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Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

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Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#111

Post by nibbleshifter »

scarface_74 wrote: post #84
roywashere wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Not only is the original link paywalled it is also not accessible from EU because GDPR and they think it is easier to block us than to not have so much third party cookies or such :sad:

Blame your government. The only thing that the 99 section/11 chapter GDPR accomplished was to make the web worse with shitty Cookie notices.

GDPR has proven incredibly useful to me and others in imposing cost on organisations and businesses that want to fuck about with our data.

Someone's acting the maggot? No matter where they are, they get a subject access request. Followed by a request to correct or delete data.

The ability to legally force companies to correct inaccurate data is incredibly useful.

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#112

Post by vlunkr »

rightbyte wrote: post #50
vlunkr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that when we revisit older movies, all the way up to the 90s, we're watching them at much much higher quality than we did originally. Special effects, costumes and sets are all much more believable when you're viewing them on a little grainy screen. I think some older movies are unfairly judged by how they look on hardware that couldn't have existed at the time.

Theatres were a thing back then. But ye concerning TV you are right. My best example of that is playing Ocarina of Time on a big modern TV ... it was so much more impressive on a small ctr.

Yeah, video games are probably even worse off than movies. If you're playing on original hardware, most modern TVs don't scale them properly and they look terrible. There are external upscalers and RGB modding, but it's an expensive and esoteric thing to dig in to.

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#113

Post by nibbleshifter »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #14
roywashere wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Not only is the original link paywalled it is also not accessible from EU because GDPR and they think it is easier to block us than to not have so much third party cookies or such :sad:

Weird, from EU also, not paywalled nor geofenced for me.

The geofence code only kicked in when I was about halfway through the article.

Seems buggy as fuck.

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#114

Post by pessimizer »

legitster wrote: post #52
ghaff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though independents are still a pretty niche business. Around where I am there are certainly far fewer of them than there were before the big chains became dominant.

I don't know. I'm in a pretty redneck county and even here there are dozen independent bookstores. Most of them are tied to a coffeeshop though. But if you check your local map you might be surprised.

Even the article said there were 10-15 bookstores in a place that had 35 of them in the 70s.

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#115

Post by pessimizer »

thewebcount wrote: post #73
rubyn00bie wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I personally hated blockbuster because they sent me to collections over like $9 in late fees I didn’t know I had. People have fond memories but I have nearly none of video rentals. Long lines, poor selection, and over priced… along with bullshit “late fees,” I can say I am happy they failed. Truly video rental stores were not great, and I dunno why people remember them like they were.

Yeah, likewise. What I'm noticing in the comments is people who say, "My parents would take me there on Fridays..." seem to be nostalgic for it, but for those of us who were adults, we ran into the things you talk about. I distinctly remember 2 specific problems: 1) Being unable to get the latest release you wanted to watch. This was a big problem when video stores (not just Blockbuster) would only get in a few copie…

Also they didn't stock gory horror, 99.9% of foreign films, classics, or porn. If Blockbusters shut down your local video store, you just weren't going to be able to watch a wide variety of movies anymore (until Netflix's DVDs by mail came along.)

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#116

Post by Dylan16807 »

pessimizer wrote: post #103
omoikane wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it's not so much the difference in resolution, but the fact that due to low resolution being the norm, all the on-screen text tend to be huge. This is readily noticeable for the credit text in TV shows (not so much for movies, which seem to have barely legible credit text going way back).

People get trained on what's supposed to be nice. There are people who will insist that anything less that 2K resolution on their computer monitor physically hurts their eyes and brain.

Blur can cause eye strain, and eye strain hurts. I don't think that's a weird thing to say.

Also "2K" is mess of a term people shouldn't use. By better definitions it should mean either almost-1080p or a loose term for 1080p. 1440p is often called 2K but it really isn't. 2560x1440 is 2.5K if anything.

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#118

Post by dontcontactme »

zw123456 wrote: post #87

I am old enough to remember when the wife would call me at work on a Friday and say hey, stop by the video store and get a movie for tonight and I'll stop and get wine and take out. What was special was the "Dave" at the video rental place (it wasn't blockbuster but whatever). I don't recall the guy's name, but he always remembered me and what we liked and had great suggestions and sometimes if you said, nah but how…

I think there’s something to be said for the interaction involved in getting a recommendation from a human. An AI might recommend movies just as well as Dave did, but you presumably like Dave and enjoy talking to him about the movies you’ve seen. You don’t get that part of the experience with an AI recommendation.

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#119

Post by joosters »

reaperducer wrote: post #97
vlunkr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that when we revisit older movies, all the way up to the 90s, we're watching them at much much higher quality than we did originally. Special effects, costumes and sets are all much more believable when you're viewing them on a little grainy screen. I think some older movies are unfairly judged by how they look on hardware that couldn't have existed at the time.

Special effects, costumes and sets are all much more believable when you're viewing them on a little grainy screen Can confirm. I recently watched Ghostbusters on Blu-ray. Wow. The special effects are really obvious.

Older 'practical' special effects still hold up better than much more recent early CGI though. Even if you can tell that something is a physical model, IMO it still looks 100x better than a poorly rendered and animated low-poly 3d effect.

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#120

Post by usrn »

Johnny555 wrote: post #105
zw123456 wrote: post #87

I am old enough to remember when the wife would call me at work on a Friday and say hey, stop by the video store and get a movie for tonight and I'll stop and get wine and take out. What was special was the "Dave" at the video rental place (it wasn't blockbuster but whatever). I don't recall the guy's name, but he always remembered me and what we liked and had great suggestions and sometimes if you said, nah but how…

today's AI is pretty good It's pretty good at suggesting exactly the same type of movies you've watched before, but not so good at those "but how about something completely different, but something that I'll still like" suggestions, that's where a real human movie buff can help.

I haven't thought about it but most of the movies I've really enjoyed were recommended to me by my dad, girlfriend, or my brother in law. I can't think of anything I really enjoyed from a recommendation algorithm. The last movie I tried I certainly didn't enjoy.
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