Laughed out loud a few times watching this video. Funny to watch the inside jokes on some of the games but actually playing it that way wouldn’t be fun. My cousin had the original NES Game Genie and you could sort of do stuff in that video. It was fun to play the game outside its intended bounds but it really took the challenge out of the games. I think the best thing the Game Genie could do was allow you to enter any kind of random code and watch the result on the game. Sometimes it was like rolling the dice, it was really fun.

Super Mario Bros. from Andreas Heikaus on Vimeo.

Cool.

Marketing not to scale.

Recently we bought a new LED TV.  Reasons are a few fold.  We watch a ton of movies and want a great experience.  We want a TV that uses less power.  We want more crisp and vibrant colors.  Plus its cool to buy a bigger TV.  No envy really, its just great to have the picture come alive in your house if you love that sort of thing.  It was a real no brainer and right now, we love the TV.  But when we first got it we hated it and that almost led to us returning it.

This is post is about why.

The question.

So ill start off with a question.  You ever been in a store hocking new TVs and you look at the latest model and notice that the movie or TV show looks totally fake?  Does the image look like a Soap Opera, British TV show or something filmed on set?  Does it look like it was filmed as home video?  I have.  When I plugged in my new Samsung TV the image looked just like that.  It sucked.  It sucked because it didn’t look like what I come to expect a movie or TV show to look like.  When I watch “The Dark Knight” I don’t expect it to look like a British comedy OR a soap opera, I expect it to stylistically look like the movie I saw in the theatre.  We watch movies in BluRay, I expect the image to be crisper and the sound to be more dynamic I don’t expect the movie to look like a home recording.

The problem.

After plugging in my Samsung my wife and I lamented that this image looked like crap.  We didn’t want to watch a home video “behind the scenes” recording of Harry Potter, we wanted to watch the Harry Potter movie.  After fiddling with the contrast and color and watching a few TV shows on DVD and BluRay movies we decided if things didn’t get better we would buy a lesser quality TV.  Reason?  The new TV looked like something so foreign we wouldn’t accept it as what it was to watch a movie.

A bit of history.

Come to find out we are not alone.  Come to find out the Samsung default actually modifies the original movie and TV show from its intended release.  To explain it ill stub in a few facts about TVs.  TV is generally broadcast at 60 frames a second or 60hz.  A hertz is defined a clock cycle per second.  So 60 hertz or hz is 60 frames per second.  Most movies are filmed/released as 24 frames per second.  Thats one reason why you notice TV looks like TV and movies look like movies, because, generally speaking they have a different hz rate(amongst other things).   People that produce new TVs need to keep adding in features to stay competitive.  One way is to increase the hertz or frames per second they can support.  Current middle Samsung and Sony LED models support 60hz and 120hz.   Ultra top of the line 3D models are 240hz.  So that means the middle of the road LED supports 120 frames per second!  Makes little sense if 99% of all source material(TV & Movie) doesn’t support it.  Most BluRay movies I have clock in at 24hz.  So, right now, there seems little reason to have a 120hz TV right?  I mean, even PS3 and XBox games don’t clock in more than 60hz.  Some struggle for 30hz.

Whats going on?

Samsung has a technology called Auto Motion Plus.  Basically Auto Motion Plus takes your 24hz, 30hz or 60hz material and adds in frames making it a 120hz material.  They “morph” or “transition” the added frames to make it look like a seamless process.  So if you have a 24 frames per second BluRay Samsung adds in 86 frames.  It attempts to blend them to make it look seamless, but as I have stated previously it looks really really bad.

Why this sucks.

It sucks because it doesn’t look like the movie you bought.  It sucks because Samsung is showing you the material by default in the way the material wasn’t meant to be shown.  This would be akin to Pioneer(a maker of good audio equipment) saying that an album needs to be sped up to meet some arbitrary feature that they want to demo.  Lets say Pioneer developers a really great sub-woofer system but the source material lacks prominent bass.   Pioneer shouldn’t add bass to the mix, it should work with the existing material not alter it.  Adding two bass drums or another bass note to a Rolling Stones mix is altering the material in the same way that Samsung adds 86 frames to a 24 frame per second movie.

