My first contribution to Youtube. Unbelievable how some guys dip their heads into self-tanning lotion and think they look awesome:
Visit my Youtube-profile for more cool movies.
Tag Archives: movies
DSTV – High-definition – WTF?
Posted by GNaschenweng on July 29, 2008 2 comments
DStv operator MultiChoice announced at a press-release last week, that they will (finally) launch O-N-E high-definition channel on August 1. The channel, which will be available in a resolution of 720p, will be used to broadcast the Olympic Games from August 8 (apparently not life, but re-broadcasts), and from August 24 it will carry a new entertainment channel called M-Net HD.
The device, which includes a 500GB hard drive, costs the same as the standard-definition (SD) PVR model — R2 499 — and is capable of storing 150 hours of SD content and 50 hours of HD material.
Come on Multichoice — ONE CHANNEL???? Most of the HD-content broadcast on the marvelous new HD-channel will be anyway multi-cast on standard definition: Season 6 of CSI Miami (Tuesdays at 8.30pm), Season 4 of CSI New York (Thursdays at 9.30pm, and Season 1 of Gossip Girl. Other shows include season 3 of My Name is Earl, season 1 of Samantha Who, season 4 of Lost and season 1 of Reaper.
But wait – there is more – a whole bucket of high-def movies (all of which you should have on Blu-ray already): Die Hard 4, Zodiac, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Spiderman, Oceans Thirteen and Shrek the Third.
The new HD-PVR is a step backwards though. While the current SD-PVR features dual-view (you can hook up two TVs, record one programme but watch two different channels in parallel), the “new” HD-PVR will only support watch one and record two – WTF? DSTV is broadcasting so many repeats anyway, so it is pretty pointless two record two programmes simultaneously anyway.
But there is XtraView which eventually will allow you to pair your existing decoder/PVR with your HD-PVR and will then give you view-three/record-three (if you pair the HD-PVR with a SD-PVR).
The device would have been appealing if even SD content looked better via HDMI (if you are running an LCD bigger than 46″ you will find out that most programming appears washed out or grainy). But to just watch one channel with re-broadcasts in high-definition defeats the purpose of forking of R 2,500.00.
I am certainly not going to get a HD-PVR, as Multichoice will only launch XtraView “sometime in October”. Multichoice was supposed to provide a firmware update to stabilise the PVR’s by last year October and is only now managing (10 months later) to deliver it. So who believes that XtraView will be on time. Not to mention that you will either have to fit a splitter/multiplexer and in the worst cast re-cable/re-install (if you do not have a twin-LNB).
How to crash an airplane
Posted by GNaschenweng on May 6, 2008 No comments
On my recent flight to Atlanta I managed to break the Delta airlines inflight entertainment system and upset a few fellow passengers on the plane (hello row 27 passengers: sorry for crashing your entertainment system and forcing you to fast forward to your movie a few times 
).
Each seat in the plane had a small touch screen monitor built into the head rest of the chair in front allowing passengers to watch a variety of movies (Beowulf sucked), sitcoms and play a few simple games. I decided to save half of the movies for my return flight and wanted to keep myself occupied with Klondike.
The touchscreen really sucked (and sorry to you in 26A – I might have hit the screen too hard a few times), but curiously after drawing the fourth card … poof… my screen goes black. Poof … screen of the person next to me goes black. In fact all screens in my row go black and initiate a nice Redhat Linux boot sequence:
I had to stop my “analysis” after the fourth repeated try, as fellow passengers got mightily upset, because as they managed to restart their movies, their system rebooted again (I noticed that it took painfully long to fast forward the movie). (I also noticed that taking a picture of the rebooting screen gave away that I was the culprit).
While the reboot resolved the issue, we were not that luck on our return flight. Halfway through our trip (and this time without my involvement), the inflight-entertainment system did not show a movie selection anymore. The cabin-crew reset the system a number of times and the whole plane showed rebooting penguins (at that point in time I hoped that none of my previous row-27 passengers are on the plane spreading the word that I am the cause of this). This time the reset did not help and the cabin-crew gave up (I did notice though that a NFS mount failed during the startup – probably the location to the movies???).
Downside of this experience: If you are on a 24-hour flight, ensure that you have alternative entertainment – since staring at a fairly static screen showing a tiny blue plane moving slowly towards your destination is not overly exciting after 4 hours.
