Oooh, I Got Trouble.  Drive Trouble.

I love a bargain.  That’s one of the reasons I take emails from TigerDirect.  Not everything Carl Fiorentino and his troops come up with is great, but often you can find real gems.  And so I thought when I saw a Seagate Barracuda 1.5Tb hard drive on sale for $140.  In the collapsing world of hard drive manufacturers, Seagate has always had a sterling reputation, one they defend with 5-year warranty.  So I figured, what could go wrong?

Well, this could go wrong.

It seems that Seagate 1.5Tb drives running under Windows Vista and Mac OSX can slow down, freeze up or fail altogether.  Apparently, all data is still preserved on the otherwise-bricked drive, but still:  Is this the best we can expect?  I mean, this is SEAGATE.  The Cadillac Lexus of hard drives.  Seagate says the drives can be repaired with a firmware update, and has set up a webpage to help identify the defective drives. 

I haven’t yet installed that drive, and I won’t till it is cleared by Seagate.  But still, it gives me chills.  I guess we aren’t any less safe that we ever were, but how many projects do you have stored on hard drives?  I have - literally - dozens.

What do you trust for long-term storage?

Take A Deep Breath

President-Elect Barack Obama has nominated an old Harvard classmate to be the new chairman of the FCC.  Julius Genachowski has a pretty deep background in the Internet, as this biography on Wikipedia points out.  He is described as a strong proponent of network neutrality, the essential nut of which is that Internet service providers cannot favor one type of traffic over another - for example, Comcast can’t slow down Google packets while allowing others to travel unimpeded. 

Reporting of the Genachowski appointment hasn’t been all skittles and beer, though.  ZDNet is sounding a much more cautious tone, seemingly based on the fact that there really isn’t too much detailed information about Genachowski out there.  He has experience in the big media space, working at Barry Diller’s InterActive Corp., which at times has enveloped companies like Ticketmaster, Home Shopping Network,  Match.Com, CollegeHumor, 23/6, and dozens of others. 

But it is his stance on net neutrality that should most interest the PVC crowd.  What if you find that you finish your masterpiece video, upload it to some distribution site, and then find that it can’t be seen by anyone on RoadRunner?  Or Charter?  Or AT&T?  Let’s hope that a Genachowski FCC can make unequivocal, long-lasting rules to keep the free flow of the Internet free for years to come.

Sony EX1 Alternative Recording Media UPDATE!

If you have been following the saga of alternative recording media for the Sony EX1 and EX3 XDCam EX cameras, you’ll recall that the main problem with using the Kensington ExpressCard 34 adapter is that when loaded into the EX1, the media door can not close.  (The EX3 has no door problem with the Kensington card.)  Well, the good Aussies at E-Films have grabbed the EX1 bull by the horns, so to speak. They designed a ExpressCard34 adapter that is low-profile enough that it fits comfortably behind the media door on the EX1, so dust and other contamination should not be an issue.  It also has one other big advantage over the Kensington adapter - it’s actually available!  Order it here and save yourself from ridiculously expensive Sony SxS media.  I’m really impressed with the initiative show by the E-Films folks.  Good on ya!

Big thanks to Jim Feeley for the link to the ordering page!

Who Wants To Own A TV Station?

How many mail-lists are you on?  I receive about a dozen, some daily, some less so.  One I read everyday is published by the National Association of Broadcasters (that’s the “NAB” in “NAB Show,” every video geek’s must-visit toystore.  It’s in Las Vegas in April. Go.)  So what is the headline for today, January 2, 2009?

Loosening ownership rules could be key to media’s recovery

The headline links to this article in Variety Magazine, written by Brian Lowery.  It is a very thoughtful piece on what the future of television broadcasting - both national and local - may turn out to be, absent intervention from the government.  And it points out once again a tightrope that I think the NAB does a very bad job of walking - balancing the desires of its largest members (especially Fox) for avaricious, unlimited ownership of broadcast stations across the US against the small owners, with one or five or eight or a dozen stations.  And it once again ignores the real losers in either a meltdown or a “one owner to rule them all” scenario - the local viewers, who often depend on local TV to be their primary news source, for good or ill.

So where do you stand?  Is local TV dead for you already?  For that matter, is broadcasting dead, drowned by the Internet wave?  I’d like to hear what the PVC community values in local TV.  Fire away!

PS:  While you are on the Variety site, be sure to read some of Brian Lowery’s other columns - he’s a really insightful, entertaining writer.  And he seems to agree with me on what the prime-time Jay Leno show means for NBC - and for production personnel.

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