Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray Column: Enjoying TV - the Old-Fashioned Way
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By Ellen Gray, Philadelphia Daily News  Dec. 19--JUST BECAUSE Netflix and DVRs and streaming video are changing the way people watch TV doesn't mean some of us don't still come when we're called.   Especially at this time of year.
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Yesterday's piece, lightly edited, on the Huffington Post. http://x98.us/jz  I think it looks pretty good over there!
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The practicalities of next generation services "There's nothing decent on TV," is a common refrain in our house. Even though we have heeded the BBC adverts and invested in some Freeview boxes, it seems that even increasing the available channels from five to roughly 50 does not guarantee a cosy evening in front of the box. It wasn't much different when we lived in America, except that baseball was on most evenings; however, I am in a minority in my family being a fan of the sport.â¦
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From royalty to realism, HBO proved yet again that some TV is   still worth paying for.
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Television used to be dismissed by elitists as the idiot box, a sea of mediocrity that drowns thought and intelligent debate. Now people who ignore its pools and eddies of excellence do so at their own peril.
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After decades of hype, interactive television is now pouring into American living rooms. But how much do viewers really want to interact?
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Rooftop antennas are back in vogue. Many homeowners are trading up to expensive television sets and hooking them up to old-fashioned antennas that can pull in the digital and high-definition signals of local broadcasters for free.
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Fans of "Grey's Anatomy" should be careful what they wish for.
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Some of TV's best shows come back soon; get the discs, and get onboard
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Our day-by-day guide to the fall TV season: Thursdays
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In 2005, there's a good chance you or someone you know will buy a digital television set and a satellite radio and purchase a movie at home using a remote control or laptop. In the newspapers (strike that -- on the Internet), you'll read more about radio and television indecency and may very well see the Supreme Court take the first step toward tossing out the federal regulations that have kept NBC from looking more like HBO.
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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls... It's with much anticipation that I say this. I have a new product that may be familiar to those of you who used Radio 8, and in other ways may be completely new.  The idea is simple.  There's a convergence between big screen high-definition televisions, and photography as an Internet based activity. The purpose of this product is to smooth that convergence, to make it easy to set up a connection between the Internet and your television. To allow photography to come into your living room in new, powerful and easy ways. Think of it as the networked living room and you'll understand the vision. Some of the work I've done is technical, some is user interface, and some is working with media organizations to try to create a comfort level, or at least a spirit of Let's Give This A Try. In the latter case, it's much like working with the NY Times to get their news headlines and summaries to flow through Radio's RSS aggregator in 2002. Only this time we're working with photographs, and we think, the best news photographers in the world. And the pictures are beautifully high-def, they look really great when displayed on LCD and plasma screens. I use it with my 52-inch Samsung and 46-inch Sony. Of course what looks great on a wall, also looks great on a 15-inch Macbook or 24-inch iMac.   And while we connect those pros with your TV, it's equally important that we connect your friends and families too. One of the early testers found the pictures that Doc Searls uploads to Flickr a great revelation. Me too. That's because Doc is not only a great photographer, he's also a great story-teller. I find that I can follow the lives of far more friends visually than I can through text messages (which I love to do too!). Viewing great photos on bigscreen TVs, desktops and laptops -- that's one focus, but not the only one.  I wanted to provide a complete two-way tool for people who love Flickr, as I do.  Why Flickr? Well, they've got this great thing called an API. It makes it possible for people like me to make software that runs on a desktop computer that does things like automatically backing up your new photos every night, and providing a drop-folder on your desktop for quick uploads. (It understands tags too, it's incredibly simple.) We also made it easy to post pictures you like to Twitter. Why Twitter? It's that API thing again. They made it easy for us to love them. I wish more network service developers understood how powerful this outstretched hand is.  But that's not all! Not by a long shot. The reason all this will be so familiar to Radio 8 users is that it builds on the same engine, the one that was released as open source in 2004. So I've been working on other tools to drop into this base platform and once we have a good-sized base of people using it for "really simple photos" on the desktop, there will be other tools. And because it's an open platform, other developers can do the same. Not saying they will, but they can.  Anyway, I'm in the last stages, preparing the download site, and a FAQ, and tweaking the installer. One caveat, the first beta release is Mac only. That's because I'm doing all my work on the Mac, and this is a one-man show. Later we will work it out for Windows too, and with a bit more work and a bit more luck, for Linux.  It should be ready before the sun goes down today.
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It may soon be easier to watch "Sesame Street," "Masterpiece Theater" and other public television programs in sharp, digital images.
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About this time last year, I wrote a column following up on some pieces I'd written earlier to see what if anything new had happened to those topics. The reaction I heard afterwards convinced me that revisiting old news was a worthwhile exercise -- in general, it's too easy for tech reporters to lose sight of how a product works over time in the real world, as opposed to a brief trial in a reviewer's hands.
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By Donald Munro, The Fresno Bee, Calif.  Jun. 8--"The TV Set" is sort of funny and sort of obvious. In that regard, I'm not sure it's all that different from the dim-bulb TV shows that it purports to satirize.
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Ellen DeGeneres can probably put anyone at ease. Even nominees for the biggest awards in show business.
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Will Sears shoppers go for the high-definition television? Stay tuned.