1) Suicide Servers

As a rather large number of you found out around 4:10 PM today, our Windows Media server at Limelight Networks, died during Episode 56. A couple of gentle souls that stuck around (or tuned in late)  tell me it popped back up around 4:50, just in time for last of the show to scoot by on screen. That sucks. Not the server coming back up, but the outage. I'd like to apologize for that.

I'd also like to let you know what happened. Whether it was server suicide (really, the show was pretty good, so I don't think our stream drove it over the edge), somebody tripping over the power cord, some nameless WM glitch, an attack, or what. But  we don't know. I've just gotten of the phone with Limelight after a series of emails under the "um, we're getting a rather large number of posts and emails that said our stream died... what happened?"

The folks that answer the phone don't know. They're 'waiting for an RFO... that'll be available sometime later tonight.' That's NOC-speak for Reason For Outage... NOC being a Network Operations Center. (I love Acronym Finder!) As soon as we know, we'll let you know. Hopefully it's something massively cool, like 40 zillion folks jumped on the server and killed it. That's about the only happy reason I can think of for our live audience getting hosed.

[[Update 7:30PM: It wasn't something cool. It was "due to faulty handling of stream updates in the operating system. This caused the streams in several locations to fail to update." More later. Upate 8:45: Short version: it won't happen again. Longer version? Windows isn't UNIX, especially when a bad process goes berserk. A bad stream took out 220 Windows Server boxes.]]

2) Forum Lust
We're dumping Telligent's CommunityServer (the software that DL.TV runs on) [[Note 05/05/06: On behalf of our dev team, I'd like to point out that Ziff Davis Media uses CS for forums on PCMag.com and ExtremeTech.com, "which is the reason we choose them (not for blogs) and that's been trouble free" and that "We're happy with Telligent as used in the PCMag.com Discussion forums.  It's been a big step up from our previous system." In short, the only group here at Ziff that's frustrated with CommunityServer are the folks using it as a straight blogging tool: DL.TV and CrankyGeeks.com.]]  shortly for something that doesn't a) cost a fortune every time you want to update the software or tweak the look of the site (I supposed it's cheap if you have a large in-house team of developers), b) doesn't do horrid things like randomly clip OBJECT tags for no apparent reason, or smersh up basic HTML formatting and c) a whole list of other reasons .

If anybody reading is considering dropping a check on CommunityServer, free free to kick us an email. I'd love to talk to you before you do. [[Note 05/05/06: I'm sure our dev team would also be more than willing to share their success stories using CS for the forums on PCMag and ExtremeTech... CS carries a pretty heavy load there with aplomb.]]

Did I mention forums? We need to get the site where we want it before we start building forums. We know you want them. We'd like to give 'em to you. At the moment, we don't have the bandwidth to set 'em up. (Tho, hey, Robert and I might go nuts one weekend and see what we can build in Drupal. [[Note 05/05/06: this was a bit of a jest on my part, but thanks to the Drupal mavins that emailed in!]])But forums are something we'd love to give ya'll, so, yes, they are very much on the radar.

3) The Downloads For Episode 56
Will be available Friday. Don't worry about the server dying... the tape was still rolling. We're busy encoding and will have the files up Friday, assuming the anger over the server problems doesn't gnaw at me till the wee small hours when the rendering finishes up. If it does, DL.TV Episode 56 will be available sometime in the wee small hours Friday morning.

4) In the meantime...
Feel free to kick on over to CrankyGeeks.com and check out Episode 7... Robert Heron's on there with Dvorak, Loyd Case and John Johnson and the whole crew is talking about HDTV, HD-DVD and Blu-ray.

5) Again,
My apologies for the live stream going down.
Patrick

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Posted By:  Patrick Norton

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On the show today:

News:

• Wii: Nintendo Names the Revolution What???
  
• Samsung Replaces Portal Player in the iPod

Reviews:

• Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2: Wow, that's a new look. Interesting tab handling. Phishing philter, too.
  
