Chindie

The second episode was **** dreadful. I remember when Top Gear was genuinely funny without being overtly scripted into skits. The skits could be still be funny, the Reliant Robin sketch was obviously scripted but genuinely funny. But stuff like the Porsche challenge, cheap second hand cars, etc they were great TV. This however... It just doesn't work. The rescue skit had some funny ideas and was obviously a decent script for some silly send up of action movies etc, but it's utterly ruined by the personas the 3 take on. May is the least off the problem but Clarkson and particularly Hammond are **** dreadful, and always have been. The entire thing was an exercise is cringing so hard your teeth turned backwards. And the less said of the other 'comedy' sections the better. The celebrity death thing is the filmic equivalent of bollock ache and the weird sub chat show audience warm up shit Clarkson does is nail itchingly awful. The best thing that can happen to this show is to have the budget absolutely decimated. The more Clarkson is indulged the worse it gets.

The Hisense M7000 appears to be getting some love as a 'bang for your buck' option.

Technically most people will be related to some form of royalty. The old 'direct descendant of Charlemagne' thing.

I still love the idea of a billionaire property developer pointing at someone else as the Establishment.

I kinda feel like there should be something other than a spoiler box here... For the avoidance of doubt, I absolutely understood every second of the movie. I saw the twist coming in the minutes before it came and the audience around me (the little of that there was, and of that the little that wasn't calling the subcontinent at the time) could attest I had my head in my hands as I realised what it was about to do and how it was going to justify it. The movie makes a very pointed reference to a very pertinent thing about 45 minutes in and that set alarm bells ringing, but when it went for it I could feel my love for the thing drain away. I could still have a chat about it in the pub afterwards and discuss the layers and possible ramifications of what it lays out. But before that twist is was a fantastic movie with nice themes well developed and toyed with, and a few intellectual rabbit runs to navigate, and then it decides it's much more clever if it does that. And it isn't that clever. For me anyway.

When you're privileged, equality feels like oppression.

One of the upsides of Battlefield is you can be a dreadful FPS player and still contribute. A medic can rack up massive scores without contributing much to the kills of the team just by reviving and healing team mates. It's a very different style of play but no less useful.

I wonder where Bradford and Leicester would sit on the watch lists of the CIA.

Made the mistake of going to the Bullring. Fought my way there, taking about 3 times as long as usual, got to the HMV which I set foot in about once a year like everyone else, to be greeted by a queue down the length of the store more or less. And promptly walked back out. It's saying something when a shop that's invariably about 1 bad week from going under like HMV is so busy.

I'm sure someone will defend it.

Pitch or not, presumably given that they actually are working with the department (as are more than a few other consultancy firms on various elements of the situation) they would have an insight into the workings of the government on the Brexit question and therefore their comments might have more weight than initially framed you'd think. Perhaps considerably more given the inside view we now know they have.

Remember that Deloitte memo that actually had nothing to dry with the government and they weren't even employed by them and it was basically portrayed as a pitch for work? The Eye did an FoI request and discovered that Deloitte actually are being used by the Department for Exiting the EU. They're consulting on financial planning.

Do we needed a Paul Dacre scum thread? It'd be triple digits in a week.

I'd love an OLED. Well set up you see shots of films on Bluray look far better than usual. The black levels can't be outdone by LCD. You get absolutely fantastic image quality. But I do play games and the cost is mad. A good LCD won't be as good, but it'll be at worst maybe 2/3rds the price, and lag wing be an issue, and the HDR experience on a good set will be slightly better. But I'd still but an OLED of the money was burning a hole... They're just so nice and good blacks can't be underestimated. And you don't have to worry about bleed.

Yeah the Defenders are Daredevil, Cage, Jones and Iron Fist, and they've added some of the supporting cast from each series too. Daredevil is good. It's more obviously a superhero show than Cage, but it's still quite dark and violent. It's more like a Batman series than something like say, an Iron Man series would be - Daredevil isn't invincible, and his powers are only really tools to assist a well trained man rather than give him super strength or whatever. First series, which is great, is better than the second, which is more up and down quality wise, but adds in what might be the definitive version of the Punisher. The first series also has a great villain. It also has some great action scenes. Well worth a watch.

HMV supposedly have Titanfall 2 for £20 on Friday, which has had near universal praise (even for campaign).

I'm surprised. It's definitely better than AoS (which is dreadful, I've not watched anything past mid series 2) or AC (which could have been great but instead fell a little short). But I just found it so dull, and the overt villain awful. You should try Jessica Jones. Luke appears, and it's also very different to the usual superhero stuff. And has a brilliant villain.

IPT up again. Just merge it with VAT and have done with it...

UHD and 4k are basically the same thing. HDR is High Dynamic Range, which refers to colour range and brightness. The common thinking now is that HDR is more impactful than 4k itself, certainly in conditions in most peoples homes. Though the effect is heavily reliant on lightning conditions of the room, if the room is bright you lose the 'range' and impact of HDR. The 2 formats are harder. HDR10 is the easy quick way of doing it, kinda, DV much more involved and requires extra hardware to do it, but is better. But that also means things have to be encoded and made to make use of it. I think only Netflix (or Amazon) support it right now steaming wise. And I'm sure only LG make sets that support it ATM. And the average person might never notice it.

Scratch that, LG now support it on their newer LCD models. Dunno about other makes.

It's worth adding that there's 2 (potentially 3) HDR standards, and only really OLED TVs support the second format ATM, that may actually be the better solution. Most HDR TV's only support HDR10, newer OLEDs support Dolby Vision. Saying that there's so little HDR content, and so little of that supports DV, it's hard to say it makes much difference.

Oled's big benefit is the ability to do better blacks than any format other than plasma. That has the effect of making other colours pop more. They also offer very very good picture quality generally, which is again further helped by the black levels. They do have problems though. Many sets seem to have an issue with banding on the panel which is one of those things you might never notice or it would piss you off constantly, if you're unlucky and get a banded screen. They also can't get as bright as an LCD which means (good) LCD screens tend to have more 'pop' in HDR - the trade off however of the Oleds blacks arguably make this less necessary, but there are still times where the HDR is weaker on Oled. They also are still quite laggy compared to the best LCD, again something only some gamers may notice. And currently they can't do HDR gaming in game mode which helps reduce some lag. And they are a little more liable to burn in. Money no object and not being a gamer I'd go Oled just for how good those screens look when set up properly. But it's big big money for minor gains and other downsides that may effect your usage. It's quite likely some Oleds will drop in price this week, the B6 seems to be the good bet and is by most accounts pretty damn good.

Arrival has the right amount of explanation, and it's not difficult to understand. I just found that entire turn to the film intensely unsatisfying. The film presents a logical and somewhat scientific approach to a fantastical thing, and that thing is itself engrossing. And then it I don't think it's a bad movie by any means, but there's 20 minutes of a movie that ends up switching something that might have been a top 10 all time for me, into something that would struggle to get into the top 100.

Thanks. Some googling suggested this should be the first port of call so good to have that reiterated. A job for tomorrow evening. Thankfully seems less involved than other VAG cars of the same era.