financial media that run video, only WSJ and NYT seem to have gotten it right.

Um, its 2008. Can we get with program? The embeddable flash video is circa 2006. Can you find it in your business models to only be 2 years -- not 10 -- behind the technological adoption curve?

~~~

Comedy Central on The Economy

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 | 03:00 AM

in Economy | Markets | Psychology/Sentiment | Television | Video

For our UK friends who may not have access to TDS: several moments of lighthearted hilarity:

The Daily Show on Bear Stearns:

Stephan Colbert on the Economy:

Aasif Mandvi reports on the Bear Stearns bailout while experiencing gravitational altitude correction:

I talked to guy about 300 feet ago . . .

Why Can't I Rip DVDs to My iPod?

Wednesday, March 05, 2008 | 06:30 PM

in Digital Media | Film | Technology | Television | Video

Legally, that is.

This is my annoyance of the moment: Why are DVDs a DRM-locked proprietary platform? When I purchase one, why can't I use this on a convenient, portable device such as my iPod?

What a pain in the arse it is to rip a DVD: Frist, you need to use several products (MP4 Converter, Handbrake, Ripper); 2nd, it takes forever. 3rd, and its illegal to do so.

What brought this about recently was The Simpson's Movie -- actually, more of an extended 90 minute episode. I saw it with my nephews (with me snoozing thru parts of it).

However, going through the extras, I started listening to producer/writer commentary. Unbelievably entertaining stuff, like a terrific radio show with several very funny people cracking each other up. I would have liked to put on the iPod for the train, but no such luck.

~~~

I can rip the basic movie, but not the special audio commentary. Anyone have a clue how to do that?

Sources:

The Complete Guide to Converting DVDs to iPod Format
Jerrod Hofferth
iLounge, November 21, 2005
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/the-complete-guide-to-converting-dvds-to-ipod-format-mac/

Rip DVDs To Your Mac To View On AppleTV And iPod.
Alexis Kayhill
Mac360, Friday, April 13, 2007
http://mac360.com/index.php/mac360/comments/rip_dvds_to_your_mac_to_view_on_appletv_and_ipod/

I'm Optimistic . . .

Tuesday, February 12, 2008 | 04:30 AM

in Economy | Television

Amusing:

Hot Ladies Talking Money with Bald Dudes

Wednesday, February 06, 2008 | 04:30 AM

in Economy | Politics | Television | Video

Too funny, too apropos: Very Mad Money

Shiller: "Historic Housing Bust"

Tuesday, February 05, 2008 | 04:00 AM

in Economy | Real Estate | Television

Shiller warns about the extent of the Housing collapse:

Friday Night Jazz Sarah Silverman

Friday, February 01, 2008 | 06:30 PM

in Digital Media | Music | Television

I know, its not Miles. But this was so frickin' hilarious that I had no choice -- I had to make this my Friday night entertainment!

Enjoy your evenings!

Sales of HD DVD Players Plunge

Monday, January 28, 2008 | 08:58 PM

in Digital Media | Television | Video

No surprise here: Sales of HD DVD Players Plunge After Warner Move:

"One week after Warner Brothers Entertainment announced that it was abandoning its support for the next-generation HD DVD format in favor of the Blu-ray high-definition format, consumers abandoned HD DVD.

What was a 50-50 market split in 2007 for the high-definition players shifted sharply in Blu-ray’s favor in the new year. For the week that ended Jan. 12, Blu-ray hardware captured 90 percent of the market, according to data collected by the NPD Group, a market analysis firm."

Wired had the best take on the matter:

Hey HD DVD: It's Not Just a Flesh Wound

You've got to hand to Toshiba. Even now, when faced with overwhelming evidence that Sony's Blu-ray has won the high def format war, the mortally wounded HD DVD backer just keeps on prolonging the inevitable.

So to the HD DVD camp I say this: You've put up a good fight, guys, but seriously, what are you going to, bleed on Blu-ray? Let's move on with our lives.

