2010 Black Friday Purchase

 

Time to update on what’s bought for this Black Friday. Not much either for this year. It’s actually the first year that we didn’t wake up at 4AM and go into the lines. I got up at 9AM that day and went out to buy a couple stuff, which most of the items are still in stock. Granted they aren’t THE popular stuff like TV, notebook, etc…

So here are what I got:

A Samsung BT headset, my staples rewards is about to expire, so I got this… I actually made two staples online purchases with a seagate 1TB expansion drive, and a camera bundle. The camera gets cancelled though… Next is the Logitech mouse from office depot. I’m pretty impressed with the new Logitch lines with these mini receivers. They got great range unlike the older ones which totally sucked and required in line of sight. Then it’s the SIIG AC adapter for notebook. The Toshiba notebook we got last year had a malfunctioned adapter, so we exchanged the adapter within warranty with Toshiba acclaim without problem (one incident is Toshiba charged my credit card for original price of $134 even though I returned the broken one within 30 days, but a call solved the problem). And this SIIG AC adapter is only $10 after rebate… It seeams I got lots of SIIG product lately from sound card, notebook cooler, to keyboard… Last one out of this photo is the ASUS DVD writer. It is the first SATA DVD writer I got. My old SONY ATA one is dying, so this is a good replacement, hopefully it can last long enough before I got my first Blu-ray writer…

These are got from the next day, Saturday, which turns out have a better deal than Friday (more attractive). There’s also the Fujitsu i3 I reviewed earlier on sale for $400 which is a great deal, but I opt out since I want to assemble an i7 desktop in the near future (just wait for the memory to come down a bit further!) The SIIG card reader takes four drives which I don’t like, otherwise it’s decent enough with a dedicated microSD (TF) slot. The Trio 8GB 7” mp4 player WAS a steal at only $20. But it’s going back to store, since yesterday I can’t power this sh*t on! Called the manufacture, support guy suspects the battery is out, which I only had it for two weeks?? How unreliable is this… Lessons learned, never get unnamed brand… Last is the HDMI 1.4 cable with ethernet built-in. This was much better than the HDMI 1.3 cables I got last year from cablesunlimited.

So that’s pretty much what I got for this year.

Next are the entertainment stuff. There are MANY crazy prices for Blu-ray boxsets this year. The price/disc is even better than the end of 2007 when SONY defeats Toshiba’s HD-DVD. Anyway, I got the following, six movies for less than $40 after tax:

And lastly, the order in Sept from Sony rewards has been cancelled by me since I got the move bundle from Amazon:

I got tired waiting for Sony, since Amazon’s price is not too bad, I went ahead and placed order, got it within 3 days instead of endless waiting. Now just have to wait for Sony to reimburse the purchase by using my rewards points I got way back when I purchased my Playstation 3!

October big BD purchase Part I – Planet of the Apes 40th Anniversary & Goldfinger Steelbook

 

Here’s the promised big month of BD purchase. Well, the two items in part one here are actually unexpected, somewhat impulse buy.

I’ve always wanted the Planet of the Apes 40th anniversary set considering the first movie is so awesome, plus there’s a 200 page book in there. So since I can get this for $41 shipped, which is the lowest price I’ve ever seen on this set, I pulled the trigger.

The package came in relatively fast. It’s a 4lb beast! I’ve never received any DVD/BD sets so heavy. I was pretty surprised. I’ve seen some pictures online, but never thought this thing would weigh so heavy.

It’s a huge 5 disc digipak with a premium 200 page book. The thing is big and heavy, I put a standard UK Blu-ray just for comparison.

Upon opening, there’s a timeline summarizing the events happened in these 5 movies. These are big spoiler if you’ve never seen the movies, which for me I’ve never seen anything beyond the third movie. But since I’m a big sucker for bonus features, especially physical features such as the book, I know I HAVE to get this version instead of the individual release.

The book is printed on glossy photo-ish paper. The quality is very good, I’m extremely satisfied with it! The digipak, however is pretty bad. The central hub is made of some kind of plastic rubber, with the discs put on them extremely hard to take out. You have to twist the discs in order to take them out. But the problem is that the rubbers will come off when you twist… I think I might just go get some multi-disc Blu-ray case and make a custom cover for the peace of mind. I’ve never liked digipak anyway since they deform pretty fast and not suitable for long term storage.

