In the continuing move away from brick and mortar video rentals, Blockbuster is planning to close as many as 22 percent of their current locations.

It’s pretty clear that services like Netflix, video on demand, and Internet based delivery are the preferred delivery methods going forward.

Today was supposed to be the big day.  The day we finally shut off the analog broadcasting transmitters and switched to all-digital broadcasting.

After about 10 years of planning, preparation and public awareness, the government decided too many people still weren’t ready and stepped in at the last minute to delay the change.

Now we get to go through this all over again in June.  As if an extra 4 months is going to substantially change the number of people who aren’t ready.

This delay is only going to add to the confusion since broadcasters are not “required” to delay the cutoff, they “may” delay it if they wish.  So instead of everyone switching at once and dealing with the problems and confusion one time, there will be at least two dates for switching and increased confusion as some stations switch and others don’t.

The government really should have stayed out of this.  One of their big concerns was the derth of coupons for converter boxes.  In their infinite wisdom, they delay the change, but make no provisions for extar coupons, more funding for the coupons or reissuing the expired coupons people already have.  So they step in add to the confusion and don’t do anything to help people.  Sounds like a typical government program.

Now we can reset our count down clocks for June 12, 2009.

In case you still had any doubts, VHS is dead.

First, JVC stopped producing VCRs, and now the last remaining distributor of VHS media is sending out its final shippments.

“It’s dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt,” said [Ryan] Kugler, 34, a Burbank businessman. “I was the last one buying VHS and the last one selling it, and I’m done. Anything left in warehouse we’ll just give away or throw away.”

If you are using Netflix’s “Watch Instatntly” streaming service, you may be interested to know some of the technical details about their encoding processes.

Believe it or not, JVC was still producing VHS decks, until today, when they announced they are stopping production of stand-alone VCRs.

More than 900 million VCRs were produced during the past 30+ years.

VHS. RIP.

Photo courtesy of http://av.watch.impress.co.jp

A reporter for IEEE Spectrum Radio details her experience switching from analog over-the-air broadcasts to digital over-the-air broadcasts.  She found it was “neither as easy or painless” as everyone promised.

It’s unknown if her experience is typical or not, but the reality is that most people do not need to do anything to prepare for the February 17, 2009 switch to digital television broadcasting.  You only need to be concerned if, like the reporter, you get your television only from a roof antenna or “rabbit ears” AND you have an older television without a digital tuner.   If you get your television from cable, satellite or some other provider, or if you have a newer set that has a digital tuner, you don’t need to do anything.

Vince Cerf, the “father” of the Internet, thinks “the world wide web will spell the end of television in the coming years.“

He claims that since we only watch 15 percent of programming in real-time, it would be easy to download programs over the Internet in the background and watch them at our leisure.

I’m sure at some point in the future this will happen, but I seriously doubt it will be by 2012.  Broadband penetration rates in this country are sill embarrassingly low.  No one is going to download a season of Lost over a 768k DSL connection.  When we all have a 100 Megabit fiber connection and a multi-terabyte media server in the basement, then we can see things like this happening.  Until then people will be happy with cable TV, DVRs and DVDs.

If you need help setting up your home theater game console or other electronics check out Wirewize.

They have helpful guides for many consumer electronics that can show you which cables go where and how to connect it all together.

(Not that our readers would need any help, you’re all smart enough to figure it out )

Retailers giving vinyl records another spin.

And they said we were crazy.

I’m old enough to have owned records when that’s all there was and I don’t remember them being that great.  There have always been audio “purists” who feel that the analog sound is superior to today’s digital audio.  The absurd thing about records today is that I have to believe 99.9% of them are recorded, mixed and mastered as digital audio.  Only in the last step are they molded into analog records.  Anyone who is going to claim to hear the “more natural” sound in those recordings is fooling themselves.

The MPAA is at it again.  Now they want to prevent consumers from recording HD movies during the time period between when a movie is released in the theaters and it is available on disc.  They are petitioning the FCC to change the current restrictions on the use of technologies that restrict home recording.

In a very real sense, it is the studios’ content and they can do with it as they please.  As consumers we are also free to not purchase their product.  But in this case their ideas seem to do nothing except annoy people.  According to the article, they only want to block the recordings during the roughly 2 month period between when a program begins to be available in these other mediums and when it is available on disc.

This is a case where the MPAA is going to generate a huge amount of consumer ire for very little actual benefit.