When 1080p is really 1080i

I bought a JVC TV in early 2006 that I paid a hefty premium for to get the best possible quality of 1080p thinking I would eventually get a source that would drive this TV. Well, it took longer than I thought, but I just replaced a failing JVC DVD player (that only lasted a measly 4.5 years) with a new LG Blu-ray player. That's when I found out that the LG player couldn't drive my TV at 1080p. So I tried to contact tech support.

Greetings,

After 40 minutes on hold waiting for tech support to answer I thought I'd try this route.

I just bought a new LG BD370C Blu-ray player and connected it to my JVC LT-40FH96 TV. The LG allows several resolutions but when I try to set it to 1080p, the TV goes black and a few seconds later the LG reverts back to 1080i.

This is the first device capable of 1080p that I've used on the TV. The TV works fine with my 1080i PVR. I've tried both HDMI ports on the TV and two different HDMI cables without success.

The TV was bought on 2006-02-20. Is there a firmware update I could download to see if this will help? Any other suggestions.

I got a response the next day so even though they don't answer the phone, at least they reply to email. Here's what they had to say,

Hello xxx,

Thank you for your email.

This model accepts 1080i max, it will then display as 1080p. The LT-40FH96 will not accept 1080p resolution.

Sincerely,

JVC Service

After sitting in stunned silence for a few seconds, watching my blood start to boil, I composed this reply,

Greetings,

Thank you for the quick, but very disappointing response. I'm faxing this response to the head office since they don't want to hear from customers via email.

So what you're telling me is that I've been lied to by the authorized JVC dealer who sold this to me as a 1080p set, with no mention that it was really a 1080i set in disguise. To say that I'm disgusted at this deception is an understatement.

And I see that JVC is complicit in this deception as evidenced by the fact there is no mention that this set only accepts 1080i on your web site. See the page at:

http://www.jvc.ca/en/consumer/archived-product-detail.asp?model=LT-40FH96

It clearly states, "High Resolution Widescreen (1920 x 1080) Full HD LCD Display".

"Full HD" to me doesn't mean only 1080i in. As far as I'm concerned, I paid a hefty premium for a 1080p set but really only have a 1080i set.

I then searched the online copy of the User Guide at:

http://resources.jvc.com/Resources/00/00/93/YA363ien.pdf

There is no mention that this set is not a true 1080p set, although it does fail to mention 1080p and only talks about 1080i.

Then I searched the Internet and found numerous stories how JVC has not advertised this limitation on the boxes of other sets you made too.

Although I've spent many thousands of dollars buying TVs, VCRs, Tuner/Amps, and DVD players from JVC, essentially you're telling me never to buy another JVC product because I can't believe what the specifications say on the box or manual, or what I'm told by a salesperson (who probably knew better because I bought it from a specialty store, not a big-box retailer).

In my opinion, I've been defrauded. Fortunately, with the power of the Internet, I can publicize this egregious deception.

I'll close by thanking you for the education on how not to get screwed on my next TV purchase, which most definitely will not be a JVC.

Update 2006-06-24:

JVC responds,

Hello xxx,

There's no deception here 1080p sources in 2005 were practically non-existent -- Blu-ray players started to be introduced in the fall of 2006. The LT40FH96 is a 2005 1080p LCD display. Please look at the timeline of HD1080p availability.

I am providing you with links to some useful information:

http://hometheater.about.com/od/televisionbasics/qt/1080ivs1080p.htm
http://blog.hometheatermag.com/geoffreymorrison/0807061080iv1080p/
http://www.hometheatermag.com/gearworks/1106gear/

Let's look at just the text in the first link where it states, "In 1080p, each frame of video is sent or displayed progressively. This means that both the odd and even fields (all 1,080 pixel rows or pixel lines) that make up the full frame are displayed together. This results in a smoother looking image [than 1080i], with less motion artifacts and jagged edges."

