Saturday, May 18, 2013

Slowdown in Reviews

Due to a trip to Indiana and the resulting penalty to my health, I’ve been slow in getting anything serious done for the blog. A new movie review is currently being written and notes to redo the Beowulf review to cover the Blu-ray have been taken. Somewhere in the confusion I forgot to review the fifth episode of Area 88 so that will come after the review in progress.

I’m mulling over the nightmarish task of adding the tag “kaiju” to Japanese giant monster movies, but can’t decide. It isn’t the task that is dissuading me, it is the definition. Would giant monster movies from other countries fit the category? If not, what label for them? And since so few visitors use tags is it worth the effort? Since I put up the index pages I have noticed they get used far more than tags.

Meanwhile, I have upgraded my multimedia PC in the living room to the point where it has replaced the Samsung Blu-ray player for DVD playback. The picture quality of combining a Radeon 7750 based videocard and XBMC software has produced a result that is nothing short of amazing. While not true HD, the image quality has no right to look so good.

There is probably a decent sized blog post in that project and I may write one about the settings, software, and hardware cobbled together. A few screenshots would be appropriate, but I haven’t figured out how to get any out of the Samsung player. That is most likely impossible, which is a pity. The difference is staggering especially close up and the Samsung is no slouch at scaling up DVDs.

Why am I mentioning this in a post about reviews? Out of concern that my take on DVD picture quality is going to change due to the enhancements. What I’ll be seeing will be far better looking than most people will get to view. Yeah, yeah, I can see you are weeping for me having such an awful problem.

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