Netflix Streaming VS. Amazon Prime and Roku 2

With my upcoming open heart surgery we are trying no to spend so much money.

As most people will know as of September 19th, Netflix is basically doubling it’s prices, and are losing STARZ in it’s streaming. Well I have used Amazon Prime shipping for years, to get 2nd day shipping from Amazon for $79 a year, and they added streaming service with most of the same shows as Netflix earlier this year, but we didn’t have anything to receive the signal, but at $7.99 a month to add streaming to Netflix, that is $95.88 a year. Well a new Roku 2 XS (with Ethernet) is $98, so we got one and are going to use the Amazon Prime Instant Streaming instead. In a year we will start saving money, and still get to stream most our shows.

Of course the interface on the Roku is not quite Netflix. No queue, and getting to your shows can be a chore without having a queue and at least Star Trek Voyager has some weird interlacing issues going on, but since we are already paying for Amazon Prime, why not use the free streaming.

I kind of hope Tivo adds Amazon Prime Instant Streaming though.

FCP.co on Matox’s Thunderbolt Adapter

FCP.co has an article on Matrox’s Thunderbolt solution, which is an adapter to work with any of their existing MXO products for $199 or $100 if you by an MXO as well.

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Of course that means only one Thunderbolt port, so this has to go at the end of your chain, but still pretty cool to get your old product with Thunderbolt, now if only someone releases a PCI thunderbolt card!

Adobe has a 45% gain after Apple releases FCPX!

Hardmac has an article on an official statement from Adobe about them having a 45% growth in OS X after the release of FCP X. Good job Apple! You could not have done more for Adobe, or in all likelihood AVID than crippling FCP X as you did!

And if you cared, you would have released an update to FCP X by now, but obviously you have not, so your claims to caring are shown to be hollow!

FCP.Co on the AJA Io XT thunderbolt

FCP.Co has a report on the new Thunderbolt equipped AJA Io XT with HD-SDI dual link support and HDMI input and output. Now if only someone could come out with a Thunderbolt PCI card for older MacPro’s (I know they say it is not possible). And I love that new cards are working with Media Composer.
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FCP.CO shows off DVcreators new FCP 7 Plug ins

FCP.co is showing off DVcreators 3 new film looks FXScript plug ins for Final Cut Pro 7 created by the great Graeme Nattress. The effects look great and are only $35 dollars, which is good as they don’t work with FCP X or anything besides FCP 7, which is EOL.filmstyles_fcp_dvcreators
Check out the filter FilmStyles at DVcreators.

Inexpensive enough that people may still get them for FCP 7, but they had better add Premiere Pro support soon!

Colored Sidebar in Lion Finder

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OS X Daily has this article on a free Japanese SIMBL Plug-In to Make you Lion Finder Sidebar color once again! Yipee! This should be a feature you can activate in Lion automatically, not something that you have to hack the system to do, but I have hacked mine, as this is a far superior configuration!
Instantly my old finder is back and looking much better. It is so much easier to find what you are looking for with Color icons! Nice!

onOne Releases Perfect Photo Suite 6

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onOne Software has released Perfect Photo Suite 6 for Photoshop. This has long been one of my favorite Photoshop plug in suits, and they have added new plug ins, Perfect Effects 3 replaces PhotoTools, they have added Perfect Portrait and Perfect Mask replaces Mask Pro 4. I am always using Photoframe and the rest of the suite is well worth it. Also love that when I owned the earlier version they gave a free 64 bit upgrade. This company totally rocks.