Category: Uncategorized

I mentioned recently that I got an HD-DVD player for my 360. Today I decided to do a quick visual comparison between the DVD and HD-DVD versions of Hot Fuzz (which conveniently come on two sides of the same disc), to try and see the difference in image quality for myself. First, I watched the opening 10 minutes of the DVD version. (I watched the DVD version first to try and prevent myself from subconsciously nitpicking at its image quality if I watched it after the HD-DVD version.) Then, I watched the same 10 minutes of the HD-DVD version of the film and noted any significant differences.

As could be expected, fine detail was much more apparent in the HD-DVD version. In the opening shot of the film, part of the Metropolitan Police desk sign is illegible in the DVD cut, but is quite readable in the HD-DVD version. The shots of Angel talking with members of the community were also noticeably improved in the HD-DVD version. The DVD version also exhibited extreme blurriness and a bit of a moire effect in the scene where Angel is talking to his superiors and discovering that they plan to ship him off to Sandford — the venetian blinds in the background look much better in the HD-DVD version.

One other interesting difference is that the menu system in the DVD version was considerably nicer than the one in the HD-DVD version. I’m not sure if this is due to limitations of the interactive content format used by HD-DVD, or time/budgetary/effort considerations, but it’s a little annoying that the high definition format gets stiffed on something like this.

Overall, though, it’s a pretty clear win for HD-DVD and high definition formats in general. The visual quality difference is pretty easy to see, even if you’re not really looking for it — things just look nice and sharp. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, given the resolution differences between most DVD video and HD-DVD video, but it’s nice to be able to verify this for myself.

I recently took the plunge and bought the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player. There was a great deal at Best Buy that allowed me to get all of the following for $179.99 plus tax:

• The drive itself (which comes with King Kong)
• Two free movies of my choice (for which I chose Hot Fuzz and Transformers)
• Heroes – Season 1 (for which I had to take a rain check)
• Five additional movies (from a pre-set list) via mail-in rebate.

Not a bad deal at all.

My impressions so far are pretty favorable. I haven’t set up the drive in its final position yet, because I have to disentangle a bunch of stuff behind my entertainment center, but it’s quite small — I would say that it’s about the size of a dictionary or so. It connects via a USB 2.0 cable to one of the ports on the 360 itself, and it has its own small power supply. I have to say that I’m surprised that USB 2.0 provides enough bandwidth to transfer the video data, but hey, it works. The playback process itself is software-driven — an application that apparently comprises 4.7 million lines of code and includes technologies from several different groups at Microsoft.

Following installation of the "drivers" (I’m not sure that it’s actually installing things so much as flipping a settings bit on the 360 dashboard, or doing something like copying a decryption key onto the console), the "disc tray" menu item on the dashboard becomes split in two, with one half representing the main 360 DVD drive, and the other half representing the HD-DVD drive. This should make things a little more convenient in that we won’t have to eject a game disc to play a movie anymore.

An interesting wrinkle is that apparently the playback software can be updated through Xbox Live or a burnt CD/DVD, just like a game title update. I was prompted to download an update when I first inserted a movie. Initially, I wondered whether or not this would allow for forward compatibility with the proposed disc format changes — however, another article I read suggests that this may not be the case.

I should also mention that the HD-DVD add-on comes with the remote control for the 360. It’s nice — not quite as nice as a Harmony remote would be, but it’s a nice addition to the package.

We watched King Kong last night, and the difference between the standard DVD format and a high-def format was pretty clear to me, and pretty impressive. Much finer detail is evident, and there did not appear to be as many motion artifacts in scenes with fast-moving action or camera movement. Our TV is only a 720p display, as well — I’m sure the difference would be more pronounced with a 1080p set.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with it. I’m definitely looking forward to watching more movies on it.

And happy. 🙂

We saw the wildfires from the plane last night — it was really crazy to see from that far up, and to realize how big they actually were. The whole region appears to be under a cloud of smoke, although today is a little better than last night. Everyone is hoping for a change in the wind, but it seems like the change forecast for Wednesday has now been pushed back to Thursday. For most of today, I’ve been glued to the news sources to see what’s been going on — it’s been hard for me to concentrate on much of anything today, and I can only imagine how it feels for those who are directly affected or who are out there on the front lines trying to fight the fires.

For some reason, my blog is banned in China, according to this testing tool. Or is it? Every address that I tried, including ones that are in the .cn domain, came back as rejected. They state, “This version, 1.0 may report sites as being ‘blocked’, while there are only technical reasons for their unavailability.” Hmm.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to point at results from a tool like this as reliable and useful when it seems to be broken on a regular basis. I’d rather see them take the tool down when it is not actually working than to leave it up and generate bogus negatives. It kind of makes you wonder, though, if there is any sort of legerdemain going on where test results are manipulated as they return through the Great Firewall of China.

As a recent sufferer of a nasty cold, I had my first opportunity to use nighttime cold medicines without pseudoephedrine. I bought some Tylenol Cold Head Congestion and put it to work, comparing it against the remainder of a box of Nyquil that we had which did contain pseudoephedrine.

Strangely, even though pseudoephedrine is alleged to only combat nasal congestion, I found the Nyquil to be much more effective in stopping a runny nose. The Tylenol took perhaps 50% longer to work, in my estimation, although it did eventually clear up my runny nose and allow me to breathe more freely. I would also say that the Nyquil made me significantly drowsier than the Tylenol, which I view as an advantage in a cold medicine being taken before bedtime.

I found out a little more information on the changes to cold medicines after I purchased the new stuff — apparently there is an opposite handed isomer of pseudoephedrine that does not reduce to methamphetamine, and has fewer side effects. Of course, Pfizer “has not yet sought or received government approval for its sale to the public.” In the meantime, cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine can now only be obtained from behind a pharmacy counter (and only with a prescription in Oregon!) — had I known that before looking it up, I probably would have gone that route. It just seems to work better for me — and apparently I’m not the only person who feels that way.

I’ve been feeling under the weather for the last week or so, which is why I haven’t really written much. (We’ve been stricken by a pretty bad cold.) I do have some more stuff in the pipeline, which will hopefully be thought-provoking and interesting, so stay tuned…

Sources: Goodell determines Pats broke rules by taping Jets’ signals

This is an interesting story to me, for a couple of different reasons. First of all, the Patriots have been a very successful franchise over the last few years, with three Super Bowl wins in the last six seasons setting themselves up to be enshrined as the “Dynasty of the Aughts.” It is particularly difficult for teams to dominate over a long period of time in football, because of free agency, injury, and the fact that every playoff game is “win or go home” — games are often won or lost on a single play. These allegations, even if untrue, have already tarnished their accomplishments with the taint of illegitimacy.

Second, if the description of the Patriots’ espionage in the article is to be believed, they went about it in an incredibly amateurish fashion — I don’t understand how they could think that an assistant, standing on the sidelines with a video camera, would not be caught. I guess I gave the NFL more credit than they deserved in the subterfuge department — baseball has a rich history of elaborate sign-stealing schemes, all of which were probably more effective than this clumsy bit of espionage.