Category: Uncategorized

As I was writing my last entry about Ultra HD televisions, one of the considerations was whether I would have fast enough internet to stream UHD content. It takes at least 25 Mbps, which is right about what I am getting from Xfinity right now for the introductory price of $20 per month. The non-intro price is $60 per month, which is crazy since Google Fiber will charge $50 for 100 Mbps service (the problem being Google Fiber isn’t available yet at my house). I checked AT&T Uverse, but their rates are even worse and they pretty much require you to bundle cable television, which I don’t want to do. When I throw in Uverse cable and internet plus their ridiculous extra fees for modem rental (I bought a modem for Comcast for about $40) and HD television, it was still more than I am paying now. So no thanks. I have had Dish for many years and they seem to be the cheapest cable I can find, even though their prices have creeped up to about $55 per month, including HD and a DVR to record shows and skip commercials. Plus I bought an external hard drive and have stored hundreds of hours of shows on it that I have yet to watch including the last couple of seasons of Hawaii Five O, all the episodes ever of Blacklist (never watched one episode), most episodes of Twilight Zone from a SyFy marathon, including the rarely shown season of hour-long shows, and tons of movies and Game of Thrones episodes from free weekends of HBO (I watched a couple of episodes of Game of Thrones and decided it was too dark for my tastes).
Continue reading “Dumping Dish”

HDTV was a huge step up in television resolution after no significant changes since the introduction of color, going from 480i to 1080p (720p and 1080i used to be made, but only smaller TV’s still have 720p). But a few years ago, 4K TV’s started arriving, at first only to show a glimpse of the future, but now they are actually not that much more expensive than 1080p TV’s. Walmart will sell a 55-inch 4K TV for $298 on Black Friday. Yes, it will probably only be one per store, and it will probably be broken, but there you go. I am still using my 13 year old 51-inch 1080i rear projection TV which doesn’t even have HDMI jacks on it (let alone wifi or apps), making it increasingly difficult to deal with, though so far I am making it work without many sacrifices (mainly because my Dish receiver and HDTV receiver both have component video output and my Blu-ray DVD player’s HDMI output can be converted to the TV’s DVI input with just a cable).

“4K” was the original term, but really 4K is a slightly different standard created for movie theaters, so “Ultra HD” is the correct term for TV’s with resolution of 3840×2160 pixels, or twice the resolution in each direction as 1080p. True 4K has 4096 pixels horizontally, which is where the 4K came from, but still 2160 pixels vertically). Theaters don’t use film projectors anymore, but instead download 4K versions of the movie (or they are delivered on hard drives) and then projected on the screen like you do with a Powerpoint presentation.
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My desktop computer died a year ago and I have been getting by with my 8 year old Vostro notebook set up as a desktop with external keyboard, mouse, and extending the desktop to a second monitor. But the Dell is showing its age, still running Windows Vista, which is no longer supported by the Chrome browser. Even using Firefox, a lot of the security certificates don’t work. And it tends to run slowly at times, though I am using it right now and it is working just fine.

Still, I was having some serious issues today with internet speed, which may not have been the fault of the Vostro, but I started looking at new notebooks. I don’t want a desktop because they use too much electricity and laptops seem just as capable, but you can take them with you if you want. I have a Dell Inspiron 15 that I bought a couple of years ago to be my main laptop and it is pretty good, but has a few little things that are disappointing like the wi-fi cutting in and out and a bad trackpad and mouse buttons. It works fine, so I am not replacing it, but after buying 5 Dell computers over the years, I am looking at other brands too.
Continue reading “HP Notebook 15-ay052nr”

I was researching Disney animated movies and thought it would be good to see how the movies ranked. Disney has released a lot of animated movies, but the lists I was looking at were limited to the canon of Disney Animation Studios, not Pixar, not Disney Toons (mostly straight to video), etc. These are fully animated (unlike Mary Poppins) and released in theaters, though some are compilations of shorts, particularly during the 1940’s when labor was short. The compilations were kind of a low point, as was a period in the 60’s to 80’s, and then another in the 2000’s.

At least in a few of these rankings, the writer actually sat down and watched all 55 movies before making the list, which is an impressive commitment. There are so many of these that I just don’t feel like I need to watch, though I guess if I had a lot of time I wouldn’t mind coming up with a list of my own. But instead I figured I would take an average of a number of lists on the internet to smooth out some of the personal opinions. There are some movies that tend to be polarizing. One is Fantasia, which some consider an early animation masterpiece and some will admit was kind of boring. In fact, all of the early movies tend to be polarizing with movies like Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, and Dumbo appearing at opposite ends of different reviewers’ scales. The exception is Pinocchio which was in every single Top 10 (Snow White had one outlier at #25, otherwise all Top 10). Another is The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which some throw in the bottom half and some include around number 5, feeling it is part of the 1990’s renaissance. Beauty and the Beast was also pretty consistent, though while a couple of reviewers insist it is the best Disney movie ever, nobody has it outside their Top 10.
Continue reading “Disney Movie Rankings”

Recently I got some junk mail inviting me to join the Disney Movie Club, which has about the same business model as Columbia Record Club had for LP records. You get some free movies up front, have “opportunities” to buy movies every month (they ship and bill you for them unless you say no), and have to buy a few movies at full price later. The deal I got in the mail had you getting 5 movies up front and you had to buy 4 more, but if you bought one at half price now, you only had to buy 3 more at full price. I researched it and found a deal where I only had to buy 3 more, or 2 if you bought one now (the default deal if you visit the website is the worst: Get 4 now, buy 5 at full price later). For the most part the selections included whatever movies Disney currently has on disk (they intentionally take older classic titles out of production, putting them back “in the vault” so that people will snap them up when they re-release them later; also some titles are for members only and not available in the initial enrollment), plus Disney properties like Pixar, and including some live action movies like Marvel and some other ones. I have a lot of Disney and Pixar movies already, but it seemed like I could come up with 9 movies total that would cost $90 grand total. $10 each for Bluray movies is pretty good, and they often include a DVD copy and a digital download so you can add it to iTunes and play on your computer or other devices. So I decided to do that. And once you buy your movies at full price, you can cancel your membership and do it all over again if you want even more movies. If you are careful and buy two $25 commitments instead of $30 commitments it is only $80.

Edit: The Disney Movie Club is now closed.

Continue reading “Disney Movie Club”