OTHER HOBBIES OF MEMBERS ??

[jdkmunch]

How long do you think it will be before we can just store our content digitally.    An HD movie is what 20Gigs?  Give us a few petabytes and were good to go.  Anyway I too wouldn't repurchase a movie.  I still have casset tapes that I refuse to buy again on CD or digitally.  I'm not going to pay 2X or 3X for something I own already.

[jay]

I purchased the Blue Ray Edition of Spiderman 3 and then picked up the regular Spiderman 3 in the previously viewed $5.00 bin.
Using a PS3 as the BlueRay Player I can't really tell the difference between the two.
I can however tell the difference if I play the standard disk in a regular DVD player that does not do upconversion.
I too have a 1080p Panasonic projector and 120" screen.

I am pretty impressed with the upconversion and if I had a limted budget to spend on new A/V equipment it would be $69.00 for an upconverting DVD player.

My friend has a Sony carsole that handles 300 disks. They are inexpensive now but I have not seen any come out with Upcoversion or Blueray yet. What Sony charges for a Blueray single disk player is criminal. I was hoping that once the standard was set they would be as cheap as regular players but not yet. What is nice about the Carsole unit is that you can scroll through movies by genere, tiltle, or by actors. Just like PayTV.

There is PC software that will do the same. I have been looking at putting in a media PC and ripping my 1200+ library to hard drive, but I am concerned that new formats will make this obsolete before its time.  I have a terra-byte of disk mirrored as a NAS device for household storage so size is not really an issue.

I really think that the future of media will be on-demand with the demise of the DVD as we know it.

[rilaw]

How long do you think it will be before we can just store our content digitally.    An HD movie is what 20Gigs?  Give us a few petabytes and were good to go.  Anyway I too wouldn't repurchase a movie.  I still have casset tapes that I refuse to buy again on CD or digitally.  I'm not going to pay 2X or 3X for something I own already.

I store movies on my Iomega Screenplay HD.  I download them (Don't ask where from  ), then transfer them on to the Screenplay, then connect the Screenplay to my TV and watch them.  No DVD needed...  Its 500 gb.. Here is a link: http://www.iomega.com/about/prreleases/2008/042308_screenplay.html

I found it cheap on www.techbargains.com a while ago...

[StatFreak]

I must confess to having purchased some movies more than once, only because they are my favorites. Casino is one, Planes, Trains & Automobiles is another. I'll leave the rest to everyone's imagination.

...
I have a terra-byte of disk mirrored as a NAS device for household storage so size is not really an issue.
...

That's not what she said.   

Seriously, I have a terrabyte as well, but it's already at 83% of capacity; I'd need a second TByte to undertake such an endeavor. On the other hand, I know people who don't have enough data to fill an 80Mb drive. 

[Forrhouse]

Stat. Planes trains and automobiles is one of my favorite movies too.  John Candy was one of the best.  QUote from movie, "Those are NOT pillows!"
Disgusting but real funny.
Eric

[StatFreak]

Stat. Planes trains and automobiles is one of my favorite movies too.  John Candy was one of the best.  QUote from movie, "Those are NOT pillows!"
Disgusting but real funny.
Eric

If I define a favorite movie as one that I can watch repeatedly and be entertained, then PT&A ranks as my favorite film. I can't count the number of times that I've watched it; certainly more than the 18 times that Steve Martin says F%^king to Edie McClurg, whom I absolutely love in her short appearance in the film. An IMDB trivia buff posted that the scene was added solely to bump the film's rating to R in the U.S. I don't know it that's true, but it's a good story. I'm not even generally a Steve Martin fan, but he plays the straight roll perfectly against John Candy.