 

Next up is James Bond Goldfinger Blu-ray Steelbook Amazon exclusive.

Another impulse buy. This marks as the third steelbook, and the second 007 steelbook in my collection (first being thunderball which was very awesome!)

Unfortunately he first one they sent had a pretty big dent. They are sending it in a cushioned envelope which is an extremely poor choice! So I have to request an exchange, the second one came in the next day since I have Amazon prime. But it's still coming in with a cushioned envelope. And guess what, still dented, but it is far smaller, and it’s from the inside which suggests maybe a problem when manufactured rather than the first one with externally squeezed into the case. I also got a $4 Amazon VOD credit out of this purchase.

 

Last one is actually ordered in this month, but since I’m doing a batch, here it is:

Tokusatsu Kaiju movie… I’ve seen some Godzilla (Gojira) movies, but Gamera is new to me, since it’s only $5.49 for two movies, I took my chance to get it. It turns out I enjoyed these two movies very much, pretty decent video (~11Mbps) and audio (lossy DTS-HR with 1509K core) quality since these are from Kadokawa’s new HD transfer despite they are crammed into a BD25 disc (The Japanese releases use full BD50 space for each movie, with LPCM 5.1 audio and special features, but for less than $6, what can you ask for more)... Although the acting and the monster costume are rather lame, I think Ultraman Heisei series (Tiga, Dyna, Gaia) made around the same time are much better in these regards. But the pacing of the movies are pretty fast, which made them very enjoyable to watch.

Sept - Nov TRU Blu-ray Triple Purchase Summary

 

Well, three pre-orders, four separate trips to TRU for the past three month, has finally ended today. This deal wasn’t as good as the previous toy story 1+2 deal. There was just so many unexpected hassle associated with it, it was never as smooth as I had hoped. But I think I have pulled it off relatively OK this time. So here’s the summary for what I got from this four trip deal:

 

 

So I pre-ordered Tinker Bell 3 on Sept 17 for $10. (first trip)

I paid $15.96 when picking it up on Sept 21st. (second trip, did get a $10 GC)

I paid $3.94 when picking up BATB on Oct 5th. (third trip)

And today Nov 7th, I paid $63.69 for Toy Story 3 and the Sing Along Songs DVD filler with a bunch of Hasbro board games as seen below. (fourth trip, spent the $10 GC got earlier)

Among these 4 trips, only 2 of them are good deals, the Tinker Bell 3 sucked the most. If it wasn’t today TRU had a stackable game deal, the TS3 deal would be even a big sucker since there’s no promo whatsoever for this alone unlike all previous Disney Blus...
So here’s the story for today:

I was able to combine 3 deals:
1. Get $10 GC after spending $75. (on today’s ad there’s a coupon, which needs to be scanned)
2. Get $10 GC for purchasing ANY $40 worth of Disney DVD/BD. (In store promo)
3. Get $10 GC for purchasing $35 of Hasbro board games. (In store and online) There’s also a rebate for these games.

So since the TS3 BD is @ $34.99 original price, plus a filler Disney DVD, and then bought a bunch of Hasbro games to make the total purchase greater than $75, I was able to get $30 GC.

 

So my total spending is $93.59. And now I have $30 TRU GC. I have $15 Hasbro rebate to do. And assuming the 10% TRU cashback works, I should be able to get about $7 for all these trips. So my final spending would be $42 assuming I could utilize $30 GC efficiently. I think it was an OK deal, considering the thing I really wanted are just BATB and TS3 BDs, the rest I guess I can give away as gifts considering Christmas is coming…

 

Blogger DVD/BD Reviews Page

 

 

My semi-professional DVD and Blu-ray Disc reviews crammed with pictures! Reviews start from new to old.

DVD Reviews:

 

 

Blu-ray Disc Reviews:

交響詩篇エウレカセブン ポケットが虹でいっぱい Eureka 7 the Movie Pocketful of Rainbows – BD-Live experience report 2

First of all, the updating frequency has been slowed down. From July to the end of August, we got six extra videos, but in September, we got nothing. Now in October, we got an audio commentary for the movie. Let’s see how the implementation of this audio commentary goes.

