Having a tornado demolish her home was bad enough. But when Ann Beam received a $2,000 cable bill a few weeks later, she was floored. “I just couldn’t believe it,” Beam said. “I was like, ‘What are they thinking?’”

Time Warner Cable billed a number of Wheatland residents for equipment destroyed in the Jan. 7 twister that struck the southeast corner of the state. Beam’s bill covered five cable boxes and five remote controls.

She immediately called the cable company, but a man who identified himself as a manager said there was nothing the company could do.

Tornado victim billed for cable devices - Yahoo! News

I am not sure what’s odder in this story.  That the person in question had 5 cable boxes or that they are $400 dollars each.

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Tags: WhenBureaucracyAttacks, WTF?, TimeWarner

Sony Corp said on Thursday it would stop making rear-projection televisions, becoming the latest company to distance itself from a technology once seen as a promising rival of LCD and plasma displays in the flat-TV market.Sony said it would focus its resources on liquid crystal display (LCD) and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology to address the flat-TV market, which is growing rapidly as consumers trade in their boxy tube sets for sleeker flat screens.

UPDATE 1-Sony becomes latest to quit rear-projection TVs | Industries | Consumer Goods & Retail | Reuters

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Tags: Sony, HDTV, LCD, TV, Television

 Lost in the news of iTunes updates and DRM-free music, comes the updated AppleTV.  I knew this was coming sooner or later.  The next version of AppleTV sports a 160 GB drive, 4 times the current drive size.  Also upgraded, the price.  The next version is $399, up from the original $299 price tag.

 Apple also announced that AppleTV users will be able to browse YouTube, as well as login to their YouTube account via their AppleTV.  Initially only the most popular videos will be available, until later this year when it expands to the entire YouTube library.

 The new 160GB version if AppleTV is reportedly to be available this Thursday.

 Boston officials freaked out over marketing stunt to promote late-night programming on Cartoon Network.  The devices caused officals to shut down bridges and major roads.

“It had a very sinister appearance,” Coakley told reporters. “It had a battery behind it, and wires.” 

 The light-bright looking device featured the mooninite with a  raised middle finger.

 Err was quoted as saying, “It was all a mistake, I was trying to cash my Uncle’s welfare check.”

MSN Video has acquired the syndication rights to Arrested Development. MSN plans to make the show available to watch online for free, by this fall.

Despite it’s popularity, FOX cancelled Arrested Development due to low ratings. You’d thought they would have learned from Family Guy.

In response to a recent lawsuit filed over possible hearing loss the iPod can cause, the latest release of the iPod software adds new volume control limits. It even allows parents to set the max volume and lock it with a password.

Lost now has a season pass in iTunes. You can get the discount of buying the entire season, before the episodes air. 25 episodes of Lost would cost you around $50 if you buy them individually, or only $35 when purchased with the season pass. With the season pass you get all the existing episodes from season 2, and all future episodes - which download automatically. This is in addition to the multi-pass option that was added to some shows, such as The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. The difference is the multi-pass option gives you the most recent episode, plus the next 16.

Apple is again being sued by Apple, the Beatles’ record label. Who the hell are the Beatles?

iTunes has new FREE video content. Best of Ghost Hunters, Vol 1 is currently a free download from iTunes video store. This 44 minute episode lets you relive the best hauntings from season 1.

Stewie from Family Guy will be hosting a Internet talk show that will be found on FamilyGuy.com.

The tyrannical tyke in the Fox animated series “Family Guy” will be the virtual host of a talk show being developed strictly for the Internet later this year.

Stewie’s show will be based on familyguy.com (http://www.familyguy.com) and other News Corp.-owned Web properties catering to the young demographics that have embraced the Fox series.

NBC, currently in last place for viewers within the major networks, will be trying their hand at marketing their shows via iTunes. A collection of current and older TV programs will be made available for download through iTunes.

NBC Universal has inked an agreement for 11 shows–current series as well as library programs. This includes NBC’s mainstay “Law & Order,” as well as “The Office,” “Surface,” “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” USA Network’s “Monk,” and Sci-Fi Channel’s “Battlestar Galactica,” as well as classic library shows “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Dragnet,” “Adam-12,” and “Knight Rider.”

The shows are currently available on the iTunes store for $1.99 each, commercial-free.

Staring next year NBC will be offering commercial-free on demand shows for .99 cents. This is in response to Walt Disney’s ABC offering it’s popular shows, Lost and Desperate Housewives, on iTunes for $1.99. But instead of downloading the video to your computer or iPod, like ABC offers, NBC viewers will have to have a DirecTV Plus DVR. And hours after the show airs the content will be pushed to your DVR.

Among the shows that will be offered through this service are, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: SVU, The Office, Surface, Monk and the best scripted show on TV (only because Firefly was cancelled), Battlestar Galactica.

Where the service falls flat is the requirement to be a DirecTV subscriber and to get a different DVR. If I had a DVR, I would have recorded it anyway, and just fast forwarded through the commercials. And now you have to have a device, separate from your computer, to purchase the videos. And you can’t transfer the shows to another device, such as a computer or iPod. Put all that together and you wonder whether they want this to fail.

NBC is also not alone in the incompetent decision making. CBS will also get into the mix with CSI, NCIS, Survivor and the Amazing Race. These shows will only be available to Comcast digital subscribers. And only in certain markets, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and suburbs of New York City.

In my opinion these restrictions will only serve to cause the IPTV movement to fail. And the service itself is not even worth .99 cents. Thanks for nothing NBC.

Apple has announced that since it started selling videos 3 weeks ago, over 1 million have been downloaded.

Steve Jobs said, “Selling one million videos in less than 20 days strongly suggests there is a market for legal video downloads. Our next challenge is to broaden our content offerings, so that customers can enjoy watching more videos on their computers and new iPods.”

This is pretty impressive considering the anemic video selection on iTunes. Although I would say it should do more than “strongly suggest” that consumer want video downloads.

I would also be curious on how many video podcasts were downloaded during the same period.

UPDATE: Slate has good article called, “TV You’ll Want To Pay For”.