Eagle Eye

I was walking past Sanity today and happened to see this DVD out the front as one of the new releases. This means it must have been out at the cinema 3 to 6 months ago. I didn't go and see it, but I know I've seen the movie, I'm sure I've seen it. it wasn't on a plane or in a hotel either I can't explain it...


No I just remembered, it was amongst those DVDs of questionable source that I borrowed off someone a few months ago.

From memory it was an OK film, typical Hollywood DVD fodder. OK for boring nights at home with nothing else to do. A good (ie stereotypical) techno-thriller with lots of explosions and stuff.

HD DVD RIP

No doubt you've heard about the official death of HD DVD, with this weeks withdrawal of support from the formats major backer, Toshiba. It's been pretty clear for quite a while now that Blu-Ray was the leader of the race. Blu-Ray had most (now all) Hollywood studios on board (the porn industry went HD DVD I believe, not sure), sold the most players (mostly SONY Play Station 3 consoles), and I suppose most importantly sold the most discs due to the wider range of titles available. It is good that the race is over, but people are rightly worried about pricing policies.

None of this matters to me, or to anyone really as "SD" DVD is still the most widespread format. To me DVDs just look and sound brilliant. Even if you happen to have a HD capable display an up-scaling DVD player can boost image resolution to near HD. Ironically it is said (on the DTV forum anyway) that the best up-scaling DVD player is/was the Toshiba XE1 HD DVD player (BD and players do it too, but not as well as this one).

At the moment I'm looking at a DVD player. The basic features I'm looking for are that it does all the usual things such as playing DVDs (a no brainer) and viewing photos. But what I'm really looking for is a player that plays DivX and XviD encoded videos and has a USB port. The reason I want DivX is just because it will come in handy from time to time. For me it's the USB port where things get interesting. Instead of burning mp3s and photos to DVD, it is much easier to just put them on a USB drive, the DivX videos are also playable from the USB port. Strangely enough it seems that the only models that have these features are up-scaling players, but that is of little use to me as I only have a CRT TV. At the moment it looks like the player I will get is the the Pioneer DV-400. I was looking at the more expensive DV-600, but I can't seem to find any.

Saturday. Another winner another loser and a whole lot of apathy

Another grand final has come and gone. Geelong reign supreme, while Port Adelaide can hang their heads in shame at the absolute drubbing they received. As for me I didn't watch the game at all, I just was not interested. Instead I spent the day out and about in town. I bought some DVD's ,Star Wars Episode VI The Return of the Jedi and Police Story. I now own 5 Star Wars movies. I'm reluctant to buy the abortion that is The Phantom menace, but I guess for completeness I should, and I suppose it does have some good points. Police Story is a Jackie Chan film set in Hong Kong with the dialogue in Chinese (the DVD also has the English dubbed version), no Chris Tucker in sight. I think I've seen it, or maybe it was one of the sequels? I'm looking forward to seeing it anyway.

For lunch I went to Burger Edge at QV, and had a "feel the cheese". Not bad for an $8 Hamburger, could have done without the fries though, as the burger was so huge. After lunch I decided to hit the rails and went to Melbourne Central and decided to get whatever the first train on platform 3 was. The lucky winner was Upfield. I only made it as far as Brunswick, before deciding I'd had enough. I walked down to Sydney Road for a bit, the place was dead, and decided to head back to the City. I'd just missed a tram back to the city so went back to the station just in time for the next train.

I alighted at Southern Cross Station (it really does sound like Southern Crustacean sometimes) and had a quick look at all the VLocities (propaganda here and here) waiting for the post grand final/Saturday evening rush hour while making my way to DFO. I didn't intend buying anything but I bought a pair of jeans at regular retail price despite the fact that it's meant to be a "Direct Factory Outlet".

Uming and aring, I got on a Frankston bound train to Flinders Street, but ended up staying on as far as Malvern, where I decided to hang around for the empty Football specials returning to Richmond to pick up spectators on their way back to Geelong. No disappointment there, I managed to see three push-pull P's with H sets and an N class loco (propaganda) hauling a massive N set (see V/LineCars.com for the H and N sets). I did take some photos, but the light was failing so they are a bit dodgy.

Getting on for 6pm it was time to go home, as quite frankly I was stuffed.