#I just have to hope most people are using dark mode and on PC otherwise the “fakeout” wont work 😂

[moonverc3x]

@kirbyoctournament

⭐J will be open for asks for the duration of the tournament!! And Galacta is there too, I guess

⭐J seems relatively approachable, but is quick to butt heads with anyone who disapproves of her!

⭐J is an adult in her early 30s, and thus is potentially romanceable, if you're brave (or stupid) enough!

⭐ She's been around a while, and knows alot! Feel free to ask her about anything. Who knows if shell give you a straightforward answer though!

[nickburn]

Things I Enjoyed in 2020 Despite Everything

Seasons Greetings! This year has felt like an eternity for so many reasons, and before it’s over, I’d like to take a look back on the distractions that got me through it. Along the way, I’ll occasionally point out where I was emotionally at the time and whether I got into a particular thing before or after the pandemic hit in mid March. I hope you enjoy this little retrospective of some of my experience during one of the worst years of human history!

Games & Mods

Might & Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven

When I was making my 2020 resolutions list late last year, one of my goals was to play more old games in my backlog and not buy many new games this year. That goal largely went on hold, because, well, I sought out enjoyment wherever I could find it instead of forcing myself to play one thing or another. But before Covid, I was really enjoying my new playthrough of M&M6. I’d made attempts at it before, but it was really GrayFace’s mod that made the game click for me. Modern features like quick saves and mouselook make the game much more accessible, and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to try an old-school RPG. It’s a great stepping stone into a mostly-dead genre. I’m hoping to get back to it soon. I just jumped ship to simpler ventures like Doom Eternal after the pandemic hit and haven’t looked back since.

Pathologic 2

I learned about the Pathologic series late last year and have since become a little obsessed with it. Hbomberguy’s lengthy video essay on the original game really intrigued me and lead me to trying the sequel/remake in April via Xbox Game Pass. In a weird way, it was cathartic to be a doctor in an even more dire situation than our current one and still see signs of the townsfolk trying to help each other deal with a supernatural plague and little help from their local government. The game helped me express a lot of what I was feeling at the time, when I was still getting used to working from home and wondering just how long this could go on for. I’ve gone back to it recently, and I’m hoping to finish it someday, if I can find a way to stop dying. Above all, Pathologic 2 teaches you how to make choices in no-win scenarios with little information or resources and still persevere, despite the world going to Hell around you. And that’s maybe the most important thing to practice at the moment.

Overwatch

I’ve continued to look forward to weekly Overwatch nights with my friends every Thursday, and it’s really important to have something like that right now. Even if it’s just a new episode of a show airing, a new video from a favorite YouTuber, or a regular Zoom call with coworkers, it helps so much to have something to anticipate from week to week and month to month. Otherwise, it’s really easy to feel like nothing’s going on besides the entropic deterioration of the universe. Overwatch itself helps with this, because it’s such a positive, bright, and optimistic game, as only Blizzard can create. And it’s improved a ton in the past couple of years, in a lot of ways. If you haven’t played in a while, hop in and check out all the new content with your friends; I think you’ll have a great time. It’s looking more and more like Overwatch 2 is right around the corner, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

Go

I learned how to play Go after watching a documentary released this year about  AlphaGo, the computer that beat the Go world champion, and I have a huge appreciation for the game now. I think it’s even more beautiful than chess, though even more insidious to learn. If you haven’t played before, start with a 9x9 board, teach yourself the basics, and try playing with another beginner friend. I guarantee you’ll be amazed at the amount of strategy and imagination that a game ostensibly about placing black and white stones on a grid can inspire. Go’s one of several new hobbies I’ve picked up this year, and those new hobbies have really helped me pass the time in a way that feels productive as well as take my mind off whatever depressing news just got blasted across Twitter.

Doom 64

Doom Eternal was fine, but Doom 64′s where my heart lies. The PC port on Steam is great, allowing everyone to easily play the game with mouse and keyboard. Its levels are tight and colorful, often asking the player to backtrack multiple times through the same areas to unlock new ones and take on whatever new twists await down each darkened corridor. It’s a surprisingly fresh experience. Unlike many modern Doom mods that strive to be sprawling marathons, 64′s levels are short but memorable, and the game is a great entry point to the series for newcomers because of that. Retro FPS’s continue to inspire and entertain me, and Doom 64 is one of my new favorites.

