Top: 3D glasses from the 1950s, below are the modern 3D glasses

3D has been around for quite some time, in fact 3D was considered the “golden era” in the 1950′s and yet very few films have ever been able to pull it off successively.

However, this past year it seems that the movie industry has decided to bring it back… Big time.

I consider 3D a gimmick and I’m not a big fan… This is due to the fact that needing an extra accessory to look at a screen seems stupid, even worse for those whom already wear prescribed glasses.  The other reason is that it’s a ploy for movie studios to make more money off you.  Paying to go see a non-3D movie in southern California is already ridiculously overpriced as it is which is why I rarely go to the theaters to begin with.  To see a movie after work hours rangers anywhere from $9 – $12.  If you want to see that movie in 3D you have pay an additional $2 – $4 to cover the cost of the 3D effects used and the glasses.

And while we’re talking about 3D glasses, I’d like to bring this to your attention.. Part of that extra cost you’re paying to see that movie in 3D goes towards those glasses you need to wear.  Alot of theaters would expect you toss them out after the movies are over.  So what if I choose to keep those glasses I paid for?  Can I go back to the theater and watch the 3D movie at a reduced cost?  I shouldn’t be obligated to pay the extra cost of 3D in full if I already have the accessory I paid for.  Of course this strategy would never fly with any theater, which bugs me but I don’t blame the theaters, I blame the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

Having worked for MANN Theaters, I know for a fact that theaters make no money off the movies.  The only profit theaters make is what they sell from the concession stands.  The MPAA determine the cost of the tickets as well as the extra cost to see movies in 3D.  As ridiculous as this may sound, the MPAA feel they’re not paid enough for their movies they produce; so by adding 3D, they can expect us to pay (alot) more to see these movies.  If it wasn’t the MPAA’s intention to sponge more money from you, then why don’t theaters tell you to keep your glasses and not place 3D glasses disposable containers everywhere?  They don’t because they’re required to have you to pay the full extra cost to see that movie in 3D every time.  That’s the second reason why I don’t like 3D.

I can tell you that the only movie I’ve gone out of my way to see in 3D was Avatar.  Which they did very well.  However there have been alot of films that have done a shitty job with it.. I can name three off the top of my head:

• Final Destination 4
• Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland
• Clash of the Titans

Adding 3D to a shitty film does not make it better.  And that really bugs me.  It’s one thing to pay to go see a shitty movie, it’s another when you’re forced to pay MORE to see them in 3D.  That’s just rubbing salt in the wound.

This is my third and last reason why I don’t like 3D:

3D is being shoved down our throats.  The whole focus of 2010′s CES was 3D HDTV’s.  That’s all it was, a huge hype for 3D.

Lets pretend you bought into the hype:  You just bought your brand new 3D HDTV, and you’re having people over for the Superbowl party, your HDTV comes with 2 pairs of 3D glasses, but you invited over 10 people.  So these are your options:

1. You go out and buy 8 extra pairs of 3D glasses
2. You have your friends to bring or buy their own pair of 3D glasses
3. You turn off the 3D feature on your HDTV and watch the game w/o 3D
4. You have your other 8 friends watch the game on another TV because they can’t look at a blurry screen

Option 1 sucks for you because you’re paying money for something you’ll rarely need.  Option 2 would be pretty shitty for your friends if they don’t have or forgot their 3D glasses.  Option 3 defeats the point in buying a 3D HDTV.  Option 4 defeats the purpose of having a party when the party is split up.  No matter how you look at it, all these options look pretty shitty.

At this point in time, the negatives certainly outweigh the positives of 3D.  That one time when I went to see Avatar I couldn’t help but feel like a dumb ass having to wear 3D glasses to watch a movie.  They look tacky and you look stupid wearing them.  It must feel worse for those whom wear glasses having to stack glasses to get the 3D benefit.  If manufacturers are able to come up with a way to produce 3D effects on their TVs without requiring us having to wear 3D glasses then (for me) that’s a huge benefit.

Mythic Entertainment, known for their MMO games: Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online recently had a fiasco that they’ll never be able to recover from.  Apparently their billing systems glitched resulting in charging their active (and some inactive) subscribers as many as up to 80+ times resulting in overcharges exceeding $1000+ dollars.. More in overdraft charges if people didn’t have enough money in their accounts.

