Alpha OTS

Behold my Iron.....Giant? Not quite. Someone threw this in as a freebie on some transformer auction I won quite a whiles back. I *think* it was a Burger King toy. It's not that bad.

Is it just me or does everything in these pictures look way too bright?

In the Dark Knight Returns, the reasoning for the yellow bat symbol on the chest was so that if anyone were to shoot at him, they'd aim and shoot there: the only place on the bat suit with bulletproofing. Or so I remember....

So do I. I don't think that factor's going to change much for me any time soon either. This will sound nerdy, but my dvd shelf is an expression of my personality.

It wasn't just you. That was my only complaint about the demo. They kick you out of it just when it's getting good. Then they go and show you these cool things that you can't do in the demo. The evil bastards.

Word on the allspark is that it's an HD-DVD exclusive. For how long? Who knows. But it's steered me towards an HD-DVD attachment for the 360 for now. Edit: Found the link at tformers.com click here to go there.

Ok, that 360 HD-DVD special. I just noticed that if you buy an 360 HD-DVD player from bestbuy.com, they'll give you 300 the HD movie for free. This is just a bestbuy offer, right? And it won't make someone ineligible for that 5 free HD movies offer, will it? Anyone try this or have found a better deal?

"No! Not the bore worms!!" Going through the extras right now. Alex Ross talks about the film and pretty much states word for word how I feel about the film, only eloquently. I agree. It should probably be reclassified as a rock opera. There's another interview with the screenwriter which is interesting, but he doesn't capture how I feel about the movie as well as Ross does. Watching the original Buster Crabbe episode now which has much of the same intro storyline as the movie. It's kind of erie how much Sam Jones looks like Buster Crabbe. I remember watching PBS as a kid because it was the only way I could get more "Flash Gordon". Yeah, you had to use your imagination, much like Dr. Who of the time only more-so, but I remember it being fun. Actually it's still fun seeing the dinosaurs of mongol which are live iguanas with glued on horns. It's a good extra because you really appreciate how much the 1980 film references the serial costume and ship designs among other things. The worst extra? The trailer for the new tv series. If you could call it a trailer. All it is is the "Flash Gordon" logo rotating into view. That's it. Nothing else. I had thought part of the reason for the 1980 re-release was to promote the new tv series. Unless it's that bad that the camp doesn't save it. This was a really good purchase. I'm very happy with the dvd.

I dislike him heavily, and most of that has to do with the colors, especially the red. And I had enough of that translucent weapon nonsense from the Energon line. Having it in the chest only makes it worse. The weapons always look so much better when they're solid and metal colored. Even the Target Energon repaints' weapons look better with the translucency diminished. Hopefully they'll repaint it into something that fits a little better with the movie line's aesthetic. If he was put out as he was originally concieved, that'd be right up my alley.

On the upside, it's pretty easy to take the Doctor Octopus claws from the figure in that Spidey line and carve them down a bit so they'll give your Voyager Starscream or FAB Megatron actual hands.

Yeowzer. Watching it now upscaled on my 1080p 42" lcd, and I have to say, this is one nice transfer for a standard dvd. I'm surprised at how crisp it looks. The packaging is surprisingly nice too. Someone actually cared about putting a quality product out to market. The only thing I don't like is that I can clearly see all the imperfections of the special effects. When Zarkov's ship flies into Ming's world, you can clearly see the "box" surrounding the ship for that effect like most space ship sequences from that era. Boy, is this thing full of one-liners. It's better than I remembered. "Klytus, are your men on the right pills? Maybe you should execute their trainer."

Where did you get that real nice display case and about how much did it cost? The collection is awesome, btw, but that goes without saying.

I only have one negative thing to say about it. When the demo is at its best is when it ends. And then they go and add insult to injury by showing you things you want to do in the demo but can't unless you have the full game. It's evil! Evil, I say!

I had this same problem right out of the box and was really dissappointed that the arms didn't have any kind of ratchet joints to help compensate for the weight. Best thing to do is like drifand said and rotate the joints until you get it into a pose where gravity isn't working against you. It limits your poses unfortunately, but you can still do the main ones.