Source:
Sales of HD DVD Players Plunge After Warner Move
ERIC A. TAUB
NYT, January 28, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/technology/28disc.html

Hey HD DVD: It's Not Just a Flesh Wound
Bryan Gardiner
Wired, January 28, 2008 | 4:22:25 PM
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/01/hey-hd-dvd-its.html

NPD Confirms Huge Blu-ray Share Jump http://hd.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=291403

Plasma Screen Bargains: 50" Panasonic 1080p

Tuesday, December 25, 2007 | 12:15 PM

in Television | Video | Web/Tech

You may recall when I was shopping for flat screens, Best Buy was advertising the Panasonic 50" TH-50PZ77U at $1799, but refused to honor that price, claiming it was a money losing typo. (See Inconvenienced By Best Buy! for the details). Their price was an absurd $2,899.99 -- $100 over list.

This ultimately sent me into the arms of the delightful Pioneer Elite FHD1 (at a great price, thanks to a friend in the audio business) for a joint B-day/Xmas gift.

I noticed just before the holidays that J&R Music was advertising that very same Panasonic -- the TH-50PZ77U 50" Class 1080p Plasma Flat Panel TV and HDTV -- for 1749.99 after $200 rebate. By way of comparison, the same set is $2119 at Amazon.com, far below the Best Buy pricing.

~~~

Talk about compartmentalizing: As an investor, Best Buy (BBY) is one of the few non luxe stores that is doing well.

But as a consumer, I continue to happily find alternatives to Best Buy -- especially after reading articles like this one).

Comedy Writers, VCs to Disintermediate TV Studios

Tuesday, December 18, 2007 | 03:23 PM

in Digital Media | Television | Web/Tech

I frequently criticize the Recording Industry for the short sighted stupidity; The Film industry has a history of being savvier than the record industry, but still is subject to frequent bouts of idiocy.

Its possible that the brain trusts running the television industry may make both of those groups look like rocket scientists: The L.A. Times is reporting that the writers strike has motivated the striking comedy writers to sit down with Venture Capitalists. The two groups are exploring new web based ways to reach comedy audiences, potentially bypassing the TV studios.

The TV studios have already lost. The VCs will find a business model that works on the cheap, and begin competing with the studios, even if the strike is settled tomorrow. I suspect that Television, as we know it, is now officially over.

Ubiq-cerpt:™

"Dozens of striking film and TV writers are negotiating with venture capitalists to set up companies that would bypass the Hollywood studio system and reach consumers with video entertainment on the Web.

At least seven groups, composed of members of the striking Writers Guild of America, are planning to form Internet-based businesses that, if successful, could create an alternative economic model to the one at the heart of the walkout, now in its seventh week.

Three of the groups are working on ventures that would function much like United Artists, the production company created 80 years ago by Charlie Chaplin and other top stars who wanted to break free from the studios.

"It's in development and rapidly incubating . . ."

Regardless of whether the strike gets settled, and what cut the writers get, the situation has just unleashed a long tail of entrepreneurial energies of some of the most creative minds in the country. Just what television needed as their ratings have been sliding: competition from both within and without.

It appears that the TV studios and producers are drawing from the bottom of the same IQ talent pool of executives as the RIAA and MPAA . . .

UPDATE December 19, 2007 3:30pm

Portfolio addresses the same essential subject in their January 2008 issue:

Will Ferrell and the End of Media as We Know It

Source:
Striking writers in talks to launch Web start-ups
Joseph Menn
Los Angeles Times, December 17, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-webwriters17dec17,0,4998256,full.story?

Hollywood Studio Exec Explains The Writers' Strike

Thursday, November 29, 2007 | 04:30 PM

in Digital Media | Film | Television

A studio executive explains the Hollywood writers' strike (as written by striking Colbert Report writers).

Bloody brilliant.

Also, the AMPTP finally fights fire with fire, and uses the internet to counter the WGA's ugly smear campaign.

Hysterical.

via pmarca

Not The Daily Show, With Some Writer

Thursday, November 15, 2007 | 08:37 PM

in Digital Media | Television | Video

Brilliant commentary from a Daily Show writer about the Writer's Guild strike:

(if no video appears here, than try IE or Safari -- or got to YouTube directly.
Firefox has been glitchy with YouTube videos lately)

There's a lesson in this: Be careful about not paying comedy writers, as they have the clever ability to make you look like idiotic shitbags . . .

Pixar Short Films Collection

Saturday, October 27, 2007 | 03:30 PM

in Digital Media | Television | Video

Now that I finally ordered a plasma, I've been on the look out for good video.

I'm pretty jazzed about this: Pixar Short Films Collection.

There's lots of backstory at Pixar's site.

Here's the full list of shorts:

Boundin'
For the Birds
Lifted
Jack-Jack Attack
Tin Toy
Mater and the Ghostlight
Geri's Game
One Man Band
The Adventures of André and Wally B.
Mike's New Car
Luxo Jr.
Red's Dream
Knick Knack

Looks like good G-rated fun.

Fox News Anchor or Porn Star?

Friday, October 26, 2007 | 02:30 PM

