I’m sorry, Cheapy and Wombat. I was on the fence to this point, but this episode cinched it for me. The live podcasts must die. I love my CAG brothers and sisters, but somehow the callers on these shows (with the exception of Thorbahn and one or two others) have proven themselves mumbling, clueless, unfunny, mouth-breathers. Moreover, the poor sound quality (which was not resolved in this episode, despite Cheapy’s assurances last time that it would be), the constant rebooting, and the dead air wait for people to call/respond/figure out how to turn down their speakers was painful and brought the show to a dead stop at several points.
I feel bad, because I know these episodes seem fun and interesting for the hosts and make Cheapy feel like Howard Stern. But I wish we could make you see that they are NOT fun for your listeners. Maybe I can illustrate it this way: When I downloaded last week’s CAGcast and saw that it was two hours long, I thought I’d be bored silly. But I wasn’t. It was one of the best episodes ever. Funny, lively, consistently interesting. But this episode, despite being a half-hour shorter, seemed twice as long and half as enjoyable. Maybe a call screener is the answer. I don’t know. I just know that the live shows are cooling my interest in the CAGcast after almost two years of dedicated listening.
On the up side, I did enjoy “Stump the Retailer.” That was one of the few things that worked with the live format (though could be just as entertaining if played with Wombat alone). And I like the use of the sound buttons.
As to the Blu Ray/HD DVD discussion: I tend to agree with Cheapy that one of the formats is going to win...eventually. But I think Wombat is correct in that 90% of the general public doesn’t understand the advantage of high definition formats over DVD or even standard def TV and doesn’t really care. There was a recent study that said 55% of the households with HDTVs are NOT feeding it HD content. That’s crazy. And I’m quite sure the vast majority of the WalMart crowd thinks regular DVDs ARE high definition. So these new formats have a tough road to hoe.
Add to that the fact that there are currently only about 250 titles available on each of the HD disc formats. For comparison, Netflix offers well over 80,000 standard DVD titles. The only thing that even remotely interests me on Blu Ray or HD DVD at this point is Planet Earth, and I already have that in HD on my DVR. When Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Criterion Collection titles start coming out on HD discs, THEN I’ll take notice.