So, being that we were discussing upscaling dvds in the other thread, how's the transfer on this standard dvd when it's played on a 40+ inch HDTV When I was a kid, I was mystified that this movie didn't get a sequel. Key phrase = "When I was a kid". It is good campy fun regardless. All the bits in it just click, and if there were one element missing(the 80's, the cheesy yet consistent effects, the tacky costumes, the casting, and of course the Queen soundtrack) I doubt we'd have the fond memories of this that we do. I need to pick this up, HD DVD or no HD DVD.

I sure hope that's the Dr. Archiville we get, because that Dr. Archiville is painted!

I need a tuner for that though, don't I? I know that's one thing this tv doesn't have.

May as well show this off here too. Some of you have seen how you can add hands to a Voyager Movie Starscream by cutting the top arm claws off of a Doctor Octopus from the latest Spiderman figure line. It's a real quick and easy kitbash that improves the look of your Starscream ten fold, and I really recommend it. I've had bottom arm claws remaining from that project that I didn't know what to do with, until now. Fast Action Battler Megatron is.......ok, I guess. He's an FAB for starters, so he's sort of kiddified in a way. The normal red hands and missiles really do make him look like a KO. So I've removed the hands, did some minor carving to the Doc Ock bottom arm claws and viola! Working transformable hands that aren't an eyesore! I also grabbed a Robot Replica Megatron which for some reason has the same *exact* coloring as FAB Megatron. I did some carving to the cannon arm attachment so it too fits in the FAB arm missile holes. It's still not the movie Megatron that we wanted(the upcoming Voyager repaint is much closer to what we expected but unfortunately has "ice" all over it), but it does make the most out of the FAB mold.

I don't have an HD feed. Actually, the only HD things I have to play on my set are the 360 games I have. That's why I've been paying attention to this thread. I know I should purchase an HD player rather than buy any more standard dvds. The thing that caught my eye about the DLP was how vibrant the display was. There was none of that "grayness" you sometimes see on an lcd screen. I even commented to the bartender how nice the display was, and he said you can really tell how good it is when you compare it to the surrounding LCD sets they had, and he was right. That's why my friend recommended the westinghouse. It had a ton of inputs and each has its own individual calibration. I'm using the 360 for everything though. It just irritates me that this is a new set(to me) and I have dead pixels.

I have a couple of questions and could use a little tutoring too. I have a 40" Westinghouse LCD 1080p. I bought it refurbished through newegg.com. The price was pretty inexpensive, but I'd probably buy it new if I had to do it all over again. I'll explain. When I first turned it on, I was horrified. The picture looked like ass as the contrast and brightness were way out of wack among many other way off settings. I did the "reset to factory settings" foolishly thinking that it would reset to a presentable picture. Amazingly, it set it back to the exact asstastic setting I was trying to escape. I've since figured out what settings I needed to fix and the picture is good now. I'm a little dissappointed with the blacks sometimes, but that's probably unavoidable when you have an lcd screen. Any hints on general tweakings to get the best out of your black levels would be appreciated though. I have, at last count, 3 "dead" pixels. I'm not sure if they're dead dead though. I don't think they are, because they're purple. You can only see them if you're an inch or two away from the screen. I imagine if they were dead they'd be complete black like the liquid crystal behind it was empty. I tried the pencil-eraser-rub-and-turn-on trick, but it hasn't brought them back, and I don't imagine trying to do that over and over again is good for the screen either. Of course they appeared after the limited warranty for a refurb ran out, and even if it didn't, I believe you need 10 before they would have done anything about it anyway. I heard there's a computer program that can cycle your display and bring them back. What are the odds of that working and what else can I do? What's the difference between running the color temp warm, neutral or cool? I don't see a discernable difference. The manual pretty much only tells me how to turn on the set, and is pretty much worthless. There's a backlight setting from 1 to 100, but I really don't see a difference when I tweak this setting either. I can see a tiny difference when it's on 1 compared to when it's on 100, but that's it. Should it be more obvious? Should I have it at max 100 anyway? I originally bought this as a videogaming screen. 360 gaming to be precise, and I haven't been dissappointed there(Gears looks fantastic). It wasn't until I put in a regular dvd that I really "got" what this HD-DVD/Blu-ray thing is all about. I was surprised how crappy some of my dvds looked that I guess I never noticed before because my previous cheapy crt tv did a good job of blurring the imperfections. Although it is pretty hysterical when I put in Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts and the picture looks more vibrant and defined than some of the newer dvd releases I have. I never really understood when people would go on about crappy transfers, but now I do. I bought a VGA cable for my 360 so it could do upscaling because I was told that would get me the best picture out of my dvds. Is that as good as it gets? I had read that there is a player(the brand name escapes me at the moment) that's the peak of performance for playing normal dvds on an HD set. Any truth to this, or am I maxxed out here anyway? Having a refurb, I don't know if some things on the set are really broken or not, so I'd appreciate any advice on tweaking your LCD set. I'm still pretty new to this stuff. But if I were to buy a new set, I'd probably go DLP. There was one at the local bar playing HD ESPN and I was amazed at how vibrant the picture looked.

