Slashdot Mirror

According to a couple fan sites, and to TV Guide, the new Enterrprise episode, "Silent Enemy", airs this Wednesday.

Heck, I don't even know what day it was on. Just like Family Guy.

It was on right after Family Guy. (Thursday nights, 8 PM.)

Is it that hard to go to TV Guide's listings and do a search?

Ooohhh... Where the hell did I put my Wardialer...

You remember? In the Olde Dayes, with accustic couplers? War Games anyone? ;)

The problem is that every widget is hand drawn instead of using the native OS widgets. So scrollbars, drop down boxes, etc. are all taking up rendering time.

LOGIC! My God! There's someone on /. who sees the simplicity of things...
Thank you for posting this.

This is (some of) why I use Konqueror 98% of the time. It uses KDE's own wigets. Which not only provides a similarity to the rest of the "OS", it also boosts the hell out of render time.
Konqueror isn't perfect, however. I said 98%. That other 2% is dedicated to Mozilla. Theres just some things that Konqueor has a hard time with. Ever try to do a TV Guide search with Konqueror? It doesn't render the search page (almost) at all. I'm not sure why. I've looked at the source page to try to figure out why it doesn't render it right so I can send a fix (or at least a suggestion) to the KDE Team, but I have yet been able to see what's wrong.

Anyway...
Off my Soap-Box now...

Training Day

Here is a link to Amazon's review of the movie. Here is a link to Yahoo's review of the movie. [User Rating: (4.1/5) ]

Chicago Tribune said this about Training Day.

"Training Day," for most of its length, is genuinely thrilling, explosively cynical about life on the streets and in the squad cars. More strikingly, it lets Washington play a really juicy heavy: hard driving, acid-tongued Detective Sgt. Alonzo Harris. Harris is Washington's meanest, most brutal and dangerous character in years -- an L.A. cop who's adjusted so completely to life among the wolves that he's become a wolf himself. Washington is magnificently vicious and wily in the role."

"Dares to be a cop movie based on character and not on pyrotechnics."
-- Jeffrey M. Anderson, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

"The film works a bit better as a vehicle for Washington, and it often gets by on his devilish charm. But it loses all its punch as he becomes more hissable."
-- William Arnold, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

"A taut -- if violent -- police thriller."
-- Ken Fox, TV GUIDE'S MOVIE GUIDE

"Washington's performance is so good, in fact, that it may temporarily blind you from seeing that the movie has obscured its message."
-- Sean Means, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

All Posters.com as a poster of the show if you are looking for one.

Here is the director Antoine Fuqua's filmography. I was interested to see if he was an action director that is continuing his specialization or if he directed mainly heart felt drama's and was crossing genre's. With a limited filmography that includes previous B+ rated action flicks as The Replacement Killers, it seems that he has the background to provide us with an entertaining medium grade action flick. I would definately see this movie over The Musketeer.

TV Guide already lets you download the guide in a machine-readable format.
It's being used for a few PDA-based TV Guide listers such as PTVL (Pocket TV Listing)

According to TVGuide, the list of songs rumor is untrue: "It's not true. No one has told us what we can or cannot play from a corporate level," says Tom Poleman, senior vice president of programming for Clear Channel Communications in New York. You decide who to believe. I'm not making any statement about whether it's true or not, but you should see that there is some doubt.

http://www.tvguide.com/listings/closerlook.asp?I=6 1016&Q=2624522

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution - (grade: C+) "Maybe Darwin was wrong: this remake shows no sign of evolution."

• Chicago Tribune - "...a rouser, a screaming-banshee fun house."

• CNN.com - "...this is one really bad script."

• Deseret News (Salt Lake City) - (3 stars) "...when it's good, it comes close to being great."

• E! Online - (grade: C+) "...offers an eye-appealing world but a truly disappointing story."

• Entertainment Weekly - (grade: C+) "...[features] everything...but imagination."

• L.A. Weekly - "...underwritten..."

• Los Angeles Times - "...over-plotted and under-dramatized..."

• Mr. Showbiz - (rating: 2/5) "...despite its presentation, the film is so very ordinary, without urgency or revelation."

• New York Times - "...both a gas and distant, a toy sealed in its unbreakable box."

• People - "The fault lies not in the stars here but in the script."

• Roger Ebert - (2.5 stars) "I expected more."

• Salon - "...stops far too short of being completely seductive."

• San Francisco Chronicle - "...an amazing display of imagination."

• TV Guide - (2.5 out of 5 stars) "...sorely deficient on the story front."

• USA Today - (3 out of 4 stars) "...[the costumes] allow the power of the performer inside the ape gear to break on through."