Golf With Your Friends

I’m not usually that into party games, but Golf With Your Friends strikes the right balance between casual tone and skill-based gameplay. The maps are vibrant and devious, the different modes are creative and often hilarious, and the pacing is near-perfect. If you’ve got a squad itching to play something together for a few nights, I guarantee you’ll have a lot of laughs trying to knock an opponent off the course or turning them into an acorn just as they’re about to attempt a nasty jump.

Quake 1 Mods

I probably sound like a broken record by now to a lot of you, but I won’t rest until I get more people into retro FPS’s. The outdated graphics and simple gameplay can be off-putting at first, but it doesn’t take long at all to get hooked after you’ve played the likes of excellent mods like Ancient Aliens for Doom 2 or Arcane Dimensions for Quake 1. And it’s only getting better, with this year marking probably the best year for Quake releases ever. The industry even seems to be taking notice again, with many talented mappers getting picked up for highly-anticipated, professional indie projects like Graven and Prodeus. And while the marketing around the retro FPS renaissance as the second coming of “boomer shooters” should be much maligned, the actual craft involved in making mods and brand new games in the genre has never been stronger. I even contributed four levels to the cause this year, but you’ll have to play them yourself to decide if they’re any good: https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/?filtered=burnham.

Streets of Rage 4

I had not tried Steam Remote Play before this year, but it works surprisingly well if you have a decent internet connection. Because of Remote Play, I was able to complete Streets of Rage 4 with my friends, and it was very close to the experiences I had as a kid playing brawlers like Turtles in Time on the Super Nintendo. The game is just hard enough to make you sweat during the boss fights but just easy enough that the average group of gamers can complete it in a night or two, which is ideal for adults with not a lot of free time.

Hard Lads

Hard Lads is a pure delight of a game by Robert Yang about the beauty of a viral video from 2015 called “British lads hit each other with chair,” which is even more ridiculous than it sounds. It made me smile and laugh for a good half hour, and I think it’ll do the same for you.

Commander MtG

The Commander format for Magic: the Gathering is one of my favorite things, and in 2020, I dug into it more than any other year. More so even than playing or watching it being played, I created decklists for hours and hours, dreaming up new, creative strategies for winning games or just surprising my imaginary opponents. I sincerely believe this little ritual of finding a new legendary creature to build around and spending a few days crafting a brew for it got me through the majority of this summer. I didn’t have a lot of creative energy this year, but I was able to channel the little I did have into this hobby. Especially during the longer, more frustrating or depressing days at work when I had nothing else to do or just needed a break, I could often dive back into card databases and lose myself in the process of picking exactly the cards that best expressed what I wanted to do for any given deck. And it’s nice to know I can always fall back on that.

Yu-Gi-Oh!

I played a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! growing up but never had the cards or the skill to be particularly good at it. I just knew I enjoyed the game and the 4Kids show, but I quickly them behind when I got to high school. Fast forward to 2020, and the game and franchise have evolved substantially, not always for the better. But I do find it so intriguing, with a skeptical kind of adoration. It’s not nearly as well-supported as Magic, but what it does have are gigantic anime monsters on tiny cards with enough lines of text to make your head spin. And it’s so interesting to me that a franchise like that can continue to thrive alongside more elegant games like the Pokemon TCG and Hearthstone. And the further I’ve delved into how the game has changed since I stopped playing, the more invested I’ve become, going so far as to start buying cards again and looking into possible decks I might enjoy playing. An unequivocal win for Yu-Gi-Oh! is Speed Duel, which seeks to bring old players back to the game with a watered-down, nostalgia-laden format with fewer mechanics and a much smaller card pool. So if all you want to do is pit a Blue Eyes White Dragon against a Dark Magician, that’s 100% still there for you, but the competitive scene is still alive, well, and astoundingly complicated. And I think that’s kind of beautiful.

Black Mesa

I wasn’t expecting to have the tech to play Half Life: Alyx this year, so Black Mesa seemed like the next best thing. And it really is a love letter to the first game, even if it’s far from perfect. I even prefer the original, but I did very much enjoy my time with this modern reimagining. If you’ve never played a Half Life game before, I think it’s a great place to start.

