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How are people feeling about Quantum Leap so far this season?

Volume II of Paul Terry's book is available for pre-order.

https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/x-f … 419771392/

code XFILES30 to receive 30% off.

Now only if we had something like this for SLIDERS.

the simple solution is refurbished laptops.  They tend to have issues, but usually not major ones, and are much cheaper.

What's nuts is... as an investment instrument...(which it is not touted to be, it's supposed to be a currency used for everyday transactions)... if you held bitcoin before the pandemic and still hold it now, you'd still have a 10x return on the investment. 

The hype period is over but the market still values it as a potential future currency, otherwise the price would still not be so high (even if it's half of the peak).

The idea of giving people power especially in third world countries to not be reliant on the currency of potentially corrupt govts is a powerful one.  But too many people got involved in bitcoin simply as an investor and a lot of those who came in during the hype have exited now.   A lot of big companies exploited retail investors, people lost their shirt.   Even though crypto is supposed to be about removing influence by govt, the flipside of the lack of regulation was wealthy people getting more wealthy from it and consumers being manipulated by pyramid schemes.

For the life of me, trends like nfts, web 3, obscure cryptocoins.... they seem so full of hot air.  I don't know how people get so excited over such crap.  There seems to be more important things to help humanity but we have very bright people who get consumed and apply their talents toward this stuff.  Can't people smell bullshit?

Decent ratings?

https://tvline.com/ratings/quantum-leap … 235055066/

This is great Tom!

hate to see this
https://www.mediaplaynews.com/some-targ … footprint/

What do you guys think?

https://www.cancelledscifi.com/2023/09/ … i-fi-fans/

I've always thought there was some arrogance there not to embrace their brand and air a show that was part of their history in SLIDERS.  It hasnt been in re-runs on the network since like 2008 or something.  If SyFy wants to have a niche, I am sorry, you've got to understand what people will tune into a linear channel for.  Nobody is looking for prestige tv on cable.

I know what you mean. Let's call them diehard fans sourced from the general audience.  They aren't as concerned about the mythology of the alien invasion.   But they are highly interested and passionate.  The relationship between Mulder &Skully is important to them, Mulder's character is important to them, David Duchovny is important to them, Skully is important to  them, Gillian is important to them, Mitch Pileggi is important to them.   

It seems fan base. 2x more composed of women than sliders remaining fanbase (by percentage) I'd guess. 

Sliders fan base is less "geek" oriented than Trek's.  X files' might be more "geek" oriented than Sliders' but probably closer to Sliders' than Trek's on that scale.  Sliders' remaining fan base loved the characters (and their teamwork). X Files is closer to that than Trek's which may be more interested in thr mythology/world building.

A bunch of interviews by the X-Cast team from PhileFest.

https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-x-cas … es-podcast

Vinyl records made a big comeback.

Maybe that will happen with home media.

What is nuts is that DVD is still a chunkable size of the market (actually the most popular format but the rest is split between either blu-ray or 4k/ultra hd

It's disappointing how packaging and extras on many of these movies have declined as home media sales have declined.

A pop culture commentator I follow, who is a big trek fan, said it echoed how he felt.  It had to do with Star Trek, and so I shared it here for people who follow star trek in case they might be interested.  It really wasn't much more complicated than that.  As for the veracity of the report, I don't know if it's true or not.  Studios are still operating internally, and I am pretty sure they could engage with producers.   Regardless, it was posted here because it was what I thought people with an opinion on trek may or may not find interesting as far as the kurztman debate and how Paramount is handling the trek franchise.

As far as my post in the politics thread you referenced, it had nothing to do with that, and though it might have felt vague, it was not intended to be that.  It was an observation I felt like sharing, summed up.  Brief yes, but not meant to be vague or meaning more than what it said.

I just watched a season 5 episode and actually was surprised.  Though that season has always looked good on DVD whereas s2 not so much, on xoom, the episode I watched (the one on the aircraft carrier or battleship) was closer to s2 quality on the same service than I expected.  Not 1 to 1 but still gap wasn't as significant as dvds.

Season 2 has always been wonky to me.  While not having some of the issues we see in s1 episodes, it can have a very dark and blurry (on mid and wide shots) and grainless/washed out (on close shots) quality.

The lack of sharpness and the darkness and lack of color vibrancy bothers me most. 

Here are some screenshots on Xumo's platform.  It's still the best I have ever seen it streaming-quality wise.

If you have the web browser Opera, I believe they provide VPN where you can pick perhaps United States, and then be able to watch https://play.xumo.com/tv-shows/sliders/XM0AYB6TTOKW0L

Not that it's necessary.

To me, the major jump in quality comes during Season 3.   S2 has always had a dated like feel to me.

My instinct as to why Xumo looks better than Roku (and Peacock looks better than Roku, and worse than Xumo) is Universal is not doing anything differently on their end across this distribution.  These outlets have different systems for default handling of content.  It may be Xumo is more used to older SD content and more ambitious in "getting it right" since they don't have the other businesses that Peacock/Universal and Roku have.   And they may be more technology oriented.

