Windows Vista and Windows 7 both have excellent support for over-the-air HDTV signals. If you’re in a city with a clear line of sight to the local broadcaster, you might be able to get by with an indoor antenna. But if you’re in a marginal location, you’ll get better results with an outdoor antenna, on your rooftop if it’s a single family home, or on a balcony or patio if you live in a condominium where the rooftop is a common area and not under your exclusive control.

With the transition to digital broadcasts earlier this year, it’s even more important to have a great digital input source. So what do you do if your homeowners association says “no outdoor antennas”? You point them to the official Federal Communications Commission Fact Sheet on Placement of Antennas. It’s a summary of the Over-the-Air Reception Devices Rule, created by direction of Congress in the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Continue reading “Know your antenna rights” →

OK, this alone justified the $9.95 I paid MTV this month for its URGE service. I have to say, it’s addictive and has worked spectacularly well for more than two months. After my disastrous experience with Napster To Go a few years ago, I was gunshy. But it’s been rock-solid.

The commentary from Jack Black and Kyle Gass is priceless. Sample :

I hate to sound like an old man and keep naming songs from the ’70s and ’80s. … The Cars don’t really make what I’d call sexy music, but the guitar solo in this is so hot [scats guitar sound].

As for the playlist itself, I haven’t summoned up the courage to actually play it yet.

(PARENTAL LYRICS ADVISORY: If you don’t know Tenacious D, this is a good starting point. Imagine that Spinal Tap had grown up in an American suburb in a parallel universe where Jack Black is a rock and roll god. And if bad words offend you, then forget I even mentioned it.)

Good heavens – have I really not done this in eight months?

While I’m working on the digital media section of Windows Vista Inside Out, I get to poke around in my music library. I clicked a few buttons today and wound up with this eclectic list for reasons that are unfathomable to me. But it sounds pretty good:

1. Yakety Axe, Chet Atkins, Neck and Neck
2. Beautiful and Strange, Shannon McNally, Geronimo 
3. Popstar, The Pretenders, Viva El Amor
4. The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss), Cher, The Very Best of Cher
5. Twilight, Garth Hudson, The Best of Mountain Stage Live, Vol. 1
6. Loose Fit, Happy Mondays, Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches
7. Tombstone Blues, Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited
8. Two for the Road, Bruce Springsteen, Tracks Disk 3
9. I Believe in You, Luther Allison, Blue Streak
10. Sunday Morning/Sunday Evening, Joe Zawinul, World Tour

And a bonus track:

Get Down Moses, Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros, Streetcore

So, who do you have to sleep with to get an invitation into this group?

Via Frank Shaw, I read this report from Wil Wheaton about his saga to recover his lost iTunes music library. The short version: Computer crashes. WW installs iTunes 7. Plugs in iPod. iTunes library vanishes. WW posts rant on blog. Apple calls and makes good: 

A very kind woman named Kate called me, and told me that she’d read my blog about my problems with my purchased music. … She said that Apple wants to keep their customers happy, and ensure that they’ll be confident purchasing things from the iTunes Music Store, so she was going to push a Big Red Button that would allow me to have a do over, and download all of my purchased music again, free of charge. This seemed excessive to me, and way above what would be reasonably expected, but before I could tell her that, she told me that she’d read on my blog that I didn’t expect Apple to treat me any differently than they’d treat any other customer. She assured me that this is Apple’s corporate policy, and they’ll do this for anyone who has a catastrophic loss of their iTunes Music Store purchases, regardless of the cause.

Yes, this sounds like good customer service. Except that, as I’ve written before, that’s not what their stated policy says:

When you buy a song or album from the iTunes Store, you are entitled to download it only once.

When you buy a song, video, game, or album from the iTunes Store, you are entitled to download it a single time. If you want to download it again, you must purchase it again. You can copy downloaded content between authorized computers.

That page is linked from this article, entitled Finding missing music and video downloads:

You may need to restore the files from your backup, if you have one. If a backup is not available, the music or videos may be lost. In that event you may need to purchase replacements. For content acquired through the iTunes Store, please read Apple’s policy on replacement.

Which takes you back to the earlier page.

How is an average person (someone who wasn’t a Star Trek character and doesn’t have a widely read blog) supposed to know that there is a double-secret corporate policy that contradicts the official written policy?

If a one-time exception is available (but not guaranteed), that should be clearly stated on Apple’s website.

Update 15-Sep: Edited first paragraph to correct error in description of original post by WW.