more on disc players

On April 15 I did a post about a new disc player I picked up, a Samsung BD-JM57C, that seemed to be able to handle everything. Well, I've discovered it won't play files made with the DivX (4/5/6) video codec.....something that has been very commonly used in the past 6 years or so.
An example of that would be the most recent disc of New Tricks episodes. I suspect this could be the same problem James in Texas has been having. 

Inside No. 9

Inside No. 9, the dark comedy anthology series created and written by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, returned for a second series which ends later today. As with the first series, this one features an impressive list of "big name" actors...too many with too many credits to list here.

Inside No. 9

The episode "12 Days of Christine" closes with Sarah Brightman's recording of Time To Say Goodbye from about 20 years ago. Sarah was an original cast star of Phantom of the Opera along with Michael Crawford. Michael starred in Some Mothers Do 'ave 'em with Michele Dotrice as his poor wife and Michele plays Sheridan Smith's mother in the Inside No. 9 episode. Does anyone else make connections like that, or am I losing it?

Harry

If you are a fan of the classic 1960's / 1970's comedy of Harry Worth, a few weeks ago Mancunian Ken discovered that a previously "lost" episode of his late 60's sitcom "Harry Worth" had been uploaded to youtube in four parts. I downloaded the 4 parts and after a bit of editing combined them into 1 file. You can watch it on youtube or I would be glad to fit it in on a disc or email it to you.
Harry Worth (Series 3 Episode 5 ) James Bond: Where Are You? (originally aired 18 November 1968).

Vera

Vera's back. The world's second-oldest Inspector has returned with four new feature-length episodes.
(The world's oldest inspector, George Gently, also returns with four new feature-length episodes beginning Wednesday.)

 Vera

Poldark

Poldark has returned to the TV screen. About 40 years ago BBC produced a Poldark series that ran for 29 episodes and also aired in the US on PBS Masterpiece. This should be returning next year for a second series. In case you missed it the first time around or are unfamiliar with the Winston Graham books, Poldark is a drama that takes place in 1790's Cornwall. This also marks the final appearance by the late Warren Clarke, who appears in the first 4 episodes and appeared on television quite regularly for 50 years (first appearing in an episode of Pardon The Expression in the northern hemisphere summer of 1965). Clarke's final scene is a deathbed scene. Ironically, he was not well at the time of the filming and he died in bed a few weeks later.

Books

1975

2015

Gallipoli + House of Hancock

A couple of Australian dramas from a couple months ago that fell through the cracks and I forgot all about them.

Gallipoli

House of Hancock

Banished + Ordinary Lies

Two new drama serials. All are one-hour episodes. Excellent quality full screen 720 X 404 high bitrate video on individual discs or both on a single disc with a 640 X 360 picture and lower quality bitrate. Take your pick. 

Banished is about the establishing of a British penal colony in what is now New South Wales in 1788. Starring Orla Brady (Out of the Blue, Noah's Ark, Proof, Mistresses, Sinbad, Eternal Law, Jo), MyAnna Buring (White Heat, Downton Abbey, Ripper Street), Ryan Corr (Packed to the Rafters, Love Child), David Dawson (Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Luther, Peaky Blinders, Ripper Street), Russell Tovey (Little Dorrit, Being Human, What Remains, Him & Her, The Job Lot), David Wenham (SeaChange, Killing Time, Top of the Lake, Better Man, The Code), Joanna Vanderham (Dancing on the Edge, The Paradise, The Runaway) and so on..................and was created by Jimmy McGovern.

Banished

Ordinary Lies takes place in a modern day British car dealership. The show is written by Danny Brocklehurst (Clocking Off, Shameless, Linda Green, Accused, The Driver) with Kay Mellor (Playing The Field, Fat Friends, Band of Gold, Strictly Confidential, Between the Sheets, The Chase, The Syndicate) starring Jo Joyner (Swinging, No Angels, Candy Cabs, Trying Again, EastEnders), Sally Lindsay (Coronation Street, Scott & Bailey, Mount Pleasant), Max Beesley (Bodies, The Last Enemy, Hotel Babylon, Survivors, Mad Dogs), Michelle Keegan (Coronation Street), Ellie Haddington (Life Begins, The Cafe, Bad Girls, Foyle's War), Shaun Dooley (Five Days, Married Single Other, Sugartown, Misfits, The Game, Broadchurch), Mackenzie Crook (The Office, Detectorists, Game of Thrones, Almost Human), Tony Maudsley (Eyes Down, Benidorm, The Wilsons, The Job Lot)....and others. Samantha Power (A Prince Among Men, Little Britain, The Cup, guest appearances) appears in the second episode. I recognized her distinctive voice before I recognized her.....Susannah Doyle (Drop the Dead Donkey, Ballykissangel) appears in the 6th (and also made a recent appearance in WPC 56).

