[KLUG Members] Movies? Weird!!!

[Bruce Smith]

> >Anyway, Saturday I went to the 1:00 PM Star Trek Nemesis at Crossroads
> >theaters (behind Crossroads mall in Portage).  About half way into the
> >movie (give or take an hour :)  the sound started cutting out.  Then 
> >the movie started slowing down and the sound started dragging (like a
> >cassette player with the batteries going dead).   Then total blackness.
>  
> >Then . . .  no kidding! . . .  a screen shot of Windows XP Professional
> >REBOOTING appeared on the BIG screen!!!  The little progress bar moved
> >from left to right.  Then the movie was back!  I would have found this
> 
> It picked up right where it left off?

No, it appeared to lose a minute or two.

Luckily, it was at a slow point in the movie.  I'd been pissed 
if it was during a major action scene.

> >I was amused by the comments by other movie viewers when this was
> >happening.  (oh that explains it, and so on :)  
> 
> I'd love to have been there.

Yeah, that made the outage almost worth it.  :-)

> >But what's up with that?  
> 
> XP sucks?
> 
> >Do movie theaters project from computers now?
> 
> Yes, some do, for some movies.

Okay.  News to me, but I'm probably "out of it" again.

I suppose it's possible that when the projector quit, it automatically
switched back to the computer used to display the pre-movie ads, which
just happened to be rebooting at the time.  (I said "possible", not
"likely" :)

> >If movies are going to
> >be interrupted with a random Windows reboot, bring back the old film
> >format!
> 
> You got free tickets afterward, right?  I'll take a blurp in projection in order
> to get my $~8.00 back,  especially with most of the movies I've seen recently.

No.  I thought about it, but I figured the best I could get was tickets
to another showing of the _same_ movie.  I don't like seeing ANY movie
more than once, and wouldn't have used them anyway.

> I really miss the oil gels / ameaba simulation before the previews.  Now they
> have those horrible larger-than-life commercials.

Yeah, that sucks.

> >(or upgrade the projector to Linux! :)
> 
> It is illegal to play most DVDs on Linux.  At least without a hardware decoder,
>  and those aren't very common. And it seems obvious that they probably aren't
> using one.

No, I think it's illegal to use/write non-licensed code to play DVD's.
The OS (Linux) is immaterial to this.

I'm sure if movie theaters wanted to use Linux, they could hire out
programming for a legal copy of a DVD decoder on Linux.

And to answer the other question, yes I liked the movie.  It's been
getting bad reviews, but I normally don't agree with most reviewers
anyway.  This isn't the correct place for reviews/opinions about the
actual movie, so let's not turn this thread into that.

--------------------------------------------
Bruce Smith                bruce@armintl.com
System Administrator / Network Administrator
Armstrong International, Inc.
Three Rivers, Michigan  49093  USA
http://www.armstrong-intl.com/
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