The Spam Thread!

[cpd2009]

Oh, Sparkle World and your endless reuse of vectors.

I suppose they won't let Sparkle World artists draw the characters themselves?

Then again, even Hasbro's own vectors tend to come out weird sometimes. Case in point: the stylized Rainbow Dash that looked like she was drawn by the person who designed Michael Jackson's Moonwalker logo. And of course the "geass" Fluttershy (one eye missing the color in her retina).

I found a MLP:FIM calendar at Dollar General last month, and there are two errors on the front cover!! Pinkie Pie is missing the nostrils on her nose, and Rainbow Dash is missing the cloud on her cutie mark, which is just a bolt of rainbow lightning.

I wish I had access to a scanner so I could post it. But I think some online retailers may have a picture of it.

Though the calendar is officially licensed, it was Made in China. Since China has their Great Firewall (the source of their SOPA style internet censorship), perhaps the vectors got corrupted that way?

[huckleberrypie]

Even better gameplay than Superman 64:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxZUPZlVrWI[/youtube]

[RAMChYLD]

Even better gameplay than Superman 64:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxZUPZlVrWI[/youtube]

Touch Screen? Button? Do they have those back then?

(in other words, where the heck is the fourth wall?)

I found a MLP:FIM calendar at Dollar General last month, and there are two errors on the front cover!! Pinkie Pie is missing the nostrils on her nose, and Rainbow Dash is missing the cloud on her cutie mark, which is just a bolt of rainbow lightning.

That's the said stylized Rainbow Dash. And if you look carefully at Fluttershy, you'll notice something's not quite right with one of her eyes.

[huckleberrypie]

Touch Screen? Button? Do they have those back then?

(in other words, where the heck is the fourth wall?)

"If you need instructions on how to solve the case, check out the enclosed instruction book!"

[cpd2009]

The nerve of some people who don't respect copyright.

Someone on eBay lifted the image of my Menards Black Friday DVD player to use for their own listing!!

:evil:

Sent a sternly worded email to the seller. If seller fires back in a similar or worse way, Im prepared to report said seller to eBay.

Now...to edit my Flickr profile page to keep people from doing the same thing in the future.

UGH!!

[RAMChYLD]

The nerve of some people who don't respect copyright.

Someone on eBay lifted the image of my Menards Black Friday DVD player to use for their own listing!!

:evil:

Sent a sternly worded email to the seller. If seller fires back in a similar or worse way, Im prepared to report said seller to eBay.

Now...to edit my Flickr profile page to keep people from doing the same thing in the future.

UGH!!

Well, if you released the picture under the Creative Commons license...

[cpd2009]

The nerve of some people who don't respect copyright.

Someone on eBay lifted the image of my Menards Black Friday DVD player to use for their own listing!!

:evil:

Sent a sternly worded email to the seller. If seller fires back in a similar or worse way, Im prepared to report said seller to eBay.

Now...to edit my Flickr profile page to keep people from doing the same thing in the future.

UGH!!

Well, if you released the picture under the Creative Commons license...

No, I didn't. I usually don't mess with the CC/Copyright settings when uploading photos.

There was a rant here earlier about why I was upset about the whole thing, but I have since deleted the message as I think I blew the entire issue out of proportion, and also because it would bring back drama into a thread where we just have fun talking about things. I have two questions though...the first one I'll ask now..

Should I just attribute the CC license on my Flickr uploads? I think it would be a good idea since there are many people who would probably steal my photos to begin with, but if I just go with CC, then I won't have to worry about it. I like helping and sharing.

[cpd2009]

Alright...second question is a go. It's not really a dilemma as the post title states, but lately, I have been thinking about Anna-Lena's successor, Anna-Lena II

I love Anna-Lena, a standard definition RCA TruFlat CRT set, 20 inch, model 20F512T. Made in August 2004. I just bought her from a second hand store back home this past summer, and the main reason was that her picture quality is stunning for a modern CRT set. The colors are gorgeous as well as the overall sharpness of the picture. Despite that, I have been feeling the urge to upgrade to a flat panel TV set for the past week or so.

One possible reason is that my parents got a nice LG flat-panel TV for Christmas, and it looks sweet. We got HD Dish Network service not long afterwards. SD looks somewhat awful since they stretch the 4:3 image to fill the 16:9 frame, but HD is great.

Second reason is that I tested a cheap plug and play NES-on-a-chip TV game into the LG TV that is on the floor lobby of my dorm. This LG also stretches the 4:3 image to 16:9, but there was no remote so I couldn't change it. Either way, the graphics actually looked smooth, not blocky as I expected to be. There was bad input lag though, and I will get to that in a bit.

