When was the last time you actually used Pioneer's audio gear? It's a pathetic joke. The included entertainment system in a Toyota Camry is better than that garbage.
Last year we bought a 2012 AVIC-X740BT which had a 4.5 out of 5 star rating on Crutchfield. It also has the "AppRadio" feature you mention. Checked out various reviews, they all suggested this was a decent unit. Using it very much reminds me of the crappy smartphones we had before Apple and Android took control of the cellular market.
1) The Windows-CE based unit takes forever to boot up, probably around 30 seconds. 2) The bluetooth pairing process does not start until after the unit has completely booted. So it takes almost 45 seconds to a minute before you can use bluetooth audio or make a call. Even my 2008 G37 pairs quickly after the car is started. 3) Bluetooth audio does not auto-play. You have to manually start the music on the device once it notifies you that the phone has connected. At this point you might be halfway to your destination if it's nearby. 4) USB mass storage devices are limited to a few hundred songs. It takes about 2 minutes to scan a USB stick full of music each time you start the car. The inter-track delay increases as you get further down the list of songs, too. Checking out various car audio forums, most everyone suggests buying an iPod because that's the only way you get a usable music playback interface for a decent size music library. 5) The touch screen is slow and it's hard to scroll through lists fluidly. 7) The app radio stuff is super slow and clunky. It's barely functional, just enough that the concept sounds appealing but something you'll probably never actually use in practice. It's way easier to just use Pandora, etc. through the bluetooth audio.
After seeing the AppRadio implementation on this unit, I can't even imagine having the "dumber" unit that only does AppRadio. Granted, things may have improved in the 2013 and 2014 models but I seriously doubt they've completely changed their ways.
I pretty much have to assume that CarPlay and its Android counterpart will be far superior what Pioneer is currently offering. Both Apple and Google have a much better understanding of how to implement intuitive consumer electronics than the big name aftermarket car audio guys ever will from what I've seen.
Solar panels typically have a 20 year warranty, and are guaranteed to output 80% of their power at year 20 (these figures are required to be met in order for the systems to qualify for tax incentives, so they're pretty common amongst manufacturers). They'll most likely continue working after the warranty. I will, however, probably have to replace my inverter every 10 years or so. It looks like I can pick up a new one on ebay for around $2000 right now. I'm hoping the cost of these drops over time or the technology improves such that my next one is more reliable.
As for ROI, my break even was only 5-6 years. In Southern California we pay dearly for electricity (over 30 cents per kWh once you get past some scant "baseline"), but we have plenty of sunshine. It's been almost 3 years now. The estimated savings for my $15k investment was projected at $100k or so over 20 years. I feel they're using too high of a percentage year-over-year increase of utility power, but even if I only make half that, it's still a good investment.
I did opt to buy instead of a pre-paid lease. The salescritters promised that the leasing companies would effectively gift me the system for $0 at year 20 because it would be too costly to remove, and that the real money was in the accelerated depreciation in years 0-5. However, if I think of the solar panels as a money printing machine, it seems unlikely that the panels, even if they're 20 years old, would have a fair market value of $0. No business would give away something that they can get money for, so I have to assume that at year 20 they will do something to ensure they continue to get a profit from the system that they legally own on my roof. Forget that uncertainty, I decided to just buy it so there are no unknowns. I think it will be really fascinating to see what happens to all of these ultra-long leases in the 2032 time frame.
The Wii controller was a bit better than a gimmick. It re-introduced the light gun in a way that works on modern plasma and LCD TVs, and in a way that can be part of a more elaborate control system. People loved the Zapper on the NES, but the games were pretty shallow because all you could do is pull the trigger.
If you played Metroid Prime with the Gamecube, and then the remade Wii version with the Wii controller, you'll find the Wii controller version is unquestionably better for the gaming experience, because you can aim and shoot at the enemies, instead of fighting with an auto-targeting system. Of course, this is meaningless with the Wii-U's controller, which is a regular game pad with a screen, which is not a new concept - the Dreamcast had something similar. Fortunately games can still use the original Wii controllers.
I was excited to get a HD Nintendo console, but so far the experience ha fallen flat. The key Nintendo franchise games have not materialized. I have no interest in playing the old Wind Waker game again. I want a new Zelda or Metroid title.
> So this isn't really AI, it's a take on the Eliza program of the late 80s/early 90s that hides the computer better.
