Re: Slightly OT, but funny
- From: Alric Knebel <alric@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 06:06:04 -0500
leo86@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Mar 10, 7:54 pm, Backspace <m...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
le...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:/
Guess what, genius? That's the state of MOST of the TV audience. Who
can keep up with all these terms--HD, SD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, etc.--all
these pointless upgrades, except techies? I'm in complete sympathy
with these "clueless" folks. Techie scum like you dictate the kinds
of expensive electronics that the rest of us have to buy just to keep
up, whether we need it or not, whether it "improves" anything or not.
Everyone's being sold a bill of goods with hi-def, the biggest fraud
ever perpetrated on the public by the electronics industry. Your smug
superiority infuriates me.
Hey, moron. Know one is holding a gun to your head to keep up with
anything.
That's simply not true. New formats push the old formats off the
shelves all the time. I prefer listening to music on audiocassettes on
a Walkman. Tell me where I can buy a Walkman these days. Or pre-
recorded audiocassettes. It ain't happening. I buy CDs and then
transfer them to tapes on an old boom box that can do that just so I
can listen to them on a Walkman. Yeah, I know, there are iPods now
that can do all that and more. I just haven't figured out how to put
all that music into that tiny little pod. If I ever determine that I
even have the capability to do that, I'll probably spring for an iPOD,
especially after I can no longer find audiocassette stock, even though
I find electronic products that small wholly unnatural. But the music
will still originate on CDs.
I like VHS. I like taping programs. I like certain features of the VCR
and VHS tapes that are not duplicated on DVD players and DVDs. Tell me
where I can buy a decent VCR these days. I'm lucky I can still find
sources of VHS blank tape. At some point I'd better have enough VCRs
and enough tape stock to last me the rest of my life. Because those
sources will dry up. And, no, I don't want to transfer them to DVD or
DVD-R or a computer hard drive. Eventually I may have to, of course,
for space issues more than anything else. OR just get rid of stuff
I'll never have time to watch. (I didn't say there wasn't a downside.)
As for HD, I heard someone wax rhapsodic the other day about how they
watched a sports event in HD and it was breathtaking. "You could see
every blade of grass and every one of the faces in the stands." Since
when are every blade of grass and the faces in the stands so important
to enjoyment of a sports event? Who cares?! This is stupid.
Television is worse than ever, no one's making shows that have any
sense of a visual aesthetic. Everything looks like CRAP, but you can
see it in HD. What's the point?
When someone starts making decent movies again, with good photography,
great locations, beautiful set design, lighting, costumes, music, and
good-looking actors who look like movie stars and not 7-11 clerks
plucked out of a lineup, then maybe, just maybe, HD might make a
difference. But when all you're watching is utter garbage like the
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies or the latest "reality" show, what's
the point of it all?
What the hell are you? A closet Luddite? I can't tell if you're being funny or what. In case you're not. . . .
I have a DVD recorder, and I can't see how it's less efficient or convenient than VHS. I prefer DVDs, for lots of reasons. If you were to invest in one of those DVD recorders with a hard drive inside (Wal-Mart is selling one right now by Motorola, I think, for a little over $200), you'd be able to edit on the hard drive, then transfer the program to a DVD. You can place chapter marks anywhere you want. And once you've made DVD, you can take it to your computer and make as many copies as you'd like, in just a few minutes; unlike copying VHS tapes, which, without one of those dual-deck devices, requires you PLAY the tape into another machine.
Now, for playing music. How can you, while utilizing anything resembling reason, prefer a walkman to one of the new MP3 players? First of all, the walkman, because it requires an actual motor to pull the tape, drains your power supply pretty quick. The MP3 players, on the other hand, have no moving parts (which is still a mystery to me, as to how the music is retrieved), and can last a long time. Not to mention the real plus of having on the cheapest ones up to 250 songs. As our old friend Mutefan once said, "Mirabile dictu!" I don't seize onto new technology the day it's introduced, nor shortly after, so I'm not what you'd call a technophile. But I'm very interested in the technology that involves entertainment. An MP3 player isn't something that I'd put high on my list of goodies to acquire, but when I inherited my girlfriend's 1G iPod when she got an upgrade, I was quite impressed with how good that light, thin thing sounded. Replacing the Apple earbuds with a pair of Koss Sparkplugs ($12 from Amazon) and I've got great sound in a convenient rechargeable package. Why this wouldn't be preferable to a walkman is a great mystery.
And, finally, HDTV. Your argument against it is that there's nothing worth watching anyway, so why upgrade. Man, if you can't find beautiful stuff to watch, you need to find some way to expand your vistas. There's stuff produced all the time that makes the upgrade to HDTV worth it. If that sort of thing matters to you, that is. I saw a movie this weekend -- THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES -- that made me feel like I seen Jesus. Amen, brother.
Then there was THERE WILL BE BLOOD. And ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE. All of the CGI stuff. Last years 300 or BEOWULF. These are all visual feasts, if nothing else.
--
_________________
Alric Knebel
http://www.ironeyefortress.com/C-SPAN_loon.html
http://www.ironeyefortress.com
.
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