Currently or recent..... T.V. Movie, $orn etc...

I did pick up season three of Breaking Bad on Blu-Ray and am six episodes into it. It reminded me of the other reason why I would never watch a show like that on streaming: the sound design on that show is one of the best that I have ever heard for any TV show, even including miniseries like Band of Brothers. It has judicious but well-placed directional effects all throughout the soundfield, and thunderously deep and powerful bass. (The prologue of episode five with the flashback to Jesse blowing money at a strip club was almost rattling the windows in my house.) Uncompressed audio alone makes Blu-Ray worth the money.

Finally made it to the second season of breaking bad, very good show. hey Iago you will be surprised with netflix HD, as long as you have the download speed to support it. I think 30mps does good....

Ah, Iago, you finally got to the episode where Jesse asks the girls if they'd like to meet his thick stack! I loved that line. Aaron Paul does a wonderful job of playing Jesse. Did you see him in Big Love?

blur: I can't be bothered doing the math, but an HD broadcast equivalent to the resolution and audio fidelity of Blu-ray would require a bandwidth of about 2 GB/s! A bandwidth of 30 MB/s is okay, but not nearly as good as true high definition.

HD streaming broadcasts are more heavily compressed and filtered than Blu-Ray, and they have less detail as a result. You also cannot get uncompressed audio with streaming.

Up to episode 8. Speaking of sound design and uncompressed audio, my favorite audio moment in the entire show is when the "cousins" shoot the gun saleseman in the back of his semi trailer and then slowly walk out. The overall ambient sound level is fairly quiet, so their footsteps in those boots are clear as one walks off screen to the left and the other walks off screen to the right. You clearly hear the image of the footfalls move slowly in two diagonal lines starting in the center of the screen and moving into the left and right surrounds. The imaging is extraordianary -- I may make that a demo scene!

I enjoyed that scene for a myriad of other reasons, but the sound design is very good.

The imaging of the footfalls as they pass is really amazing -- I actually rewound the scene and watched it a couple of times. I was only half kidding about the demo -- some of my favorite demo scenes are quieter ones with a lot of ambience, rather than just explosions. Master and Commander has been my go-to demo for a long time, because it does both: the scene tracking through the ship right during the opening credits has some really immersive creaks and groans, but you can skip forward after that to the first cannon volley to shake people out of their seat.

Master and Commander is a good film for a number of reasons. I thought the acting was quite good, and the adaptation done well. I do wish the camera angles were a bit further back at times and I also wanted a bit more character development, but I guess that's not necessarily the point of that film. What did you think of the film?

It is one of my favorite movies of the past decade and may well rise to being one of my favorite movies of all time. I do not think that anyone could have adapted O'Brien better. His books really only develop the characters over time -- meaning over the course of the series rather than within any single novel -- and with so little time in the movie, relatively speaking, I thought that they did as well as they could. I think that Weir relied more on casting to flesh out the character rather than scripting -- the right actor in the part can do more than pages of dialogue. But anyway, I absolutely love the movie and it gains in stature for me with each viewing.

It's true that the characters develop over the series, which is why I'm okay with how the film plays out, but that doesn't mean I can't wish for a little more! It's the one thing, that had it have been done, that I think would have propelled the movie to a complete work of art.

Well, it suffers from essentially being an origin story, like all the origin superhero movies. Time spent setting up the characters better is time taken away from the main conflict in the story. Weir contented himself to reveal little tidbits here and there as the story progressed, much like Ridley Scott did with Alien; you are told just what you need to know about each character within the context of the story. And it was enough for me, both before I started reading the books and after I am partway through them. For me, it is indeed a work of art. (My only real criticism? I hate the "Jonah" subplot and would glady have seen it excised.)

Biggest Loser... however I prefer the old intro theme song. "What have you done today!? To make you FEEL PROUD?!"

Rozzi deserves points for that random course-altering interjection.

Point taken. Or should that be point given?

"awesome" point please.

How can you deny Rozzi?

Especially not when she is begging for it.

I thought you were offering points!

i need to post 47 x more and double my awesome rating to catch up to Iago

We can help with points, but you will have to do the posting yourself!

If that is the carrot that we need to keep Rozzie coming back, then we will have to keep raising her rating! (At least until she gets a couple of points shy of mine, at which point we will have to withdraw the carrot in case reaching her goal would result in her never coming back!)

Ok I will post.

She scored a point!

mrblur wrote:You should really think of getting NetFlix...NO>...

What I really can't stand is the high price of 3d bluray movies. Who the hell has ~$34+ a pop to spend just for 3d? Especially in this broken economy. The best they usually go on sale for is $24. I think that the most any movie should ever cost is $20. Even that is pushing it but anything beyond $20 is a complete ripoff especially when if you already paid to see it in the theater.

Points make prizes.

I'm not a fan of 3D, so I see no point in 3D Blu-ray,. However, for some people it will be the ticket, and they'll find a way to fork out the extra coin.

East wrote:

mrblur wrote:You should really think of getting NetFlix...NO>...

What I really can't stand is the high price of 3d bluray movies. Who the hell has ~$34+ a pop to spend just for 3d? Especially in this broken economy. The best they usually go on sale for is $24. I think that the most any movie should ever cost is $20. Even that is pushing it but anything beyond $20 is a complete ripoff especially when if you already paid to see it in the theater.

Welcome to the wonderful world of niche marketing. Sales of 3D Blu-Rays are a very small percentage of total sales, so you are paying for the privilege. Back in the day, most standard laserdiscs went for $35-$40 a pop, and special editions like Criterions could go for as high as $125. 3D Blu-Ray may be expensive, but it could be worse!

I finally finished season one of Boardwalk Empire last night. My only major beef is still Micheal Shannon's character -- any attempt at developing only piled more cliches on top of the existing cliches; he got worse, not better. But other than that, it was entertaining. I like the fact that they resisted any kind of a cliffhanger ending for the season, and instead just left all of the unanswered questions as motivation for viewers coming back for season two.