Although the site's being slashdotted at the moment, I saw some transcripts of Eugene chats, and I was disappointed that it didn't seem to be that great of an improvement over Eliza. It still uses a lot of the same sorts of very generic, pedantic responses to try and change the subject to fake not having a real answer. By now I'd expect to see some improvements in terms of keeping to a conversation's overall context. Perhaps try to bring up a related topic to something previously discussed. Instead we still have generic stuff like "I'm glad you agreed. Oh, what a fruitful conversation;-)" or "Even my grandpa would find your words strange."
which seems to be popular now. Configuring an old game controller should be a non-issue, the game supports full configuration of whatever inputs your controller supports, and the USB/Game port adapters will map all of the available controls to DirectInput pretty cleanly. I played Descent with D2X using an Xbox controller and it worked great. Today's modern controllers with dual analog sticks and buttons galore are great for Descent.:)
They could take video a pirated movie playing on an old 32" CRT TV. Have a couple people to sit in front of the TV that periodically obscure the picture for good measure.
Getting texts on multiple devices (computer especially) is certainly a worthwhile feature. The end-run around ridiculous text fees for those without unlimited plans is also fantastic. I just wish it was more open. I'd like to see an Android and a Windows iMessage client. Making those available would make iMessage more useful, even for Apple's own customers.
I still have a limited text plan. No plans to upgrade, because the majority of people I "text" have iPhones. If someone with an Android starts getting chatty I switch to GV and continue the conversation.
My electric bill is $.98 if I don't use any electricity. My gas bill is $4 if I don't use any gas. My water bill is $2 if I don't use any water. Comcast wants to charge you what you're paying now (which is already making them a healthy profit), and add overages on top of that. They want the perks (heavy users paying more) without giving light users the benefit they deserve.
I'm fine with paying for my usage too, but the use charges need to be reasonable, and the base price needs to come down. We don't have enough competitive pressure in the US broadband market to keep prices in check.
CD-Rs are, of course, completely different technology, and will only last about a decade.
I have some CD-Rs from 1994. Most still work fine. They were burned with a giant Philips CDD-521 SCSI burner. I didn't even treat them that well (you'd think I would have, since the blank disc was almost $50), but they lived most of their lives indoors in a CaseLogic zipper case, so they get no light exposure whatsoever. The first audio CD-R I burnt in the same time period is scratched to hell but still plays totally fine.
It wouldn't surprise me if the newer "high speed" media also expires at a higher speed though.
The game changer of the iPhone wasn't features. It was UI and updates. Prior to iPhone, you typically would never receive software updates for your phone. After all, why bother, it doesn't sell more phones. The opposite, even. Bug frustration was a reason why people would "upgrade" by buying new phone whenever they hit the end of the contract period.
Apple was big enough to force the phone companies to allow updates to happen.
Updates were there, they were just a lot slower due to the handset manufacturers needing to test and customize updates.
What was revolutionary was the iPhone's ability to navigate around a "full size" web page or map intuitively and fluidly, at high speed with multitouch gestures. Prior to the iPhone, mobile web browsing was a positively miserable experience.
Re:In the early 90s we all read the hype
on
The Road To VR
·
· Score: 1
They just need to stop treating LCD displays as if they were CRT displays. See NVidia G-Sync
It's what I'm starting to use and it's pretty good so far. Door locks, window/door sensors, thermostats, motion sensors, lights, outlets, dimmers, etc. Pretty handy so far. Scripting with LUUP (a LUA like language) is pretty simple, and you can get it to play pretty easily with other whole-house solutions (like SONOS).
You're describing the Vera, which is primarily a Z-wave controller but supports lots of other protocols and ethernet/serial devices. I use this as well. The best part is that there aren't monthly fees to use it, and the community is writing new drivers for things in LUA all the time. Most other HA solutions I've seen are very nickel-and-dime.
If you think you might ever want to use Insteon (which does have some issues, but has some cool features as well), make sure you include a neutral to all of your wall switch boxes.
You want this for Z-wave also. There are two-wire Z-wave switches, but they usually require an incandescent bulb. To expand on this a bit - make sure that lighting switches are wired with a constant hot and neutral, and separate load wiring. Usually this means the line and load's neutrals and grounds are tied together in the switch box, and the hot is switched. There are some other more creative ways to do lighting circuits that make things more of a pain when trying to replace switches.
