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American Idol 6.2
Wow, I’m shocked. Although Blake has been my recent favorite, I’m surprised that Melinda was dropped tonight. I really thought that it would come down to Melinda and Jordin. I think Jordin will take the crown, but I’d rather buy Blake’s album.
May 16th, 2007 
music, Television 
Tags: american idol, Entertainment & Media, music, Television, more... American Idol 6 – Four remaining
Call me a fair-weather Idol fan this season. I enjoyed the prelims, got bored with the early eliminations, and got interested again beginning last week. Blake has been my favorite (and still is), although I doubt that he will win. I previously thought that Melinda Doolittle would win hands down, but Jordin Sparks blew me away tonight. She easily had the best performances.
Prior to this week, I thought the final two would be Melinda and LaKisha. After tonight, I have no doubt in my mind that it will be between Melinda and Jordin.
May 8th, 2007
music, Television Tags: american idol, Entertainment & Media, music, Television, more... Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
We saw the movie today. It was very goofy, but that’s what I had expected from Tim Burton. Overall, I liked it, but would recommend anyone who is thinking about seeing it to do so with an open mind. Just go to have fun, don’t over-analyze it. Johnny Depp was hillarious in the movie! Some of the music was funny too. And in an effort to make the story not simply a duplicate of the first, they had a different ending (although similar result). Depp should get some awards for his performance.
AllOfMP3.com
I found a really sweet music service called AllOfMP3.com. They even give you a free download when you sign up. The cool part is that when you find a track you want to download, they let you select the format (MP3, WMA, OGG, MP4, and several lossless codecs like FLAC) as well as the bitrate to encode at! Once you purchase it, it encodes it online using your encoding settings and then puts it in your download locker when completed. So far, I’ve found most of the music I’ve been looking for (however, I usually like pop, hip-hop, and R&B, so no big surprise there). I really like that I can download a high quality file in the format of my choice without having to convert it. Oh, if you didn’t catch on yet, it’s DRM-free. 
Time Warner HD DVR
A couple of weeks ago, Wanda and I signed up for the Time Warner HD DVR package to go along with our new HDTV. Although we were very fond of our media center, I decided to try the HD DVR for the following reasons:
- It tuned HD content.
- I assumed it was easier to maintain than an actual computer connected to the TV.
- The media center took up more room, and I thought the slim DVR would look nicer in our cabinet.
Ultimately, we ended up cancelling it and just reverted to our trusty HP media center. Here’s why:
- The user interface was lousy. It looked like something that was designed in the 1980′s using CGA graphics. We also thought it was much less intuitive than Windows Media Center Edition.
- The extra HD channels I received over the ones I already got over the analog service were non-impressive.
- The remote sucked.
We now have our HP Media Center hooked up to it, and we like it much better. We hooked it directly to the TV via the monitor port, and the resolution is quite impressive (as compared to a composite connection which we were using before). It doesn’t tune HD, but we don’t really get any HD content we’re interested in anyway, and even if we were, we could switch to the normal tuner for that. Windows Media Center is definitely one thing Microsoft got right. Easy to navigate, intuitive interface, and simple remote with all functions a few clicks away.
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