These are the days of sites like ESPN3.com. On that site you can watch pretty much any game that ESPN has on their numerous channels and many that aren't on TV at all. The caviat is that your cable provider must subscribe to the service. If you do get the service, it works amazingly well. These are also the days where every NCAA basketball game is streamed online for free. NBC put every Sunday Night Football game online this season and announced they would be streaming the Super Bowl as well. You can subscribe to online packages for the NBA, MLB, an NHL. Hell, I watched Wrestlemania by paying for an excellent quality stream from wwe.com. Why am I sitting on my couch listening to a radio stream on my iPhone?

Normally I would be listening to the radio broadcast and watching the same video that's displayed on the jumbotron in the arena using the school's "All-Access" service. It's not the perfect solution, but as an out of town fan, it's all we have for most games. It's also not cheap. I pay the school $15/month for the ability to watch this.

I understand why every game is not streamed. Most of the current media contracts were probably written before it was a feasible option. I asked the University of Memphis's Sports Information department's Twitter account about tonight's game and was told "The game is televised on Fox Sports Tennessee. Fox media rights do not allow us to stream the game online."

This is the crux of my problem with online media rights. Streaming rights, like everything with contracts, can be re-negotiated. I don't see why I can't give money to the university to get the ability to watch the television broadcast of the game online. They should be responsible for giving the proper rights holder their appropriate fees.

The same should go for the networks themselves. Tonight's game is on Fox Sports South. Why can't I pay for streaming access to their network, or other regional cable networks? Thanks to the Internet I can watch live streams from across the world. There is no technical reason preventing the networks from offering live streams of sporting events. The legal side needs to get worked out. I know this, but it needs to happen. I don't know what level it needs to happen at, but the experience for out of town fans is horrible compared to what it could be in this day and age.

Postscript:
As I was finishing this post up, the Memphis game was joined "in progress" as the local Fox Sports affiliate's game ended. Just because I can now see my game doesn't make me any less upset at the options that out of town fans have to watch their favorite team play.

iPhone updates – The January event has been about new iPhones the last few years, so we’re starting there.

• new iPhone models shipping in June with an OLED screen, a better camera, faster processor, more storage, but not much more.
• iPhone OS 4.0 with improvements in app management, WiFi syncing with iTunes, customizable lock screen (with things like calendar entries), and speed improvements.
• AT&T tethering plans announced

Tablet – While I’m still not 100% sure they’re going to release a tablet in January, this is what I’d like to see in one

• 10” screen
• Customized OSX built for touch, but not necessarily based off the iPhone design. Maybe based off AppleTV, either in the whole OS or only for media playing
• WiFi media syncing with iTunes
• DisplayPort output

AppleTV – The AppleTV is badly in need of a refresh. The OS just got updated a few months ago, but there’s still room for improvement.

• AppleTV software integrated with a TV
• New version of AppleTV OS with the new interface throughout.
• New hardware with faster processor and more ram
• Front Row update for Snow Leopard to unify AppleTV and Front Row interfaces

We’ll see how accurate I am. Out of all of these, I’d say the WiFi syncing is the thing that I’m hoping for the most. I hate having to connect to my laptop to sync when I’m in a hurry. I wish it could stay in sync automatically when they iPhone and Mac are on the same wireless network.

The AppleTV stuff is very unlikely to happen, but it would be nice to have better hardware. The main interface that Apple put out with the newest update is really nice as well. I can’t see why they wouldn’t put that in Front Row as well.

I decided on the Onkyo based on good reviews online, its features, and its price. I almost got the 706, but figured that I'm going to have this for a while, so it would be worth it to get the extra ports. Amazon also had it for almost $300 off, which helped. Set up was a breeze. The unit has a setup microphone that detects tones from the speakers to calibrate. As soon as you plug in the microphone you get a menu for the calibration. That's a nice touch, I was fumbling through the menus before I discovered that all I had to do was plug it in. I still only have 5.1 speakers from my previous system and the receiver showed that as my setup after the audio setup was completed.

Right now we only have our TivoHD set up through HDMI. I found that after using a HDMI cable to go from my TV to the receiver I didn't have enough cables for all my devices (I was already one short). I should have some coming from Monoprice soon, and have used the component cables from my DVD player on my AppleTV. There was some sync issues with that and I had to adjust the settings to get the audio and video coming through together on that. I don't know if it was the component cables or something else. I didn't have that problem with HDMI and my Tivo. My eventual setup will have my Tivo, AppleTV, and DVD player all using HDMI and my Wii using component so I'm not too worried about it.

It's been set up for over 24 hours and so far I'm happy with my purchase. I still have some things to figure out but it looks like it'll be a perfect fit in my entertainment center.

I've now put Windows Server 2008 back on in the Server Core mode and am running nothing but Hyper-V on it. I think some of my problems were tyring to do too much with the base OS, and if I can't have something as light as ESXi, I'll do the best I can with this. Thankfully, I still had my VMs saved, but I decided to rebuild my XP one because it was too slow. It was converted from an old desktop I had last year and needed to be dumped. Both the Server 2008 and XP VMs are working fine.

My Drobo however...I'm still trying to diagnose what's going on with it.