If you can, get the electrician to label the load wire (the one that runs to the light). That can sometimes be a pain to figure out if there's only line and load in a single gang box. I also second the suggestion for alarm wiring. Figure you want motion sensors and wires to every door and window run to some central location. Changing the batteries on these is a big pain if you have a lot of sensors, and the sensors can also be part of your automation logic.
Yep, the Mac Pro pricing is mostly about the Intel Xeon tax. When the Mac Pro came out in 2006, the pricing was favorable compared to a Dell Precision workstation configured similarly. The problem is, unlike Dell, Apple's next step down is the Mac Mini if you want a standalone computer.
Except as mentioned above, the power company becomes free off-site "storage" for your off-peak power. You generate power you don't need in the morning, and you get it back "free" from them in the afternoon when you get home from work.
And this is still beneficial to the power company, because generally, when you get home from work, it's no longer peak usage. This gives them more peak capacity to satisfy the rest of their customers, without having to build an expensive new plant.
> The panels themselves are cheap, but installing the batteries and storage necessary arn't, so people appear to just put up the panels, run what they can, then take the rest from the power company.
Almost. We run what we can, and sell the excess generation to the power company. We buy it back when our demands exceed our generation (mostly at night).
> This means the base load the power company has to supply at night is probably significantly higher than during the day, meaning their capacity for peak wattage doesn't change, but they sell less overall.
A utility's peak power demands are typically from 3pm-6pm A solar customer is likely selling power back to the utility during this time (or at very least, using less than they would have), so the utility's peak requirements should certainly be less. The only issue I see is that you might have have so many solar customers, that off-peak (say 1pm) generation won't be consumed by the remainder of the non-solar customers. This energy would need to be stored, but it's still energy that they don't need to generate themselves. With plug-in electric vehicles replacing gasoline, I don't think there's much danger of solar customers ever generating too much energy.
Of course the power companies are crying. No monopoly wants competition. Edison wants us to pay 3x the national average for power, and they wonder why solar is so popular?
The MiCasaVerde Vera "glues" protocols together by presenting everything as a UPnP device. It doesn't matter whether it's X10, Zwave, Zigbee, or some proprietary IP protocol with an appropriate LUA driver, a basic on/off switch presents a device with BinaryLight/SwitchPower interface.
This seems to work well in practice, although I haven't seen anything take advantage of this. Every third party UI I've seen uses MCV's remote access APIs.
To use HomeLink with a rolling code garage door, you first teach HomeLink your remote. I suspect it is simply detecting the type rolling code opener you're using. At this point the HomeLink will transmit a code, but it still does not open the garage door. You now need to press the "Learn" button on the opener and transmit a code from the HomeLink to get it to accept the codes. This, incidentally, can be quite a pain if you only have 30 seconds to get down from a ladder and back into your car to push the button.
it is a big deal because unlike a universal remote, security systems are supposed to be, well, secure. you shouldnt be able to hack a security system with a 20$ toy.
The article is about hacking an $8 security system! I don't think anybody is going to purchase it thinking it's going to protect them against hackers with sophisticated reverse engineering knowledge.
> Invariably when the TV comes fully on, it switches the input on my receiver to a dormant device (usually the Apple TV but sometimes it's the BluRay player).
HDMI-CEC is one of those things that should be awesome, but AV receiver manufacturers are simply too out of touch or don't care enough about how consumers actually use their products. Plus, they usually re-badge it to some proprietary name such as Samsung's "Anynet+", so they have an easy out when that Samsung TV doesn't work quite right with that Pioneer AV receiver.
I had the issue you described. Manufacturer's attitude is that ALL of your devices must support the CEC "ecosystem", otherwise you're supposed to turn it off. Good job guys. I really expect Comcast, Time Warner, DirecTV Tivo, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft to work together to support something that will pretty much always be turned off by consumers since almost no one has a compliant collection of components.
Slashdot Mirror
When was the last time you actually used Pioneer's audio gear? It's a pathetic joke. The included entertainment system in a Toyota Camry is better than that garbage.
Last year we bought a 2012 AVIC-X740BT which had a 4.5 out of 5 star rating on Crutchfield. It also has the "AppRadio" feature you mention. Checked out various reviews, they all suggested this was a decent unit. Using it very much reminds me of the crappy smartphones we had before Apple and Android took control of the cellular market.