 

交響詩篇エウレカセブン ポケットが虹でいっぱい Eureka 7 the Movie Pocketful of Rainbows – BD-Live experience report

The disc is released by Bandai under their premium label Honneamise. So how’s the experience different from the previous US Hollywood based BD-Live? Here is the report. This post also touches upon the menu, etc, with a focus on the BD-Live features, I guess.

 

プラネテス Planetes Blu-ray Box - the first full featured BD-J title from Bandai Honneamise (Blu-ray Review)

プラネテス, Planetes Blu-ray Box is the first full featured BD-J title from Bandai Honneamise, looks like Bandai has finally got the Java stuff together.

 

舞-HiME COMPLETE (Mai-HiME) Blu-ray BOX

舞-HiME COMPLETE (Mai-HiME) Blu-ray BOX is the first TV anime title released in Japan to feature Chinese Audio that I'm aware of.

 

MACROSS ZERO Blu-ray Disc Review

The second disc size is 25.6 GB, Video is 1080p 24fps, and audio is 1600K Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and 1536K LPCM 2.0. Last episode also has a commentary track but I haven't listened to it yet. The two episodes here look better than the first disc, colors are better, object and backgrounds are better defined... There is a 13 min seiyuu interview. The video is 1080i with a high bitrate transfer, but it looks rather soft, almost like from some home video.

 

FUNimation BD review Part III: Samurai 7 Blu-ray Box

The first TV series on Blu-ray by FUNimation seems a little underwhelming to me, especially for the video quality issues. I don’t think this release could justify the name of Blu-ray. I would suggest a rental first, start from episode 6 to see if the bandings are issues to you as they are very very distracting for me.

 

 

 

交響詩篇エウレカセブン ポケットが虹でいっぱい Eureka 7 the Movie Pocketful of Rainbows – BD-Live experience report

 

So in my previous post, I’ve mentioned that this Blu-ray Disc is the first Japanese domestic released title that supports BD-Live. The disc is released by Bandai under their premium label Honneamise. So how’s the experience different from the previous US Hollywood based BD-Live? Here is the report. This post also touches upon the menu, etc, with a focus on the BD-Live features, I guess. There are two discs in the limited edition, I’ll talk about mainly disc1 which has the BD-Live on it; disc2 is just a Bonus disc which I don’t have lots of stuff to say… For the BD-Live content, I’ll put the screenshots along with disc2, you’ll see a reason why I go for this order in the end…

交響詩篇エウレカセブン ポケットが虹でいっぱい Eureka 7 the Movie Pocketful of Rainbows – The first Japanese Domestic Blu-ray Disc utilizes BD-Live

 

So per the article from AV/watch impress, Eureka 7 the Movie is the first Japanese domestic Blu-ray Disc that utilizes BD-Live function. BD-Live from this disc provides trailer downloading (currently has seiyuu stage greeting footage), subtitle downloading, chat, etc. I’m rather underwhelmed by the BD-Live functions from US Blu-ray discs, first the registration is really hard, then the contents are pretty much just advertisements. I don’t think too many people would pull out the disc just to check out the BD-Live contents.

 

Also same as Evangelion Rebuild 1.11, this disc uses SONY’s SBMV (Super Bit Mapping for Video) technology to minimize banding issue commonly seen on digital animations.

Blogger DVD/BD Tutorials Page

 

So I decided to start this page by posting some of my tutorials, all of these will be regarding Sonic’s Scenarist (DVD) and Scenarist BD packages. Currently there is only one post. But I have posted ALL of my knowledge on the other Chinese forum. I think I’ll try to translate those into English and make them into PDF and post them here.

 

General:

Blu-ray ISO Mounting and Playback Guide with BD capacity (122509 Update Player Troubleshooting)

Current State of Blu-ray Authoring/Modification

PS3 DLNA software comparison: TVersity vs PS3 Media Server

Playstation 3 does NOT support DVD SPRM4 register !!! (Verified on the US fw 2.70)

How to deal with tsMuxeR's AV frame too large error.

