CatBus

No, not talking about Him, discussing Him in hushed, reverential tones.

Well, burning is too good for them, so what options does that leave us with? Restorations, I guess. Besides, CPY!

Na zdraví!

Check the first post in this thread for an idea how it spread globally. I think Japan opened in 1978, but I'm not sure.

Somebody pinch me (not you Frink).

Seems like an open invitation to Stinky-Dinkins, if you ask me.

It was a German company called Hush Technologies, but they don't seem to be around anymore. That was way back before HTPC's had quite taken off, so there wasn't much market for silent PCs (if you could even say there's much of one now).  It's well-made--the case itself is an impressive and heavy piece of solid aluminum industrial art.

Well, my tips are just by observing what this outfit did with my server, and I'm not sure I have a lot more I can add.  A power-brick style power supply (similar to those used in laptops), just seems to make a lot of sense for this application, but I'm not sure where you'd get them and how compatible they'd be with various cases and motherboards.

Intel publishes the TDP of their processors on their website--I would not assume that Celerons run cooler just because they're less capable.  The TDP numbers are actually a good way of comparing the different chips to each other (lower TDP is cooler/better), even if they aren't exactly real-world usable numbers in their own right.

I'd really want to caution you about the hard drives, though. If you're really serious about making this thing quiet (and if it was sitting next to my TV, I'd want that too), 3.5" drives, even the quiet 5400 RPM ones, turn out to be obnoxious once the system fans are gone and no longer cover up their noise.  If SSD is out of the question, I'd really go for 2.5" drives, 4200 RPM if possible.  I think Samsung Spinpoints are very quiet, although I'm not so keen on their long-term reliability (just speed up your normal replacement cycle).  The system I've got has an "adapter" for placing 2.5" drives into a 3.5" spot, which is basically two metal plates with a squishy material in between them.  You sandwich the drive between the plates, screw the plates into the chassis (with rubber grommits because you can never use enough squishy material), and then the drive vibrations are pretty well dampened, although it's still the noisiest part of the system.

That said, lots of people say they can't even hear the "quiet" PC fans that are out there, and you might be lucky enough to be among them. Determine exactly how quiet you can tolerate FIRST, because targetting absolute silence is a path to craziness.

EDIT: I also wouldn't worry about RAM, except that it will need to fit under whatever monster heatsink/cooling system you end up using for the CPU.

Not sure.  I know theatrically, SW and ESB were both shown dubbed for some showings and subbed for others.  ROTJ, interestingly, had no theatrical dub, so it was subbed-only (so another reason people may prefer the home video dubs is for consistent voice acting throughout the trilogy).

Given that, I'd assume the Japanese audience has always had a choice of subs & dubs on home video, since apparently they went through some trouble to make sure subtitled options existed theatrically. On VHS, they'd be two separate releases, of course.

But that's pretty much just guesswork based on what I know about the dubs.  I could be wrong.

EDIT: Actually, our latest & best capture of the '77 stereo audio comes from a Japanese laserdisc, so there were definitely some options for hearing it in English (actually better than the options available to English-speaking audiences, it turned out...)

You_Too said:

Life of Pi had different aspect ratios, and on top of that it had some stuff move out over the black borders sometimes!

I'm kinda torn on if this qualifies, personally. If there's content outside the frame, then it's not really fair to call that the frame, is it? Yeah, it's a bit of a pedantic distinction, but still...

Not that it wasn't a neat effect (and a reminder that 2D depth effect tricks can still be more effective than stereoscopic ones). Ang Lee has tried before to bring comic book inspired visual tricks to the big screen, and this effect worked out much better than most of the things he did for Hulk IMO.

pittrek said:

Does anybody have any experiences with passively cooled (fan-less) PCs? I'm trying to build for myself a HTPC, criteria are

- silence (that's why I want to try passive cooling)

- dimensions (the smaller the better)

- powerful enough for playback of 1080p MKVs

Unfortunately I have no experiences with passive cooling and google isn't very helpful :-) I'd like to hear some tips for the components

I have a fanless home server, but I didn't build it, I bought it. I don't envy the task of trying to build one of these--not that it can't be done, but heat kills PCs, so one mistake and it's fried.

What I know from my home server that may help you:

- If it's a possibility, use an external power brick for your fanless power supply. Moving the AC/DC converter outside the case removes one more heat source.

