Category — Movies-TV

Forrest J Ackerman at his Ackermansion, 1990 - photo by Alan Light

Forrest J Ackerman, the sometime actor, literary agent, magazine editor and full-time bon vivant who discovered author Ray Bradbury and was widely credited with coining the term “sci-fi,” has died. He was 92.

Ackerman died Thursday of heart failure at his Los Angeles home, said Kevin Burns, head of Prometheus Entertainment and a trustee of Ackerman’s estate.

Although only marginally known to readers of mainstream literature, Ackerman was legendary in science-fiction circles as the founding editor of the pulp magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. He was also the owner of a huge private collection of science-fiction movie and literary memorabilia that for years filled every nook and cranny of a hillside mansion overlooking Los Angeles.

“He became the Pied Piper, the spiritual leader, of everything science fiction, fantasy and horror,” Burns said Friday.

Every Saturday morning that he was home, Ackerman would open up the house to anyone who wanted to view his treasures. He sold some pieces and gave others away when he moved to a smaller house in 2002, but he continued to let people visit him every Saturday for as long as his health permitted.

From the AP via CBS News.

Sad news indeed.  :(   I wish I had known that he welcomed interaction with the public .  It would have been a real thrill to meet him.  Godspeed Mr. Ackerman, Godspeed…

Here’s a neat concept: rather than messing with unreliable home WiFi networks, simply walk that big honkin’ HD video over to your TV, just like you’ve done for years.  This time, the movie is on a portable hard drive, and the device to play the file doesn’t cost several hundred dollars.

WD TV HD Media Player

Western Digital has introduced the WD TV HD Media Player, and it is a very interesting idea.  Essentially it allows you to turn any USB hard drive into an HD media player.  You store your HD content on a USB drive. Plug the drive into the WD TV and you can then easily play HD movies, digital music or still images on your TV in up to 1080p resolution.  Now, that IS easy.

It supports a ton of video formats: from .avi to .mov to XviD, DivX, H.264 and a bunch more.  Did I mention that it supports HDMI and 1080p?  I think I did!

When you compare this little device to buying or building your own media server, I think that it clearly comes out ahead in the areas of cost and simplicity.  You can get the item for as little as $119, and it may just be the answer to a lot of every day needs.

Back Panel

A couple of cons that I see.  First and foremost, it doesn’t support component video, only composite and HDMI, so connecting this to my 6 year old 65″ Mitsubishi Widescreen HD Television with an HD signal just isn’t going to happen.  It will however go on the newer plasmas screen that we have.  But, we use the Mits much more than the Plasma because of location.  I know, I know - I touted its HDMI support, and that IS awesome.  But HDMI along with component would be even better.

Second con: No network support.  It would be nice to be able to drop a USB drive onto this puppy and wirelessly be able to store files on the drive.  I think it would reduce the “sneakernet” aspect of the whole thing.  But, what can you expect for $100?  This would be a nice feature, but it would certainly bump the cost up.

Nice Browse Screen to View Available Media

I suppose when all is said and done, going with something like the QNAP 109 II or 209 II probably makes more sense if you already have a method of displaying digital files - i.e. a PS3 or xBox 360.  You’ll end up spending more money that way, but the benefits may be worth it.

Still, this little thing is easy to use and dirt cheap for the kind of functionality.  You be the judge!  Drop me a note in the comments below and let me know what you think!

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File Formats Supported
Music - MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIF/AIFF, MKA
Graphics - JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG Video -MPEG1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H.264)
Playlist - PLS, M3U, WPL Subtitle -SRT (UTF-8)

Note:
- MPEG2/4, H.264, and WMV9 supports up to 1920×1080p 24fps, 1920×1080i 30fps, 1280×720p 60fps resolution.
- An audio receiver is required for surround sound output.
- AAC/Dolby Digital decodes in 2 channel output only.
- JPEG does not support CMYK or lossless.
- BMP supports uncompressed format only.
- TIF/TIFF supports single layer only.

WD TV, 1080p HD Media Player, USB HD

The time is finally upon us!!  Don’t miss the start of the awesome Random! Cartoons!  They are set to air tomorrow, December 6th, 2008 at varying times on Nicktoons Network.

Flavio with his voice, Emmy Award winning actor Rob Paulsen. Rob is, without a doubt, one of the best voice actors of our time.

My brother Mike made an AWESOME Random! Cartoon called Flavio, but still no info on when that one will air.

Flavio is an Italian goat who works as a dishwasher in a Pizzaria but aspires to be much more than that. Someday he hopes to be a great inventor like his hero Leonardo DaVinci. No one says it better than Flavio himself, “One-a day, straight to th’ top!”

Anyway, rush over to see the listings and be sure to change the location for your TV provider so you get the right time and channel.  Its set for 1:30 Eastern, 10:30 Pacific according to what I can tell.

First up on Saturday are Solomon FIX; MooBeard the Cow Pirate; Two Witch Sisters followed by Sunday’s airing of The Finster Finster Show; Adventure Time; Mind the Kitty.

Its going to be an awesome show!

I’ll of course annouce it as soon as Flavio is going to air as well!

Flavio, Mike Milo, Random! Cartoons, Frederator

For anyone that cares, I updated MovieWidget to support the latest Amazon searching features.

Not a big deal, but hey, that’s what I did last weekend.

Also, I’m in the process of adding MovieWidget to the Wordpress Plugin database for easy automatic update capabilities.  Then I’ll also be able to tell if anyone actually uses this thing!  :)

Check out this awesome song from Craving Lucy, a new band that is simply awesome.  My friend’s son is on accustic guitar…  Get them on iTunes, Rhapsody or Amazon!

I’m Alive!

Craving Lucy, I'm Alive!

I was shocked and saddened at the news about Heath Ledger.  I knew very little about the real man, but I was a big fan of his work.  He always seemed like a very nice person on screen.  After talking with a gentleman that knew him first hand, I now know that it was an accurate representation.  He was described by this person as “Very kind… A brilliant artist.”

I pray that God grant Heath’s family and friends His Peace, which transcends all understanding, at this extremely tough time…

Heath Ledger

Well, I’ve finally written my first widget for Wordpress.  Introducing Movie Widget!

I wanted a quick way to randomly display titles from my DVD collection on my blog.  I use Movie Collector to manage the collection, so I exported some XML from the program and started parsing it up.  Eventually, this little widget was born.

I mostly wrote this for myself (in fact, it started out as just custom code in my theme) but I’ve been wanting to try my hand at writing a widget for a while, so I figured I would widgetize the code.  Once it was a widget, I decided that widgets are made to be shared and that I should make it available to anyone else who happens to use both Movie Collector and Wordpress.

You can get the plugin here.

Wordpress Widget, Movie Collector, Collectorz