iTunes, Movies Anywhere, and SD

April 4, 2018April 5, 2018 Daniel

There was a time when I had not yet embraced our digital-only future.

I still bought Blu-ray discs. Like a caveman, I would search through my mostly organized Blu-ray and DVD jewel cases, find a movie I wanted to watch, open the case, take the disc out, open the Blu-ray player, put the disc in the tray, close the tray, and wait.

When I put The Bourne Legacy’s disc into our Blu-ray player, it didn’t work. It wouldn’t play.

My wife wanted to watch The Bourne Legacy.

The disc wasn’t playing.

I grabbed the jewel case, walked to the basement, opened iTunes or whatever obscure URL the coupon in The Bourne Legacy’s jewel case wanted me to open, and redeemed the code for the digital copy of The Bourne Legacy.

Then I walked back upstairs, changed the TV input to the Apple TV, and played the movie.

It was as if the disc worked.

But I could watch it on my phone. I could watch it in the basement without lugging the disc around (like a caveman).

A short time later, I went through all my DVDs and Blu-rays, looking for digital codes to redeem. Some had expired. Some had expired but worked anyway.

As I looked over my new iTunes movie library, I noticed that some of the films were HD and some were not. This was annoying and disappointing and would cause me to re-purchase some films in HD.

I believe I owned the following films on iTunes in SD format:

Now, as of April 2018, I can only find the following SD films ~~in my iTunes library~~ on my up-to-date gen 3 Apple TV and on my up-to-date iPhone 7:

In iTunes on an up-to-date Mac, these films appear to be SD:

The fact that two films are HD on two devices and SD on one seems like a bug to me.

(Technically I can find Inception in SD, but I later purchased it in HD. It appears twice in my library. I upgraded Prometheus, too, but the SD copy is no longer in my library.)

Limitless was distributed by Relativity Media. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Super 8 were both distributed by Paramount. What do these two film studios have in common? In what way would they be linked that is relevant in the 2018 digital film library landscape?

Movies Anywhere.

Name two film studios that aren’t participating in the Movies Anywhere initiative as of April 2018. Relativity and Paramount. Sure, there are others. I just don’t own any of their movies.

This makes me extremely curious. This is too much to be a coincidence.

The first thing I wonder is: If I were to buy an SD film on iTunes that is available in Movies Anywhere, would it show up in Movies Anywhere? Would it upgrade to HD in my iTunes library? Seems unlikely. Apple wouldn’t leave a loophole that big.

Are SD films upgraded to HD only if they were in a user’s iTunes library before Movies Anywhere started?

Here’s what I think is most likely: Apple/iTunes keeps track of which films a customer purchased on iTunes and which films a customer redeemed with a code. If a code redeemed an SD copy and that film becomes available in Movies Anywhere, it is upgraded to an HD copy.

If my theory is correct, the moment that Paramount or Relativity join into Movies Anywhere, I should have fewer SD films in my iTunes library.

Google Accelerator, WordPress

October 23, 2005 Daniel

I noticed some quirky behavior in my website after I installed Google Web Accelerator, so I put danpremo.com in the “don’t accelerate these sites” list.

I noticed the issue during the following: I created a new post, saved it (and continued editing) a couple times, then published it. Immediately, it was still in my list of unpublished posts. I clicked on “View Site,” and the front page did not have the latest article. So I put it in the DATS list.

Product-100 Table

June 10, 2005 Daniel1 Comment

A couple years ago at a party at Pam’s place (not her current place), someone was trying to figure out how to split 53, four ways. (I think four girls had thrown a party … you fill in the blanks.) Pretty quickly I determined it to be 13 and a quarter, because 53 is really close to 52, which is the number of cards in a deck, and there are 13 cards of each suit, and then you take that extra dollar and split it four ways.

What’s the point? It’s useful math. Here’s another example.

Ever have trouble converting percentages to fractions, or vice versa? I remember being a kid, thinking that 10% was the same as 1/10, so 14% must be 1/14. Sitting down with a pencil and paper took care of that. So how do you calculate this stuff quickly? Long division in your head is a pain in the ass, especially if you’re like, eight.

