I keep meaning to blog about movie nights so people in the area can be informed and so I can keep a history.  Tomorrow’s movie night is King Kong in glorious high definition. 

04.03.2009 8PM – Contact me for details.

Now, bear witness to my poor photography and composition skills and burn the movie night splash logo into your retinas:

I’ve really got to take some better photos.

This article on Engadget HD today greatly amused me.

Research finds that people still heart physical discs, greatly prefer Blu-ray to streaming

While the "HD streaming rulez!one11!1!" bandwagon was quickly filling up after Netflix announced that it would be bringing such a service to the Xbox 360, the numbers just don't substantiate the claims that physical discs are doomed anytime soon. Sure, for the budding technophile, streaming is just the next great thing, but for the average joe / jane, the tried and true disc still holds a great deal of importance. A recent study by market research firm SmithGeiger found that out of over 2,000 surveyed, "HDTV owners familiar with Blu-ray favor the format over downloading and streaming by a margin of nearly 10-to-1, with about 70% of respondents citing the fact that there's a physical disc to keep as a key factor in their decision to buy Blu-ray." It also found that 96% of BD users were "familiar with downloading and streaming services, but that two-thirds believe watching a movie on Blu-ray is a better overall entertainment experience." Sure, BD has its flaws, but not having to re-rent an HD film after a remarkably short 24-hour window sure is nice, huh?

No kidding.  The cries that physical media was dead reached their highest volume as it became clear that Blu-Ray was going to win over HD-DVD.  The people making these claims were either:

1. Analysts who must not watch many movies at home (ergo are relatively clueless on these dynamics)
2. HD-DVD supporters/fanboys trying a little et tu coque to ease the pain of their loss by saying BD's days were numbered as well.
3. HD-DVD supporters with huge vested interests in media streaming
4. Random outfits not necessarily associated with HD-DVD, but with huge vested interests in media streaming

Media streaming has such a long way to go it's not even funny.  I am certain that we'll get there, but consider the following facts and anecdotes:

1. I have yet to see a streaming solution that offers basic DVD features: chapter selection, audio selection, special features, multiple audio streams, multiple subtitle options.  This takes bandwidth and increases technical complexity of this delivery mechanism.
2. Ditto #1 but for the advanced interactive features of Blu-Ray: online features, PiP, advanced programmability, etc.
3. Quality.  Last time I checked HD Cable bitrates top out at around 9mb/s for audio plus video.  Right now this is overwhelmingly Dolby Digital and MPEG-2, with some outfits moving to MPEG-4 for better video compression.  While not bad compared to normal TV, this is a far cry from the 40+ mb/s I have on numerous Blu-Ray discs or even the relatively lean 18+ mb/s on say the King Kong HD-DVD encode.  Some people will not be able to tell the difference, and some won't care, but a lot of people do.  If you have a sound system you care.  The larger the TV you have, the more you'll be able to notice the flaws.
4. Delivery.  While some people have the option of 10mb/s U-Verse, 18mb/s cable, or 150mb/s fiber in their home, that is still a relatively small # of people and not increasing very fast.  A lot more folks are still slumming it with 3mb/s or 5mb/s cable because they either can't get or won't pay for the faster options.  Where I live, 1.5mb/s DSL is my best option.  I could literally get a Blu-Ray from Amazon.com with 2-day shipping before I could download even half of a high quality movie.

The convenience of just instantly grabbing a movie over the PSN or Netflix, or even queuing it up while I make dinner has appeal.  I will not, however, pay money to watch something of less than DVD quality in my home theater on my 106" screen.  Those of you who will, enjoy your mediocre entertainment! 

I don’t have any ideas yet, but Netflix is one of my favorite services.   This is completely awesome.  I hope they have the APIs enabled for cross-domain stuff so I could perhaps do some Silverlight mojo without having to Proxy the calls.

http://developer.netflix.com/page

Actually, in the process of writing this email, I did get some ideas for uses of the Netflix API.  I'm not sharing yet!

