Today was the day I had been counting down to for a few months now. I had a countdown gadget on my sidebar to assist with the counting down the this date. Finally it was here, Volume Two of Heroes, my favourite TV Show ever.

After watching a few of the previews released, I became worried that everything was going to be different from season one. Yes, things were different from season one, including the introduction of many new characters, new heroes. They didn’t really answer the main questions we were left with in season one except for one, are the Petrelli brothers alive. They also managed to add many new questions to the list.

Overall, I really enjoyed this episode of Heroes. I am not going to spoil it for you but if you haven’t already seen it, definitely go and download and watch the episode. If you haven’t seen the first season, you are an idiot, and you should probably go get the DVD set (or download them all for free.) This is going to be another awesome season of Heroes coming up!

Ten days ago, I posted complaining about VLC and one of the point mentioned was the bad quality of the video, more specifically, HD video.

I watched a H.264 HD video. I was disappointed with the quality becuase it was not as good as the quality Quicktime offered. It was extremely apparent when the podcast, Diggnation, displayed websites which were crystal clear and readable in Quicktime, but were slightly pixelated and harder to read in VLC.

I now retract hat I have said. The reason the quality didn’t look as good as it did in Quicktime is due to the fact that Quicktime opens the video in its original size whereas VLC Player scales the video down so all the controls and everything fits on the screen.

Quicktime makes the player adjust to the size of the video, in this case, HD Diggnation is 720p (1280×720). The resolution of my monitor is 1280×800 and what ends up happening is the player controls get chopped off. For me to control it, I have to move the player so the topbar goes offscreen. If I want to exit the video, I have to then drag it down. I can always put it in fullscreen and not worry about it but sometimes I want to do other things or want to be notified of events in the taskbar.

VLC doesn’t let it happen. It scales the video down so the player controls fit on the screen. The disadvantage is that you get loss of quality and a little pixelation due to it scaling the video down. This thing was, I didn’t realize thing until I accidentally put it into fullscreen and found that the quality was perfect and the pixelation gone. This is great, but I am a little disappointed in it. VLC didn’t tell me that it had scaled it down so everything would fit on the screen. When opening a video that is bigger than the real estate it has to work with, it should either prompt me and ask what to do, scale down or go fullscreen or otherwise alert me on what it is doing. Another thing is that 1:1 original size isn’t the original size, it has scaled it down and hasn’t told me. 1:1 original should mean that, the original size, and it should do that regardless of the space or at least give some sort of message.

I don’t think VLC is perfect but I have to admit, it’s pretty darn close. I suppose I am just a fussy person that wants things perfect and other people wouldn’t have issues with it. I will give VLC the award for best alternative player, especially for Quicktime, I have given up on that.

Today, season 3 of Prison Break returned. This is the first of many fall shows returning in the next 2 or so weeks. This season of Prison Break doesn’t seem as interesting, or as good as the following season but lets give it a chance. Many new characters were introduced in this episode which leaves me with some questions as well as a little confusion. I am getting the sense that in this season, we will finally see the bigger picture of what is going on. Hopefully they don’t drag this show out for a fourth season because then they are just dragging the horse for a bit too long.

Now it is time for two of my favourite TV shows (I have a lot of favourite shows) to go into Hiatus for the Summer. Monk and Psych aired their 9th episode of the season yesterday and are now having a break and returning back in the middle of January 2008.

Monk was unusual and wasn’t as good as it normally was. It was very random and confusing and didn’t have the same “interesting” case(s) that it normally did. Still worth watching but it didn’t meet up to its normal standard. What Monk lacked, Psych had. It was a great episode, the best out of all the episodes that have aired to date in my opinion. The last scene was something that had been building up in the series for a long time now. It was somewhat expected but the creators put a spin on it and made it interesting by making something that was nothing happen, which we pretty funny and well done.

Well now these series are having a break, it will free up 1 and 1/2 hours a week. It can make room in my schedule for the other shows that are returning in the next few weeks. I could also save another hour by only watching Diggnation once a week but is that really necessary?

Today is the day Diggnation come out for members. Usually on this day, I would download Xvid Diggnation from a mirror. Unfortunately the mirror I use isn’t mirroring this week and I cannot find an alternative so I can get Diggnation early. This makes me uneasy because I am missing out and it has also ruined my Saturday Schedule.

Generally how it goes is on Saturday, I download Diggnation early in Xvid format to watch at night time. Then the next day, Sunday, I download the Quicktime HD H.264 and watch it at night then again too. This has been my weekend schedule for the past… 3 weeks now (I think) and I do not like my schedule being disrupted.

I am also thinking about downloading Diggnation a 3rd time each week, once in iTunes so I can put it on my iPod Classic when I get it. I’m not sure if it is worth it though. I wish I could just throw the Quicktime HD or Xvid onto it but iPods don’t support it. I vote for DivX/XviD support in Apple products!!!

The other day when I tried to open a movie in Quicktime, my computer crashed. Quicktime is a frustrating piece of software for me, it doesn’t do video very well for me. It can play video on an external source, whether its a USB Drive or a Network Drive or a Memory Stick of some description. The only thing it can’t do it play videos that are saved onto my hard drive. I just don’t get it and why, 6 months later, it hasn’t bean fixed.

After some searching on the internet, apparently Apple blames nVidia for a bad driver for its Serial ATA driver and nVidia blames Apples bad software. No one seems to want to take responsibility for this and it is a pain in the arse for me and other people with this problem. People have been somewhat forced to use Quicktime alternatives. I eventually gave up and decided to take that route too.

I downloaded VLC Player and it pissed me off from the word go. It played video fine but it done annoying things that pissed me off. First off it made itself the default for all video formats. It would have been nice if it asked me first and not just presumed that I would want it like that. Trying to get it back to my original configuration was a pain in the neck and resulted in my uninstalling it and fixing settings individually to get it back exactly to the way it was.

After reinstalling it, I watched a H.264 HD video. I was disappointed with the quality becuase it was not as good as the quality Quicktime offered. It was extremely apparent when the podcast, Diggnation, displayed websites which were crystal clear and readable in Quicktime, but were slightly pixelated and harder to read in VLC. Another tedious thing is the volume control in VLC which is not simple to use and also thanks to Vista, makes it animated, which can be distracting when watching video at times.

Everyone is going to blame Vista and say thats what I get for being an early adopter, or a user in general. Yes I accept that but that is not going to make me switchback to XP. My XP days are over and I am only looking forward now. On the Quicktime problem, I have two options, put my videos on an external drive and play them from there in Quicktime, or play them with VLC but suffer because if degraded quality. I guess I’m gunna have to live with an annoyance either way so it’s whatever one is more convenient so VLC it is, unfortunately!

UPDATE: I have made a retraction to one of the things mentioned in this post. You can find it here.

Monk and Psych didn’t air because they had stupid tennis on TV. If it didn’t air, I can’t download it! I am annoyed. I hate sport, why don’t they have special channels dedicated to it and not have sport on any other channel, especailly the ones with TV shows I watch! It completely screwed up my Saturday Night routine.

Fortunately for me, they have changed the Diggnation schedule and I ended up downloading that instead (more about that issue later though) of my normal shows. I watched that and also had plenty of time to spare and watched two movies, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Meet The Robinsons. Both movies were pretty good. Anyway, I do not like having my routine changed, especailly if its a disadvantage to me. Unfortunately my weekly routine will change when the fall shows come and Monk and Psych go into hiatus.