Remember multiplication tables? 3×1=3. 3×2=6. 3×3=9. 3×4=12. Etc. Well I developed a sort of fuzzy Product-100 Table. With this table, we’re talking about conversational, estimated, seat-of-your pants calculation. It’s useful if you’re talking about sports or foods or a lot of different “close enough” topics.

Just like in a multiplication table, we’ve got three columns. The first column is the percentage number. It’s the number out of a hundred. The second column is the closest whole number to the quotient you get when you divide 100 by the number in the first column. The third column is the product of the numbers in the first to columns, in case you want to know just how close you are. Let’s take a look. If you’re starting with 4 percent, and you want to know what that translates to as a fraction, the second column shows you that it’s 1/25, and the third column tells you that it’s exact. If you’re starting with 7 percent, the second column shows you that it’s 1/14, and the third column tells you that it’s close, but not exact.

Percent	~Quotient	(Percent * ~Quotient)
1	100	100
2	50	100
3	33	99
4	25	100
5	20	100
6	17	102
7	14	98
8	13	104
9	11	99
10	10	100
11	9	99
12	8	96
13	8	104
14	7	98
15	7	105
16	6	96
17	6	102
18	6	108
19	5	95
20	5	100
21	5	105
22	5	110
23	4	92
24	4	96
25	4	100

I only spell out the chart to 25, because that’s where its usefulness starts to break down. If you examine the lower portion you’ll see why — The whole number which, when multiplied by 18, gets you closest to 100 is 5, as it is for 19, 20, 21, and 22 (5 results). You get 4 all the way from 23 to 28 (6 results), 3 all the way from 29 to 40 (12 results), and so on. I’ll post a comment with a more complete chart.

So, I think they should teach both the card stuff and the Product-100 Table. Maybe some schools already do.

Wedding and Water

July 25, 2003 Daniel

Brown’s wedding was a blast. I was in Buffalo for all or part of four days, and I had a blast the whole time. The wedding and reception were outstanding … I even enjoyed being an usher. Unfortunately I am behind on posting my pictures … it seems that almost all of them feature glaring red eye. My camera has a red eye removal feature, but usually most of the pictures turn out fine without it. Maybe it was the open bar … Hopefully I will post them sometime this weekend. Lewis has his wedding pics up, though. They turned out really well. Give ’em a peek.

This week at work was kind of abbreviated, which is nice in a way because I was kind of pooped after the wedding weekend. Monday we were looking out the office window at the unusual darkness, the horizontal rain, and the toppled trees. At 5:30 the power went out, but most of us have laptops that will run 3 or 4 hours per charge. When i drove home i got about a quarter mile up Chipmonk at 8 o’clock to find “Road Flooded” signs and a county worker telling drivers to wait an hour before proceeding any farther because there was a foot of water over the road. So I went to McDonalds and when I got back there was only about an inch of water.

Tuesday we were surprised to find that Coudersport, PA was still without electricity, that the Sheetz gast station was filled with people buying gasoline for their generators and food for their stomachs, and that there was more afternoon rain. That day the generator had to be turned off early, and the maintenance crew asked us to leave. So we left. I got to Chipmonk at about 7 and while it wasn’t as bad as the previous night, there was probably about 8 inches of water over the pavement. A guy in a pickup came down through the water, and he told me he thought I could make it, so I gave it a shot. I don’t know exactly how deep the water was, but the water line looked to be about a foot high on my car and I assume that some of that was probably due to splash. Water splashed up to my windows and onto the hood of my car. It was an interesting experience as I hoped my car wouldn’t stall. I suppose if it had I would have quite literally been “up a creek.”

Wednesday there was still no power in the town of Couderpsort, and the generator at our office conked out unexpectedly at about 2:30. For some reason our phones and LAN were also down, so there was an awful lot of work we just couldn’t do. We decided to leave and to also avoid Coudersport on Thursday. So my weekend started a little early. This was fine because I was still a little pooped all week after the wedding.

