grinthock.com – A World Of Opinionation

Movie Distributors and Retailers Conning Consumers into purchasing “useless” Blu-Ray movies.

Posted on January 9th, 2009 by grinthock.
Categories: Department of Film, Department of rant services., Toy Box, What's Up Department.

Recently I had a conversation with an assocaite about HDTV’s, he was telling me about his “120hz 1080p 14bgillion:1 contrast ratio hunger saving” HDTV that he purchased over boxing week.

While this was all fine and good, he also mentioned that he purchased a blu-ray player and has picked up a bunch of movie – one of which was “TOP GUN”, and he mentioned how “GREAT” it looked on his TV and how amazing TOP GUN was in 1080p.

He mentioned in the store the sales person was  telling him how “35MM Movies shot in the 80’s are already higher def, they just needed a better distribution format”.    Upon asking others, many have been told the same.  This is clearly deceptive, not to mention they are taking advantage of highly technical issues related to the product to trick the consumer knowing full well they can’t understand this stuff.

When visiting the  store recently I walked over to look at these movies – nowhere on any movie does it say what the SOURCE was, it does not mention that the movie is an upconvert, re-capture, re-digitization.  I know for a fact the movie was not shot in 1080p digital – or in any format that can provide that level of detail – yet the box clearly said the movie was in 1080p resolution.  Well i’m sorry but that a deceptive practice – sure it’s in 1080p resolution – but at the end of the day this would be no better than an upconverting DVD player in my opinion – i’ve seen both, side by side.

Bottom line – the amount of 1080p ACTUAL content out there is limited – purchasing a blu-ray player and movies right now might be a little pre-mature – even now – the content STILL isn’t there yet.   You are better off with a good quality upconverting DVD player for the time being – wait till the blu-ray’s hit $50 a walmart.

Here is a 720p capture from TopGun,  film grain clearly visible.  This is not digital compression noise, tiling or pixelation – the pixels are intact – this is film grain.

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Grinthock.com has been moved.

Posted on March 23rd, 2008 by grinthock.
Categories: What's Up Department.

Not one moment of downtown, so the IT goons get to actually see their family on Easter this year.

Good job with the move guys, we didn’t miss a beat.  Now the entire world can listen to me drown on about — whatever.

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grinthock.com is on the move…

Posted on March 18th, 2008 by grinthock.
Categories: What's Up Department.

So Grinthock.COM is on the move, well, sort of. Due to some issues with our current registrar, mainly that they are a PITA, we are moving the domain to the registrar we normally use. This process should be seamless – but hey, this is the internet and it never is. However we have had very good luck in the past.

Let’s see if the grinthock.com IT department earns their pay this week. Come on guys, don’t let me down!

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Shameless X-Promotion

Posted on February 22nd, 2008 by grinthock.
Categories: Blogroll, What's Up Department.

Grinthock.com, an opinion based blog is proud to see the startup and partner with http://www.gtablogger.com a new Greater Toronto Area blog. Call it a sister of grinthock.com if you will, operated by one of our very close friends.

We wish them luck in their new endeavor, as long as they don’t steal our articles! grinthock.com is happily donating webspace to gtablogger.com in support of their new venture.

Keep your eye on the site for the very best (and worst) of Toronto and the surrounding area.

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Grinthock Blog to increase posts…

Posted on September 9th, 2007 by grinthock.
Categories: What's Up Department.

So up until recently it was my undersetanding that GRINTHOCK.COM was not read too often, however with the posting of recent articles, it’s been mentioned that some people actually read this crap (Man don’t you have better things to do)

As a result I plan to start posting more often – Get your RSS Readers ready!

I am also recruiting for Opinion writers as well – if you have an opinion, contact me, let’s get you on board writing for Grinthock.COM on a regular basis.  Your identity can be hidden if you choose.

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Trans-Canada move in progress!

Posted on April 2nd, 2007 by grinthock.
Categories: What's Up Department.

Well as some of you know, Jeff has decided to hit the road and move to Vancouver, so i’ve decided to go for the drive…. 

 

that’s not exactly our route (the bottom line) but it’s close.  Currently we are in some dirty motel in Moussimin or something, but go figure it’s got internet.  Looks like snow ahead, i’m keeping video of the trip, and will be releasing single day editions of the trip on youTube in the coming weeks.

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Openfiler Testing Continues….

Posted on March 15th, 2007 by grinthock.
Categories: What's Up Department.

Well OpenFiler testing has started. It’s been a hard road, finding out the installer doesn’t much like both SCSI cards and the SMP kernel that ships with 2.2 has some issues. Processor power is kinda important, and having a dual CPU machine to use for the project was important to me — but for now, i’ll live with it, at least during my testing phases. The plan is to end up with a 1.5TB RAID 5 SAN at the end.

So right now the test system consists of 2 8GB drives (yep small but that’s ok, for testing i want many drives), an 80GB and a 36GB, i’ve cut it up into 2 raid mirrors, 1 is dedicated to a single machine, the other mirror is split in 2 volumes servicing 2 iSCSI targets. Then i’ve got a larger 30GB chunk testing SMB / FTP and other file system access.

Testing continues, so far other than the PITA install process, it’s working out quite well.

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Data Recovery Success!

Posted on March 13th, 2007 by grinthock.
Categories: PC Hardware, What's Up Department.

Well other than some settings loss, and a requirement to re-install a few software bits, it looks like i’ve recovered all of the lost data. I’m slowly moving over as much of the software that I can to avoid re-installing that (wonders of a MAC, you just move software around as a single container, no need to really install it)

System was probably due for a re-install anyway, but the old drive is probably pooched, either way it’s going to hell because I simply cannot trust it anymore. In a few days I should have things back to normal, probably just in time for the leopard release, at which point i’ll want to re-install again

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Hard Drive Failure – No Closer to joy

Posted on March 13th, 2007 by grinthock.
Categories: PC Hardware, What's Up Department.

No closer to joy that’s for sure.  DiskWarrior ran all night and didn’t get ahead, it reported “Hard DRive Read Error” like crazy.

My biggest concern is my entire iTunes Library is on that drive, and re-finding all that stuff will be a pain.

Phase 2 tonight will involve purchasing a new drive, installing it, and attempting to copy the GOOD data off the drive.

Phase 3 will involve my new SAN and some redundant HDD’s on my system.

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Sad Mac Sunday…

Posted on March 11th, 2007 by grinthock.
Categories: What's Up Department.

It’s not too often that I lose a HDD, it’s been about 5-6 years, infact I figure i’m due. Ususally i can tell when a drive is “on it’s way” it starts to read/write slow, it’s doing weird stuff. For the record, “SMART” technology has never helped me. It ususally hangs around long enought to say “Attention user, you are fawked!”

Noticed today the machine was going a tad slow, it was chugging for an unknown reason, and I could hear the HDD “ticking”. A quick reboot into single user mode and i’m getting errors that FSCK simply can’t repair and a constant “disk0s3: I/O Error” error popping up every few seconds… So either this disk has some seriously bad track or it’s on the way out.

This is the time I wish i had burned all those utilities before I needed them — turns out burning a bootable MAC disc on a windows box is not so simple.

it’s been a bunch of hours — trying and attempting to get DiskWarrior burnt so it will boot. The system still kinda runs — but it gets into one of it’s I/O Error loops and then stalls for 10 minutes. Problem is — disk utility won’t even start, and that’s the tool that burns MAC bootable discs. So it’s a gambut of ideas to attempt to get this disk to boot — and i’m still going at it….

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