 

My Special Expertise – Subtitle:

Current state of Blu-ray Subtitle Rendering Software

Subtitle Software Bundle Part I - Four subtitle software I've been using for original creation/modifying ((09052010 update)

Subtitle Software Bundle Part II - Two subtitle software for getting subs from the original DVD or fansub Ver.2 (08242010 update)

 

DVD Tutorials:

6 Scenarist (SD DVD) mysteries decode

 

BD Tutorials:

 

Other Resources:

 

Aug and Sept 2010 Blu-ray Purchase

 

 

This was purchased during Bestbuy promo which gives you $25 GC. So the two movies come out to be $5 only assuming I could utilize the GC effectively.

 

Well, nothing much going on, the two titles coming from Deepdiscount BOGO sale. Happen to be all SONY titles, struggled a little, and finally settled on two anime titles since the live action prices are a bit too high. Thus I have paprika, tekkonkinkreet, and sky crawlers from SONY anime titles, still missing some others which I’m NOT interested. But I promise that October is gonna be HUGE!

Farewell Windows Live Space, Welcome Google Blogger

 

 

OK, so M$ has officially dumped Windows Live Space, it’s just such a sad news to me. I’ve started blogging three years ago, 241 posts which averages about 1.5 post per week. I remember how I hated doing diaries during my elementary school and writing weekly essays when I was in China, because there’s really not too much going on in my life that deserves to be recorded so frequently. But blogging, at my own pace, is actually something I enjoyed doing, well, some of the posts are a bit show off, or most of them are pretty technical, but they really record my growing knowledge about video/audio technology. Out of 241 posts, about 90% I spent lots of time writing them, the rest are a little sloppy. Several things happened during the three years of my blogging life, first is my constantly researching for a better blogging place, tried a couple big ones such as fc2, blogger, livejournal, wordpress, I’ve always come back to Live Space because of its unique features such as dynamic page layout, which I can use super wide pictures (at least 800pixels on a 1024*768 monitor), lists which I can link to another site and make some comments, connects with msn messenger directly, which I’ve made some friends with through blogging, and statistics which tracks back all websites where it originally link from. The Live wave4 update removed the statistics feature which was a huge deal breaker so I have to start looking for a new blogger service which I think I finally settled down on blogger this time. But blogger is still lacking some of the features I’m looking for, the dynamic page isn’t dynamic although I can change the CSS style for accommodating the 800pixel width, I just don’t understand why the f*ck people prefer using narrow columns for their blogs, which you have to click every single picture to zoom in in order to see what is going on, it just never makes sense to me. Also the statistics feature, despite google made some effort on improving it such as using the same tech as google analytic, it’s just NOT the same as Live Space, it won’t track back the websites for example, also despite it provides a “don’t track my page view” feature, it still tracks my page views anyway, furthermore it enforces autopagenation, which saves on their resources, but it’s really irritate for people such as me who want to post long articles. I think the only solution to make me totally happy would be hosting my own blog, but it’s not gonna happen any time soon since I don’t want to get into the trouble of setting up all the stuff and pay domain and web hosting fees. Second is the development of Windows Live Writer, which simplifies my blogging significantly, it offers some great feature such as tables, links, graphics, but the video part is extremely weak, which I have to log into the site and do it from their. Third thing is my inner otaku power suddenly woke up sometime around 2008 so that I was really into anime at the time (maybe Macross Frontier was the cause), up until now I’m still watching on a regular basis, just not as much, but since then my blog postings have been centered on anime topics quite a lot, which I eventually renamed my blog’s name to “Anime, movies, home entertainment technology”.

I believe moving to blogger is the right decision for me. While losing some functions from Live Space, I have some new things to play around with blogger. This blog is still under construction, hopefully I could finish updating all the pages soon. Lastly, I have backed up all my old posts from Live Spaces and it’s available for download.

Anime BD Release Date #01 (2009)

 
03.27.2009 Cardcaptor Sakura カードキャプターさくら ―クロウカード編― BOX
JP Geneon. 7×BD50, 1150min. LE Boxset, (1.33:1)1080p, LPCM 5.1, LPCM 2.0. Booklet.


04.14.2009 Fate/Stay Night Blu-ray BOX フェイト/ステイナイト
JP Geneon. 4×BD50, 600min. 1080p, LPCM 2.0. Digipak, booklet, T-shirt.


04.24.2009 Macross Frontier Vol.9 マクロスF(フロンティア) 9 <最終巻>
JP Bandai HONNEAMISE. First Press, 1×BD25, 72min. 1080p, LPCM 2.0. Keep case, 16pg liner notes.