Wasted Continuum

I just got wind of this. I really don’t know how long it’s been out, but I just found out about Adobe TV today. I think everyone is trying to do the video thing. I’m glad Adobe is. Adobe TV is basically a hub where users of Adobe products can find videos by so-called experts with tips, tutorials and general information about the various Adobe products. I skimmed through the titles. They are some that I would like to check out when I have time.

Something very unexpected happened with Flickr today. Flickr is no longer just a place to share and store your photos. It now is allowing users to upload video clips. They’re introducing it as a “long photo” feature. Other restrictions are that only pro users can upload videos, videos must me 90 seconds or less, and they must be created by the user. They have an FAQ page set up for video now. A group called Video! Video! Video! has already been created to share with the Flickr community.

I’m not sure if I would try out the video upload. Maybe if I got the Flip Video, I might. I already spend enough time going through and processing my photos. I don’t think I would have time to edit video.

I know. Everyone has talked about Flip Video Cameras. I’m about a year late. I never really gave the Flip Video a chance. It’s a barebone, feature-less, relatively cheap handheld camera that shoots 640×480 AVI’s. It’s not exactly a geek’s dream camcorder. It’s almost the opposite. I’ve been researching digital video cameras for about a year now. I’m mostly waiting for a 1080p camera to be priced for a consumer to buy. That hasn’t really happened yet. There are options for that out there. Then I heard a couple people I trust in the geek world talk about the Flip Video so I decided to check it out for myself.

I think the most attractive points to the Flip Video is that it is cheap ($100.86 for the 30-minute and $149.99 for the 60-minute) and simple to use. You basically press the red button on the back to start recording. You press a button to stop. To get the video off the camera, you flip out the little USB connector from the side of it and plug it into your Mac or PC. You can use the supplied software to edit it or even upload to AOL or YouTube, or you can just copy off the MPEG4 AVI files and edit them in your own software. You can even connect the camera directly to your TV and watch the video that way. The Flip Video also runs on AA batteries so when you on the go and forgot to charge your batteries, you can easily go to a gas station or convenient store and pick up some.

Hulu is a new video streaming service owned by NBC Universal. It launched earlier this year in March. I really didn’t give it a look since it came out. I think I glanced at the site when it was in beta and I remember it not being very useful. Last week, however, I finally gave it a chance and checked it out. After hearing talk about it on a recent episode of TWIT, I wanted to see if Hulu was just a wasted of space.

For those of you who have not heard or seen Hulu yet, it basically is a video streaming site that provides video clips, full TV shows and movies with limited advertising. I was surprised by how minimal the advertisement was. I was a couple episodes of My Name is Earl and the only commercial I really noticed was the beginning screen where it said the episode was brought to you by HP or something like that. On another night, I watched one of my favorite episodes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I Only Have Eyes For You. It was awesome. They have the first two seasons of Buffy.

They don’t only have full episodes of older shows. As I mentioned before, they have Earl and other new shows like The Office. They have a decent selection of movies too, a lot of them full-length. The video quality is good. It is at a much higher resolution than YouTube. You should definitely check out Hulu. It is great for catching up on certain shows or movies or even to discover new shows.

It’s been a well known fact that HD DVD has been on it’s way out since right before CES. Now, Gamerscore Blog has stated that Microsoft will no longer producing their HD DVD player for the 360. This coming after the major movie studios abandoned them. Then retailers like Best Buy, Walmart and NetFlix dropped them. Then, Toshiba, the company associated with HD DVD, announced that they’re discontinuing them. Everyone can safely buy a Blu-ray player now. Right now, the price is too high for me to get one. Currently the best deal for a player is still the PS3. The 20GB version is going for $418 right now. I’m definitely waiting until players are at least under $200. Shouldn’t be too long now.