So JVC is pointing me to a source of information that clearly states 1080p is better than 1080i, but they hid the fact that my set could not handle a 1080p source. To this day, they're still trying to justify their actions by referring me to content that validates my stance. The arrogance of that is simply stunning.

I buy equipment with an eye to the future. I'm not going to replace a multi-thousand dollar TV every few years, so yes, I expect that 1080p sources would come along and I'd be able to get the best quality then.

But JVC thinks that just because a 1080p source is rare, they can hide the fact that their set is not true 1080p. Why not be up front about it? Because they know that people would just buy the cheaper set.

You know, it's one thing for a company to be caught deceiving their customers, but it's a new low when they try to defend their actions.

We own your life

Original posting 2008-10-23 (see update below): I came across a job advertisement that rubbed me the wrong way. Sure, it may be good for the business and the major shareholders, but it tells you how much they value their employees.

This is from a company called International Datacasting. They were looking for a software developer. It said very little about the job but seemed to be more of a sales pitch. In these tough economic times, they shouldn't have to beg for people unless they don't understand the message their job postings send out.
Like this line,

"And let’s face it, you are going to spend the majority of your day at work, so why not work where you will enjoy what you do and where you really can shape the future of technology."

Wow! The majority of my day at work? Are they nuts? What kind of slave drivers are they?

Let's analyze the situation. Just what do they mean by "day"? Here's a few dictionary definitions,

1. a period of twenty-four hours as a unit of time, reckoned from one midnight to the next …
2. the time between sunrise and sunset.
3. the time between waking and sleeping.

Surely they aren't referring to 24 hours … or are they? That means your average day at IDC is over 12 hours long. Geez, I sure hope that doesn't include weekends.

If they mean the time between sunrise and sunset, that's a long day in the summer and a shorter day in the winter. Where IDC is located, in Kanata, Ontario, the longest summer day is from 5 AM to 9 PM or about 16 hours. So a summer day could be just 8 hours and that would fit the "majority" o

f time. But, the shortest amount of time between sunrise and sunset is from about 7:30 AM to about 4:30 PM, or about 9 hours. Surely they don't mean just 4.5 hours as a "majority" of your day.

No, I suspect they aren't referring to definition 2, even with the time before dawn and after dusk.

Well then, are they referring to the time between waking and sleeping? This is

quite variable for each individual, so I doubt that's what they mean. But for amusement, this could mean from say 7 AM to 11 PM. That would be 16 hours. Sounds about right. Equal 8-hour slots for sleeping, working, and everything else.

Naw, not likely. I've worked at several high-tech companies and I know they can pull long hours, and expect you to unless you apply back pressure.

It seems the problem is that, well, we don't know what they mean by "majority of your day." And that's what makes me nervous about these folks.

I wish them luck in finding qualified slaves, er, I mean, employees.

P.S. Uh, they do pay overtime, don't they? Ask that question in your job interview and see their reaction. That will tell you everything you need to know.

Update 2009-04-02: This job ad over at Ciena looks suspiciously familiar. Maybe it's written by the same HR person.

"Let’s be honest, you’re going to spend the majority of your life at work, so you might as well enjoy it. A career at Ciena is unique."

Holy crap! Those were the very first two sentences in their job ad. The majority of my life?!?! What kind of frickin' slave drivers are these guys?

Let's keep it really simple and then do a more detailed calculation. Just on a week to week basis, ignoring statutory holidays and vacation, there are 7 x 24 = 168 hours in a week. Ciena says you will work the majority of that time at work. Uh guys, that's over 84 hours per week — forever.

But that calculation is inaccurate. It's much, much worse.

A male will live to be about 78. I'm sure they only hire people out of university, so let's say you start working at age 22 and retire at age 65. That's 43 working years and 35 non-working years, ignoring summer jobs while attending university.

We want to figure out the number of hours a day they expect you to work so let's start by converting the numbers to days. Someone check my math here.

