Parents visit

The In-laws stayed with us this weekend. Taking a quick picture before our hot pot dinner. Always a good time when we have family over.

Changing Honda headlamps

One of our headlamps blew out from wear & tear. One headlamp was still running but I was a bit anxious to get it changed out because when Viks is on call, she is often summoned in the middle of the night to a county hospital that is a good 20 min away. You can never be too careful when it comes to crazy So Cal drivers. Changing a car headlamp can be a bit more work that changing a household lamp as we found out. Reading the car manual, we thought it should've been easy. We both scratched our heads for a little bit but eventually we figured it out and felt like kicking ourselves on how easy it should have been. The mistake we made was completely removing the steel "clamp" (on the right side of photo) that goes over the metal clasp that securely holds the headlamp bulb and it was extremely difficult to put back on. Lessoned learned: If you have a similar "clamp" don't completely remove it. Just loosen it!

Blade Runner - beautifully restored

2007 "Final Cut" HD DVD

1992 "Directors Cut" standard DVD

2007 "Final Cut" HD DVD

1992 "Directors Cut" standard DVD

2007 "Final Cut" HD DVD

1992 "Directors Cut" standard DVD

It's true that most movies today are simply commodities. You watch, are entertained for a bit (or not), but then after a while you forget the movie. Blade Runner is one of those movies that whether you love it or hate it, you don't really ever forget it.

The film never had quite the following of say .. Star Wars. Maybe it was too dystopic for its time. I remember the first time I saw Blade Runner many years ago and thought to myself how slow moving the film was. I really didn't understand what the film was about. However, it made more sense the 2nd & 3rd time around. In fact, the film is very rewarding with repeat viewings and holds up well even after 25 years and is now revered as a sci-fi classic (and currently
#97 in AFI Top 100 films of all time)! Like most fans of this film it has to do with the dazzling visuals, the astonishing attention to detail, Vangelis' memorable electronic score, and for me personally the pay off is with Roy Batty's "Tears in rain" monologue - there is an irony and poignancy that culminates in that sequence that many films try to accomplish but rarely achieve. It still gets me every time.

From the pictures, you can see that Blade Runner has been painstakingly restored with the prints scanned in 4K resolution. The HD presentation simply smokes the original SD DVD release. The picture quality is unbelievable in hi def. If you click on the pictures, you'll know what I mean. It's almost looks like a recent film release! Sound & Vision had a great article on the restoration process. The soundtrack has been restored as well. While Blade Runner is not as rich in sound effects as other sci-fi movies, I felt Vangelis' score to be the biggest benficiary of the restoration process. Terrific soundtrack presentation.

The Simpsons Movie - Blu Ray

"Spider pig, spider pig..."

"Bountiful penis.."
The Simpsons movie in hi-def Blu Ray

The Simpsons TV episode in standard DVD

I didn't think a "simple" animated feature like The Simpsons would benefit much from hi-def but wow, it is a nice upgrade.

The Bourne Ultimatum HD DVD

I can't say enough about how much I love the Bourne Trilogy. The Bourne Ultimatum is argubly the best looking disc of the three - not too grainy but also not too artificially, squeaky clean. The movies are dark overall but the image on this disc still has plenty of "pop" and just leaps out at you. Also the Dolby True HD soundtrack rocks the house. I think the neighbors are quite annoyed at me.

Decent Best Buy BOGO

Man, it seems there is a BOGO everyday now. Despite being a HD addict and the temptation of BOGO sales, I am pretty good with regards to not buying everything that's out there and being much more selective on what I purchase. Most movies I only want to watch once and the cost can quickly add up after a while. Last week, an AVS member had the inside scoop on a Best Buy HD DVD -and- Blu Ray BOGO which starts today. And whoah - this Best Buy BOGO actually has movies people would want! I picked up Bourne Ultimatum and Shrek 3 last Tuesday thinking that if the rumor was false I could just return Shrek 3 unopened. It turns out the deal is real as I got the refund adjustment today. I even had a $5 off Reward Zone coupon. This makes it real hard to justify paying $27.95-29.99 for the upcoming Simpsons Blu Ray movie released this Tue. No deals on that one yet.

And before you ask, no, I am not at all concerned about the Blu Ray disc sales lead over HD DVD. It's all noise to me. I enjoy being format neutral. Period.

KCAL9 basketball: Lakers vs Warriors

We don't have ESPN HD so it's a treat for me to get a KCAL 9 NBA game during the weekdays. And what a great game is was tonight. It was awesome to see two former UCLA guards playing on opposite teams. Baron Davis is always fun to watch. And for me, watching sports on a 106" screen is the next best thing to actually being at the game. I just wish there was much less compression on the HD feeds. The screenshots here are from the DVR recording and when the game is paused, the picture breaks up/becomes heavily pixelated and looks a lot worse than how it actually appears in motion (much sharper). AFAIK, all stations are guilty of compression but relatively speaking, CBS and NBC seem to be better in terms of sports hi def picture quality. Fox and ABC are notoriously bad.

Light 'em up

Hats off to Toshiba for their continued FW updates. The latest FW version 2.7 allows the raw digital bitstreams of movie soundtracks (Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, and Dolby True HD, and DTS-HD) to be sent and decoded by the SSP (both HD DVD player and SSP/receiver must be HDMI 1.3 compliant). Prior to this FW release, the XA2 could only send decoded PCM to my 885 and the 885 display would show "HD DVD Multich" (meaning, Mulitchannel PCM). With HDMI sending out a raw bitstream the 885 display will show "Dolby TrueHD" because the SSP is performing the decode. To me, that is so cool. Does it make a real difference in terms of sound quality? I have not listened enough to say a definitive yes or no. My initial impressions lead me to believe that it's not a drastic difference. But in theory, by sending a raw bitstream it's one less conversion. So why am I so excited? What can I say, I just like seeing "Dolby TrueHD" light up. Haha.

There is an important caveat. Because of the way HD DVDs are authored (what I read to be termed "advanced mode"), special features like PiP video commentary will produce no sound unless you switch the XA2 output to PCM. I verified this on the "Knocked Up" HD DVD.

Bay Area visit

Visiting Carolyn and Jenn and meeting baby Nolan. Naomi is also saying a lot of words now!

Hanging out Diana's new place.

Hanging out at Mel's new frozen yogurt shop in downtown Mountain View on the corner of Castro and Church. Terrific frozen yogurt. Give it a try!

Ouch

The two UCLA fumbles pretty much set the tone for the entire game. The faint glimmer of hope with that cool one handed TD at the end of Q2 was squashed in 2nd half. Oh well. I do wonder what is in store for Karl Dorrell.