Roger Ward

On a recent CNN story regarding the introduction of “Peanuts” to Northwest Airlines in-flight menu (yeah, because that’s considered news!) a reporter must have had another thing on her mind due to her use of the word “Penis”. Not once or twice, but three times!! I suppose it’s a good way to have a break and get some time off work in the form of a mandatory suspension (possibly) seeing as how uptight the yanks are over anything the slightest bit rude. Look at at boob nonsense from the super bowl a few years ago!

Oh well, it certainly makes for funny viewing and what will most likely turn into the latest youtube sensation.

Got the new HD Basics Blu-Ray yesterday which I’ve used to re-adjust the settings on my BRAVIA television. Previously I’d posted settings for my “X Series”, but these new settings are wildly different to my previous settings.  I quite like these new settings, they bring out excellent shadow detail with very natural colours.  Novices may not like these settings due to the fact that there are no overblown colours and a low brightness level. But the detail in return is quite astonishing compared to the previous settings.

Let me know what you think.

• Backlight: 2
• Picture: 85
• Brightness: 52
• Color: 55
• Hue: 0
• Color Temperature: Warm 1
• Sharpness: 51
• Noise Reduction: off
• MPEG Noise Reduction: Low
• DRC Mode: Mode 1
• Black Corrector: Low
• Advanced C.E.: Low
• Gamma: Low
• Clear White: off
• Color Space: Standard
• Live Color: off
• DRC Pallette 50/60
  • White Balance
  • R-Gain: -7
  • G-Gain: -7
  • B-Gain: 0
  • R-Bias: 6
  • G-Bias: 4
  • B-Bias: 0-10

• Detail Enhancer: Low
• Edge Enhancer: Low
• Motionflow: High
• Cinemotion: Auto 1

I’ve also attached images below taken after calibration. They’re not totally indicitive due to the camera, but they give a good idea of what the image is like.

It’s early in the morning here and the F1 championship has been decided in quite exciting and controversial circumstances. I mentioned a while ago how I’m sick of committees deciding the results of races. Committees along with political correctness have made the world a worse place, not a better one. Considering how this race finished, it may happen again!

As F1 fans would know, Lewis only needed a fifth place to win it should Massa finish in first. That happened, but not without some scares. With about 6 laps to go, the rain came down, Lewis went in for rain tyres and then the rain stopped. Uh oh. Thanks to mother natures fickleness, Lewis was out of sorts as his tyres weren’t gripping. Vettel went past, Lewis went into sixth, a championship losing position.

This is where is gets interesting. With the championship lost, Lewis got fifth back when Jarno Trulli’s Timo Glocks car went 17 seconds slower on the last lap thanks to his not changing tyres, so a screw up on Toyota’s part handed the championship back to Hamilton as he passed Trulli Glock on the last turn!

So the question will most likely be asked, did the Toyota slow down deliberately or was it bad tyre choices? Methinks that a committee may have something to do in deciding this championship. I hope not, but they do have to justify themselves don’t they?

Oh, by the way. Channel 10. SCREW YOU! Why do you even deserve the rights to show F1 when you cut the telecast short to go to your rubbish 6am news service which no one watches, hosted by two muppets who have no personality, HUH?

Top Gear UK has won it’s third British National Television Award in a row. Well deserved of course as it is the most original, fun and refreshing Television program on anywhere in the world currently. Well done chaps!

Watch the quite funny video of The Stig accepting the award below.

You’ll have to forgive me for this moment of excitement, but WOO HOO. Top Gear is always one show that is a must watch because its original, something that rubbish American networks need to get into there thick heads looking at the crap that they’ve been shoveling out these last few years! (Two & A Half Men excluded of course)

Come November 2, intelligent people the World over (thanks to bit torrent) will get there fix again when series 12 airs in England in a few weeks. Begin countdown! Oh yeah.

No guesses of what I’m going to be doing tonight. This morning the HOT post office delivery chick (stuff political correctness!) we have servicing this area knocked on my door with my Amazon package. Woohoo as Homer Simpson would say. Neighbours, you’ll be staying up late with this noise!

Transformers Blu-Ray Disc

Due to my never ending search for perfection when it comes to my HD television, I am forever calibrating the hell out of the damn thing till I’m happy. For a while now, I didn’t think that was going to happen. But after lots of researching and adjusting, I think I might have done it. So if you own an “X Series” Sony Bravia, give these settings a try, you might like them!

