<story><title>Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive</title><url>https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/06/meet-the-plano-man-keeping-blockbuster-alive/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vlunkr</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s interesting that when we revisit older movies, all the way up to the 90s, we&amp;#x27;re watching them at much much higher quality than we did originally. Special effects, costumes and sets are all much more believable when you&amp;#x27;re viewing them on a little grainy screen. I think some older movies are unfairly judged by how they look on hardware that couldn&amp;#x27;t have existed at the time.</text></item><item><author>awacs</author><text>Growing up in the 80s with VHS, Betamax, Laserdiscs (if anyone recalls), and being a dj in the late 90s when the thought of a &amp;quot;USB stick instead of traveling with all this vinyl was an impossibility&amp;quot;, makes this whole nostalgia tour a fun one. I think we all forget though just how poor the quality was back then, and what we&amp;#x27;ve become accustomed to, with VHS being 240 lines, DVD 480p, etc. It&amp;#x27;s like reminiscing about the first iPhone and then looking at one and realizing how damn small it actually was compared to modern versions.&lt;p&gt;I started converting &amp;#x2F; collecting most of my movie collection onto a localized server years ago, and glad I did. Though I rarely watch all my old movies (a growing list of about 1000 including most of my favorite TV shows), the end game I think we all know is everything streamed, with no actual ownership of content. It&amp;#x27;s not a terrible notion, but the problem I think we&amp;#x27;ve all seen is it&amp;#x27;s now turned into a corporate ownership game, and you never know where the content you&amp;#x27;re interested in watching is. One day Star Trek is on Netflix, the next Paramount, etc.&lt;p&gt;The only problem has been keeping up with resolution changes, even though I&amp;#x27;m a firm believer in unless you&amp;#x27;re watching on something well over 100&amp;quot; a nice high-quality 1080P file looks just great on a large 85&amp;quot; tv (which I currently have).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>larrywright</author><text>There’s a video floating around out there somewhere from the 80s show Knight Rider. One of the things about that car was that it could drive itself. I always assumed they used some sort of complex remote control system to film those scenes, but the video clearly shows that it’s just a guy wearing a suit that looks like the seat in the car. I guess simple wins out over cool.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Here’s a link to the tweet with the video. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;BryanPassifiume&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1335636896488120321?s=20&amp;amp;t=svIdjEpEKr8BdlyN0kdDgg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;BryanPassifiume&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;13356368964881203...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive</title><url>https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/06/meet-the-plano-man-keeping-blockbuster-alive/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vlunkr</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s interesting that when we revisit older movies, all the way up to the 90s, we&amp;#x27;re watching them at much much higher quality than we did originally. Special effects, costumes and sets are all much more believable when you&amp;#x27;re viewing them on a little grainy screen. I think some older movies are unfairly judged by how they look on hardware that couldn&amp;#x27;t have existed at the time.</text></item><item><author>awacs</author><text>Growing up in the 80s with VHS, Betamax, Laserdiscs (if anyone recalls), and being a dj in the late 90s when the thought of a &amp;quot;USB stick instead of traveling with all this vinyl was an impossibility&amp;quot;, makes this whole nostalgia tour a fun one. I think we all forget though just how poor the quality was back then, and what we&amp;#x27;ve become accustomed to, with VHS being 240 lines, DVD 480p, etc. It&amp;#x27;s like reminiscing about the first iPhone and then looking at one and realizing how damn small it actually was compared to modern versions.&lt;p&gt;I started converting &amp;#x2F; collecting most of my movie collection onto a localized server years ago, and glad I did. Though I rarely watch all my old movies (a growing list of about 1000 including most of my favorite TV shows), the end game I think we all know is everything streamed, with no actual ownership of content. It&amp;#x27;s not a terrible notion, but the problem I think we&amp;#x27;ve all seen is it&amp;#x27;s now turned into a corporate ownership game, and you never know where the content you&amp;#x27;re interested in watching is. One day Star Trek is on Netflix, the next Paramount, etc.&lt;p&gt;The only problem has been keeping up with resolution changes, even though I&amp;#x27;m a firm believer in unless you&amp;#x27;re watching on something well over 100&amp;quot; a nice high-quality 1080P file looks just great on a large 85&amp;quot; tv (which I currently have).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pessimizer</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s part of the Progress Quest™ style transfer from audiophiles trying to maximize numbers to videophiles trying to maximize numbers. Audiophiles are listening to music in &amp;quot;better&amp;quot; quality than the people who made it had through their monitors, and people are watching movies in &amp;quot;better&amp;quot; quality than the directors saw their final cuts in.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re either moments before or moments after direct competition between UHD televisions and AI-aided upscaling and artificial sharpness, where details that never existed in the original are being precisely rendered by screens with higher resolutions than the human eye.</text></comment>