43 x 365.25 = 15,706 days during your work life and 12,784 days of non-work.

Now move the statutory holidays into the non-working total at about 12 days a year.

43 * 12 = 516 so now we have 15,190 days working life and 13,300 days of non-work.

Figure you start at 3 weeks vacation, 4 weeks after 10 years, 5 weeks after 20 years, 6 weeks after 30 years, 7 weeks after 40 years. This is a joke because nobody stays at the same company for 40+ years and each time you move, you're likely to have your years of service reset. Let's cap it at 5 weeks and figure you change jobs before the 10 years are up. To make it easy, let's assume 14 years in each bracket.

(14 * 3 * 7 ) + (14 * 4 * 7) + (15 * 5 * 7) = 1,211 days of vacation.

Now we're at 13,979 days during your working life and 14,511 non-working days.

Oh, oh. The total available working days is already below the non-working days and I haven't adjusted for weekends yet!

What the hell, let's figure out the weekends too. You deserve it.

43 * 52 * 2 = 4,472 days resulting in 9,507 working days and 18,983 non-working days.

Let's do a sanity check, 9,507 / 43 = 221 working days per year. Yup, that's about right on average.

But the good folks at Ciena expect you to work the majority of your life so of the 28,490 days of your life, they expect you to work at least 14,246 days in your 43 working years. Yes, that's right, working for Ciena means you will be working 331 days a year. But those are 24-hour days!

331 days x 24 hours per day = 7,944 hours per year.

Can you do it and still keep your vacation, and weekends. Sure, if you don't mind working 7,944 / 221 = 36 hours per working day, every friggin' work day of your life. This takes, "work smarter, not harder" to a whole new plane of existence.

How about 7,944 / 365.25 = 21.75 hours per day for every day of your working life?

Clearly, they don't mean what they said about spending the majority of your life at work. I don't even agree with the second sentence, "A career at Ciena is unique." It's not unique, there are sweatshops all over the world.

AMC MovieWatcher Scam

Here is a nasty feedback comment I sent to AMC Theater regarding their otherwise excellent loyalty program called MovieWatcher. You can get a free card, they don't spam you, and you get discounts on movies and food purchases. There was no down side. Or was there?

One problem at the theatre I go to in Ontario is that they are constantly forgetting to credit points to my account. I get a printed receipt with the points on them and the next time I go to a movie and get a card, it shows the same total. They've forgotten again.

Here's what I said, and it's much milder than what I should have said:

Is this the fifth or sixth time I've had to complain about points failing to be posted to my card? Once is an error, twice is amusing, three times is incompetence, six times is fraud.

No organization of your size can "fail" this many times without it being a company policy to cheat customers out of the rewards. If this has happened to me this many times, it must be happening countless times to other customers daily. This kind of insidious, petty theft by your company just shows how much disregard you have for your customers.

Unlike previous times where I politely asked you to investigate the problems with this theatre, I no longer believe this is an accident. I believe this is deliberate theft. Frankly, I don't care if you find this harshly worded. I don't have any respect for thieves.

Don't waste your time replying to this message. I'll go back to the theatre and straighten it out there. And I won't even ask you for compensation for wasting my time since I'm sure you just factor that in as a loss to your overall program of deceit.

Update: And AMC's personalized response:

Dear MovieWatcher Member,

Thank you for contacting AMC MovieWatcher.

At AMC, our guests deserve the best possible movie going experience-which is why we believe you choose AMC to see your favorite films. We want to thank you for coming to our theatres!

Let us know in person. If your experience was enjoyable, then we've done our jobs well and our theatre managers would love to hear from you. Likewise, if you believe AMC has let you down in some way, our managers would appreciate the opportunity to speak personally with you to address any concern immediately. When you are visiting a theatre, don't hesitate to ask for a manager.

Send us a letter. If you'd like to write to us, please send your letter to:

AMC Theatres
P.O. Box 725489
Atlanta, GA 31139-9923

Call our 24/7 guest services toll-free number -
1-877-AMC-4450 (877-262-4450).