Of course, there are other definitions of what constitutes a favorite film. There are great films that I love, like Casablanca and Citizen Kane, and classics like It's a Wonderful Life, It Happened One Night (1934), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Lawrence of Arabia, and The Quiet Man. There are the mafia films: The Godfather I & II and Casino (I like Goodfellas, but it doesn't quite make my list of favorites). There are films like Star Wars (1977) that were released at a time in my life that made them special and that were departures from anything that I'd seen before. Fantastic Voyage (1966) and The Andromeda Strain (1971) are two more examples, the latter being the better film. There's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the first DVD that I purchased, and Dr. Strangelove a Peter Sellers classic. There are newer films like The Shawshank Redemption that are becoming classics and even newer films like Ray. All of these are on my "short" list of favorite films.

And although it doesn't rank with the big boys as a great film, I can't fail to mention Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Python at its best.

[tacman]

I also have a small DVD collection in the 4-5000 range and there is no way in h*ll that I am going to duplicate anything I already have. Technology moves so quick, and to be honest I think the next step is here already just not being unveilled because they want to get several years of people buying Blueray before they announce this "New" system. It's all $$$. The only smart thing they did was make Blueray and the now defunct HD-DVD backward compatible with DVD.

 Dan (tacman)

[stayouttadabunker]

I still have VCR tapes.... but no more VCR to play them in....

[rickhunter]

One of the best upconvert dvd players out there are the defunct HD-DVD Players that can be found around for under $75.00.  Remember this was a pretty advanced piece of technology (in fact the one I have (Toshiba A20) is based on a Pentium 4).  It upconverts regular DVD's better than my PS3 does and when viewed on a 1080p projector, it's pretty good.  You cannot replace the detail on the newer blu-ray movies from recent releases, and you can clearly see a difference, but for the existing library (which is not quite as ample as some of the other members here) it does really well.

I have ripped and encoded to Apple Universal format (works on Apple TV, ipods, and anything apple) about 75% of my existing library (about 500 titles) so far, and it's taken about 500GB of drive space.  If you just do a straight rip, do not re-encode to a more efficient codec, and then only save the movie part and not the extras, then on a 1TB drive you can typically fit about 250 to 300 movies (250 x ~4GB = 1000GB).

I have also ripped my rather small blu-ray library (currently 15) and my HD-DVD library (curently 10) and those 25 films take around 18 to 25GB each.  I can lower the bitrate somewhat with the freely available X264 encoder, it's even multi-threaded so if you have a Quad Processor on your machine, it can encode a typical DVD movie in about 35 to 40 minutes and reduce the size on a typical DVD movie to about 800 to 900 MB with very good quality results.  if you are interested http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html , if you are not handy with CLI interfaces, then get frontend GUI's like handbrake ( http://handbrake.fr/ ).  All these programs are released as freeware under the GPL license.

[bunnyslots]

Well I of course being an old man have about 250 laser disc's because at the time it got better resolution than vhs or beta and have a great player that looks like new
But now comes the Dvd's and another obsolete system is heading to ebay. I think I'm going to make blu ray my last system for quite a while

[rickhunter]

I'm with you I have about 300 laserdiscs, I even purchased some of the box sets that at the time were costing around $100 for them.  I still have 2 players that are active and 1 new in a box.  I have not duplicated any of the titles to DVD.  I have the entire Stark Trek Next Generation series on laserdisc, they were $34.95 each for TWO episodes, so 12 per season x 7, comes to about $2,700 for the series.  Now you can buy the DVD boxser for under $200.00, but like you said, at the time laserdiscs were FAR superior to VHS (You couldn't even buy them on Beta).  So for keepsakes, it was not even close.  I have a pair of Beta decks that I used for all my timeshifting as Beta decks also had a better quality that crappy VHS.  In fact I have a pair of EDV-9500's.

[bunnyslots]

Oh God as I make a list for ebay and see how much I paid for these it makes you want to cry. I'm glad that there wasn't a lot of old TV shows out like there is now or I would have had 1500 disc's. I just found one I haven't even played yet  The Godfather Collection $129.85 Maybe tonight?

[tacman]

Hey Ron, those Edison wax cylinder recordings from when you were a teenager go for a good buck on Ebay now. 