• Search the Movie Review Query Engine

Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes" wants to be all things to all men, and all apes. It's an action picture and a satire of an action picture. It's a comedy and then it gets serious. It's a social satire and then backs away from pushing that angle too far. It even has a weird intra-species romantic triangle in it. And it has a surprise ending that I loved, even though Matt Drudge spoiled it last weekend with a breathless "scoop."

The movie could have been more. It could have been a parable of men and animals, as daring as "Animal Farm." It could have dealt in social commentary with a sting, and satire that hurt. It could have supported, or attacked, the animal rights movement. It could have dealt with the intriguing question of whether a man and a gorilla having sex is open-mindedness, or bestiality (and, if bestiality, in both directions?).

It could have, but it doesn't. It's a cautious movie, earning every letter and numeral of its PG-13 rating. Intellectually, it's science fiction for junior high school boys.

I expected more. I thought Burton would swing for the fence. He plays it too safe, defusing his momentum with little nudges to tell you he knows it's only a movie. The 1968 "Planet of the Apes" was made before irony became an insurance policy. It made jokes, but it took itself seriously. Burton's "Planet" has scenes that defy us to believe them (his hero survives two bumpy crash-landings that look about as realistic as the effects in his "Mars Attacks!"). And it backs away from any kind of risky complexity in its relationships.

The key couple consists of Leo (Mark Wahlberg), who is the human hero, and Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), who is the Eleanor Roosevelt of the apes. They're attracted to each other but don't know what to do about it, and the screenplay gives them little help. Leo is also supposed to be linked romantically, I guess, with a curvy blond human named Daena (Estella Warren), but her role has been so abbreviated that basically all she does is follow along looking at Leo either significantly or winsomely, as circumstances warrant. At the end, he doesn't even bid her a proper farewell.

Leo, to be sure, is not one for effusive emotional outbursts. He's played by Wahlberg as a limited and narrow person with little imagination, who never seems very surprised by anything that happens to him--like, oh, to take a random example, crash-landing on a planet where the apes rule the humans. He's a space jockey type, trained in macho self-abnegation, who is great in a crisis but doesn't offer much in the way of conversation. His basic motivation seems to be to get himself off the planet, and to hell with the friends he leaves behind; he's almost surly sometimes as he leads his little band through the wilderness.

The most "human" character in the movie is, in fact, the chimpanzee Ari, who believes all species were created equal, casts her lot with the outcast humans, and tells Leo, "you're sensitive--a welcome quality in a man." Helena Bonham Carter invests this character with warmth, personality and distinctive body language; she has a way of moving that kids itself.

There's also juice in a character named Limbo (Paul Giamatti), a scam artist who has a deal for everyone, and a lot of funny one-liners. That he sounds like a carnival pitch-man should not be held against him.

The major ape characters include the fearsome Gen. Thade (Tim Roth), his strong but occasionally thoughtful gorilla lieutenant Attar (Michael Clarke Duncan), and Sen. Sandar (David Warner), who is a parliamentary leader and Ari's father. There's also a cameo for Charlton Heston, as a wise old ape who inevitably introduces a gun into the plot and has a curmudgeonly exit line. Watching the apes is fun all during the movie, while watching the humans usually isn't; the movie works hard to bring the apes to life, but unwisely thinks the humans can take care of themselves.

It's interesting that several different simian species co-exist in the planet's ape society. It may be a little hard to account for that, given the logic of the movie, although I will say no more. One major change between this film and the earlier one is that everyone--apes and humans--speak English. The movie explains why the apes speak English, but fudges on how they learned to speak at all.

The movie is great-looking. Rick Baker's makeup is convincing even in the extreme closeups, and his apes sparkle with personality and presence. The sets and locations give us a proper sense of alien awe, and there's one neat long shot of the ape city-mountain that looks, when you squint a little, like Xanadu from "Citizen Kane." There are lines inviting laughs ("Extremism in the defense of apes is no vice") and others unwisely inviting groans ("If you show me the way out of here--I promise I'll show you something that will change your life forever"). And a priceless moment when Leo wants to stop the squabbling among his fugitive group of men and apes and barks: "Shut up! That goes for all species!"

"Planet of the Apes" is the kind of movie that you enjoy at times, admire at times, even really like at times, but is it necessary? Given how famous and familiar Franklin J. Schaffner's 1968 film is, Tim Burton had some kind of an obligation to either top it, or sidestep it. Instead, he pays homage. He calls this version a "reimaging," and so it is, but a reinvention might have been better. Burton's work can show a wild and crazed imagination, but here he seems reined in. He's made a film that's respectful to the original, and respectable in itself, but that's not enough. Ten years from now, it will be the 1968 version that people are still renting.

Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

Let's make a tradition of this!

The TV Guide article is here.

The place I got these links as well as the repository of all B5 info is here.

It's syndicated, which means it doesn't have a network. In practice, it's picked up by the same "independent" tv stations that are generally also WB affiliates. This also has the annoying side effect that air times will vary from station to station. Your mileage will vary. (Check local listings. TV Guide has a great listings search feature, for those of you lucky enough to be within the United States.)

I'm just sayin'

Indeed. In fact, there is an article in this weeks TV Guide that talks about the new FCC chairman. A great article, but unfortunately I couldn't find it online. A quote, however: "New FCC chairman and champion of the free market Michael Powell says, 'There's a lot of garbage on TV,' and it's up to viewers--not government--to do something about it. That's a change from the Clinton days."

Another quote:

"But, he added: 'We have to be realistic about what government can do. We have a First Amendment in this country that prohibits, thankfully, people in my position from being national censors. Broadcasters shouldn't be dictated to by government."

In short, the Left loves to lie about the what the Republicans stand for. Yes, they have their share of the wackos (the religious right comes to mind), but on balance, freedom lives in the Republican party. I guess it's probably too much to ask for Jaime to learn something today, and shed some of his naivete.

[and no, the "real" home of freedom is not the Libertarians, although they and Republicans share a lot of ideology.]

--

Just use a perl script to connect to tvguide.com, parse the actual listings, and add your own formatting, including interface. I've seen Litestep modules that do this, so it shouldn't be too hard for somebody with the know-how.

You cannot legally extract the guide information and use it to populate listing information on your home-brew PVR.

This question has been asked no fewer than two times before, and one time, I even answered in +3 detail on exactly what would be needed to make a PC-based TiVo.

But that's okay, let's rehash.

Since we're going entirely software-based, e.g. you're sitting a normal, icky PC in your stereo rack, or you're just using your PC as normal, you probably don't have a hardware MPEG encoder. The best you've probably got is a Matrox card with onboard MJPEG compression, and I don't think the Linux drivers support that.

Now, assuming you already know how capture a video stream and pipe it to an MPEG encoder (and trust that your system is fast enough to not drop too many frames; think P3/500 or better), the only thing you really need to do is add in TV listings, and integrate them into channel changing and record functionality.

Copy and pasted from my previous post, channel guides are easy. Just have a Perl script rip and reformat any of the listings from the online providers, including Excite TV, Ultimate TV, GIST TV (which also provides the Yahoo TV listings), Ask TV (in the UK), Click TV (what TiVo uses), TV Quest, TV Grid or TV Guide Online.

As for integration, a lot of this work has already been done, at least for satellite TV streams. Klaus Schmidinger produced his Video Disk Recorder which performs channel guides and VCR functionality on his Linux PC, for his satellite TV using a PCI card. All GPL'd, so feel free to port it over to plain old TV cards, too.

--Vito

The Senator Kelly commercial is actually shown on Fox TV. It was on last night on Fox 32 Chicago. Check your TV listings for more info. Sorry, TV-Guide's site is kind of lame with Netscape/Linux, and a search for X-Men didn't show anything, maybe someone else will have better luck.

Check out TV Guide. From here you can get listing for your cable, satellite, or broadcast TV channels.

It would be fairly simple to write an interface to this site which can be used with a software-based TIVO/ReplayTV.

--

"500 more points and you get a free game."

"Great. Another chance to lose!"

They both have valid points. They both have posted using somewhat abrasive/inflamitory language. They have both wasted my bandwidth!!!! :-)

-Derek

P.S. About your email problem while sailing... maybe one of those "contestants" of CBS's Survivor show will figure out a way to do email. Tune in and find out!

I've been doing research on this for the last month or three, and the news isn't entirely good. First, you need to figure out exactly what you want your TiVo-esque set-top box to do. "Personal TV" features like live pause and live rewind? Digital, full-frame recording? MPEG1, MJPEG or MPEG2 compression? Channel guides and automatic VCR programming? CD playing? DVD playing? Lastly, what will you put it all in?

Let's start with personal TV features. You can currently record live, full-resolution video and audio onto your HD without dropping frames -- assuming you've got at least a 500mHz processor and a fast HD. That's just a live dump to a raw AVI, and you'll fill up your HD pretty fast that way, at roughly 1-2 meg a second. But if you can blow 4gb for an hour of programming to be able to do a live pause/rewind for a while, then that's not too big a deal. But what if you want to include digital VCR features, not just live pause/rewind?