Mythic claims they have addressed the issue with their billing system and that the overcharges should be reversed starting today.

According to some posters on their forums, people whom unsubscribed as long as six months ago were also charged numerous times.  One has to wonder why ANY billing system would still hold customer’s credit card information when the company has no reason to bill them after the fact.

Dark Age of Camelot, released October 2001 had as many as 200,000+ subscribers, according to Wikipedia, their subscriber base was down to an estimated 50,000 subscribers as of January 2008.  One can assume that number is much less now two years later…  One thing’s for sure, they’re going to lose alot more now as some of these subscribers can’t pay their bills now.  This billing fiasco Mythic faced very well might be nail in the coffin for that game.

Also keep in mind Mythic is now part of EA… So uh yeah… Word of advice, don’t buy any EA game online (via their online store) or subscribe to any future EA MMO anytime soon. I can’t help but wonder if EA is using the same billing system.

Sources:

• *** BILLING ISSUES THREAD*** @ Mythic – YOU BILLED ME 18 TIMES THIS MONTH
• ***Official Billing Issue Discussion Thread***
• The Camelot Herald – Billing Issues – Update 4/9/10

It would seem that NBC is going out of their way by pretending that Conan O’Brien never existed.  Just a few days ago Hulu.com had available every recording of the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.  Now as of today, none of them are to be found.  Same thing for NBC.com and YouTube.

The only logical conclusion for this must be with the  The Tonight Show being back on the air with Jay Leno.

Interestingly enough, Sarah Palin was the first guest since Jay Leno came back and one of the things Leno said was that Palin has never been on a late night show (which is false) as Conan O’Brien had her on as a guest.  This seems to insinuate the notion that Conan O’Brien never existed on NBC before…

If it’s true that this is what NBC is trying to accomplish, then that’s pretty shitty considering that Conan worked for them 17+ years.

Sources:

• Huffington Post – Jay Leno Disses Conan For Palin Promo
• Media Memo – Conan Who? NBC Disappears “The Tonight Show” From the Web.

Apparently there is some sort of outage on Sony’s Playstation Network.  The issue started late last night as people were being kicked offline with an error code: 8001050F

If you have one of the ‘fatter’ versions of the PS3, Sony is advising you to keep your console off until they can fix this problem.  There is some sort of time & date issue where by turning it on you risk losing your stored trophy data among corrupting your save data.    That’s  pretty severe…

Not only could you risk losing your saved data, but anything that may be subscription based… If you rent movies from the Playstation Network, the console will assume the date is wrong and prevent playback of that rented movie.

I myself own a 60GB Playstation 3 that has support in playing PS1 & PS2 games..   I recently started playing Castlevania: Lament of Innocence and was looking forward to continue playing it after work.. But looks like that won’t be the case…

*sigh*

Sources:

• PlayStation Blog – Latest info on PlayStation Network Status
• Sony: ‘Don’t use your PS3′ until internal clock bug is fixed

First things first… iPad… Really?  When I first heard Steve Jobs use that word, I thought he was referring to some form of tampon.  Seriously.  I’m not joking…  Ten minutes later I see links to the MADTV spoof where they actually poked fun at Apple with a product called an iPad which was exactly that: An advanced tampon.  Check out the MADTV iPad spoof below:

The Apple iPad

Rumors were circulating around the net that Apple was going to call it the iSlate, and to be honest, I like that name alot more then the iPad.  MacRumors.com claimed that back in 2007, Apple had purchased the domain name iSlate.com. According to ArsTechnica, Apple has a scheduled “internal hall” meeting to discuss the iPad.  My hopes would be that somebody would notice the MADTV spoof and perhaps change the name.  I mean c’mon, let’s face it, the iPad is a terrible name.  I’m convinced whoever inside Apple came up with the name probably named it after that spoof. But enough about the name. So what is the iPad?  It’s basically a giant iPod Touch with a 9.7 inch screen.  Literally.  Every aspect of the iPad is identical to the iPhone or iPod Touch.  The O/S is a modified version of the iPhone/iPod Touch software, just scaled to fit on its 1027×768 screen. The iPad will come with iTunes built into the device.  In addition it will full support of all the 132,000 iPhone/iPod touch applications already available in the catalog.  It can run these apps in the  native iPhone 320×480 resolution, or run them in a “fullscreen mode” where it doubles up the pixel size of the application, which means the application runs at 640×960.