A note though. I’ve calibrated and optimized for Blu-Ray and HDTV sources only. I haven’t tested these settings for Standard Definition sources, although I would still think they wouldn’t be to bad either.

Backlight: 2
Picture: 76
Brightness: 50
Color: 52
Hue: 0
Color Temperature: Neutral
Sharpness: 30
Noise Reduction: off
MPEG Noise Reduction: off
DRC Mode: Off
Black Corrector: off
Advanced C.E.: off
Gama: off
Clear White: off
Color Space: Standard
Live Color: off
White Balance
R-Gain: 0
G-Gain: 0
B-Gain: 0
R-Bias: 0
G-Bias: 0
B-Bias: 0
Detail Enhancer: Low
Edge Enhancer: Low
Motionflow: Standard
Cinemotion: Auto2

The entertainment industry is booming, be that the interactive or motion picture and that’s great. Never before have we been offered so much choice in how to be entertained. But, there is a downside to the vast range of choice, and it’s a big one. IMAGINATION, or lack thereof.

Many years ago, movies had imagination. There were a great many films made during the golden age of cinema. For example, War of the Worlds, King Kong, Planet Of The Apes & Psycho were excellent examples of brilliant cinema of their day. These days, imaginative films from the Hollywood of today consist of films like War of the Worlds, King Kong, Planet Of The Apes & Psycho. Oh dear, there is something wrong here isn’t there. The 1950’s classic, The Day The Earth Stood Still was a brilliant example for fine 50’s film making. It was intelligent and had a simple message. It was well acted and excellently directed and stands the test of time.

Due to Hollywood’s lack of imagination, The Day The Earth Stood Still is being re-made for release late this year. This time though, Klaatu will not be played by a classically trained British actor, but by Keanu Reeves!

So no doubt this “remake” will remove any intelligent scriptwriting and add in words to suit someone with Keanu’s acting skills. So expect words like “Woah”, “Awesome”, “Righteous” and “Gnarly”. I’m hearing reports that Keanu will be using a British accent and the film will try to be as respectful to the original as possible. I’m sure Keanu will try his best to do a believable British accent. Right up until he says the word “Dude”.

Apart from actually re-making these films, I think is the biggest problem in remakes is they try to be as close a copy to the original as possible. That’s the biggest mistake, because we’ve seen them before. We KNOW the style of the original. That’s why we enjoyed the originals. If Hollywood is going to waste time by making unoriginal films, at least try to put some originality into these remakes. It’s been done successfully with Ocean’s Eleven, so it can be done.

But it’s not just the film industry that suffers from a lack of originality. The interactive software industry is to blame also. Look at the games industry only a short 15 years ago. Games were fun. They were long and they were above all else ORIGINAL!

Today, it’s much like the movie industry. The most common games are sequels, remakes or just plain and total rubbish. Just with better graphics. The average time it takes to play a game has gone from anywhere 20-40 hours. To generally under 10 hours.

Today games are all about looks over originality. Games like Bioshock for example. Brilliant to look at, but I played it nearly 15 years ago. It was called System Shock. Sure the graphics were crude for the time. But they didn’t have flashy graphics to hide behind, so the game play had to be good. And it keeps on coming. Guitar Hero III. It’s technically proficient, but it is just the same as Guitar Hero II and Guitar Hero I, just with different music. Halo 3 is just like any other 3^rd person shooter out there. But because of hype, Halo fans the World over have been tossing themselves off over the game, in turn making it the biggest game of the year Why? It’s just Halo 1 and Halo 2 with a bit of a polish.

Ultimately, the blame must rest on us, the consumer. After all we are the ones that buy and watch all of this crap, just because we seem to accept mediocrity so willingly. After all why see an intelligent movie that requires you to think, when we can just as easily switch off and become robots for 2 hours while we scoff popcorn at some dumb action film with the depth of a paddling pool. Hence, smart movies die a quick cashless death while the mind numbingly tedious rakes in the cash. Games are the same. Ignore a good story and game play in favor of pretty graphics and you’ll make a mint.

But nothing I can say will change the fact the all consumer wants these days is some brightly colored movie/game with all the depth of a spoon. So when we find ourselves one day, bored out of our minds watching Captain Bland’s Monotonous Adventure while playing the game tie in. I want you to know that I told you so!