2011 — 17 November: Thursday
I was obviously in a filmy1 sort of mood yesterday evening. I'd borrowed two DVDs from Brian, though (having heard the Kermodian rant last April) I had only a mild hope that "Sucker Punch" would have some sort of entertainment value at the extreme "so bad it's good" end of the scale. It didn't and — having 'watched' the first couple of action sequences at 8x speed — I gave up long before the end. "Checking Out" (Peter Falk) was an improvement, but was still far too mired in its theatrical origins to work well as a film.
Then it was already past time to start watching Claudia W and her fringe reviewing2 the next Twiglet stick. She's no Barry Norman. Nor is her sidekick. That left me with just one item (a not terribly insightful look at previously-sealed correspondence between film-makers and the UK censors — not that there was anything more recent than two decades ago) festering unwatched on the Humax hard drive. When that finished, the Humax fell back into BBC 4, on which I discovered an enjoyable oddity that was "Old Jews Telling Jokes". There weren't any new ones, nor (it seemed) many clean ones, but after 1 a.m. my critical faculties tend to quiesce.
Time for my next cuppa. [Pause] My oh my, this is depressing. The only twitch of the lips came when learning of the first-ever text message sent by newly ex-PM Blair to his sidekick Campbell. "This is amazing, you can send words on a phone."
Who knew?
Return of the Killer
I've used the last of the twilight (it's 16:50) to root out my fine back-'garden' collection of brambles (and worse) growing up through longer-established and/or more desirable flora. Before that, there was a trip over to Brian to drop off a couple of DVDs, some more supplies shopping, lunch with Len at "The Wheatsheaf" followed by a valuable dip into some of the murkier waters of video transcoding with Handbrake and its operating parameters. At some point while I was out Mr Postie also dropped off two long-awaited items.
And, acting on advice received, I ordered a mini-hdmi to hdmi cable to replace my neat mini-hdmi to hdmi adaptor but put a lot less strain on the mini-hdmi socket in the side of my Tablet PC. I also made the unwelcome discovery that my set of "House" Season #3 DVDs is currently AWOL (which, I rather think, is code for living in Battersea in Junior's custody).
Velly interestink
I've just been playing with Len's Netgear Digital Entertainer Elite EVA9000, aka a network media streamer, and very tasty it is, too. When he last brought it round and hooked it up to my system, it was primarily because he wanted to see how it performed on my 60" plasma screen. I was more interested at that time in audio streaming and hadn't really given any serious thought to digital video file streaming here in Technology Towers.
Still, it hooks up to my network and goes sniffing around for videos, photos, and music files, then offers them up over an hdmi connection (at up to 1080p video) and (as far as I can tell) also delivers eminently hi-fi audio. It certainly works well with the video files I have been creating for the last couple of days. Positively the answer to a maiden's prayer.
Now all I need to do is compare and contrast its user interface with the one that Brian assures me is on offer from a similar function Sony PS3 (which is his streaming device of preference). Then I have to talk nicely to Santa. I have, after all, been a very good boy. And we all know that Every Good Boy Deserves Favour.
But then there's "Serviio". It's a free DLNA 1.5 compatible UPnP media server, and works with my Oppo Blu-ray player as its renderer...