• You can download it now. Warning: beta means "It's not finished and might crash on ya."
• It definately breaks some web pages.
  
• Patrick's not giving up FireFox yet.
  

Guestage:

• Jesse James Garrett from Adaptive Path joins us in the studio to talk about user experience, Ajax and the future o' Web design

Viewer Questions and Contributions:

• Rob aks "What's the best Windows OS?
• Mike asks "Can using my DLP HDTV as a computer monitor hurt it?
• Grant says "Informer is the best Yahoo Widget I've ever seen!"
• Stephen suggests a site for CSS web design.

Episode 56 in Windows Media: 

            Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 56 in Windows Media, 215MB

       Click here to watch DL.TV Episode 56 in the Windows Media Player

 

Episode 56 in Quicktime H.264: 

            Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 56 in Quicktime H.264, 286MB

 

Episode 56 for the video iPod:

            Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 56 for the video iPod, 294MB

 

Episode 56 in MPEG4: 

            Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 56 in MPEG4, 197MB 

 

Episode 56in DivX: 

            Right click here to DL.TV Episode 56in DivX, 359MB

 

Episode 56, audio only (MP3): 
    
            Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 56, audio only (MP3), 22.7MB

 

Thanks for downloading and watching!

The next episode of DL.TV streams live Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 at 4pm PDT (It's daylight savings time again!) 7pm EDT, 23:00 GMT/UTC, and will be available for download Wednesday, May 3rd.

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Posted By:  Patrick Norton

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Welcome to a well pre-blended edition of DL.TV.  Patrick is in Las Vegas at NAB finding new and cool ways to make better DL.TV.

News:

• Reverse Hyper Threading?
• 750 GB Hard Drives
• The World's Largest Rasterbation

Products:

• Sony Ericcson W810i.  Robert's dream phone is now in his hands.  Does he still like it?
  

And a whole bunch of viewer questions:

• HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.  Why buy now?
• What do you guys know about FreeRIP?
• Looking for a MP3 player with lots of memory around $300?
• Someone found something better than Alcohol.
• Is a 2.15 GB Hard Drive worth anything?
• Details on how Joey got his $3000 gaming PC.
• Hint: we didn't have a thing to do with it!
  
  
  

Episode 55 in Windows Media: 

            Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 55 in Windows Media, 210MB

            Click here to watch DL.TV Episode 55 in the Windows Media Player

 

Episode 55 in Quicktime H.264: 

            Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 55 in Quicktime H.264, 286MB

 

Episode 55for the video iPod:

            Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 55 for the video iPod, 286MB

 

Episode 55 in MPEG4: 

            Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 55 in MPEG4, 197MB 

 

Episode 55in DivX: 

            Right click here to DL.TV Episode 55in DivX, 359MB

 

Episode 55, audio only (MP3): 
    
            Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 55, audio only (MP3), 21.9MB

 

Thanks for downloading and watching!

The next episode of DL.TV streams live Thursday, April 27th, 2006 at 4pm PDT (It's daylight savings time again!) 7pm EDT, 23:00 GMT/UTC, and will be available for download Friday, April 28th.

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Episode 54 went live at 4:04 Pacific, Thursday April 20th.

 

Is Apple Still A Computer Company?

• Porn Leads in Download-To-DVD Movies
• Horizontal Cooler Showdown
• A quick chat about what to back up.
• HD-DVD... we've got disks!
• Viewer Question: Why buy HD-DVD or Blu-ray movies if they alreayd have DVDs?
• Viewer Question: Gaming PC Sponsors: Part Deux
• Viewer Question: HD Radio

Episode 54 in Windows Media: 

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 54in Windows Media, 184MB

         Click here to watch DL.TV Episode 54 in the Windows Media Player

 

Episode 54 in Quicktime H.264: 

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 54in Quicktime H.264, 178MB

 

Episode 54for the video iPod:

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 54for the video iPod, 252MB

 

Episode 54in MPEG4: 

         

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 54in MPEG4, 172MB 

 

Episode 54in DivX: 

         Right click here to DL.TV Episode 54in DivX, 350MB

 

Episode 54, audio only (MP3): 
    
         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 54, audio only (MP3), 19.3MB

 

Thanks for downloading and watching!

