"Shaken or stirred?"

"Does it look like I give a damn? "

Believe the hype. I must admit I had my reservations about Daniel Craig playing the new 00. However, I was pleasantly surprised by his performance. Given Craig's menacing demeanor and piercing eyes, I felt that his casting was a perfect fit for the gritty and edgy tone of the movie. Craig, in my mind, is the most "human" Bond in the series. I've always liked Eva Green since Kingdom of Heaven; she just radiates with style and sophistication. And scene-for-scene she held her own against Daniel Craig. Given that this movie was more of an exposition into "the man behind the martini," it's hard to imagine any other two actors who could have been more successful in showing how Bond became the distrusting man we know of today. I'll even go as far to say that had there been a Q or an emphasis in the gadgets, it probably would have been more of a detractor rather than a value add to the story.

New screen is up

House MD in HD 720p and "low lamp" setting

Viks helped me install the new Da lite 106" screen this past weekend. The frame came unassembled and the screen was rolled up. Installation took about 30 min. The screen works as advertised. Wrinkle/wave free and I love the black velvet frame. Because of our family room dimensions, we sit about 13 ft back and you can see a tiny bit more of the pixels compared to the older 92". A 1080p projector would certainly help here but those are a bit out of reach for me at today's prices. What was nice was when Viks commented on how good the image is despite the larger size (she is much less nit picky than I am).

At the request of Kev, I took some shots at varying amounts of light to show how the picture is affected. The screen has a 1.1 gain and the projector is at low lamp setting and without calibration to the new screen (newer Mitsubishi HC3000 production units have better out of the box performance compared to the initial runs). There is a high lamp setting which makes the projector more watchable but with ambient or household lighting, the Mitsubishi projector will never be plasma-like bright. However, it was not designed for that purpose. With proper light control / lights off, that is when the picture quality really shines in terms of contrast, color, picture depth, image detail, etc. There are other much brighter projectors available but you trade off on contrast, color, etc. So with that said, it's understandable why many people would much rather get a plasma/LCD/DLP/SXRD RPTV. Let's face it, setting up a projector and screen takes quite a bit of effort ( our rear wall now has a good amount of spackle and touch up paint that proves this). And then there is the wife acceptance factor (I am very lucky in this regard)!! But the pay off at the end is a much more immersive and cinematic viewing experience, especially with hi-def sports and movies.

Hopefully, our next house will have a big enough wall so that we can mount the screen onto a wall as it was designed for.

Covey's habit #5 ...

"seek first to understand and then to be understood" has really saved my ass on more than one occasion..both professionally and personally.

Stadium of the future

Now if this becomes reality, it would certainly be a fantastic showcase of networking technology that both techies and J6Ps can appreciate alike. I don't know a better salesman than JC.

"...digital advertising displays will be able to switch images based on the buying habits of the people walking by through data embedded in their cell phones " reminds me of a particular scene from Minority Report.

it's like early X-mas

Yippee! I finally got delivery of my new screen. It's the Da Lite High Contrast Cinema Vision fixed frame with the pro trim option. I sent back the manual pull down since it had a lot of "waves" and the new screen is fully tensioned. The screen features a 45 degree cut frame and is much more decor friendly compared to the manual pull down. However, since we have a TV alcove, I can't mount the screen on the wall as shown in the URL. I had Da Lite custom drill eyebolts on each top corner so that I can hang from hooks.

Holding out

I do not have any strong opinions on Tom Cruise's personal life/beliefs. If you can separate the man from the movie, MI3 is a decent summer action flick. So I picked up the SD DVD version of MI3 last night but was sort of kicking myself knowing that I will be buying the movie again in HD down the road. Will it be Blu Ray or HD-DVD, I'm not sure at this point (being a collector, I think I will always prefer a physical disc over any future download method).

Despite all the hype re: BR studio support, there aren't as many titles today on BR that I'd purchase compared to HD-DVD. Despite the BD50 capacity, the reviews, etc., I am not really convinced MPEG2 should still be used for encoding Blu Ray. It's been disconcerting to me that with all the purported benefits of BR along with the significant premium, the picture quality and features of BR has not exceeded HD-DVD. For me, the value proposition of HD-DVD is clear.. equal (and in many cases much better) picture quality, great sound at a cheaper price. The intent here is not to bash BR but I really think HD-DVD is the better deal today and will continue to be tomorrow.

With the current clearance pricing on the Toshiba HD-XA1, I've been really, really tempted. There is also a "three free HD DVD" promo going on. The glowing review on the HD-DVD version of "Batman Begins" just about pushed me over the edge. Of course I shot myself in the foot by telling Viks about the format war and now she doesn't agree on getting an HD disc player until the formar war declares a winner (doh!). But even if I had her blessing, I'm still on the fence as the HD-XA1 is a first gen unit... slow boot up time (it's essentially a HTPC), has some HDMI quirks, and supposedly has little tolerance of blemished HD-DVD discs..clearly a time to market product albeit a very respectable unit. Another barrier to entry for me is the fact that my old but faithful Sony SDP-EP9ES surround processor only has Dolby Digital (no DTS) and no analog inputs so I won't be able to listen to the newer Dolby Digital Plus / Dolby True HD soundtracks. I've been eyeing the current surround processors from Outlaw Audio that have 7.1 analog ins but I have been thinking to just wait til they or someone releases an HDMI 1.3 spec processor (I would like to have the option of having the newer surround formats decoded by the surround processor vs having the decoding performed by the HD disc player).

Watching on the sidelines since April of this year, the whole HD format war has been pretty frustrating for me. It's like David and Goliath. Back in 1997, I was an early adopter with DVD as the technology was compelling and there was no format war (Divx was never a real contender IMO). Hard to believe it's been almost 10 years since DVD was originally released (in US). With the limited release of PS3, the Sony and Pioneer BR player delays it looks like the format war is going to drag longer than I had originally thought. So it looks like I may have to wait a bit longer to avoid buyers remorse in 2007.