 Dan (tacman)

[bunnyslots]

Mr Tacman
Isn't there a doughnut shop that you and your kind are eating into chapter 11???

[tacman]

Already closed the Krispy Kreme's working on Dunkin but they have alot of capital coming in from India and Pakistan, Damn!! 

 Dan (tacman)

[bunnyslots]

While reading the Las Vegas Review- Journal delivered to my Kindle DX this morning I see amazon is lowering the price on the Kindle by $60.  It figures since I just bought my wife one.
The DX has the large screen and is perfect for all the pdf's that I need to have around in case I need to change a battery or something

[StatFreak]

Since we've been discussing inexpensive DVD upconverters, I thought that I would post a link to this ad that I received from MCM Electronics today. It's a refurbished Phillips, and I have no idea if this model any good or not, so this not a recommendation -- I'm just passing it along. One can't go too wrong for $33.

http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/58-13485

[stayouttadabunker]

That's actually not a bad model.  I paid too much for it last winter though....lol

[tjkeller]

Where can I get my hands on one of these?

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/SDbQ5xvsrIU&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/SDbQ5xvsrIU&rel=0</a>

[CommTech]

Very Cool!!!
I wouldn't want to crash that baby! I could only imagine how much it must cost!

[jdkmunch]

That thing is awesome!  -  I wonder if they are actual jet engines.  It sure sounds like it.

[a69mopar]

Absolutely awsome.  I would crash it in no time, but have a hell of a time doing it.  Has to be a real jet.

Thanks for the video and K+,
Wayne

[uniman]

Where can I get my hands on one of these?

Very awesome!
My dad was into rc planes for some time. Can't wait to show him that one!
If the video had started with the jet already in the air, I would have been very surprised to see it's actual size when it landed.
 
Here's where you buy them;   (currently sold out) added;(Stat has it correct below, this is obviously the affordable miniature version)
http://www.nitroplanes.com/5racosr71blt.html

[CaptainHappy]

I think that the RC plane in the video is considerably larger than the model that you referenced after reading the DIM's on the ad you referenced, but the model you pointed out is quite large as it is!!!

The sale price is reasonable if it performs at all like the one in the video, but I bet when it comes back in stock, the sale price will be gone!! I have seen that tactic before on the web! 

I too would be afraid to fly an RC plane, especially one that costs more than $50! 

CaptainHappy 

[StatFreak]

WOW!! What a plane!   Heck, this guy seems to have even built his own private runway for the thing. (Okay, it's probably a public park or something, but it's still cool, although, given the probable cost of the model, he could have built the runway for it, and made it long enough to accommodate the needs of his plane. )

  There's never enough drool around when you need it! 


The plane in the video is turbine jet powered and was custom made. You can't buy it anywhere, but you can buy the small jet engines that power it and build a kit yourself if you have the time, money, and talent. (I don't. )

The turbines alone for this jet model cost somewhere between $2500-$5000 each (that's $5k-$10k on this bad boy!). Here is a link to the product page of Jetcat.
http://www.sitewavesstores5.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=JetCat&Category_Code=TURB
And here is their main page:
http://www.jetcatusa.com/

<ADD> The jets that these German guys used might of been from a different manufacturer, but I'm sure that the cost was in a similar ballpark. It looks like the only model on the Jetcat page that would mount internally is the SPT5 at $5300 each, and it looks like you could spend another couple of grand on the peripherals.

Then there's the cost of all of the rest of the materials, engineering the model, and the hundreds of hours building and finishing it. .. .. Just so you can crash the thing on it's maiden flight. Seriously, I'd be too chickens$^t to fly the thing, but I'd love to see someone else fly it in person.

Regarding the model that Uniman posted, there are videos of the $300 EDF models on YouTube and they sound like toys when they fly by -- because they are toys.
Here's one:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/-U3NOv9ny7A" target="_blank"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/-U3NOv9ny7A" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/-U3NOv9ny7A</a></a>
Go to 4:45 to hear the engines.