Search options (Page 11 of 24)

Rob sure is an artist

Love this blog post from sabrina

https://www.sabrinalloyd.com/post/sprin … aa877c4df6

That's a great point about Hurley too.

Or who tracy' s Stephanie was. 

So now we know cleavant singing at candlestick park and Stephanie are two musts for a collector's edition.

I think endemic is considered when there is no spike over the normal.  Unfortunately, we are setting a new baseline for what's normal but that maybe we haven't established the new baseline just yet. 

With omicron, at least in the U.S. the IFR (death rate) was fairly low and comparable to the flu but spread so much more abudundantly.  Really unprecedented.  Probably 2m cases a day at times (even if only 1m were captured). 

Public health officials should IMO stressing ventilation (HEPA filteration systems, you can build yourself for 50 bucks with a box fan, ductate and filters) or even purchase floor units of varying sizes.   They should actually do a good job of explaining what masks work, and of the ones that do, how well.  We have a video of biden and cdc officials promoting masking with surgical masks (and doctors and medical staff wearing them quite a bit).  No wonder people are confused.

We should be educating the public on antivirals, monoclonals, early invention/treatement and rapid tests.  I bet at least half of the people who died from covid/complications would have lived with these early interventions.  Maybe as much as 75 percent.  The Biden White House treated the vaccine as a magic bullet, that could stop transmission and eliminate severe cases.  It didn't stop tranmission.  It greatly reduced severe cases.

The problem is we have so much institutional mistrust, we have people who think the vaccine side effects are horrible but covid is nothing, and at the end of the day this is an experimental vaccine with a lack of transparency (won't get into that), and so there was always gonna be some hestitancy.  And there was way more than they expected because to some degree, their world is their own bubble, and they don't always understand some of america outside of it.  The america that doesn't trust institutions or trusts putting it all in god's hands, even though I am pretty sure god didn't want any of the 1m americans to die (and potentially 18m across the world in some estimates).

The new normal has to be educating the public on the virus, on long covid, on the tools we have in our arsnel (it's not just vaccines!) and empowering people to make individual choices while also implementing measures when necessary to assist the most vunerable populations.   Institutions and leaders need to not bend the truth (avoid the noble lie or telling part of the truth) because there's been too much of that from the get go and it has created even more distrust as the public has latched onto these things.

As of now heart disease and cancer combined kill about 2-3x more americans than covid per year.  Not sure numbers in canada.  We now have another major cause of death to contend with.  So it sucks because the older everyone grows, the less the immune system is in shape, it becomes more of a threat.  Just a bout with it can age the immune system.  People need to do what they can to avoid obesity, diabetes, etc and the governments should be supporting that and including that in the messaging.  Hopefully more money goes into medical funding and hopefully there are more breakthroughs in medical technology because of this.

We need to try to come back better out of this but in the short term we have to manage this as best we can, understandingly some people are more risk averse folks, some people just want to live their life and not be fearful about it, we have put our hospital workers through a god awful time and we have various ways of trying to let people live their life while reducing death and severe cases if we don't become political or irresponsible about it.

The argument I would make for crossovers is that generally the network or studio might care about the franchise more because it is a way to create a shared cinematic or televised universe.   Universal hasn't really given a crap about Sliders.  That may have been different had they done crossovers.

disagreement is a healthy thing.... an interesting perspective.

Wouldn't it be cool if Quinn Mallory and Marty McFly interacted?  Would love to see those two universes collide.  Them working together would be awesome..

could be a diffferent caitlin basset?

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7000196/bio … _ov_bio_sm

Good addition to the conversation, ireactions.  I love the sliders discourse when its like this.  It's also why i loved the podcast -- because it made me look at things different and I know with annie, it's not always gonna be perspective without interesting criticism.

regarding sliding tech, i myself have never cared about the details. I think writers only feel they have to construct a nuts and bolds realism around that stuff because there's  a segment of the audience, more of the engineer or science or braniac mind who thinks through that portion of the world, and if they feel that it isn't always truthful, or contradicts itself, it undermines the entire world and not real.

Sliders audience to me seems less TNG and more quirky people interested in differences, interested in alternatives, and people who like the team / working-together themes of the show.

looks like the sliders pilot got an AI remaster on a popular reddit remastering forum

https://www.reddit.com/r/AIRemastered/c … _1995_dvd/

My strong belief is universal gave mill creek the digital files in the largest size they had them and mill creek made the decision to compress to get them to fit on a certain number of discs.

