By Michael Rutschky
Published on October 10, 2007
Oh yes, this is good. I just ran up the stairs to my apartment and jump kicked through my front door, eager to get inside and try out my new toy, a simple $10 cable that will connect my new 80 GB iPod Classic to my television. Think of the possibilities! I can play music videos and podcasts on my home TV! I can take my DVD collection on the go by storing it on my iPod, and when I get to a friend’s house or a hotel room, I’d just whip out my new cable and viola! Instant portable home entertainment center! I can even play slideshows of my comic strip, “The Chronicles of Mark Question,” with a song playing in the background for all my friends! Sweet!
So why isn’t it working? What the hell? Give me a second to check Google and make sure I’m doing this right. Meanwhile, my girlfriend can work on fixing the door. Oh, okay, here’s what’s wrong. Apple has locked the “TV Out” option for the new generation of iPods. Apparently the only way to get around this is to buy the first party connector cable from Apple’s website which runs for. $50? Not including shipping, handling, and (of course) waiting? Apple’s connector isn’t even all that sleek and cool; it’s some huge power dock thing! Well, so much for my delusions of 007-esque gadget grandeur.
Someone begins to chuckle outside, and I look out from my splintered door frame to see my neighbor, Chunk, smoking a cigarette underneath a light post across the street with a few of his cronies.
“Chunk!” I call out. “I hate all technology! I am the new Unabomber!”
My girlfriend puts down her electric screwdriver and tells me that it’s not a good idea to yell those kinds of things. I look back and notice some neighbors, older women walking down the road to their apartment.
“Disregard!” I shout. I can hear the neighbors on the road laughing.
Well, up until now I have been in audio/visual bliss, thanks to my new system for acquiring new music and video content. For the last month and a half I’ve been getting music from eMusic, an online mp3 subscription service that specializes in independent record labels. For $15 a month I get 50 downloads, which is obviously an incredible deal.
So I start off by using LastFM, which is a free program that instantly constructs a streaming radio station based on whatever genre or band tag you submit. Put in “Teengenerate” and you get a playlist of garage punk, likewise if you put in “Garage Punk” you’d probably get a playlist of bands like Teengenerate. This gives me new bands to listen to, most of which have albums for download at eMusic. Another advantage of LastFM is that it “scrobbles”, meaning that it keeps track of what you’re listening to, whether it’s on the LastFM player, or iTunes, or even on your iPod itself. If you’re cool like me, you can paste a widget of the songs that you’re listening to on your MySpace profile page or your LiveJournal so that your peeps can check out what you’re listening to while your listening to it. LastFM is also connected to a sort of social networking music site, but I haven’t really looked into that aspect of it.
As for videos, I have discovered a little program called Ares Tube. This is a free program that is simply a web browser that has the ability to download any videos you like from a plethora of video sites, including YouTube, MySpace, and Google Video, and save them as iPod-compatible files. Don’t worry, it’s legal. So, like, if I want to research Flash Gordon serials for my space opera comic strip, I can find and rip them from YouTube using AT and bring them with me wherever I go. Obviously it’d be great to watch them on a television screen, but, you know. Also, if I download a music video and categorize it as such in my iTunes library, my iPod will let me listen to the song independently of the video. This means places like YouTube are ultimately another means of downloading music.
All of this is basically pieced together from things I’ve read about much smarter people doing. If you know me, you’ll know how vehemently I detest anything close to corporate or mainstream music (unless it’s Prince, Bowie, or Beatles). Just in case anyone reading this shares my displeasure and needs some new bands to get into, here’s my Recently Played playlist from my iPod.
Bauhaus – Ziggy Stardust
Atlas – Battles
April March – Try To Cry
Rasputina – Draconian Crackdown
Stars – Your Ex-Lover is Dead
Adult. – Gimme Trouble
David Bowie – Drive-In Saturday
Cobra Killer – L.A. Shaker
Blonde Redhead – The Dress