negative1 said:i take it you don't care for the 35mm restorations of star wars, and the empire
strikes back, or the CED trilogy, or any of the other ones in the works?
You mean the threads that are now gone because you guys decided to "go dark"? How are we suppose to be excited about something when we don't know how things are progressing?
Tiptup said:Both candidates sucked when they tried to talk about the economy. McCain kept using incomplete sentences and Obama seemed to ramble about nothing. Once they got to foreign policy they seemed to deliver their lines better. All in all, McCain did better in terms of appealing to people who want fiscal responsibility and knowledge of the world and Obama did better in terms of being a calm smooth-talker who's good with worthless word games.
Why does this surprise anyone? How long was this debate scheduled for? And what was the topic? Foreign Policy. They shined when they started talking about that because that's what they've been studying for the last few weeks. They've both been coming up with talking points and what not on foreign policy, not economics.
Stinky-Dinkins said:They cost what, 5 bucks or less than DVD's?
Get a PS3.
<sarcasm> Yeah, because we like spending about twice what the player should cost </sarcasm>
I have no PS3 games and I don't intend to play any. The PS3 is an overpriced Blu-ray player. Maybe next year when the prices are under $200 I'll invest in a player. Somehow I doubt it though.
I'll stick with standard DVDs for now. Even though I don't have an upconverting player, they still look fine to me on my TV (I sit 15-20' from the screen, so I'd need a much bigger set in order to realize the benefits anyway).
thebigguy said:ferris209 said:McCain stomped Obama.
Agreed, as was to be expected. The only thing I did not like was that he seemed to talk down to him at times. I don't know how that will play, but either way he won hands down.
What did you expect? McCain's been in the Senate for 26 years. Obama's been there barely 2 and he's been campaigning for a good part of that. Obama deserves to be talked down to as someone that not only isn't paying attention to history, but wasn't even there for some of it.
Oh puhlease! We should not have to micromanage the freaking petition! If Lucas doesn't know how to do a proper release of a DVD in 2006, then he needs to gtfo of the movie business period! Nobody should have to tell the freaking director that he needs to remaster the film, clean it up, put on the proper audio, yada blah etc. No director in their right mind would take a freaking laserdisc master from 1993, throw it on a DVD, and sell it in 2006. And there's the problem. George Lucas is not in his right mind. Not anymore.
We didn't f'up a damn thing. Lucas is f'ing things up just fine on his own.
Bobocop said:Maybe we should try sending a letter to LFL to see what kind of response we get. Just asking them why the colors changed from the '97 SE. It would be interesting what their PR department comes up with.
It would probably be something to the effect of "It was a deliberate creative decision by George Lucas" which was the reason for the audio being messed up too.
Fair enough. It probably won't be a big deal until some killer title comes out that really uses it. Similar to how seamless branching wasn't a big deal until the T2 Ultimate set really used it. Then the people with players that don't support it will get pissed anyway. Unless of course the price of the players is substantially lower by then.
This article also points out that player http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080923-blu-ray-stutters-in-face-of-tough-economy-hd-downloads.html. I hadn't seen that player before, which I guess I can blame on Amazon not really wanting to move them since there's a better model out now. I think it's pretty bad that the format is actually doing worse than it was during the "war".
Season 2 was pretty bad mostly due to the writer's strike.
As far as Nathan's concerned, I don't think his dying and coming back was suppose to be a huge deal. I think the big shocker there was that Nathan was shot by Peter. In all honesty, I thought that with the cap and jacket, Peter looked a lot like Sylar.
I'm actually starting to enjoy the changing timelines too. It's not just "Yeah, I'll go back and change things" and then everything turns out just fine. They seem to be borrowing a page from Eureka in the sense that everytime someone goes back and tries to "make things right" things end up being a lot different then what they expected. I think it's getting the point across that as they try to make things better, they're actually making things worse. Didn't the X-Men cartoon actually explore this angle when they sent Bishop back in time to save the X-Men? And what What if? series did the same when someone tried to go back and kill Magneto.
The firmware is upgradeable, I noticed that. But that doesn't mean the profile's are upgradeable. I see one person mentioned upgrading to firmware 2.0, which I initially took to mean Profile 2.0. Then, later on, the same person mentions upgrading to firmware 4.10. Something tells me the firmware is different from the profile.
Also, quite a few people have mentioned that it's a very slow player. Some even say that it's great when it does work, but that it doesn't work very often. It looks like it's a hit or miss player. Sorry, but I just don't think that's going to cut it with John Q Public. If it doesn't work all the time everytime, they're just going to think that Blu-ray in general is broken.
