Blessed by the Potato

For the better part of the last decade high definition TVs were the “it” item, way up there on the list of what people were milking the equity of their houses to get. For the most part, I didn’t really get it: the standards were changing in Internet time: from 480p through 720p to 1080i/p in less than 10 years: and while 1080p looks to just be settling in as a standard that might linger for longer than a goldfish, who knows what the new year might bring. In addition to the standards, we faced a variety of physical connections: from coax and RCAs to component, s-video, VGA, DVI, HDMI, and I’m sure someone out there has an optical connection (even if only for, ironically, audio). I wasn’t really satisfied with that, especially for such an expensive piece of home entertainment that has a history of lasting (my current TV is 15 years old and will likely last at least 5 more; the one it replaced lasted for 20). Some videophiles (Netbug, cough) do seem to get genuine enjoyment from HDTV and can tell the difference, but for me I don’t see standard definition as something that hurts my enjoyment of a movie or game; it’s not immersion-breaking. Once the lack of content (and the lack of uniform content — the few HDTV stations that are out there can’t seem to decide how they want to broadcast, some even letterboxing the widescreen stuff and transmitting at 4:3) is factored in, the investment just didn’t seem to be worth it.

My parents, just over a year ago, bought a beautiful LCD TV at 1080p and a PS3 to go with it (they really only use it for the blu-ray player). And they loved it. They gushed about how beautiful and sharp and bright their picture was. I went over there… and saw that they were watching standard-def cable. Stretched standard-def cable. Once I got the box hooked up properly for them and tuned to an actual high def channel they were even more ecstatic… but the point is that the biggest difference for them was that the picture was big. Even now that they’ve got it all figured out, they still do 99% of their TV viewing in standard definition. Over a year later with the fancy PS3 blu ray player and they own a grand total of 3 blu ray titles.

I’m clearly not Netbug, or I would have long since succumbed to the HD bug. I figure if I want to watch something in high definition, I’ll do it on my 22″ computer monitor, which looks freaking huge when sitting in my desk chair an arm’s length away. In fact, that’s what I do now. I’ve watched my TV for maybe 10 hours in the last year — I’ve spent more time gaming on it with the Wii. I just got so sick of the few shows I tried to keep track of being moved around all the time and having to go catch up on my computer anyway that this year with the new TV season I’m not bothering with the TV and VCR at all — I’m just going straight the computer and/or the DVD boxed sets. Watching TV makes me edgy these days; I spent so much time in my teen years with the TV and the computer in the same room and always multitasking that I feel like something’s wrong if I’m not checking my email on a commercial break. I’d cancel cable entirely if Wayfare wasn’t so attached to it. Of course, I’m not my parents, either: if I do get a new TV, I want to actually get some use of of its abilities (as well as have a bigger picture), and get something that’s going to be somewhat future-proof.

Things are starting to change now: the Xbox360 and PS3 can provide HD gaming, and cable and even over-the-air high definition content is more commonly available. Blu-ray discs can bring high definition movies home, which confuses the hell out of me because as far as I know regular DVDs were already able to store ~3 hours of high definition video (why the need to switch?). The biggest immediate change though is that Wayfare’s parents gave us an extravagant, over-the-top, completely unnecessary wedding present: a framed picture of a HDTV, a card that said “go buy a TV”, and a cheque (and boy were we confused when we unwrapped a picture frame and turned it over not to find a nice printed picture from the wedding… but a picture of a TV!).

Ultimately, Wayfare is going to decide on what to get for our home theatre setup, since she’s the one who actually watches TV. But since I’m the mad scientist technical one, I get to do most of the research and narrow it down for her. Here’s what I’m looking at so far, and I’ve asked Netbug to provide his feedback as well, since he’s the resident expert on these things (and is looking to replace his audio-visual setup as well).

