VT 1010

An NTSC TV may not be needed. Most of the new HDTV standards in different countries should be compatible with each other. Most of the material on Blu-ray is encoded at 1080p24 (that's 24 frames per second). The Blu-ray player will then convert that signal into the kind specified by the player's output settings (like 1080i60 if you use a 1080i HDTV in the US or 1080i50 in the UK). It's really up to the player. HD DVD was region free and importing movies was quite common. In fact, region coding on Blu-ray is optional. There have been a lot of region free releases. I own the Starship Troopers BD from the UK, which is region free, and it works just fine on my unmodified US PS3 and HDTV. As long as the material is encoded at 24fps, then it shouldn't be much of a problem. Furthermore, I have heard that many HDTVs in PAL land can accept 1080i60 signals and properly display them (this isn't the case in the US, though).

I doubled checked again to see if I had problems directly connected to the cable modem. I had trouble previously, but it seems to work fine now without the router. I guess it is a router issue. I'm using the replacement router (Linksys WRT54GS v.7, with the latest firmware update), and it still isn't working. I have no idea why the router is having problems with just this site. Unfortunately, I'm stuck with this one for the moment. Any suggestions?

Not the 1080i/p vs 720p thing again. Resolution is one of the least important aspects of a good display. Contrast, color accuracy, deinterlacing, image processing or lack thereof, etc. are more important to consider than resolution. The difference between 720p and 1080i/p isn't very noticeable, unless you sit relatively close to a big screen. Most people, at your average seating distance, won't notice much of a difference. I'll take a newer 720p Pioneer plasma over any 1080p LCD. The only way you can appreciate a 1080p display is with a 1080p signal. Unless you sending it a 1080p signal, there is no difference between a 1080p and a 1080i display (there can be difference in deinterlacing the 1080i signal, though). There is also the issue of how the display handles the various framerates as well, but I'll discuss that later.

I talked to the cable company again and they said there's nothing else they can do. It isn't OS/Settings problem. It shouldn't be my router either. My ISP claims everything is fine on their end. That would leave the site itself as a part of the problem. If my IP isn't banned, what else could it be?

I just talked to my ISP and they said that they will check again. They should call me back in less than two business days. The tech guy said that I seem to be "doing everything right". He suggested either my IP was banned or a range of IPs, with mine in it, were being banned. Is it at all possible I may have been banned or something (IP is 74.130.169.134)?

Unfortunately, switching ISPs isn't an option for me. My current one is actually quite good, with this one exception. I'll try calling them again. I'm tired of using web proxies and dial-up. One way or the other, I'm going to get this fixed.

Thanks for the help so far, guys. Time for another update. I talked to Linksys and they said it probably isn't the router. I can't seem to access MW with my computer plugged directly into my cable modem either. I then talked to my ISP. They said something about it being a higher level problem and would have it fixed in 24 to 48 hours. One week later, I still had problems. I contacted them again; they told me it may be a problem with their servers and it would be fixed within 24 to 48 hours. Over 72 hours later, it remains to be fixed. I called them a third time and after trying several things, I still couldn't access MW. The guy said to contact Microsoft, however I couldn't access MW using Linux, so that won't solve anything. I'm quickly becoming agitated. I don't know what else to do. Would anybody happen to have any suggestions?

This seems to be a serious issue for a lot of people over at the AVS Forum: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1008620 Now I'm glad I got the new TV instead of the receiver.