I remember the hell that was raised when The Matrix came out because it wouldn't play on a lot of players. The reason is because the players weren't fully standards compliant. So all those players had to get upgraded, mostly by sending them in to the manufacturer. The same thing happened with T2 Ultimate Edition. It would lock up and restart where they're driving through the desert. The Apex I own would do that. I had to send it in for a firmware upgrade. They also ended up removing the region-changing backdoor menu, which is one of the only reasons I bought the player. I'm a pretty tech savvy person. I can imagine Joe Schmoe user taking their DVD back and complaining about how it doesn't work.
"Excellent for the price, however this player lacks the new BD profiles, 1.1 and 2.0, which allow you to have picture-in-picture and web content."
That would be a silly player to buy at this point. Profile 1.1 is final and on all new players. Unless this player is upgradeable, that would be a waste of $200. I payed about that for my Apex 600a, but it was upgradeable.
That's not exactly what he said. We can assume that from Peter's mom's dream, but even her previous dream was changed due to Peter's actions. I think we're going to find that there's more to it then even that. I almost wonder if her head could've been reattached at that point. That would make her truly immortal and "you can't die" would then be a fully true statement.
I loved the season premiere though. I'm just wondering how Peter plans to "fix" everything. Hiro was able to delay it, but so far no one's been able to keep it from happening (referring to Sylar and Claire). I would think he could go back and tell himself to let Claire come to Texas, but there's no way of knowing if that'll really "fix" everything.
Did Claire really think she'd be able to shoot him at the beginning? That scene played out exactly the way I thought it would (accept I didn't know it was at the beginning).
kenkraly2007 said:I know Return of the Jedi was called Revenge Of The Jedi before it came out lordjedi I know my star wars history.
Uh, dude, that wasn't me that posted that.
Arnie.d said:lordjedi said:So Rob and Arnie can't see the latest posts? I fail to see the problem with that :P
If I can't read your messages, lordjedi, then you can't enlighten me. :)
Who said anything about trying to enlighten anyone :P
Ziz said:I gotta go with A-M...compare Blu discs to standard on price-vs-content, not whether you're getting one or two or however many physical discs. Clarity aside, BD's other claim to the throne is capacity. The 10 disc Ultimate Matrix collection is only 4 or 5 discs on HD and BD (coming on 10/14), but they retail for the same basic price range.
And where are you seeing these prices at? I just checked Amazon and TheDigitalBits. The "10 disc ultimate set" on DVD sells on Amazon for $31. The BD set, which only has the movies and Animatrix in hi-def, the rest are all SD, sells for $90. That's not exactly the same basic price range. Yes, at release they'll have been the same basic price range, but the DVD set has been out so long now that it's easy to get it much cheaper.
Every other release I've seen recently (Iron Man, Hulk, Heroes) has the same number of discs for either the DVD or Blu-ray release. The difference is usually as little as a few bucks, but sometimes it's $20-$30.
And yes, everyone wants the player prices to come down, and yes eventually they will, but when to spend that money is a different decision for everyone. To use the standard "car" analogy - would you rather have a cheap car that's expensive to insure (yes, they do exist) or spend a little more for a car that has lower insurance? I was actually faced with a decision like that when I bought a new car a few years ago, so I know it's possible and not just theoretical.
The CEO of Sony said very recently not to expect prices to go below $299 by this Christmas because they were not going to license the players to the Chinese manufacturers. They do not want cheap players on the market. Why is that? Because they're trying to milk the consumers, but the consumers aren't buying it.
SInce I don't have to insure my player, I'd rather just have a cheap player. I don't really have that choice right now though, do I.
Corollary to the "disc count" issue - one of the things I hate about 2 disc releases - 1 film/1 supplement - is that they use the extra disc as a reason to jack up the price. Early on, discs were dual sided instead of 2 disc sets. Know why they stopped doing it? Because people complained that they had to actually read the disc core to figure out which side to play. They wanted something idiot-proof like artwork on two separate discs so that they wouldn't have to think about which side of the disc is which. ',:-\
Uh yeah. I'm sure the price is jacked up so high. Or not. Yeah, it's a lot easier to read a giant label than it is to read the tiny lettering on the disc core. Dual sided discs were a pain in the ass and I'm glad they got rid of them. And since you can still fit two discs into a single disc package, there's really no need to cram everything onto a dual sided disc anyway.
Tiptup said:However, if by some mysterious happenstance, the Blu-ray critics are correct, then only the BD association stands to lose if they've priced Blu-ray wrong. I can't predict the market well enough to determine where Blu-ray will ultuimately go, but I know it's doing fine right now. Anything else seems like worthless speculation to me.
Actually, it's not doing fine. DVD purchases might be down, but they're still way ahead of Blu-ray purchases. Blu-ray adoption is low and slow right now, due completely to player prices. The excuse the BDA is using is that DVD took a while to become popular with consumers and it took a while for prices to come down.
