First, a real quick thing about Thunderbird 2.0. If you like Thunderbird as your email client (and if you use FireFox, you should), you should check out Thunderbird 2.0. It has a few new features that I ran into, but I haven’t been able to play around with it very much. There is a neat little live search function you can use to find a particular email quickly.
As for our TV situation, that got fixed. I spent a good chunk of yesterday morning on the phone with a Samsung service tech. Well, actually it was a guy from a local TV repair shop that happened to be a certified Samsung repair center. We determined, pretty convincingly, that that problem was not with the cable to the TV or the TV itself. That left just one thing: the DVR. So, I got online and Live Chatted with a couple of Charter techs who probably live in their cubicle in India, but who knows. They sent a “signal” to my box, but wouldn’t tell me what it did. So, I followed their directions and waited 15-20 minutes and power cycled the box. That means I turned it off… then turned it on. Ha, I’m hilarious. Well, it didn’t fix the problem. So, I scheduled a service call. Well, around 6:30pm (18:30), Lexy and I went to dinner at Mexico Lindo with Dave and Natasha. Dawn was supposed to go with us, but she stayed home (not letting us know she wasn’t going until the last minute, which is annoying as we all know) because she was sick. Then we get back and she went to a gay meeting. *Sigh* Whatever. People are stupid. Well, when we got back, I did some research on my DVR, a MOXI box. I checked my software version (3.2 vs. the most current 4.1) and sighed because Charter isn’t about being up to date. Then I noticed the line problem was gone. I checked my one minute of footage I recorded that showed the problem amazingly well and it wasn’t there. I guess the software update took around four hours to actually employ itself. So, I called Charter to see if there was anything that I could do to get a better DVR, one with more hard disk space. No… of course there isn’t. If I had the 4.1 version of MOXI software, I could plug in an external HDD via a USB 2.0 port AND have a wireless extender in my bedroom. Such is not to be, I guess. Apparently Charter is planning on upgrading the MOXIs to 250GB HDD versus the alleged 80GB in there. We’ll see how THAT goes. If TiVo didn’t have a monthly subscription, we’d probably get one of those. Damn monthly subscriptions for shit that’s free. You know what you pay that monthly subscription for? Channel Data. That’s it. You know, the channel list that Windows XP Media Center Edition can do for free? Yeah. Thank you capitalism. Thanks.
The last, most important thing is about Internet Radio. It is dying thanks to SoundExchange and The Copyright Royalties Board (CRB). There is a significant increase in royalty rates coming on May 15. This will up the royalties to:
2006 - $.0008 per performance
2007 - $.0011 per performance
2008 - $.0014 per performance
2009 - $.0018 per performance
2010 - $.0019 per performance
That may not seem like a lot, but consider this: that channel has to pay for each song AND each person listening to that song. Each person listening is considered a “performance” of that song, so the channel has to pay per “performance.” Here’s the kicker, the rate increase is retroactive. So, the channels will be billed for the new rate all the way to the beginning of 2006. Not really fair, if you ask me. Recently an attempt for an appeal over the new rates was denied by the CRB, so it appears they are really excited about getting more money until these channels have to shut down because they can’t afford a triple rate increase.
What can be done? Well, because most of the recording companies are part of SoundExchange, they have a huge following and lobby in DC. Internet radio customers have to write their Congressman. So, if you want to help save Internet radio go to Savenetradio.org. Save Net Radio! You love it and you know you do.