AMC chooses these forms of communication with our guests because they have proven to be the most meaningful and effective.

Please let us know if you have any additional questions.

See you at the movies!

Did you get that last part, assuming your weren't laughing so hard the tears in your eyes didn't blur the text too much, "AMC chooses these forms of communication with our guests because they have proven to be the most meaningful and effective."

Wow! These folks are pathetic.

Comics.com — The web site IS the entertainment

Here's an email I sent off to the customer service reps for United Media who runs comics.com.

No Reply Required

Greetings,

The new comics.com web site is a total disaster. The design team should be fired.

I tried to use the Contact Us link on the comics.com web site, but it gives me a Page Not Found error. Good grief, even the Advertising link goes nowhere. How can this be released to the public in this state?

I don't know if you're the right people to help out, but perhaps you know who is in charge of the comics.com site, assuming they're not hiding in a bunker now given the horrible way this revamp has turned out.

Please pass along the following comments to your CEO and the people (ir)responsible for comics.com:

I went to view the normal list of comics and noticed the new redesign that we were warned about in a previous email. The first thing that came to mind was how abysmally slow this thing was to load and I'm on 8 Mbps cable broadband. What are you using as a server, an old 386 PC you picked up at a garage sale?

Each cartoon's page has a week's worth of cartoons ensuring that the page load time is very long. But wait ... where's today's cartoon? It's not posted yet. Duh. And then there's the four ads per page, not including all the self-promotion junk.

Oooh, nice big cartoons! That's great! Really. Well, maybe they don't need to be that big unless I'm visually handicapped, especially not when they're about 160 KB in size. The whole Herman page for today is, wait for it, 2.563 MB in size!!! Are your web developers freakin' insane?!?

I used a web developer's tool to show me the sizes and timeline of today's Herman page. 2.4 minutes to load the page consisting of 284 KB of HTML, 72 KB of stylesheets, 1.7 MB of images, 375 KB of scripts, and 124 KB of other crap. Now this may work great inside your corporate network but is unusable by people even on broadband. What about the poor people on DSL or, gawd forbid, dial-up supposed to do?

When I go to a comic's web page, I expect to see just today's cartoon. I can then click on a calendar day to catch up on any comics I missed. You know, like the way it used to be!

Well golly gee, I can customize My Comics to see whatever I want, but first I have to register because you can't carry over old subscribers. Well, it's not that you can't, it's that you chose not to, probably to get rid of the inactive accounts. So you're forcing thousands of regular customers to waste their time signing up. All you needed to do was ask people to click on a link or reply to the email warning of the new redesign to know that the account is still active. But no, my time means nothing to you and saves your web developers a few hours of coding and testing the renewal code. Well, given their skills so far, maybe that was a good decision.

So I decide to sign up anyway. Hmm, you require my date of birth. If I want to know why I can just click on a link you've so graciously provided. I know it's a link because it's underlined. But when I roll over the link, I can't read the text in my Safari web browser. No problem, I'll just view it in Firefox 3. Oh dear, it doesn't work there either. It doesn't work on one of the most popular browsers in the world. How about Opera? Nope. Same problem. It appears there's some white text on a transparent background that tries to overlay the page. Good job. Oh, clicking on the link does nothing. It's not a link at all. So why is it underlined?

IE 6 on Windows? Finally, one that works, sort of. If I'm willing to wait minutes (yes, that's right, minutes) for the box to pop up. Let's see what it says. Hmm, you need to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act to gather personal information in case I'm under 13. No problem, if I was under 13 I'd just lie and say I was 18. You don't check but no doubt you'll tell your advertisers you have accurate demographic information. Heck, I am over 18 but I'll just say I'm 18 anyway 'cause it really ain't your business how old I am. Besides, it makes me feel younger.

