Wayne D's Blog

I was clicking around last night and made my way to the Global TV web page. Well actually I was checking to see if they were going to show Bones and noticed that they offered streaming episodes of Heroes. I have been pretty hard on Canadian rights holders because they were slow to offer streaming TV shows because the U.S. network websites block Canadian users. I clicked on one of the Heroes episodes to see what the quality was and received the message Sorry, this video is unavailable outside of Canada. When did they move Richmond Hill outside of Canada? What kind of idiot geolocation service are they using? My IP address is in the rogers.com domain, when did Rogers start offering cable service outside of Canada? I decided to complain, clicked on the contact us link and was presented with a list of Global locations across the country. There was no option to comment about the website. Sigh. I guess it's off to the bit torrent network for Global TV shows if you are a Rogers customer. I sent feedback to webmaster@canada.com but I'm not holding my breath.

Yahoo TV still sucks. I went to the Yahoo TV listings last night and saw that Global was showing a repeat of House so I clicked on the episode to see the synopsis to check whether I had seen the episode and here's what came up: House treats a teenage supermodel who gets into a catfight on the catwalk and then passes out. When her tox-screen shows heroin, she's treated for addiction. Unfortunately, her symptoms continue after she's weened off the drugs. It turns out that she's actually a "he" with undescended testes. House fights off increasingly bad leg pains. Cuddy helps him with what she later confesses was a placebo. They spoiled the whole episode, both story lines. House is about solving medical mysteries and Yahoo gave the mystery away. Compare Yahoo's synposis with the episode info from TV.com: House uncovers a startling secret when he treats a teenage supermodel for heroin addiction. Meanwhile, Wilson hopes the increased leg pain in House's leg is an indication his leg nerves are regenerating. I know the episode is over a year old but why spoil the show for someone who hasn't seen it?



I ran across a couple of new podcasts this week. Geekbrief.tv offers fast talking Cali Lewis in a three minute video podcast on the tech issues of the day. She's cute, funny and at more than three hundred words per minute packs a tonne of content into a short podcast. Even though the show often covers the same territory as Buzz Out Loud it worth watching for entertainment value alone or if you don't want to devote thirty minutes to listening to all of Buzz Out Loud. I'm also sampling Tiki Bar TV. Tiki Bar TV is too hard to explain, it's entertainment not information and the best thign to do is to go to the webiste and watch an episode and decide for yourself if you like it or not. Episodes are five minutes long so worst case is you lose five minutes. Geekbrief TV can also be viewed on the web, no iPod required.