Here's a little breakdown of similar prices when DVD was being adopted. Keep in mind that Divx was around from 1998 until 1999 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX_(Digital_Video_Express))
DVD player prices were as low as $200 in 1999 and as high as $1200. http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpidvd.htm Even on sale, I can't find a Blu-ray player for that price. DVD player adoption was also rapid according to that. Sales quadrupled from the 1.1 million players sold in 1998. So at the time that was written, October 2001, DVD player adoption was rapid.
And here's another article that suggest prices will be around $300 for the foreseeable future http://www.ipodobserver.com/story/35730
These aren't really critics making these statements. These are industry observers looking at historical data as well as the current market. Blu-ray adoption is low and everyone agrees that $200 is the price point at which most consumers start snapping up players. Anything above that and it remains in "videophile" territory. Unfortunately I can't really find any sales statistics on Blu-ray players or discs, but the article I originally linked to doesn't seem to impressed with sales figures to date.
sean wookie said:If it wasn't for the DRM and not being that good me and a lot more people would of bought Spore.
Actually, from what I've read, it's exactly because of the DRM that a lot of people (more so than usual) are pirating it. No one's bothering to buy it for exactly that reason.
Why does the forum software even care where the text came from? We have this happen at work with an email marketing firm and it's annoying as hell. The forum software should just be treating text as text and nothing else.
The second one is definitely the best!
So Rob and Arnie can't see the latest posts? I fail to see the problem with that :P
This should probably be moved to the preservation threads in that case.
You probably need a faster CPU. My dual core at home can play this just fine (Athlon x2 6000), but the one at work chokes from time to time (Athlon x2 3800). Mine does the same thing with the black bars at home (4:3 monitor), but at work I seem to remember that there were none (widescreen monitor). I can't check that right now, but I think it is related to having a regular vs widescreen monitor.
I seriously doubt those were HD-DVD people. What I do think is that they were people who are tired of the industry price gouging. It's been almost 10 months since HD-DVD died. The players can be made affordably, but the BDA clearly doesn't want them to be. Even the CEO of Sony said they wouldn't be licensing the tech to the Chinese because they didn't want cheap players flooding the market. Why not? Because that way they can gouge consumers for even more money.
Here's a listing for Iron Man on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=iron+man&x=0&y=0
Yeah, the Blu-ray version is only $5 more than the DVD. But the player would also cost you about $300. If the player were half that price, more people would be willing to upgrade.
The reason for the laserdisc comment had almost nothing to do with Blu-ray becoming a dead format. It had everything to do with the high cost of the players and it becoming a niche market. In LDs hayday, the LDs themselves weren't that expensive ($60 I think was the average price), but the players were $200-$300, and that was for a low end player. That's more than Joe Average consumer is willing to spend to watch a movie. If they really want people to adopt the format and stop buying DVDs, they need to lower the price of the players. They had no problem cutting the costs when HD-DVD was still around, but suddenly all the costs have stayed pretty static since March.
People aren't asking for things for free. They're asking for things at a reasonable price. As technology advances, things are suppose to get cheaper, right? It costs far less to produce a DVD or Blu-ray disc than it did to produce an LD. The players should also cost far less to produce, yet they're still being sold at a high markup.
I got my first DVD player for $300. A Toshiba with everything built-in (dolby decoder and all that). I got my Apex a year or two later for $150. Both of those were well after Divx folded. The Toshiba was actually top of the line when I bought it. Right now though, even low end Blu-ray players are about $300 and that's just to much.
Why not just sell the BR set and buy it on Blu-ray? I'm sure someone out there wouldn't mind paying a discounted rate for the DVD.
I'd have a Blu-ray player by now if they could get a little closer to $200 (preferably lower). NewEgg recently had an awesome deal on a Blu-ray ROM drive for just $99.99. Since I have a HTPC hooked to my 50" HDTV, it would've been perfect. But for now, I'm still waiting for prices to drop.
You gotta love it when these dumbasses open their mouths. I guess they don't want Blu-ray adoption to take off.
see you auntie said:It would be like one of the many conventions asking Hamill or any other Star Wars actor to appear for free when the organisers are making money off ticket sales.
Actors, of any movie or TV show, are not typically paid to show up at conventions (Creation might be an exception to this). They do usually charge money for a photo which they will gladly sign, but they generally show up for free. Hamill especially shows up at Comic-Con all the time because he's a total comic book fan. The ticket sales essentially pay for the rental of the building and not much else (at least with Comic-Con).
MotherGunner said:It would be really cool if Obi-wan stopped calling vader "Darth". Maybe remove this and modify his face so he doesnt move his mouth?
"You can't win" "If you strike me down..."
Yeah, it's to bad Lucas changed it from a name to a title, huh.