in Financial Press | Television

Time for some Friday afternoon fun:

It started with this New York Magazine column: Fox Business Network: Full of Foxes!

Of course, anything on Wall Street must be pushed too far, and Radar magazine doesn't disappoint with this quiz: Fox News Anchor or Porn Star?

click thru for Anchor/Porn Start quiz

Perhaps I shouldn't reveal this, but I got a 10/10 -- you can conclude that I either know know my media anchors -- or my porn stars!

Only TV Reporter at the 1987 Crash

Monday, October 15, 2007 | 08:55 AM

There is a terrific narrative by Jan Hopkins (Live From New York), who was the only reporter on the floor of the NYSE the day of the crash. She covered it live, and her reporting on the crash helped CNN win a Peabody Award.

Here are her recollections:

"At best, most people get to merely observe great events. On Oct. 19, 1987, I found myself the narrator of one. On that Black Monday, I was the only TV reporter broadcasting live throughout the day from the New York Stock Exchange.

That's quite a contrast with today, when telecasts from the floor are ubiquitous, and reporters seem to outnumber the NYSE's dwindling crew of specialists and traders. Although CNN didn't regularly report live from the exchange, we'd had a reporter there the previous Friday when the Dow had shed 108 points, or 4.6%. I was assigned to go to the exchange Monday, in case things got worse.

My producer, Barbara May, and I arrived well before the opening bell. Our cameraman, Jim Peithman, lowered wires out a window of the exchange balcony to our production truck, parked in an alley. For most of the day, I was on that balcony with Gary Miller, a Big Board employee assigned to keep an eye on us. His bosses decreed that we couldn't use camera lights because they might distract the traders and specialists.

The market was tense as stocks continued their fall from the week before. I did updates whenever a producer in Atlanta ordered one, each time calculating the Dow's slide by longhand with Barbara.

From where we stood, we couldn't see the monitors that the stock specialists used, and there were no huge plasma screens around the trading floor as there are now. Barbara used an internal phone to call the exchange's market-news desk for the latest reading on the Dow. Then, we did the math ourselves. We didn't have access to computers, and we hadn't brought calculators. By shortly after 2 p.m., we realized that the Dow had fallen more than 292 points, or 13%, to around 1950, a decline that eclipsed the market's previous worst one-day percentage swoon -- 12.82% on Oct. 28, 1929.

Until that juncture, I had been careful to stress that, despite the large point decline, this was nothing like the 1929 crash. But now it was worse. With its global satellite reach, CNN was broadcasting the story live around the world. What we reported and how we reported it had the potential to make a bad situation worse. I carefully chose my words and tone, and tried to avoid expressing fear. Still, I had to describe the panic developing below.

As the action intensified, the balcony became crowded with reporters and photographers, awaiting the closing bell. I remember a sign at the end of the day, indicating that the ticker was running several hours behind. Eventually, we learned that stocks had plummeted 22.6% -- that would be about a 3,100-point drop now -- to 1738.74. I remember the traders' uneaten lunches in paper bags. Most of all, I remember thinking that we had been part of history.

Richard Torrenzano, the Big Board's then-communications chief, recently told me he believes the media helped calm investors on Black Monday. That might have helped ease the way for the market recovery that soon began."

Quite fascinating . . .

Source:
Black Monday – Part II
ANDREW BARY
Barron's October 15, 2007
http://online.barrons.com/article/SB119222899092857845.html

Alan Greenspan on The Daily Show

Monday, October 08, 2007 | 02:30 PM

in Federal Reserve | Television

Since its a quiet holiday Monday, how about some Greenspan-related fun:

A stunningly revealing interview that Jon Stewart conducted with Easy Al on the 9/18 “Daily Show." It’s telling that the most of the media (and Wall Street) are ignoring Easy Al’s answers.

Easy Al admits to Jon Stewart:

1) Excess money causes inflation.
2) Fed easy credit favors stock market operators at the expense of savers.
3) The Fed believes that the market trades more on perception of what the Fed is or will do instead of the actual policies.
4) The Fed must make the market perceive that the system is sound.
5) The presence of the Fed guarantees there is no ‘free market’.
6) He still can’t forecast the economy or whether there is a bubble or too much exuberance.

Here's a transcript of the interview (via Dummy Spots):

Stewart: (after Greenspan’s explanation that the market moves on expectations of the Fed move, not the fundamentals of it) So the Fed, or whoever’s leading it, if they wanted to could in fact “goof” on all of us...

Greenspan: (smiles) You wouldn’t want to.

Stewart: When you say “Open Market,” I always wonder... Why do we have a Fed? Wouldn’t the market take care of interest rates and all that? Why do we have someone adjusting rates if we are a free market society?

