JsARCLIGHT

Snap. Got my Best Buy "HD DVD Player Bonus Cash" gift card in the mail last night. Ironically... the gift card is solid "blu ray" blue and silver...

It's inevitable that prices will fall. As technology matures and it's makers find new ways to reduce cost and speed manufacturing the overall costs will fall... it's simply a matter of time and how quickly the market warms to Blu Ray. IMHO three things have to happen before we will see substantial noticeable drops in BD hardware and movie prices: 1) BD needs to shore up it's technology so all the manufacturers and studios are on the same page. By all accounts that I've seen BD Live 2.0 is the final stage and once all the retail players inhabit this "tier" and the movies are all marked for it as well there should be a definite "standardization" across the manufacturing and authoring scope which should alleviate some of the "issues" people (both studios and consumers) have with the "complexity" of the format. 2) The great digital migration of 2009 is upon us and many consumers are not exactly thrilled with the idea of purchasing a new format, let alone new TV's. I'd think that once the great migration is underway and close to finished we'll see many new HDTV owners making the leap to BD technology. And 3) The local, and to an extent the global, economy is not exactly in the best of shape right now. The dollar is falling like a rock and most "typical" consumers are not looking to buy a $500 "toy" at the moment. Add to that on the manufacturing side raw materials prices are skyrocketing as are transportation costs and neither shows any real signs of ebbing off soon. With their existing profit margins subtlety shrinking from a ballooning overhead I highly doubt the hardware manufacturers are rushing to drop prices just yet. I fully believe they are rushing to reduce their own overhead, but if that translates into lower market prices is yet to be seen. While I have no doubt BD prices will fall... eventually... I'm still in the camp of "wait and see". It's illogical to think that the prices will never fall, but at the same time it's kind of presumptuous to believe that just because "the war is over" that instantly means the prices will fall. Blu Ray is just like the infant DVD of the late '90s... it's a long range game plan. Prices will slowly drop and eventually years from now we will all look around at Best Buy or Frys and wonder when they stopped selling DVDs. It's just that the transition from DVD to BD, from expensive to cheap, will happen so gradually and over a longer time period that we will never notice it happening. It will be like the old analogy of the tiger and the elephant used by Ho Chi Minh, BD will peck away at DVD slowly over the years until DVD is no more.

Red Dwarf needs a comeback. I dare not say "remake" as the original show was pure awesome as it was... more like a "re imaging". With as much as the US "borrows" TV show ideas from the UK these days, I'd think a US made and "localized" Red Dwarf... provided it had the same "flavor" as the original... would be kind of fun. You really don't see much decent "Sci Fi Comedy" these days. I'd also like to see Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy redone as a longer TV series, but this time trying to be more accurate and following the books closer. The recent movie was good from an effects standpoint but completely lame in it's handling of the material. The old British mini series from the early '80s was spot on, it only lacked decent special effects. With today's effects I'd think HHG could be done serious justice as a limited TV mini series.

SciFi has been running lower thirds for it for the past week (perhaps even longer... I don' watch SciFi that much). Supposedly season four begins air on Friday April 18th in it's "usual" time slot.

OK, now that is a toy worth my money. Like I say, make me a "toy" that is big and detailed and they can name their price. I am by and large a fan of the Ride Armors in bike mode first and foremost and this Beagle iteration appears to me to be the best toy rendition of a Ride Armor in bike mode that I have ever seen. It even partially fills one of my long-time dreams that someone build a highly detailed Ride Armor accessory for Dragon/Hot Toys scale figures. If they show me accessories like scale pistols, rifles and the like I'll buy one even if it's a QC abomination... I'll glue the bitch into permanent bike mode. Count this dog in the "buy me a Beagle" camp.

