Around the World in 83 Days – Plane Movies – Central Intelligence

So whilst travelling around the world I’ve been on a few planes and caught up with a lot of movies.

Central Intelligence

So this was definitely better than Bad Moms but there is only so much suspension of belief I can muster and how many times can trained CIA agents miss their target?

Freakonomics » An Economist on the Oscars

“We don’t think our customers are smart enough to tell us which of our products are good. So we created a ceremony to correct our customers.”

Movies are not a product made just for the members the academy. These ventures are primarily made for the general public. And yet, when it comes time to decide which picture is “best,” the opinion of the general public seems to be ignored. Essentially the Oscars are an industry statement to their customers that says: “We don’t think our customers are smart enough to tell us which of our products are good. So we created a ceremony to correct our customers.”
The Oscars are hardly alone in the entertainment industry. We see something similar in the sports industry. The fans are not generally asked to choose the “best” player in each sport. Instead, experts (i.e. sports writers) often tell us who is the “Most Valuable Player,” who is an “All-Star,” or who is worthy of the Hall of Fame.

However, what if we asked the customers?

via Freakonomics » An Economist on the Oscars.

Fighting back against the monopolists

So in my quest to get a Freeview+ box with DVD player/recorder I ended up buying an LG RHT297H which is great in most ways (a few niggles like losing the time and hence recording times when the power cuts) but is forced to only play region 2 DVDs. Now I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again if I buy a DVD from the US the UK or Australia then it should play on my equipment so obviously I wanted to fix this.

After searching on a few forums here is how to make your LG HDD DVD recorder multiregion.

Switch your player on.

When it’s booted up hold down CLEAR on remote (under the slider) and PROG Down on the front panel of your DVD player simultaneously for about 6 seconds

You will see a list of codes

Change OP6 from ae or af to 8e (move around using the left and right arrows on the remote)

Press Enter and then menu/list on your remote

Your player will reboot or switch off

Turn it on or wait for it to reboot and now your player is multi region.

🙂

Attention for reasons beyond our control

Okay so finally Andy and I got around to watching Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. We had been going to see it all weekend but ony managed it last night. So we ended up in Wimbledon Odeon. We had tried the Kingston one the night before but got waylaid enjoying dinner and it got way too late to see the movie.
So anyway back to Wimbledon.
Five minutes before the end. I know this because realistically there can’t have been much more left before the opening scenes of the original Star Wars, the film stopped. It wa slike someone had hit pause on the big DVD player. Then the announcement started and the sirens.
We were being evacuated from the building.
So we got the excitement of firemen and fire engines and standing ina big crowd waiting to see if we could watch the end or not. We decided to go for the seeing it again some other time option and headed back to Surbiton.
So I still can’t say I’ve seen the whole film.
Ah well better luck next time!