Logan's Run and the Blu-Ray effect

Logan's Run is a SciFi movie released in 1976 starring Michael York and Jenny Agutter. I was 9 going on 10 when it came out. I remember it well. I was a big-time Trek fan, so my folks usually sent me off to see most of the new SciFi movies. I can't tell you I was totally thrilled by the movie, as it had some obvious narrative potholes which even a 10 year old could figure out. Still, the movie developed a big following and got turned into a rather dreadful TV series which did not last long. That one died like the Planet of Apes series did.

Last night, Logan's Run arrived at my mailbox on Blu-Ray. It was sent to me my Netflix of course. I stashed it my queue only because I wanted to see how well the re-master would turn out. It turns out that they did a very nice job with the conversion. My biggest gripe about the disk is that they did not do a full DTS-HD Master Audio sound track for the movie. This makes a huge difference for anyone with even modest audio hardware.

Strangely enough, it turns out that I liked the movie better than I thought I would at this age. Issues of mortality and renewal are not that well appreciated by a 9 year old. The movie still has those dreadful narrative potholes I mentioned before. They are definitely still evident.

In short, the movie gets off to a flying start introducing you to their rendition of the 23rd century. It is a Utopia with fly in the ointment. Mankind lives only for pleasure in this society, but you only get to live 30 years. In your 30th year, you must go on Carousel which is a thrilling zero gravity ride that ends when your body explodes, as everyone in the audience cheers for you to Renew. That is, reincarnate in a new body.

It is obvious how the economics of this Utopia work. By maintaining an exclusively young population, you avoid all the medical costs associated with aging, costs that I myself and just becoming familiar with at 43 (after two knee surgeries). Geriatric care is a massive drain our on collectively resources. If you could avoid that, you would make an abundance of resources available for other purposes. I myself would not have needed any surgeries if I had died 13 years ago on Carousel.

It is a little interesting for a former 9 year old kid to watch this same movie at the age of 43 and realize that he would now be 13 years older than anyone in this civilization. It boggles the mind to think that you would be the most experienced, the most veteran, the most elder member of such a society if you showed up on their doorstep. It is hard to believe that it has been 34 years already.

The dreaded narrative potholes begin when Logan 5 receives special mission order 033-03 from the mainframe computer. He is ordered to penetrate the city seals, seek and destroy Sanctuary, and account for the 1056 unaccounted for runners who seemed to have escaped the system. Logan's life-clock is "retrogrammed" to indicate that he is approaching Last Day, when he should have 4 years left. Logan 5 makes a series of unwarranted saltations, big illogical leaping inferences, based on zero information from the computer. Now he is only 26 years old, so you can expect him to be a bit unreasonable. Still, those jumps are quite unwarranted, and they are critical to the entire course of action he chooses for the rest of this movie.

Still, I did find myself enjoying this movie more than I did when I was a kid. However, I have to give the major credit to Blu-Ray & HDTV. As per usual, Blu-Ray is so much more immersive and cinematic that it makes even weaker movies seem stronger. Dave's law says that Blu-Ray adds 10 points to the score of any movie, regardless of how weak or how strong. If you have a movie that scores 80/100 in the theater, it will be 90/100 at home on Blu-Ray. This is the Blu-Ray effect.

One little illustration for you: Just a week or two ago, my brother & my cousin Nick came over for a showing Inglorious Basterds. The first words out Nick's mouth were the following "It looks so much better than it did in the theater! When are the theaters going to get HD?" I had to chuckle on that one. They need 4K (at least) for the kind of screens sizes they employ, and they are working hard on it.

About 40 minutes into the movie, my brother declared that he was enjoying the film a hell of a lot more than he did in the theater. He saw it in Denmark, during the summer, when his band was on tour in Europe. The Danish used Danish captions, which made it tough for him to follow the French & German parts. He also mentioned that he thought it looked and sounded a lot better at home.

So the moral of the story is as follows: Check out a few movies you remember as marginal, just as soon as they become available on Blu-Ray. You might be impressed to see how much better they are.

If you are a Netflix subscriber, you know Blu-Ray is hot... unfortunately

Well, I just looked at my Netflix queue a few moments ago to see if they sent me any of the latest releases. Drat! Fucked again! They sent me some second tier stuff. I did not get Surrogates, or Gamer. I am a long-term Blu-Ray renter too! Since the very beginning!

Now whenever I scan down the list of most desirable Blu-Ray releases I see nothing but "Long Wait" and "Very Long Wait". It used to be that I score all the new releases within days of the release. Now you won't see one for a month or longer. This really sucks. What happened?

It's pretty clear that Netflix is suffering a resource allocation issue. They are not buying enough copies of the Blu-Ray to supply their renters. Presuming that this is a smart company, and I think they are, why do you think they've fucked up the resource procurement end? Probably because there are a ton of new subscribers applying pressure to the system. The N00Bs are probably screaming for Blu-Rays as well.