(I was joking about the "vast numbers" of DTSMA discs... note the smiley) But I can see that 15% number being close to correct. Just a look on my shelf shows about 10% of the BD's I own have DTSMA. It's still upsetting though that the PS3 lacks these audio abilities this far into it's development cycle. Sure they'll patch the thing with tons of goofy and sometimes nonsensical features... but they seem to be dragging their feet on a few things. Then again they still haven't released that much ballyhooed "home" thing either.

I remember when the domestic sub Mospeada came out I kind of fumed about it in the same way. I "justified" it in my mind in that "Stig" was an actual name, whereas "Stick" was only a name if you count the Burt Reynolds movie... and even then it was a nickname (short for "Stickley"). "Stick Bernard" is kind of like someone being named Shaft McKenzie or Branch Devenue... come to think of it the name "Stick Bernard" would fit right in in today's empty brained teen angst high school shows that are on the cable channels.

Well then, I guess it's a good thing that my PS3 can't even decode DTSMA let alone stream it. ... seriously though Sony, anytime now with the DTSMA decoding... it's no like a ton of movies use it or anything.

I think once the huge forced "digital migration" hits in 2009 you will see the market begin a sizable shift to HD and Blu Ray. Retailers are doing their best to phase out SD televisions from the market and given the usual lifespan of consumer electronics the vast majority of people are probably just waiting for their old sets to die before finally making a new HD purchase. IMHO a year after the digital migration you should see prices start to dip to levels the common consumer will palate. In the end that is the driving force behind media for the masses: price. Average people will not care that Blu Ray is 1080p HD with lossless sound... they will care that it is $30 when they can buy "the same thing" on DVD for $15. I know so many people who claim they "cannot tell a difference" between Blu Ray and regular DVD, and from what I have seen these people are the majority. These are the same people who were "happy with their VCR's" ten years ago when VHS was king and thought this "newfangled DVD thing" that occupied tiny endcaps and special displays (also priced at $30 a pop) was not going to last. If the studios have a plan it's most likely the same plan that worked for DVD. It's just a matter of time... and if and when the day comes when Blu Ray dominates the movie section you will probably not even notice it happened because it will have been so subtle and slow to mature. I remember the day I "woke up" and noticed they didn't sell VHS tapes any more.

While I have personally never really liked the "ninja" Snake Eyes (I prefer the "elite soldier / commando" Snake Eyes) I have to at least admit that that still of Park shows some adherance to pre-existing artwork. They did not pull the whole thing out of their ass like many movies like to do. ... also I thank everything holy that they did not choose to go with that early '90s "grey and blue with big orange goggles" paintball Snake Eyes costume. That thing just looks ten shades of stupid.

[Peter Griffin] Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet. [/Peter Griffin] Best Buy to send $50 Gift Cards to People Who Bought HD DVD Players I bought my Xbox HD DVD drive at Best Buy. Used my Reward Zone card too so they should have a record of me. Time to start checking my mailbox for a gift card... that I will probably use to buy Blu Rays. The irony is delicious.

Guys... Back... on... topic. Please.

I'm not going to lock a thread that has stood for months and has a lot of decent info in it just because a few egos can't stay in check. I see no issue with the topic at hand (the discussion of price) but I am starting to see issue with how the topic is being discussed. Please carry yourselves with a bit more decorum guys. Fight fire with fire and debate, make points and counterpoints, call on fact and impression... but if civil words fail you and your only recourse is to inject insults, passive aggression or other derogatory text then please recuse yourself from the discussion. I for one am getting pretty tired of a lot of the petty baiting I'm seeing lately. This may be a forum about plastic toys based on a cartoon but it does not mean you have to act childish.

