Cowboy Bebop for the Masses & Squeezing More Entertainment from your System

In searching out some news on recent projects from Yoko Kanno (read: genius) I stumbled across some recently breaking news. It appears that a live-action anime Cowboy Bebop movie is in the works at Fox. In my humbled opinion, animation of this caliber should never be turned into "reality". There are nuances and personalities in the series that can never be captured correctly with actors. They've already announced that Keanu Reeves will be playing the role of Spike.

[IMG]http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb312/IGDetail/Keanu.jpg[/IMG]

"All we are is dust in the wind," dude.

Albeit Reeves 'looks' like Spike, I personally doubt he can pull off Spike's deep, resounding internalized intelligence based upon his recent dull portrayal of Klaatu in "The Day the Earth Stood Still". I'm also curious who they're going to find to play the excitable Ed and Ein without resorting to Scooby-Doo-like computer scorcery. So far music maestro Yoko Kanno has yet to say whether she's on board with this project and, without her, it's highly questionable that the movie will have as much of a cultural impact as the original series. Kanno's music is what put the Bebop in Cowboy Bebop, transcending the anime to a timeless piece of artwork.

On a totally unrelated note, I've recently tried out both TVersity and PlayOn. TVersity is a great media server for streaming content (videos, pictures, music) from your PC to your game system, although it's rather devoid of any real internet video streaming. Relying solely on your game system to pull music through your media center enabled PC can be rather limiting (the PS3 plays mostly DivX), but TVersity can play anything that your PC can without any help from Windows.

[IMG]http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb312/IGDetail/PlayOn.jpg[/IMG]

PlayOn, however, is in a whole different category. It perfectly streams, in quite high resolution mind you, videocasting from such sources as Hulu, YouTube, and CBS. It can't play the content currently on your PC, but the amount of media out on the web easily makes up for that. Hulu is definitely the best source of entertainment currently and I have a feeling that online media is still only in its infant stage. Be prepared for more partners to join in the video streaming revolution.

It took no effort to get both of these programs running simultaneously on my PS3 through a hard-wired router. The folder system on the PS3 also makes it easy to find recent episodes of The Simpsons and Family Guy and old episodes of MacGyver and the A-Team. TVersity if a totally free software right now but PlayOn is only free for 15 days before you're required to purchase it. For the "low" price, however, this is a great alternative to buying an extra cable box.