The fact of the matter is a great life event has occurred—This past May my wife and I had a beautiful baby daughter. Her name is “Layan”, which means gentleness or softness. She’s 4 months already, laughing, exploring and growing her own personality. The delay in this mini announcement kind of explains the distraction part…

Everything from the pregnancy to the birth has been indescribable. From the movements and hiccups to the smiles and coos.

• Honey, can you believe this thing was in you?
• Yes… I was there, remember?!!
• Oh, yeah…
  

Whatever people tell you about having babies and preparedness is bullshit. You can never be fully prepared for this. I mean yes, you will purchase the formula, diapers, clothes, toys, etc. But there is going to be a lot of “Holy shit, what is this on her face?”, “Holy shit, what’s this smell coming out of her?”, “Holy shit, why won’t she sleep?!”, etc.

The good news is with great patience every obstacle comes with a nice little feeling of accomplishment… with the occasional surprises.

The bad news is you will never sleep the same way again, that is if you get any sleep at all. Some people will disagree saying things will get back to normal in a couple of years. I have a feeling that what happens is parents adapt and meet this lifestyle change midway. I expect that throughout the years the sleep interruptions will keep manifesting themselves in physical form (e.g. “Oh, my God. Why won’t she stop crying?!”) and then slowly morph into the more psychological  form (e.g. “Oh, my God. Why hasn’t she called yet?!”).

In the end, the important thing is it’s… all… worth… it.

Anyway, back in May I added the following tracks but I didn’t get a chance to announce it because of the aforementioned life-altering event. They were:

• “The Immigrant Song” from Soundtrack for America (Joey Curtin & Marc Cooper)
• “The Sacrifice” from Mars Needs Moms (Jown Powell)
• “Gribble’s Loss” from Mars Needs Moms (Jown Powell)
• “Belmont’s Theme” from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (Oscar Araujo)
• “Final Confrontation” from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (Oscar Araujo)
• “Waterfalls of Agharta” from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (Oscar Araujo)
• “Dearly Beloved” from Kingdom Hearts II (Yoko Shimomura)
• “Passion” from Kingdom Hearts II (Yoko Shimomura)

Today, I added these tracks:

• “Eclipsed Heart” from Priest (Christopher Young)
• The Stampede & I’m Coming Home from Water For Elephants (James Newton Howard)
• “Eli’s Theme” from Let The Right One In (Johan Söderqvist)
• “The Father” from Let The Right One In (Johan Söderqvist)
• “Dark Day” from Soul Surfer (Marco Beltrami)
• The Shattering from World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm (Russell Brower)

Hope you like them!

Then came 1993 when with this strange new hardware addition to the console was release. Games on compact discs? OK. People somewhere must have been smoking something potent. But more importantly, video game soundtracks went from a polyphonic mess (not always!) to a whole new level. Ecco The Dolphin was one of the first titles that made the video gaming experience hypnotically movie-like. Even though its music may be categorized as New Age, it still fits.

Then came 2010 when I wasted 5 minutes of my life reminiscing about the past.

But before I go, 5 new tracks join the Permanent Waves play list:

• “Dream Within A Dream” from Inception (Hans Zimmer)
• “Time” from Inception (Hans Zimmer)
• “Flow Like Water” from The Last Airbender (James Newton Howard)
• “The Machine” from Ecco The Dolphin (Spencer Nilsen)
• “End Title” from Little Children (Thomas Newman)

Enjoy!

Dish Network was attractive for 2 reasons: price and programming.

The important feature to investigate was the picture quality, so I ordered the TurboHD Silver package along with the ViP722 receiver, which supports two completely separate outputs for two rooms; one HD and one Standard Definition (SD). I didn’t care at all for the SD output, but I did care about the extra hard drive storage, which would allow me to record up to 55 hours of HD programming. Any extra processing power, if any, was a bonus.

Prior to the installation day, I was instructed by Dish Network to get permission from my landlord to have a dish installed on the premises. Permission granted, as long as the handy-man was supervising the whole thing. No problem.

So on that glorious Saturday, the installers came and assessed the site and the room. Since I live in an apartment, I can’t have them bring in a wrecking ball (or a drill) to pave their way, so:

“Hey buddy, you gotta purchase a flat coaxial cable for ~$16 to be able to slide it under the window.”

