Year: 2007

Obituary: Tige Andrews

Tige Andrews

Tige Andrews has died. My mother knew him at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts long ago, as I mentioned here.

Tige Andrews; nominated for Emmy

By Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times | February 3, 2007

LOS ANGELES — Tige Andrews, a character actor who earned an Emmy nomination for portraying Captain Adam Greer, the officer who recruited the undercover police officers of television’s “The Mod Squad,” has died. He was 86.

Mr. Andrews, who often played detectives during a career in television that spanned five decades, died of cardiac arrest Jan. 27 at his longtime home in the San Fernando Valley, his family said.

“Dad was really proud of `The Mod Squad.’ He felt the show made a big difference because it was one of the first television series to address social issues, such as drugs, prostitution, and teen pregnancy, that were more hush-hush before that time,” said Barbara Andrews, one of his six children.
Continue reading Obituary: Tige Andrews

Even More Netflix Instant Viewing

Mohr

It’s Bogart! Wait. Nope. It’s not Bogie, it’s Gerald Mohr. I cropped this from a photo taken of my Sony 32XBR100 screen, while Netflix Watch Now was running, thanks to the 25-ft. S-Video and audio cables running between the computer and the TV. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Add-on Note: I’m taking a break from playing with Netflix, and I’m doing my usual Web browsing. I see that Mark Evanier has Watch Now, too. Maybe everybody does. Click here to read Evanier’s comment.

More Netflix Instant Watching

NetflixVideo.gif

Netflix is rating my connection speed as being merely “Basic.” HA! I don’t think so. I have FiOS, the fastest residential connection there is. If there’s a throughput problem, it’s not with the last mile!

After repeated re-testing, I managed to get a “Good” rating and confirmed that the image is much better. The jaggies are less flagrant, but there’s still a lot of color banding.

Angry Red Planet

In my viewing test I still haven’t moved on beyond Mars, that angry red planet. The script offers seemingly endless lessons on life and, yes, love. How do I compare thee? I compare thee to my dog …

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/FEB07/AngryRedPlanet2.mp3]

The distinctive male voice belonged to Gerald Mohr. A radio actor for many years, he switched to TV in the 50’s. Mohr was the voice of Reed Richards in the 1967 Fantastic Four cartoon series.

Netflix Instant Watching

I wasn’t among the very first to be able to watch online movies from Netflix, but I’ve been checking almost every day, and this morning the feature is enabled. The selection of movies is very limited, and playback requires Internet Explorer 6 or 7 with the Silverlight plugin. Firefox isn’t supported, and movies can’t be downloaded.

So what did I pick as my first choice? The Angry Red Planet, from 1960. Why? Because it was directed by Ib Melchior, who wrote the story that became Robinson Crusoe on Mars. The movie is full of profound human insight. For example, the relative merits of girls over radiation risks.

The video transfer of this movie appears to be, at best, 400×300 pixels blown up to 640×480. In other words, it’s lousy. There’s a full screen option, but the resolution doesn’t justify doing that. Because of the way the video is done I can’t get a screen capture without great difficulty, so I took a picture of it with the camera.

How red can an angry planet be, anyway?? For Robinson Crusoe on Mars, instead of Melchior’s simple red filter, Byron Haskin cleverly used the blue of the desert sky as if it were a blue screen, to easily and cheaply insert a red sky.

Netflix is off to a rather tentative start with their “Watch Now” feature. But I’m not going to knock it because it isn’t costing me extra, and it’s certainly a step in the right direction.