NerdTV Available by Free Internet Download

Tech-Focused Interview Show NerdTV Now Available Via a Free Internet Download

NerdTV identifies its target audience with its very name and with its format: It’s not available over the air but rather via a free Internet download.

The tech-focused interview show, created by pundit and PBS host Robert X. Cringely, is meant to be unlike anything on regular TV or elsewhere on the Internet, where video tends to come in short clips.

Instead, this is a "Charlie Rose"-style chat, about an hour, with "some incredibly smart person you always wanted to meet," Cringely says.

Among the names lined up for coming weeks are former Sun Microsystems Inc. guru Bill Joy, Apple Computer Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak, computing pioneer Doug Engelbart and Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt.

This week’s debut offering was a talk with Andy Hertzfeld, who is described with a sort of nerdish breathlessness as "the first Macintosh programmer … ever."

At one point, Hertzfeld recalls his amazement at discovering how Wozniak had designed the Apple II’s display screen: "He used a very clever trick of clocking the basic machine synchronous with color microburst, so effectively you could micro-program the NTSC signal."

You can’t say you weren’t warned.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv