Info and forum posts by 'Leo Davidson'

RE: Wanted: Booklets for R1 Natural Born Killers & Being John Malkovich

Same with Being John Malkovich, at least with my R1 version of it. Also has probably the worse ever DVD case where you practically have to break the DVD to get it off the strange claw-shaped ring-holder.

(It`s a great film, though!)

This item was edited on Wednesday, 2nd August 2000, 11:45

RE: U-571

BTW, Mel Gibson was born in the US state of New York. He just grew up in Australia.

I only found out the other day myself when I was saying it was odd to have an Australian playing an American patriot.

http://us.imdb.com/Name?Gibson,+Mel (Sorry, Can`t get it to link due to the comma.)

This item was edited on Thursday, 27th July 2000, 18:43

RE: How do i watch my pc dvd player on my tv?

You need to switch to an outputable resolution, try 640*480 or 800*600 at 60hz, and you should then be able to turn on the TV out option in the display properties (I guess in the advanced section).

If you have ICQ at home, grab me on 1072448 (or 1702448, I can never remember, it`s Nudel anyway) if you need help.

Toshiba SD-3109(chipped) menu lockup?

Hi, just wondering if I`m the only one with this minor problem...

I have a chipped Toshiba SD-3109 (I think that`s the codename for it) and I`ve noticed a few times that if I`m going through a lot of DVD menus, for example exploring all the extras or setup options, it sometimes locks up and has to be turned off and on again (via the remote).

It`s only happened three or four times, and only once been annoying, but does it happen to anyone else? I`ve never heard a bad word about the Toshiba players and it`s perfect in every other way *, so maybe the problem is due to the modifications done to it. Also, I don`t know which firmware version I have -- would it be safe to upgrade anyway given the machine is chipped?

* Except you can`t have on-screen displays without that fusking annoying flashing multi-angle icon wHICH I WANT TO DIE...[takes pills], and you can`t tell it not to output sound from the SCART sockets meaning I have to turn my telly down when watching DVDs using the DD/DTS amp.

Ta for any info.

RE: How do i watch my pc dvd player on my tv?

Ah, well, if there is just a phono socket on the back of your graphics card you should be able to buy a normal SCART to S-video cable. The one with three phono sockets, one for video (which you`d plug in to the graphics card) and two for stereo sound (which you`d plug in to your soundcard or just ignore).

RE: How do i watch my pc dvd player on my tv?

Hmm, strange that the card didn`t come with one. Where do you live? I can`t say that I`ve ever used my cable or ever see myself using it, so I`d be willing to give it to ya if it`s something you`d find useful.

RE: How do i watch my pc dvd player on my tv?

My TNT2Ultra came with a cable which plugs in the back of the card and I think outputs s-video, which you could convert to scart if your TV doesn`t have an s-video connector.

RE: Napster

Since this thread has come up again, I thought I`d mention an excellent article just posted by Matt Johnson of TheThe on their website:

THE THE VERSUS THE CORPORATE MONSTER

http://www.thethe.com

A lot of sad truths about the music industry. Interestingly, Matt is against both Napster and the Industry (see, it is possible to dislike both, heh) but has also decided to put songs from his latest album on his website...

RE: How do i watch my pc dvd player on my tv?

Or just a video card with TV-out.
I know with the NVidia TNT2 you have to go to 800*600 or 640*480 to allow TV-out to be enabled.

RE: Independance Day extras suck?

Isn`t there a rule about the quality/quantity of the extras being inversely proportional to the quality of the film? :-)

Actually, scratch that, I thought ID4 was diabolical when I saw it in the cinema. Plot was utterly crap, stupid, unoriginal, brainless, unrealistic (the computer virus, PER-LEESE!). Average special effects (IMO they were nothing special, nothing new (I thought the fx in TPM were pretty boring, too... Whoopee we can do full-screen CGI now... Give me a break!)...

Only good bit is Will Smith punching the Alien and saying "Welcome to Earth".

There ya go, that`s my review. :-)

A lot of people liked it, though, so maybe I was expecting too much? I didn`t see it expecting an intelligent film but I did expect a decent action movie and felt pretty left down...

RE: Austin Powers Hidden Menu

Go to the extras menu and wait for a while. A rocket will fly up the centre of the screen and deposit the extra menu.

For more hidden stuff, there is an excellent resource on the similarly-named site DVD Review:

http://www.dvdreview.com/html/hidden_features.shtml

(I`ve no connection with them, btw, but it is useful.)

TOSLINK splitter

I`m getting quite desperate now...

I need a TOSLink splitter, like this:
http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cables/img/sp-toc-split.jpg

Unfortunately, I can only find this thing for sale in one place on the net:
http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cables/index.html

For orders placed outside of the USA they require I fax (grr) or email (oh, how secure!) a photocopy/scan of both sides of my credit card. "A necessary part of doing business over the Internet", they say, although I don`t recall ever having to do this for any other company.

Sigh. :-(

Can anyone help me find one of these things from another company or a shop in London?

Thanks for any help!