Ordinary Lies

and another option

Sharon in Memphis, Tennessee has a good suggestion to share:

"I use a Mediasonic HW-150PVR Homeworx box.

Look it up on amazon.com. 

Mediasonic-HW-150PVR-HomeWorx-Converter-Recording

I transfer your files to a external hard drive with my computer then plug it in and watch it on tv. I started doings this months ago.

It plays  all your files with no problems. It's nice to have all the files in one place. It's the best investment I've made. A great alternative to a dvd player."

another option

GP in Texas wrote: "My Samsung TV is only about two years old and has a USB input at the back. When in TV mode, not DVD mode or anything else, if I plug in a USB drive, a box pops up on the screen asking me to select a USB device, even though there's only one. Then I can choose videos or music. My remote control has a play, pause and stop button at the very bottom that are for these files. There's also a "MEDIA.P" button on the remote that brings the USB menu back up if I get out of it somehow."

I have a 7 year old Samsung and it has a USB input on the side, but it only plays photo's or music. So sometime between 2008 and 2013 they must have added a video feature. 

So there's another option for playing files with no disc player even needed. Simply copy the files from disc, create your own playlist and copy to USB, plug it into the TV and away you go. 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Charlie in Bangkok writes that he has had very good success with Pioneer brand DivX / all-region players which can be had for about $40 there. 

Roger in New Zealand writes that he bought a Pioneer DV-2242 and has generally had good luck with it but sometimes it won't play a file yet finds his 8 year old Sony DVR will.

James in Texas says his newest disc player purchase, a Sony 3200, will only play about 70% of the files. I'm thinking that it may have a DivX and/or Xvid codec issue where it will recognize one, but not the other. In the future, send me a list of files you can't play and maybe I can figure out why. It could also be a mp3 and/or AAC or AC3 audio codec issue.

    

Quite Interesting XL - L

QI {quite interesting} returned for a 12th series, the "L" series, back in October. They were somewhat erratic with the airing of the extra long "XL" episodes. The series ended back in January but the last XL episode wasn't aired until last night. 

QI

Inspector Montalbano - Disc 4

Series 8 of Inspector Montalbano. Each episode runs about 100 to 112 minutes. Italian dialogue with hard-coded English subtitles. 

Inspector Montalbano

Indian Summers

Indian Summers is a new big-budget drama set in 1930's India. It will be returning in the future. I didn't find any sites that offered much information on it. Here's a newspaper article from a couple months ago:

Julie Walters Indian Summers interview
Trailer

30 Degrees In February

30 Degrees in February is a Swedish drama containing a mix of three stories of Swedes that relocate to Thailand. The link explains it better than I can. The Swedes speak Swedish among themselves and Thais speak Thai, but English is the common language they use to communicate between the two groups. This should be returning to Swedish TV with a second series next year.

30 Degrees In February

more on disc players

A few weeks ago I posted some comments about the future of playing compressed video files and the problems some people are having with the current crop of disc players.
I thought it might be good for everyone to share their success or lack of it and a few people contacted me privately, but only Victor in Texas posted a public comment. Thanks Victor.

A couple weeks ago I was grocery shopping in Costco and they were selling Samsung BD-JM57C players for about $90. If you look in the lower left corner of the photo you see a blue right arrow
in a circle and under it is "Multi Codec". The same symbol appears near the top right and under it says "The most competitive number of codecs available to cover various multimedia formats".
Well, that sounded good to me, so I bought one.

I connected it to the big TV my wife watches. It very easily found my home wireless router and connected to my home wireless network. It has built-in software for using the internet services shown on the box plus many more not shown. 
I keep a 32 GB USB flash drive plugged into my wireless router to host files that I may wish to view on my tablet sitting out by the pool...or wherever. The player found that source and easily streamed them to the TV. 