After all this time, let's check Safari, Opera, and Firefox again. All but Safari works. Well that's better than nothing. I've just got to be patient. Real patient. More patient than with any other web site I've ever used. No problem. I've been writing up this rant while I wait. You may have noticed how much I've written already. That's another reason you don't want slow page load times. Customers have too much time to document their complaints.

On with the registration. Fake birth date. Check. Fake first name. Check. Fake last name. Check. Fake country, Check, I'll pick a funny one like Bouvet Island. Click on the checkbox saying I agree to the Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy. Check. Haven't read 'em, but then nobody ever does.

OK, I lied. I did click on the Terms Of Use. Not to read them, just to see how ridiculously long they were. Wow, a mere 6500 words. And the Privacy Policy? Another 3400 words. Let's see now, you seriously believe I'm gonna read 10,000 words? Really? Do you?

Skipped.

Finally, let's pull the handle on this slot machine, er, I mean, click the Register button. Success! It tells me it will send me an email with a link on how to sign up. But, it never arrives. I tried this once yesterday and there was no email by this morning. Yes, I did check my spam filter and it wasn't there either. So I can't click on a link to sign up.

No problemo, I'll try again today. Darn, the username is already in use. Probably by me since it's a pretty bizarre username and extremely unlikely that some other poor schlep has waded through your registration process with the same one. But, it does allow me to click on a link in case I forgot my password. I'll try that.

I get nothing in Opera. Back to Safari. That worked. But wait, I have to enter my email address to reset my password? Why? I just entered it in the darn form on the previous page. You mean your hopeless web developers can't figure out how to pass on some data to another page. Sad. Very sad.

Whatever, I'm getting used to this ridiculous web site. When I came to comics.com, I never thought the entertainment would be in laughing at the web site structure instead of the content. Maybe your web developers are closet comedians, they're certainly not professional web developers.

So I type in my email address and click the Send button. Oh this is too much. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, snort, snort, ha ha ha. I can't stop laughing. It takes me to a URL of http://comics.com/forgot_password.process/ that results in a Page Not Found error. Ha ha ha ha ha! I love it. I'm no longer angry at the idiocy of this registration process. I'm now truly in hysterics. Click the Back button. Page Not Found. Oh stop! Stop! This is too much! You're killing me! Ha ha ha ha ha!

Now I have to reenter all my information into the form again to try to sign up again so that it will tell me I'm already signed up so that I can click on the forgot password link so that it can ask me to reenter the password it already knows so that I can get a Page Not Found error. Uh, no, I don't think I'll do that.

As a last resort I go back to one of my favorite cartoon pages to see if I can at least read today's cartoon. Alright! Now we're talking! It's back to the old look! And so are the other cartoon pages, including The Other Coast, that wasn't coming up at all.

I guess the message got through to the blockheads who inflicted this crapola on us that they better roll back the web site to the old one ... that worked.

Cool. I'll just sign in with my old account. It doesn't work. Ha ha ha ha ha!

Click on the old link for contact information thinking that must work if they rolled back the whole site. I get a Page Not Found error, but on the new site. Ha ha ha ha ha!

I gotta end it here 'cause my stomach hurts from all the laughing and the screen's all blurry with the tears rolling down my face.

Signed,

Anonymous

P.S. Can I attend the public flogging of the people in charge of this fiasco?

Sorry for the long hiatus

My personal life has been in a turmoil due to two deaths in my immediate family within 6 weeks. Exhaustion sets in and then I look at all the consumer problems I had to deal with during this time, and should have documented, and it just seemed insurmountable.

I don't know if I'll ever get around to documenting the missed problems, but the posting above is perhaps getting me out of my malaise because the subject is dear to my heart.

Michelin Tired

Read here about a previous run-in with Michelin Tire. Either I'm an optimist or a masochist, but I decided to try again to get a rebate out of these nimnels.

I'm sending it in tomorrow and the form says to wait 6 to 8 weeks for the $50 rebate. That brings it to no later than June 30th.