The iPad showing off the iBook application that displays your purchased books on a bookshelf

Aside from the iPhone/iPod Touch application support, it’s going to have support for “iBooks” which will definitely give Amazon a run for its money with their Kindle; (perhaps Amazon should lower the price on the kindle considering its lack of features).  Any books you purchase through iBooks will appear on a bookshelf as displayed on the right.   Other then that the iPad will include all the same applications you’d find on an iPhone or iPod Touch:

• Safari
• Mail
• Notes
• Contacts
• Google Maps
• YouTube
• Calendar
• etc…

The iPad does NOT support Flash

In addition, the iPad has the same limitations as the do the iPhone/iPod Touch, no multi-tasking, no support for Flash, which to me is a huge disappointment.  During the announcement, you can see Steve Jobs on stage sitting on a couch casually browsing the web.  Immediately you can see an icon where some flash animation should have appeared.  You could also see him switch in and out of applications; again – no multi-tasking… Very disappointing.  I just love how Steve Jobs during the announcement was like “who needs netbooks?”  Really Steve?  …Really?

The iPad (just like the iPhone/iPod Touch) does not have a removable battery.  So over the years when the battery can’t hold a charge anymore, you’ll end up with an expensive paperweight.  Steve Jobs claimed while he was on a 10 hour flight from San Francisco to Tokyo, he was able to watch video the entire time which (admittedly) is impressive.

You are entering an Apple Restriction Zone

The only way to sync the device is using the same proprietary plug like what the iPhone/iPod Touch have.  What… No support for wireless syncing? (Even Microsoft’s Zune HD has this.)  There are no alternative connectors or USB ports on this unit (which really shocked me).  No SD card slot, no nothing.  Any sort of input or plug will need to use Apple’s proprietary plug if you need to load data onto the unit.

Apple will be releasing six different models of the iPad. The differences between these models will vary with the amount of storage space: 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB.   All models will have wifi 802.11(a/b/g/n) but the other three models will have wifi as well as 3G.  The downside is the 3G connection will only be provided via AT&T (Apple, you should have learned from the iPhone you fucking idiots).  The starting 16GB model with wifi only will cost $499, which is impressive considering how Apple normally overcharges for their other products.  Here’s breakdown on the iPad pricing:

Wifi only:

• $499 for 16GB
• $599 for 32GB
• $699 for 64GB

Wifi + 3G Connectivity

• $629 for 16GB
• $729 for 32GB
• $829 for 64GB

The available plans for 3G (provided with AT&T):

• $14.99 for 250MB of bandwidth (this plan is a rip off)
• $29.99 for “unlimited data (probably a 5GB cap, but still a decent price.)

All in all… I’m not impressed.  Again, the iPad doesn’t offer anything significantly unique from what Apple originally announced with the iPhone and iPod Touch.  And because of that I don’t see any compelling reason why I should use it over the iPhone or iPod Touch.  It’s not something I could easily carry around with me on the go due to its size.  Even if I did, I’d have to get a protective cover to prevent the screen from getting scratched or cracked.  With a netbook or laptop, this isn’t a problem as the screens aren’t exposed.

I was hoping that it would be the ultimate device to use for video playback, but considering how it’s restricted to certain video codecs, this becomes a substantial limitation as to what you can or can’t watch.  Also having no support for flash eliminates about 90% of all available video content on the web.  Also the resolution is lower then I expected… 1024×768 – which makes the screen more square then widescreen.  This means if  you were to watch high definition 720p content, you’d see approximately 1 inch of black on both the top and bottom of the iPad screen because it has to scale down the widescreen video to make it fit.  If you were to watch widescreen 16:9 content on the  iPhone/iPod Touch, the black borders would not be as thick as those screens are more rectangular with their 480×320 resolution.

I’m surprised it doesn’t have a built in webcam.  Hell the Phone has a camera, and can even capture video… Why wouldn’t this at least have a webcam?  The iPad could have been a great device to use with Skype, or any other Instant Messenger that supports video.  Certainly would have made it more useful.  I guess Apple needed to cut costs to make the price appealing.  Who knows, maybe next year they’ll include one in a newer model.

Oh and Apple, you really, really, REALLY need to change the name… I think the “iSlate” would’ve been more appropriate…  The name is iPad fucking terrible.