Funnier in HD
I gave Chalerm the old computer when I bought the new uber-Mac. Does he use it? Nah. He thinks the uber-Mac is much nicer, and I still have to chase him away from my office corner if I want to get anything done.
Don’t feel sorry for Chalerm. He can use the 15 inch iMac for his Internet chat, and that computer was state of the art in 2002.
The uber-Mac has a screen with 1200 x 1920 pixels. I discovered that this is enough to watch high definition movies, such as Blu-Ray disks, in the full 1080 resolution. Oops. Did I say Blu-Ray? On the Internet people are debating the format war as if it was a matter of life and death. Most people say that Blu-Ray is winning against HD-DVD.
I don’t have any high def movies. The closest thing is the Hollywood trailers on the Apple website >> Seeing the trailers and comparing them to traditional DVD I realised that DVD is done for. Thank you and goodbye DVD. Long live high def.
Now I just need a Blu-Ray player to hook up to my big screen. I have the Dolby Surround speakers already. Would this work? It should. And then I need Blu-Ray movies. I don’t think the friendly movie pirates on Silom road are up to date with this technology. Till then there are 25 dollar Blu-Ray movies on Amazon. But they have these darn region codes on the disks. A disk made for the USA will not play in Asia. All right then. I will do as the studios want and wait for the pirates to work out a solution.
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Chalerm’s saltwater aquarium is filled with water but there are no fish. Chalerm put a finger in the water and told me to lick it. It tasted salt. I guess he waits for the tank to stabilise. I don’t want to ask him, as this would be to involve myself in the plan. When it comes to Chalerm’s saltwater scheme I am strictly an observer and the less I know the better.
Farang N says I should come out of the closet regarding my tense relationship with our two turtles, who live in a plastic bowl in the sink.
As any domestic situation this one is complicated. No, actually it isn’t. Everything is their fault. The turtles make no attempt at charming or befriending me. They pretend I don’t exist. They do no amusing moves. They don’t like it when I look at them and they hate to be picked up.
Chalerm took the turtles out of the fish tank because they made such a mess of it. It takes the turtles two days to soil the aquarium in a way it takes the fish two weeks to do. But I get the blame. Their eyes say “You! You! You!”.
January 25th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I have better video ideas to watch on that large screen:) muahahaha
January 25th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
You can’t blame Chalerm for making the new computer his first choice… it’s like drinking instant coffee when you have an expresso machine with freshly ground beans in the kitchen. That gleaming new Mac is much more attractive.
…damn the less attractive farang is making me use the less attractive computer again…
That blasted region coding!
I can’t believe they’ve continued this highly irritating feature into Blu Ray. It’s enough to turn me against buying legitimate DVDs. Half of my DVD collection is legitimate… and I know if I ever move overseas, they will be obselete, so I just don’t buy legitimate ones anymore. Pirated ones are a MUCH safer investment. Same goes with downloaded music, which can only be moved between devices 3-4 times. Much safer to download music from Bittorrent. See the irony?
January 25th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Since they are not sea turules: How about a turtle soup? You have some advantages: No blaming eyes, you know the name of your supper, you know it’s organically grown, it’s a healthy variety to BK….
;-)
January 25th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I bet those turtles would write an interesting blog if they could….
“oh god we’ve been kicked out for making a mess, and I just know that farang is scheming about having us for dinner!….. Oh no, here they go again. They make love in front of us like we’re not even here!”
January 26th, 2008 at 7:06 am
HUMMM…
A technical question?
I thought if you play DVD or Blu-ray disks coded in the US (actually North America) on a player set to that code, it did not matter where you actually live.
So you need to buy TWO players, one set for NA and one set for Asia.
SIMPLE???
January 27th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
No, unfortunately, it’s not so simple:
1. I shouldn’t need to buy more than 1 player (waste of space and waste of money)
2. What if you haven’t bothered with a TV and play your DVDs on your laptop attached to a giant monitor? Buy 2 laptops?
You are also assuming that everyone comes from the USA!
I live in Australia, which means if I was to buy all legitimate DVDs, I would need my laptop/s or DVD player/s to play the following codes:
Region 4 - for Australia, where I live
Region 1 - for anything I buy from USA (very rare as I never travel there, but it does happen if I order something from Amazon)
Region 3 - for SE Asia, where I often buy DVDs when travelling
Region 6 - for China, where I often buy DVDs when travelling
Region 2 - for anything I buy while travelling in Europe.
Also, many Australians end up spending a few years working in Europe… so when I (and many others) do that, our DVD collections become obselete! That is, unless we’ve done the smart thing and bought non-legitimate copies
I prefer to own legitimate DVDs as they are quality guaranteed and always work (don’t mind the cost, now they are a bit cheaper than they used to be), but with the above dilema, it’s too much of a hassle, so I mostly buy pirated ones now.
January 27th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
For DVDs I have a multi-region player. But I don’t think they have made those for Blu-Ray yet.
January 27th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Yes, I would love to have a multi-region DVD drive on my laptops… unfortunately, if it were possible (I don’t know if they make them for this particular laptop), it would come at a great added expense (most laptop parts are expensive).
hmmmmm, Blu Ray… another reason not to buy legitmate DVDs…. they’ll be obselete in a year or two!
The sooner the pirates crack Blu Ray (or they decide to get rid of region coding), the better.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:31 am
Anonymous: a bit late to reply, sorry, but why wouldn’t you give a vlc (videolan.org), a great multimedia-multiregion-player?
SF: Many many thanks for your blog, one of my favorite places on the Internet!