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Back on TV: Max Headroom
infofreako writes: "
Everyone's favorite 80's construct, Max Headroom, has returned
thanks to the people at TechTV.
According to their website,
they will be rebroadcasting all 14
episodes starting this Friday! This series was doing ethics
themes based on designer babies, corporate controlled media, brain
scanning and more before some of us were capable of hitting record
on the old VCR. "
R-R-R-Rock!
Bet that doesn't include the original Channel 4 series and the original TV movie with a much slimier Bryce. As always, US TV took a good idea and sanitised it for the masses.
(showing age). The 15 minute entertainment show - Max + videos (zoolookology anyone?) was much sharper than anything that came later.
"Oh to be in gay Paris, where only the river is Seine"
.02
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Max Headroom back on TV, Alf doing commercials, a new flavor of Coke hitting the market, Hulk Hogan as WWF champ... the 80's are back! Ronald Reagan should be President any day now.
Max Headroom was shown on Canada's Bravo network soon after it came out. Already have all the episodes recorded in LP for my time-shifting pleasure.
The best episode by far was #13: Lessons, about cracking down pirated video programming. Children were not allowed to learn because the educational television wasn't paid for, and schools were not free to the public.
SPOILERS AHOY....
The whole thing turns out to be a cover operation for an old fashioned printing press operation, to print real books for kids to read.
It's very 80's of Max to focus so much on how much television will change our society. Sign of the times.. The world could use a lot more freelance journalists like Edison Carter...
Max Headroom was NOT computer generated. Those funky, trippy lines behind him might have been, but even that would have pushed technology to the limits. :P
Oh, and by the way, Star Trek (the orig, with Kirk) didn't have a computer generated starship either.
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
Amanda Pays, she was pretty hot.
Actually, it was just plain old makeup against a bluescreen for the backdrop.
In protest of the show being canceled, someone in Chicago hijacked the airwaves of 2 TV stations. It's pretty amusing, unfortunately the only site that had video clips of it is down. Here's some information though:
Google Cache with more information
Slightly less, but more direct information
To summarize, it involved a Max Headroom mask, a bare ass and a fly swatter, while Dr. Who was supposed to be playing.
I just want the DVD box set already, dammit. And while they're at it, could they please get UHF released, too?
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I mean, if the entire Titanic can realistically be rendered, why not be able to render a person in real time with realistic voice synth and physics?
Are you serious? If you are, you obviously have absolutely no grasp of how 3D modeling works.
Rendering something like the Titanic is easy. (Not easy in the sense that anyone with a copy of 3D Studio MAX can do it, but easy in the sense that it's just a ship.)
When you create something in 3D like the Titanic, it's based on specifications that do not change. Lighting is constant, shapes stay the same, and moving parts are minimum.
Compare that to attempting to duplicate a person, detailed, in 3D. People are tremendously harder to do than objects, because people automatically scrutinize other people. That's why when you look at a movie like Final Fantasy, you can say "Wow, they sure are realistic, but there's just *something* not right."
With a person, you have to deal with mouth movement (a very difficult thing to model in 3D), eye movement, muscle expansion and contraction based on movement, bending limbs and joints, breating, and a whole host of other factors. Then when you get into voice synthesis (which is still not perfect, but AT&T is making leaps and bounds.), and physics modelling on things such as cloth and water... It's all very hard.
So between rendering something like a ship moving through the water, or creating a realistic person in 3D, the ship is a lot easier to do. It may be painstaking in detail to create, but it's still just basic shapes.)
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
I've always wondered how come there isn't a nationwide station dedicated solely to technology. There are plenty of geeks and nerds to watch it, and you could always have shows teaching the elderly or the less technologicaly inclined simple computer tasks. One or more of the major computer companies (Dell, Gateway, Apple, Microsoft, etc -- apparently AOL/TW can't afford it :) could sponsor it. It's unbelievable that there isn't enough of a market considering how pervasive technology is in today's society. The only shows right now that even remotely feature computers are HSN and the like and the dichotomy between getting my tech fill and pulling my ears off is unnerving.
Enough ranting...still wishing
The previous virtual mascot for the channel, Tilde, was female (appealing enough to the first niche gamer-type market ZDTV was shooting for), but she was not good enough. They used on-the-fly 3D graphics based on VR-suit-like encoding, so the movements of the character were not fluid or terribly near accurate.
If Matt Frewer could record new vocals, I don't think anyone would object to a purely-digital Max Headroom. Digital!? But, what about..um..the original..was..good..um..ah.. Oh yeah..they just didn't have the technology to do it in 1985, you know.. psst.. they used a latex mask--it wasn't digital!. Also, surely Mr. Frewer is not doing terribly much since Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Lawnmower Man 2, so he can probably use the money (that is, if a short revival of the original series doesn't load his pockets with royalties).
Oh, and don't watch Lawnmower Man 2...for the love of all that's Holy! Don't watch it!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Fresh Gear - gadgets galore... if you read /. you would probably like this show
Audiofile - where tech meets music... everything from mp3s to music creation gear to the tech behind making acoutic guitars
Extended Play - the only weekly program I know of that covers video/PC gaming (tho I'd imagine the channel G4 is offering quite a bit... wish I had that channel :)
The Tech Of... - they pick a topic (rollercoasters, race cars, etc) and well, talk about the tech of it :P
Yes, The Screen Savers plays a million times a day... but once you have a TiVo it doesn't matter what's on "right now" anyway! Buy a TiVo and then you can enjoy the "better programs" that apparently don't air whenever you happen to be channel surfing. :)
If all you were watching for was the animation sequences or the action scenes, then I guess this comment is dead-on. Of course, if all you were watching for was the animation sequences or the actions scenes, then you seriously missed the point! Max Headroom was about computer animation the way that Star Wars is about space flight; that is, just as a hook. The key to Max, the whole essence of the show, was its cynical-yet-so-true jaded view of Big Media and the world we were rapidly approaching, wherein the sheep of the world abdicate their power to the TV... Hmmm. A lot like this world, actually.
