Alpha OTS

Reminds me of something in the extras where they discuss movie Bonecrusher's design. He's the Buffalo minesweeper with that long retracting arm with the big claws/rake on the end, but in real life that rake's about the size of a pizza box.

I ordered mine online, and I wouldn't do it again pretty much for those exact reasons.

I was thinking of getting a PS3 not so much for the games, but for the blu-ray(every movie I want seems to be there) and to replace my PS2. Statements like the above only serve to encourage my wreckless spending habit.

Oh we knew that was a given from day one. However, Hasbro was probably the one that suggested it first.

The Car Brothers are the original Alternators, imo. Less than 2 days left! More pictures at the auction links. 4 Original Energon Terrorcons - Battle Ravage, Divebomb(missing instructions), Insecticon, and Cruel-lock 4 Energon Transformers including Omnicons Strongarm, Skyblast, Signal Flare, and Decepticon Starscream, all 100% complete! All 3 TF Robots in Disguise Original Car Brothers - X-Brawn, Prowl & Side Burn, all 100% complete! All 3 Transformer Robots in Disguise Super Car Brothers - X-Brawn, Prowl, Side Burn(Hot Rod Homage) , all 100% complete

HD DVD Players For Under $200? Internet rumors fly after a Wal-Mart employee posts evidence of $199 player for the holidays. By Swanni Washington, D.C. (October 18, 2007) -- An HD DVD player could be available for the new low price of $199 this holiday season. Internet message boards are buzzing with the possibility after a Wal-Mart employee posted an upcoming store notice about a $199 Toshiba HD DVD player. The price has not been confirmed by Wal-Mart or Toshiba, but the drop would not be surprising. Toshiba's entry-level player is now $299, but industry analysts have forecast that a sub-$200 player is likely for the holidays. Additionally, Blu-ray manufacturers are expected to lower the price on its players. Sony's Blu-ray player is now the lowest with a suggested retail price of $499. However, Sony announced today that it will launch a new Play Station 3 for $399 on November 2. The PS3 has a Blu-ray player inside. Lower prices for both Blu-ray and HD DVD are expected as supporters of the two high-def disc formats battle it out during the holiday season.

Went through all the extras on the extra disc in the HD set last night. Pretty decent stuff, although the Transformers history they bring up is pretty basic, but probably sufficient for the general public. The thing that surprised me was that given some of the quotes and stories I've read prior, I was expecting to hate Michael Bay, but ended up nodding in agreement with him quite a bit as he logically explained why he chose the designs and voices that he did. I'm a *little* less reticent of him doing the sequel now. One of the neat bits is where he explained why he chose Hugo Weaving over Frank Welker by showing a clip of movie Megatron using Welker's voice. Although to be fair, they did use a voice clip from the G1 cartoon(I think). I remember when Welker did a voice clip for the Transformers fandom not that long ago, and his Megatron voicing had aged(purposefully?), and sounded much better I thought. The only deleted scenes I saw were in the behind the scenes features, and none of which were anything I'd want to see again or have re-integrated into the movie. They're all human scenes anyway, obviously. One of the neatest unexpected extras is the Iron Man trailer on the first disc though. Awesome!

Cool, I hadn't considered that. With that in mind, my wish list is that for Bee they do that *and* change the paint on the bottom and insides of the feet from light gray to black as well as putting some silver/chrome behind the headlight. Hey, might not all happen, but it would make me happy. The one I'm really holding out hope for is Megs though. Gray, red, and black will always be *the* Megatron to me. I love classics Megatron, but I feel that his paint deco is more of an amalgamation of Galvatron and Megatron into one, than it is just Megatron. Although the paint scheme they did choose is actually a very clever way of bypassing the U.S. gun laws while doing fan service. Astrotrain needs an anime deco, and someone needs to do it and make it affordable before botcon does it.

I had thought it was just my vga cable gone bad, but now I'm not so sure. Over the last two weeks, the video would cut out for a second or two while playing a game. I'd still hear the audio, and the game would still be progressing, but I just wouldn't see any video for a second. Then it'd all pop back and be fine. At a random and quite long interval later, it'd happen again. It wasn't enough to be hinder my 360 use, but it was enough to be worrisome. When I was watching the Transformers HD last night, it happened again, quite frustratingly when Blackout showed up. And at random intervals after it'd happen again, and again. It got so bad and frequent that I had to replace the vga cable with the default component set. I tinkered with the vga cable after, hooked it up to my pc monitor, but it didn't work at all after that. I had thought that had fixed it, and it was just the cable, but today I go to play Crackdown with the component cable and two things happen. The same video blackout and when it flashed back there was a weird video signal, like the full strength wasn't getting through to the tv. I turned it off and on, and the problem resolved, but I'm still freaked out that the blackout happened again followed by this other weirdness. Anyone ever hear of anything like this before? I saw a post on gamefaqs saying it's a GPU failure without the RROD, and that others are having similar problems. Is this covered under the factory extended warranty?

Ideas or stories? Because story wise, Japan has a pretty craptacular record with the TF franchise. Armada was insulting, Energon was boring, and Cybertron barely managed to be mediocre. Car Robots was plain old silly, and for the first time ever, an American dub improved a Japanese show from silly stupid to silly fun. I liked Headmasters, but it was definitely a downward slope from season 3. I've never seen Victory or Masterforce. Idea wise, you may be right. Although the movie designs were a refreshing new change from the norm. Not sure who deserves all the credit for that though.