So, Mr. Curmudgeon, you ask, why are you whining about Michelin Tire rebates already. Well, because all rebates are a scam and I am 100% certain that Michelin Tire will not deliver the rebate on time. It's against their internal rules.

Make the customer wait and bitch and moan about not getting the rebate, although most customers will simply not track them like I do, and only when he makes enough of a fuss, then grudgingly send the rebate.

Am I being unfair to Michelin Tire? Anyone care to bet against me? I've set up a reminder to myself for June 30th so that I can update you when they're late.

P.S. When companies that use rebates quote 6-8 weeks, have they ever in their lifetime ever paid any customer at the 6 week mark? I think not.

Update 2008-05-28: The rebate cheque arrived today, a mere 3.5 weeks after I requested it. Miracles do happen, I guess. I'm sure it had nothing to do with my previous complaint to them.

KitchenAid or Kitchen AIDS?

My KitchenAid dishwasher, that I've had numerous problems with, acted up again. This time the motor stopped working after the tub had filled with water. Great! That's going to be a huge expense, or more likely, given the history of this turkey, I'd simply replace it. No way I was going to put any more money into repairing it.

But, I repaired it myself. You probably don't want to try this because it involves soldering a circuit board around a part that handles 120 volts.

Read the whole saga here. Oh, and do you really want to buy KitchenAid "for the way it's made"? I thought not.

My wonderful KitchenAid dishwasher seems to be afflicted with AIDS (Arbitrary Insidious Defect Syndrome).

Quiz? No!

My family has tried Quiznos, once. We were not impressed. So we stay with Subway. Why?

The first Quiznos we went in to required you to line up between two rows of tables. Now that doesn't bother me being in line, but how about the poor people at the tables trying to eat when there's this constant stream of people standing over them looking down and eavesdropping on their conversation.

Then, they didn't show you the types of bread or the toppings like they do at Subway. Their menu is much more like a restaurant where you take it or leave it. Subway gives me a choice.

Quiznos is more expensive than Subway. We never went back to that place.

A new Quiznos opened up near where I live and offered a small sandwich, chips, and a drink for $3.00. Not a bad deal in Canada where we get screwed for high prices by all the fast food companies. So I decided to check it out and see if Quiznos had improved in the intervening years. Nope.

Same take it or leave it menu. Since they still don't show you what bread they have I asked. First of all, I was interrupted by the standard fast food restaurant question, "Is that for here or to go?" I'll answer your question if you'll answer mine. Did you really have to interrupt me?

It was to go. The kid then stood there with a stupid look on her face. Uh, you still haven't answered my question. I asked again what type of bread they had. The answer was, "white, brown, and uh... uh... some cheese type." Wow! I don't need to comment on that.

My wife wanted chicken, but she had to choose between specially flavoured chicken, she couldn't get it plain. Then she asked for lettuce, green olives, green pepper, cucumber, mayo, and salt and pepper. The only thing they had was lettuce and instead of putting on mayo, they put on ranch, ignoring what she requested.

When we get to the cashier, they again asked if this was for here or to go. Note to Quiznos trainers: tell your trainees not to ask your customers the same question twice! Once again I said it was to go. I paid with a credit card that had a chip on it. Quiznos hadn't properly trained their staff how to handle that so we had to do the transaction about three times.

As I walked over to get my drink I noticed that they had hot peppers and other condiments near the fountain machine. Uh, you didn't think to mention that when you told us you didn't have most of the veggies my wife asked for? But by this time, the sandwiches were already wrapped, sealed with tape, and in a plastic bag. The work flow experts at Quiznos expected me to unwrap the sandwiches to add extra topping. Simply stunning in its stupidity.

I got my drink, put a plastic lid on and got the heck out of the store. As I was about to get in to the car, I noticed that even though the lid was fully seated on the cup, it was leaking all over the bag and my pants. Then I had to get this home without it making a mess in the car.

