RIP-Felix

Ah, nutz! I don't have either, so I guess I have to pay for it. It's not bad yet, so I should probably sign up and watch what I want before they raise the price. I recently added ep 2 to complete our collection of prequels, and suffered through it to verify the DVD was good during the return window. I'm going to have to disagree about it aging well. There are some blaring problems that strike at current affairs. Namely, Anakin Skywalkers inappropriate relationship with Padmé Amidala. While the age difference felt weird, they're not actually that far apart. Even if they were, its not something I'm particularly opposed to. 2 adults falling in love is their business. It just adds to the discomfort of watching my main concerns. First, he continues to pursue her, even after she asks him not to - multiple times! He's constantly saying "I'm sorry my lady" with a flirtatious look on his face. It's like he thinks its a game. He's not really listening or taking her serious. He's being selfish. This might be forgivable if it were just normal adolescent ignorance about proper relationship etiquette. However, he's in her employ as personal security. He is supposed to be making her feel safe from a credible threat to her life, not hit on her! His actions in this case rise to the level of workplace sexual harassment, undermine trust in the position he's been privileged with, and he's taking advantage of a situation that brings them in close proximity with one another by necessity. She needs him for protection, so it's not like she can tell him to 'take a hike'. She has legitimate concerns about the relationship and tells him to stop, He dismisses her with that smug look on his face and even guilt trips her with a profession of love. I felt uncomfortable by it...and I'm a guy! It feels like a wholly inappropriate, one sided, sap fest written by a man. A man with the same tired old fashioned belief that women don't know what they want and need to be convinced. That's demeaning, and it doesn't play well in a 'Me too' era. My other issue is the skin tight white garment they had Padmé wearing in a the latter half of the movie. It's too sexy. There's a reason women do and don't wear sexually appealing attire. And those reasons are usually subverted by Hollyewood's desire to put butts in seats. This is a common practice and it often is done at the expense of the character. I'm not saying she shouldn't dress sexy, but I find it unlikely that she would do so given her position as a senator representing an entire planet. People in these positions try to dress modestly, as a courtesy. It shows respect for the sensibilities of those with strict moral codes. You loose nothing by respecting others in this case, and this is why politicians choose to dress in tasteful attire...not skin tight garb designed to elicit sexual desires (it's an ounce of prevention against perverts who might fixate and act on those desires). Take Princess Leia, for example. She dresses herself practically or diplomatically. This is as you would expect for someone in her position. The only time we saw her in skimpy clothing, it was because she was enslave by Jaba the Hut. He put her in skimpy garb for his own perverted reasons, She did not choose to! The audience seeing her in that sexy slave girl outfit added to the dramatic vilification of Jaba the Hut, so when he was killed the hero's were seen as freeing her from His oppression. It complements the story, fits with her character, and we forgive the out of character garb. Not to mention that we get to see Carrie Fisher scantly clad, which put's butts in seats, like Holley-wood wants. The point is, theres a way to achieve the same goal, without sacrificing the character to do it. It takes great writing to accomplish. Return of the Jedi got that formula right, Attack of the clones did not!

This pickup yielded me a $10 coupon I applied to Civilization VI, which is 75% off ATM. So I got it for $4.99. That's a steal! ...but Borderlands PS & 2 for free is ridiculous! I'm enjoying the prequel sequel quite a bit! I hadn't paid any attention to Borderlands. I just thought it was a Mad Max style post apocalyptic western FPS set on earth. Turns out it's a Mad Max style post apocalyptic western FPS/RPG set in space! That makes all the difference...lol. It's like Mad Max meets Firefly in the distant future. Actually, I really like the visual style and the game play is addicting. My i7 and GTX970 can handle it maxed out at 1440p, which is great! It stutters sometimes, but the overall better picture is worth the loss in frame rates. Although, I just downloaded the UHD texture update, so I'll find out how far I can push that. It looks great in HDR on my OLED. Sun beams shining through my weapon look sick...if I could look at them with 1000nits peak brightness trying to burn my retinas (actually it's momentarily painful, but quickly my pupils adjust and it's fine. Games are what HDR is meant for)! I just want to point something out. My wired X-Box 360 controller is recognized and setup automatically, even with the prompts in game switching accordingly (I don't even have a 360...lol). This was my biggest complaint against PC gaming, for a long time. PC games are far more reasonable in price, and with deep discounts like these it's impossible to pass up. I mean, I spent $30 on Chinese take out last night! Basically, if PC games can be consistent about utilizing controls in this way there's no reason to buy a console. NONE! The games savings will pay for hardware upgrades...lol! In the mean time you get better graphics. I've been that console guy for along time, but PC is converting me...dammit! This was a great pickup for free, thanks for pointing it out man!