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/09/this_is_the_dawning_of_the_age.html

Art imitates life, and life in turn imitates art (which is a part of life)

I have often remarked to friends that the enduring success of Roger Ebert is hard to understand, though I am happy to see it.  After all, this is the 2000's we are living in.  He is, forgive me, not a particularly attractive man, nor does he speak and write at a level accessible to to the average high school graduate.  This is after all the age in which we vote for politicians based not on their qualifications to make decisions that are "far above our pay grade" but rather on whether or not we would feel comfortable having them over for BBQ chicken without having a chance to clean the house first or if they would fit in at our local church.  What I mean to say is that Roger Ebert does not have qualities which would immediately invoke the words "mass appeal".  He is, rather, an elitist - a word which should be badge of honor and not the insult is has become in our praise of mediocrity in this nation.

Roger Ebert writes thoughtful insights about Film, which I consider to be our highest art form to date.  Why?  Because it combines music, philosophy, dancing, drama, words, and technology into a single medium.  Each of these expressions can be profound in themselves, but combined into a single human experience moving through time can approach something truly sublime.   Surely all these things are excellent achievements of Humans and the combinatorial effects of overlapping them are worthwile of educated commentary.   The success of Roger Ebert, then, I attribute to there being just enough intelligent people in America who care just enough about things that matter to humans to give this man an enduring audience.

Ebert tells us that these days there are few rewards for critical thinking, and I must sadly agree to a point.  It would seem to me that his true talents lie not in interpreting Art, but in observing and reporting on human behavior.  Keep up the good work, sir.

Well, just over a year ago, I was drooling over the Klipsch Palladium speakers that had been announced.  Look who found their way into my home theater this weekend:

You can check out other photos and sizes at http://www.klipschcorner.com/SystemProfileDisplay.aspx?Id=1

The photos don't do them justice, they are extremely attractive.  They are extremely expensive, I'm thinking this will be the last pair of main speakers I ever buy.

http://www.cinematical.com/2008/04/06/r-i-p-charlton-heston-dead-at-83/

As a big fan of Sci Fi and movies in general tonight's regularly schedule blogging is cancelled: Charlton Heston is dead at 83 years of age. 

Although I'm not religious I enjoyed Ben Hurr and The 10 commandments.  I enjoyed Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man.  I despised the Fat Master of Douchebaggery (Michael Moore) for taking his schtick to Charlton's doorstep despite his senility and obvious Alzheimer's symptoms.  My wife and I are getting ready to watch "I Am Legend" on Blu-Ray this week.  Will Smith, you are no Charlton Heston.  Rest in peace sir.

http://www.ps3fanboy.com/2008/03/14/microsoft-predicts-blu-ray-irrelevance-in-12-18-months/

This is ludicrous talking head speak for the vast overwhelming majority of the movie-watching population.  If I can get better than 1.5mb/s DSL in the next 18 months I'll be shocked, let alone enough pipe to handle True HD video.  At this stage of the market, digital downloads and packaged optical media are NOT different versions of the same product, as these people seem to believe.  They are utterly different products.  38mb/s MPEG4 with 5 mb/s LPCM is not "the same" as the puny bitrates we get through video on demand at this time, and the average consumer can handle having a shelf full of optical discs much easier than they can prepare for terrabytes of digital storage medium.  How many average users have a backup strategy?  The first time you want to watch The Matrix but that hard drive died and you have to redownload you'll be mad.  When you realize the DRM might make re-downloading insanely painful or impossible (as Casey has shown) you'll be wishing you had a Blu-Ray player instead.

The market will figure this out, but not in 12 months, sorry Mr Pundit.

{Edit: I ironically realized after I posted that the words of someone linking to any website with "fanboy" in the name are probably deserving of a side of salt as well.  Oh well, it's the internet...}

It's over folks.  Take your pick of any one of a dozen news outlets, or read this nice summary on Ars: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080217-official-hd-dvd-obituary-a-matter-of-days-not-weeks.html

Sadly there's not that many titles that I'll be picking up after the inevitable announcements by Paramount and Universal.  Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick are guilty pleasures; King-Kong shall be a rental, as will Sweeny Todd and Transformers.  I won't buy the whole "Jack Ryan Collection" for my beloved Hunt for Red October but I'll netflix them.