Mill Creek was dealing with the non high end, much more causal fan (this was the third release of the dvds) and at a lower price point, saving 25 cents, 50 cents, 75 cents, a dollar on discs helps preserve their limited profit margin ( which may have been something like 4/5 bucks per unit).

It's incredible you haven't seen Dream Masters but I'm guessing it's premise is particularly creepy to you and it's best not watched.

In terms of what files they used, do you really think they used the "Mill Creek" files.  My guess had been they had one set of digital files that they send to all partners (though I suppose there actually may be a few, which can happen over 20 years).  I always assumed though there was one files and then the partners either heavily compressed it or did not.  The per-purchase vod files on amazon, verizon cable is awful for instance.  But I just assumed that was how the partner who received the files handled things, not because they got a crappy version of the file from universal.

If universal does have different types of files and they gave Peacock crap ones that's not excusable.  Unless Peacock wanted small size files to save on bandwidth costs but I doubt they would have made that request. 

It's possible that universal just has different versions of the files and the people who work there have no clue that they have different files with better or lower qualty and they just  send off the ones that are most convenient.

El Cid

Here's some pilot images to start:

(click thumbnail and then magnifying glass to see full size)

It will definitely happen   Tuesday at worst, tomorrow night at best.

It's terrible peacock isn't available in Canada!

Honestly, even season 5 on Peacock is nowhere near close to HD.  It's very watchable though quality wise.

It is comparitively better I think probably than the the stream that used to be on Netflix (and Hulu although hulu didn't have seasons 4-5).  It is probably better than the vod purchases you'd get from the cable operator if  you bought the episodes through that platform.  Or through like Amazon (or maybe itunes).

I haven't paid that close attention to season 5's look across all platforms.  I do know that netflix was always worse than what peacock gave for the rest of the content, the cable operator was even worse than netflix, amazon was also pretty bad.  I mostly looked at S1&S2.   Comet at times haven't been awful for the later episodes I think.

Looking at what's on Peacock, they could easily up-res S5 with Topaz and come up with a pretty respectable image that wouldn't match HD but maybe get closer.  I think what  they have on now for S5 is respectable enough as SD content, compartively better looking than earlier seasons and probably better than we've seen it on other streaming / vod platforms in the 2007-2018 era.

Peacock lost 1.7b last year...

https://deadline.com/2022/01/comcast-pe … 234920844/

well.

https://deadline.com/2022/01/quantum-le … 234912430/

Well, I took a look more at the samples last night.

I have to say, looking at Last Days, which was a pretty problematic-looking episode with the original dvd source, that this up-res probably is superior to the original up-res.

It obviously has less flaws with the wide shots, so if you were to put this on Peacock or release it on blu-ray, these would probably be the better up-res specs.

It's a very artfully done up res job.  It finds a right balance and the coloring is better and less dark compared to the previous version.  Also, it's got a naturalistic feel to it, and it really done have the feel of transferred film stock, with the grain and texture.

So I think it's really wonderful to see SLIDERS both with this new S1 up-res job, and also the original up-res job, which had some great strengths in the close up shots and it gave a different sort of feel with the smoothness.   On balance, the new one is probably better treatment for s1 for wide distribution.  But I love that we've gotten to see both approaches.

update.  Gonna have to switch to another computer as the one I downloaded them to is a slower machine (with only 4mb ram).  So the video is not rendering well.

I haven't had real internet access the past number of days but looking forward.to checking the samples when it's back.

I'm taking a look at an older pilot sample right now and just marveling at it.

Plus editing on tape (as sliders did) is another burden.  It's very ironic older shows can get HD restoration easier but it's the case.

alright, never mind. I realized the idea is a little ridiculous.

I was prompted by seeing Netflix promoting Knight Rider in their library and showing a "new episodes" label on the thumbnail.  So it made it feel new again. And Knight Rider got a full HD restoration.  So it made me think of Sliders..

my guess is here it's like a two to three week wait but i am not sure of that.  also now there is likely a surge in interest, which of course will push back timelines.

We have an updated essay on the guardian

https://annieannieannie.medium.com/remn … 02fe7e5295

All good information.

Ok. As I recall, the hardware with your gpu broke.  I must have missed.it but did you get a new one?  I mean you've been doing a lot of processing lately so that would make sense but I guess i.assumed you were still held back by some limitation due to lack of a proper one.

I agree, it's very inspiring

that was fun and very creative!