In addition to adjusting the speaker level, you can also use Dynamic Range Compression. DRC (sometimes called "Night Mode") is a feature that reduces the difference in volume level between the loudest and quietest parts of a soundtrack. Gunshots, explosions, cars, etc. are close to the same volume level, so you aren't deafened by sound effects while trying to listen to dialog. It is also nice if you don't want to disturb neighbors or other people in your house while watching a movie. Many home theater receivers and newer players have this feature. The only downside to DRC is that you lose dynamic range. Another thing you can do is calibrate your sound system, although that requires a sound level meter. Keep in mind that DVD/Blu-ray/HD DVD/etc. soundtracks are normally remixed for home viewing. What you hear on disc isn't the exact same thing you hear at the cinema. Even on HD audio tracks. You also must consider the difference in equipment and room acoustics. One of the myths of uncompressed and lossless audio is that they are "identical to the studio master". This statement is not 100% accurate. Even soundtracks on HD media are usually mixed differently from their theatrical counterparts. Lossless is lossless because what comes out of the encoder sounds exactly the same as what goes in to it. It should sound identical to the media format's master, but not always to the theatrical master. Some movies in the past, however, have used the theatrical tracks. I believe the Jurassic Park DTS Laserdisc used the original mix, where as the later DVD's DTS track did not.

I'll probably go see it. This movie might be pretty funny. Ha! I was thinking the same thing. I used to watch Thunder in Paradise all the time when I was younger. I didn't realize how cheesy it was, until after seeing the "movies" recently. I can't find any of the episodes (in english, that is) anywhere online. I wish I could see the "Predator" episode again.

How about these: VF-25 Ghoul VF-25 Oni VF-25 Heracles VF-25 Drago or as a tribute VF-25 Black Widow (II)

The alternate ending has been leaked online already. I think gametrailers.com had it. I'm sure it's probably on youtube as well. The seven minute ending still can't make up for a disappointing third act. I'm sure it will probably have a Special Dark-Seeker Extended Cut in a few years anyway. EDIT: Yay, 100 posts!

Okay, I just got the replacement router (WRT54GS v.7, which is probably a refurb too) and it still doesn't work. I upgraded to new firmware, that still didn't help. I'm getting sick of this. I really don't feel like talking on the phone for 45 minutes, doing the same thing I've done before, trying to communicate with someone that doesn't speak english! This is quite irritating! Would anybody happen to know of a good, fast, reliable wireless router that won't break the bank?

Actually, I'm too young to know of a time without remotes. I can barely remember when cable had those huge "remote control" boxes where you changed channels with a slider. We did have one rotary phone, though.

I just talked to Linksys technical support and, after trying just about everything (including the hardware reset as you had mentioned, Hurin), I still couldn't get it to work. They told me that me router is faulty and I need to contact customer service to get it replaced. We'll see what they say... BTW, out curiosty, I logged on to AOL (via cable) on one of my old laptops and was able to connect to MW just fine. When I used IE or Firefox, it didn't work.

I got my first DVD player for Christmas in '98. I was about nine. My parents got it for me. I remember thinking, "Wow, A DVD player...What the hell is a DVD player? I didn't remember asking for this." I was skeptical, until my dad connected it to the TV. It was a shocking improvement at the time. Yes, the US and Japan are in the same region. keep in mind, however, that region coding is OPTIONAL. Studios don't have to region code their discs. There are a number of releases with region coding. Starship Troopers in the UK, for example, is not region coded. It plays just fine in my US PS3 (although, I hope the inevitable US release will have a new encode. This version suffers from Edge Enhancement). Even though HD DVD is dead, it's not like the discs will cease to work. The Add on plays movies in HD just fine. There are also going to be lots of HD DVD sales. Of course, I'm probably biased. I still have my parents' Sears Beta Max VCR from the early 80's (1983, I think). It still plays great. Unfortunately, there's no remote control capability. I also have a Pioneer CLD-97 Laserdisc player. I actually bought it last year. DYRL? and Flashback both look and sound pretty good on LD.

I agree wholeheartedly. I love my Virtual Boy. I only got a headache playing it, because the visor smelled like cigarette smoke (bought it used). The controller is one of the most comfortable that I've ever used. Out of the several VB games I own, only one of them (Waterworld) was "bad" (and I've played far worse games). Virtual Boy Wario Land was excellent. It could have been a great franchise, if the system hadn't failed. The only major negative of the Virtual Boy was it's fragility. A good bump would completely screw up the display. Two of my three VBs have damaged displays.

