Ben Drawbaugh

Verizon started to install fiber in my hood as early as January 2007, and back in April they even had the box in front of my house completed. It has been some time since I’ve seen any activity, so I gave them a call to check the status, the CSR indicated that my address still wasn’t showing up in their system and that they’d probably send me a flier when it was ready. So yesterday I get some mail from Verizon trying to sell me DSL at a 3Mpbs! What a joke! Six months to install seems like too long and then they would bother advertising 3Mpbs when I get 15Mbps with Bright House Networks! So still I wait.

One of the best things about my role at Engadget HD is that I get to write about whatever I want. Sure sometimes Paul or Evan ask me to hit a story, but for the most part I get to write what I want. More often than not, I write Blu-ray news that I am excited about, and because of this I have been given the name “Ben ‘Blu-ray’ Drawbaugh” by some of the commenters. As a blogger the first thing I had to get used too was ridicule, some call you an idiot, or a fanboy, or even a corporate shill, but yesterday when I wrote my first post that some felt was an attack on the PS3, I learned a whole new wrath; the wrath of the PS3 fanboy. All I have to say is WOW, those HD DVD fanboys aren’t anything compared to the blind dedication that these guys have. The funny part is that I really couldn’t care less about the PS3, but I do think it is interesting that the PS3 can’t handle bit-stream audio output properly and it was worth a mention on Engadget HD.

I live in an old neighborhood, but a new house. For years I lived in multi-dweling housing which means no fiber for whatever reason. Last year when I moved into an old neighborhood in Tampa I didn’t expect to get FIOS anytime soon. Back in January I noticed they were finally running conduit for fiber on my street, but until today the conduit was empty. Much to my surprise today there was fiber in the box in the front of my house. Who knows how long it will take now for them to light it up, but I can’t wait to get the extra HD channels they provide over Bright House Networks as well as faster broadband, no 15 Mbps isn’t fast enough for me!

FIOS Flickr set

I had tons of fun at CES with Engadget this year and while I was there taking pictures of HD.net in action they ended up catching me in the action as well. While you can hardly make me out, I assure you it’s me to the right of the guy talking walking by in my khaki jacket. If you want to try to catch it during the “What’s Kwel at CES 2007” fast forward to about the 32 minute mark.

When this format war first got started, I wasn’t sure which side to choose, but after attending CES 06 I was sold on Blu-ray. I was overwhelmed with the amount of Blu-ray support at the show and this prompted me to talk about and write predictions about the fast demise of HD DVD. This earned me the nickname Ben “Blu-ray” Drawbaugh by some commenter’s on EHD. Most haven’t noticed that a few months ago I changed my tune. The reason for this is an interview I did for EHD that I wasn’t supposed to talk about. Well I could talk about it, but not specifics and although I am not going to go back on my word now, I am going to share more info. You see I had a nice talk with a Studio exec and while I won’t say which one, I will say that it is a neutral studio that produces titles for both sides. What he told me that changed my mind was that they are making money on both formats. Like any other business, the decisions are based on return, not costs and as long as they make money on both sides, they will continue to support both. This really forced to step back and realize that this thing isn’t ending anytime soon. Who knows how long it will go on, but for now I am enjoying Blu-ray movies and you should be too.

I knew I wasn’t going to be super excited about the Amazon Unbox, I mean it isn’t HD after all and there isn’t multi-channel audio, but man could they have messed it up any worse? Did a quick search by price for the shows tagged TiVo to find the least expensive show was the Animatrix episodes for .99, I downloaded one with my $15 credit for signing up. If you haven’t seen the series, it is great for Matrix fans, but it is presented in a 2.35 aspect ratio. So you know what that means right, yeah bars on the top and bottom of my TV. No problem, but it is a problem with the Series3 adds gray bars to the sides. I just can’t believe that Amazon/TiVo would encode a 2.35 movie in a 4:3 frame. DVD’s haven’t even done this for like 8 years. If they would have encoded it like a DVD, then maybe the TiVo could distribute it in a 16×9 frame.
How much you want to bet that the AppleTV doesn’t do stuff like this?

Ok I feel better now.