Hi, friends!
It’s Monday and work makes me grumpy, so today’s post is about things where you’re like for fuck’s sake, that’s what you did with that? All the smart people working there and that was it????
I’ve been catching up on Strange New Worlds after not using Paramount+ for like 9 months and wowsers that streaming platform is still a complete and utter piece of shit. Can’t tell if they just hired shitty devs or their leadership can’t plan their way out of a paper sack.
Oahu has some of the worst traffic in the country & light rail seems like a no brainer good idea, especially if you allow bikes on it. Unfortunately, they didn’t sell the idea & the execution has been an expensive joke.
https://www.hawaiibusiness.com/hart-history-hawaii-rail-project-when-finished-budget/
The problem I have with the light rail – you know it will be done in 2037 – is that it seems to just be focused on connecting the airport to Waikiki.
I love Waikiki, I’ve been there a few times and it’s a lot of fun. But the tourists can afford to take an uber or taxi and the public transportation should be designed on to make things easier for the residents and not just theoretically reduce traffic on H1 (but just the international tourists, because chances are most of the mainland US tourists will be scared of public transit).
It was never intended to be for tourists but for locals. Especially the ones that live near Ewa Beach where a 10 mile commute can be 2 hours because of traffic. The taxi union & others fought to have it NOT go to the airport & Waikiki. While it would be amazing to get tourist to not rent cars to get around the island, too much money is made with rent-a-cars, shuttles, Ubers & parking for that to happen.
Interesting! When I was there the first time (the best work trip ever because it was somewhere lovely and not like *go do an on-site in a Florida strip mall in August*), the coworkers were telling me it was predominantly designed to move airport volume. So I just figured they knew what they were talking about.
Glad to know I was misinformed.
It’s both for P+. Paramount would have been better off to license their catalogue than run their own service but Sheri Redstone is one dumbass completely over her head.
Part of me won’t miss the Redstones making shit worse.
I’ve been watching bits of a few NBA Summer League games on ESPN via Hulu, and that has also been terrible.
The announcers for a couple of games were fine – clearly not top level announcers, but they were engaged and knew the players. It’s what you’d expect.
But they also had Tim Legler and Marc Kestecher who are supposed to be full time ESPN employees, and they were absolutely awful. They just babbled for long stretches at a time about things that had absolutely nothing to do with the game being shown. I get that these kinds of preseason games with mostly rookies aren’t the big times, but could they at least pay attention halfway?
The other weird thing is that they seemed to have not really sold any ads. There were only three ads in rotation – one for the NBA app, one for some tile store, and one for Orkin. And each company didn’t even have multiple ads, just the same one over and over.
I keep reading about how streaming apps are losing money like crazy, but it also seems like a lot of the ad-supported streaming hurts like crazy for ads. I don’t really get it – I’d think they could still sell time to shoe companies, chips, shampoo, energy drinks, whatever. Every extra eyeball should be a plus for companies, but somehow ESPN/Hulu can’t make it happen.
That is interesting, because Disney+ with ads hasn’t been bad. There’s a handful of ads in rotation that I see, but it’s not like the same 3 every commercial break. I guess it’s different groups managing it for Disney vs ESPN streaming.
I’ve watched way too many summer league games but on NBA tv or ESPN & have had mostly decent announcers though not real game quality. NBA tv is the best, they always have a competent ex-player. Though Lakers & more popular games get better announcers since nobody is watching Charlotte play the Nets. It’s fun to play GM & try to figure out who can grow into a rotational player.
It’s kind of nuts to me how you can climb the ladder of leagues but the quality of announcers isn’t necessarily better. A G League game’s announcers aren’t necessarily great but they tend to be competent. If you watch an NBA game on a local network, it’s the same thing. But national broadcasts of the NBA or NFL can be inconsistent and sometimes bad.
Only a few great NBA announcers left, Kevin Calabro being the best. I miss Chick Hearn so much, TV or radio, you could feel the game.
Some of the local ones for teams if you watch on NBA tv the feed from that city are so bad. They can’t be slightly objective & just yell foul & terrible reffing worst than I do as a fan. Don’t get me started on the NFL shitshow since Madden left.
One thing I’ve noticed is across all sports, announcers with a radio background before TV are better than ones with only a TV background.
Radio forces them to be precise and always focus on the game. TV lets announcers be much too sloppy.
Hearn knows the point in the shot clock he can talk about the jello. He cuts that out when it starts getting closer to zero.
Is Netflix app different on different platforms? On my Roku, it’s a surprisingly good app compared to some of the others. Better than Apple, better than Hulu, and on par with Prime. Plus, I’m surprised at how well it can deliver high-quality video over limited bandwidth.
The quality of the shows is another matter, of course. I usually only find a few shows a year I want to see there. If I can get one a month, it’s above average.
Unsure – I watch Roku on my smart tv when I work out and on my firestick when I’m lazy in my living room and I don’t notice a difference in functionality between the two.
Sorry apparently I can’t use words good and need to go to the Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Want To Learn To Read Good.
I meant to say I watch Neflix , not that I watch Roku.
I have noticed when I travel that Roku on a smart TV does not have as good functionality as a standalone Roku on a TV via HDMI or displaylink.
Yeah I feel that way about my smart tv.
Sometimes it just seizes up and can’t load fuck-all because it’s trying to load like 29 apps on its homepage despite me only wanting 3 and not able to delete the others.
Like tonight? First it was like waah waah no internet to which I was like LIES. Turned off and on again, still no luck. Unplugged and then tried again and it could find the internet but stalled out trying to load the home screen. Then I just pressed the Netflix button on the remote and was able to get that to open.
Meanwhile, my firestick just turns on and works fine with none of this bullshit.
If you watch used equipment sales long enough, you can buy a dumb TV for a song and just plug a stick in without all that hassle.
Yeah good point. My smart tv was a cheap small one I got a few years ago because the room isn’t big and I was cheap, so like no reason to spend a lot of money.
Honestly with the way tech can go obsolete, I’m somewhat surprised it still works.
Oh good, this is a universal experience, I see.
My smart tv is the biggest idiot. It sometimes just restarts in the middle of me watching something. Or sometimes I turn it on an app and I have video but no sound. The only way I can fix it is to get down under everything and unplug the TV.
my smart tv gets dumber with every update….
like used to be i could cast youtube from my pc to the tv (a power i didnt abuse at all) but not anymore
like….i can accept my old ass tv doesnt get new features….but losing old ones by the upgrade?
thats some bullshit
(even tho i understand its just shit no longer running on whatever old version of android my tv has….still bullshit)