JsARCLIGHT

I always go to mom and pop "enthusiast" stores to do my drooling but most people don't have those around... (thanks walmart). The one by my new house (Hi Fi Fo Fum... that's their name I sh!t you not) has a great presentation setup but they only carry a very small selection, mostly of the super high end toys. That is the danger and the blessing of shoping "non chain store" is you get to see the units performing in grand style but they usually only carry the uber high end ones. Also the guys at Ultimate Electronics actually know how to run their setups. They pride themselves on showing you a good signal on their demo units... of course they also pride themselves on bending you over on the price.

Well, in a super nutshell: LCD - Liquid Crystal Display. Same thing as flat panel computer monitors. Pros are they are "flat" TV's and have very good contrast. Cons are that they have the same dead pixel issues that computer monitors have... a real bummer to drop a deuce on a TV only for it to have dead pixels. Most manufacturers have a policy about that though but it is still a massive hassle. All the pros and cons of flat panel PC monitors apply to these TV's as well... so all the backlight bleed, stuck / dead pixel and image color issues apply. DLP - Digital Light Projection. Sort of the new evolution of rear projection televisions to a degree, they use tiny mirrors to reflect light. Pros are they are cheap compared to the other types, get more TV for the buck and they take up less space than a traditional rear projection big screen. Performance wise they are average, better than a normal TV but not quite as good as a plasma. Cons are they take up the most space next to CRT monitors, can be a bitch to move and some have quite the heat putout. Plasma - Basically not actual "plasma" in the star trek sense but a charged gas. Pros are they have outstanding picture quality and are flat. Cons are the gas has proven to be less than reliable and stories still abound about plasma TV's "loosing their charge" in a few years and ceasing to work. The most expensive of the lot but arguably the best potential picture. I myself own a plasma phillips and I would say unless you MUST have one, avoid them. My opinion is the best bang for the buck is still DLP. You can get a 60"+ DLP for the price of a mid range plasma and not have to worry about the gas in them going "out". As with everything though your own personal gut reaction to the unit may speak volumes. Go into a Ultimate Electronics or Best Buy and gander at the different types and see what "grabs" you right off the bat. First impressions are important when it comes to TV's, if it doesn't "wow" you then why bother? Next step would be to investigate the specific units that interest you. If you see a track record of unhappy consumers in reviews and such online then you might want to avoid that one.

Just a note on the 2006 FCC mandate on HDTV... all that mandate says is that all "local" content must be broadcast in HDTV by that date. It says nothing to cable or satelite and nothing really about the phase out of normal signals. Most metro areas already have the big three networks broadcasting in HD OTA so for the most part everyone is compliant. Europe even pushed back their mandatory rollout another ten years or so to about 2015... so the big use of "the future is nigh" argument to buy an HDTV now sort of has no teeth. It will still be years before the airwaves reach a true 100% HD content level and with the life span of most HDTV's being at most a predicted 10 years right now (much less for plasmas) you may never see that 100% HD channels thing happen with a TV you purchase today. Rumor mill even keeps abounding that the FCC will roll back it's 2006 mandate into the tens (2012, etc.) just like Europe because a lot of domestic broadcasters just seem to refuse to take the switchover to HD seriously. Sure HD is out there now in a very small amount and it promises to grow in the next 5 years but to go out and purchase a very expensive TV on the grounds that in the next year you will have tons of HD programming is not too sound. If it happens, it happens... but at the moment most signs point to "this is going to take much longer than expected".

I also have to confess to watching Bikini Destinations on HDNet. Makes me think "Gee... so THIS is what HD was made for".

I think the UN does not need PSA's... they mess things up enough without outside help.

