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Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

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Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#161

Post by Uptrenda »

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…

Now I'm thinking of the massive amount of content locked up in VHS tapes that future generations will probably never see due to copyright + lack of resources. I bet there's some absolute gems there.

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#162

Post by actionfromafar »

laumars wrote: post #90
jacobsievers wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, VHS Hi-Fi wasn't bad. It had a frequency response of 20Hz to 20kHz and signal-to-noise ratio about 70 dB.

Maybe. That wasn’t used by regular VHS rigs though was it (ie PAL or NTSC recordings)? I just remember VHS audio sounding muffled after the tape had been used a few times. To be fair, recording stuff from RF wouldn’t have helped much either.

VHS has a mono track and a stereo track. Some copies have only the mono track, some setups use only the mono track, ever. My Harry Potter 2 copy has a garbled stereo track, so I manually switch to mono when watching that.

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#163

Post by actionfromafar »

papito wrote: post #38

If you want your mind blown - "Who really killed Blockbuster Video?" https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/who-really-killed-bloc... It's amazing that Blockbuster had Netflix on the ropes, until one notorious activist investor showed up and basically gave Netflix the win. One man is responsible for creating a completely different timeline when it comes to video streaming. Very similar to how we would be living in a d…

Or if BBC would have gone ahead with video-on-demand from an array of LaserDisc players distributing to optical (analogue!) fiber in London.

In the 80s.

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#164

Post by fundad »

_fat_santa wrote: post #28
kerblang wrote: post #3

It's sort of bizarre that an entrenched, widely despised corporate behemoth thoroughly deserving its own demise has turned into an anachronistic mom-and-pop shop that just gets by. But isn't this the worst of both worlds? It's dystopian nostalgia. Maybe I just have too much of a grudge against the 1980's...

The way I see it, there are really two Blockbusters. One is an evil corporate behemoth, the other is the neighborhood video store that lives on in our memories. These guys aren't keeping Blockbuster running so much as they are keeping the nostalgic memory of it going. TBH I'm a bit surprised no one has tried to buy the Blockbuster brand from Dish and restart the company. I feel like you could effectively run one much…

Funny because there were the same 2 sides to the cable companies. Your closest shop and your TV’s internet was out connection to the culture.

I’m ok renting or buying digital movies from a big corp like Apple or Disney now that I don’t have to drive to a store.

Though the pipe to my house doesn’t need a big corp because we should have a free national municipal fiber network.

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#165

Post by fundad »

karaterobot wrote: post #5
kerblang wrote: post #3

It's sort of bizarre that an entrenched, widely despised corporate behemoth thoroughly deserving its own demise has turned into an anachronistic mom-and-pop shop that just gets by. But isn't this the worst of both worlds? It's dystopian nostalgia. Maybe I just have too much of a grudge against the 1980's...

Yeah, ironic because Blockbuster is what killed off the mom and pop stores it now stands in for in our collective memory of the 90s. I actually liked our local Blockbuster, and have fond memories of it, but only because it was run by the same employees from the independent video store it drove out of business. I liked that one even better.

How is that ironic? Memories of the 90’s woupd be all about the demise of mom and pop shops and generally flattening the character of US cities and towns (see also Starbucks).

It’s more discomforting than ironic.

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#166

Post by HeavenBanned »

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…

Old "Dave" has something AI doesn't: artist's intuition.

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#167

Post by chiph »

jinto36 wrote: post #39
awacs wrote: post #26

Growing up in the 80s with VHS, Betamax, Laserdiscs (if anyone recalls), and being a dj in the late 90s when the thought of a "USB stick instead of traveling with all this vinyl was an impossibility", makes this whole nostalgia tour a fun one. I think we all forget though just how poor the quality was back then, and what we've become accustomed to, with VHS being 240 lines, DVD 480p, etc. It's like reminiscing about…

One of the most noticeable things about playing laserdiscs on modern displays is the poor black levels and noise in shadows, and of course the difficulty in scaling interlaced material. Even with what should be a decent (but not nearly top of the line) FPGA-based deinterlacer/scaler I still feel like it should look better than it does, given how much better laserdisc resolution can be than VHS. But it's also analog v…

Like you said, Laserdisc was way better than either tape format. But if you watched it on a Trinitron television, you noticed all the same artifacts you have.

The best reason for owning a Laserdisc player in 2022 has decreased somewhat with the availability of the de-specialized versions of Star Wars. For decades that format was the only way to see the first 3 films as they were originally shown in the theater. Many thanks to the talented fans for putting the de-specialized versions together.

I'm wondering with the resurgence in popularity of the LP, and with media stores re-configuring their store fixtures to sell them, if we'll get Bluray films being distributed in the large 12" size with large photos and booklets.

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#168

Post by jefftk »

fitzroy wrote: post #140
jefurii wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about Buffy but some later Star Trek series like Deep Space 9 will be really hard to remaster because they were shot on video instead of film. The detail just isn't there to be enhanced.

Deep Space 9 was also shot on film. The editing, effects, and mastering were completed on video (same for TNG). This is true for nearly every 1-hour US prime-time drama of that era (Buffy, X-Files, etc). https://www.slashfilm.com/549088/star-trek-voyager-deep-spac...

I think maybe the problem is that DS9, especially the latter seasons, made much heavier use of effects, since it was entering the CGI era?

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#169

Post by ahartmetz »

zw123456 wrote: post #155
ryangittins wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long pondered building exactly this, an anti-recommendation engine. You'd go through and mark some favorite films or genres, and it'd come back with something great but totally unlike your usual picks. Foreign flicks not your thing? Try Parasite. You don't remember what it's like to be an awkward pre-teen? Eighth Grade will remind you. Not a big action movie person? Maybe you need to watch Die Hard. Kids movies…

Agree. Too much here is more of the same. Ugh. I like cowbell. Here is an endless loop of cowbell ringing and nothing else. It's like torture.

Just noticed this again today. Spotify vs Hype Machine (browse, then "recommendations" by checking out people who also liked $song). Spotify is somehow stuck on dark, aggressive electronic music for me. It's not the only thing that I like, not even my favorite really.

Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

#170

Post by blantonl »

larrywright wrote: post #127
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.

There’s a video floating around out there somewhere from the 80s show Knight Rider. One of the things about that car was that it could drive itself. I always assumed they used some sort of complex remote control system to film those scenes, but the video clearly shows that it’s just a guy wearing a suit that looks like the seat in the car. I guess simple wins out over cool. EDIT: Here’s a link to the tweet with the v…

That’s awesome: the author of that tweet is a friend of mine and a journalist out of Toronto. Small world.
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