Channelflip - bite sized chunks of geekery
Mar. 1st, 2008 02:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fearmeforiampinkWhat is ChannelFlip, I hear you cry! Or is that just the drunks wandering past?
Either way, I'm going to tell you. Channel Flip is an online TV station, with several channels producing news and reviews of interest to technically adept 18-35 year olds.
Or to use less buzzwords, its a set of videos (similar interface to youtube vidoes) for geeks. Specifically, there's Unwired, a show about gadgets, tech toys, and suchlike, Play:Digital on games, and Discus, a show about DVDs. Before I go any further, I'll mention that I've known two of the people doing the show for 10-15 years, so I'm not entirely unbiased. But I still think the shows are very much worth watching - they're interesting, amusing, and at 5 minutes they're easy to quickly watch when you've a spare moment.
The center for the shows is ChannelFlip.com (warning; there's a movie at the top of the page that autoplays when the page loads). Unwired, Play:Digital and Discus each have their own sites as well. You can subscribe to each show through RSS, iTunes, or LJ syndcation, you can also subscribe or syndicate (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
channel_flip) ChannelFlip as a whole, which has the advantage that you get the news posts relating to the thing as a whole. Links for the individuals shows feeds are with their reviews.
The shows are actually quite different in terms of their style, so I'll review each one seperately, and cut it so that your friends page isn't utterly overwhelmed.
RSS feed here, LJ syndicated atunwiredshow, and iTunes download subscribing here (more formats and options available on the site
Unwired is the hardest of the shows to pin down, topic-wise. It describes itself as:
And that's accurate, as far as it goes - a lot of the stuff that's been reviewed on it is gadgets & gizmos - like the digital photo frame in the . However, it misses out the more unusual things it covers, like what webcomics to read, or where to go for online info on the US elections.
The 'need-to-know info' is an area where it shines - the embedded video is partly a review of a particular digital photoframe, but the focus is actually more on what you need to know about digital photoframes to get a good one. The video medium works well with this - they can directly show you the issues with photoframes losing quality when seen from the wrong angle, or how to do a particular thing in one of their guides. They've done a few episodes where they concentrate purely on guiding and explaning rather than reviewing, these include:
A third area they cover is the release of new technology - they've done a bunch of episodes at the swanky releases of new technology that are becoming de riguer in the tech industry. Those are somewhat interesting - it's something us punters don't usually get to see that much of - but only of strong interest if you are curious about that and/or wanting to know about the latest releases as soon as they happen.
The 'straight' reviews are reasonably good - they take a long hard look at things, and are blunt about any problems with the products. They do suffer, however, from the small number of reviews - with a total of 50 shows, if I want to get their advice on phones, I've got four episodes on such, and those four phones aren't neccesarily in the same price range. Comparing this to the sheer number of phones out there, even if you confine it to 'geekier' phones, means that you're seeing only a small part of the picture.
As a geek, I find watching stuff about technology generally interesting, regardless of whether I'm actually likely to ever use or need what's being shown, so I watch pretty much all the episodes of this. If you're not so enthalled by technology, that side of it may be less interesting for you. But the shows that I remember and would recommend to everyone are the guides and also the comparisons episodes (such as "How much do I have to spend on a video card to make Crysis look good?") - that's where the show is at its best.
Summary: Good for the tech if you're generally interested in new technology. Not bad if you're thinking of buying a new monitor/phone/whatever and want to get more opinions on good models. Great for the "how to" element - opens up new ways of doing things for you.
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RSS feed here, LJ syndicated atplaydigital, and iTunes download subscribing here (more formats and options available on the site
Play:Digital is the games show. It describes itself as:
And that's pretty much what it is. There's some gaming hardware reviews, previews, and brief looks at other ways of playing, and stuff that has come from games. But mostly, it's games, and single games.
The reviews are good - Katharine isn't afraid to say when a game isn't good enough. She also knows her geek stuff, meaning that she can review games that link to wider geek culture, like these two Warhamster £40,000 games.
Episodes are made more interesting by the little tricks and silly things in some of the episodes - the cosplay review of the Legend of Zelda DS game I've put above is an extreme example, but plenty of the episodes have nice little asides - the start of this one almost resulted in hot tea all over my keyboard, it's worth watching regardless of whether you might want to play the game or even own the hardware to do so.