This is good news for lovers of the high definition experience.

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/01/04/warner-goes-blu-ray-exclusive/

Let the healing begin...

Update: I posted my furthur thoughts on this on KlipschCorner.com: http://www.klipschcorner.com/BlogDetail.aspx?guid=84883401-25a5-47ab-8bfa-8382175c22c3

I'm sitting at my kitchen table tonight burning about a dozen podcasts for my commute.  For a while I stuck to Dot Net Rocks but I've been throwing in the occasional Hanselminutes and Audioholics into the mix as well.  Tonight is the first time in a while I donn't truly have to do anything right now.  I still can't make any public announcements on the work situation but suffice to say my typical day is go to work --> pick up daughter --> put kiddo to bed at 8pm --> work till 12pm; throw in some required travel and marathon meetings and I'm more than a little tired.  I have two solid, relevant articles I need to complete and just haven't had the time.  In the next two weeks I'll be getting our new WPF based product into a demoable state and preparing for a talk in front of 600 people in Atlanta.

Tonight shall be spent catching up on Netflix night with my friend M. Chateauneuf du Pape and little else. 

Some people I know personally got an invitation to see Bram Stoker's Dracula on BD this weekend as one of my two Halloween movie nights this month.  I would encourage Milwaukee area nerds to try to make this one, in addition to the screening of one of my favorite films someone has promised to bring over a Halo edition 360 for some 106" front projection large and loud H3 action. 

I haven't been able to try my lighting technique yet, so for now you'll have to put up with more bad photography.  Here is a shot of the seating I mentioned:

My beloved HD projector started exhibiting some issues, mostly during Blu-Ray playback over the HDMI port.  Cruising some forums it seems that this huge purple line or white flash I sometimes see could be fixed by either firmware (not user upgradable) or a stuck dynamic Iris.  My projector (PT-AX100U) uses a dynamic iris to increase the contrast significantly.  My home theater and gaming depends on this device, I'm incredibly spoiled by always playing games on a 106" screen in a huge room in 5.1 so I'm not going to bother with any games until I get it back.  This would be the 4th piece of technology I've broken in a very short period of time.

Movies at Damon's, which I know some readers are on the mailing list for, will resume when my projector comes back.  300 will most likely be the next title, as it is supposed to be stunning in HD.  Anyone in the metro Milwaukee area who wants to be on the mailing list, leave or send me your address.

I thoroughly enjoyed GrindHouse this weekend.  Surprisingly it was Jen's idea to go see it as she is also a fan of Sin City and the various Tarantino films.  While a bit long at 190 minutes I haven't enjoyed a film this much in a long time.  Not everyone will appreciate the gore filled double feature; they are chocked full of Hollywood insider nonsense.  Rose McGowan is dating Robert Rodriguez, nearly the entire cast of both films have previously appeared in Tarantino or Rodriguez films, "Zoe Bell as herself" did Uma Thurman's stunts in Kill Bill 1 & 2. Eli Roth, director of Hostel (presented by Tarantino), plays a small roll in Death Proof.  And so on, and so forth, I'd have to watch it a few more times to catch probably even half the Hollywood insider crap.

Two big successful directors with a large studio backing them and an-all star cast spoofing/praising low-budget camp horror films works despite the irony.  The fake movie trailers before and in-between the features are hilarious and may be the best part of Grindhouse. 

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/8211

Yes, they are looking to make movies or a TV Series about the Dark Tower books.  I'm pretty sure there's no way this can turn out well, and so I'm sad.  I'd rather stick with my book and audio book versions of this 7 novel story.  I have a signed Michael Whelan print of Roland outside the Tower in my office and have read these more than anything except The Hobbit.   Why don't I think it can turn out well?

