iPhone 3G launch a mess; Apple's phone activation system crashes. Apparently lots of people tried to activate their phone at 8 AM this morning; who could have expected that? Apparently some stores are letting people activate the phone at home, which means that's still possible (though the article mentions that didn't work, either).

I browsed the iPhone app store last night, downloaded some free programs that I can load on my iPhone when I get home tonight and upgrade the firmware, which was released this morning. Streaming Pandora on my iPhone sounds pretty sweet. Some nice-looking paid programs available, too, I'm sure I'll be sporting crosswords and sudoku on the phone soon.

As I just mentioned in my last post, I am looking forward to the digital distribution of media reaching critical mass. But while I wait, I've been making inroads into controlling my media library on my computer. I recently purchased a 1TB external hard drive, and have begun digitizing my movie collection for use on my iPhone and elsewhere.

For those who haven't tried this, I should mention that it's not like ripping a CD in iTunes. The conversion process takes time; on my old clunker of a computer, it takes almost twice as long go convert a movie into H.264 as it does to watch it. So for the most part, I've just been converting one movie at a time, overnight. And sometimes Handbrake (the program I'm using for the task) freezes up in the process, and I have to start over (again, I have an old computer ill-suited for such modern tasks). So it's a somewhat frustrating task. But the end result is well worth it. I've been impressed with the visual quality of the final product, and especially the audio quality. I digitized some concert DVDs; since I've always found music on DVD to be inconvenient, I rarely watch my music video DVDs, so I figured putting them on my iPhone would breathe new life into them. They look good, but the audio fidelity was what really surprised me, sounding as good as anything probably can on the standard iPhone headphones.

So I've been happy with the results of my digitization project. Trying to get the videos onto my TV has been more frustrating. I have an Xbox 360, and so should be able to stream media via Windows Media Player 11. But despite setting everything up correctly, my Xbox 360 couldn't recognize my computer. After much tinkering, I gave up. But last night, I wanted to watch MST3K while playing poker online, so I wanted to get the show off my computer and onto the TV. So I decided to take another stab at getting WMP 11 to work with my Xbox 360. But upon booting up the software and the Xbox, I found it was now working fine. So all I had to do was set up the WMP library, and I'd be all set. Unfortunately, WMP sucks ass, so it was another two hours or so before I finally got the library under control. But I was watching MST3K on my TV (not playing poker, as Poker Stars turned out to be having issues with sit-and-go tourneys).

So far, so good. But the program I was watching was an, um, archival copy found online, in Divx. WMP didn't have a problem with that. But I'm creating my library in H.264, since that's what the iPhone plays nice with. WMP doesn't natively support the format, but plug-ins are readily available to permit playback. But even with the plug-in, you can't add H.264 files to the WMP library. I've found workarounds online, but one seems rather cumbersome, requiring multiple programs and modifications to the registry, and the other being simpler, but consisting of merely changing the file extension, which would interfere with iTunes, which is where I primarily use the files.

So I've given up on streaming H.264 files to my Xbox 360. When I want to watch a movie in that format, I'll just copy it to my portable USB hard drive, and plug that into my Xbox. Should work fine, but from past experience, I expect some glitch to arise.

So what's my point? Mainly, I'm just bitching that Microsoft seems to make this harder than it need be. But also, I wanted to point out that, even when a company like Microsoft gets their device in the home, through something like the Xbox 360, which doubles as a trojan horse for a Windows Media Extender, getting video onto a TV through these devices is too difficult for the general public, and far from mainstream. Which might be good news for Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace, but is bad news for the overall adoption of digital video.

Steve Job's MacWorld keynote address was today. This is the speech where he rolls out new products; last year, it was the iPhone. Rumors had this year's speech announcing movie rentals on iTunes, an updated Apple TV, a new ultra-light laptop, and possibly an updated iPhone. So when I got up this morning and started reading the liveblogging of the event, I wasn't too surprised to read about movie rentals on iTunes, an updated Apple TV, a new ultra-light laptop, and an update to the iPhone's software. The video of the speech isn't up yet, so I haven't taken in every detail, but about the only surprise for me in those announcements was that every major studio is on board with the movie rental store, with new arrivals due one month after the DVD release (and presumably several months after the pirated digital release). Prices weren't too out of line, $2.99 for back catalog, $3.99 for new releases, and an extra dollar for HD releases. Cheaper than Xbox Live Marketplace, especially for HD content (I refuse to rent a movie for $6), but I'll probably stick with Netflix (even though I often go two or three weeks without watching a Netflix movie, which makes the monthly fee difficult to justify, until a month comes where I go nuts with movie watching). But the fact that all the major studios are involved suggests they may finally be serious about pursuing new digital distribution models (an iTunes subscription model for movies would be very interesting to see).

So anyways, the announcements were made, it looked like things were wrapping up, and I was a bit disappointed by the lack of surprises. Certainly nothing to compete with last year's iPhone announcement. That's when the announced the closing musical entertainment, Randy Newman. I was half-convinced Steve Jobs was just fucking with me: "Not surprised, huh? How's this for surprising?" Or was the speech simply tailored to every observer, and Randy Newman is whom Steve Jobs knew could sell me a $1500 laptop? In any case, I was glad to see him there. I was especially surprised that he sang his latest single, "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country," which hardly strikes one as an effective jingle. But I was very excited, and this assures that I will be downloading the video of the speech when Apple puts it up. And it was nice that non-Newman fans were exposed to a side of him besides his Pixar stuff. He did sing "You Got a Friend in Me," but prefaced it with his Toy Story shtick that he uses in concert. Certainly made an impression on Gizmodo's livebloggers:

Jason Chen:
Aaaand it’s over. Holy crap. Who knew Randy Newman, the guy who makes the songs your kids play over and over and over again, would sing such crazy crap about our government?
10:41 am ON Jan 15 2008

Jason Chen:
The first song’s over, but now Randy Newman’s just riffing about random stuff. The next song is from Toy Story. Randy says he wrote another song to go with the love scene between Buzz and Woody, but the scene was cut. This guy is blowing our minds right now.
10:39 am ON Jan 15 2008

Jason Chen:
“It pisses me off a little that the Supreme Court is going to outlive me.” What the crap is he singing about? We have no idea. We think he’s gone nuts.
10:36 am ON Jan 15 2008

Jason Chen:
Randy’s singing a song about America, the president, and comparing them to Hitler and Stalin. USA! USA! USA!!!!!
10:34 am ON Jan 15 2008

I would point out that our present leadership is compared favorably to Hitler and Stalin (faint praise, of course). Anyway, always nice for audiences to be exposed to the full scope of Newman's talent (though I think "The World Isn't Fair" might have spoken to more of the audience).

I'm downloading the new iPhone firmware as I write this (just managed to connect to the update server after many, many tries); perhaps I will write about the new features (and my general satisfaction with the phone) in the near future.

UPDATE: Video is up. Newman did a fine job. I mentioned his Toy Story routine; he didn't do that here, just made a one-off joke about Buzz and Woody's love scene.