I have also heard that DTV towers create a condition called "signal wash" in which the signal from a close tower overpowers all other incoming signals. We operated under that theory when trying to use the one at our office. We got three poppers and one no-show. Supposedly you can do all sorts of rain dance tactics like add FM traps and sepparate mount spots and other hullaballo to fix all the issues we where having with that unit at my office but to us it just showed that HDTV OTA broadcasts where still not the "plug it in and just go" answer that the Best Buy blueshirts tell customers it is. My big love for direct feed is that when I had an antenna I had to wrestle with it all the time and move it constantly to train other signals from towers in different directions. With a direct feed like cable or satelite you just push a button and it is on. I'm sort of lucky at the moment though as my condo is right at a cable hub and we are sort of the the "first pigs fed" from the line in the area. I was going to get a dish when I got my HDTV but the cable signal is just so good here that I decided to save the money... plus the condo has rules against mounting dishes on the roof and I would have had to put it on our deck and that would have been ugly. I'm planning to upgrade to Voom when my house is finished, I've heard they have the best ratio of HD to analog channels out there. I'm about ready to kill a drifter to get TNT in HD.

Digital TV over an OTA broadcast is terrible in my town. It suffers from the exact same problems as normal OTA broadcasting except with HD OTA the signal keeps popping in and out like a bad feed from video. Unless you are in a massive metroplex like LA or NY that has a massive HD OTA broadcast network do not expect to get all the OTA signals all the time. In STL when we tested the OTA broadcasts at our office we were less than 5 miles from one of the towers and the signal was still very problematic. It would come on in spurts and go off. We gave up trying to keep it on and returned the antenna. I myself only trust "direct feed" type signals.

As much as HDTV sets are becoming more mainstream and cheaper IMHO they are still quite "enthusiast" oriented. To get the most out of a good HDTV you need a lot of other accessories going for it. I hate to talk you out of something you may have your heart set on, just letting you know that HD sets are still far from mainstream. But if you do get it and get a good HD signal you will never go back. Once I saw movies in HD on the HD channels and first run HD programming in widescreen HD I was hooked. Shows like Deadwood, Arrested Development and others are excellent in HD. Also if you are a sports fan (football for me) it is a big improvement. With football especially, you can see the whole line and see the whole play evolve without being saddled with a cramped 4:3 camera frame. Plus HD Net has pro world cup soccer in HD and that signal is so clean and crisp you can count grass blades. Just always keep in the back of your head that HDTV sets require a lot of juice to get the goose if you follow. Even though their price points are dropping they are still quite the money pigs... watching HD programming wise that is. DVD wise just get a good home theater system and good DVD player and you are set.

Not to poke you with a stick or anything but unless you intend to go all out and get a nice clean HD signal provider (like digital cable or satelite) you are sort of wasting your money on the HD capabilities of the set. I live in a large metro area and we have four local HD broadcasters who send out an HD signal that HDTV's with the right aerial can receive... but it is still an OTA signal and the quality is not that good. We have an HD monitor at my office with a built in tuner and we got an aerial for it and it gets three of the four channels tollerably... not enough to warrant it though. Another bad thing about a widescreen TV is that unless you only watch widescreen DVDs all the time or always watch HD feed you will still only be seeing a 4:3 picture on that thing. I have digital cable with HD here in STL and only ten of my hundred and some channels are HD, meaning only about a tenth or less of my channels are in widescreen... and most of the time those HD channels are showing the same thing that is running on the normal channel. On the DVD front you should also know that DVDs are NOT HD. With a good progressive scan player you can see at best a 480p signal. Clean but not HD. If you buy a $300 upconverter DVD player then you get an upconverted signal from the DVD but it still is not true HD and shows it. (I myself have a upconverter DVD player and while it is the best DVD picture I have seen to date it still pales compared to a nice hard HDTV 1080i or 720p signal. As for video games only a tiny fraction on console games use true widescreen modes and an even fewer number have true progressive scan capabilities. I've hooked every console on the market to my Phillips with some of the best games available and the picture quality is still not that great. The only real benefit to playing console games on an HDTV is the widescreen mode (on the handful that allow it). An HD set is a definate upgrade in performance capabilities yes but unless you intend to put those capabilities to use it may be a colossal waste of money. If you mainly watch DVDs and want THE best picture you can get from them then this would be a good way to go, provided you get a good upconvert player to max out the picture and a good surround sound home theater system to max out the audio. If you just intend to watch TV and play console games I'd say pass and get a good NTSC set as the widescreen mode will mostly go unused.

