zerolight

I saw this movie back in the late 90’s and loved it. A really entertaining look at the history of Apple and Microsoft, with a dash of IBM. It’s now free to watch online – the full movie. Definitely worth a look if you’ve never seen it before. Click here.

Sony delivered my free copy of James Bond: Casino Royale today. Nice surprise that one. I’ve watched about 30 mins of it thus far (well I have seen it several times already on DVD and at the Movies). Impressions are as follows. Picture quality is a step up from Terminator 2, I guess camera technology has advanced some what in the past decade or two. Casino Royale looks much better than it’s DVD counterpart, and a step up from the compressed HD preview available on the PS Store. Check out the photo below, and apologies for the glare coming from the window… I really should have closed the blinds. I’m still not entirely convinced that the masses are going to flock to the new HD media over regular DVD, but that’s another debate.

The biggest surprise was the Audio. Casino Royale has regular Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks and a full, uncompressed, linear PCM 5.1 surround track. The difference is very impressive. Regular DD has a bitrate of 640kps which works out at 106kps per channel, which is pretty much an average MP3. Linear PCM 5.1 has a bitrate of 4600kps which works out at 766kps per channel. That’s a 7 fold increase in definition, which I guess is like comparing low bit rate MP3 with CD. The difference is noticeable. It’s not just more detailed (though the rain in the opening jungle scene was most impressive) but also a much fuller, stronger, louder sound. It really is Hi-Fi. It delivers that cinema experience like never before. I look forward to experiencing the Matrix on Blu Ray one day as that has a particularly good soundtrack which can only benefit from HD audio.

Terminator 2 arrived yesterday on Blu Ray. I’ve been looking forward to trying out a Blu Ray movie and T2 is apparently one of the best available in terms of picture and sound quality. Certainly, you get the full 1.5Mbps DTS sound track in comparison to the 640kps Dolby Digital sound track. Video quality is also very good, you get wonderfully crisp and sharp pictures with lots of colour. You’ll spot the film grain from the original film, but that’s something that’s always going to be apparent in HD, unless the Movie was originally filmed on a Digital camera, which is starting to happen more an more, though many directors still prefer film. Don’t confuse the lines in the picture below as film grain, that’s just the result of photographing a TV screen.

The thing is, just like HDTV, the picture does look better than DVD, but it’s not knock-your-socks-off, blow-your-mind better. You won’t see the difference in video quality that you saw going from VHS to DVD, and as such I find it hard to see the masses flocking to either HD-DVD or Blu Ray in favour of DVD. Instead I see it as a format that only the most dedicated gadget lovers will buy, just like SACD and DVD-Audio, both of which ended up failing to replace CD. Still, I’d love to be proven wrong, and I’m rooting for Blu Ray over HD-DVD for no reason other than I have a Blu Ray player in my PS3. Check out the images below for a comparison (click to enlarge).

We watched Unleashed tonight. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The trailers for this movie would have you believe it’s a mindless action movie full of Martial Arts mayhem. Entertainment-lite. Pleasingly, it’s not. It’s quite a serious film revolving around Danny (Jet Li), known to his master as Danny the Dog. He’s literally been kept since childhood as a dog. In a cage. With a collar. Occasionally he’s unleashed to attack and kill at his masters orders. This results in sporadic Martial Arts scenes. However the movie is actually about Danny growing as a person, leaving this life behind and starting over with the help of a Sam (Morgan Freeman) a blind piano tuner. His previous master being none to happy.

What surprised me was that it’s set in Glasgow. Everyone in the movie bar Morgan Freeman and Jet Li have English accents, which is strange. The opening scene is in the Argyle Arcade. There’s a scene in the Botanic Gardens. You’ll spot the SECC and the Clydeside Expressway. There’s even a few scenes filmed 5 mins from my house, at the local Broomhill shops. It’s strange to watch a movie that’s set where you live. Especially strange when even the local shop-keeper is English.

Well worth the rental