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Bluto

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Join date
14-Nov-2016
Last activity
28-Mar-2024
Posts
310

Post History

Post
#1319288
Topic
What's everybody's favorite Original Trilogy movie - Star Wars, Empire, or Jedi?
Time

Slavicuss said:

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK:

The best direction of the three.
The actors are more comfortable and confident in their roles.
More ambitious and polished SFX.
The introduction of new and interesting characters.

I would agree wholeheartedly with all these and add the following (all IMHO):

  • the best soundtrack of the three films
  • darker tone (less of a children’s film, making it even more appealing later in life)
  • more atmospheric

Only suffers from being a middle chapter.

One could argue that being a middle chapter has its advantages, too. The film doesn’t need to devote too much time before “getting going” since the main characters are already known. And I often find the middle of a story the most satisfying: the plot twists and turns, leaving you wondering quite how matters will be resolved. The anticipation of the ending can be better than the actual ending. I’ve always loved the final scene of Empire: a time of loss, reprieve, and yet also of hope.

Post
#1317297
Topic
Why don't people hate the Palpatine re-casting in ESB yet despise Force ghost Anakin's re-casting in RotJ?
Time

DuracellEnergizer said:

He’s silly in ROTS once he whips out his laser dildo and goes full Henrietta. Before that point, he’s very good; I’ll go so far to say he’s better in most of the PT than he is throughout ROTJ.

I’m not familiar with that expression… Is it an obscure reference to Evil Dead II, or am I way off?

Regarding the casting of the emperor, I much prefer the calm, eerie portrayal of the original. Already in ROTJ, I thought McDiarmid’s cackling was a bit over-the-top, nevermind in ROTS. But then many things are over-the-top in ROTJ, so I guess a Revill-style emperor may not have worked as well without also darkening the tone elsewhere in the film. But I can accept that from a continuity point of view, the recasting in ESB makes sense in principle. It’s a shame they messed around with the make-up, hood and dialogue.

Post
#1316046
Topic
NJVC Custom Blu-ray Set of Harmy’s Despecialized Editions now available on Mega
Time

I suspect what you have may actually be fine. My .iso files also behave a bit like archive folders when I double-click on them in Windows: I can navigate inside them as I would with a zip file. (I see a BDMV and CERTIFICATE folder at the root level.) There is no .iso file as such inside this “archive folder”, because the .iso file already is the archive folder.

What puzzles me is why you can’t mount your .iso files. Are you using Windows 10? If I right-click on one of my .iso files, the first option in the context menu is “Mount”.

Post
#1315963
Topic
Guide to Downloading Projects from Usenet
Time

Ideally, you should pause the download in NZBGet (click on the big green arrow at the top left) a minute or two before the 3 hours are up. Then check in Free-Usenet a few minutes later to see if your account has expired, renew your free account, enter the new password in NZBGet’s server settings, and resume the download.

If you don’t pause the download in time, NZBGet will think there is a problem with files missing on the server, rather than realise that the server password is no longer valid. Consequently, the health of the download will slowly reduce from 100%. You can nevertheless go through the above procedure to resume the download, the only difference being that NZBGet will have to repair the missing articles at the very end by acquiring some Par2 files.

If the health ever drops below the critical value (usually 90%, assuming there are enough Par2 files to repair 10% of the download), then NZBGet will mark the download as “Failure” and move it to the “History” tab. At this point, follow these steps to get things moving again:

  • Renew your password in Free-Usenet for another 3 hours.
  • Enter the new password in NZBGet’s news server settings.
  • Click on “Save all changes” followed by “Reload NZBGet”.
  • Click on the “History” tab and find the failed download.
  • Click on “Failure” and select “Retry failed articles”.
  • You should now find that the health is back to 100%. If you can keep it that way, NZBGet
    won’t need to repair any files at the end (as long as they are intact on the news server).

I have recently been in touch with the developer of NZBGet, but do not yet know whether this issue is something he can fix. (The fault may lie with Free-Usenet, depending what error message it is sending.)

