Here’s Hillary before Iowa… and after.
I won’t vote for Hillary Clinton in the primary, because she voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq.
Year: 2008
Xbox 360 Reality and Rumor
Eric and I have successfully struggled through setting up streaming media integration between the Xbox 360 and Windows Media Player 11. Very cool! With all of the various dedicated streaming media set top boxes out there, it’s nice to have it work out-of-the-(X)box at no additional cost. With this, I don’t need to bother with Verizon’s FiOS media manager.
Way back last February I featured Star Trek: New Voyages, a continuation of the original TV series, created by devoted fans. Here’s how a low-res copy of one of the shows looks, taken from my PC over the home network and scaled up to 720p by the Xbox.
Fun! Now the question is, where is this technology going? Well, the exciting rumor is that the Watch Instantly service on Netflix will be available through the Xbox Live site. That would be great! Even better if the entire Netflix catalog were available, especially with HD offerings. Ideally, I would like to forget not only the red Netflix envelopes, but the format war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD; which at the moment appears to be favoring Blu-Ray, because Warner Bros. is dropping HD-DVD.
Thanks For The View
Here I am going on about the video projector, without giving thanks to the men who made it possible for me to appreciate it. Dr. Mark Hughes and Dr. Brad Shingleton.
I am indebted to Dr. Hughes in particular. My admiration and appreciation of him are without limit. Hughes saved the vision in my left eye, after a retinal detachment eight years ago. I still see him every six to eight months, and he will most likely be performing a procedure on my right eye this year.
Before Hughes, a doctor in Worcester, Massachusetts botched a surgery to repair the detached retina. Immediately after the surgery I knew it hadn’t worked, yet he sent me home. A week later I found Dr. Hughes through my boss, whose wife worked at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.
Eye Popping
My apologies for falling off my blogging habit, but I’m still gawking over the Panasonic PT-AX200U video projector. Remember the Popeye DVD collection? Here’s a photo of how it looks on the big screen, taken with the camera sitting on top of the projector.
Zooming In
Why have a 4:3 screen for a 16:9 front video projector? Because you can zoom in to make 4:3 material B-I-G, that’s why. Here are a couple of photos of the Panasonic PT-AX200U picture, zoomed in to fill the screen, taken from the couch. The image is about 75 inches diagonal. This Superman TV show is on DVD…
… and this spectacular image of Paulette Goddard’s breathtaking face is from a FiOS recording of “Modern Times.”
Moments of Morty Gunty on PBS
PBS is running a series called Pioneers of Televison. It’s not necessarily about the first TV personalities, but performers who broke new ground in their own time. One of them is Carl Reiner, who had pitched a pilot called “Head of the Family,” featuring Morty Gunty originating the role of Buddy Sorel, later done by Morey Amsterdam in The Dick Van Dyke Show; who, frankly, I thought was too old for the part. It was fun to see a few moments of Morty Gunty on PBS tonight.
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If you take a look at this past post, you will see that Morty’s daughter Sheryl has added a comment. I’m very pleased that Sheryl found my Web site, and I hope she spotted her late father on TV this week.