AVRant #66: Are you a friend of Tom?
T-shirts with Tom’s name on them are cool… at least Tom thinks so. A discussion of Cloverfield and I am Legend. Phil has a question about when to upgrade your movies. Tom and Dina discuss. Dina had a neat Blockbuster experience. People that don’t like widescreen movies deserve to suffer… according to Tom. Can you buy a HDMI to component box and get a 1080p signal over component? How do you test to see if your subwoofer amp or mechanism is blown? Fans of Indiana Jones and Lego rejoice. The game is out on June 6th. Tom got some new HD channels… only one of which interests him. The winner of the “Dina looks like Claudia Black” contest is announced. Tom tortures Dina a little. And by the way – happy anniversary AV Rant! May 10th is a year! Thanks for listening and don’t forget to vote for us at Podcast Alley.
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I ate dinner at my parent’s house last night and noticed my step-father had Netflix-ed Office Space. I wanted to watch it with him so I popped it in after dinner. I noticed the “This film has been formatted to fit this screen,” and my reaction was, “What the…” Somehow Netflix had sent him the full-screen (I hate that term) version. I almost jumped in my car to get my widescreen special edition from my home, but I just stayed put. During the movie my step-father commented how the framing of the movie made everyone look short. I told him that it was because the DVD was non-widescreen and the player was stretching the picture to fit the TV. Unfortunately, their DVD player does not have a Squeeze setting to properly display 4:3 content. When I buy the new Oppo flagship player, I will give them my old Oppo 970. It was actually painful for me to watch that great movie with such a distorted picture.
I’m shocked. I didn’t think that Netflix had any full-screen versions either. That’s just wrong.
My favorite moment – the killing of the fax machine. 😀
I actually saw that movie in theaters; my fraternity brothers and I were in hysterics throughout the whole thing. The gangsta rap track to the fax machine scene is just perfect.
As you were talking about HDMI not converting to Component vid at higher than 480, I was starting to get pretty mad. It’s STUPID that normal DVD doesn’t upscale to 720 or 1080 through component video. It’s STUPID that we can’t have a converter to go from 1080p via HDMI over to 1080P on Component video. WHY is there any protection on those things at all? And disallowing component video? What the Heck? You need like an axtra $1000 in hardware/software for your computer to record that analog HD stream. Or, you can use your $25 DVD drive, and free software off the internet to rip it. Or, for BD and HD, you need a $200 drive and free software off the internet to rip it. So, what’s the point in hurting the average guy? You know, the guy PAYING for the movies? The guy who bought an Early HDTV and may not even have HDMI? Component video always works. ALWAYS! I have never had a component video connection fail. Don’t ask how much frustration HDMI has caused. And you can all see what Gene is going through with his rant as well. Now I am ticked off… *grumble*
Because they still think that any form of format conversion somehow adds “value” and that consumers should be paying them for that value. It’s not enough that I have bought 300 DVD’s in my life and have given members of the MPAA many thousands of dollars in doing so. They think that if I want to watch those 300 movies and TV shows on anything other than my DVD player, that I should have paid for at least 600 copies.
I actually like HDMI in general – one cable for audio and video?! Brilliant! It’s HDCP that’s the problem. And that is born of greed and fear. Fear from the studios that someone will steal their stuff. What they have (and always will it seems) failed to realize that the people that steal stuff are going to anyways. They will always find a way. All most of us need is the most basic of protection to “deter” us. “Download a free program to copy discs to my hard drive? Too much trouble.”
I hate HDMI. It’s too many cable pairs and too fragile for what it does. SDI kicks butt and coax digital was plenty good for multi-channel uncompressed audio if they had ever allowed it.
Can you imagine if Gefen actually pulls off an active converter box that translates HDMI + HDCP into a SINGLE coaxial cable for long distance runs?
If they do that I will make them famous (to the best of my ability) and request that every manufacturer license the technology so that we can systematically replace HDMI cables with coax.
Plus – and I hate to say this – HDMI should have done for AV components what Apple did for computers. It’s confusing (just ask your Dad) to connect components together. You have about 20 steps just to set up the correct inputs and get the remote working. HDMI’s CEC should have fixed this – and it’s been a royal flop. Nobody uses it except in very minimal ways – mostly intra-brand, so that interoperability between brands is not likely.
Argh… don’t get me started or I’ll begin to sound like Rob the Pirate.
I lived in Philly for 2 years, and it has forever ruined me for Cheesesteaks. I can’t believe what passes for a “Philly Cheesesteak” everywhere else. It’s really quite shocking.
I’m sure. One of these days I’ll get up there to check them out. And yes, I’d make a special trip to Philly just to eat a cheesesteak.
Handheld camera haters? You guys must never watch porn. That’s 99% handheld stuff.
HDMI (up to 1.3) to component or VGA or RGBHV converter boxes are available in limited quantities through small third party vendors referenced at http://www.curtpalme.com. I have one that works pretty well. HDCP sucks!
Funny making fun of Tom’s inhaler LOL!! Go Dina GO