Author: DOuG pRATt

While I was writing my last post, the download to the embedded Windows Media Player of The Angry Red Planet completed. At some point Netflix’s system must have improved my speed rating, because now the video is approaching DVD quality. Hmm. What movie should I try next …. ?

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.

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.

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.