- Use a mobile CPU. They run cooler than their desktop counterparts, and are often powerful enough for the job.

- Use heat pipes or some such thing. Heat just radiating on its own without fans doesn't follow a very helpful path out of the case.  Heat pipes help direct it a bit.

- Metal case. The case itself should help conduct heat outwards. You wouldn't make your case out of wool, so why would you make it out of plastic?  It helps if the case has cooling fins, allows natural convection ventilation, etc.

- Surprise! It's still noisy! The trick of silent PCs is that once you get rid of the noisiest components (the fans), you can now more clearly hear the noises made by the quieter ones.  Hard drives should be solid state, or if they're mechanical, use quieter low-RPM 2.5" laptop drives, using a cushion to absorb vibration (but not so much to enclose the drive and not let the heat out).  And some capacitors can still hum more than others (change your motherboard!), etc, etc.

...and that's why I bought a pre-made one ;)

yoda-sama said:

I'm truly impressed with the effort of this early dub

Actually FWIW, the Japanese dub included with the DeEd is NOT the original Japanese theatrical dub (it's mislabeled), but one done much later for home video release with big-name voice actors, etc (not sure of the date).  The original dub is included in a collection of Japanese SW audio on the newsgroups if you're interested.

But your impressions do match up with what I've heard, that the home video dub is strongly preferred over the original theatrical dub in Japan, probably for those very reasons.

Harmy said:

And as to beer, I have every intention of spending all the money on the computer, because it's something I'll get much more use from :-)

I used to be pretty sure you had your priorities straight. I just don't know, man. Screw the computer and spend it ALL on beer, I say.

PM sent.

Mavericks said:

Ok, but still any interrogation is the duty of army, its intelligence, not the President of even the Defense Minister (who equivalent Vader used to be to). He ordered to bring them to him personally.

The record shows that for the one interrogation shown in the entire trilogy, Vader was not only involved but central.  Different armies are organized differently, especially when you've got force users who may have special abilities regarding interrogation (sensing conflict in others, thinking about sisters, etc).  There's no doubt at all that whatever Vader's official rank, he's involved in interrogations.

Actually I was wondering about GPU, and I think forgoing that could help protect you against overheating issues leading to rendering glitches (discrete graphics cards can add to system heat and also mess up case airflow).  I think it's a workhorse machine.  You may want to add a dedicated GPU later for other purposes of course and that would be fine.

Oh yeah: RAID would be nice for render speeds, and so nice in fact that if I were strapped for cash, I'd personally trade out half the RAM rather than sacrifice RAID. I'm sure you'll get other opinions ;)

Jetrell Fo said:

Little is sacred in OT land anymore

AFAICT all that's left is CPY. Everything else is fair game.

DominicCobb said:

What the hell these last two pages

Not only that, but I'm gonna have to call my engraver and change what's gonna be on my tombstone.

Because information is valuable in a military operation?  Remember, the Emperor was playing his "it's a trap" game pretty close to his chest, everyone else just thought it was a regular combat operation.  Of course the enemy should be captured and interrogated whenever possible.  Heck, even if it was widely known to be an Imperial trap, they should still do this.

Yeah, this is a red herring.  When people out in the media distribution world say "original trilogy", they just mean some version of the Special Editions.

Basically ever since they stopped explicitly labeling the Special Editions as such, there's been a lot of consumer confusion about what movie you're actually watching/buying/streaming.  Which, I feel, is an intentional bait-and-switch scam.

The short answer is: unless you got it from OT.com, it's the crappy wrong version you didn't actually want.

I clicked it and I just got this guy singing "Never Gonna Give You Up".  Weird.

team_negative1 said:

There is no one pretending to be anyone here, and unless people are willing to post some proof or evidence, it's tiring to keep hearing the same baseless speculation that adds nothing to this thread.

Seriously?

Unless that persons posts and says it himself, that would be proof, anything else is just distraction not paranoia.

So if -1 posts under the group account and tells us all it's him, that, and only that, proves that he's posting under the group account and pretending it's not him. That must be the double-secret backwards switcheroo approach to evidence, I hadn't thought of that.

You're doing a great job, team. I like your project and what you've done so far. What's really tiring is this "I'm hiding out from the DEA in the bedroom over the garage, but tell everyone I moved to Guatemala, this is totally gonna fool everyone" routine. Or, at the very least, change the team account password so he stops using it. The moderators here have already been on you about this, and they have access to IP address information if you want more proof. Christ.