Wait...I have verizon. So what's this R thang U B wording on my screen? I may have to look into this! Okay, so the Fett thing isn't "officially" related to the Mandalorian (which I didn't think was Fett, but wasn't sure).

Ouch, that's something I would have preferred be in spoiler quotes. I haven't subbed to D+ yet, so I was under the impression it was really baby Yoda I was seeing on the news. But that little spoiler defiantly messes that timeline up. So I take it, that was just a baby [insert Yoda's species here]. I don't really want the answer. Is D+ worth sinning up for? Besides the Mandalorian ,will I find anything else I have to watch and can't get elsewhere?

Well done, but it brings alot of that prequel CGI and production martial arts. It breaks the old-world mystical illusion. Not sure which way I lean, but I think I like the way it was better. Still fun to see this thrown in. I'd like it in an "extended cut" HD remaster, selected from the special features in a blu-ray release or something. This, combined with that fan project trying to make an accurate HD upscale, would be worth buying.

I haven't heard from him in awhile, I hope he's doing alright!

Oh, no! That would require me to find another person to help! You know...COVID factories! I still prefer the hand cart and a ratchet strap.

Yeah I agree, bang for buck matters more when it comes to AV equipment upgrades, because of the diminishing returns on the high end. But the same is true on the cheap end. Sometimes you get lucky with a cheap N64 s-video or x-box component cables, but most of the time that's not the case. Once, I got burned on those cheap amazon x-box component cables, noisy crap! I complained and they sent me a replacement set with exactly the same problem. They didn't even want them back, so they went in the trash where they belong. Clearly defective, the entire design, and they still sell them! I eventually bought an old school 3rd party brand from when the X-Box was still around. They work good. It's not as simple as going on amazon and searching x-box component cable and reading reviews. It should be, but it's not. It just pisses me off that these companies are preying on unsuspecting gamers who're looking to relive fond memories of childhood consoles. It turns what should be a good experience into a bad one. It doesn't help that much of the retro gaming community portrays inexpensive lower end, but perfectly good solutions as if they're inferior and not worth you're money. Composite is actually not that bad! S-video is a huge step up. Past that, it's a diminishing scale of price/performance ratio.

$40 at harbor freight. Great investment. As long as you're careful, they make it up stairs too!

That is a real tragedy. In 10-20 years CRTs will be dead, dying, expensive to replace, collectors items. And because they required the economics of scale to produce profitably, they'll never be put back into production. When the current batch of CRTs are gone, they'll be gone for good. Now's the time to get one, if you ever plan to.

Cool, thanks. I didn't opt for the retroaccess S-video cable you linked, because I RGB modded my console and went with the HDretrovision component cables (at much greater expense), but last week I bought a $8 S-video cable...that works really great. I expected a bigger difference. Perhaps the better shielded S-video cable would be better, especially if you have a lot of cords behind your setup, but I've been staring at zoomed in side-by-side comparison video of the $8 S-video against my $90 YPbPr/RGB setup and the difference is too minute to see from a normal viewing distance. I don't see any reason to mod or pay more than the price of a TINK2x Classic and $8 S-video cable. That's a very good experience for under $100. I'm getting the sense the vast majority of gamers really don't care about the best, they care about the games. And the hardware side of things frustrates them. They only look as far as it's necessary to get the games working. And when they invaraibly buy a bad product with 3-5 frames of added lag and noisy upscaled composite, this either causes them to find out why and get a good product, or blame the console/games and move on. That's a Retro Gaming tragedy! That's what the avove questions are for. If I can understand better what most people are, and are not , interested in, I can help them avoid the tragedy without boring them with stuff they don't care about - that cut off is somewhere in the Moding and upscaling realm. I'm just trying to peg where it is exactly. Based off my assumptions and your answers, it's probably at any moding and upscaling beyond 480p (when buttons and setting need to be fussed with before playing). There's probably a cost threshold too, which I'm guessing is in the $100 or less category.

