February 27, 2001
I was watching a movie at home last night on VCD. VCD is a video compact disk, basically an MPEG file on a CD which can be played to a television or monitor. These are pretty cheap here in Hong Kong, often selling for about $30 to $40 for movies which have been out for a while. That's about half the cost of a movie ticket, so it's good value.
MPEG is a lossily compressed format, very like a JPEG file, so compression artifacts can be visible in the scene, especially if there are large or rapid changes in the picture. A good player is essential.
I've got a huge collection of VCDs - everytime I pass a VCD shop I go in and buy the ones that look interesting. I tend to acquire them faster then I watch them, so I've always got a big backlog of VCDs to go through.
Anyway, the wife was out with her friends for the past few nights, so I decided I'd catch up on a few of my movies...
...Sigh, this was one of those projects which would require a vastly greater expenditure of time and effort than I'm prepared to put into it.
Apollo 13
What a great movie - Tense action, geeky backroom guys, three-ring binders. See also Office Space.