I do have a pretty good recollection of the awful quality of the series on Netflix, and some recollection but not a lot of it  on Hulu.   It always looked terrible on Netflix though this for its run that I believe ended Dec 31 2016.  It was on Hulu a year later before the deal expired.

We know when it was *televised* on the Hub everyone felt it looked better than airing elsewhere.   

Comet, which came years later, was just OK.

One of the interesting things about the last number of years was I learned how wrong some of my assumptions were about the charges or conclusions made by those that I disagreed with or wrote off initially.

I've learned to not write anything off, and to be more humble in drawing conclusions.

That does not mean a lot of the stuff I hear that I disagree with comes true, or that there's not a lot of bad-faith arguments made, politically/ideologically motivated etc.   But I also know not to just shut the door on anything that I don't like the  sound of initially.  File it away, or approach with a more open mind.   I'll learn from times when I was wrong or badly wrong.   I won't hunker down just because we have culture wars going on or different sides that have a very different philosophy on things.

Interesting that the best streaming still doesn't compare to the dvds.  I wonder why that is.  Maybe compression.

https://play.xumo.com/tv-shows/sliders/XM0AYB6TTOKW0L

Hello PicardUK!

I did hear that.

Yes, when the strikes end, I have a feeling less content will be ordered in the past.

Even if X-Files  is a bit of a mess re: mythology and handling Scully and her child, it's staying power feels significant.

Podcast episode on the event

https://twitter.com/TheX_Cast/status/16 … 6184169473

I love the response and agree with you

However if you click the YouTube video in my post you'll see I was referring to something else

I don't think it was Mill Creek, but a family member picked up something similar (of different types) for my grandmother and mom at one point.  Pretty cool.  One days, we might catch SLIDERS on one of those with quantum leap, seaquest, stargate (and maybe babylon 5 and farscape?).

These sold on Amazon originally for about 20 bucks and the online retail price was like 29.99 tops at most places.  Wallmart.com now has it for 15.  Brick and mortar may have sold it higher back in 2019.  The manufacturer suggested retail price was 45 but online nobody sold it for that. Maybe big box had it 30, 35, 40... I am sure they would have reduced it over time if they originally priced it at the upper end of those values.

88 episodes...  target market being people who would have skipped buying initial studio releases (about 3 runs over 15 yrs).

And even with those low prices, mill creek only gets 66 to 50 percent of that (eg 15 dollars).  So it's an extremely low profit margin of dollars per unit.  15 discs is taking out at least 5 bucks just on the DVD and sleaves. More discs/sleaves at 25-33 cents really matters to them and especially multiple if they are only making a few bucks a unit.

Besides he cost of printing, packing and shipping the current set as is, there is company overhead (employees..  mill creek is a rather small team )and the licensing fee they had to pay Universal for this release (my guess $50k to 250k). Let's assume 100k.

the-numbers.com has the DVD sales estimated at $295k in total revenue (before split between retailer and manufacturer).  The number may very well be lower than that since they use a number from brick and mortar retailers to estimate marketwide price.  In any case even at 295, if mill creek got lets say 60 percent of that in share with retailers, when you take out licensing fee, overhead, production costs, shipping costs...   margins are slim and if they paid too much on the licensing fee in this one and overestimated demand, it would have probably put them in financial loss territory.

Sorry for my being long-winded on this.

Yea, you are right, they don't do color grading as far as I know.  They did have Quantum Leap on Blu-Ray HD, and Airwolf, but I think maybe Universal did the restoration on that.  Mill Creek I think usually just uses the files universal gives them (and actually contractually these types of deals with distributors don't allow them to "change" the content).

As far as bitrate -- could that just be a product of them trying to fit more episodes per disc?   Because even an added disc cuts into Mill Creek's slim profit margin.

That, or it's just them being lazy or not having the know how.

You're right about DVD though -- I am constantly surprised how it's still ~40% units sold for the home market.  A lot of people stuck on dvd for some reason.

@XFilesMuseum
We are making room for new inventory so we need to clear out the old.   This is your chance to enjoy a 10% discount on all orders over $15.00  in store and online.  Sale ends 8/1/23

https://twitter.com/XFilesMuseum/status … 8177184773

Some pretty cool items:
https://xfilespreservationcollection.co … hop?page=2

is Jerry O'Connell noticably good and funny in lower decks?

His wife Rebecca is decent in the limited SNW I've seen although I guess doesn't offer anything extraordinary.  What do you guys think about her in that series?

X Files had a 30th anniversary event in Saratoga Springs, New York, home of the X-Files Preservation Collection / Musuem.   They have another planned July 5-7 in 2024.

Looks like this year's was a success despite the location being somewhat out of the way:
https://twitter.com/William_B_Davis/sta … 1607228416

Coverage:
https://twitter.com/XFilesMuseum

https://www.saratogian.com/2023/07/08/t … f-x-files/

good lord!

doah!   is it possible you might have scratched your eye in your sleep or something?  I've heard of athletes with this injury if someone swipes at the ball and accidently scratches them across the eye.

if you're looking and feeling 23 though, i'd say you are doing pretty good health wise overall!