It also helps that, with the focus on games, the show feels more able to keep you generally informed about the 'important' games coming out - it's still too few shows to cover everything, but they're able to cover most of the big releases, while still having reviews of smaller and stranger games. Once again, the fact that this is a video, not text with pictures, lets them show rather than just tell, so when they say "This bit's really annoying", you can see what they mean.
Summary: A good show for keeping you up to date with what the latest games - what they look like, whether they're worth getting, and it also delivers sneak peaks for the games you're really waiting for.
RSS feed here, LJ syndicated atdiscus_rss, and iTunes download subscribing here (more formats and options available on the site
Discus is the DVD review show, describing itself as:
Now I have to admit the review of Discus is what's kept me from posting this earlier; I've not been sure how to approach it, largely because I'm not the sort of person they're aiming for with this show. With the other two shows, I find that sort of stuff generally interesting, so as I've said I'll watch reviews of stuff I'm never going to use/play. With DVDs? Not so much. I don't go to the cinema that often, and most of the DVDs I buy are either stuff that I've walked out of the Cinema and gone "That was awesome, I'm getting that when it comes on DVD" – things like 300 or V for Vendetta, TV series that I like, or cheap DVDs of movies I didn't manage/get around to seeing at the cinema. So, this review should be read with that held in mind, and that's the reason why it's less link-ful than the rest. To be fair, I think the show has resulted in at least one actual purchase for me - when I saw Oceans Thirteen going especially cheap at Tescos, and wanted something not too challenging to pass an evening.
The format of the show is generally a short intoduction of film in question, a clip from it, an assement of the film, then its addons, pronouncement of a score, and then finally the 'Piggy piggy snack snacks' (which I'll explain later).
Justin reviews the films expertly - praising and damning as appropriate, identifying the flaws in otherwise worthy pieces, and the redeeming aspects of lemons, doing it all in a clear and mostly serious style, with occasional hyperbolical similes, impressions, and clever camnera tricks to stop it from getting boring. He tries to get the feel of the movies over, and is reasonably good at doing so, though the show is somewhat let down by the fact they only ever show one clip of each movie. I'm guessing this may be due to copyright or other such stuff, but it is one of the main issues I have with the show - I want to see more of a film before I buy it, and if I'm told that "The interactions between the Dude and the secondary characters in The Big Lebowski are really funny, I'd quite like to see a quick clip of such, to see what he means.
The movies they review are split into current releases and 'Discus Legends' - reviews of classics, and films you might have missed. Discus covers a broad range of genres, this means there's probably some "Do I want to get that" item for everyone reviewed here, but when combined with the relatively small number of shows (55 at the moment), means that unless your tastes are broad you may have little interest in a sizeable proportion of the reviews – once again I'll wave my 'not much of a DVD watcher' badge, and say that only about a third to a half of the reviews are of films I'd have any real interest in watching from the one line description of them.
Each show ends with a 'Piggy piggy snack snack', which is essentially a review of some snack food or other that you could eat while watching the movie. While these can be funny, and might open you up to new culinary experiences, I have to admit I usually close the window when they start, as they don't hold my attention enough to stick with them. Your mileage may vary, of course.
So, given that I'm not as rabid a fan of this as I am of the other shows, what's it good for from my PoV? For the 'do I/don't I' get it stuff, it can be a decider as to which way you fall. The reviews of the DVD extras are good, as someone who's slowly begining to accept that there's more to a DVD than just the main feature itself, having them brought to your attention is useful. And with the Discus Legends, they're often the things that people have told you, "You have to watch this movie!" without very clearly getting over why, the froth overpowering any useful explanation, Justin's clear reviews can give you what you need to know to decide whether you want to see the damn things. It also reviews some lesser known films and could alert you to stuff you'd like that you'd otherwise miss.
Summary: A reasonable show, but not really my cup of tea in the same what the other two are. Probably pretty good if you're particularly interested in DVDs, and the Discus Legends portion is pretty good for going "This is a great film, is it a great DVD?"/"Should this ghost of the past stayed back there" Could possibly be improved by reviewing some non-movie DVDs, especially with many TV series boxed sets beginning to come down into the 'affordable' price bracket now.
Either way, I'm going to tell you. Channel Flip is an online TV station, with several channels producing news and reviews of interest to technically adept 18-35 year olds.
Or to use less buzzwords, its a set of videos (similar interface to youtube vidoes) for geeks. Specifically, there's Unwired, a show about gadgets, tech toys, and suchlike, Play:Digital on games, and Discus, a show about DVDs. Before I go any further, I'll mention that I've known two of the people doing the show for 10-15 years, so I'm not entirely unbiased. But I still think the shows are very much worth watching - they're interesting, amusing, and at 5 minutes they're easy to quickly watch when you've a spare moment.