This was mentioned in the HD thread, and maybe here already, but man, this dvd is really lacking in good chapter stops. I have the HD version, but I'm assuming the dvd has the same stops. There should be twice as many as there are, and at the very least, there should have been *direct* jumps to the key action scenes/introductions. I frustratingly found out that my 360 only goes up to 16x when forwarding, which is a pain the ass when the scene I want to get to is at the very end of the chapter stop I selected.

That makes sense and jives with the recent talk of some HD movies being taken from masters for a DVD release. Is upscaling more hype than delivery? I know the OPPO players market themselves on being fantastic upscalers. My very limited experience with my xbox360 through vga, and with only the dvds I have, is that I can't really see any improvement. That's the only thing I don't like about my HDTV experience so far is how it's educated me on what a crappy transfer is. I was blissfully ignorant before.

Jsarclight, I enjoy reading your posts. I'm curious as to what your opinion on upscaling standard dvds is. What do you think of the difference between watching a natural 480(I know it's encoded as interlaced) picture in 480p on your hdtv vs upscaling that 480 picture to 1080. Actually, I'd like to hear anyone's experience on the subject. My xbox 360 vga cable just broke. I'm still unsure how, but it just no longer works, and it was upscaling my dvds(according to my tv menu at least). So I had to go back to the regular component cables for the moment. I have a regular dvd in now, and I'm not so sure there's a difference as when I played the same dvd upscaled to 1080.

Just finished watching the HD. Damn, that was fun. Things that annoyed me before didn't annoy me as much. Probably because I was expecting it now. The Jazz death sequence still bugs me though as it was still without any real resonance. It just happens. Even the autobots seem a little nonchalant about it. There's other minor things, but this movie's just fun. I even kind of enjoyed the arrogantly stupid Sector Seven guy. I too remember in the theater how this was all jumping around so quickly during the end of the movie, which I remember being a common gripe during the movie release too, but this time I was able to focus more on what was happening and take in all the robot detail/action. Factor it to an HD home viewing or to me just knowing what to expect. Regardless, I enjoyed this much more on the second viewing.

I went to Target with intent of getting the HD copy, which I did. However, I seriously considered picking up the transforming case copy because I collect Optimus Primes and the case seems like a borderline true transformer. So how durable is that case, and can it really stand up on its own?

I'm in agreement with the above, but I'll elaborate more. I'm more concerned with the Hollywood Godzilla aspects of introducing a transforming aircraft carrier. We didn't get the Transformer characterization we did because of Bay, we got it *despite* Bay. And unfortunately look at how little it was. Seriously, we're lucky we got what we did. Throw a Hollywood Godzilla into the mix, and we'll get even less.

Dang, there were that many episodes!?

Two things about that bother me. Bay is still involved(we were lucky we got what robot characterization and mythos we did despite his involvement), and two, that's just a terrible idea.

I'm crossing my fingers for a more G1 deco'd Megatron. An anime Astrotrain wouldn't hurt either.

I know we already discussed that you wanted a leader scale. Well, here's another one you don't want. A voyager redeco in G1 colors which also quite amazingly succeeds at being one ass ugly figure. I pray if and when they do do a G1 deco leader class, they don't do it this way. Allspark Power wave pics at tformers.com They're also releasing Ironhide again but in blue. He looks quite a bit like Soundwave now.

I was looking for a picture of the Energon Grimlock and Swoop combiner to show how poorly engineered and half-assed the above good idea turned out. Oddly, this picture from the G1 cartoon came up in my search results, and is just.....wrong.... Had to share...

I'm surprised how well he looks amongst an Alternator line-up.

The only thing I really don't like about Barricade is that there's no head articulation at all. The spring loaded arm is kind of pointless too. I do *very* much like that he has the "to punish and enslave" logo and the soundwavish Frenzy gimmick is neat too. Everyone seems to have that problem with deluxe Brawl though. I usually don't handle my figures much once I find "the pose", so it's not as much an issue for me, but yeah, if you handle the arms at all they detach from the chest. You sure you didn't break your 70s Bee's morphing tab? It's the tab underneath the hood transform button that kind of helps hold the front end together. If you force the automorph on the front end instead of pressing the button, you could break the tab and end up with the problem you describe. How do you mean floppy? I have two 70s Bees now(the extra was from buying the Target Evolution of a Hero set) and neither are floppy. Concept Bee is, without a doubt in my mind, the best deluxe figure to come out in a loooooong time. Very Alternator-esque and at a small scale. No one loves Bonecrusher enough. No wonder he hates everyone and everything. I have him in a skating pose that's pretty close to his cameo appearance in the movie.

This sucks. I would really like to own the prequel dvd, but when I bought this HD DVD drive for my 360, Transformers was one of the movies I used to rationalize the purchase. Seems like every other movie I want in hi-def so far is only on bluray too.

The voyager is a really nice mold though. I have the Target Robovision Voyager Prime with the G1-esque deco, and the silver paint they used really makes it look sharp. Much better than the standard deco voyager Prime, imho.