Blu-Rays are still very pricey to buy, and you can understand why everybody purchasing a new HDTV & Blu-Ray player falls in love with the media immediately. Everything else pales in comparison. Netflix is one of the few places you can go where you can (theoretically) rent absolutely anything that has been released on Blu-Ray.

All of this tells me we are drawing nearer ever nearer to the mythical crossover-point where Blu-Ray becomes the user standard, and DVD becomes the obsolete object of scorn. Most folks I know, hate to even plug in a DVD. Netflix needs to recognize this and start supplying the house accordingly.

So Blu-Ray sales just took off, aye?

So the Yahoo! Tech section is reporting the Blu-Ray sales shot through the frickin' roof this Black-Friday. We are talking about both players and media. I am not surprised. What is behind this sudden spike in Blu-Ray? I think collective knowledge has grown. This is at least as important as the recent drops in Blu-Ray player and media prices.

1. Adoption of HDTV is hitting critical mass. Believe it or not, we are just now reaching a cross over point where most households have at least one HDTV. We should have hit this point by the end of 2007, but on-rushing economic turmoil delayed the moment. This cross-over point is critical to Blu-Ray adoption because you cannot enjoy Blu-Ray without an HDTV.
2. The market seems to realize now that DVD is low def (720 X 480 pixels) and that Blu-Ray is high-def (1920 X 1080 pixels). Right up until a few months ago, I have been consistently horrified by how many people were totally ignorant of the basic facts of resolution.
3. The market seems to be learning that streaming media is lower in quality than DVD, not higher in quality than DVD. Streaming media cannot carry the weight of Blu-Ray's jockstrap in terms of quality. Ergo, streaming media is no solution for the HDTV owner, who wants his prize possession to look its absolute best.
4. The market seems to be realizing that On-Demand is not particularly convenient, not cheap in absolute or relative terms, and the quality does not rival Blu-Ray.

Once all of these factors are understood by the market place, you have a large pool of pent-up demand that is ready to snap at a sizable price drop, just like the ones we saw on Black-Friday 2009.

To all you guys who just joined the club: Welcome! You are going to like things here. It is much better than the old world. Martin Scorsese and hundred other film makers have been totally thrilled by how well Blu-Ray presents their work. I think you will be too!

Blu-Ray leads HD-DVD 16-13: Why the Harris Poll is a fucked up lying bitch whore

Alright Mr. Harris, I'm calling you out. I'm calling you a low-down, fork-tongued lying asshole, and the son of a whore. I'm slapping you in the face, and spitting in your eye. Pistols at 10 paces in 10 minutes unless you are a yellow-belied coward.

Why? Because you continue to differentiate between Blu-Ray players and the PS3, that's why. It is absolutely pointless distortion of the key fact, unless you have a hidden agenda. It is the implementation and use of a false distinction. It must be intentional, outright intellectual dishonesty that drives the use of this false distinction. The objective must to distort the facts and show the Blu-Ray is doing poorly. You continue to manifest a clear-cut agenda to undermine Blu-ray's success.

I have said for many moons now that there is absolutely no reason to believe that the dedicated disk player will survive in the next generation of media systems. To insist that there will be dedicated disk players, or that they will lead the way is curmudgeon-thinking. You are thinking like a caveman if you think this thought. It is tantamount to insisting on reel-to-reel audio playback in your stereo system. You pattern of though is antiquated, outdated and obsolete.

The PS3 is the best damn media device ever invented in any category. There is no reason to presume that any moderately informed consumer should ever prefer a dedicated disk player over a PS3. You don't even have to play video games to think so. The PS3 does DVD Audio, SACD, DVD-Upscaling, computer media, networking to local libraries, USB2 key files, downloads, etc. Feature for feature, it is a devastating landslide in favor of the PS3. It is also amazingly fast. Dedicated players, with far weaker processors, are very slow footed by comparison.

For the entire first year of Blu-Rays existence, PS3 was not only the best player on the market, it was also the cheapest. Why pay more for a lesser machine? Why would you pay the same amount for a lesser machine? Why would save $100 are buy an inferior machine? Very few people did. Those who did often returned it in exchange for a PS3 later. It was a stupid mistake to buy a dedicated Blu-Ray player when you could have bought a PS3.

I believe it remains a stupid mistake to buy a dedicated Blu-Ray player when you can buy a PS3. The PS3 is the reference system for Blu-Ray, period. Any denial of fudging of this fact constitutes a pure lie. All facts quoted regarding Blu-Ray must, of necessity, include the PS3.

To lead any story with a headline like "Blu-Ray sales are tepid" and then (later on in the piece) explain that you aren't including PS3 players in the basis facts for this story is 100% pure, outright intellectual dishonesty and distortion of the key facts. This key-fact distortion must speak of bias. You have a liar's agenda at heart.

When the facts are totalled, 16% of US homes are now equipped for Blu-Ray. 13% are equipped for HD-DVD. 90+% are equipped for DVD. This is the forthright honest way to state your research findings.