Moth3r said:

StarThoughts said:

The limitations of a 192 kb/s Dolby Digital track as compared to the LPCM stereo track are pretty apparent to me whenever I hear the music.

ABX test results?

Why, the dialnorm and DRC alone would... oh ;)

Feallan said:

CatBus said:

Keep in mind that Mike's very open about his identity,

... If what he does is illegal, and could get him in trouble, why isn't he keeping low profile? ... But his behavior is mind-boggling to me.

What he's doing is not illegal.  His behavior is that of a law-abiding citizen.  That's the whole point.  He hasn't stepped over the line into piracy or distribution or any such thing, and he doesn't intend to.  So why keep a low profile?  There's no reason for it.  This is a choice he made early in the project, and it allowed him access to resources that would not otherwise have been available.  It will result in a better preservation in the end, and that's the long game here.  Many Star Wars fans are interested in what he's doing.  Where can you find a lot of Star Wars fans?  OT.com.  It's a sharing community second, a Star Wars community first.

Now, I really do get what you're saying.  This is still a sharing community.  And there was a period there, back before Mike had shared anything substantial with anyone in the community, that I felt his project was a net drain on the community's limited resources--a black hole where people's attention went and nothing ever came out.

But that was before Mike shared some of his resources with people here.  Yes, they were shared privately--but the contribution was huge, and the results are freely available to the entire community.  So he gave back (and he found a creative way to do it that AFAICT kept within the law).  He contributed, and my attitude changed.  Because frankly, he's given more to this community at this point than I have, and what would it say about me if I were to say he wasn't doing enough?

EDIT: I guess I should add that I privately believe that Mike's dream of someday providing the scans to some studio that will end up as the definitive Star Wars preservation would only really work if the studio wants to do it on the cheap.  If they do a real quality restoration, they'll use OCNs and other high-level sources to get as much detail as possible, and then use Mike's scans only as a color reference (this is how Tech IB prints are used in high-quality commercial restorations today).  Which means, in my opinion, when Mike provided Harmy with the Star Wars color reference, he provided Harmy with what may ultimately be the entire long-term value of his project.  But that's my opinion.

TFN hates Star Wars in general, from what I've been able to tell.

Keep in mind that Mike's very open about his identity, and even assuming he didn't get outright arrested for what you're asking him to do (because "reasons" include "it's illegal"), his career would be most definitely and negatively impacted.

Meanwhile -1 never revealed his real name, is pretending he's not part of his own project anymore (paranoia about the aforementioned "it's illegal"?), appears to be on the same 2076 timeline you're complaining about here anyway, and the quality won't be as good as what Mike's doing.

Some people are willing to break the law for you, a complete stranger. Some people aren't. I wish everyone shared, that'd be great, I understand. But when they have very good reasons not to (such as: it's illegal), I understand when they don't. And I'm happily surprised when they share anything at all, especially when it's the sort of extraordinarily helpful things Mike has given us that could not be gotten from any other source.

Well, I'm asking about this because I actually don't know the capabilities of the target device(s) for testing. Finding out what one or two devices can do is interesting, but it doesn't necessarily tell you what the lowest common denominator is.

As for test patterns, those look good to me (for NTSC naturally).  I'd assume a "correct" device would show just green and blue on the top pattern and all three colors on the bottom pattern.  But I suspect most devices would show all three colors on the top pattern and from what I've read, it's possible they'd even add black padding to the bottom pattern!

Mostly I was concerned about 704x480, from the point-of-view of compatibility. Yeah, it's a valid part of the spec, and I use HCEnc so creating a valid file isn't the problem, but do players actually do the right thing with it?  I've seen a number of reports about hardware players that make me a little nervous about using this lesser-known DVD resolution.  Also, I'm a little fuzzy on the benefit of nominal analogue blanking--is the lack of blanking on this resolution an issue?  But mostly--why do the places that actually bother to have the correct aspect ratio always seem to opt for 720x480 with blanking?  That is the question that really makes me concerned about the player compatibility of 704x480 video.

As for 720x480, so many players already get the PAR wrong, and it doesn't seem like any newly-created players are doing it right--I'm seriously wondering at this point if I should just forget the specs and encode at 720x480, just anticipating that the player will get the PAR wrong and by virtue of two wrongs making a right, the image will look correct.  That is, apparently, the path most major studios are taking.