If my wife and I didn’t take the initiative on ourselves to find out why this was happening the outcome would have been a returned TV.  We would have purchased a lesser model to achieve the outcome we wanted.   This is why defaults are so important.  I would argue some people wouldn’t be as resourceful and either return the TV or be displeased with the results.

Why they really need to stop this by default.

I appreciate the fidelity of the original artists vision and in the end want to watch the same movie at home I saw in the theater.  If you want to go outside the lines and add beats to the Rolling Stones song fine by me.  However, don’t add beats to it for my default listening experience.  Make it opt in.  If you want to add 86 frames to Harry Potter, fine but don’t do it by default.  I appreciate technology that ages gracefully but don’t force me to look at something the way it wasn’t created to be viewed.   I just put a few coins into a new experience to me wrecks the out of the box experience.  Let me wreck the movie if I want to, not by default.

In the end.

We turned off the abomination that is Auto Motion Plus and really love the TV.  Its so crisp and the colors are so vibrant the movies comes alive.  Good on Samsung, its a great piece of technology.  That said, don’t let you marketing department go crazy.  Its cool that you can support 120 frames per second and its also cool you can modify the source material to show 120hz.  That said…  just because it can doesn’t mean it should and certainly, absolutely and without hesitation not by default.

Extra reading.

120hz in and of itself does serve a useful purpose to displace judder for 24hz sources.  Im not going to get into it here, however needless to say if you view a lot of 24hz material a 120hz set does help you with original source fidelity.  Im not knocking 120hz as totally useless, I am knocking Auto Motion Plus.

I present this material to you as a opinion of a way I appreciate viewing video material.  I imagine other people may see it differently.  Realize this is the internet and everyone has an opinion whether or not you think it is correct is something else.

We watch the Watchmen.

This last Friday I had my friends over to watch The Watchmen Ultimate Cut on BluRay. It was a fun time as I really love watching great movies, this being no exception. Kind of sucks though, I picked this up for $50 on Amazon and yesterday it goes on sale for $28. The rub of the market it seems.

The theatrical release mainly follows Rorschach as he tries to uncover a plot to kill superheros. The Ultimate Cut dances around all the characters and interleaves Tales of the Black Freighter throughout the movie. Watching the Ultimate Cut the first time, my first inclination was that it was too long. I also thought it seemed less focused than the theatrical version. After pondering it more, I still agree with my initial impressions but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t fantastic, I just needed a break in the middle.

The Ultimate Cut is much more dark than the theatrical and with Tales of the Black Freighter in the mix now, it really cranks the dark tone up quite a bit. All the scenes have more footage, you see entire sub stories of some of the city gangs and you get the absolutely gruesome yet extremely powerful Tales of the Black Freighter. Speaking of the aforementioned pirate tale I found it to be one of the more compelling bits of the movie. The pirate tragedy narrative really brought the movie to a level I hadn’t considered previously. At first the animation really jerks you out of the movie but I felt later on I was looking forward to it. The final chapter in the tale really brought the entire story full circle in a really fantastic way.

In the end if you loved the theatrical, I would recommend this version. It has a few issues though… First being its length and second being it really changes the movie from it essentially being focused on Rorschach to the Ultimate Cut dancing around everything. Not saying its bad, but it is worth mentioning. That said, if you are looking for the same anti-super hero movie that has you question the motives and actions of “good” then I recommend you check it out.

Locks are great....

Except when you put the key in your running shorts and forgot to put it back on your keyring and have to sit outside in the dark waiting for your wife to get home.

I really need to get us a spare key……

Doh.

Two player fun for all ages!

I love working with a team of cool developers.  Right now we are growing our team and finding the right people is challenging, fun and slow.  We have interviewed a few people and what people we have interviewed have been quite good.

Its awesome to be part of a larger entity that is so much better than you are.  Having someone close to you that can give you a different perspective on the code you are writing is magical.  Not being ultimately responsible for the entire product is equally awesome.  I don’t mind responsibility and accountability, I just don’t want it all.  :)  I am loving the team atmosphere and how we are all in agreement on its style and tone.  Its fun to express that vision in an interview and watch the person interviewing get excited about the team and its possibilities.  Not to say everything is always roses, conflict arises out of mis communication.  However, the team bounces back because ultimately we are all good people with great intentions.

