News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

I'll probably rent this. I actually very much enjoyed Spiderman 3 although i thought the Venom character should have been saved for Spiderman 4.

I'm looking for a decent company that rents Blu Rays through the post as Love Film just don't have a good enough selection. The only other which seems to have a better and bigger selection is Blockbuster. I was wondering which one do you use or is there a better option out there ?

Here in the Scottish Borders it's impossible in this town to find a place renting Blu Ray out.

Anthony - Thanks for the kind words....It's actually a short story to tell you what happened but basically there was myself and someone else on the Oppo Blu Ray player thread posting about constant image height and what the player can do. I felt there would be some minor degradation to the image and they felt there would not be. I did say it was just my opinion but they pushed it so i replied again. Next thing i know the moderator is banning me from the thread even though i had actually said in the last post that i apologise if this was annoying readers of the thread as we were posting replies to one another. It was a very minor thing and i don't feel that both of us said anything untoward and i feel the moderator blew it out of proportion by banning me and then i found out he wasn't consistent and banned only me. So i pushed things and asked the moderator why i was banned and if the other person had also been banned and they refused to say citing rules forbidding them to say so i finally sent a PM to an administrator. The administrator never got in touch despite three PM email communications and instead i got a rather abrupt PM telling me not to bother the administrators with such things.

It says in the forum rules if i disagree with a moderators decision i can appeal to an administrator and yet i was being told not to do that. I was informed the other person had apologised and thats why they were let back in the thread. I frankly do not believe that version of events and i felt i was being singled out because i had replied to this person and i also feel i had nothing to apologise for as what i was writing was not anything abusive and just an opinion. I did tell the other person they were being a bit of a bully but if thats worthy of a ban then it's a place i no longer wish to visit.

I felt the moderation was heavy handed and i also felt i was picked upon as three times previously i have noted moderation that has been very light when someone was abusive to me ( called me a gimp )and previously i also had penalty points and a warning about "only posting to incite" and that was for a film review on Blu Ray for which i said director Joel Schumacher was trying to turn Batman into a gay icon by adding nipples to the batsuit in Batman & Robin ( He was and i actually read that in an interview with Schumacher years after the film was released - But someone decided i was anti - gay based on that one comment but i was not being anti-gay or gay bashing i was posting a little history in my review of The Dark Knight... but just look at what they did with Batman & Robin and tell me i'm wrong )

So in the end i just felt i had enough and left. Hopefully someone else can take over that thread assuming they haven't just ditched it altogether. I'll never know as i'm not going in again anytime soon.

Anyway sorry to disrupt your thread Whiggles. Maybe you can do a thread at this site devoted to worthy transfers and one which lists issues with transfers.

(Posted on Monday, October 19, 2009 at 2:43 PM)

I'm going to try the Blockbuster rental and thats purely based on the fact when i checked Lovefilm they didn't even have films like Star Trek: The Motion Picture on Blu Ray but Blockbuster said they did. Thats just one of many i found Blockbusters site said they did but Lovefilms didn't.

The funny thing is i had a trail with Lovefilm and when i cancelled over the phone the guy tried to keep me and said i could get a special reduced price over the course of a subscription but i kept trying to say it wasn't the cost but the lack of Blu Ray movie titles which is why i don't want them. I don't think he got it as he kept trying to get me to stay as a customer.

I'm actually working on a Wordpress site. Most impressed with the software and easy ability to edit it and the functions and themes of it compared to Movable Type. I have heard some bad things about hackers always managing to break the latest versions of Wordpress but i have a thing called 3x lock which is free software and works very well at protecting PHP based software and it's pretty handy and i'm going to look into re-naming the admin section.
( If that can be done )

Regarding AVS. I was a bit unhappy with the way the site has been going for a while now and actually intended to take a break from it but no one came forward to keep the thread i started running. Lately the site seems to have just gone into the same old arguments regurgitated and after a while you just run out of things to say. I mean there is only so many times i can enter a screenshot thread and say that looks bad and too much DNR and oh the grain structure looks clumpy. Then hearing the same people say nah it looks good on their 40 or 50 inch monitor and things like that.

It was recent stuff over the last few months though which really got me thinking if i wanted to be there. I had a thread i made up for Cutthroat island and a guy who frankly ever since i started the Film Grain Allowed/Reference Thread was calling me a snob and saying i'm part of some elitist group who think they know everything and well he came in and called me a gimp for absolutely no reason and i think basically he responded to something someone else wrote and said the gimp didn't have a clue about sound quality of the release so i reported it and the post was removed but his posting priviledges in the thread remained and he came in a week later and used the term gimp again.

Well post removed but no ban whatsoever. So i felt like just because i had started a thread dedicated to quality transfers some people were suddenly calling me a snob and reacting differently to me. I say that because that particular person above who i mention had no problem with me in the past but now did.

So everything that happened yesterday was just another reason to split as i was getting a little fed up with it all. I had started to feel moderation at the place was sometimes not right and yesterday really got my goat up since if two parties are deemed to be disrupting a thread then ban both and be consistent otherwise it looks biased on the part of the moderation team if one is later let back in and thats assuming he really was banned. I mean i had already apologised for any disruption in the actual thread with my last post but the other guy apologised afterwards and gets let in and i'm still banned. That seemed wrong to me. No point dwelling on it though. I might pop into the high definition digest forums for a while. I'm also working on my site. Unlike you i really am lazy and find reviews difficult to do and put into words and i really don't bother with apostrophes and the little things.

Ok well it's 7pm. Perhaps when i make my new site ( which will be a good 8 weeks away since i'm learning Wordpress and experimenting ) you might want to exchange links and we can join forces ( with some other sites ) and do a bit on each site devoted to good and poor transfers which readers can nominate and then we watch and tally up votes for or something like that. Yah that might be hard to do.

I'll probably enjoy Drag Me To Hell when i evntually see it.

(Posted on Monday, October 19, 2009 at 7:08 PM)

Excuse all the typo's in my above post which i just noticed. :o)

(Posted on Monday, October 19, 2009 at 7:09 PM)

You guys need to start a letter-writing campaign to Netflix encouraging them to setup shop in the UK and drag you out of rental hell.

Reading the IMDb trivia, I saw that Ellen Page had the leading role locked down for this film but backed out due to scheduling conflicts. I'm not quite sure if that would've worked quite as well as Ms. Lohman - an interesting mental exercise to consider it.

(Posted on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 6:34 AM)

Well i really despair sometimes at the lack of public knowledge with high definition transfers. Read this review.

http://www.play.com/HOME/HOME/6-/UserReviews.html?rn=17239&edtm=0

"The picture was a little grainy and there were lines going down the screen"

I think this person means the image had black bar borders on their widescreen tv since it's a 2.40:1 aspect ratio movie.

Unfortunately this sort of thing is all over the place with review sites and Amazon and Play. It's everywhere. The general public think smooth grain free images is how it should be and some even think black bars on their widescreen tv is wrong and the sign of a fault.

I feel like signing up to Play and commenting but it's like trying to keep a huge tidal wave out as the last time i tried it i got most people clicking the disagree button.

(Posted on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 10:53 AM)

I agree Cinema Squid. The more competition the better and i'm surprised a major company like Netflix hasn't opened in the UK marketplace.

(Posted on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 10:55 AM)