Fine, fine, so what was the food like? My wife wasn't happy with her chicken since it contained bacon, that they never mentioned, and almost none of the toppings she wanted! My roast beef sandwich was actually quite tasty. But not even close to being good enough to put up with an experience like that ever again.

Note to the Quiznos CEO, who undoubtedly never reads customer feedback since the experience has only gotten worse in years, I'm never coming back. Worse, I'm giving my business to your competitor, Subway. You'll have great success attracting the type of customer who doesn't give a damn about customer service. That helps keep your profits high and that's the only thing that's important.

The only way you'll get any of my money in the future is to siooma!

The firmware is shuffled too

Everyone raves about the quality of Apple products. Yes, I'm a consumer curmudgeon, but even as a regular consumer I find it bizarre that Apple has that reputation when they can't even get the simple things right.

For example, I own an iPod Shuffle, second generation no less. And this second generation unit is also on revision 1.0.4 of the firmware. That means they've had .0, .1, .2, .3, and .4 attempts to get it right — after all the practice they had with the first generation.

Well, my Shuffle has had problems since day one. It won't sync because it "can't find the disk." I have to quit iTunes, eject the Shuffle, remove it from the cradle and redock it. Does that help? Sometimes. Other times I have to restart the computer to get the Shuffle recognized.

Then if I drag a podcast over when it's nearly full it tells me it will not be able to place all the tracks on but will do its best. Uh, I'm only copying one track. It does the copy anyway but when I eject it and push the Play button, it flashes the "no content" code at me. I redock it and sometimes it shows me an empty device, other times it shows me the list of tracks that are surely on the device.

However, if I add or delete tracks, eject and press Play, it still tells me there's nothing there.

When I skip to the next podcast and return, it doesn't remember where I left off and jumps way, way back in the track. Similarly, if I turn it off and back on,  it resumes from way back in the podcast.

Finally, I restored the firmware to this turkey. It didn't help a bit and Apple doesn't give you any way to roll back the firmware to a less buggy version. Idiots!

Please understand that this is the simplest device that Apple makes. And it's badly screwed up. I wish they'd stop letting the janitorial staff do programming.

You can only buy it from stores that don't stock it

Is Apple the most arrogant company on the planet? Sorry, rhetorical question.

The Apple TV is starting to interest me, but not for reasons that Apple would prefer. I have no intention of buying content from Apple, but it seems to be a nice way to get high-resolution photos on my Hi-Def TV and watch video podcasts.

I found the nearest Apple retailer and called to ensure they had one in stock so I could view it and buy it if I liked what I saw. The retailer told me that only stores that sell televisions are allowed to sell the Apple TV. Huh?!

We discussed the stupidity of Apple for awhile; him from the retailer's perspective, me from the consumer's perspective.

Being a persistent S.O.B., I checked Apple's web site to find other retailers and the only ones were Future Shop and Best Buy (two companies owned by the same parent company to give consumers the illusion of competition, but that's for another rant).

Their web sites allow you to check store stock. Neither store at any of their locations even carry the Apple TV. You have to order it from their web site. The problem with that is that you can't see it in person, ask questions about it, and maybe even see it in action. Plus there's the hassle of being home for delivery. The price was identical to Apple's web store because, as is typical of the world's biggest control freak, Apple, they tightly control retail pricing to give you the illusion that their products are in high demand and there's no need for price competition.

The end result? No sale of the Apple TV that day and the impulse to buy has faded away. Nice job Jobs. Your marketing policies result in a lost sale. At least I wasn't getting the shaft on the higher Canadian price than the U.S. price even though the Canadian dollar is stronger than the U.S. dollar (see this site for gouging details).

Now I hear that the third generation Apple TV (although the second generation was just a software upgrade) will also be a DVR. So I guess I'll wait and see what Apple will do. Now that lost sale on a particular day is translating into a lost sale for months(?).