When I was interviewing this was a question I asked everyone:  ”Why is your company awesome?”   I selected a company that seemed to be just that.  Its a startup so if we do well the potential for substantive reward exists.  That said, I am more excited and motivated because it seems like a cool mix of people that love what they do.  Plus the project is exciting and I will learn much.

Its been fun to throw a idea in the “team cooking pot” and have everyone stir it up and we come out with a awesome meal.  The best ideas bubble up and when your team is diverse enough the ideas bubble up in ways you never would have imagined.

I know what my weaknesses are.  Finding people that can cover that will make our product a joy to use.  Plus its fun to see something grow into something you love.  And right now, I have a lot of love for what I am doing.

What up hooligans?  If this where 1995 and you were children I could say: What up Yahooligans?  But its not 1995 and I just ran out of wit juice.

I wanna do right by you, Im holding out not clicking an answer.

A few months back I started using Google Chrome as my primary browser.   Still use it, you should too its rad.

I recently installed the latest Ubuntu stable 10.04 on my desktop.  Its very nice.  I appreciate the new free software nvidia drivers.  Gwibber is amazing.  Empathy is growing on me and ive used Pidgin/Gaim for years.  Unsure what I think about the new Ubuntu status panel for Gnome.  I liked the old one better and haven’t figured out what package to install to get it back.  Rhythmbox sees the iPhone but I am not sure if it can actually add songs to it yet.

My new job got me a brand new Snow Leopard Macbook pro.  It is much faster than my old Leopard Macbook pro.  Boots and is actually usable in a minute or so.  My old Leopard Macbook booted and was usable in 3 minutes or longer depending.  A few things they changed in Snow Leopard don’t make much sense to me though.  In Leopard if you double clicked the app bar it minimized the app.  This is now a setting you have to turn on.  Right click on the huge trackpad is turned off by default too.  I heard Steve Jobs doesn’t like right click?  Odd.  Beyond those annoyances, it really seems like a speed improvement over Leopard.  They changed a few things but nothing warranting much discussion save that when the lights dim the screen dims as well.   I know this is Mac blasphemy but I find modern free software desktops to be just as usable as Snow Leopard.  Plus in something like Debian and Ubuntu you get a robust toolchain included by default.  Installing XCode isn’t too hard but it discludes things like wget and to get functionality like that you need something like macports.   All told, not a huge deal until macports conflicts with a library you have and all hell breaks loose.

With all their flaws, Ubuntu and Mac work just fine for software development.  A free software desktop will always be 127.0.0.1 for me though.  Flay me as you would.

I installed VirtualBox the other day on the new Mac and its now VIRTUALBOX BY ORACLE!!!!!!!!!111one.  Whoa.  Same for OpenOffice.  The Sun logo seemed less intrusive.  I hope both programs stay free.

I still run Quicken 2002 on Ubuntu to manage my finances.  I guess I could upgrade or use something else but it works so well why stop now?

Since Debian/Ubuntu deprecated Grip I don’t know what to use to rip CDs.  I tried a few programs but they don’t allow really terse lame settings.  I want something I can set to rip MP3′s at VBR 320k.  So far, that seems like a tall order to fill.  I know there is the always awesome abcde, but id prefer a graphical tool if possible.  Ill let you know what I find.  I care about audio fidelity in mp3s.

http://jdodson.org is back

So this site has been offline for quite some time.  I honestly wasn’t sure if I wanted to bring it back but a few friends asked about it and I figured I might as well.

Why was http://jdodson.org down?

Recently the wife and I moved from our old house in SE Portland to Beaverton.  I was hosting http://jdodson.org on our Qwest DSL and didn’t want to pay for a private server, so the site went down.  We didn’t find a place to live right away after we sold the house so we lived with friends for six weeks.  During that time the site lay dormant.  Ive had comcast internet for the last few weeks but haven’t cared enough to bring the site back up till tonight.  Figured while I was at it I might as well upgrade to WordPress 3.0 too.

I heard you got a new job.  Is that true?

Yep.

Anything else?

Not really.  Check back from time to time for new posts, ive had a few things on my mind that make sense to drop out in digital form.