The next episode of DL.TV streams live Tuesday, April 25th, 2006 at 4pm PDT (It's daylight savings time again!) 7pm EDT, 23:00 GMT/UTC, and will be available for download Wednesday, April 26th.

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Episode 53 went live at  4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern, 23:00 UTC!

 

What's in the show?

• HD-DVD Decks Hit Stores, Sell Out Toshiba has 10,000 units total for this run.
• Microsoft Vista: Expect a Premium Push (with Premium Prices)
• In other Vista news: Microsoft Set to Deliver a New Build
• Apple Gets Sued, Again. This time it's over possible patent violations in iTunes...
• ...the company suing, Burst, settled with Microsoft for $60 million in a similar suit.
• Feedburner says, Podcasts Outnumber Radio Stations... but what about actual radio programs?
• Rasterbator: it's all about the mural size posters. And your printer. And lots and lots of ink.
• Use it online, or download the standalone version. (Yes, it does color, too!)
• Props to ReadyMade Magazine for turning us on to, uh, Rasterbating (Great DIY magazine if you've never seen it: been reading it since issue one!)
• Speaking of great DIY magazines: we'll be at the Maker Faire Saturday, April 22nd
• Light, low cost gaming notebook? Tough call. Try HP Pavilion dv5000z or HP Pavilion dv5000t if you're on a college budget.
• If you don't mind melting your plastic, Dell's XPS M1710 is the fastest gaming notebook four grand can buy!
• Loyd Case goes deep on that Dell's graphics in GeForce Go 7900 GTX: For Hardcore Gamers on the Go
• Viewer Question: Tools for making and burning ISOs?
• Check out ISO Recoder ( Free). Robert reccos Alcohol 120%.
• There are tools in Nero and Easy CD Creator, too... I've burned tons of disks from ISOs in either one of these... never had a reason to create one tho. Any other applications y'all like?)
• Wondering what an ISO image is?
• Viewer Reponse: Joey's really upset with Robert (Deathmatch!!!) and he got a sponsor to pay for a $3000 gaming machine! Joey... what's the deal on the sponsorship??? Lots of folks want to know!
• Viewer Question: 720p vs. 1080i, or "Does 1080i suck?"
• Viewer Queston: What's our source on the Dell Axim news we dropped last week? (Dell!)

 

Episode 53 in Windows Media: 

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 53in Windows Media, 494MB

         (Yes, this is rather large. We rendered a second time, it ended up just as big. Same settings as the last umpteen episodes. We'll be re-installing Sorenson Squeeze, next.)

 

Episode 53 in Quicktime H.264: 

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 53in Quicktime H.264, 195MB

 

Episode 53for the video iPod:

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 53for the video iPod, 267MB

 

Episode 53in MPEG4: 

         

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 53in MPEG4, 267MB 

 

Episode 53in DivX: 

         Right click here to DL.TV Episode 53in DivX, 350MB

 

Episode 53, audio only (MP3): 
    
         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 53, audio only (MP3), 20.5MB

 

Thanks for downloading and watching!

The next episode of DL.TV streams live Thursday, April 20th, 2006 at 4pm PDT (It's daylight savings time again!) 7pm EDT, 23:00 GMT/UTC, and will be available for download Wednesday, April 20th.

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Posted By:  Patrick Norton

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Streamed live Thursday April 13th at 4PM.