Yes but Last Man on Earth was also produced outside the Hollywood system (in Italy by a majority Italian cast and crew) and also on a shoestring budget. Which means the only area they differ is that Living Dead was done by (at the time) rank amateurs and Last Man was supposedly done by "professionals" (even though the Italian director and most of the cast were of roughly the same skill and experience level as George Romero and his crew). Just because Last Man was a Lippert production doesn't mean it was given the same level of treatment as his earlier "in system" movies. Last Man was actually turned down by another studio before Lippert picked it up, and he picked it up knowing full well he was going to farm it out to Italy. Had Lippert kept it inside the studio system it would have been a better movie... but it would have cost him much more to produce, which means it would have been too expensive for him to make. Which is kind of the thrust of my argument on I Am Legend... this time around they had the budget and the star power and still managed to not do the subject matter justice. Last Man had the story but lacked everything else... I Am Legend had everything else but lacked on the story. Omega Man falls somewhere in the middle, having a better budget and some semblance of the original story but never enough of either to make it truly great.

When viewed against it's peers (other bargain basement sci fi movies made in the early '60s) it holds up though. The same complaints can be leveled against the original Night of the Living Dead (which also has fallen into the public domain) yet it is still a great movie. Science fiction / horror was cheap B movie pulp back then, completely low budget and it was unheard of for a movie like it to receive any better treatment than what these films had. Which given today's newfound "respect" of sci fi films and the outlandish budgets and talent they throw at them you'd expect this particular subject to be hit out of the park... but it isn't. For all it's flaws I still believe Last Man on Earth is the superior movie to the new I Am Legend. Legend has all the glitz and polish but none of the mood or message.

But most of that was budget constraints, location filming (Rome of all places), half the actors where Italian (and speaking in Italian, requiring a lot of the dialog in the movie to be overdubbed in English in post), the fact that Matheson abandoned the script halfway through and other people had to finish it, the dubious choice of Vincent Price as the main character etc. etc. I still to this day think that if it's script was polished just a tad and it was given the budget and star power it needed Last Man on Earth could be remade practically shot for shot and turn into a superior movie. I'm just tired of Hollywood "knowing better" and dicking with the story lines of well established stories just to "popcorn it up".

In posting about this movie in another thread elsewhere it came to my attention that the original movie adaptation of "I Am Legend" called "Last Man on Earth" (which aired recently on MGM HD) has fallen into the public domain and is free to watch here: Internet Film Archive I still prefer this film adaptation to Omega Man and this recent Will Smith vehicle. Last Man on Earth is the closest to Matheson's novel (hell, the man himself wrote most of the script for it) story wise with only a handful of minor deviations. It's not big, loud and over the top like Omega Man or I Am Legend but it definitely has the right "feel" and mood.

From what I've heard the Blu Ray will have both versions of the movie, theatrical and alternate, complete and fully branching. So you can watch either the theatrical or the alternate movie in their entirety fully finished and edited together.

Speaking of Mass Effect, did anyone get the DLC for it yesterday? I'm wondering if it is worth the $5 and the hassle of dragging my ME back out. I was going to get Bully but if the ME stuff is worthwhile then I might just do that instead. After all, GTA4 will be here in a month or so and I'm not sure I'd want to get all bogged down in Bully because I'll drop it like an angry cat when GTA4 comes out.

If you were going for "period accurate" then the lower receiver looks close to correct. It's also not really anything you could do much about... I myself have a lot of those "big army man dolls" and the inaccuracies in their weapons are quite common. Weapons, like the characters that carry them, are very unique and have many small "tell tale" bits and details that give away their age or period. When it comes to toy accessories most designers simply opt for a mish-mash approach. All they care is that it resembles something rather than it being 100% dead nuts accurate. Then again 100% dead nuts accurate is a waste of time usually, as only I and like four other people will know it's not "right". The intent is what counts and I'd say you nailed it. Another notable AR pistol design that has some Hollywood behind it is the Olympic Arms OA93, which was used by Willem Defoe's character in "Clear and Present Danger". The OA93, unlike the Patriot style AR Pistols, remedies the gas system problems by using a different bolt and gas system which completely omits the recoil buffer. It still suffers from the same ballistic issues though with the short pistol barrel. To also complete my douche-baggery, the Beta C Mag (the double snail magazine) shown used on the Patriot in MGS3 also did not exist until the early '80s and it has never served with any military command as an issued magazine, mostly because it is too finicky and delicate for military use (it's primarily plastic after all).

