Comment Stream

Re: TNG S7: All Good Things...

Great wrap-up Jammer, makes me want to rewatch the finale as I have not seen it in some years.

Reading this is bittersweet, both in terms of it being the final voyage of one of my favorite TV shows, but perhaps also an end to the legacy of Jammer's Reviews. I've been reading this site since it was called Star Trek Hypertext; back in college when I lived alone I perused the reviews to help me decide which episode to pull from my collection for an evening of Trek. Now, as a married man with a 16-month old son, I'm all too familiar with your change in situation and how it has a way of altering your focus. Things change, maybe we all have less time for the idle pursuits we once did. But if nothing else, the product of our work will always be here for us to re-read and remember fondly.

Whatever you get up to next, thanks for exhaustively reviewing and organizing the entirety of Star Trek (not to mention BSG and the other goodies here). I hope one day it'll be my son combing through this site and picking which episodes he wants us to watch together, just as my dad and I used to catch new episodes of TNG together every weekend as they aired. Nerd culture begets itself!

Re: The war officially ends today

Jammer,

I agree about Paramount's DVD sets not pushing the capabilities of the format. The TNG and DS9 sets I have are really unremarkable in quality, and I can't get over how awful the disc menus are. Hello...a brief synopsis of each episode would be nice? Instead, I have to run to your review site to read *your* synopses so I know what I'm getting into.

After how substandard the releases are, charging such a premium for them is insane.

Re: The war officially ends today

I believe you're right, that Toshiba was selling HD-DVD hardware below cost. On the flipside, Sony did its share of selling below cost, too, with the PS3. In the end, blessing the PS3 with a Blu-ray player was a good move on their part, although I was skeptical at first. I'm a gamer, and bought a PS3 for that reason, but the included Blu-ray drive was a nice bonus.

As recently as two months ago, I came very close to pulling the trigger on the Xbox 360's HD-DVD add-on drive, because I wanted the Bourne trilogy and the new Star Trek TOS:R which are HD-DVD exclusive as Matthew noted. This just underscores how detrimental the format war was to the consumer.

I wonder how long it will take Paramount to come join the Blu-ray party? I agree with Eduardo, though, that I cringe at the thought of what they will charge for any remastered Trek they may release on the format. I started collecting Trek DVDs with the old two-episode TOS orange boxes in 1999 -- I've probably stuffed thousands of dollars in Paramount's pockets as it is.

Re: The endless cycle of a declining popular culture

I think smeos has a point, in that there are a good number of actors and actresses who get comparatively little attention because they're not very interesting to photograph. i.e., their house is consistently in some semblance of order. The consuming public gets bored with that; they want reports of juicy scandals, debauchery and destruction.

But at the same time, there's a certain point of no return where it no longer matters how normal you are. When you rise to the level of stardom that Britney Spears [once] commanded, you could be a paragon or a loon -- the paparazzi will hound you incessantly regardless.

Re: Go get 16:9 content for your 16:9 TVs, you morons

Hear hear. It drives me bats when restaurants, bars, etc. are showing fully-stretched 4:3 content on their expensive LCD and plasma widescreen monitors. Everything looks like crap! And worse, it usually appears as though I am the only guy in the place who can tell!

Even worse when big-box retailers are running stretched SD content through their new HD sets (which of course is split sixteen ways until it looks even worse than it already did). Practically impossible to tell how a monitor is really going to perform unless you pipe some real content through it. It's like taking a new Porsche out for a test run, and then just driving 20 MPH in a straight line.

BTW, longtime reader from Jammer's Reviews here. I consult your reviews not only for assistance when I'm looking for a good, nostalgic episode of DS9 to watch, but as episode guides too. Nothing finer out there.