Video: We are certainly going to go with a TV of some sort — as much as I’ve thought about taking a digital projector home from the lab and using the wall, that’s just not going to fly. Beyond that though, I really don’t have too much of a clue. Like my parents, I think I would prefer screen size over resolution — a 40″ 720p screen would probably be better for us than a 1080p at 32″ (though we might be able to get both size and resolution for not much more and avoid the decision entirely). We should size the TV to the room and all, but since we’re only going to be in that room for another two years or so it’s probably better to err on the side of too big. Right now I’m thinking 40 or 42″ just because that seems to be a fairly common size, in the “big” but not “uniquely monstrous” zone. I’m also not sure about plasma vs LCD: plasma seems to mostly come in 720p from what I see, at about the same prices as the same-sized 1080p LCD. I don’t really know what we’d want from inputs: I know that when gaming/hooking up a laptop having the inputs accessible from the side and/or front is handy, but I doubt that would be a dealbreaker for us (especially with our current setup). I think we do want a tuner though, so we can grab OTA (over the air — rabbit ears) HD signals, since I don’t really see us getting blu-rays or paying through the nose for HD digital cable. I know that there is a hefty price premium to the Sony name, and we probably would never notice a difference; beyond that I don’t really know anything about the other brands. Samsung also seems to have a name for itself in LCD, and Panasonic for plasma; Costco sells Westinghouse, which I’ve never heard of.

Netbug says [paraphrased]:

Don’t worry too much about resolution, side by side you could tell, maybe. Yes, I do GREATLY prefer HDTV over standard, but that fact is escalated because SDTV looks like utter crap on an HDTV set. There will never be a standard like there was for CRT (I don’t think). There’s always new techs coming out. You gotta bite the bullet and buy something.

So that all meshes with other stuff I’ve been reading. In particular, we’ll be more happy with a screen that’s a lower resolution (720p, for example) but better contrast and colour ranges, and better hardware for interpolating images that aren’t in the native resolution than we will be with a set that has a higher resolution at the same price but cheaper everything else.

I think though the most pressing question for us at the moment is: should we buy now, or wait to see what boxing day brings (or continue to suffer with our 27″ tube, earn interest, ponder, and wait for some kind of standard to emerge along with the death of analog and the finalization of our living room size).

Audio: There are advantages to X.1 surround sound, but I just don’t see how we can work it in our living room. Our setup is geared more towards socializing than TV watching, so the couch is at a 45 degree angle to the TV, rather than straight-on, and there are really only two usable walls to run wires around/hang speakers on, so I just can’t see how we could make surround work. We might get a 2.1 speaker setup with a receiver/amp that has some futureproofing… or we might just use the speakers that come with the TV (like my parents).

Accessories: We have a Wii, but Netbug and Ryan keep bugging me to get an XBox360 so I can game with them (though we all have PCs, it just doesn’t seem to work out that multiplayer games come out on that platform these days), and that might be a better system for Tversity to run off. I have no idea if our current DVD player is “progressive scan” or not, nor how much of a difference that might make. We’ll also need a new stand in all likelihood, especially if we need to house a receiver/amp.

Wayfare says: “Most of our TV watching is with regular shows. I want a bigger, clearer, thinner TV, but if standard definition looks worse then what’s the point? And I don’t want to pay for screen space that’s just wasted on grey bars for most of our watching. Let’s see what boxing day brings, but I’m not against waiting longer; I’m just not sure right now. Can I go to sleep now?”

Trend-Micro for a number of years, together with UWO, offered students here copies of PC-Cillin/Internet Security for $15. From that you could protect as many computers as you pleased, the theory being it was worth the subsidy to keep the UWO network secure. This year however, it’s $15 per computer, and you have to go up to campus to physically pick up each license. I picked up three licenses for our computers recently, knowing that I needed one for my new build and both my laptop and Wayfare’s laptop, which expired early December. We both thought Wayfare’s desktop was on a different schedule… unfortunately we were wrong and it expired this week as well.

Figuring that her computer is behind the hardware firewall and that she “doesn’t do much” with it, and not wanting to pay and have to go up to campus, we decided to try out a different, free, antivirus product. We went with AVG, one I’ve been using on my server computer for some time (ever since PC-Cillin stopped working on WinME). Well, within a day she was infected with some sort of browser hijacking trojan. It keeps throwing popups at her as she tries to surf, and does it even in safe mode.