“Okay.”

As for the dish itself, they told me they have no idea what’s under the concrete of my entrance/ patio area so:

“Hey buddy… You would either have to wait until we check what’s under there, which would take several days, or install the dish on this heavy, foam-like two-layer slab thing.

“Can it withstand harsh winds, etc.?”

“It sure can, buddy.”

“Okay, let’s do it then.” (And I’m not your buddy!)

Installation took no more than an hour. They fired up the receiver and started going through all the diagnostic tests and configurations. Once the picture of a football game appeared, I knew I wasn’t going back to U-Verse for a good while. The picture was clear and crisp. Much better than what U-Verse had to offer and perhaps as good as what Time Warner Cable (TWC) offered, if not better.

It was time for the installers to leave and the main guy charged me on the spot for the flat cable, so I gave him a $20 bill. He turns to me and says:

“Sorry, buddy… I don’t have any change. I bought my friend here lunch and I’m all out.”

“Err… okay. Just keep the change I guess.”

“Thanks for the tip, buddy!”

It’s not a tip, BUDDY. You left me no choice. Although I should have been more of an ass and slapped my checkbook in your face. This same guy asked me to give them a rating of 8 or higher when the I got the survey phone call. They were lucky I missed that call…. Just don’t call me buddy.

Anyway, to summarize, after I’ve been watching TV for several months, here is what I like about Dish Network:

• Very good picture quality from a reasonable distance, sans a couple of crappy ones (CBS’19 Action News in the morning is pixel heaven);
• Responsive receiver and menu system with tons of options. TWC’s menu system was slow as hell. Honestly, U-Verse’s menu system was the best—it was fast, stylish and previewed every channel you browsed through the guide;
• Flexible scheduling options. With TWC, if I set it to record only new episodes of The Daily Show, I get 5 recordings of the same exact episode on the weekends. With Dish Network,  I have more flexibility to set a specific time and day;
• Tons of storage space—55 hours of HD recording no longer has me thinking twice about what to record and what not to;
• Faster fast-forward than TWC;
• The ability to jump ahead 30 seconds and jump back 7 seconds.

Here is what I don’t like:

• It rained a bunch of times during the summer, and I’ve had signal blackouts for 1 or more minutes when there were heavy clouds and storms. It’s the nature of the beast and it should be expected I think;
• Menu system, while configurable, is a little on the bland side;
• Some international channels’ programs don’t match what’s in the program guide, making recording hellish.

It’s funny how she shifts her adoration from one character to another, and keeps asking me “Who’s gonna die next? Come on, tell me!”

“Absolutely not,” I keep telling her… “It’s like a book!” The long-term excitement is mostly in the build-up. Anyway, one tune in season 3, “Ocean’s Apart”, caught our attention.

“Whoa… What do you think of this?”
“It’s nice…” she said.

This started snowballing my thoughts and actions into another radio station update.

Here are the 4 new tracks:

• Ocean’s Apart (Lost)
• End Credits (Star Trek)
• Broadcast (Terminator Salvation)
• Kayla (X-Men Origins: Wolverine)

Honestly, and Star Trek fans might hate me for this, but I do not like the old Star Trek theme at all. I’m not talking about the popular theme that’s shared by every Star Trek movie and TV series. I’m talking about the part in the 1960′s series  that starts immediately after “To boldly go where no man has gone before!” Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh aaaaaahhh aaaaaaaahhhhhh…

Sorry… Nevertheless, with the newly released Star Trek’s “End Credits”, Michael Giacchino puts a very cool 8-minute touch on the theme if you ask me.

As things started settling down, and my wife and I started experiencing a little of the homey lifestyle, and even though TWC has always offered high picture quality, I started getting fed up with their lack of High-Definition (HD) channels, because as they say “Once you go HD, you can’t… err… go back.”

I started getting mail ads and leaflets of this new cool service from AT&T called U-Verse. It was cutting-edge—fiber-optic infrastructure, tons of HD channels, sleek and lightning-fast menu system, no black screen on channel switching, the ability to record 4 channels at once (with up two HD channels), and the ability to schedule recordings remotely over the Internet, etc. I started looking at their programming packages and prices and it was very appealing. “They offer CNN HD? Isn’t CNN a Time Warner company? Isn’t Time Warner Cable a Time Warner company? Why the hell don’t I already see it on my TV?!”