Those CRT HD units are sort of nice buys as they have filled in that "entry level" nook for HDTV for consumers. I know a person who has a Phillips model and he seems to like it. I'd say read up on all the online reviews you can before buying just to be safe and make double sure the unit has the specs and the inputs you need. My own personal opinion on those would be to save some extra money and buy one of the low $1200 range DLP units. Twice as big and just as good. Unless space is an issue the DLPs are the best bang for your HDTV buck on the market right now. I myself own a Phillips 42" plasma that I wish I never bought. Thing has more quirks than a retarded midget and I could have had TWO nice Mitsu DLP's for the price I paid. Needless to say when I move soon I'm getting a new Mitsu DLP big screen and putting the Phillips in the bedroom.

I just found this pic a tad too funny. Substitute "Americans" with "Canadians" and it's even funnier... ... or maybee not.

Honestly I was jazzed to see the first prequel when it came out years ago. I remember my then girlfriend (now wife) had just got back and she somehow miracled some tickets for the opening night and we went to like the 2:30am show and watched it. I remember liking it at first... on the big screen it was impressive, especially the podrace and the final three-way lightsaber fight. Then as time went on and I saw the movie again and again on video I started to not like it. All the little annoying things starting poping up to me, the things you never saw that first time in the theater. Soon all those little annoyances ruined the movie for me as I was now obsessing on the bad and ignoring the good. Then came Attack of the Clowns. My wife offered to try and get tickets for us opening week but I told her to wait. I was so "sullied" by the first movie at this point I did not want to see AOTC. She finally talked me into seeing it and we went around week three or four it was out. Once again, on the big screen it was impressive. I liked a lot about it and overall left the theater liking it. But once again, repeated viewing on video drew my eye to all the bad... all the terrible. Once again the good feelings generated by seeing it on the big screen vanished after repeat watchings... repeat picking-it-aparts. Now comes Ep3... I am once again torn whether to go right away or wait. I think I'm going to try and go right away and get it "over with" so to speak. All in all there are a few things I like about the first two prequels but a LOT that I didn't like... but that level of fanboyish loathing for the prequels took a lot of repeat viewings to get to. I really hope this last one will not go the same route... but... same actors, same director, same scripting... it does not sound as if it will suddenly "break the previous trend" but rather be more of the same. Breaking a trend usually requires outside influence.

I think one real rule of "like or dislike" should be that you MUST actually watch the thing you claim to dislike in it's entirety before comming out against it. Otherwise you are basing your opinion on the opinion of someone else who could be huffing paint for all you know. I watched all of Macross II as it came out in the mid '90s tape by tape at the time and have watched it several times since. I like Mac II... for what it is worth. The things I dislike about it are the horribly rushed feel of the ending and the sad truth that I saw the american dubbed version first and that ending song is burned into my mind as only the worst tortures can. Macross 7... when I first saw images and synopsis from it I was very, very wary. But I still got the DVDs and watched ALL of them. Everything. Every episode. At the end it turns out I really did NOT like it. I thought it was terrible. Most of my hate of Mac 7 comes from the "what it could have been" side rather than the "what it is" side. So much was repeated and wasted in that show IMHO. I think it could have been much better had it not had this "stretching a premise" feel about it. I could ignore the clown valks in the hope that I would get drawn into the story but when the story failed to draw me in all the ugliness I was ignoring crashed down on me. I am a firm believer that there seem to be only two camps for Mac 7, those that love and those that hate.

I have round-table lunches at my office... and seeing as I'm the owner of the company I can waste as much time as I like. Seriously though, my team is a tight knit group and we talk about all sorts of things. We got onto the subject of hentai because it started the same way it always does with anime: the anime fans of the office were talking about people's misconceptions of anime. They said that outsiders and "non anime people" have stereotypes of anime such as "it's all just mindless violence and people getting raped by demons". As for the retarded s#it angle we have previously discussed such wonderful topics as: - why would the federation of star trek get killed by the empire of star wars - what Cobra did wrong and how they could beat GI Joe - why did people actually like the Partridge Family - what does a burning ewok smell like - why Halo sucks but for some reason Halo 2 does not When you work in an office doing graphic design with many an artist sitting side by side with many a computer and sci-fi dork you get these weird topics of conversation in the lunch room. I like to keep my shop fun... has not failed me yet.

