hairy_hen

Thanks for pointing out the alteration to the first lightsaber scene, msycamore.  I too noticed that quite a while ago, and it bothered me because there was something not right about it.  Obviously the old transfers are of rubbishy quality, but you can still see the difference even there; the Technicolor print, of course, is by far the best representation.  The blade looks so well made and natural in that version, while the SE is flat and sharp and strange and stupid in comparison.

The same kind of thing is apparent on the Millennium Falcon's engine glows--the SE version never looks as good and is more artificial than the original.  Even with all the errors made back then, the older effects work was quite often stylistically superior.  Funny, isn't it?

"We never should have been Star Wars fans in the first place"?

What an incredibly stupid thing to say!  Sure it can be real tough being an oldschool fan these days, but that doesn't change the fact that the original films are awesome and that we all got tremendous enjoyment out of them, and that most will continue to do so.  I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Even with all the needless difficulties and rubbish that's been going on, I still love the original movies and always will.  The fact that so many people here continue to put so much effort into preserving them is inspiring and amazing to me, and it seems the height of foolishness to go telling people to give up and not bother with any of it.

Heh, seeing Star Wars for the first time around the tender age of seven, I totally thought it should be Luke and Leia.  I didn't like Han at all; I found him to be abrasive and awful while Luke was good and true, and his interference was something that had to be overcome.

When I saw Empire a few months later, I was horrified by the Han/Leia storyline.  I was convinced that he had somehow 'tricked' her into loving him, and that this was wrong and bad.  That, combined with Vader being Luke's father and the way the good guys are so utterly defeated, freaked me out and made me really dislike Empire, and it was a long time before I dared to watch it again.

I didn't see Jedi until I was nine, since I had seen the others on my aunt's Beta player which was on the verge of breaking down.  Actually, I read the novelisation first since my school library had it, then sought out the movie . . . anyway, the 'revelation' of Leia as Luke's sister certainly took me by surprise, but it worked in its purpose, for it satisfied me that they weren't actually meant to be as a couple.  Actually I think it worked better by reading it first, since the book had the scene's extra dialogue and backstory, explaining the circumstances of their birth and separation and so forth.  (This information, of course, is partially contradicted by the prequels, to my great annoyance.)

After that I was able to go back and watch all three movies and enjoy them all while viewing them as a cohesive story--even if it did take me a while to develop an appreciation for Empire on its own terms, or Han as a character.  I didn't like sarcastic or irreverent people at all back then, which was part of the difficulty I had with the idea of Han and Leia.  Today, however, I myself am often quite sarcastic and irreverent, so it no longer poses any problem.  lol

I know now that Lucas basically made up the idea of her being the sister and the 'other' at the last minute, but it doesn't really bother me.  For one thing, the RotJ book strongly implies that she unconsciously used the Force to help her strangle Jabba, since nobody would have been physically strong enough to do such a thing otherwise; for another, this works in considering how she was able to withstand Vader's interrogation in the original film.  More importantly to the topic, being more understanding of such things than as a kid, I see how Han and Leia was always a much more interesting and valid choice in writing the romance aspect, so it completely works.

Still, I'll always remember those early days when I thought it should have gone the other way.  ;)

005: It sounds to me like your Bluray player is sending out a stereo or Prologic downmix over analogue to your receiver.  It also sounds like it is capable of sending out the core DTS track via S/PDIF, but your receiver has Dolby Digital only.  Am I understanding what you mean correctly?

If that's the case, you'll probably need to upgrade your equipment to get 5.1 from most Bluray discs.  If your current receiver has multichannel analogue input capability, then a player with this kind of output and the ability to decode all the new codecs would be your best bet.  As long as the player's digital-to-analogue conversion is of good quality, you'll get HD audio regardless of how it is encoded on the disc.  The other option is to get a new receiver, so that you'll at least be able to bitstream the core DTS 1509 tracks with coax or optical.  (Of course, by upgrading both you could send all audio via HDMI, but that's down to how much you can afford.)

