Post by darinbI'm not sure this list is still active
It's not a "list" but a Usenet newsgroup...the difference is
the standards for participation are MUCH lower for Usenet...
Post by darinb--all I see is spam
If by "spam" you mean the mentally-ill incomprehensible ravings
of lunatics, you would be correct sir...
Post by darinb--but here
Has anyone been able to determine the coordinates of the Moon
monolith? I know it is in Tycho, of course, but Tycho is very large.
Can anything be gleamed from the ship's readouts or any of the other
data displays, especially on the high-res version of the film? Even a
rough coordinate would be an improvement.
OK, I just took some notes on the coordinates from my
1080p TV and blu-ray player. I didn't really watch the
movie again as a special favor to you, but because I just
"calibrated" my TV again for the umpteenth time, and
was curious as to whether it made a difference in the
image quality of "2001" on blu-ray. So I'm going to
report on that first because there might be something of
interest there for people who want to see this particular
movie the best way possible.
For my latest exercise in TV adjustment frustration, I
actually used the hi-def calibration test patterns available
for free from the "AVSForum" web-site. I adjusted my
TV according to the instructions and was immediately
frustrated and stymied by the way my stupid TV works
and by the difference between SUBJECTIVE and OBJECTIVE
measurements of picture quality. In short, I liked the
way MOST TV shows looked BEFORE I changed the adjustments
to make the picture more "technically" correct according
to the test patterns.
But anyway, I thought I'd pop in "2001" and see if
it improved a 1080p/24fps movie. The bottom line
conclusion: yeah, it did sort of, particularly for
some scenes.
One frustrating thing about "2001" on my blu-ray
set-up was that the scenes in the beginning with
the monkies was too dark and too colorful, the rocks
had kind of a neon glow to them, and the monkies
were little more than black silhouettes of monkies,
you couldn't really see any detail of their fur
or faces (a severe "shadow detail" problem, using
the lingo of TV images).
The difference after calibration was stunning,
all of those problems largely disappeared. Another
problem wasn't cured, but made much less noticeable
and annoying, and that was the appearance of the
seams in the background material that appeared
when the movie was first transferred to digital
DVD, and people here have complained about several
times. You could still see the seams in a few
scenes, but much more faintly, and they effectively
disappeared from many of the scenes in which they
were previously very annoyingly visible.
So far, so good, right? Well, it wasn't all
a bowl of cherries. The discoloration (fading)
in many of the space scenes was actually made
much worse, with big gray patches of "space"
in the upper left corner, and made subjectively
even worse because many of the space scenes,
particularly in the last part of the movie,
look fine, and the difference is jarring.
(The scenes around Jupiter looked particularly
good, much better than I've ever seen on a
TV, getting closer to the original Cinerama
theatrical image.)
The other problem is something that is a
SUBJECTIVE issue with all types of content,
and that is as part of the "calibration"
process I significantly turned down any type of
"sharpness" or "advanced edge enhancement",
and although the picture is then TECHNICALLY
much more faithful to the material, it loses
some of that kind of 3D quality where objects
and details kind of pop out at you when those
adjustments are set high, as I had them set
for years. The movie looked a lot "flatter"
in most scenes, but the biggest difference in
this is actually well-lit TV shows, where
previously the TV had this SUBJECTIVE quality
where it seemed like you were looking through
a piece of glass at actual people on the other
side, the picture seemed so 3D and detailed.
So that aside, where was this FICTIONAL monolith?
Well, looking at the graphs and pictures that
Heywood looked at, "TMA-1" was located by
cross-hairs at the NW rim of some crater, in
a photo overlaid with long/lat lines, one of
which was marked "34(N)", and the caption below
the photo said "34(NL): DATUM +/- .03" and
"ERN HEMISPHERE TYCHO REGION 5" (the word "NORTHERN"
is presumably partially obscured in the shot).
The second picture says "45(degrees) S 10(degrees)W"
and the specific bulls-eye mark for TMA is
"51.5(symbol)".
The next two graphs and pictures are just
magnetic and excavation contour maps and have
no phoney-baloney location coordinates. Of
course the real phoney-baloney stuff in "2001"
was always on the displays and as they land
there is a close-up of a screen that says:
ENV/CON: +4490
STA/CON: +5904
RTO - CONC-.0052X338(symbol)GR^26
Now if that doesn't clear it up I don't know
what else to say...
---
William Ernest "Where In The Moon Is Waldo TMA?" Reid
