Joey Wendt

I have really been bothered by having to watch ABC shows online through a tunnel, which as of my most recent discovery was pointless.  The problem isn’t with comcast filtering, there is some sort of problem with the ad system they have setup.  Some of the ABC affiliates don’t work correctly and cause the shows to never start playing resulting in either a black screen or the waiting cursor circling round and round.

Assumming you have no other problems, open a new browser window or tab and enter the following URL.

http://fep.abc.go.com/fep/player?src=abccomjs&aff=kjif

That’s it, you should now be able to watch all the ABC.com online shows.  The only difference is the &aff=kjif at the end. Enjoy.

PS: ABC please fix your affiliate system, kthx.

You may have read my post raving about the Zune Pass, but I made that post after playing with zune for a few hours.  Now that it has been a while and there are a few things I may have not known at the time.

Overall

I have enjoyed my zune pass as much as when I wrote my first impression review.  It has saved me quite a bit of money which I would have normally spent in iTunes or through Amazon which I recently tried when buying Ratatat’s new album (I highly recommend you do too btw).  I have really enjoyed my zune pass over the last couple of months.

DRM Arggg

As you may have assumed or read the music comes with DRM, if it didn’t then everyone would just buy a one month subscription and download every song in existence.  The bad thing that really irks me is the fact that It will not work with my ipod or my iphone whereas itunes and amazon work lovely.  I also tried to burn a cd a few days ago but prompted me to purchase the album before I could burn it.  Normally I only play music with zune when I am at my computer because that is where I am most of the time and also I do not have an actual zune player.  However, mp3s are offered for purchase on some songs while the main format is wma for music included with the pass.

Music Availability

It sort of depends on the artist’s record label whether or not their music is offered with the pass or made available for purchase.  Thankfully my music choice has been a good one considering most of the music I like is already included.  Most music is available and if it isn’t there are thirty second previews too entice you to buy it.  And worst case senario, it flat out isn’t in the zune marketplace.

Videos / TV Shows

There are videos and tv shows, but none that I have seen are included with the zune pass and require you to purchase them to view.  Boo to that.

Zune Software

My experience with the software that you use to download and listen to songs has been good for the most part.  I only have problems when I am running games, then sometimes it lags out a bit trying to sort through all my music.  I have been tempted to just fire up windows media player a few times, but I am just too lazy to add music to the library every time I download something new, also I believe you have to play the song once in zune to properly acquire drm approval etc.

Final Thoughts

If you are strapped for cash or just cheap, the zune pass is the way to go when it comes to enjoying a lot of music and staying out of jail and paying big fines in the process.  If you have an ipod or other apple product, don’t plan on using them .wma files to jam out.  At best we can only hope the itunes subscription rumor is true, which I would most likely switch to immediately.  If you feel I have left anything out worth mentioning or have questions, feel free to contact me or drop a comment.

Just sitting here on this monday quite bored.  iTunes has been getting a little dusty since getting my Zune Pass, but until theres a Zune Movie Pass or Netflix has more movies available for immediate viewing, I think iTunes will own my movie rentals.  But theres one thing missing from the movies that the music has.  “Complete My Rental” as I am calling it.  Basically similar to Complete My Album so when you rent a movie and like it, you can but it minus the rental fee you already paid.

One other thing that bothers me is that there are no HD rentals through iTunes, only with AppleTV.  The quality of the regular movies are decent and watchable, but this is 2008 and 480i~ resolution is only acceptable for crappy youtube videos, not a movie I spent four bucks on.  For example I have two monitors on my G5, a Dell 24″ with 1920×1600 resolution and a Dell 22″ with 1680×1050, so when I go full screen with a rented or purchased movie it just doesn’t impress me.  With my primary monitor being higher than 1080 HD and my secondary close enough, give me better quality video!

So uncreative I couldn’t think of anything to write here, click the picture to go to flickr.

Oh man what could that mean?  If you don’t know then you must not be that hardcore of a Lost fan!  If you are a huge lost fan like me then you cant wait for tomorrow for the new episode.  These few weeks of no new lost has me twitching from deprivation.  After soaking up the new podcast and previews that have been posted at lost.abc.com have gotten me itching even more.  So many questions left unanswered, so many more to come guessing the pattern of the show thus far.

If you want to see the bonus clip I am referring to in the title, go to Lostscape and find the right items to click on to trigger it. http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/index?pn=lostscape.  Or find the right niche or longtail to google and find it easy.

 Edit: Seems this is no longer special, you can see the video clip on the lost page without having to find it.