New to me too. I want one!

I must have got a good QC WWI Prime. Yeah, the arms aren't too great, but he poses decently for me. Joe Megatron, OTOH, is a complete and utter floppy mess. There's no saving that mold. It's a shame that he comes to mind when people think Titaniums because he's the exception and not the rule. That Thundercracker you have posed above is missing a transformation step. You can swing the shoulders out and downwards so the shoulders and arms look better proportioned.

All of the photos I've seen make the $10 Deluxe Bumblebee look like a piece of art compared to the ultimate one.

Sweet!

I forget what the Japanese names for these figures are. I'm not a Power Rangers fan. I don't watch the show, Japanese, Domestic or otherwise. I just like Voltron-ish robots with gimmicks which sets A thru D were in spades. The problem is that I wish I was as happy with these sets as I was sets A thru D. Why? Well, they took away what I loved about the previous sets: interchangeable pegging that let you peg vehicles together in ways that were or weren't originally intended. Sets F & G have a totally different sized pegging system that isn't at all compatible with the previous sets, but they are compatible with each other. Problem is that apart from the arms there's nothing else you can swap between the two that I've found so far. Combined robot modes are about 5" to 6" tall, just like previous Transmax sets. Set G's the definite winner over the two. I get a definite Macross/Yamato vibe from the combined vehicle mode. What really does it is the "bridge" near the rear thrusters and the thrusters themselves, which while probably not thrusters because the vehicle has giant wheels for locomotion, look an awful lot like the Macross's thrusters anyway. The flat portions that become the upper thighs, although small, kind of resemble the deck of an aircraft carrier. The ship's armed to the hilt too. Robot mode is really nice with an effectively menacing color scheme. The upcoming repaint that's advertised on the back of the package is in all colors of the rainbow, so this is definitely the better color scheme. Articulation is ok. Thankfully the pegging for the arms and legs allows for a tiny bit of ball joint type motion so it allows for some dynamic poses that a strict 90 degree wouldn't have. There are no elbow or knee joints, unfortunately, but there is wrist rotation. There's two negatives in Set G. First there's far more soft plastic than I would have liked. Three of the Five vehicles that make up this zord are made out of it. The second thing is that two of the five vehicles don't look like vehicles. Well, one of them does, kind of, but for some reason there's a huge gaping hole in the center of it which really blows the vehicle look. The other "vehicle" is essentially the legs and torso of the bot mode, and doesn't look like much of anything, especially with the pegging system being way too obvious when the other vehicles are detached. Set F reminds me of that giant stone head Mr. Burns gave to the Simpsons as a gift. "Marge, what does it do?" "Homer, whatever it does, it's doing it right now." I think the Japanese normal sized version's gimmick was that it auto-transformed, which isn't going to happen on a 6" tall partforming replica. The only articulation is in the arms which rotate up and down and in the "wrists" which allow the front of the car arms to look more like fists. Unfortunately the cars only have a single peg attachment and can only ever be the arm they're molded to be. It looks ok in the combined mode despite the lack of any decent articulation. The other good point is that the three vehicles it forms looks decent with the body/firetruck being the weakest of the three, but not near as weak as the body vehicle in Set G. I know I've sounded kind of negative throughout this little rant. These really are decent for their size and for $8 a set. I'm just really dissappointed that they changed the pegging system as I was really looking forward to adding more lego Voltron parts to Sets A thru D.