That theme looks clean. I never had it as a kid, just recently picked up a copy. I played about an hour in and decided to table it. It looked like it was going to be epic, and I didn't have the time to dig in. So I've been saving it for later. Actually my backlog of epic titles I've been meaning to play is getting pretty long. I suppose that's a good thing, but there so many games people love that I've never played! For example, Skies of Arcadia is another of my need to plays...lol! Man, I gotta get to these before I lose my cred!

Too bad. Hopefully they turn out to be reliable for you anyway.

No, you're the perfect person to weigh in then! I'm really looking for the person that just want to try something out for the first time and has very little knowlege or opinion to beging with. Your input would be greatly valued! I'm assuming then you have very little knowledge about the video solutions, mods, or games? So if you were to find a N64 for cheap at a thrift shop and wanted to give it a try. How would you start out? Assume it only came with the AC adapter, no video cables. Would you prefer to play on your HDTV or a CRT? You need a video cable. Where would you start and what kind of budget are you setting? If you're willing to approach this seriously and provide a link to the product you would likely buy, that would be helpful. Are you willing to install a simple mod or would you need an installer? Perhaps you want to keep the console stock, no mods. At what point do you just walk away? Too much money, too hard to figure out. What would keep you engaged? The games, the fun of collecting, hardware modding and chasing video quality, etc. I still keep one in the living room for parties. Mario Party, Mario Kart, & Goldeneye are still as great 4-player as they used to be.

Rf is notorious for interference from...well, RF. So if you live in a big city with lots of other people using RF, you can expect a wide range of bad. Composite was much better at providing a consistently adequate signal. S-Video represents the last big step up until the HDMI ere. Y/Pb/Pr and RGB are a marginal improvement comparatively. I have a later model Sony Trinitron (manufactured in 2004) that has component (input 3) and an S-video port above the composite jacks (Input 1). Those are on the back next to the RF coax jack. Then it has the composite port under the flip up flap on the front. I imagine if you look around on craigslist you could find someone in your area giving them away (if you haul it). Actually I just checked and theres a Sony KV32FS100 in my small town for $20...damn that's tempting, now if I had the space and it wasn't 200lbs...lol.

I'm working on something "special" and wanted to solicit your opinions. This could extend to other consoles too, but I'm wondering specifically about your wish list for the N64. Do you like smooth or sharp pixels CRT or HDTV What kind of budget for a mod would you set? What's important to you regarding the N64? Is it getting the best picture quality or input lag or both? Maybe it's something else, like finding a good 1st party controller with a tight stick, or perhaps a high quality replacement for the analog stick. Maybe you just want to know what the best games. What do you think of the "Fantastic" translucent colored consoles? Which color do you prefer? I'm trying to get a sense of where most peoples interest lies. I'm too close to the hardware aspect of modding, and I think that's only a small subset of the people interested in the console.

It may be a dumb question, but can you not return them? If not, your really making me question the whole "white van" thing.

Interesting, I wonder if it feels different? Like if it's less forgiving about rounding corners or hit boxesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. ... My keyboard just freeked out and reset mid-type. I decided to leave it..lol!

I've not had issues with two 3TB Hitachi Deskstars and a 6TB ultrastar. Never given me reason to ever think one would fail, although I'm playing with fire having no RAID backup. I've had good luck with both Seagate and WD, but heard so many horror stories that I've been sticking to Hitachi (which I know are good). But like Tom said, you get what you pay for. If you pay extra for an enterprise level NAS drive, you'll get a long warranty and maybe even free data recovery services. That's worth a bit extra, if the DATA is critical. I'd probably just stick to the ultrastars in some simple 3+1 Raid configuration. Although I was thinking of jumping into NAS with more reliable drives at some point for a home NAS/multimedia server. I just have been dreading the purchase of the hardware and setup of PLEX or what have you. For now, it's all on the HTPC.