So, right quick I switched it up to Trend Micro Internet Security for her… unfortunately, perhaps because it was already infected, or perhaps because it’s a nasty new exploit they haven’t solved yet, Trend Micro wasn’t able to fix it either. I’m still trying to figure this thing out, and am sincerely hoping I won’t have to resort to a reformat…

There was a short article in the Globe today about how people use Google. I was laughing a fair bit because this is exactly what Wayfare does all the time: rather than type in the address of the site she wants to go to, she Googles the web address. No bookmarks for her, no “messing up” her history bar by typing in something like “facebook.com” directly — she’d rather go to google, then search, then get to where she was actually trying to go. To be fair, it does help avoid typos and getting a website wrong (especially for Canadians, who are never quite sure if they want the .com or the .ca extension). And anyone who’s ever accidentally typed a misspelling of ebay and ended up on a disgusting gross-out site will probably be sworn off the using the URL field entirely.

This week’s events in federal politics have certainly been interesting if nothing else.

Parliament is fractured into four small parties; the Cons are the largest ones (and hence formed the minority government after the election), but are the least willing to work with the others. The Liberals and NDP even combined don’t outnumber the Cons, so to govern one side or the other has to get support from the fourth party: the Bloc. Harper did it not so very long ago, giving them concessions of billions of dollars and “nation” status. Now the Liberal-NDP coalition has received support from the Bloc to overturn the Cons.

Harper has come out with all kinds of vitriol about how the coalition is making deals with separatists; coming from a still-technically-sitting prime minister, this is worrying some people that it’s stirring up the hornet’s nest of Quebec separation just as that issue was finally dying a quiet death, that he will alienate quebecers (38% of whom voted Bloc — more than the Cons got nationally). Likewise, there is valid criticism that by having to go to the Bloc, both sides (the Cons in 2000 and 2006, the Liberal-NDP coalition now) are giving a separatist party legitimacy in the House.

The Bloc is, ostensibly, a separatist party. They were founded to promote Quebec sovereignty… but let’s get real. The separatists lost two referendums on sovereignty. The Bloc doesn’t even put up the pretense of asking for another in the near future. No, the Bloc has gone from being a separatist party to being a mean-spirited, single-minded regional party. They are the party of “give Quebec everything and screw the rest of Canada”; which, I suppose, is not all that different from the mindset of a separatist party. The difference being that it’s quite possible for other regional parties to form even without the separatist agenda/rhetoric.

First-past-the-post election systems, like we have, tend to come down to two-party systems due to issues like strategic voting. Interestingly, this has not happened in Canada — true, really only the Cons and the Liberals have any chance of forming a government, but that doesn’t stop the NDP and the Bloc from putting up strong showings, and even the Greens (and in past elections, Reform) compete. Of course, many ridings come down to two-way races, but nationally it’s a mess.

Oddly enough, this mess of smaller parties is one of the criticisms levelled against alternative voting schemes like proportional representation. Since the population is so fractured on who they support, a proportional representation scheme would most likely return minority government after minority government. Then fringe parties with distributed support who would never get enough concentration to elect an MP in the current system might get in and hold the power to make or break coalitions. Of course, that’s exactly what we face now. The trick of course is that the Bloc have gamed the system: they just need to win a few first-past the post races to be a viable fringe party, by which I mean that obviously they can use regional specialization to their advantage.

This is probably going to be bad for Canadian politics going forward. I mean, the Bloc model is working, and this is not a feature. To compete in a first-past-the-post environment the former Progressive Conservative party merged with the Reform to form our current Con disaster. It used to be that you could sway a centrist between the Liberals and the PC party, as evidenced by decades of alternating majority governments between the two. But now the gulf between the two is quite wide (today’s Cons are indisputably right-wing rather than right-of-centre), and there is little hope or point in trying to “unite the left”.

With things looking like a series of minority governments on the horizon for the next several years if not decades, the door opens to coalition makers and breakers, and further regional specialization. Years ago, my friends and I used to shake our heads at the Bloc, and jokingly say that we would form the “Bloc Ontarioquois” party to counter them. No one is starting such a party yet to the best of my knowledge, but it can’t be long before it happens. The Cons are increasingly seen as the party of the “West” (which somehow excludes Canada’s westernmost province), and it’s only a matter of time before an Ontario/BC-centric party decides to get in on the action. That could be either the Liberals or the NDP, both of which get half their support from Canada’s largest province, or a new party (hopefully one without the initials BO).