Today I slept in until 9:30. It rained again today, and it sounds like it is raining now. I expect it to rain tomorrow. I’m tempted to go into town just to see how deep the Allegany River is.

Hornets and Toolbars

June 28, 2003 Daniel

Yep. I’ve got a splitting headache.

See, my dad and I were outside doing yardwork today. We were preparing to dismantle and reassemble our fireplace thing when I noticed hornets and wasps flying around. I peered into some of the cinder blocks which make up the fireplace. Little too dark too see. I look over my sunglasses. Sure enough. I spot about four of the suckers. So I tell my dad this, and he goes into the garage and gets some hornet and wasp killer. As I’m crouching to get a good angle so I can spray this stuff into the openings in the cinder blocks, I go through the standard checklist:

Do I shake the can before use? If a hornet or wasp flies directly at me, will I be able to run away? Am I supposed to hold this can upside-down or right-side-up? When I press the button, am I going to get this stuff on myself? Which way is the wind blowing? Okay, the wind is going to spray this stuff on me — can I move in a way so that it won’t spray on me? Nope. There’s only one place to spray from, because I’m basically spraying into a tiny little cave, so if the wind gets me, it gets me.

And I press the button. And I basically get covered with a fine mist of highly toxic chemicals. Chemicals designed specifically to kill living things.

So after we had called it a day and I was sitting on the couch, I couldn’t figure out why I had such a splitting headache. Now that I’m in my room, away from a TV, I’ve had some time to reflect on the day and I can only assume that I killed about a million brain cells when I got sprayed with the old bug killer. So there you go.

In other news, Google now has a version 2 beta of its toolbar, which includes a pop-up blocker and a weblog updater. This sounded interesting to me, since I recently installed a pop-up blocker and wrote a post about it, and also because I have a weblog of my own. The thing is, the weblog updater on Google’s beta toolbar only works with Blogger. I actually ran the first version on Historical Context using Blogger, but I didn’t really love the interface or the fact that you were required to put Blogger’s logo on your site. I also found it strange that Google would endorse Blogger, since I can’t really remember Google entering an explicit partnership with anybody. As it turns out, Google purchased Blogger in February of this year. I would prefer that a toolbar button just open a text editor window and then append my stuff via FTP, but I guess that’s asking a bit much.

Anyway, although I like Google — it’s my home page — I just don’t want to add it on to my browser. Hell, I didn’t really want to install a pop-up blocker before I tried one. To switch gears a little, I think the fact that Google has created a pop-up blocker goes a long way to reinforce what I said a few posts back: Microsoft really has to add pop-up blocking to point release of Internet Explorer. And soon. Additionally, has anyone ever noticed that when you type in the address or hit the bookmark for certain sites, then switch windows while you’re waiting for them to load — BAM! That first site moves to the front when it’s done loading? I’m pretty sure that both ESPN.com and CNN.com do this. I think this is almost as annoying as more obvious pop-up ads, and only slightly better because you actually want to read that page. What to call this incursion? Bring-to-fronts? Snap-ups? Top-ups? I think I like “top-ups.” Make a note of it.

Rant

May 19, 2003 Daniel

The new Apple iStore ads suck worse than previous Apple ads, which is saying a lot. Females should not be allowed to put poetry and/or song lyrics in their buddy info. Summer should be longer than winter. If you feel like the world owes you something, maybe it does. Shaquille O’Neal drops his shoulder on everybody, and his jokes aren’t funny, but he gets calls and people laugh because he’s big. Last year Jason Kidd was the NBA’s real MVP. Maybe Michael Wilbon is right, and hockey should just be called “goalie.” It’s a travesty that it costs money to listen to “The Jim Rome Show” on the Internet. DSL should be available in Chipmonk. The United States should probably have switched to HDTV by now. Everybody wants to rule the world. Eminem should focus less on D-12. It’s the economy, stupid. If big airlines were run the way that small airlines are run, they wouldn’t need government money to bail them out. Summer should still be longer than winter. Nintendo should drop out of the console business. You shouldn’t believe everything you hear. Java is a lot like C++. It’s time to format c: again. The New York Mets are a train wreck. File-swapping is not the record industry’s only problem. Dan Brown is getting married. The Matrix Reloaded is good. Rule of thumb: plural words are usually not “apostrophe – s.” Books will survive the digital revolution. Chip ‘n’ Dale are not intimidating. I want a 24 inch HDTV. Finding a job sucks.