1) The Windows-CE based unit takes forever to boot up, probably around 30 seconds.
2) The bluetooth pairing process does not start until after the unit has completely booted. So it takes almost 45 seconds to a minute before you can use bluetooth audio or make a call. Even my 2008 G37 pairs quickly after the car is started.
3) Bluetooth audio does not auto-play. You have to manually start the music on the device once it notifies you that the phone has connected. At this point you might be halfway to your destination if it's nearby.
4) USB mass storage devices are limited to a few hundred songs. It takes about 2 minutes to scan a USB stick full of music each time you start the car. The inter-track delay increases as you get further down the list of songs, too. Checking out various car audio forums, most everyone suggests buying an iPod because that's the only way you get a usable music playback interface for a decent size music library.
5) The touch screen is slow and it's hard to scroll through lists fluidly.
7) The app radio stuff is super slow and clunky. It's barely functional, just enough that the concept sounds appealing but something you'll probably never actually use in practice. It's way easier to just use Pandora, etc. through the bluetooth audio.
After seeing the AppRadio implementation on this unit, I can't even imagine having the "dumber" unit that only does AppRadio. Granted, things may have improved in the 2013 and 2014 models but I seriously doubt they've completely changed their ways.
I pretty much have to assume that CarPlay and its Android counterpart will be far superior what Pioneer is currently offering. Both Apple and Google have a much better understanding of how to implement intuitive consumer electronics than the big name aftermarket car audio guys ever will from what I've seen.
Solar panels typically have a 20 year warranty, and are guaranteed to output 80% of their power at year 20 (these figures are required to be met in order for the systems to qualify for tax incentives, so they're pretty common amongst manufacturers). They'll most likely continue working after the warranty. I will, however, probably have to replace my inverter every 10 years or so. It looks like I can pick up a new one on ebay for around $2000 right now. I'm hoping the cost of these drops over time or the technology improves such that my next one is more reliable.
As for ROI, my break even was only 5-6 years. In Southern California we pay dearly for electricity (over 30 cents per kWh once you get past some scant "baseline"), but we have plenty of sunshine. It's been almost 3 years now. The estimated savings for my $15k investment was projected at $100k or so over 20 years. I feel they're using too high of a percentage year-over-year increase of utility power, but even if I only make half that, it's still a good investment.
I did opt to buy instead of a pre-paid lease. The salescritters promised that the leasing companies would effectively gift me the system for $0 at year 20 because it would be too costly to remove, and that the real money was in the accelerated depreciation in years 0-5. However, if I think of the solar panels as a money printing machine, it seems unlikely that the panels, even if they're 20 years old, would have a fair market value of $0. No business would give away something that they can get money for, so I have to assume that at year 20 they will do something to ensure they continue to get a profit from the system that they legally own on my roof. Forget that uncertainty, I decided to just buy it so there are no unknowns. I think it will be really fascinating to see what happens to all of these ultra-long leases in the 2032 time frame.
The Wii controller was a bit better than a gimmick. It re-introduced the light gun in a way that works on modern plasma and LCD TVs, and in a way that can be part of a more elaborate control system. People loved the Zapper on the NES, but the games were pretty shallow because all you could do is pull the trigger.
If you played Metroid Prime with the Gamecube, and then the remade Wii version with the Wii controller, you'll find the Wii controller version is unquestionably better for the gaming experience, because you can aim and shoot at the enemies, instead of fighting with an auto-targeting system. Of course, this is meaningless with the Wii-U's controller, which is a regular game pad with a screen, which is not a new concept - the Dreamcast had something similar. Fortunately games can still use the original Wii controllers.
I was excited to get a HD Nintendo console, but so far the experience ha fallen flat. The key Nintendo franchise games have not materialized. I have no interest in playing the old Wind Waker game again. I want a new Zelda or Metroid title.
> So this isn't really AI, it's a take on the Eliza program of the late 80s/early 90s that hides the computer better.
Although the site's being slashdotted at the moment, I saw some transcripts of Eugene chats, and I was disappointed that it didn't seem to be that great of an improvement over Eliza. It still uses a lot of the same sorts of very generic, pedantic responses to try and change the subject to fake not having a real answer. By now I'd expect to see some improvements in terms of keeping to a conversation's overall context. Perhaps try to bring up a related topic to something previously discussed. Instead we still have generic stuff like "I'm glad you agreed. Oh, what a fruitful conversation;-)" or "Even my grandpa would find your words strange."
