Viva CineVegas.

It's been quiet around here, you say? That's because I've only had time to shoot off short entries for the other blog, Film Festival Secrets, regarding CineVegas. I've been in Sin City for the last six days and now it's time to go home, hopefully to return to a more regular posting schedule here. See you after the plane ride.

Pipeline Posse

Cool little surfing doc "pod" from Current TV.

Apple announces 3G iPhone and "Mobile Me" service

Via MacRumors:

The heavily rumored 3G iPhone was announced today during Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference Keynote.

Features
- 3G-capable. 2.8 times faster than EDGE.
- GPS built-in
- Thinner
- Better battery life - 300 hours of standby, 2G talk-time 10 hours (as opposed to 5), 5 hours of 3G talk-time (competition is 3 hour 3G talk time), 5 to 6 hours of high-speed browsing, 7 hours of video, 24 hours of audio.
- flush headphone jack

Pricing and Availability
The iPhone 3G will be available July 11th in 22 countries for $199 for 8 GB and $299 for 16 GB. The 16 GB model also comes in white.

Apple also announced "Mobile Me," which they're billing as "[Microsoft] Exchange for the rest of us." Basically, it's real-time sync of your personal data (contacts, calendar entries, etc) across your phone, laptop, etc.

With a price point of just $200, the only real stumbling block to getting an iPhone (other than the goofy "I like hard buttons" complaint) would be that you don't want to be beholden to AT&T.

See more at Apple's web site.

'Torchwood' cut down for third season?

Despite bringing in some of BBC's best ratings in 2008, Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood will receive an abbreviated series for its third year. From Digital Spy:

Executive producer Julie Gardner told TV Guide: "We've decided to do a five-part mini-series, one big story that will run during one week. I wanted to make a really big noise about the show."

Gardner, who confirmed that John Barrowman will be back as Captain Jack, remained coy about any additions to the cast following the death of two regular characters in the second season finale. However, she said that fans of the show "will be pleased with the casting."

Read the full story at Digital Spy.

Update: two other quick bits of Doctor Who news - Steven Moffat (the series' best writer currently working) to take over as showrunner in 2010, and David Tennant dates his "daughter" -- who is also Peter Davison's real daughter. Holy incestuous paradoxes Batman!

Pssssst! You hear that?

You hear that distant rumbling?

That's the sound of the internet going insane as another Apple product announcement keynote speech approaches. The 2008 Apple World Wide Developer's Conference starts tomorrow and rumors of next-generation iPhones with video chat and faster data connections are flying furiously. Personally I'm just looking forward to the new applications that will be available now that Apple has opened the iPhone to 3rd-party software development.

Can't be in San Francisco with the other Mac faithful for the speech? Now there's an official podcast from Apple that will automatically download the keynote videos for you after the fact.

First evening with the Netflix Roku box

Netflix Roku box
Originally uploaded by stomptokyo

Last night Christina and I hooked up our new Netflix Roku box, which allows us to finally take advantage of the Netflix "Watch It Now" program. About 10% of the titles on Netflix are available to watch as streaming video for no additional cost on top of your regular DVD rental subscription. I'd never really used it before because it only worked with Windows PCs. Not only is my primary laptop a Mac (and I never could get it to work with my Windows XP machine), but I dislike watching video on my laptop for more than a few minutes. When I want to watch a movie or TV show, I want to take advantage of my couch and the nice TV set sitting in front of it.

Enter the Roku box, which hooks up to your TV and streams the video from your Netflix account over your wireless (or wired) home network. You have to add movies to your "instant watch" queue on your computer before they show up as selections on your Roku box, but I actually prefer it that way. Once you select a program, it takes about a minute to spin up the show and then you're watching. Since it's streaming, network interruptions could result in video stutters or straight-up stoppages. Over the 90 minutes or so that we watched a couple of different TV show episodes ("A&E Biography" and the pilot of the original "Battlestar Galactica"), however, we never noticed so much as a blip. Video quality varies depending on the speed of your network, but even though we got the medium-quality stream (2 pips out of 4 on the little quality meter that pops up), it looked more than passable. Better than Tivo's "basic" recording quality, and we watch TV at that quality all the time.

Setup was dead simple -- plug into TV, plug into wall, follow on screen instructions. I was done in about 10 minutes, including a system software update. It was the most painless install I've done of a home theater component ever.

There are a few minor down sides, but I don't think they're deal breakers by any means. First, it's yet another box to hook up to your TV. But given the plethora of hookups most TVs come with these days that's less of a problem than it once was. Adding to the clutter problem, I can also see a time when I'm going to want to run an ethernet cable over to the TV to get higher quality video -- especially if HD content (which the box can handle) becomes available.

The Roku box's biggest problem is the dearth of content, which is annoying but not insurmountable. About 10% of the titles on Netflix are available on Watch it Now, and Netflix conveniently scans your DVD queue for the titles that are available to watch instantly. (You'll have to manage the queue of things you've seen manually so that you don't end up with a DVD in your mailbox that you've already seen on the Roku box.) The biggest rebuttal to this problem so far is that there's a ton of great TV content, including recent shows like Weeds and 30 Rock and classics like The Dick Van Dyke Show and a bunch of vintage Doctor Who episodes. If you've ever watched a series all the way through on DVD, devouring episodes like candy, the Roku box is for you. The ability to take a chance on something -- and bail consequence-free if it sucks -- is liberating. What's this? Knight Rider and The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries?

For more on the Roku box, check out David Pogue's review in the New York Times.