Greenspan: We didn’t need a central bank when we were on the Gold Standard . . . [Conspiracy theorists note- the Fed was created 20 years BEFORE we decoupled from the Gold Std] . . . people would buy and sell gold and the markets would do what the Fed does now. . . but by the 1930s most everybody in the world decided that the Gold Standard was strangling the economy and universally the Gold Standard was abandoned...you need somebody out there or some mechanism to determine how much money is out there because the amount of money in an economy relates to the amount of inflation...

Stewart: So we’re not a free market then - there is an invisible...a “benevolent” hand that touches us...

Greenspan: Absolutely, you are quite correct. To the extent that there is a central bank governing the amount of money in the system, that is not a Free Market, and most people call it regulation.

Stewart: When you lower interest rates, it drives money to stocks and lowers the return people get on savings.

Greenspan: Yes, indeed.

Stewart: So they’ve made a choice - “We would like to favor those who invest in the stock market and not those who [save]”...

Greenspan: That’s the way it comes out, but that’s not the way we think about it.

Stewart: Explain that to me. It seems to me that we favor investment, but we don’t favor work. The vast majority of people work, they pay payroll taxes, and they use banks. And then there’s this whole other world of hedge funds and short betting... y’know, it seems like craps. And they keep saying, “No no no, don’t worry about it, it’s Free Market, that’s why we live in much bigger houses.” But it really is, it’s the Fed, or some other thing, no?

Greenspan: I think you’d better re-read my book.

Stewart: Am I wrong that we penalize work by not making the choice to...

Greenspan: No, what a sound money system does is to stabilize the elements in it and reduce the uncertainty that people confront, and when people confront uncertainty they withdraw and it reduces economic activity...

Stewart: So it’s all about perception then. It’s about making people believe the system is sound. If the stock market is high, people feel confident in spending, and if it lowers, they feel less confident?

Greenspan: Well...uh...I think you have to realize, there are certain aspects of human nature, which move exactly the way you defined it. The problem is, periodically we all go a little bit euphoric until we are assuming with confidence that everything is terrific, there will be no problems, nothing will ever happen, and then it dawns on us- NO!

Stewart: And then it goes the other way.

Greenspan: Exactly.

Stewart: Huge Fear.

Greenspan: I was telling my colleagues the other day...I’d been dealing with these big mathematical models for forecasting the economy, and I’m looking at what’s going on the last few weeks and I say, “Y’know, if I could figure out a way to determine whether or not people are more fearful, or changing to euphoric... I don’t need any of this other stuff. I could forecast the economy better than any way I know. The trouble is, we can’t figure that out. I’ve been in the forecasting business for 50 years, and I’m no better than I ever was, and nobody else is either.”

Stewart: (Leans back in chair)...You just bummed the sh*t outta me!

And here's something I never thought I would type: Alan Greenspan on The Daily Show

Video via Comedy Central

Screwed Inconvenienced By Best Buy!

Monday, September 24, 2007 | 07:30 PM

in Retail | Technology | Television

Having just moved this past spring, I have been postponing replacing the giant 36" Sony (way heavy) XBR tube with a lighter, thinner flat panel display -- until all the contractors and painters were done.

Well, they are finally out of the house, so I started looking in earnest for a big HDTV.

Mrs. Big Picture won't let me pull the trigger on the Pioneer Elite screen I desire; "Its a tee-vee, for cying out loud," she protests. Unlike me, she is far too reasonable to spend that much money on a piece of glass. I, being unreasonable, already have a standing order for the new M3. She has no idea -- but now I know she doesn't read the blog as much as she claims to.

But I digress.

So I had to narrow it down to something quote "more reasonable" unquote than the Pioneer. I've been leaning towards plasma (not rear projection or LCD), and preferably 1080 (not 720).

Then this weekend, an effective resolution of the price/quality balance popped up: The front page of the Best Buy (BBY) circular showed the Panasonic 50" TH-50PZ77U at $1799.* Its a good name brand (Panasonic), its true HD, 1080 dpi, and it has garnered good reviews. Lets just get it over with and go and buy the damn thing, (I'll get the Pioneer Elite as soon as someone offers me 7 figures for the blog).

An ideal compromise.

Or so I thought.

We get to the store, and -- Damn! -- this this sign greets us on the front door of the Best Buy:

"On the front cover of the 9/23 Best Buy ad insert, we mistakenly priced the 50" Panasonic TH-50PZ77U (8501711) at $1799, before $90 savings. We intended to advertise the 42" Panasonic TH-42PZ77U (8501757) at $1799, before $90 savings. Best Buy will not be honoring this price on the 50" Panasonic TH-50PZ77U (8501711).

Best Buy apologizes for any inconvenience and will offer a $100 Instant Rebate on all Plasma Televisions this week. This Instant Rebate will be reflected in online and in-store prices, and will be reduced from regular sale prices."

How much is the actual price of the Panasonic 50" TH-50PZ77U st Best Buy? Oh, about $1,100 more than the advertised price -- $2899! THAT'S $100 OVER MFR LIST!

If a company like Best Buy is not going to honor even their own advertised prices, why should anyone expect them to honor the so-called price matching policies?