Of course, one must never discount the importance of good speakers.  It is entirely possible to get better results from lossy codecs heard from high quality speakers than from a lossless signal played through a flimsy low fidelity system.  It is for this reason that I highly recommend anyone looking for a new audio setup do themselves a favour and get some real speakers, and avoid HtiB's.  Not only are HtiB speakers usually of low sound quality and high distortion, their small size means they cannot reproduce the audible spectrum its entirety--there will be 'holes' in the frequency response, particularly in the midrange, meaning that the sounds our ears are most sensitive to will sound thin and weak.  This also forces the subwoofer to be crossed over at a higher frequency than is desirable, meaning it can be localised as a source of sound.  If you can hear the bottom end of voices coming from the sub, something is seriously wrong!  The subs themselves tend to be little more than noise makers, over-emphasising distorted tones around 60 hz to compensate for the fact that they can't actually get much deeper than that.

Avoid anything from Bose like the plague--contrary to their ubiquitous advertising campaign, they are not of good quality, and in fact exemplify all the bad traits I listed above.  Even other HtiB's would be preferable.  The fact that they claim to be hifi and charge at least six times what their products are worth is one of the great crimes of the audio world; that so many people believe them without question shows how little many know about what makes for good sound.

I don't mean to sound like some kind of audio snob or anything like that--I don't exactly have the world's best sound system myself, not even close.  But with a bit of research and effort it is quite possible, even easy, to put together a system that greatly exceeds the quality of an HtiB, and for not that much more money either.  Depending on budget you may have to build it over time and get only a few components at once, as I did, but it's well worth it in the end.  When I was starting out I found the 'HtiB Alternatives Thread' on avsforum to be a very useful place to look for recommendations.

S/PDIF (digital coaxial/optical) cannot pass high resolution multichannel audio.  To do so you must use an HDMI connection to the receiver, and the receiver must be able to decode the new codecs.

Decoding can also take place in the player, with the audio being sent via multichannel analogue connection, but your player supports stereo analogue output only, so this is not an option.

Obviously, you will need a second HDMI cable to go from the receiver to the tv.  Such cables can be outrageously overpriced in stores, particularly the Monster brand.  Try a website such as www.monoprice.com instead.  I don't have HDMI myself but I ordered my S/PDIF cables and speaker wire from there and recommend them wholeheartedly.

Be aware that some devices have issues with 'HDMI handshake', the communication each component must perform with the others to ensure compliance with the copy protection scheme.  Problems may arise if a manufacturer has not implemented the spec correctly on a certain model, or in a fashion incompatible with the component on the other end.

Of course, you can still obtain good results from using S/PDIF.  While it will not be the full high resolution audio signal, all DTS-HDMA Bluray discs contain a 1509 kbps 'core' track for backwards compatibility.  Depending on the quality of your speakers and audio equipment (not to mention room acoustics), this may well be nearly indistinguishable from the uncompressed version.  Similarly, discs with PCM or Dolby TrueHD tracks also contain AC3 versions, usually at 640 kbps.

Regardless of your connection type, check your Bluray player settings to ensure that it is outputting a 5.1 signal and not a stereo downmix.

The Four Horsemen, by Metallica.

What an awesome combination of unbridled enthusiasm and masterful technical brilliance!  This description applies to all their albums with Cliff Burton, especially.

Choose your fate and die!  ;)

I've read the draft screenplay, and it was very interesting.  But however the revision process happened specifically, the finished version is obviously much better.  Aside from Vader being Luke's father, and the hyperdrive being busted for the whole film, pretty much everything in the structure of the story is recognisably there, albeit unpolished and with a lot of unnecessary exposition.

It's quite clear that any claims of the 'saga' being all planned out in advance are obviously ludicrous in the face of having read this, though.

As good as Holy Grail is, my estimation is that you're not a "true" fan of Monty Python until you have more than a passing familiarity with the Flying Circus television programme.  Not only does it contain their best material, but much of it is also far less played out.  I have to go quite a while in between Holy Grail viewings because of the endless quoting, which puts it in deeply unfortunate danger of becoming unfunny through sheer repetition.  (The same could also be said for that infernal Dead Parrot sketch, however.)

I was lucky enough to see a theatrical screening of Holy Grail a few years ago.  Thankfully the crowd didn't shout out the lines during the film or anything like that, which would have been difficult since the theatre had their sound system cranked up to nearly oppressively high volume.