• MS: No Aero For Vista Pirates Legal Downloads?
• The Beatles Promise To Go Online
• 200 city-wide networks on the way... Free WiFi for Portand.
• It's in trial: Google Calendar.
• Danny O'Brien's back for another EFF update. He's got Seven Years under the DMCA, a great way to get AOL to stop black holing the email you send you... and lots of info about AOL's Email "Tax"
• Orb Remote ads more TiVo support.
• You can test your cell phone for Orb video compatibility by going to this page. Orb streams to WMP equipped smartphones, Real Player and the 3GP player... but rumor has it the Motorola RAZR won't work.
• Matter of fact... our studio can be a real Faraday cage... outside the studio, we can stream WMV no problem.
• More Movielink specs (HDTV downloads are in the future. How far, we dont' know..)
• Viewer Question: What do we use to edit and encode the video for DL.TV?
• Viewer Question: Will BitTorrent get me busted? (Not if you dwnload legit files!)
• Viewer Question: "Is there is any way you could hook me up with a gaming rig?"
• Robert over-reacts a tad... .
• Did you miss the link to register for the register for the LaLa.com beta?
• Got a question?  Email us at dl.tv@ziffdavis.com

Episode 52 in Windows Media: 

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 52 in Windows Media, 183MB

        Click here to watch DL.TV Episode 52 in the Windows Media Player

 

Episode 52 in Quicktime H.264: 

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 52 in Quicktime H.264, 178MB

 

Episode 52 for the video iPod:

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 52 for the video iPod, 250MB

 

Episode 52 in MPEG4: 

         

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 52 in MPEG4, 173MB 

 

Episode 52 in DivX: 

         Right click here to DL.TV Episode 52 in DivX, 374MB

 

Episode 52, audio only (MP3): 
    
         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 52, audio only (MP3), 19.2MB

 

Thanks for downloading and watching!

The next episode of DL.TV streams live Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 at 4pm PDT (It's daylight savings time again!) 7pm EDT, 23:00 GMT/UTC, and will be available for download Wednesday, April 19th.

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Posted By:  Patrick Norton

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Streamed live at 4PM, Tuesday April 11th.

What's on the show:

• ABC To Bring Prime Time TV to the Web
• MySpace Adds Security Monitor
• PDAs are dying. Smartphones are the future.
• The Cingular 2125 is one of the first Windows Mobile phones without a touch screen.
• It's great for Outlook and Exchange users
• T-Mobile's SDA does it one better by adding dedicated music buttons and WiFi!
• P2P CD trading?  DL.TV viewers can sign up for the LaLa.com beta.
• Viewer Question: ATI or Nvidia? It depends!

Episode 51 in Windows Media: 

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 51 in Windows Media, 133MB

         Click here to watch DL.TV Episode 51 in the Windows Media Player

 

Episode 51 in Quicktime H.264: 

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 51 in Quicktime H.264, 146MB

 

Episode 51 for the video iPod:

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 51 for the video iPod, 205MB

 

Episode 51 in MPEG4: 

         

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 51 in MPEG4, 205MB 

 

Episode 51 in DivX: 

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 51 in DivX, 305MB

 

Episode 51, audio only (MP3): 
    
         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 51, audio only (MP3), 16MB

 

Thanks for downloading and watching!

The next installment of DL.TV streams live Thursday, April 13th, 2006 at 4pm PDT (It's daylight savings time again!) 7pm EDT, 23:00 GMT/UTC, and will be available for download Friday, April 14th.

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Posted By:  Patrick Norton

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What's on the show? Here's parts of it:

• Boot Camp: Apple brings XP installs to the Intel macs. You asked, we're showing it off.
• Yup, gaming on the MacBook Pro notebook and a mo' basic mini kind o' XP experience.
• Pioneer's Inno XM2GO: a quick preview of the new portable XM satellite/MP3 player.
• Dang, is that thing small!
• What's a $6000 PC look like?
• One more disk tool: JGOODIES JDiskReport. It's Java, so it runs runs on darn near anything...
• Movielink: Download to Own, the same day the DVD gets released. (That's a new twist.)