~~~

Gee, I don't think I'll be shopping in Best Buy very much in the future . . .

As to the Plasmas, any one have any specific ideas or suggestions?

I am thinking about getting the 42" TH-42PZ77U and eventually moving it into the master bedroom when the Pioneer finally shows up . . .

What say ye?

_____________

*Do not confuse the PX77 with the PZ77. Here's where things get obnoxious in electronics land: Sets with nearly identical model numbers are very dissimilar. The TH-50PX77U is one letter off from the TH-50PZ77U -- but its 720 dpi, not 1080.

Who Is The Anonymous Donor?

Monday, September 17, 2007 | 09:09 PM

in Digital Media | Television | Video

After an exhausting 3 day road trip away, the first thing I like do on my first night back is kick back and relax.

Depending on the time of year, that could mean any number of things. Could be a cigar, a walk by the beach, or a glass of port.

Tonite, it meant pouring a glass of Shiraz, firing up the TiVo, and watching Curb Your Enthusiasm. Absolutely laugh out loud hysterical -- and that was before I drank the wine. You can really recognize LD's stylistic fingerprints all over Seinfeld in the plot of this Curb.

I've seen them all, but I may have to go grab a few box sets of this; it will make for good airplane viewing . . .

Too, too funny . . .

The Widening Gap Between the Rich and the Super-Rich

Wednesday, September 12, 2007 | 02:30 PM

in Psychology/Sentiment | Taxes and Policy | Television

Via the Onion, comes this frickin' hysterical tv panel discussing the all important question: Are America's Rich Falling Behind The Super-Rich?

Panelists discuss a new study showing the gap between the wealthy and the absurdly wealthy is widening, and how we can help the merely rich catch up.

In The Know: Are America's Rich Falling Behind The Super-Rich?