Speaking of trascripts, here are some from chatbot batles:
http://www.square-bear.co.uk/c...
The original Descent and its sequel were open-sourced, there are Direct3D versions of it now that run on modern OSes. I used to use D2X, but there's
http://www.dxx-rebirth.com/
which seems to be popular now. Configuring an old game controller should be a non-issue, the game supports full configuration of whatever inputs your controller supports, and the USB/Game port adapters will map all of the available controls to DirectInput pretty cleanly. I played Descent with D2X using an Xbox controller and it worked great. Today's modern controllers with dual analog sticks and buttons galore are great for Descent. :)
They should show them pirated pirate movies.
They could take video a pirated movie playing on an old 32" CRT TV. Have a couple people to sit in front of the TV that periodically obscure the picture for good measure.
Getting texts on multiple devices (computer especially) is certainly a worthwhile feature. The end-run around ridiculous text fees for those without unlimited plans is also fantastic. I just wish it was more open. I'd like to see an Android and a Windows iMessage client. Making those available would make iMessage more useful, even for Apple's own customers.
I still have a limited text plan. No plans to upgrade, because the majority of people I "text" have iPhones. If someone with an Android starts getting chatty I switch to GV and continue the conversation.
My electric bill is $.98 if I don't use any electricity. My gas bill is $4 if I don't use any gas. My water bill is $2 if I don't use any water. Comcast wants to charge you what you're paying now (which is already making them a healthy profit), and add overages on top of that. They want the perks (heavy users paying more) without giving light users the benefit they deserve.
I'm fine with paying for my usage too, but the use charges need to be reasonable, and the base price needs to come down. We don't have enough competitive pressure in the US broadband market to keep prices in check.
CD-Rs are, of course, completely different technology, and will only last about a decade.
I have some CD-Rs from 1994. Most still work fine. They were burned with a giant Philips CDD-521 SCSI burner. I didn't even treat them that well (you'd think I would have, since the blank disc was almost $50), but they lived most of their lives indoors in a CaseLogic zipper case, so they get no light exposure whatsoever. The first audio CD-R I burnt in the same time period is scratched to hell but still plays totally fine.
It wouldn't surprise me if the newer "high speed" media also expires at a higher speed though.
Old Glory Insurance. "For when the metal ones decide to come for you. And they will."
https://screen.yahoo.com/old-g...
In all fairness, fixing a broken update can, however, be close to rocket science :)
My favorite is when I did a dist-upgrade, and Debian left me without a kernel to boot from. Grrrr... In fairness, it was quite a while ago.
The game changer of the iPhone wasn't features. It was UI and updates. Prior to iPhone, you typically would never receive software updates for your phone. After all, why bother, it doesn't sell more phones. The opposite, even. Bug frustration was a reason why people would "upgrade" by buying new phone whenever they hit the end of the contract period.
Apple was big enough to force the phone companies to allow updates to happen.
Updates were there, they were just a lot slower due to the handset manufacturers needing to test and customize updates.
What was revolutionary was the iPhone's ability to navigate around a "full size" web page or map intuitively and fluidly, at high speed with multitouch gestures. Prior to the iPhone, mobile web browsing was a positively miserable experience.
They just need to stop treating LCD displays as if they were CRT displays. See NVidia G-Sync
http://www.geforce.com/hardwar...
It's what I'm starting to use and it's pretty good so far. Door locks, window/door sensors, thermostats, motion sensors, lights, outlets, dimmers, etc. Pretty handy so far. Scripting with LUUP (a LUA like language) is pretty simple, and you can get it to play pretty easily with other whole-house solutions (like SONOS).
You're describing the Vera, which is primarily a Z-wave controller but supports lots of other protocols and ethernet/serial devices. I use this as well. The best part is that there aren't monthly fees to use it, and the community is writing new drivers for things in LUA all the time. Most other HA solutions I've seen are very nickel-and-dime.
If you think you might ever want to use Insteon (which does have some issues, but has some cool features as well), make sure you include a neutral to all of your wall switch boxes.