Intel probably will stop subsidizing it at some point. Until then, it costs way less than it should. May be a good idea to get one before then? I just don't like to be pushed into buying something I'm on the fence about just because I may not be able to get it in the near future. Kinda like limited run games. However, in this case, Intel is doing it to help FPGA adoption, development and to promote education. So I'm fine with it. Interestingly, I'm really starting to see the advantages of Composite...yes the noisy, blurry mess we grew up with. I'm on the record saying I prefer the sharper look of RGB/HDMi solutions, however there are some situations in which composite hides or better sells the look IMO - transparencies and gradients using Dither. When viewed on a CRT, composite looks fine or at least as good as I remember it. Component is sharper, but at a distance and while playing it's not that big of one all things considered (again, on a CRT, not a HDTV). However, a transparency, cloud, or sunset that was supposed to be blended smooth with dither is noticeable if it has jail-bars, banding, or grain. The art was designed with composite in mind, and using sharper video actually subverts the creators intended look. This is why I'm excited by advances like adaptive composite blending, because it has the to potential to unite both camps. I just restored a Jungle Green "Fantastic" N64, the cheapest one on e-bay. It had deep rust and water damage, board rot, caked on dirt/mud, bug carapaces, and the case was cracked in several places. It looked like it was salvaged from a ditch after being through a tornado or perhaps a flood! It required a thorough cleaning, rust removal, solder reflowing, a recap, and some super glue to sure up the cracks, but it works! Now to the point...the fantastic consoles are supposed to have sharper composite than do the charcoal grey models before it. It may just be the brand new electrolytic capacitors, but it looked as good via composite + RetroTINK2x Pro as did my RGB modded charcoal grey through the RAD2x. Now, the RGB modded console hasn't had it's caps replaced yet, so it's possibile that could soften the image, but I was impressed composite could look that good on an HDTV! So I'm coming to appreciate composite for what it is and has to offer. It's not as bad as it's reputation.

These will be my preferred secondary output for the Dreamcast once they finally drop. I have a dual output setup. Each console can output to both my OLED and CRT simultaneously. For Dreamcast, my primary output is still the DCDigital (formerly DCHDMI). However, I've been waiting for these to be my analog output to the CRT. I'm going to connect the HD retrovision YPbPr component cables to my Gcomp switch, which auto switches between 8 component sources to both my OSSC and CRT (just like an HDMI auto switch, but for component inputs). The OSSC outputs upscaled HDMI back to the OLED, but that's really only for the other consoles connected to the Gcomp switch (RGB Restored SNES mini, RGB modded N64, Genesis model 2, Sega Saturn, X-Box, PS2, WII, and a DVD-VCR). Since the Dreamcast is HDMI modded anyway, the real perk here is to get a high quality 480i signal to my CRT. This represents the cleanest Analog signal possible on North American TV sets (RGB Scart is very slightly better, but no consumer TVs in NA had it). That's why I originally decided on an all Component setup with the GCOMP switch instead of the GSCART switch. SCART to the OSSC is just a little cleaner than YPbPr, but I though that retaining compatibility with the CRT was more important to me. Of course, now that Mike Chi (maker of the RetroTINK) released the SCART2COMP transcoder, I kinda wish I had gone SCART to begin with. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20 and I'm committed now.

WOW! Just effing wow! This was once just a steaming pile, then it froze, calved off into the north Atlantic, and now Atari set a collision course! Sound the alarm...abandon ship! The SS Atari is headed strait for an Ice burg of frozen Shiz. What the hell are they doing!

Yeah, the more I watch this project grow the more impressed I am with It. I will definitely be messing around with it in the future...though I'm not sure when I'll have time.

I trust Voultar, but I don't know this guy. I think he goes a little overboard, but I think theres enough to confirm my suspicions about Kaico. Namely that they are yet another shady cash grab 3rd party Retro gaming company peddling other peoples hard work as their own. I hadn't heard of them prior to seeing the Dreamcast cable posted earlier in this tread, which I suspected was a clone of the Pound cable. I've heard anecdotal evidence that it's much better, but now I wonder if it's just a retrotink2x. I haven't seen any breakdowns of the internal chipset, but I'm damn suspicious now. At $30 it's a tempting solution. Makers like Mike Chi and others contribute to the retro gaming scene and make it awesome. I just wish this kind of intellectual theft didn't hurt them. And shame on twitter for taking down photographic evidence of the theft! Enablers!

My guess is that perceived scarcity actually motivates people who are on the fence to buy sooner rather than later. It could too be that they've made the business decision that it's better to underestimate demand and have to ramp up production in batches when they have a hit (like we see with the Switch), instead of having inventory they cannot sell or store when they've got a dud on their hands. Basically they shift the inconvenience onto the customers. We'll put up with whatever shenanigans as long as they keep making great consoles and games...and they know it.