MojoLists

Movies are designed to place you deep inside their world, well good movies are. Watching a movie on a large television or even projector is a wonderful experience but the picture only tells half the story. Movie soundtracks envelope you, they bring out emotions, surround you in their make believe world, and complete the fantasy.

If you are listening to movies on the speakers in your television or on a cheap, uncalibrated sound system you are missing the movie. From the explosive sound effects to the softest whisper, a good sound system brings the movie to life.

Films are NOT a visual medium, they are a combination of video and audio. If you haven't watched your favorite films, no matter what the genre, in the theater or a home theater with a full 5.1 sound system, then you need to do so, right now. The difference is night and day. The importance of the sound track to telling a story on film was known even before talkies came out. Music was always played during the showing, music designed specifically for the film and timed to elicit the emotion, the action, the laughter being displayed on the screen.

Don't cheat yourself by cutting out the second half of a film, bring them to life in a whole new way. Experience the entire artistic vision of the director and invest in a sound system worthy of the movies you love.

For years I have preached about the evils of pan-and -scan. Thanks to VHS and the public's inability to endure any movie that didn't fill their entire 4:3 screen, pan-and-scan became the way we endured movies, even the early days of DVD were filled with the criminal act. Criterion had the vision and guts to start releasing movies in their original aspect ratio during their beginning with Laserdisc and eventually helped all of the studios see the value of putting out DVD's in their pristine and full aspect ratio.

Aside from the occasional release that comes in both flavors, pan-and-scan has slowly vanished, thanks in part to the popularity of HDTV with its  16:9 aspect ratio. Now a new evil has started to find its way onto DVD and Blu-Ray. The most current release of Gulliver's travels, a movie with an original aspect of 4:3, has been released in an altered 16:9 format.

No movie should be changed from its directors vision, in any way. I don't want to see any of Stanley Kubrick's 4:3 films in 16:9,  that wasn't what he wanted, that wasn't his vision.  The general public needs to be educated all over again it seems... wait, that isn't it at all.

The studios need to be smashed over the head for this idiotic practice and belief that John Q Public won't accept black bars on their screen. People have finally come to understand that some movies don't fit their screen. If they don't like it they can select from a number of options to stretch the picture (a practice I am appalled by but tolerate) and fill their screen. It makes no sense whatsoever to leave those of us who wish to see the movie as it was presented on the big screen.

I am hoping this practice dies quickly and I certainly won't be purchasing movies, in any format that don't present the movie properly. Take a stand and force the studios to do the right thing, skip the purchase until the movie is offered in the format it was filmed for.

I will go into the lesser evil of not offering original sound tracks in a later article, it upsets me just as much however so be prepared for another rant.

I have written several article on the WRT160Nv2 wireless router from Linksys. The problem appears to be much more widespread that anyone imagined and Linksys has yet to admit there is a problem.

I don't get a whole lot of traffic to this blog but my user base has increased by thousands over the last two weeks, all because of people looking for a solution to the DNS bug in this router. The Linksys forums are swarming with upset customers and a total lack of caring on the part of Linksys.

Linksys was kind enough to send me a new router when I bricked the first one trying to downgrade the firmware. The new one arrived with the old firmware and it is running like a champ now. I appreciate Linksys doing a fast swap for me but it still cost me $20 for shipping it to them and I was without wireless for a week. That is a major inconvenience not to mention that the additional cost could have gone to a better router if I had known of the problems with the WRT160Nv2.

I am not giving up on Linksys, their customer support took great care of me. I will have to rethink the relationship if I don't see a fix from them soon however. Running the older version 8 firmware means I am open to a DNS security vulnerability. I don't like that, hell, who would. If you are in the market for a wireless router, especially a Linksys router, I wouldn't buy this one.

Original Article: Linksys WRT160N DNS Issue Needs a Fix