MachinimaTv.net Blog

So I have indeed been enjoying the new fall premieres on TV. I’ve been watch Heroes each and every monday night, and even found a few new shows that I like.

With this new fall lineup comes an old favorite of mine  (I was pretty much obsessed with this story when I was a kid) The shows/stories that I am talking about are the NBC miniseries “V”, and “V- -The Final Battle”. On November 2, ABC is making a premiere of this “reimagining” of the series, and it looks to be a good time…I’m really looking forward to it.

In the meantime (since this is one of the later fall premieres) Fan cast has posted the original Series (not the mini series), that start immediatly after the events of “V- The Final Battle”.

 
The New Series will feature the talents of Scott Wolff (Party of Five), and Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost), but the original series mini-series and series from 1984 (posted above) contains the talents of Robert Englund, Micheal Ironsides, Jane Badler, Marc Singer, and Faye Grant. Its definately worth the watch if you have some time to kill.

This is a direct message from Start Logic-

…so as you can see, this is a problem for more people than just me.

Hopefully the site will resume normal function either today or tomorrow.

So, The Xbox is still broken, and I didn’t really broadcast anything last weekend. My apologies for that, but life away from the broadcast and the internet would not permit it.

I miss the xbox and the ease of broadcasting with it. This new way is much harder, and the plain and simple fact is that all of the machinima does indeed look better when it streams from the xbox, instead of my desktop. Until the Xbox is fixed, I plan on being more sporatic with my broadcasts (and not for too long), as these broadcasts will be for the sole purpose of building an archive, and keeping the channels somewhat fresh.

Once the xbox is fixed I will return to my normal broadcasts, and somewhat of a normal broadcasting schedule. 

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With my current financial “crisis”, I am finding new life in some of the games that I have bought within the past few years. Right now I have the following games installed on my computer-

Sims2 (complete)
Sims3
Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 (Complete)
The Orange Box (Half Life 2, HL2 ep1, HL2 ep2, Portal, Team Fortress 2)
The Movies (with Stunts and Effects)
Star Wars: Empire at War – Gold Edition
Star Trek: Elite Forces 2

Sure I would love to run down to EB games and get some newer games to play, but with a hefty pricetag for most of the new stuff…this is what I am faced with. Besides, most of the games that cost $40/$50/$60 right now, will indeed be $20-$30 after Christmas.

So, for now…I wait until after the holidays to play anything new (and yes, that includes waiting for a price drop on TS3-World Adventures)

For anybody that knows me, you also know that I like crude Humor.

It doesn’t get much cruder than this weeks pick for “What I’m Watching”.

F.Y.I.- Toots Braunstein is my Favorite Character on the show…

Drawn Together Is suggested for Mature Audiences Only, and is not advised for children. Parental Discretion is Advised.

So the telethon has been a partial success. After broadcasting for almost 36 hours We managed to raise $62.00 towards the $120.00 goal. Many thanks to all the donators, chatters, and mods who helped out for the event, and I will return to show the Bulk of the remaining programming on Monday afternoon, and on into Monday night.

 The Lineup artists who donated (and helped out) for the event will be recieving a “push” for their machinima on the stream in the coming weeks(extra plays, mentioning), and will each recieve a few “command performances/requests” next time they are on the MachinimaTv or MachinimaTv Nightflight streams.

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My other half has lost a job. Skye came home from the bar tonight with the news that the business is closing down. Because of this, ninhead(me) will need to seek employment very very soon. This will also mean that until this problem has been worked out, there will be less broadcasts, and my time will be much more limited very soon.

Sorry guys, but I don’t make any money off of MachinimaTv, and I do indeed have to pay the rent (and find another $60 to get an xbox360 fixed).

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The MachinimaTv stream on friday was kinda so-so. While I did enjoy seeing everybody again (I’ve been missing you guys the past few weeks), there were indeed problems (with framerates and various other things), so more encodng will need to be done. This method of broadcasting is merely a temporary one until I can indeed get the console fixed.

I will be returning to the “fundraising/telethon/ninhead channel” next weekend at some point in an attempt to raise a bit more money, but no promises will be made as far as what will be shown, or when this will take place. I will release additional information on this subject as I can.

So I am taking a break right now from encoding files to post a small update here as to whats going on and what we are all in for tomorrow night.

Things are pretty good it seems…

I’ve managed to knock out a good portion of the encodings that need to be done before the return of the stream tomorrow night. So far I’ve managed to encode about 22 movies in the past 24 hours.

It’s not hard to do, but its terribly boring.

The “shiny little bright spot” of this is that I have a second compy (which is pretty old) that I can watch dvd’s on while the movies are encoding. I am also well “up to date” with all of my “Trash Tv” shows (i.e. springer)as I’ve had the regular TV running in the background. 

At this point I am looking forward to tomorrow nights stream, and think that MachinimaTv shouldn’t look TOO much different than it was before.