You want this for Z-wave also. There are two-wire Z-wave switches, but they usually require an incandescent bulb. To expand on this a bit - make sure that lighting switches are wired with a constant hot and neutral, and separate load wiring. Usually this means the line and load's neutrals and grounds are tied together in the switch box, and the hot is switched. There are some other more creative ways to do lighting circuits that make things more of a pain when trying to replace switches.
If you can, get the electrician to label the load wire (the one that runs to the light). That can sometimes be a pain to figure out if there's only line and load in a single gang box. I also second the suggestion for alarm wiring. Figure you want motion sensors and wires to every door and window run to some central location. Changing the batteries on these is a big pain if you have a lot of sensors, and the sensors can also be part of your automation logic.
Yep, the Mac Pro pricing is mostly about the Intel Xeon tax. When the Mac Pro came out in 2006, the pricing was favorable compared to a Dell Precision workstation configured similarly. The problem is, unlike Dell, Apple's next step down is the Mac Mini if you want a standalone computer.
Except as mentioned above, the power company becomes free off-site "storage" for your off-peak power. You generate power you don't need in the morning, and you get it back "free" from them in the afternoon when you get home from work.
And this is still beneficial to the power company, because generally, when you get home from work, it's no longer peak usage. This gives them more peak capacity to satisfy the rest of their customers, without having to build an expensive new plant.
> The panels themselves are cheap, but installing the batteries and storage necessary arn't, so people appear to just put up the panels, run what they can, then take the rest from the power company.
Almost. We run what we can, and sell the excess generation to the power company. We buy it back when our demands exceed our generation (mostly at night).
> This means the base load the power company has to supply at night is probably significantly higher than during the day, meaning their capacity for peak wattage doesn't change, but they sell less overall.
A utility's peak power demands are typically from 3pm-6pm A solar customer is likely selling power back to the utility during this time (or at very least, using less than they would have), so the utility's peak requirements should certainly be less. The only issue I see is that you might have have so many solar customers, that off-peak (say 1pm) generation won't be consumed by the remainder of the non-solar customers. This energy would need to be stored, but it's still energy that they don't need to generate themselves. With plug-in electric vehicles replacing gasoline, I don't think there's much danger of solar customers ever generating too much energy.
Of course the power companies are crying. No monopoly wants competition. Edison wants us to pay 3x the national average for power, and they wonder why solar is so popular?
Or for the more standards/budget friendly: MiCasaVerde Vera turns various ZWave/X10/RS232/IR devices into standard UPnP endpoints.
The MiCasaVerde Vera "glues" protocols together by presenting everything as a UPnP device. It doesn't matter whether it's X10, Zwave, Zigbee, or some proprietary IP protocol with an appropriate LUA driver, a basic on/off switch presents a device with BinaryLight/SwitchPower interface.
This seems to work well in practice, although I haven't seen anything take advantage of this. Every third party UI I've seen uses MCV's remote access APIs.
To use HomeLink with a rolling code garage door, you first teach HomeLink your remote. I suspect it is simply detecting the type rolling code opener you're using. At this point the HomeLink will transmit a code, but it still does not open the garage door. You now need to press the "Learn" button on the opener and transmit a code from the HomeLink to get it to accept the codes. This, incidentally, can be quite a pain if you only have 30 seconds to get down from a ladder and back into your car to push the button.
it is a big deal because unlike a universal remote, security systems are supposed to be, well, secure. you shouldnt be able to hack a security system with a 20$ toy.
The article is about hacking an $8 security system! I don't think anybody is going to purchase it thinking it's going to protect them against hackers with sophisticated reverse engineering knowledge.
> Invariably when the TV comes fully on, it switches the input on my receiver to a dormant device (usually the Apple TV but sometimes it's the BluRay player).
HDMI-CEC is one of those things that should be awesome, but AV receiver manufacturers are simply too out of touch or don't care enough about how consumers actually use their products. Plus, they usually re-badge it to some proprietary name such as Samsung's "Anynet+", so they have an easy out when that Samsung TV doesn't work quite right with that Pioneer AV receiver.
I had the issue you described. Manufacturer's attitude is that ALL of your devices must support the CEC "ecosystem", otherwise you're supposed to turn it off. Good job guys. I really expect Comcast, Time Warner, DirecTV Tivo, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft to work together to support something that will pretty much always be turned off by consumers since almost no one has a compliant collection of components.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/2340
Now I finally understand the purpose of Old Glory insurance. ;)