Regarding your final point, the download speed for a free account is 1 Mbps ~ 0.42 GB/h (*).
That’s about 7.5 GB per day if you can renew the password every three hours while you’re awake. It’s certainly not very fast, but it is free! Much faster speeds are available at a cost, of course. For a large file such as 4K77, you’ll probably need to spend $5 or so for a fast “block” account unless you don’t mind waiting a week or two.

(*) This assumes the usual decimal convention for transfer speeds (1 Mbps = 1,000,000 bits per second) and binary convention for file size (1 GB = 1024^3 bytes).

JEDIT: I have added section 5 to my guide with the above details on how to proceed after expiry of the Free-Usenet account.

Post
#1315777
Topic
NJVC Custom Blu-ray Set of Harmy’s Despecialized Editions now available on Mega
Time

solsticegreen said:

When I extract a .rar set to create an iso image, I am ending up with an iso archive file rather than just an extracted iso file. Once the iso archive file is created, I am unable to open it or extract any separate iso file from that new folder. I have had this issue with both SW and ESB movie only sets so far and have used WinRAR and 7zip both to try to extract with. 7zip just comes up with an error message saying cannot extract as archive. WinRAR allows me to look inside the iso archive and navigate but nothing else. There does not appear to be an actual iso inside the archive. Only the individual .m2ts movie segments. Has anyone else experienced this issue?

On a PC, the freeware program “ImgBurn” should recognise and deal with the ISO file correctly when burning to a Blu-ray disc. If you download this, just make sure you get the “no open-candy” version to avoid any unexpected extras being installed. (MajorGeeks has a safe version.)

Post
#1310507
Topic
Guide to Downloading Projects from Usenet
Time

Vultural said:

You got a three hour time limit until it expires.
Beforehand expiration, you better hit PAUSE on NZBGet or you’ll receive fails.
These affect the “health” of the file. Once health falls below 90%, it’s all over, Barney.

I didn’t know NZBGet would do that after expiry of the 3-hour Free-Usenet account. Ideally, it should realise that the news server password is no longer valid and warn you, rather than assume the files are all broken. Or perhaps it’s an issue with Free-Usenet sending incorrect information. I’ll try to let the developer know about this issue.

Having had a look, there seems to be a workaround for now. If the health drops below the threshold needed for the Par2 recovery (usually around 90%), the file is automatically moved to “History” and the status changed to “Failure” as you have discovered. From here:

  • Renew your password in Free-Usenet for another 3 hours.
  • Enter the new password in NZBGet’s news server settings.
  • Click on “Save all changes” followed by “Reload NZBGet”.
  • Click on the “History” tab and find the failed download.
  • Click on “Failure” and select “Retry failed articles”.

JEDIT: I have added section 5 to my guide with the above details.

Post
#1310475
Topic
NJVC Custom Blu-ray Set of Harmy’s Despecialized Editions now available on Mega
Time

I’ve just generated the MD5 and SHA-1 checksums on my copies, and the SHA-1s match yours exactly. Out of interest, where did you see me post the Star Wars SHA-1 before? I have no recollection of ever generating/posting that one until just now…

Star Wars Despecialized 2.7 BD50.iso

  • MD5 Checksum: FE7CDEF0D9028661CFE41F6529074762
  • SHA-1 Checksum: 217177D9982CD6B023F302C83F1DB4188AB1A3DB

The Empre Strikes Back Despecialized 2.0 BD50.iso

  • MD5 Checksum: 7F1B6B5A4FC3E49414DA6B7B83B3A39A
  • SHA-1 Checksum: E70EB6F0C4E805F3584CCDCA438A4DA4AF3E9C52

Return of the Jedi Despecialized BD50.iso

  • MD5 Checksum: 6E970F5C9A18D5B83F03710BCFC591AC
  • SHA-1 Checksum: F4275385EA7843C2289D439D7DD9BCDD96CA0F28

JEDIT: Thank you, ot2k, for confirming that my memory is clearly shot! 😉

Post
#1307429
Topic
Guide to Downloading Projects from Usenet
Time

Vultural said:
I am a big user of Emule, which many also assume is dead.
Both Usenet and Emule are off radar, to me a very good thing.
Bluto, could you talk a little about “retention”?
I was a free user of Usenet back when Mysterbin was around, but retention limits finally pushed me towards Email and private tracker torrent groups.

