We watched all of BSG redux, and even though we loathed Caprica thought Blood & Chrome deserved a shot. Plus it’s online. Easily accessible on my computer, but I like to watch TV on my TV. Here’s how.
Buy a Roku.
Install a Plex server on a nearby computer; in our case our living-room mainframe Mac Pro.
Fight your way through the creaky, irritating Plex channel selector to find and install the YouTube channel.
Install the Plex channel on your Roku.
Configure Plex on Roku to know about the nearby Plex server.
Tune in Plex on Roku, select the YouTube channel.
Navigate to the “Search videos” pane in Roku/Plex/YouTube with the idiotic Roku remote.
Type in “Blood and Chrome” character-by-character; reminded me of booting a 16-bit computer in the eighties.
Now you’re off to the races; the HDTV audio and video are just fine. But there has to be an easier way.
I think Google TV is supposed to be about doing this right. Wish I could use it in Canada.
Spoiler: The two “episodes” are really microEpisodes or nanoEpisodes or something, maybe a half-hour of TV between the two of them. But, I have to say, Blood and Chrome does show promise.
Contributions
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Geoff Arnold (Nov 10 2012, at 21:51)
That's why I have an Apple TV, so I can access all of the music and video on my iMac and get to YouTube. I've maxed out the (rather limited) connectors on my TV:
- Comcast DVR/set-top box
- Roku
- Apple TV
- PS3
Of course I can always get to YouTube (and Hulu, and Amazon, and Netflix) via my PS3, but the UI sucks horribly.
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From: stephen o'grady (Nov 10 2012, at 22:05)
The technical obstacles aside, I was actually hoping for better in the two episodes thus far. The cocky pilot narrative is beyond a cliche at this point, as is the war weary veteran bit. One of the things I appreciated about the original BSG was the extent to which it violated convention. All that I've seen of Blood and Chrome thus far indicates that its forgotten that lesson.
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From: Chris Swan (Nov 10 2012, at 22:30)
This would be a whole lot easier with OpenELEC on a Raspberry Pi (or similar), though I'm not sure whether the YouTube plugin does HD. I guess it's this sort of content that pushes YouTube past LOLcats and Gangnam Style and into territory where you want it on the main screen.
For the record I *loved* Caprica, but then I also enjoyed Accelerando. We must have some sort of singularity demarked taste boundary.
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From: James M (Nov 11 2012, at 00:28)
The other benefit for the Apple TV is mirroring your iPad/iPhone. If I find a video through Google Reader, can load it up on my phone then mirror it over to my TV easily, without having to load up the YouTube app.
I wonder if Boxee is any better or worse than Roku? I've only used the Apple TV.
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From: Dave (Nov 11 2012, at 05:37)
Why not install the Plex Media Center on the same computer? At least you have a full keyboard and can probably connect it to a HDTV easily enough.
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From: David Magda (Nov 11 2012, at 08:24)
For those folks without these appliances, the videos are on this "channel":
http://www.youtube.com/user/MachinimaPrime
And if you have a news (RSS/Atom) aggregator, you can subscribe to uploads from Machinima at:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/MachinimaPrime/uploads?orderby=updated
You can also replace "MachinimaPrime" with any YouTube username if you want keep update of new videos from your favourite creators without having to be logged in.
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From: Hub (Nov 11 2012, at 09:04)
Too bad there won't be more of this beside the original 2 hours.
Looks like they'll get my money for the DVD.
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From: Paul M. Watson (Nov 12 2012, at 02:11)
Apple TV does well. I clicked Watch Later on YouTube while at work, got home, loaded the YouTube app and was watching Blood & Chrome in minutes.
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From: Peter (Nov 12 2012, at 06:34)
The Roku app for Android makes typing into the Roku much more pleasant. Although some keyboards don't work (Swype, for instance).
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