Max Headroom might have been "twenty minutes into the future" but it was also twenty years ahead of its time.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
A BetaMax of a Beta Max.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
>wow, techtv is the best, i wish i got it where i live
:-(]. 3,760 MHz Horizontal, MPEG2/DVB, Symbol rate: 26000 FEC:7/8.
Where do you live?
In the western hemisphere, try Satcom C4, transponder 12, or the various DSS providers.
In asia, try AsiaSat3S [listed as encrypted
Elsewhere, I don't know -- sorry. Since TechTV seems to be (generally) a FTA channel, you might get lucky if you check your local DVB listings...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
If somebody told me teen would be locked up after refusing to watch TV commercials in school, I'd think they were kidding.
I can't provide a link to this one, but a certain religious radio station gave away three radios as a promotion in a very low-income area - radios that were locked into the station's frequency, with no way to change it.
An ATM tried to show me a commercial for something today.
Does it seem to anybody else that we're in a handbasket going you know where?
Y'know, I look at advertisements for new model cars, and I look at the state of the economy, and I look at Slashdot stories like this and I just have to wonder... Maybe Back to the Future II was really shot on location in 2015 afterall.
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
Trivia: The guy who exploded watching blipverts was played by Mike Cule, who played the Vogon Guard in the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series...
Yes. I am sad, thank you very much...
"Information wants to be paid"
Paul Allen seems to have a rather wide interest in technology (and business). This dated article from 1997 may or may not be too accurate now (it mentions him being the 2nd largest holder of Microsoft stock - its often quoted he has a 9% share, so I'm not sure how that works out). But the article does provide an idea of how diversified Allen's interests are.
It depends on the show and the staff. Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome fame hosts the TechTV show Call for Help and seems very pro-Microsoft/Windows. Though to be fair, I don't watch his show.
The Screen Savers also feature a lot of Microsoft bits. But they throw a lot of other bits in there too. They did a week of shows mostly dedicated to Linux. They do "alteratips" which are tips for mostly MacOS X and Linux (although, like the Windows tips, they're pretty light-weight). They do on-air help calls for Linux and Mac issues on occasion. The show hosts occasionally grumble about Microsoft and its faults (technical and political/marketing). Tux appears in the background often. OSX's strengths are lauded. Linux is often portrayed as an OS people already enjoy, and the viewer might like to try out too. And for their daily tech news, they often quote articles from Slashdot.
Of course, that's not to say all of TechTV is as enlightned. Sometimes TechTV Live and Cyber Crime have articles with viewpoints and/or quotes that make me cringe.
In all, Paul Allen seems to have a fairly wide focus despite his involvement in Microsoft. And TechTV seems to harbor an environment that allows a reflection of a wide degree of the IT industry.
Even ST:TNG used a model for the Enterprise. The model was mounted, upside down, in a green room. A motion controlled camera was then used to move around the ship to create movement. Then stary backgrounds were matted onto the green field. That is why 95% of Enterprise shots are of the bottom of the ship.
In some of the fly-bys, notably the opening credits, you can see people moving inside the Briefing Room. This was done with a green window where the briefing room window was, then stock footage of people walking around was shrunk and matted into the scene.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
There is no "better than connecting it to Video-In..."
Laserdiscs are, believe it or not, analog. (The video is, anyway, there were a few incarnations of digital audio.) Worse than that, they're composite video, so you need to decide whether the comb filter in your capture device is better than the one in your LD player. (Decide this by testing with a good monitor. Dot crawl sucks.)
I have a pretty sizeable collection of Laserdiscs, and keep meaning to start converting these to DVDR. I have this bizarre hangup that I need to move the AC3 audio, and I haven't found any way to capture AC3 with a S/PDIF card. (Pointers appreciated!)
The reality is that I should ignore that, since anything I might have with AC3/DTS is recent enough that it's likely to be rereleased anyway.
Back to your question, spend as much money as you can bear on the capture device, (I have a Director's Cut, but would get a DA-MAX if I were doing this for money.) think about a proc-amp (might not be necessary) and go for it.
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
contrary to the parent post all of these shows run more or less daily rather then 'every once and (uhhh try in here pal) a while'. There's plenty of substance on the channel, more so than most, and it's almost definitely my personal favorite channel.
I should mention that the show the the parent implicity derides (The Screen Savers) is a catch all tech show with a definite pro linux slant that's well worth watching.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Cheesy story ...
When I was a very young geek lad, I had a TRS-80 color computer. After watching Max Headroom, I decided that I wanted my own max headroom. So, I layed awake in bed one night, excited about the prospect that there could be a slight chance that I could build a max headroom with my TRS-80.
The next morning, I tried. It was my first programming experience. It went something like:
10 say "hello, I am max headroom"
I couldn't figure out what "syntax error" meant, and my dreams of my own Max Headroom faded into the past.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com