Things could turn around: federalism could return to Quebec, or the main federalist parties could learn to work together without having to pander to the Bloc. But I think that the time for electoral reform might have come. Depending on the system (I prefer STV myself, to continue electing MPs to represent ridings, and then just have ~5 MPs per riding, with ~30 on the ballot to rank as you please, as complicated as that might make the ballots), that might open the door to national fringe or single-issue parties (the marijuana party, or the pro-life party as common examples bandied about), but I think that might be preferable to the tearing apart of our country by rabid regional factions that are more interested in gaming the system for local advantage than getting everyone to run a big country together.

So for those who haven’t heard, we’re having a little bit of a crisis of faith in our government here in the great white north. We just had an election, which returned Harper with a “strengthened minority” — but a minority nonetheless. There was no “message from Canadians” — our ballots are not that detailed. Nonetheless, I’ve seen Con pundits all over say that Harper has a “mandate” from Canadians and that the opposition parties attempting to form a coalition to govern in his place is “undemocratic”.

Of course, it’s nothing of the sort — the majority of people voted against Harper. He spent years trying to self-destruct parliament with brinksmanship and confidence measures. The message from Canadian voters if anything was “you can’t rule as though you had a majority; here’s another minority now go play nice with the other parties.” Then the first thing he does when he gets back is introduce a partisan fiscal update (that takes away a source of funding for smaller parties) and made it a confidence measure to try to bully it through (oh, it also takes away the right for public sector workers to strike and the right for women to sue for pay equity). So the opposition has indicated that it is prepared to call his bluff, and he throws a hissy fit and threatens to shutter parliament for over a month. Or, as explained over at Whatever by Leila:

“Stephen Harper is not being removed because he proposed to eliminate the $1.95/vote, although that was an underhanded tactic intended to cripple the opposition parties. He withdrew that proposition […] Stephen Harper is being removed because he seems to think that 143 seats and 37.6% of the popular vote is a mandate from Canadians to do whatever the hell he pleases. He has a minority government. As such, it is his responsibility to cooperate with the opposition parties. He refuses to do so. “

Yes, in the midst of the worst economic turmoil in a generation, he wants our government and our leaders to go take a little vacation. Maybe spending more and having economic stimuli and bailouts won’t save us. Maybe it will just create more government debt and make the hole even harder to dig out of — but he’s not even willing to discuss the issue. At a time when the worldwide markets are facing a crisis of confidence, Harper wants to show Canadians that the government is not just asleep at the wheel, it’s not even at the helm!

On top of all this has been the Harper-Flaherty boondoggle of the last few years: lying to Canadians (income trusts, the prospect of a deficit), fiscal mismanagement, politicizing everything, including the safety issues of an ageing nuclear reactor, and breaking their own fixed election date legislation because they were so desperate to get an election in ahead of this turmoil that they’ve long known was coming (but did nothing about).

In a word, the Cons have lost the confidence of parliament, and of Canadians. Having the other parties work together to come to a compromise position that everyone can agree to is democratic, and it’s how our system is supposed to work with minority governments.

Now, my dad is in a bit of a huff over all this — he doesn’t care who ends up in power, but we need some stability to restore confidence in the markets. The Bloc is going to support a coalition for 18 months, so that might be enough, whereas a continued Harper government could be back here again in a week (assuming it is allowed to carry on by some back-pedalling and compromising by the PM) because of just how unstable those personalities are. The market has been burned by Flaherty before: the surprise income trust tax, and two rounds of buying mortgages from banks (not quite a bailout, but close) when the banks didn’t really seem to need it (which actually hurt confidence a bit). Because of that, on a per capita basis, the bailouts in Canada have been almost as large as the ones in the States, and we’re just getting going with this party.

Some perspective is, of course, required. This is not really a “takeover” or a “crisis” — tanks are not going to roll up parliament hill. The MP you elected is still your representative in parliament. All that’s changed is that the majority of ABC MPs have decided to cooperate since the Cons won’t. It’s been pointed out that Stephan Dion and the Liberals will probably take a drubbing in the next election over this — 18 months away, if the Bloc are to be believed — and that’s probably true. For that reason I have to respect the man. He’s willing to take the hit to his own reputation and long-term outlook in order to step up and do what is right for Canada now. Hopefully the coalition will manage to fix the economy (and our environmental plan at the same time) and turn it around within the next year and a half and they’ll be vindicated. If not, at the very least the next Con government we face won’t have Harper (and hopefully not Flaherty either) at the helm; hopefully it’ll be a Progressive Conservative rather than a Reform/Con man.