This week certainly was a squeaker, Brent.  Winning by .37 points?  I'd be surprised if there was a tighter score in the league over the entire season.

Sounds like NASA needs to get some MPEG4 compression encoders.

It boils down to bandwidth.  There's a fuckton of telemetry coming down from the spacecraft.  You should see some hi res stuff in a few days.

Actually, it's probably a combination of factors.  No doubt, the telemetry package for Orion has to be massive.  Especially since NASA stated that they have as many as 1000 separate instrumentation readouts to relay.

But I work with technology on a daily basis that can compress a 1080i HD video signal down to 6 MHz for transmission via Ku or C band satellite uplink.  Hell, with the right encoding I can even stream live HD video by bundling together streaming data from 3 or 4 smartphones.  And considering the size of the antennae at the NASA tracking stations, they should have been more than capable of bringing in that signal even when the spacecraft was at it's apogee.

Bandwidth probably wasn't so much the issue.  More likely, it's one of the classic challenges of spaceflight:  weight.  The weight of the gear that would be needed for that type of HD video encoding was probably the deciding factor for NASA.  HD cameras, like GoPros, are really light.  But the transmission gear?  That's another story.  NASA has been using Standard Def video transmission gear on manned spaceflight for years and probably has some very light gear at their disposal.  As for cameras?  NASA very well may have had something like a GoPro onboard Orion.  I'd definitely like to see that footage.

Quote from: MakingStarWars.net on November 23, 2014, 03:21 PM

Is this a GIF shot from the Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser?

Nope!

*******************

Lots of new (potential?) spoilers in this Reddit thread.

Quote

Max Von Sydow’s character is not Boba Fett, Darth Maul, or Mace Windu.

While Sydow’s identity is a surprise, it’s not necessarily earth-shattering. It’s the sort of thing that hardcore fans would be excited about, but overly casual fans likely won’t realize the significance of. Sydow’s identity does have meaning, but you need to know the context.

Quote

[–]midoriiro 1 point 17 hours ago

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that Max Von Sydow’s Identity is this guy: http://goo.gl/I1TmVV (Lobot from Cloud City)

He is a cyborg from the original trilogy. He was located in Cloud City where Luke lost his lightsaber, and Luke's lightsaber is apparently what causes a massive turn of events. If it is found by Kira and Sydow's character is with Kira then it would make sense for him to be the same person/cyborg/robot or whatever.

Ohhhhhhhhhh ****, y'all.

THIS POST is the very reason why this site needs a LIKE button.  Like, RIGHT NOW. 

It's confirmed.  Benedict Cumberbatch will play Dr. Strange.

I was waiting for the Nien Nunb update for a long time.  He was one of my favorite vintage figures, and his scenes on the Falcon in ROTJ were great, even if his dialogue was just jibberish. 

The new figure is great.  I was disappointed that it was part of an online only wave.  And I think that entire wave should have gone to retail.

Quote from: Nicklab on November 29, 2014, 07:54 AM

Regarding my "cautious optimism"?  I think that a lot of my uncertainty is entirely about the fact that George Lucas is no longer at the helm.  What will Disney do with Star Wars?  And what will JJ Abrams do with Star Wars?  I guess until I see more there's going to be a lingering sense of uncertainty.  At least for me.

George Lucas no longer being at the helm is the single biggest reason that I think these might be amazing.  Lucas used to be great, but sometime in the mid-90's he lost his edge and has pretty much made junk since then.

For me that isn't where things went pear shaped.  I think the issues with the prequels stem largely from GL getting back into the Director's chair.  Lucas recognized that much after he made the first movie.  He stepped back into the role of screenwriter / executive producer and let someone else direct TESB and ROTJ.  That formula worked. 

However, given the way that Lucas had taken to directing the PT films from the edit suite, I don't know if any good director would have taken on the job of directing any of the prequels.  But what would the PT have been like if George Lucas had a sounding board of someone he respected along the lines of a Kirschner in the director's chair?  I think that's one of the great questions regarding the Star Wars prequels.

And then there's JJ Abrams.  I look at what he did with the two Star Trek films and those are a significant departure from classic Trek.  Under Abrams Star Trek went from SciFi to becoming a series of action films.  Personally, I can't say that I've been a big fan of the ST reboot.  So will JJ Abrams stay true to the spirit of the Star Wars franchise?  And will Kathleen Kennedy hold his feet to the fire to do just that?  This is the area where I have questions about this new era of Star Wars.

There's an interesting article about the trailer on the NY Times site.  It talks about some of the love/hate relationship of fans with Star Wars as it exists now, and the reactions to the trailer.

Even with the appearance of OT elements like Stormtroopers, the Falcon, X-Wings and TIE Fighters, this trailer *FEELS* different.  And I chalk some of my own reaction to the general sense of cynicism that seems pervasive among fans of my own generation.  I was just 5 years old when I saw the first film in the theater.  And that was after it had been in the theaters for the whole summer of 1977!  That experience shaped my perception of Star Wars up through 1983 or so.  I continued to watch the OT on pirated video tapes through the 80's and eventually knew the films backwards and forwards.

I was genuinely excited for the PT.  And at the time of the release of those films I didn't have so much of a problem with them.  At least not like some other fans seem to.  But that sense of cynicism from fans who grew up with the OT has spread.  My stance has been that NOBODY, not even George Lucas, was going to be able to live up to the expectations of this generation of fans.  You know this crowd.  The ones who say 'George Lucas raped my childhood'.  Blech. 

But unfortunately for everyone involved, when you're talking about a story like the fall of the Jedi Order and the origins of Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker, George Lucas was painted into a corner from a storytelling standpoint.  When a story is boxed in with those sorts of parameters it makes it hard for anyone to get really invested in the process.  At least when we knew from the OT that Luke & Leia's mother dies, Anakin gets dismembered and burned, the Jedi are slaughtered and Obi-Wan Kenobi & Yoda go into hiding.

And then there's been the monetization of Star Wars.  It's one of the biggest, most lucrative licensed properties of all time.  So there's been a financial interest in keeping the Star Wars machine rolling.  And then enter Disney:  GL decides he's done with Star Wars and ready to move on. So what will Disney do?  Make more movies, of course!  The financial motivation on the parts of GL, Lucasfilm, Fox, Disney et al does make you question the purity of things.  At least I do.

Clearly, the arc of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader is over.  What we're left with now is a great unknown.  I think it's that unknown factor that leaves me feeling uncertain after seeing this trailer.  Maybe some of the PT critic cynicism has worn off on me, too.  And I know for certain that I have mixed feelings about Disney and their stewardship of Star Wars.  But I'm also left thinking that Disney has actually done a good job with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  So I guess I also have a degree of that cautious optimism.