I think this thread should be about how much better my thread that I'll never make is than this thread.

So no takers on the squeezing blackheads idea, then?

Damn . . .

:p

If this thread is about princesses, we have to add Midna to the list.  (see my avatar)

I was getting seriously bored with zombies anyway.  At some point, even a thread about squeezing blackheads could have been more interesting.

astral loon-burger projection is the future of cinema

but yer helths is mad importnt1!

The Naughty Bits of Reginald Maudling

@ all yoos phrinkophiles:

im in ur rektm steelin ur tapewrmz

You could definitely do that in some places, and it would probably give much better results, but any shots with cgi changes wouldn't work at all without a lot of effort to remove them.  In those cases noisy but non-smeared laserdiscs are the best thing available--not great, but still preferable to the GOUT in the worst shots.

Why is it that during and after taking a really huge dump, it feels like you've been rectally abused by a Mack truck?

Mine is a nickname I was first given in school around age 13.  Fresh into being teenage boys, it was very funny to go around referring to everything as 'hairy' (as in, "who stole my hairy pencil?").  With 'hen' being an abbreviation of part of my name, "Hairy Hen" was the inevitable result, and remained in use for quite a while.  Among a few friends, I'm still called that occasionally even now.

It seemed natural, therefore, to adopt it as a screen name.  I first used it on a Harry Potter website in early 2004.  For whatever reason, I spelled it with all lowercase letters and an underscore between the words, and have usually used that same rendition ever since.  I've had other screen names as well, most of them bizarre and some being oblique Tolkien references, but this is by far the one I've used most often.

(The irony of it was that at the time I was actually the least hairy of any of my friends by a considerable margin, though this may not necessarily be true anymore.)

Had I thought of it, I might have gone with "The Drink Inspector", which is what I called myself when I prank-called the Coca-Cola company one time, or a Monty Python kind of name such as Uxbridge F. Stool-Sample or Mrs. B. J. Smegma or something like that.  lol

Aren't they on the PAL '95 laserdiscs?

Hmm.  I've always thought that a smear-free source might be good to use in a project that is primarily GOUT-based, but substitutes the shots most affected by DVNR with a cleaner source.  Even if the overall difference in quality and colour and so forth didn't match up exactly, it could still make for a more satisfactory viewing experience.  Perhaps this laserdisc would be a good choice for that.

Incidentally, what sound mix does it have?

Hairy hairy_hen, was hairy.

The Darths in the movies tend to be abbreviations of words that start with letters 'I N'.  InVader, InSidious.  So--to fit with the ridiculous notion that 'Darth' was ever meant to be a title, there should really be a character called Darth Ane.

I do hope 7.2 ends with a satisfactory wand to wand show down between Harry and Voldemort.

Somewhat a spoiler:

The book ends with an extremely unsatisfactory wand to wand confrontation between Harry and Voldemort.  Personally I have some level of hope that this will be rectified in the film so that the contest is decided through actual skill and not flimsy coincidence (the trailers make it appear so), but who knows . . .

First five songs on Nirvana's Nevermind.

Then all three Harry Potter soundtracks by John Williams.

Well, in the book it does come up again later--Harry doesn't find out about what it's actually doing until they go to Hogsmeade.  So I suppose that mentioning what it actually is can be put into that same conversation.

It doesn't really matter too much that it will seem like they're pulling it out their @$$, because the way it actually ends up in the book felt like that too.  lol

I'm assuming they're going to have that be explained in part two.  It would fit in with the way information is presented in general--while in the book Hermione pretty much explains almost everything before they even go anywhere, in the movie she's figuring things out as they go and doesn't always have all the answers.  (Quite a reversal from the way the films usually write her.)  It's also possible Peter Pettigrew's demise may have been moved somewhere into part two as well, although I'm not sure exactly where that would fit in.

The only thing that was jarring to me was that the shard of Sirius' mirror, which had been cut from the OotP movie, is re-introduced without any explanation at all.  The role it played in their escape from the Malfoy's house makes this a fairly large oversight; but again I guess they'll say something about it in the second part.