It was about time Hollywood recognized JJ Campanella´s work

This is the JJ Campanella the World+Dog now knows...

It was about time that Hollywood recognized Juan José Campanella´s outstanding work which won many awards both locally and internationally over the years.

Down here we knew him well, but not wearing a tuxedo, but more resembling something like this:

Yes, El Secreto de sus Ojos won the Best Foreign Film award at the Oscars tonight.

My hat´s off to Campanella, and the beautiful Sole Villamil.


It´s rarely mentioned in the foreign press that Campanella also stars one of the best educational programmes on the public TV (government-run) Educational TV channel Encuentro, created in 2007.

The TV program where Campanella shines as one of the hosts is dubbed "Invisible Environments (of Science and Technology)" (Entornos Invisibles de la Ciencia y la Tecnología) and explains how physics and basic technology works (from the electric grid , to Newton´s laws to.. you-name-it) with a large dose of humour thrown in the mix.

http://www.encuentro.gov.ar/Event.aspx?Id=263

It airs on Encuentro as mentioned, which is available on all cable systems for free, and soon free over the air too, thanks to TDT...

Sorry, you´ll have to learn Spanish first. :)
FC

Earth to BBC: Bring Back Sebastian to HardTalk...

Several years ago... on the brink of the Iraq invasion, I really really enjoyed the Beeb programme "Hard Talk" hosted at the time by Tim Sebastian.

However, for some unknown reason (to me at least), he's been replaced by someone younger but who is not nearly as good.

On the other hand, Sebastian has moved to host "The Doha Debates" a truly boring program with high aspirations, a mix of reality-TV voting system and debate, which ends up being neither.

If I had any power to influence the Beeb, I'd bring back Sebastian to Hard Talk.
I didn't always agree with him, but I really liked his style.

FC

Bring back the 1920s

Public TV has a bonus, and it's that it's not subject to the influence of Hollywood and the special interests, and as thus can have a very broad view, and some gems that focus on history and true art, not just the latest-movie-of-the-week peddled by the film distributors.

Such is the case of Argentina's public TV channel, Canal 7. The only one that survived the privatization wave of the 1990s. Surely it's a long way from the Beeb, but it's been improving lately. Such is the case of "Filmoteca" a daily programme by film collectors, for film buffs.

Today, I had the pleasure of watching a series of Buster Keaton short films from the 1920s.


The best, IMHO, was "One Week", which you can watch on Google Video over here.

Buster and Sybil are newlyweds. Among their wedding gifts is a portable house you can easily put together in one week... but things won't be as easy as it seemed.

A great laugh and the amount of Busters' falls and hits is mind-blowing, specially considering he used no stunt performers. All the falls are real, and the programme presenters even explained that Buster Keaton broke a few bones several times during his career, only accepting to use a stunt performer on a jump once, because the length of a javelin jump would have been impossible for him to perform.

Thanks, Fernando Martin Peña, for letting us know about these gems from 1920s cinema.

[Fernando M. Peña and Pablo Manes host this daily view on the history of cinema]

I wholeheartedly recommend this programme dubbed "Filmoteca". It airs Mon-Fri after 01:00am on Canal 7 in Buenos Aires and its network of repeaters that spans several provinces (Mar del Plata in Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Cordoba, etc).

FC

Get 1080i HD upscaling over component video with the Helios H4000 DVD player!

A couple months ago, the nice folks at Neodigits were kind enough to send me a sample Helios H4000 upscaling DVD player for testing.

The small black H4000 over a Philips DVP9680

I'm holding out my review publication on the INQUIRER until I see if they release firmware fixes or not (I already emailed them some of my suggestions).

Another design win: vent holes!

However, that doesn't prevent me from wholeheartedly recommending this DVD player. If all you need is a DVD player for DVD movies and MPEG4 avis (DIVX or XVID) which also is capable of doing High-Definition (HD) upscaling to 1080i over component video, then look no further!.

Surprise: a VGA out!. You can hook it to a SVGA monitor, projector
or anything with VGA input!

The H4000 is well constructed, has an internal 5.1 audio decoder (no need for an external box!), a nice, big remote control with keys that glow in the dark (hurrah!), and ... get this... a POWER SWITCH in the back. This means you can actually turn the device completelly off, it cuts the AC power from the power supply!. No need to waste power in "standby" mode!. It also protects the unit from power fluctuations when not in use.

A built-in 5.1 audio decoder, to boot!

The player works flawlessly. It played every Region-1, Region 2 (Europe), and Region 4 (South America / Australia) that I threw at it. No need to enter region codes, the player arrived as "Region Free"!.

The H4000 hooked to my HD-ready 29" Philips CRT TV
which notably lacks HDMI inputs, so HD over Component
is the only way. To my knowledge the H4000 is the ONLY
DVD player capable of bypassing HDCP and doing HD over CVI.

So, do I recommend it? Yes.

Are there things that could be improved?

Yes. If you plan to use it for mp3 playback or if you have audio in .ogg (Vorbis) format, or if you plan to look at high-quality (2MP and upwards) photos with this player, be advised that these features leave a lot to be desired.

The Helios boot logo. Notice how the Philips TV shows HD 1080i mode!

R.E.M. DVD player in 1080i mode

For instance, photos look as if they are reduced to 640x480 then displayed (with visible dithering). MP3 and general data cd-r or dvd-r file browsing is limited because it doesn't support long filenames (Joliet). The names are shortened to the first few characters.

That's why I'm waiting to see if they fix these issues via a firmware update.

However, if all you want is a DVD player that does HD 1080i or 1080p upscaling via component video outputs, this is a must, get one while you can!.

See also my INQ article:

Big fat "HDTV-ready" CRT lack HDMI
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36644