The center for the shows is ChannelFlip.com (warning; there's a movie at the top of the page that autoplays when the page loads). Unwired, Play:Digital and Discus each have their own sites as well. You can subscribe to each show through RSS, iTunes, or LJ syndcation, you can also subscribe or syndicate (
channel_flip) ChannelFlip as a whole, which has the advantage that you get the news posts relating to the thing as a whole. Links for the individuals shows feeds are with their reviews.The shows are actually quite different in terms of their style, so I'll review each one seperately, and cut it so that your friends page isn't utterly overwhelmed.
Unwired
RSS feed here, LJ syndicated at
unwiredshow, and iTunes download subscribing here (more formats and options available on the siteUnwired is the hardest of the shows to pin down, topic-wise. It describes itself as:
...the hottest gadgets, technology and boy’s toys around. Technology guru Wil Harris checks out mobile phones, HDTVs, laptops and portable technology and gives you the need-to-know info.
And that's accurate, as far as it goes - a lot of the stuff that's been reviewed on it is gadgets & gizmos - like the digital photo frame in the . However, it misses out the more unusual things it covers, like what webcomics to read, or where to go for online info on the US elections.
The 'need-to-know info' is an area where it shines - the embedded video is partly a review of a particular digital photoframe, but the focus is actually more on what you need to know about digital photoframes to get a good one. The video medium works well with this - they can directly show you the issues with photoframes losing quality when seen from the wrong angle, or how to do a particular thing in one of their guides. They've done a few episodes where they concentrate purely on guiding and explaning rather than reviewing, these include:
- Problems and fixes for Mac OS Leopard
- places to find/buy legal DRM free music
- Firefox extensions
- Securing the data on your USB stick
- and finally, something I found very interesting - A guide to using Yahoo pipes - having poked at it and gone "Bwuh?" when Yahoo Pipes arrived, this game me everything I need to know to make a customised RSS feed that'd tell me when the mainstream news release a story containing the words "Iraq" and "victory", or make a compilation of all Warren Ellis' "Conan! What is best in life?" posts.
A third area they cover is the release of new technology - they've done a bunch of episodes at the swanky releases of new technology that are becoming de riguer in the tech industry. Those are somewhat interesting - it's something us punters don't usually get to see that much of - but only of strong interest if you are curious about that and/or wanting to know about the latest releases as soon as they happen.
The 'straight' reviews are reasonably good - they take a long hard look at things, and are blunt about any problems with the products. They do suffer, however, from the small number of reviews - with a total of 50 shows, if I want to get their advice on phones, I've got four episodes on such, and those four phones aren't neccesarily in the same price range. Comparing this to the sheer number of phones out there, even if you confine it to 'geekier' phones, means that you're seeing only a small part of the picture.
As a geek, I find watching stuff about technology generally interesting, regardless of whether I'm actually likely to ever use or need what's being shown, so I watch pretty much all the episodes of this. If you're not so enthalled by technology, that side of it may be less interesting for you. But the shows that I remember and would recommend to everyone are the guides and also the comparisons episodes (such as "How much do I have to spend on a video card to make Crysis look good?") - that's where the show is at its best.
Summary: Good for the tech if you're generally interested in new technology. Not bad if you're thinking of buying a new monitor/phone/whatever and want to get more opinions on good models. Great for the "how to" element - opens up new ways of doing things for you.
Play:Digital
RSS feed here, LJ syndicated at
playdigital, and iTunes download subscribing here (more formats and options available on the sitePlay:Digital is the games show. It describes itself as:
The geekalicious Katharine Fletcher feeds you tasty morsels of gaming info, as she reviews the latest and greatest gaming titles on console, portable and PC.
And that's pretty much what it is. There's some gaming hardware reviews, previews, and brief looks at other ways of playing, and stuff that has come from games. But mostly, it's games, and single games.
The reviews are good - Katharine isn't afraid to say when a game isn't good enough. She also knows her geek stuff, meaning that she can review games that link to wider geek culture, like these two Warhamster £40,000 games.
Episodes are made more interesting by the little tricks and silly things in some of the episodes - the cosplay review of the Legend of Zelda DS game I've put above is an extreme example, but plenty of the episodes have nice little asides - the start of this one almost resulted in hot tea all over my keyboard, it's worth watching regardless of whether you might want to play the game or even own the hardware to do so.