It is my understanding (and belief) that the true "horror" of kiddie porn is not so much the wacked out perv's looking at the pictures but the fact that some poor kid was exploited to make that kiddie porn. Porn does not just magically grow on trees and get picked by warped porn farmers on the porn ranch. The whole moral issue of porn to me is "was someone exploited to make this"? If the answer is yes then it should be outlawed. Underage (sub 18) and kiddie porn are just that, exploitation. Animated porn, while it may be kiddie porn, has zero exploitation. No actual children are getting photographed or violated. Anime kiddie porn falls into a different strata of porn: "morality porn". Yes, I and most other people feel it is morally wrong to abuse children and minors... but when the "children" and "minors" don't actually exsist in the real world no one is actually getting abused, are they? That is the sick loophole in all of this. Yes it is kiddie porn but it is "clean" if you follow my meaning. Porn without the exploitation. A few co-workers and I discussed the whole topic of "hentai" a while back and while we were all rather put off by cartoon porn we did agree that the sick "allure" of hentai was that it was make-believe and required no actual participants or exploitation of people to make it. It was the base form of porn, the implied kind. In the end we all sort of chalked them up to be like the old Penthouse forum letters, no "real" sex or nudity per se but all the force and impact as if it was there. There are tons of twisted freaks out there who just want to look at barnyard pictures, anime kiddie pictures and other such nasty things. My feeling is that if the material exploited someone or abused a person or an animal to create then it is reprehensable and needs to be controlled. The grey area comes in when the questionable material exploits no one but the viewer. Now if these materials can be proven to encite other illegal acts, such as the whole "kiddie porn leads to child molestation" argument then I say ban all of it... but at that point you are judging a man on acts he may commit and not on ones he has committed.

I'm one step ahead of a lot of people... I or my father bought most of these albums on vinyl as they came out and I still have most of them. Nothing beats that hiss of an LP... then again I've "repurchased" all those old flats on CD just so I can keep them in the best shape possible. Then again nothing beats whipping out Boston/Boston original LP and firing it up... or some BOC or the Tubes. I keep forgetting the darn Allmans. I think I have a hole in my head sometimes. My personal Lizzy pics are Whisky in the Jar and Dancin' in the Moonlight.

Thin Lizzy is a great band, real pioneers... especially with the whole "two drive guitars" thing. They sort of started that and no one gives them credit really. I picked up Dedication a few years ago, great compilation if you want a comprehensive TL fix and don't want to buy all their albums. Then again Lizzy to most people is "boys are back in town" and that's about it. Too Bad PPL had to OD otherwise they might have made some more great stuff.

I'm also a large New Order fan. I've owned every record since back in the Joy Division days... on vinyl even. My recent purchases are: David Bowie- Reality Moby- Hotel Daft Punk- Human After All U2- How to Dismantle... The Features- Exhibit A The Tubes- World Tour 2001 I'm also a collector of '70s and '80s music, all genres be it new wave, dance, pop, rock, electro, '80s rap (back when the music was about music and not how many "busters" you "capped") etc. etc. My tastes extend in all directions.. except three: country, heavy metal and modern rap. Those genres that are wasted on me in all ways, just incoherant noise to me.

Normally this is where I would step in and ask all parties to take a deep breath, accept each other's differences and agree to disagree. But the HELL with THAT! KILL EM ALL LET CARL MACEK SORT EM OUT!

I myself would like to see some new SC toys just to see them... but not from Toynazi. To quote one of my favorite quotes: "Those fools could f##k up a wet dream". As for that auction, it's ePay. Strange things happen on ePay... I've seen worthless junk get bid into space many a time (not that I am calling that toy worthless mind you). If you look closely one of the key bidders who drove the price up so high in the last few minutes was in France. I know international buyers can and will pay through the nose for things... they've done it for me enough times. Also note the winner is a zero feedback... once again, not pointing fingers or making accusations but I've also had a lot of strangely high winning bids come from zero bidders who are never heard from again. If it is any consolation, here in STL there is a local toy show called "Toyman" held at the machinist's hall (local STL'ers will know of it). I once saw a Hovertank there priced at $120 a year ago or so and right next to it was an exosquad reissue priced at $70. Someone bought them because they have not been seen since. Collectable prices are never set in stone, something is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. I myself am willing to pay a good piece of cash for a decent large scale high quality new legioss toy that does not reek of Toynazi bumfuggling.

