Lord of the Rings DVD, Troy, Stuff.

10:56.44 - Tuesday 1st June 2004   (Link to This Entry)

Managed to commandeer the TV last night to watch The Fallowship of the Ring from my recent purchase. For some reason, watching it in the comfort of my own home, and with subtitles so that I don't miss any of the dialogue, it's like watching a whole new film. There was so much that I didn't remember from seeing it at the cinema - weird!

The only irritant for me, aside from the deviances from the original story, were the occasions where overlays were used to superimpose a small-scale Elijah Wood into a scene. Take, for example, the scene where a council is held in Rivendell to decide the fate of the ring, and Frodo walks to the centre dais to put the ring there - the rest of the cast watch Frodo walk up, but because he's not actually there, most of them are looking at the empty space just behind him. It's kinda Charlie Fairhead from Casualty.

Some classy stuff tho - being able to see the whole screen without having to move means you get to see how beautiful the film is. Can't wait for #2 on Wednesday night and #3 on Friday night.

Tonight we're off to the cinema to see Troy starring Brad Pitt. This week is working out great for watching films but rather crap for playing UT2004. There's a new UT2004 patch available and by all accounts it doesn't break the game, but I'm not going to see it until at least Thursday night. Sigh.

Random Links:

• Fo' Shizzle
• Park Your Caravan (My best: 35.66 seconds)
• Google Comedy

Minor heart attack weekend: My bank balance showed I didn't have enough to cover my credit-card payment. Turns out it had already gone out. Phew!

Toshiba SD-R 5112 1x Write Speed Problem

13:22.44 - Tuesday 1st June 2004   (Link to This Entry)

Mucking around this afternoon I discovered that my desktops Toshiba SD-R5112 was still set to Region 1. I figured I had nothing to lose in flashing it to region-free (which I did), but I also found some info on why I had only been getting 1x write on this drive. It seems Toshiba actually certify certain brands of media within the firmware to allow it to work with their drives, and using uber-cheapo brand is leaving me with the 1x write speed, even though these particular discs are 2x rated.

Eventually I found a little program on a Russian website, here which applies a media patch to any firmware (hacked or otherwise). I copied my work folder over for testing and while the drive is still region-free and still writes (apparently, anyway) without problems, it's still doing to at 1x. Argh!

Edit: Thanks for the tip, Lenni - I re-patched the X031 firmware and it works fine. Mr.Foo keeps telling me to buy decent discs but... I just gotta use these 2x up first! :)