I`m getting desperate enough to ask for someone in the US to order it and post it on to me, which seems a stupid amount of effort and transferring money and packages around.

RE: One idea, though...

But but but, what if I read a thread, then go back and click "mark all read" just after someone posts a new message to an old thread? It`ll mark the thread as being read and I`ll never see the message that could`ve changed my life... heh

(Spot the programmer...)

One idea, though...

After clicking a thread, could it be marked as read (i.e. no longer new)?

Maybe it gets a bit more complicated if the thread is really long and spans multiple pages (if they do), but you get what I mean hopefully. heh

Great stuff

Seems excellent so far. :-) Good work guys!

RE: New Style of Review Pages - Bad?

Could you make split page reviews a configuration choice like the default region is?

Not that I`m particularly bothered, but it`s an idea (...which you`ve probably already thought of, heh).

RE: Leon - Integral Version - When/Where/How much Anyone ?

The Japanese version is region2 NTSC, so provided you setup can do NTSC you don`t have to worry.

That said, I think the Japanese version is non-anamorphic. I have it and the image is quite grainy in places but it doesn`t ruin the film or anything. (Not that I`ve got around to watching more than the first 15 minutes of it.)

As linked from this site a while ago, DVD2000 have an excellent article on how to get hold of the Japanese Integral Version. Don`t worry, the audio is English. :-)

Check this out:
http://dvd-2000.highlandinternet.net/leon.htm
At the bottom are a bunch of websites which you can order it from. I used www.cdjapan.co.jp and it took around a week to arrive. Pretty good service. Only minor hassle was that I had to create an account with them, but that`s free and doesn`t take too long. (Seemed a waste of time when I have no plans to buy any more Japanese discs, but nevermind, heh)

They also have a review of the disc here:
http://dvd-2000.highlandinternet.net/dbleon.htm

Best of luck. :-)

(Anyone want a region-1 non-Integral copy of Leon / The Professional? I bought it before I found out about the Integral version... doh!)

RE: dvd hack codes

AFAIK (and I`m not the world`s expert on this!), Toshiba players have to be chipped.

I`ve got an SD-3109 (or whatever the 2-disc player is called) which came pre-chipped from the shop and works very well.

RE: DVD World are nice chappies

I don`t trust customs not to open the packages. :-) They probably have my name now anyway just from posting here. What? WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?

Personally, I pay destitute children to fly to Europe and bring back hardcore pornographic DVDs by putting them in condoms and swallowing them.

I think the lubricant is playing havoc with my DVD player, and I`m sick of taking the ungratful little gits to the hostpital for stitches.

SACD

I was reading the linked comparison of DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD and noticed a couple of things.

( http://www.dvdnews.co.uk/features/dvd2ksacd.php )

"but SACD uses a sort of hybrid format with one CD layer and one DVD-type layer, giving backwards compatibility"

Does this mean that SACD players can play CDs (I`d hope so anyway), or does it mean that a SACD would be playable on a normal CD player, although obviously without all the new stuff like improved bitrate and surround?

...

I also saw and noticed that DVD-Audio is abbreviated as DVDA.

South Park fans will know this as the name of Matt & Trey`s band, the name coming from the pr0n term Doulbe V----a Double A--l (well, you get the idea -- I remember a discussion on IRC about how this would be possible, and it was eventually worked out).

RE: DVD World are nice chappies

S&M the Metallica disc, of course.

I wouldn`t order THAT kind of disc...

...you can`t get anything decent legally in this messed up, tabo-ridden country. :-)

RE: Wharfedale 750 using R1 discs

I seem to remember hearing that some TVs can`t take an NTSC signal through SCART-RGB (goes black & white or fuzzy) but can sometimes through S-Video (SCART or not) or composite.

Probably totally unrelated to your problem, though!

...

I recently switched from S-Video to SCART-RGB (now that I`ve worked out how to use/configure the SCART ports on my TV, heh), and the picture was all red. Luckily, it was just a loose connector. Picture`s slightly clearer than before, I have to say. Now if only I could have a quieter washing machine and kill all the people who drive loud boats down the Thames, I might be able to hear the dialog!

Why am I telling you all this? I dunno...

RE: FAO Ade Taylor

It uses the C word. Still, I used that as a kid, but I thought you might like the warning. :-) I love the C word. But that`s another story.

I saw The Exorcist in a late-night showing a little while after it was un-banned and I have to say it was one of the funniest films I`ve ever seen. The whole audience was laughing. Might be different if you watch it on your own or if you don`t have quite such a sick and twisted sense of humour...

RE: Best DVD sites

The ones I use most of the time, in no particular order, are www.dvdworld.co.uk (region2), www.dvdboxoffice.com (region1), and www.play247.com (both regions).

Hope that helps!

DVD World are nice chappies

(Hmm, who ate my cookie?)

Just wanted to say that DVD World ( www.dvdworld.co.uk ) have been very good to me -- I ordered East is East from them and after a couple of weeks emailed them to ask if there was a delay at their end. They`d posted it and asked me to wait another couple of days, but still no DVD so they agreed to send a replacement copy.

