ramblings

ok, here’s the quick summary of the couple shows I reviewed. They were mediocre. Not the worst shows they did but definitely not up to the old TSS show.

Till Next Time

patrick

Here is the second installment of the Screen Savers critique. The show broadcast was on February 23. Overall, this show was average. 

The opening of the show was pretty normal for TSS of late. Sarah and Pereira end up running over each other while talking, creating gibberish. They did another reenactment, which was also very bad, of the spoiler pictures from the latest Star Wars movie. I gave the segment a 3/10.

Rose interviewed the founder of Wizard magazine, Gareb Shamus. The segment was a good interview except that it had nothing to do with tech. It was all about comic books. I give this segment a 6/10 due to the fact that the content just wasn’t relevant to tech.

Rose showed off his modded iPod shuffle and was showing the process that it takes while Pereira was somewhat annoying in his fashion. I give this segment an 8/10 for the good tech content while being annoyed by Pereira.

Sarah spoke with John Park the author of the book “Understanding 3D Animation Using Maya”, Maya is a popular 3D animation tool for the masses. They showed a 3D model of Sarah Lane which is available for download. I give the segment an 8/10 for the good tech content while Sarah was being kind of like a kid and ooo-ing and aaahh-ing over the stuff.

The User Created segment was a bad piece. It shows how few people there are that actually care about doing stuff to try to get on the show now. The show had asked people to make art from all the useless CDs that AOL sends out and send a pic in to the show. Only one was any good whereas, a few months ago, the show would have to be turning pics away left and right and they would show only the best and that best would be very good. I give the segment a 5/10 for the lack of content.

The Feed was pretty good. I give it a 9/10.

Pereira interviewed two people about Gran Turismo 4. I liked this section because GT4 is such a popular game and because it makes such an impact on the gaming world. This is one of the few games that I don’t mind seeing on the show. I gave the segment a 7/10 because Pereira was acting like a moron again.

Sarah’s Gems of the Internet today was not very good. I give it a 4/10 because none of the sites were exceedingly interesting nor tech related. A belt buckle that is a knife, a website about the history of guillotines, & a site about warning signs in Japan.

The final bit was only one question from the chatroom about Half-Life 2, which was quickly answered and then they shut down for the end.

The story of this show was Kevin Pereira’s sweaters, a bunch of them were hideous and ugly. Something high schoolers would wear jsut before they are outcast from their friends. So anyway, another typical, yet not very good TSS.

Till Next Time

patrick

This is my first installment of the Screen Savers critiques. The show is from February 22, a Tuesday. 

The opening part of the show Kevin Pereira and Sarah Lane show some websites that are popular or new. They showed some actual tech sites today. The digital divide simulator, which shows how connected each country is around the world, the website of a guy who cracked the DRM(Digital Rights Management) on an iTunes song, and about Paris Hilton’s sidekick which was hacked into and spread all over the internet. The segment was pretty good without too much flack or tangents.

The main segment of the show was Drew Curtis from Fark.com. A form of aggregate news site. Pereira talked with Curtis about the top news stories of 2005, and if you didn’t notice, the year is only two months old. So obviously there weren’t many good stories to talk about. They “reenacted” a couple of the stories. A story about nuns going on a party run and a story about a guy shooting himself in the butt when he was trying to shoot some coyotes. This segment was kind of boring and the “reenactments” were stupid.

The next segment was about a program to create panoramic pictures. This was a good segment about a new program called Panaviews Image Assembler. This was a well done bit with some truth thrown in. The panoramic shot of the studio shows that the new studio in L.A. has no studio audience like the last show.

The next bit was poorly done. It was Chi Lan’s test of the Nextel phone that are “indestructible”. Almost the entire bit was a very very bad video of two love birds that are very clumsy. It was way too cheesy to be entertaining, just like most of the videos the screen savers do now.

Rose and Pereira did the “It Came From Ebay” Segment which was pretty good this week. This segment focuses on, obviously, odd items and/or services that people can bid for on ebay. This wasn’t the best segment ever but it was above par for recent TSS shows.

Sarah brought the Feed today which was half tech and half games, which I guess is the best we can expect from G4. It focused on citywide wireless broadband access, emulator copyrights, the game Full Spectrum Warrior and the story with Steve Wozniak. This was an average segment for the show.

One of the best segments of this show was the phone call with Steve Wozniak, an uppity Apple employee about a suit against a man who accidentally leaked source code. The reason that this segment was so good was the fact that it was completely techie.

Then came one of the worst recurring segments for TSS, DVDuesday. It’s not that Kim Morgan and Sarah are bad, it’s that this segment has nothing to do with tech. If I want to know what DVDs are coming out today, I go to Amazon, or Best Buy’s websites to find out. Hell, I can just go to Ebert & Roeper. This segment is one of the biggest peeves I have with the show. The info they give out in this segment I can find in many other places. I want to see info on TSS that I can’t find anywhere else about tech.

The remaining segments were kind of shot out, due to the technical difficulties experienced by Sarah. While trying to show a screenshot of some firefox extensions, the crew wasn’t able to show Sarah’s computer screen and she couldn’t proceed and so they cut to Pereira and Curtis to answer some phone calls but none of the callers were on the line so they went to commercials. It was a bad segment, but none of the cast’s fault.

The final segment was the usual questions from the chatroom which were useless, and the only interesting thing to come out of it was Rose breaking one of the Nextel phones while throwing it down.

Over all I would give the show a 4 out of 10. This show had some tech content in it but some of the bits were childish and don’t work for mainstream TV.

By tomorrow I hope to have at least the next two shows logged.

Till Next Time

patrick

One of the shows that I watch religiously is the Screensavers on TechTV…………excuse me, G4TechTv………oh wait, damn sorry, G4TV. The channel can’t decide what to call itself. As of last year there were two separate channels, G4 and TechTV. Then G4, which is owned by Comcast decided it wanted to buy TechTV. During the merger the companies kept saying that they’ll join the two channels together to create a better channel that will highlight the tech stuff and the gaming stuff from each channel. The common modern ‘synergy’. 

Well, the all went down the crapper after the merger was complete. Right after the merger all o the reruns were cut down since they had roughly double the original programming now. Then they started cutting the TechTV programs to ‘make room’ for the G4 programs. And now after about 6 months there are only two shows remaining from the original TechTV lineup. The Screen Savers and X Play. But the Screen Savers, the ratings cow from the channel has been sliced, diced and moved cities since the takeover. Out of the original cast of talent on the show, ( there were approximately 8 people), there remain only 2 people. The have inserted all new people into the show and gotten rid of the vast majority of the Tech from the show and replaced it with a general lifestyle show for the vapor demographic. 

I’m supposed to be their prime demographic, I’m a 24 y/o white male who owns 3 consoles and a PC computer. But the more they move away from their tech origins the less I am watching it. Which brings me to my original point for this post. For all of the next week(2/21-2/25) I am tivoing the show and will give a complete rundown of the show with how much time is given to each segment and what type of segment it is, i.e.- tech, game, dvd review, etc… I also hope to find some listings of the ratings of different shows and how the merger and show changes have affected the ratings. 

During this little experiment I will give a little more background into the rise and fall of TechTV and the Screen Savers.

Maybe then I will have some ammo for a letter I’ll write to the producers/owners of G4 for ruining a great network. Cold logic must prevail on them.

Till Next Time

patrick