-Who would play Roland?  Roland IS Clint Eastwood, but Clint is past his time with parts like this I think.  My 2nd pick for middle-aged Roland: Christian Bale.  Think about it.  Jada Pinket Smith as Susannah?  Sean Penn as Eddie?  Tobin Bell as Walter?  James Earl Jones narrating?

-A TV Series?  The material in the books absolutely require an R rating meaning meaning the only way they can not suck is to air on Showtime (Like the Masters or Horror series) or HBO (like Sopranos, Weeds, Deadwood)

-I can't think of any King adaptations that have turned out well on film.  The Green Mile and Shawshank Redeption were not bad, but both dealt with much simpler subject matter.

Sigh.  Between shit like this and the horrible flood of re-makes-of-films-that-aren't-even-that-old and sequels to films involving none of the origial cast, crew, directors, or authors, it appears that I am doomed to see every single movie and literary icon of my life ruined.

I took a friend and former client TV shopping this weekend at their request: people have gotten the idea that I keep up with audio/video stuff or something.

Anyway, at a certain local TV/Home Theater shop I walked in and confirmed my opinion that the Sony SXRD rear projection TVs have a fantastic picture and are very reasonably priced for a 1080p TV.  Of course as we walked around and discussed different things we were seeing on the unavoidable sales guy encounter happened.  The sales guy tried to give me a lecture on the TV including several horribly incorrect facts including "SXRD is Sony's image processing enhancements" and such.  My response that SXRD stands for Silicon Xtal Reflective Display and that it is Sony's proprietery implementation of the Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCOS) idea and that it didn't include any "picture processing" that I was aware of was met with momentary disorientation and then more arguments on his part. 

I can understand that most consumers are dumb and the industry hasn't made the adoption of HD related technologies easy and its probably safe to start out with the assumption of an uneducated buyer, but when someone clearly knows what they are talking about the salesperson's role switches from "educating about the product" mode to relationship building or "here's why you should buy this from us instead of somewhere else" mode.  The salesperson saw me getting ready to attack and left us alone before I could ask if this particular model had HDMI 1.3 support. 

Shut up TV man, see if I bring another potential customer to your store any time soon.  I almost never meet a salesperson who knows more than I do or is more up to date (than you RSS) on audio/video than I am.  I don't mean that to be an arrogant challenge, because really its somewhat disappointing.  If I had more time selling home theater stuff would be a fun part time job, or perhaps I should get into contract Crestron programming to get an employee discount at one of these shops to subsidise my frequent upgrading habit.

Due to some comments about incompleteness of the "Studio support" section of my diatribe on BluRay, I spent some research time over on the BluRay official site, solicited feedback from a couple locations, and built a more accurate Studio Org Chart over at http://www.klipschcorner.com/.  It does not include every single tiny little indy arm of every studio (like Fox Searchlight) but is farily complete.  Who owns what rights to what is fairly complicated it seems.

{edit: replaced sd with cf in last paragraph}

{edit: added Phillips as a BD hardware MFG and fixed typo of Toshiba model # and price}

I've taken a bit of punishment and head shaking for my decision to support BluRay for high definition optical storage.  The first such "silly Damon" conversation was two "deeper in .Net" events ago at a user group dinner where I got an earful.  My decision was based on careful research and thoughtful analysis.  You could call me an audiophile, videophile, Sony fanboy or whatever else you want, but right now BluRay is outselling HD-DVD by very large margins (3:1 and trending upwards) according to any and all metrics we have available to check.  These metrics are:

• 20th Century Fox's proprietary market research (taken with a grain of salt since they are a BD supporter)
• DVDEmpire.com tracks how much of each format they sell
• Amazon.com makes sales data available through the AWS developer program (see http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd)
• Neilson VideoScan (3rd party market research firm)

BluRay is selling great compared to HD-DVD and trending upwards.  Will this continue?  My magic 8 ball says yes.  So, for the people who think I am insane, let me summarize again.  I am a home theater person 1st, audio person second, gaming person next, "fanboy" last, and I happen to be somewhat technical.  These roles are the filters through which I studied the competing format data starting in early '05.