I`ve ordered a few DVDs from them so I guess they have little reason to be suspicious, but I was qutie impressed that they didn`t hassle me or anything, just said they would send another copy, which arrived this morning.

Anyway, I thought their good will deserved a little mention.

(I got a call from them a couple of days ago which cleared up what happened: The film got sent to my old address by mistake. Fair enough, and I believe they would`ve sent a replacement even if the original was sent to the correct place and "lost in the post".)

I`ve already ordered another disc from them :-) (S&M on pre-order.)

RE: South Park region 1 series 2

I say we find who is responsible and kick them.
Skwaah.
In the nutz.

RE: South Park region 1 series 2

I`ve been wondering the same damn thing!

I mean, WTF, the region 2 DVDs have overtaken the region 1 versions.

Problem is, I think the episode orders are changed between the two regions, so just buying one region 2 DVD may not get you all the episodes you`re missing. :-( I could be wrong, but I`m pretty sure it was this way for the first series and seem to remember investigating it for the second as well...

RE: Napster

Mark J:

You`re right, you can find out who runs FTP sites, but it is more difficult to do something about some of them and there`s a lot of them rather than one single company to attack.

Also, many mp3 ftp sites are illegally created by people who don`t own the FTP server (and these tend to last only a few hours or days), and others might be hosted in China or somewhere where noone cares about copyright. :-)

I personally have never seen a big, open, anonymous access, FTP site full of mp3 files and I expect it`d be shutdown pretty fast if hosted from the US or UK or similar.

BTW, was thinking about this more in the shower. (heh) -- When you say you`d be alright with someone quoting your column update, even the whole thing, on their site, this is only like someone distributing one song, something I doubt many artists are that bothered about. However, I`m sure you`d be annoyed if someone took the entier DVD Reviewer site, maybe reduced the image quality (just to make my terrible analogy even worse, heh), and stuck it on their server, mirroring updates occasionally. Nothing to do with what Napster are doing yet since they don`t host the files. But what if lots of individuals were nicking sites like this and a company came along and said, I`ll provide links to your sites and promote them on search engines and in return I want you to replace all the advertising banners on your sites with those which I provide and which generate money for me. You then find out and ask the company to stop promoting the site and they refuse to do so. I don`t know if that`s illegal but it`s certainly immoral and it`s pretty much what Napster are doing, in my opinion.

OK, I admit, why would they do this when access to your site is free? The analogy falls down here, but I`m just trying to say that if a company is actively encouraging people to take control of your creation, it`s going to p*** you off. The analogy also falls down in that Napster don`t carry ads (yet, afaik), but, by doing what they do they are still making truckloads of money in that crazy e-company way.

Mark O:

You`ve checked out Naspter and yeah, they are not doing something as bad as making people pay for pirate mp3s or anything like that. They ARE still making money out of what they do. They are not the same as Real or Vivo or Microsoft, though.

Say Microsoft.com added a section listing mp3 files. Just links, they`re not hosting them. Say they don`t have anything in place to deal with people making their illegal files available. That`s negligent at best since it`s obvious people will do this. Now say a band or record company sees that the site has links to their files and requests that they be removed. But not removing the links they are probably commiting a crime. There would be a s*** storm if Microsoft did this, but poor little Robin Hood Napster is somehow working for World Peace.

In my mind this is VERY diffrent to asking a site to remove links to DeCCS or a similar program. As far as I know, no movie studio or whatever owns any part of DeCCS (hmm, maybe it has a stolen decryption key? Maybe that could be removed in some cunning way). Sure, DeCCS is used mostly for piracy, but saying it itself is bad is one indirection too far, in my opinion.

I don`t know, maybe my mind is weird and I think it`s wrong for a company to continue to direct people to illegal files after being asked to stop while I still don`t have a problem with a company (or anyone else) directing people to a legal file which can and often is used to make illegal ones. :-)

Ownership of information is definitely a complicated area, either way!

I`ll shut up for a few hours now! :-)

RE: Napster

I think Napster are providing a service with a direct intent to do wrong, though. They`re also not doing anything about people using their service for wrong when it is explicitly reported to them. That`s quite different to the Royal Mail.

I think Napster are being singled out because no other *organised, suable company* has done what they are doing before.

I also think Napster`s PR machine is trying to make them look like basement Robin Hoods when they are corporate leeches. They claim to be amoungst the mp3 revolution, trying to break down the evil record companies and bring musicians closer to their fans, but, really, I think they`re in some ways worse than the record companies because they`re making money from people`s creations and not even asking or paying them for it, and not stopping when artists request they stop.

You can`t sue a bunch of anonymous FTP sites. You *can* sue Geocities if you tell them they have copyright material online and don`t remove it in a reasonable amount of time. (Which is similar to what`s happening with Napster, so in that respect maybe they`re not really being singled out, they`re just reacting so damn slowly that legal action was required.)

RE: Napster

"Btw don`t listen to Leo, he is associated with a site that posts pictures of dicks on toast with onions.

I kid you not!"


Ahahahah :-)