Episode 50 in Windows Media: 

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 50 in Windows Media, 155MB

         Click here to watch DL.TV Episode 50 in the Windows Media Player

 

Episode 50 in Quicktime H.264: 

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 50 in Quicktime H.264, 147MB

 

Episode 50 for the video iPod:

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 50 for the video iPod, 212MB

 

Episode 50 in MPEG4: 

         

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 50 in MPEG4, 145MB 

 

Episode 50 in DivX: 

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 50 in DivX, 350MB

 

Episode 50, audio only (MP3): 
    
         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 50, audio only (MP3), 16MB

 

Thanks for downloading and watching!

The next installment of DL.TV streams live Tuesday, April 11th, 2006 at 4pm PDT (It's daylight savings time again!) 7pm EDT, 23:00 GMT/UTC, and will be available for download Wednesday, April 12th.

 

(Sorry about the glitch w/ the first set of links: they're all 100% now.)

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Posted By:  Patrick Norton

But quite of few of you that subscribe to DL.TV in iTunes, Juice or other tools found yourselves with a stack of older episodes either in the queue, or, worse yet, downloaded to your hard drive.

 

I'd like to apologize for that.

 

We updated the RSS feeds yesterday and one of the clever bits we snuck in there  (GUID tags!) wasn't implemented in as nearly as clever a way as we thought. And then there was our Q&A process. That's been heavily revised. (We hucked when we should have crawled. My bad.) 

 

Worse yet, we'll probably have to tweak them one more time. And before anybody suggests it in the feedback post, no, this wasn't a stunt to drive traffic on the sly. We muffed our RSS update... and traffic in March was already gangbusters over February. (Have I thanked you all for downloading and watching the show lately? Thank you. Ya'll rock. Please, keep coming back. And, hey, if you don't mind, feel free to tell your friends, coworkers, relatives and, hey, even complete strangers about DL.TV and CrankyGeeks.)

 

A few questions we'd love to hear back from ya'll on while we're unmuffing our RSS:

• Should we keep the RSS to just the last few episodes, ie, not list all the episodes ever available for the show?
• Should we have special 'archival' feeds that have all the older
• We're testing it in a few RSS readers, plus iTunes, Juice, FireAnt and Democracy. What else do you use to subscribe to the show feeds?
• Any RSS features or tags that we're not implementing that you want to see? (iTunes album art for the podcasts, anyone?)

Fire'em to us at dl.tv@ziffdavis.com with "RSS" in the subject line. (Please!)

 

Thank you in advance for not being shy with your suggestions, and, again, our apologies.

Patrick

 

 

 

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Posted By:  Patrick Norton

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What's on the show? Here ya go:

• Robert starts his journey with OpenSUSE Linux
• Patrick shows off the new look (Think "Ribbon") in Office 2007
• We get info on the best tools for fighting spyware
• Toshiba releases first HD-DVD player in Japan
• Samsung postpones release of first Blu-Ray player (to June)
• Movielink and CinemaNow!
• Bulk microfiber cloths for screen cleaning on the cheap...
• Apple vs. Apple: it's trademark, not copyright, dummies!

Episode 49 in Windows Media: 

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 49 in Windows Media, 155MB

         Click here to watch DL.TV Episode 49 in the Windows Media Player

 

Episode 49 in Quicktime H.264: 

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 49 in Quicktime H.264, 147MB

 

Episode 49 for the video iPod:

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 49 for the video iPod, 212MB

 

Episode 49 in MPEG4: 

         

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 49 in MPEG4, 145MB 

 

Episode 49 in DivX: 

         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 49 in DivX, 350MB

 

Episode 49, audio only (MP3): 
    
         Right click here to download DL.TV Episode 49, audio only (MP3), 16MB

 

Thanks for downloading and watching!

The next installment of DL.TV streams live Thursday, April 6th, 2006 at 4pm PDT (It's daylight savings time again!) 7pm EDT, 23:00 GMT/UTC, and will be available for download Friday, April 7th.

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Got a Question? A Comment? A product you want reviewed or something you want us to check out? Email us at dl.tv@ziffdavis.com

Posted By:  Patrick Norton