I just did that and it worked fine when directly connected. It must be the router. I updated the firmware a while back to v1.52.2. It worked fine shortly after that. Then, a couple of days later, I couldn't access MW. I recently applied the firmware update again and reset it to the factory default settings. It didn't work either. My router is a Linksys Wireless-G, model number: WRT54GS ver. 6. Is there any way I can revert back to an old firmware version?

Fixed pixel displays MUST SCALE the video signal to the display's native resolution. For example, a 720p (or a 768p, 1080i/p, etc.) display cannot natively display a 480i video signal. It first needs to deinterlace the video (fixed pixel displays cannot natively display interlaced video either. Deinterlacing, however, is a whole other subject). The display will then have to upscale the video to the display's native resolution. If it didn't do this, the video wouldn't look right. The quality of upscaling varies with each display. Sometimes the DVD player does a better job; sometimes the display does better. Upscaling isn't perfect. It can sometimes degrade picture quality. It's generally the last thing you should worry about when considering DVD/HD players and displays. There was a great article explaining scaling, but I can't find the link... Old films can benefit greatly from HD (keep in mind, current Digital Cinema projectors have an even higher resolution and display more color depth than HDTV). The new HD formats have more advantages over DVD/SDTV than resolution and gimmicky extra features, though. First is more color. High Definition uses a different color space with more color information. The picture is much more colorful and accurate, without it being overblown. You also get higher bitrates. Even encoded at it's max bitrate (which usually never happened), DVD would often exhibit compression artifacts. HD DVD supports higher bitrates. HD material encoded in MPEG-2 at HD DVD's highest bitrate can have artifacting. To address this problem, more efficient codecs (VC-1 and AVC) were developed. They compress better at lower bitrates, so compression artifacts are less of a problem. Blu-ray, although supporting the same new codecs, has a high enough max bitrate that this is irrelevant (though the use of newer codecs is preferred). Then there is the most under appreciated advantage: native 24p support. Movies can be stored in progressive scan at their native frame rate of 24fps. This means no inverse telecine/deinterlacing is needed for film. Provided the disc has been properly mastered, there should be no interlacing or deinterlacing artifacts. Shimmer me timbers; the blinds won't flicker anymore! And most importantly, Edge Enhancement usually isn't as severe on HD Media as it is with the various SD formats. It can still rear it ugly haloed head, but it's normally not as noticeable. There's also HD audio, but that's another debate. I can definitely say that from first hand experience, old films look much better in HD. Comparing them to their DVD counterparts (even when upscaled), the HD versions clearly look better, some shockingly so. There is no question that HD Media can provide a dramatic improvement in picture quality.

Okay, I still cannot access the mainsite or the forums via my router/cable connection. I can get on fine using dial-up or a proxy. I talking to the cable company, they said it's probably a router issue. I talked to Linksys and they said I need to find out Macross World's port number to use with port triggering. Would it be possible to get MW's port number?

LCD and Plasma (as well as DLP and LCoS), are fixed pixel displays. They have a fixed resolution. In order to display the video properly, they have to scale the image (in SD's case, it needs to upscale). This can often cause the image to look worse. CRTs, on the other hand, don't have really have fixed resolution. They can often display the SD signal without scaling. For SD material, CRTs do the best job. Sometimes SD and HD may need separate calibrations too. There's also the fact that many new HDTVs have some "features" that are "enhancing" the picture (i.e. screwing with it), that needs to be turned off. The picture quality was disappointing anyway. It didn't look much better than the DVD and the DVD looks awful on my display. At least HDNet Movies will normally broadcast movies in their native aspect ratio. It's still hard to watch HD movies via cable though. The low bitrates cause lots of compression artifacts. Not to mention some movies have old/poor masters with Edge Enhancement. Then you have jaggies because of interlacing. It's not really HD. I have heard it's just going to have the episodes upscaled to 1080i in 4:3. I'm just glad we're in the same Blu-ray region as Japan. Should they decide to implement region coding (which is currently optional), it won't be such a pain for us in the US to watch Macross in HD.