The retention of Usenet news servers these days seems to be around 8 to 10 years. (For those who aren’t familiar with Usenet, “retention” in this context just refers to the length of time a collection of files is stored on the server before being deleted to make room for newer content.)

It may well be more than this; the better servers might look to see which older files are still be downloaded regularly and preserve these longer. Besides, after 10 years or so, many uploads will be obsolete having been replaced by newer and better versions.

Post
#1306051
Topic
4K restoration on Star Wars
Time

So far, the screenshots posted look promising to me. I’m by no means a fan of the various incarnations of the SE, but to my eyes the new colour grading is a massive improvement on the 2011 Blurays.

Are there any comparisons online between 2011/2019 of the following?

  • ESB: Snow scenes on Hoth (curious to see how white/blue the snow is now).
  • ROTJ: Any of the shots which are out of focus on the 2011 bluray.
Post
#1302268
Topic
❕ <strong>Welcome to the OriginalTrilogy.com |</strong> Introduce yourself in here | <strong>Useful info within</strong> ❕
Time

It seems you have obtained the MKV of Star Wars DEED v2.7, for which a list of the audio tracks can be found in HanDuet’s “The Ultimate Introductory Guide”. See the first post of this thread for a link to the guide: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Harmys-STAR-WARS-Despecialized-Edition-HD-V27-MKV-IS-OUT-NOW/id/12713

Go to section 3, step 7, and follow the link to the supplemental guide. You’ll then find NFO files with audio track listings for all the recent DEED releases.

Bluto

Post
#1302031
Topic
<strong>Despecialized Editions</strong> by Harmy : Index of 'How-To's &amp; Help' Threads | Index of 'General Despecialized Threads' | ‘Where are they? And how do I get them?’ mega-merge thread...
Time

sumyungguy said:

I was able to find it on usenet but some of the rars are corrupt. Tried redownloading but same thing-
any work arounds for this?

SnooPac’s link to HanDuet’s post is now the easiest way to obtain the DEEDs starting from scratch. But I have sent you a PM in case you’d rather try to fix your corrupted downloads first. (To read your PMs, click the speech bubble by your avatar at the top right.)

Bluto

Post
#1298711
Topic
Guide to Downloading Projects from Usenet
Time

I believe it is possible (albeit unlikely in the particular example you mention) for there to be two different users with the same username appearing on Usenet search results, since they may have signed up to different news servers. Although you may be searching on a specific news server, the files it has might not necessarily have been uploaded there originally. Remember that news servers continuously share files with each other. However, where the email address is also shown and appears to be valid, I would imagine that this does identify the user precisely.

You are correct to say that the newsreader is verifying fidelity rather than authenticity. In other words, all you know is that your downloaded files are a perfect match for what is stored on the news server. When files are originally uploaded to a news server, they are not verified for authenticity; after all, most of them are probably breaking copyright. Therefore, unless you trust that uploads from a particular user are authentic, I would recommend verifying the overall checksum at your end as well.

Post
#1295542
Topic
Small details that took you <em><strong>FOREVER</strong></em> to notice in the <em>Star Wars</em> films
Time

Yes - I happened to be watching that exact clip on YouTube recently, as I was trying to match various themes from the soundtrack CD to scenes in the film. One or two comments mentioned Fett turning his head just after Luke pulls out his gun, and I couldn’t believe I had never noticed that before.

The music playing during the procession (sounds a bit like a funeral dirge) is one of my favourite motifs in the whole trilogy. A slightly slower version of the theme recurs a few minutes later on the CD and was originally due to appear during the early stages of the Luke/Vader duel. I spent ages trying to find it in the film before reading online that this second rendition was pulled last minute, since the duel was more suspenseful with no music.

Bluto