Regardless, this whiole thing would have been much easier had my Xbox not died on me, but I’m trying to make lemonade here, and I’ve got a nice full lemon tree to get my flavor from.

Enough with my drivel, its back to work for me now….

In order to put MachinimaTv back on the air on friday, I will be spending quite a bit a time over the next few days encoding. Although I have done a good majority of what needs to be done, I still have several more to go. This also means going through each movie on the MachinimaTv lineup and making sure it is the right size (no bigger than 720×480) to fit on this new broadcaster.

My Apologies to each of the lineup artists that have HD videos on the MachinimaTv streams, but until the Xbox gets fixed, this is one of the tough choices I’ve had to face over the past few weeks.  

I chose to put the machinima streams/broadcasts back up as quickly as I could instead of waiting to get the Xbox fixed and not broadcasting at all. This also meant re-encoding many of the MachinimaTv “staples” that are considered “HD”. With these re-encodings there isn’t too much of a difference, but I feel the need to mention it.   

With this new broadcasting software, I was finally able to work out an h.264 picture (instead of vp6) last week, so MachinimaTv shouldn’t look much different than it was on the Xbox.  I am hoping for a nice smooth streaming experience once all the “re-encodes” are in place within the MachinimaTv Folder.

Now please keep in mind that I am not promising a “problem free” or “JTV error free” broadcast (there was a time last weekend where everybody got locked out of their rooms after refreshing…Evencito got lucky though…LOL!).  

After the short tests I ran last weekend, I feel confident in saying that I think we should be in good shape for the broadcast on Friday.

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Today also marks the end of the voting period for August Movie of the Month. Yes it should have ended two weeks ago, but since I haven’t been broadcasting, I felt it best to extend the voting period until I was a little closer to going back “on the air”.

Once again Congrats on the win, Jaydee!

The competition was rough, but you pulled it out…..I knew you could do it! LOL!

I will announce which movie won on Fridays Broadcast at 10:00pm (Eastern).

 Fridays stream will also begin the September’s  ”MachinimaTv Movie of the Month” contest (when I make my “Pick of the Week“).

I don’t have cable.

I  had it cut-off 6 months ago because I didn’t see the need to pay $100 a month for 300 channels of infomercials, or complete garbage.

Besides, I can still catch my favorite shows on regular network Tv, or here in the internet at Hulu, or Fancast.

This week I am watching “Dead Like Me” at Hulu.com.

Hulu has the first two seasons posted (the show was originally on ShowTime, and was very “short-lived”) and is a “must watch” for anybody that might be a Bryan Fuller or “Pushing Daisies” fan.

Please be advised that the show is suggested for mature audiences only.

If I remember correctly, there was rumor of a “Dead Like Me” movie a while back also…

My first order of business (with this blog) is to offer my most sincere congratulations to both Bkiddo, and Laroling for making it as far as the finals for this years BITFILM awards (http://www.bitfilm.com). 

Laroling has been honored for her film “Spinning Plates”.

Bkiddo has been honored for his film “Mad People See and Speak no Evil”.

Both Entries are solid competitors and are also part of the MachinimaTv Lineup.

Once again, congratulations to both of you, and best of luck for taking home the prize.

Voting is open until  September 24, 2009 on the Bitfilm website.

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Now, to address the issue of MachinimaTv being “Off the Air” for the past few weeks…

Microsoft really “screwed the pooch” on the Xbox360  and now MachinimaTv has paid the price for it.

Many, Many people have had problems with the 360 console and until now, I honestly loved my xbox. It worked really well (with on the occasional lock-up/freeze/crash) for over a year, but sadly I have suffered a “Red Ring of Death” 2 weeks ago in the middle of a MachinimaTv broadcast.

After a call to Microsoft,  it seems that I am merely a “face in the crowd” , and they want me to pay in order to have this problem fixed(even though its really a problem THEY created). This is because I only had 2 lights instead of 3.

I took it apart and cleaned out the console (twice now), but sadly that effort was to no avail.

As the MachinimaTv broadcasts rely upon my Xbox, I have spent the past 2 weeks scrambling to find a way to put the presentation back on the air. I finally worked something out last week with a different desktop software, but this will involve several re-encodings (I’ve been doing it for DAYS now, and its not a pretty site…I hate encoding files).

But because of this effort….

 I am very excited to say that MachinimaTv will make its return on Friday, September 11, 2009. 

I was hoping to add a few new artists to the lineup, but unfortunately it seems that trying to work this out has been pretty time consuming, and I have not had a chance to scout for additional talent. I will be doing that as soon as I have time to do so.

Next weekend(Saturday-Monday), I will be hosting a “Fix the Xbox Telethon” (on my private stream) to try to raise money to get the console fixed.

 I have already added the “chip-in” widget to all 3 channels, the forum, site, and this blog.

Please help by coming for a watch, or by making a small contribution to this cause.

Here’s the widget-