I hate Edge Enhancement! It is bad enough watching SD with Edge Enhancement, but HD is worse. There's just no reason for it. Why in the hell would anybody add EE to high definition (or even SD) material? On some SD stations, the EE is so bad, even the halos have halos (I'm completely serious). I can't even watch The Matrix on HD DVD anymore. The M+ DVDs were riddled with it too. At times, I think 1996 remastered Aliens Laserdisc looks better than the DVDs, since it has so little EE (the sound quality is better as well. It's probably one of the most impressive LDs I've seen, PQ/AQ wise). Can you believe they added EE to the HD versions of 2001? It's 2001; It doesn't need it! I should stop now, I'm starting to go into a mindless rant... Once you know what to look for, the flaws in the picture become worse. EE, interlacing artifacts, DNR, compression artifacts, banding, 2-3 jitter, grayscale, color accuracy, etc. When you are more familiar with them, bad transfers and poorly adjusted displays can be difficult to watch. Although, I still can't seem to notice the rainbow effect on my DLP sets.

They announced Predator on Blu-ray at last year's CES for May 2007. I'll believe it, when I see it. I think the French release had an MPEG-2 encode on a BD-25, too. Of course, I'll buy it anyway. Now, where are the Alien movies?!

He did even more tweaking with the movies on DVD. They weren't even the true SE versions. Hold on to those Laserdiscs. I have a death grip on my Definitive Collection. Unfortunately, I'm already starting to see signs of laser rot... The scaler in the 360 pretty much sucks (Holy aliasing, Batman!). DVDs generally look worse upscaled by the 360. The PS3 may not have the best scaling, but it is dramatically better than the 360. It does a better job than my standalone upscaling player as well. I'm glad your now enjoying HD audio. I hope to get a new receiver soon, myself. HD DVD is capable of great picture and sound as well. Both formats support 1080p24 video and high resoultion audio. The advantages of Blu-ray are minor. The codecs are pretty much the same. The only real difference is the bitrate and volume of storage. Blu-ray has a higher max bitrate than HD DVD, but this is primarily a concern of MPEG-2. VC-1 (most HD DVDs use this) and AVC are much more efficient than MPEG-2. At lower bitrates, VC-1 and AVC can have a much better picture than MPEG-2. Blu-ray may be a technically better format, but practically, there is very little difference.

Addressing some comments a while back: The upscaling for the PS3 is done by software. This wasn't available until several months after release. Upscaling is only available for DVDs via HDMI and Games that support it. Upscaling on the 360 is done by hardware. It has a separate chip dedicated to scaling. Upscaling is available for DVDs via HDMI and VGA. Games can be upscaled or downscaled to match the resolution of the display. This is available for all games. Keep in mind that the resolution at which a game is displayed is often different than that at which it is rendered. Halo 3, for example, is rendered at a resolution of 1152x640 and then scaled to the 360's set resolution. As stated in my posts on page 34, the PS3 cannot currently bitstream advanced codecs. It has to be converted to LPCM, before it is sent to the receiver, in order to get higher resolution audio. There shouldn't be much of a difference in sound quality. As for the format war: I have a strong Blu-ray bias, despite my purple shirt (yet another 360add-on/PS3 owner). Warner going "Blu" is good news to me. I'll be glad when this war is over. Warner choosing a Blu-ray should help end it sooner. I'm sure HD media will do better once there is only one format on the market. If this stalemate continues, it will probably end up like DVD-Audio and SACD. Dueling formats can do a great job of hindering mass adoption. Lets not forget that once there is a single format, good old George will be more inclined to released Star Wars (with some new "improvements"). Imagine listening to those movies in HD audio...