There are a couple reasons why I shy away from flat panel HDTV sets. As mentioned earlier, my previous experience with flat panel HDTVs proved to me that they don't really render old video game systems too well. 16-bit systems like the Super Nintendo just appeared very blocky and pixelated to me with my old Sansui 19'' HDTV, which I still have.

Another reason is input lag. CRT sets have no input lag whatsoever, but flat panel HDTVs unfortunately do because they need to scale lower resolution content to the LCD panel's native resolution. If there is input lag, then your old Super NES, NES, Genesis, and other games become unplayable. Thankfully, my Sansui 19'' set has a fast video processor, and input lag is virtually nonexistent. I was able to play my video games on the set without problems. You can only see the lag if you have the Sansui set next to a CRT, but even then, you will notice the lag is extremely minimal, probably below 20ms.

Yet another reason is that standard definition content looks...poor when compared to a CRT set. Every DVD, VHS, and video game I own is standard def, save for my Snow White Diamond Edition, which has a BluRay + DVD. I can connect a BluRay player to Anna-Lena, but it won't be in HD.

Despite these issues, I still have an urge to upgrade to a flat panel TV set. Seeing as how the graphics from that plug-in-play NES game looked rather decent on the LG (they didn't appear blocky at all), perhaps the video processing has improved. The Sansui 19'' HDTV, which I named Max, was made in 2008, and it shows. No HDMI inputs at all...just composite, SVideo, VGA, and RF input. HD looks good, if not a bit grainy. SD content is alright if you don't stretch it, but it still looks inferior to a CRT.

It's extremely hard to find CRT TV sets brand new these days, as flat panels are the only TVs you'll find at WalMart, BestBuy, Kmart, and any other big box retailer. You can only get CRT TV sets used these days, and while there are some that are well looked after, how long are they going to last? Anna-Lena won't last forever, and if push comes to shove, I may have no choice but to go for a flat panel TV set to succeed her.

Here is where you guys help. Should I go for a flat panel HDTV set, or just hang on to Anna-Lena? I do have the money to get a set at this time, but that money would be better budgeted since it has to last me until May.

[RAMChYLD]

Should I just attribute the CC license on my Flickr uploads? I think it would be a good idea since there are many people who would probably steal my photos to begin with, but if I just go with CC, then I won't have to worry about it. I like helping and sharing.

Well, if you go CC, you must be prepared to let go of the photo. Understand that once the CC license is set, revoking it would be practically impossible.

The best improvise is this: release the pictures under the CC Attribution license. This means that anyone who wants to use your photos must credit you as the photographer, if they don't then you can e-mail them and remind them. And if they still won't, then you can report to eBay that they're violating the CC license.

If you really don't want a certain picture shared, not only release it under normal copyrights, but also set it to be visible only to friends and family (what I'm doing right now). That way no one can access your picture to steal it anyway.

Here is where you guys help. Should I go for a flat panel HDTV set, or just hang on to Anna-Lena? I do have the money to get a set at this time, but that money would be better budgeted since it has to last me until May.

Well, if you want to go for a Flat TV, firstly make sure you're ready to put up with blurry SD, since not all TVs have a good upscaler. Of course, if you sit far enough from the TV, it should look indifferent. You can also disable video scaling on the TV- this will enable two black bars on the side of the TV, but will maintain the picture ratio somewhat. As for the lag issue, as you said before Game Mode is the answer to this. And getting a set with Game Mode is actually quite easy nowadays- most brand name TV sets support the mode.

I would suggest holding off the money until May, but then, if you're willing to let Anna-Lena go, you can recover some of the money lost to Anna-Lena II.

[cpd2009]

I'll take note of your suggestions David.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.avforums.com/forums/lcd-led-lcd-tvs/1383557-lcd-led-tv-console-gaming-input-lag-list-chart.html">http://www.avforums.com/forums/lcd-led- ... chart.html</a><!-- m -->

Apparently, even with game mode on, lag times can be still bad. According to this forum, anything below 35ms is considered good for gaming.

If I were to choose a brand, I would be inclined to get a Sansui 24'' LED TV. Max has proven to be great for classic games when it comes to input lag....it's virtually nonexistent as mentioned earlier. If not Sansui, I would go for an RCA, specifically this one.. <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://preview.tinyurl.com/85g9ouo">http://preview.tinyurl.com/85g9ouo</a><!-- m -->

As for requirements for Anna-Lena II...not much. However, she must have at least 2 HDMI ports for a future Xbox 360 and my DVD/VCR recorder unit, which happens to have an HDMI output, a composite video input (SVideo would be better), component input, and probably not a requirement, but I would like analog or digital audio output to a stereo speaker system since the TV speakers tend to sound tinny on flat panel TVs. Some TVs have a headphone audio out, which would work great to hook up to my Panasonic boombox Line-In jacks.

As for resolution, 1080p would be great, but I wouldn't mind 720p at all.