1. Studio support:  I don't know what the BluRay Disc Association (BDA) promised to the studios (the Sony owned ones never had a choice) to get them to commit to being BD only, but it worked.   This may not be an exhaustive list but is just what comes to mind, I also don’t claim to be up on who owns who and which of these are just sub-studios, I’m tracking the # of distinct names I’ve seen on releases and in the news.  More exclusive content means more people picking BD when their favorite movies show up on BD only.
   1. Neutral Studios supporting both formats:
      1. Warner
      2. Paramount
      3. Vivid (porn)
   2. HD-DVD only studios
      1. Universal
      2. Some porn studios
   3. BluRay only Studios
      1. MGM
      2. Disney
      3. Lionsgate
      4. Sony Pictures
      5. Colubmia
      6. Tri-Star
      7. ScreenGems
      8. Fox
2. Consumer Electronics Manufacturer support.  More choice means, well, more choices.  It also means CE manufacturers competing with each other which as a Capitalist I view as a good way to get better products sooner.
   1. Neutral MFGs:
      1. None, unless you count LG’s dual format player
      2. HD-DVD only
         1. Toshiba is essentially going it alone, with rumours that Onkyo will release a player in late 2007 or 2008
      3. BluRay only
         1. Sony
         2. Panasonic
         3. Apple
         4. HP
         5. Pioneer
         6. Samsung
         7. Phillips
3. The features of the specs themselves.  This is what initially made the decision for me.  Let me hit the highlights.  The same video codecs are mandatory on both formats, despite HD-DVD fanboys trying to spread rumors that BD only supports MPEG-2. I own several stunning MPEG-4/AVC/VC-1 etc. titles on BD. Both support DTS-HD and DolbyDigital+, with uncompressed sound being optional on BD.  I have not heard of any uncompressed sound on HD-DVD.

Feature	BluRay	HD-DVD
Disc space	25GB single layer/50GB dual layer	15GB single layer/30GB dual layer
Maximum Bitrates for video	40mb/s	28mb/s
Total Video+Audio Rate	54mb/s	36.55mb/s
Interactivity	BD-J	iHD

Ignore any larger numbers you’ve seen announced from either format group.  If you want to get into a prick waving contest BD has announced up to 200GB and HD-DVD up to 51GB.  These specs require more than two layers, are targeted at data archival and certainly won’t work on your home players.

Now, if you do research on the HD audio and video codecs supported you’ll see this is a problem.  The maximum video bitrate supported by things like VC-1 for 1080p/60 ends up being 20GB of storage per hour of HD video.  That’s 40GB for a 2 hour video.  Then add the max bitrate for DolbyDigital Plus sound, which is perfect sound identical to the studio master, that’s 18mb/s which means another 8.1GB per hour of high definition sound with eight discreet channels or 7.1 if you prefer that nomenclature.  Now, if we need maximum bitrates for video and sound, we are looking at 58GB for a two hour movie.  This is before extras(interviews, audio commentery, deleted scenes, whatever), this is before we get The Fellowship of the Ring coming it at 3.5 hours.  How do they fit?  How does King Kong look and sound great on HD-DVD despite being a 3 hour movie and only having 30GB to work with.

The truth is that even if you are trying to use the maximum bitrate for video you probably won’t.  The video codecs are all using compression with a variable bitrate.  Some scenes will be easier to compress than others.  The PS3 has a neat feature that allows you to watch the audio and video bitrate on the fly.  Some scenes will look great at 8mb/s video, and some scenes will jump to much higher numbers and look no better.  Obviously not all scenes are going to compress equally well, and things like amount of film grain in the picture will greatly affect the rate of compression. 