It also helps that, with the focus on games, the show feels more able to keep you generally informed about the 'important' games coming out - it's still too few shows to cover everything, but they're able to cover most of the big releases, while still having reviews of smaller and stranger games. Once again, the fact that this is a video, not text with pictures, lets them show rather than just tell, so when they say "This bit's really annoying", you can see what they mean.
Summary: A good show for keeping you up to date with what the latest games - what they look like, whether they're worth getting, and it also delivers sneak peaks for the games you're really waiting for.
Discus
RSS feed here, LJ syndicated at
discus_rss, and iTunes download subscribing here (more formats and options available on the siteDiscus is the DVD review show, describing itself as:
Join film buff Justin Gayner for a look at the week’s must-watch DVD releases, including film analysis and a close look at the special features thrown onto each disc.
Now I have to admit the review of Discus is what's kept me from posting this earlier; I've not been sure how to approach it, largely because I'm not the sort of person they're aiming for with this show. With the other two shows, I find that sort of stuff generally interesting, so as I've said I'll watch reviews of stuff I'm never going to use/play. With DVDs? Not so much. I don't go to the cinema that often, and most of the DVDs I buy are either stuff that I've walked out of the Cinema and gone "That was awesome, I'm getting that when it comes on DVD" – things like 300 or V for Vendetta, TV series that I like, or cheap DVDs of movies I didn't manage/get around to seeing at the cinema. So, this review should be read with that held in mind, and that's the reason why it's less link-ful than the rest. To be fair, I think the show has resulted in at least one actual purchase for me - when I saw Oceans Thirteen going especially cheap at Tescos, and wanted something not too challenging to pass an evening.
The format of the show is generally a short intoduction of film in question, a clip from it, an assement of the film, then its addons, pronouncement of a score, and then finally the 'Piggy piggy snack snacks' (which I'll explain later).
Justin reviews the films expertly - praising and damning as appropriate, identifying the flaws in otherwise worthy pieces, and the redeeming aspects of lemons, doing it all in a clear and mostly serious style, with occasional hyperbolical similes, impressions, and clever camnera tricks to stop it from getting boring. He tries to get the feel of the movies over, and is reasonably good at doing so, though the show is somewhat let down by the fact they only ever show one clip of each movie. I'm guessing this may be due to copyright or other such stuff, but it is one of the main issues I have with the show - I want to see more of a film before I buy it, and if I'm told that "The interactions between the Dude and the secondary characters in The Big Lebowski are really funny, I'd quite like to see a quick clip of such, to see what he means.
The movies they review are split into current releases and 'Discus Legends' - reviews of classics, and films you might have missed. Discus covers a broad range of genres, this means there's probably some "Do I want to get that" item for everyone reviewed here, but when combined with the relatively small number of shows (55 at the moment), means that unless your tastes are broad you may have little interest in a sizeable proportion of the reviews – once again I'll wave my 'not much of a DVD watcher' badge, and say that only about a third to a half of the reviews are of films I'd have any real interest in watching from the one line description of them.
Each show ends with a 'Piggy piggy snack snack', which is essentially a review of some snack food or other that you could eat while watching the movie. While these can be funny, and might open you up to new culinary experiences, I have to admit I usually close the window when they start, as they don't hold my attention enough to stick with them. Your mileage may vary, of course.
So, given that I'm not as rabid a fan of this as I am of the other shows, what's it good for from my PoV? For the 'do I/don't I' get it stuff, it can be a decider as to which way you fall. The reviews of the DVD extras are good, as someone who's slowly begining to accept that there's more to a DVD than just the main feature itself, having them brought to your attention is useful. And with the Discus Legends, they're often the things that people have told you, "You have to watch this movie!" without very clearly getting over why, the froth overpowering any useful explanation, Justin's clear reviews can give you what you need to know to decide whether you want to see the damn things. It also reviews some lesser known films and could alert you to stuff you'd like that you'd otherwise miss.
Summary: A reasonable show, but not really my cup of tea in the same what the other two are. Probably pretty good if you're particularly interested in DVDs, and the Discus Legends portion is pretty good for going "This is a great film, is it a great DVD?"/"Should this ghost of the past stayed back there" Could possibly be improved by reviewing some non-movie DVDs, especially with many TV series boxed sets beginning to come down into the 'affordable' price bracket now.