I also loaded a bunch of .avi files onto another one and plugged it into the USB port on the disc player and it was very easy to navigate to that source and play files from it. The player also responds quickly to remote control functions.

I then loaded several discs onto a 2 TB Toshiba portable external USB hard drive. I plugged it into the USB port on the disc player and it quickly recognized and loaded the files and played them flawlessly. 

These little USB-powered drives sell for about $100 and can hold the equivalent of about 400 data DVD's. I would not suggest that anyone takes 400 discs and copy them to a single drive, as that is 

very time-consuming even with USB 3.0 connections. But if you keep a free 2 TB or 3 TB hard drive on a PC for video files, you can create your own playlists and copy the folders to one of these drives and not have to even think about discs for months.....unless you're an insomniac and have the TV on 20 hours a day. 

Finally, for about the past 11 days my wife has been watching her shows from data discs (avi files)

to test the disc player and has not had any issues with any file, show or disc.

So I thought I would share that with you.

Once again, discs are not the future, or even the present, any more than VHS cassettes are, but they are fairly reliable data storage containers if handled properly. Streaming video from a home network or some type of flash memory device results in virtually no wear and tear on your player. There's no motor required to spin discs and no hot laser required to transfer data to the processor. 

Also, mp4 HD files are now the standard. I need to convert-down nearly every thing to .avi format.

I'm not sure if this Sanyo player will play .mp4 discs, I should try it, but if you've already moved away from discs and would prefer 720 HD mp4 for current shows, talk to me.      

River City + Fair City

About 5 years ago I started carrying drama serials like Hollyoaks, Neighbours, Home and Away and Shortland Street, but despite being popular on TV they were not so here and after 18 months I discontinued them. Now I'll throw a couple others out there and see how it goes.

For about the past 13 years when BBC airs Holby City on Tuesday nights, BBC Scotland airs its own Glasgow-based drama, River City. 
River City

For about the past 25 years, four nights a week at 8pm, a good chunk of the Irish population tune-in to check out what's going on in the fictional Dublin suburb of  Carrigstown on Fair City.
Fair City

Rather than jumping in at the first episode of 2015, I began both with the Christmastime episodes.

Bluestone 42

BBC Three comedy Bluestone 42 has returned for a third series.

Bluestone 42

Fortitude

Fortitude is a psychological thriller that takes place above the Arctic Circle in Svalbard and features an international cast that includes mostly British actors (Michael Gambon, Christopher Eccleston, Jessica Raine of Call the Midwife, etc.) but also people like Sofie Gråbøl (Forbrydelsen), New Yorker Stanley Tucci, Irish actor Richard Dormer and so on. The good news is, if you enjoy this, Series 2 will begin in late May. 

Fortitude

Stella - Disc 4

Stella

DCI Banks - Disc 3

DCI Banks has returned for a fifth series.

DCI Banks

Moone Boy

Chris O'Dowd's comedy Moone Boy returned for a third series.

Moone Boy

Series 3

Better Call Saul

Better Call Saul

forgot to mention......Comic Relief

Someone made a request for Little Britain and it reminded me of something I forgot all about. 
A few weeks ago they had the every-other-year Comic Relief charity appeal in the UK and three of the events this time around were a new 11-minute Vicar of Dibley episode called The Bishop of Dibley (that features some special guests), Mr. Bean returned to attend a funeral in a new 8½-minute episode, and David Walliams' Lou Todd character from Little Britain pays a visit to Cambridge and its most famous professor. If anyone wants them, let me know when you're in touch and I will fit them in somewhere.

The Doctor Blake Mysteries - Disc 3

Australia's The Doctor Blake Mysteries returned for a third series. 

The Doctor Blake Mysteries

Casualty - Series 29 Disc 2

Casualty

East Coronationdale

Murdoch Mysteries - Disc 9

Murdoch Mysteries is back with 18 new episodes, the first 16 of which are found on this disc. (I'd be glad to fit the last two in on another disc for now.)

Murdoch Mysteries

Schitts Creek

Schitts Creek is a new Canadian sitcom created by and starring Eugene Levy with Catherine O'Hara, both comedy legends from their SCTV days and dozens of film appearances during the past 35 years or so. 

Schitts Creek