My BD copy of The Descent averages something like 36mb/s for video and is obviously stored on a dual layer 50GB disc.  Add the DTS-HD audio and the various “extras” and disc is close to being full.  The Descent contains a lot of dark-lit scenes which is difficult to encode.  I watch movies in my home theater on a 106” projection screen so any flaws are going to show themselves quickly and more apparently than on a smaller display.  I cared about the studios having the maximum amount of space to give me the highest quality audio and sound and not script to fit it on disc, and not have to store long movies with lots of special features on two discs.  Besides the space, the higher max-video and max-total bitrates mandated by the spec obviously allows the extra space to be used “for real”.  The extra space matters for higher quality audio, video, less disc switching and more HD extra features.  To me The Descent in my home theater is the first example of video and audio that would not be possible without the storage space and higher bit rate of BluRay.

Interactive features: from what I’ve seen, HD-DVD currently has better interactive features, and from what I read from format neutral studios like Warner, iHD is far easier to program for (or at least as better tool support, which I count as the same thing) than BD-J.  HD-DVD also has a PIP thing that’s harder to do on BD; Plus one Point for HD-DVD. However, I can count on my fingers the # of times I have watched any kind of commentary or anything so this does not matter for me personally and I suspect  no t for  most other home theater people either.  The only feature I care about is the “pop up menu” that allows me to pick a new scene or change audio options or turn on/off commentaries while the movie is playing without going back to the main menu.  Both formats have this.  Bring on the good movies with high quality audio and video.

4.    Marketing strategy, position, etc.

1.    But HD-DVD is cheaper!  A little, yes, however this often matters little when selling to the early adopter crowd.  Keep in mind also that when the first few players were out the Toshiba HD-A1 was $499 and compared to the $999 Panasonic BD-P1000 that did look like a major price difference.  They forgot to mention that the HD-A1 did not support 1080p/24 or 1080p/60 output, but 1080i only.  To get 1080p you needed to buy the HD-XA2, at $999, which is what the Samsung has been selling for since a few months after launch.

2.    But the BluRay physical media will cost tons more!  Well, with the average cost per disc (using Amazon.com data) fluctuates in the plus or minus $2.50 range vs. HD-DVD, I think we can safely call this theory debunked.

3.    The PS3: Obviously putting BD on the PS3 was a huge risk but it seems to be paying off.  Skepticism ran far and wide as to what the attach rate would be for people watching movies on the PS3.  The market seems to have spoken.  Anecdotally: I would have waited until late Feb to buy a PS3 except that I was eager to watch BD in my home theater.  I own 6 BD movies, 0 BD games now and have watched many more via Netflix.  Virtua Fighter 5, MotorStorm, and Lair will be my first game purchases starting Feb 20^th.

4.    Studio support: in addition to the PS3 effect, the fact that huge movies like Spider Man and Casino Royale are coming out on BD only can’t hurt.  Fox owns the distribution rights to some huge franchises like Aliens and Star Wars, Disney is releasing some huge films like Pirates of the Caribbean and Cars in the coming months.  The only films that are arguable bigger like The Matrix and Lord of the Rings franchises are pledged for simultaneous release on both formats by Warner.

5.    Finally, is BluRay important to gaming?  The first major PS3 title, “Resistance: Fall of Man” took up 17GB on disc.  If you install the new Splinter Cell on the PC it takes 14GB.  Hint: that won’t fit on DVD.  I think Gears of War shows us the space is not necessarily needed to look better but developers are finding cool uses for the space.  The developer of “The Darkness”, an upcoming shooter says: “Yeah, well Blu-ray offers us around 25GB to play with, so we're looking to license old TV shows, adverts, and cartoons to build entire TV channels in the game. You can actually turn on the TVs in the game and watch a film, watch a TV series, anything you want really. It's a little bit gimmicky, but at the same time, it's a really cool feature. Also, we tell mission-specific information through the TVs where it's needed.”