Saturday, May 16th, 2009—the AT&T U-Verse technician arrived around 1 PM to set my place up with U-Verse TV and Internet connectivity. Since I lived in an apartment which already had coaxial and telephone lines, I didn’t get my hopes up for Fiber to the Home (FTTH), so it was going to be something like Fiber to the Node / Neighborhood (FTTN). He had to complete the Residential Gateway (RG) setup, which provides connectivity for my Local Area Network (LAN)  and the Motorola cable box, and then used the internal coaxial network to bring the feed to my HDTV in the living room.

What I like about the AT&T U-Verse high-speed Internet offerings is the finer selection of packages in my given area—they offered 1.5, 3, 6, 10, and 18 Mbps, while Time Warner offered 1.5, 7 and 15 Mbps. Plus, the U-Verse upload speeds were higher for each package. I opted to save a little by going from 7 Mbps to 6 Mbps, which was satisfactory for my download performance requirements—I don’t download movies at all, but I do download some music, send/receive emails, engage in some multi-player gaming, and manage a movie and film score blog and radio station as some of you already know.

The technician turns on the digital box and the TV. The menu and guide looked sweet. He then set it up for 1080i and it looked even sweeter. After a total of 2 hours, off went the technician and I started playing with this thing like a little kid. Then, I received the royal smack in the face…

I entered blocking artifacts and mosquito noise hell. This became noticeable from the same viewing distance. I had already read on-line that U-Verse’s picture quality was not very good, but I was suspicious as I thought it was the result of some geek-heads being extremely nit-picky. Apparently, for AT&T to provide 4-stream recording and black-less channel-switching, and to fit everything into 25-Mbps of bandwidth (I think!) they compress the hell out of the video.

I’m a big advocate for picture quality—to me, it’s getting closer and closer to what the makers behind the cameras intend. This is another reason why I rent my DVDs rather than stream them off the Internet, and why I’m still laying my eyes on the upcoming Oppo Digital Blu-ray Disc player. Anyway, I always knew there was some level of compression in digital channels, but not at this noticeable level. I was under the stupid assumption that I would get all those nifty features at the expense of something else less important, but not the picture quality… Never the picture quality. I don’t care if it’s higher bit-rate MPEG-2 or lower bit-rate MPEG-4 video compression schemes. If it affects my picture and viewing pleasure, it is not welcome.

Unfortunately, many people don’t even notice this, some don’t care, and some try to put up with it. I can hear the voices in my head: “Dude, I receive 1000 HDTV channels, how many do you have? Haha, that’s it?! Your life has no meaning!”

TV providers are obviously pushing for quantity over quality these days, which is similar to what is happening in the music industry, where music sound is loud, flat, and compressed with the end result of zero dynamic range. What’s worse is people are completely satisfied with this crappy low bit-rate audio, preferring convenience and selection over quality.

AT&T’s service, in my opinion, completely negates my investment in an excellent quality 50″ Plasma television and viewing of HDTV programs. I’m definitely not going to put up with this until AT&T gets its act together.

U-Verse must die.

It’s been over a year since I have touched my web site. Life has become so busy for me that not only was I drowning in full-time work and some self-learning, but I met a very nice and beautiful girl as well… and now you are looking at an engaged dude. Naturally, my longtime hobby has become a second priority.

As things started to settle down a bit, I thought I would revisit this place. I realized that my Internet radio station is now ranked #1 in the “Soundtracks” and “Original Scores” categories at Live365. That’s very cool. All my thanks go to all the listeners out there, of course!

As you have probably noticed, the site has sort of turned into a blog. As life has become more distracting and overwhelming (i.e. I’m so friggin’ lazy), I didn’t want to lose touch with this pure place so I opted for the route of least amount of maintenance and work. With an extremely simple ad-free blog, I can focus on content; occasional film opinions and film scores… and nothing else.

So, anyway, I just thought I’d let you know that I’m still alive and kicking, and my digital heart is pumping albeit not as actively a year or more ago.

Thanks again, people.