Here’s another from Bobmac:
I was talking with a friend about downloading music. He asked me at what bit rate I “stored” my music. I said I “rip” my CDs using Apple’s Lossless Encoder (yes, I am a proud Mac guy.) He said — get this — he converts the sound files he downloads from the iTunes Music Store to Apple Lossless, because he wants to store them at the best possible quality. He will burn a CD from the downloaded files then reimport the songs as lossless. At first I thought, OK maybe he wants to strip the DRM from the tracks. When I asked him that, he looked at me like was speaking Chinese. He thinks that a digital file will deteriorate over time and that a compressed file can be converted to a CD-quality track…just like an upconverting DVD player magically transforms a standard def signal to HD!
You can’t buy entertainment like that, folks! 🙂
I received this rant by AVRant member Bobmac. Let me tell you, fullscreen is the worst thing that ever happened to movies. I hates them. Even when I had a 4:3 display I’d pay the extra money for the VHS widescreen versions. The worst is the blank stare you get when you tell people that they are missing up to a 1/3 of the picture. Heathens:
Bobmac says: I’ve been a loyal Netflix user for almost ten years now, but I got some free coupons for Hollywood Video, a gift card for Blockbuster, and a lot of unused credits at an indie video store. With nothing on TV and my wife out of town, I’ve had some dull nights. I decided to use up the credits before this store went out of business, so I went there a couple of weeks ago to pick up some movies. All they had in stock were “fullscreen” DVDs. I asked the clerk why no widescreen DVDs, and he said their customers preferred them. I picked up some crap that wouldn’t piss me off too much for not having the picture the way the director intended. I just got back from Hollywood where I had to rent Zodiac in “fullscreen.” They also didn’t carry widescreen titles. What the heck is going on? I asked the clerk why, and she said their customers don’t like the bars. I then asked if they carry high def DVDs, and she said they carry both HD DVD and Blu-ray. They think no one has a widescreen TV without a next gen player.
And why do they call them “fullscreen” DVDs anyway? On my 16:9 TV, widescreen DVDs are fullscreen, and fullscreen DVDs have the bars.
