What Blu-Ray did you watch last night?

[Steve Klare]

Just Five Minutes until Show-Time: let's head to the snack bar!

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Not a BluRay at all but a DVD with over an hour of Drive-In movie daysets. It showed up today so I put it through the VP just to check it out.

The basic idea is when we have people over to see a show, we start this as soon as we see that first car so there's a little movie-atmosphere while they walk in the door and get settled. It's odd content on screen: really just for atmospherics, but still the same interesting enough that sometimes you can't help but watch for a minute at a time.

The images run through all sorts of quality levels including lines and fade all the way to really nice. Normally this might detract from the experience, but in this case it adds to the nostalgic feel of the whole thing.

The imbedded count-down clocks are meaningless: it was "three minutes to show-time" several times over about 20 minutes! (Don't set your watch by this!)

It's some astounding stuff! For somebody who lives in a neighborhood with a couple of really good pizzerias the very idea of Drive-In Movie pizza is kind of disturbing. Still the same, the adds are full of 1950s and 1960s cars which more than make up for that pizza!

There is actually a practical purpose being served here. I often show film shorts and then a video-based feature or concert. Once or twice I've gone to roll the video and found nothing but "HDMI#1: NO SIGNAL" on screen. After that, it's wiggling cables in front of a sitting audience (-and every so often correctly re-routing them! -Oops!) until the picture wakes up. (-not the greatest showmanship.)

By having this disk run at the beginning of the show, I know that audio and picture are both working: everything is plugged into the right place and fully seated, too!

[Graham Ritchie]

Last night the blu-ray movie was "Dirty Harry", tonight "Jurassic Park 2" using the Panasonic VP. There are some movies I never get tired watching, those two are on that list It was running the 35mm JP2 at Ferrymead park along with other films last weekend for folk that did prompt me to watch the actual feature. However as well as 35mm trailers I did include some of our old cinema ads as well. This one shown below from Telecom New Zealand, I did tell folks at the park watching that 2000ft reel, that although this ad came out a while ago, the message behind it is sadly still very relevant today.

[Graham Ritchie]

Watched this one the other night, highly recommend it.

[Brian Fretwell]

That film should have had a wider showing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Well towards the end as it shows that a virus can mutate to become less dangerous and that things could improved. If shown too early and encouraged people to take risks earier on that wouldn't have been good.

[Ed Gordon]

That film should have had a wider showing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Well towards the end as it shows that a virus can mutate to become less dangerous and that things could improved. If shown too early and encouraged people to take risks earier on that wouldn't have been good.

Your observation that in might have "encouraged people to take risks earlier on that wouldn't have been good" is spot on. A lot of people would probably taken up Sterno and aspirin as a defense against the virus.

The scientists learn that the current form of Andromeda grows only in a narrow pH range; in a too-acidic or too alkaline growth medium, the organism will not divide. Andromeda's ideal pH range is 7.39–7.43, within the range found in normal human blood. Jackson and Ritter survived because both had abnormal blood pH (Jackson acidotic from consumption of Sterno and aspirin, Ritter alkalotic from hyperventilation). However, by the time the scientists realize this, Andromeda has mutated into a form that degrades the lab's plastic seals and escapes containment. Trapped in a contaminated lab, Dr. Charles Burton demands that Stone inject him with a "universal antibiotic"; Stone refuses, arguing that it would render Burton too vulnerable to infection by other harmful bacteria. Burton survives because the mutated Andromeda is no longer pathogenic.