Little Bit o’ Everything

January 23, 2003 Daniel

Finally got the Wizards pics up. Yes, those are the Wizards dancers. If I remember correctly, they were wearing blue and white earlier in the game, but came back later wearing black and gold. I think they even changed a second time, into a third outfit that was again black and gold. Go figure.

Not much else to report lately. El Niño is making everything cold. At least El Niño is partially responsible. There’s also the dip of the Arctic air. It comes down every winter, just usually not this far south and this cold.

Soft Batch chocolate chip cookies. Remember when Chewy Chips Ahoy were new? I thought they would be so great — then I tried them. They sucked. I stayed away from soft style store bought chocolate chip cookies from then on. Then during college (note that for me, college is in the past tense), Dan Brown had a bag of Keebler Soft Batch. I assumed, naturally, that they would be no better than Chewy Chips Ahoy. To my delight, I was mistaken. I nearly finished the bag, but Brown pried it away from me. So that brings us up to about three weeks ago. I’m walking through the grocery store, and I didn’t feel like Oreos or standard blue bag Chips Ahoy. So I figured, how about Chewy Chips Ahoy? I’ll bet they’re pretty much the same as Soft Batch. Maybe my tastes weren’t as defined the last time I tried them. Maybe there were drastic improvements in soft stlye cookies over the last decade.

I was wrong. Chewy Chips Ahoy are as bad as ever. I want to say that they contain gelatin. It’s really quite revolting. I couldn’t finish the bag. So the next time I was at the store I cautiously purchased a bag of Soft Batch. Although they didn’t seem as good as the time I first tried them courtesy Dan Brown, they were pretty damn good. I definitely sense a similarity between Chewy Chips Ahoy and Soft Batch, but … Soft Batch is better. Chewy Chips Ahoy are not tolerable. Soft Batch are more than acceptable.

Alright. Drastic change in topic. Social Security Cards. I carry mine. I hate to do it, but sometimes – like when you least expect it – you need it. Like at the DMV. I mean, do you really want to wait in line for eighty minutes just to be told that you’ve got to come back when you’ve got your Social Security Card? And at a recent temp job orientation I had to hand it over with my driver’s license so that both could be photocopied. Granted, it was a government contractor, but … The way the Social Security number is used in this country is ludicrous. All you hear is, “Don’t give it to anybody. For any reason. Ever.”

Bullshit. When I got my cellphone at Radio Shack I had to speack to a Sprint representative on the in-store phone. I had to tell the person on the other end of the line my Social Security number. Meanwhile, any of the seven other people within arm’s reach could just jot it down. Make a credit card purchase over the phone? Better hope the friendly voice makes enough at his or her part time, minimum wage job. Next thing you know, some fifty year old bald guy puts his $10,000 trip to Aruba on your bill. This system stinks! For one thing, the original purpose of the number – retirement benefits for everyone – now amounts to chicken feed, and will likely be dried up by the time people our age retire. So now it’s more of a personal security number. Only problem is, it’s not very secure, and it’s certainly not private.

The solution? Probably bio-identification. Thumbprint scanners and retinal scanners. Maybe even voice recognition. We can send a credit card number over a phone line. Why not a high resolution image of a retina over the Internet? They ran out of phone numbers because of credit card scanners, but IPv6 should mean that we’ll have enough IP addresses to last forever, right? Right?

I think next time I’ll talk about how the record industry is F’ed. Have I talked about that lately? How about I discuss the different industries that have changed drastically or will change drastically because of advances in technology. I’ll start with photography. I’ll include telephony and music. Movies will get thrown in there. Stay tuned.