Are both optical formats doomed by content downloads?  Maybe in the long run, but right now most home people do not have the bandwidth or the patience to download an equivalent quality movie.  A friend of mine even suggested that optical formats are doomed because CF is becoming fast and cheap and ubiquitous and we’ll be purchasing movies on CF cards in five years.  Many HD-DVD fanboys are so dedicated that cruising some forums I see lots of “If BD wins I’ll stay on regular DVD forever I’m never buying Poo-Ray Sony sucks blah blah”.  For my part, I did my best research and guesswork to pick the winner, but I am a home theater nut and HD-DVD looks so much better than standard DVD of course I’ll jump on HD-DVD if it wins.

But it doesn’t look like it’s going to.

I've seen a few BD movies now: Black Hawk Down, The Descent, Ice Age 2, Total Recall, Underworld: Evolution.  The difference in quality is amazing.  Its easy to get used to how it looks until I switch to a standard DVD of the same content.  On large screens pretty much every flaw is visible and doing A/B between BD and DVD leaves no question that HD optical discs are "worth it" in terms of cost/benefit.  The HD optical discs on the PS3 and 360 are genious in that respect since many people have/would have the systems anyway.

Waiting for Virtua Fighter 5 and Lair now...

Opening my mail yesterday (I was way behind) a surprise property tax refund nagged me to buy a Playstation 3.  I'm surprised how much head-shaking and criticism this has been met with from my gamer friends.  The price and the weak launch lineup are the most commonly cited reasons.  The PS2 had a far worse launch with a worse shortage and weaker launch lineup and 75million consoles later I don't hear anyone complaining.  As for the price, well, I wanted a BluRay player for my home theater so even if I never play any games I'll get my $600 worth.  I was playing Blast Factor last night and I'm downloading Gran Tourismo HD tonight.  I've never been a fan of FPS games on a console (too stuck in the PC mode of play control) so I'll be passing on what are the big PS3 games right now: Reistance: Fall of Man and Call of Honor or Medal of Duty 3 or whatever it's called.  Indeed I think I'll be finishing FFXII on the PS3 and doing the downloadable games for a while until Lair comes out, and of course Final Fantasy XIII this fall.

I'm having a lot of fun, lighten up Sony haters.

(Of course when the Xbox 360 comes out with an HDMI connection I might have to score one of those to play that BioShock thinger that's coming out)

http://feeds.cinematical.com/~r/weblogsinc/cinematical/~3/72107754/

I like horror movies and H.P. Lovecraft, very cool.

You can see some pictures of my movie room here:

http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/thread/844512.aspx

I will get some pictures onto Flickr when I get a minute.

Well, with a whole ton of painting work from my lovely assistant Jennifer the home theater is nearly operational.  I won't say "done" because curtains and trim work will have to be done at some point but for now I'm tired and I just want to watch movies.  Unless there's an issue with the projector or something I'll be sitting down with a full house by tomorow night.

The date has been pushed back a couple of times, but on or about next week Tuesday I should be sitting down to screen some films in my new room.  I'm fairly sore from sanding drywall mud for hours on end the past 3 days but I have it down to a manageable amount I should be able to finish tonight, with a friend of my brother's coming over to set up a knockdown texture finish tomorrow and Jen painting on Friday.  I will post pictures via flickr over the new week, but having people over for the grand debut will have to wait until I have curtains and some other stuff set up...

http://www.petitiononline.com/hobfilm/petition.html

http://feeds.cinematical.com/~r/weblogsinc/cinematical/~3/51505052/

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?  Hollywood continues to suck.  Hollywood is a great example of a bunch of old idiots who are living in a meticulously constructed fantasy world of their own, then blaming movie downloads on their malaise, rather than the fact that they they make terrible decisions over and over again.

I am a Lord of the Rings nerd, and I don't mind saying so.  Hell, I'm even an armchair Tolkein Scholar, if that gives you any idea how much of a nerd I am.  I don't speak any made up languages but I really enjoy the depth of the mythology.  The LOTR movies directed by Peter Jackson are among the best films to come out of Hollywood in recent memory.

Reading here
http://feeds.cinematical.com/~r/weblogsinc/cinematical/~3/49649575/

You can see that The Hobbit is indeed on track to become a movie, though it may be a few years before production begins.

Glas tulo na min oh hé siniath!