Actually not to totally douche bag out, but if I put my AR15 hat on for a second... The "Patriot" was a brand name of what is basically an AR pistol. The actual "Patriot" was made by a group called Rocky Mountain Arms from 1993 to present day. There is no such animal as a "Patriot" from the 1960's, as MGS3 depicts. AR pistols are also NOT fully automatic as most people think. They could be (and a small handful are) but they suffer from constant jams and erratic rates of fire because the gas system and recoil buffer are too short to reliably cycle the 5.56x45mm round. The shortest barrel you can have on a semi-reliable fully automatic AR style rifle is 10.25", and that is with a bare minimum CAR collapsing stock. To get a short barreled AR to run well full auto you really need a "pig tail" gas system, which is basically the long rifle size gas tube bent around the hand guard... it "fools" the weapon into thinking it has a full size gas system which creates more reliable operation. Another nasty down side to an AR pistol is that the short barrel neuters the kinetic force of the 5.56 round. The military 5.56x45mm round was developed to achieve optimum power out of longer barrels and when fired from short barrels there simply is not enough rifling to properly stabilize the round, which results in less than stellar ballistics. While not totally ineffective, a 5.56 round fired out of an AR pistol possesses noticeably reduced range and power. Lastly, I know I've talked about this weapon before (in the old MGS3 game thread) but the bullets definitely do not tumble end over end out of the weapon as depicted in MGS3. Is the RMA Patriot (and AR pistols in general) a cool looking weapon? Yes. But it is pretty much all bark... but when you are making a video game or Hollywood movie, nothing "sells" like bark. All that aside that is a really nice custom. The only nitpick I'd have is that it has a "late model" A2 pistol grip and A3 upper assembly (which did not exist prior to the early to mid '80s) and you can't see the front gas block. But it's not "wrong"... the gas block could be under the hand guard and hidden by and end cap... it just looks a little weird. But only to someone who has seen more ARs than trees.

OK guys, quit it. Seriously. Talk about the toy, not how the person who has a differing opinion than you is childish, unjustified, "fanboy", etc. Debate the point, not the person making the point. If you can't debate the point on its merits then please push yourself away from the keyboard and abstain from throwing gas on the fire.

And from what I've seen they claim the game is going to be mastered in 7.1 uncompressed audio... which IMHO is kind of gimmicky. The people who will actually be able to take advantage of that are like 1 in a few thousand, if that. Then again they might as well put it in... a lot of people are putting a lot of eggs in this basket. If this game doesn't blow the socks, shoes and toenails off of a lot of people its going to be kind of sad. So many people have waited so long for this game... it would be a real shame if it doesn't live up to the already gargantuan hype it has brewing.

Pretty much. Your average "next gen" console or PC game is only about 10 to 15 gig tops for the actual game mechanics, models, textures, sound effects, etc. It's all the FMV video and audio that tip the scales. I mean your average video game will not fill up a Blu Ray disc, heck it probably won't even fill up one side of a Blu Ray disc... but a Blu Ray HD movie with all it's video and audio will max that sucker out. Plus the textures can't be too crazy. The PS3 is good but it's not the best you can get for texture pushing capacity. I'd even call the PS3's usual texture resolutions "adequate"... they are not much to write home about compared to the pure balls a super high end PC game and video card can muster.

I know in the past (analog past) cable quality was a big deal and a higher quality cable could give you slightly better quality sound. But in today's digital domain its a digital signal... it either works or it doesn't. Paying tons of cake for a "superior" quality 3' cable compared to a "lesser quality" 3' cable is nonsense (unless the difference is spec, like 1.1 to 1.3... but even still the cost is negligible most of the time). The only time I buy "high quality" is when I need a run greater than 20'... which is pretty much never these days.