Rants of a nerd
Archive for March, 2010
Public transport in Bombay
1It has been a long while since I took a bus. Tonight is a rare occasion, perhaps not to be so rare in the future. The new air conditioned buses are pretty comfortable if not in spotless condition. The fare is a very reasonable Rs. 30 (about 75 cents) for a 15 kilometer ride. The question is only one of time. Well I will know soon!
At the Verandah
0
This photo was taken on the recent trip to Kashid. Appu at the Verandah of the hotel at which we were staying.
Puja
2Yesterday was Karadaya Nombu. We had karadai at night (the month started at night) and today we finally got delivered a puja stand. We had been hunting a stand for a long time and got this though it was a little expensive.
It’s good that tomorrow is ugadi / gudi padwa and we can inaugurate it on an auspicious day.
Audio Formats
0As a follow up on the Home Theater troubles from earlier. I decided to keep the current system until the new crop of receivers hit the market. To test the setup, I fired up the PS3 and inserted a movie disc I borrowed (this was my first attempt at a BD movie). And it threw up a firmware upgrade message. I went ahead with the upgrade – thankfully no problem there.
Then I ran into the main problem: the movie soundtrack was in the Dolby TrueHD format with no alternate option (except languages). The receiver did not support that and saw it as a stereo LPCM stream. If I recall it correctly, there is a limitation on high bitrate / sampling rate in my current receiver. So I guess the argument for an upgrade is better. The mess of wires that accompanies any home theater setup is a pain. I can understand why there is demand for the sound bar type of speakers which promise surround sound from a single speaker.
I guess there are many PS3 or BD owners who don’t even challenge the poor output from their systems. There are surely more folks out there like me who have a generation old equipment. When studios release discs that are incompatible with the older hardware, it is really planned obsolescence coming into play.
On the web, I came across a criticism of the DRM schemes in the various media we consume. The commentator (and this was not a blog rant) pointed out that with store bought media, there is no certainty that the media will play in the equipment we have (thanks to the above incompatible format, hardware incompatibility – blu ray vs. HDDVD, region coding, etc.). In addition, the media companies treat us as thieves making us sit through non-skippable piracy warnings. Lastly the prevalence of trailers at the start of many movie discs. Compare that to pirated stuff. Pop it into the dvd player and the movie starts with no interrupts. Or download it and be assured that the codecs are installed on your PC already. Is there anyone in the media world who understands this?
Auld acquaintances
0Had dinner with some old friends / former colleagues (including my ex boss). Good to catch up after six months. The occasion: my treat for losing a bet on the stock market. The last time we got together was my farewell at the old shop and so it was a sort of five gainst one bet.
We have set up a new bet. A little more balanced this time as we went around the table to get a clearing price at which we had three bearish and three bullish views. Settlement is on June 30.
I am not revealing the clearing level or my position!
Music Review: Timbaland
0I’ve given a listen to Timbaland’s follow up to the debut Shock Value entitled… wait for it… Shock Value II. I did not find the first album all that good, but this one is much better. The songs seem much more developed and distinct. Perhaps at the time of the first album, there were too many Timbaland produced stuff around that the album just could not find its own space.
Home theater setup is a mess
0I am redoing my home theater setup. And it is a right royal mess.
The equipment has been bought over the past six years and the oldest pieces are the AV Receiver and the Speakers. The speakers are okay (one of them is showing some signs of problems) by and large: these are Mission’s M5 set of small satellites and sub-woofer. The receiver is a now aged Yamaha RX-V540. It works well, too well to get rid of in fact. The problem is that it was designed for the last generation of a/v equipment.
For starters, it does not support HDMI. So my DVD Player and the PS3 cannot go through it. It supports component cables (two sets only) and that takes care of the Wii. Lots of composite connectors, but only the satellite television box uses composite now.
Fortunately my TV has two HDMI inputs. This Philips unit also has an SPDIF out, which I can route back to the receiver. So for HI-Def playback, my TV is the a/v receiver and the receiver acts only as an audio decoder-amplifier. The fact that the receiver does not do any kind of upscaling means that the TV input cannot be fixed. For each source the TV has to be set apart from the receiver. This is sub-optimal and is not the way it should be. Till a year or so ago, this worked well as I didn’t have either HDMI source.
So the question is, what is to be done? The new generation of receivers from the likes of Onkyo, Denon and Sony promise upscaling, HDMI 1.4 support and so on. But many of these will hit the market only in the coming months. I guess the best option is to wait it out. Buying a receiver when many technologies are in the cusp of change is probably not the best thing to do.
Talking about HDMI 1.4, it has support for 3D video. I believe this calls for the use of special glasses to view the content. Why should this be the case? Is it not possible for the TV to trick us into thinking we are viewing three dimensional images? There is a demo 3D TV at the local mall which seems to do that reasonably well. I wonder if 3D video technology will finally deliver motion sickness to armchair travelers!
Link of the day is once again xkcd:
No Post Today
0It has been a long day and I am tired. So no blogging today.
Just wanted to point out one bit of heartening news. The Supreme Court ordered the release of some prisoners who had completed their terms. Ordinarily this would not have been news. Except that they were Pakistani prisoners who were being held even after completing their sentences because Pakistan was refusing to release Indian prisoners in an exchange. I can’t believe that the Indian government which berates Pakistan for the way it treats its people can treat anyone in this manner. For once I can say to the court: bravo!
Oscar Upset
0Looks like a major upset at the Oscars for Avatar, with The Hurt Locker walking away with the best picture and best director awards. Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock won as many anticipated. The latter apparently being the first person to win an Oscar and a Razzie in the same year. It also seems that Kathryn Bigelow is the first woman to win the best director prize!
Christoph Waltz won an award for best supporting actor for the brilliant portrayal of a Jew-hunting Nazi in Inglorious Basterds.
The Hurt Locker did not even play in theaters here, I think. Hmmm maybe after this win, things will change.