Vice was not really groundbreaking in terms of camera work, pace, content or style... it's claim to fame was that it brought all of those things from the movie theater and MTV into the Network TV realm. Vice pretty much influenced modern TV but the older movies and modern music videos (1980's modern) that Vice drew from are most likely what John Woo drew from as well. In all honesty Vice was just as much an imitator as anyone... they just were in a different genre ("Conservative" Network TV) so it seemed so goundbreaking and special. Don't get me wrong, compare the camera work, pace and style of your average Vice episode to another dramatic "modern" Network TV cop show of the decade like Simon & Simon, Riptide, Magnum PI, Hunter, etc. etc. and you will see how radically different Vice was... but all that radical difference came from the movies and music videos that came before it. Movies gave birth to MTV, MTV gave birth to Vice and Vice indirectly in turn can be credited as starting the new age of "higher level" Network Television we see today.

At least it is hard to pin the suckiness of a movie on Sammy though... he tends to be just middle or background fodder in most of the bad movies he is in. Take Sphere, SWAT, Deep Blue Sea, and others for example... he has very minor roles in those movies and can't really be blamed for their terrible stink. The movies he headlines as the main character in are quite nice IMHO. Shaft was great fun. "Workshop my foot up your ass" has been in my vocabulary for years now. And I might be the only person left who actually liked Jackie Brown.

Now that I think of it... I would willingly go see the new Miami Vice movie if Sammy Jackson was Tubbs and we got to see Jimmy Smitts get blowed up real good again. That way when Tubbs calls Crockett "Crockett" he can actually call him Cracker (like it sounds like PMT is calling Crockett half the time anyway).

I simply am pointing out that the movie is appearing to just be a rehash with no "original" grounbreaking Michael Mann scriptwork so far. If that script that bsu linked to is even half correct than in my eyes the movie is already just a shallow modern day clone of the TV show. Nothing new or original. Even MM's directing cannot elevate it to something new and exciting in my eyes. Mann just needs to come to grips with it that Vice is gone. It is done and over with. He should let it rest peacefully rather than being just like every other hollywood douche bag and digging it's bones up because he can't think of a new story idea. Also on friday I asked around at my office and my employees said almost 10 to 1 that they believe the new Miami Vice movie should not be made, almost all of them using the same reasons I have posted so far. As a suprise the handfull that told me they wanted to see it were all A) women, B) Colin Farrell fans and C) almost a good ten years younger than me making them too young to have even seen Vice originally or have no memory/knowledge of the show. I would imagine the "legs" on this new movie are going to come not from original fans but from kiddies and people who never saw the original... sort of like the Starsky and Hutch movie. Still, if the only defense of this movie remains that I should "Trust Michael Mann" then my trust in him is waining... big time.

Wow after reading through the supposed movie script it appears to be a bash of a lot of first season episode plot pieces slammed together to form a movie... not to mention it features many of the recurring themes of the show like: POTENTIAL SPOILERS! (only if you have never seen an episode of MV in your life) - Crockett and Tubbs pose as -fill in the blank illicit rich man job- - Crockett gets to use his Cigarette boat for police work (does anyone else smell a tax write-off? ) - Either Crockett or Tubbs become romantically involved with a perp or other person - Zito gets killed - Crockett and Tubbs leave the states and go "lone ranger" with no backup to catch the baddies - The bad guy has a classic '80s stereotype coke baron name like "Calderone" or other such "south american" flair - Crockett and Tubbs will be very, very overdressed for their jobs - The name of the show is still Miami Vice even though they are clearly narco cops in the movie My predictions: - moody driving scenes in a car of some sort - Crockett's Theme or Flashback played at least once in some sort of "modernized" version (stomach turning just thinking about this one) - Some celebrity cameo, most likely a musician