Now, things get a little more expensive. The crux of the problem is to do live, full-frame MPEG2 video and audio encoding in software, you need at least ANOTHER 500mhz of horsepower, and a single 1gHz processor won't cut it. MPEG1 quality blows if you're recording off satellite or even decent cable TV (if you want the low-end, though, the Broadway MPEG1 encoder is cheap, around $800), leaving you with just MJPEG or MPEG2 video. MJPEG is much larger than MPEG2, because it doesn't have temporal compression, but you can get consumer-grade hardware MJPEG encoders on Matrox hardware, so for a build-your-own box, if you 2-3x your HD size, you should be okay. But to do it right, you want full-frame D1 MPEG2 encoding (half-D1 MPEG2 is MPEG1 resolution, but MPEG2 quality), like you have on DVDs. And to do that in hardware will cost you over a thousand dollars, and may not include an MPEG DEcoding solution!. Yuck. Darim's MPEGator2 can do full D1 encoding for (only) US$1800, VisionTech's MVcast is US$1995, DV Studio's Apollo Expert is US$1995 and includes both encoding and decoding, making it possibly the best buy. I have no idea if Linux drivers are available for any of them, but the price alone puts that sort of tech out of the realm of most people's hands.

With that sobering realization in mind, let's forge forward to channel guides and VCR programming. Channel guides are easy. Just have a Perl script rip and reformat any of the listings from the online providers, including Excite TV, Ultimate TV, GIST TV (which also provides the Yahoo TV listings), Ask TV (in the UK), Click TV (what TiVo uses), TV Quest, TV Grid or TV Guide Online. And once you have this set up, it's not much farther to program an IR transmitter to sit in front of your VCR's IR port to have it automatically record shows for you.

CD playing in a set-top box is a nice feature. Pop the CD in, and have it hit CDDB for the disc info, and give track options. Shouldn't be too hard.

DVD playing in a homebuild Linux-based set-top box is nearly possible now, too. As of this weekend, I believe that you can now put a DVD in the drive, and play it, entirely software decoded, no ripping VOBs or copying to a HD, full-screen, full-frame, with real-time AC3/48kHz audio downsampling to 44kHz, and audio/video sync is probably only a few hours of coding away. Now all we need is hardware MPEG acceleration in the ATI Rage chipsets, and maybe that attractive Apollo encoder/decoder.

Lastly, what are you going to put this monstrosity of open-source software engineering in? What we've just explained above is that for around $3000, you can build a combination cable box (we'll ignore the open source software cable descramblers for the moment), real-time MPEG2 digital VCR, timeshifting personal TV player, channel guide, CD player and region-code-less, restriction-less DVD player, that utterly blows the quality of anything else on the market out of the water. This is what TiVo WANTS to be. But what are you going to do? Stick a fat, ugly, beige desktop case on top of your TV? Bah. T-A-C-K-Y. Even the recently rediscovered BookPC (aka NLX) cases still look like PCs. But most people can't afford to mint custom cases, yet you want something that doesn't look like a PC. How about a 1U or 2U black rackmount case, sans locking front panel and rails? 19" wide makes it a bit wide for small TVs, but that's okay. You've got a bay for a floppy drive or small LCD panel, a DVD drive, and enough room inside for at least one HD, and in some 1U cases, both the TV card and the MPEG card! Otherwise, just go 2U, which isn't TOO much larger. Whee.

I think that's it. I don't know what the state of TV input on Linux is, but I assume it's pretty good, or you wouldn't even be able to consider this project, so that's not a big deal. And even through you can record in real-time, without compression, straight to AVI (bleagh!), I left out the possibility to post-process the AVI to MPEG, because really, that's so tacky. That's like having to play DVDs by copying them to a HD first. Do it realtime, and Do It Right(tm). Lists of MPEG hardware encoders I got from a Canadian distributor called BernClare Multimedia, Inc. Seems like a nice place. Other URLs I used for reference (no, my personal project doesn't have a site; I just posted most of my knowledge here!) include the still-conceptual LinuxVCR project, the LinuxToday article on How to Build Your Own 1U Rackmount, the Calibri 300R 1U rackmount Linux-based router, and LCDproc for that LCD display you know you'll need on the front to perpetually blink 12:00.

According to TV Guide (which I visit religiously, and I'm not religious):

Sworn to Secrecy: The Ultra Enigma

A look at British efforts to break Germany's 'Enigma' code in World War II, which enabled the Allies to defend against the Luftwaffe and locate and destroy marauding U-boats. Also: the manpower employed to decipher codes. Narrated by Charlton Heston.

Rating: TV-G
Category: Other, documentary
Originating Country: United States

Let's face it folks - 10 years is an incredible run for any show, especially one that so few people get. I'm just glad that years ago I figured out that this show would probably be the only one in television history not to be perpetually rerun in the future, and got them all on tape...