VR via the Oculus Quest

Around halfway through this year, I started to get really stir crazy and yeah, pretty depressed. It seemed like I’d be stuck in the same boring cycle forever, and I know for a lot of people, it still feels like that. So VR seemed like the perfect escape from this dubious reality where you can’t even take a safe vacation trip anymore. And you know, I think it works really well for that purpose. The Oculus Quest is especially effective, doing away with cords or cables so you have as much freedom as you have free real estate in your home. I don’t have a lot of space in my studio apartment, but I have enough to see the potential of the medium, which is completely worth it. Next gen consoles are neat and all, but I’ve got my heart set on picking up the Quest 2 as soon as possible.

* Beat Saber

I was most looking forward to trying Beat Saber on the Quest, and I was not disappointed. You’d think rhythm games had reached their peak with Rock Band and DDR, but the genre keeps on giving with gems like this. It’s hard to convey if you’ve never tried it, but the game succeeds so well in getting your entire body into the rhythm of whatever song you’re slashing through.

* Half Life: Alyx

Again, I really did not expect to be able to experience this game as intended this year, and I still don’t think I really have. The Oculus Link for the Quest is admittedly a little janky, and my PC barely meets the minimum specs to even run the game. And yet, despite that, Alyx is one of my top three games of 2020 and maybe one of my all-time favorites. Even as I was losing frames and feeling the game struggle to keep up with all the AI Combine soldiers running around, I was still having a blast. For me, it is one of the best reasons to seek out and own VR and a pinnacle of game design in its own right.

Hades

For me, Hades has mostly been similar to every other Supergiant Game that I’ve played: fun and well-polished but ultimately not engaging enough to play for very long. And there’s always this sheen of trying to be too clever with their dialogue, narration, and music that rubs me the wrong way. But Hades is certainly their best game, and I can’t deny the effect it’s had on people, much like Bastion’s reception back in 2011. And I’m really hoping Hades gets more people into roguelikes, as a more accessible and story-driven approach to the genre. Timing-wise, I wish it hadn’t come out around the same time as Spelunky, because I think it did make some people choose one over the other, when the best choice is to play both and realize they’re going for very different experiences. The precise, unforgiving, arcade-like style of Spelunky isn’t fun for everyone, though, and Hades is thankfully there to fill in that gap. I’m really glad I found more time to play it this year at least to succeed on one escape attempt; it’s a fun game to think about in a game design context. And I do think the game has a lot of merit and is doing some clever things with difficulty that the studio likely could not have honed nearly so well without the help of Early Access. The most impressive part of the game to me is not the story or the music or the combat but the massive amount of contextual dialogue they somehow found time to program, write, and record at a consistently high level. All of this is just to say, Hades is obviously one of the best games of the year, and you should play it if you have any interest in it at all.

Spelunky 2

I’ve spoken a lot about this game on Twitter, so I’m not going to rehash much of that here. For me, it’s been a journey of over 1,000 attempts to learn the intricacies and secrets of a deep and demanding game that’s been as frustrating as it’s been rewarding. But it remains a constant source of learning and discovery as well as mastery and pride for me, and I still have hopes of reaching the Cosmic Ocean and getting all the trophies someday. It’s been a joy to watch other Spelunky players too, even as some fair worse than me and others fair far better. And the Daily challenge keeps me coming back, because seeing my name high up on the leaderboard just makes me feel so damn good (or at least I’ll get a good laugh out of a hilarious death). At its heart, Spelunky is a community endeavor, and I think it succeeds at that better than almost any other game this side of Dark Souls. I think it is my Game of the Year or at least tied with Alyx, I really can’t decide. If you don’t think you’d enjoy it, all I’ll say is, the frustration and difficulty are integral to the experience of discovery and surprise, and your brain is better at video games than you think.

Chess

Okay, yes, I watched and enjoyed The Queen’s Gambit, but I think 2020 had already primed people to get into chess this year regardless. Like Yu-Gi-Oh!, chess was a childhood pastime of mine that I really enjoyed and then quickly left behind as I discovered things like music and the internet. If I had to assign a theme to my 2020, it would be rediscovering old hobbies to remind myself how good life actually is. And now I’m more committed to chess than I ever was before. I’m watching international masters and grand masters on YouTube (as well as the incomparable Northernlion), I’m playing regularly on Chess.com, and I’m even paying for lessons and probably my own theory books soon. Like most fighting games, chess is a complicated form of dueling a single opponent with zero randomness, so mistakes are always on you. And modern chess platforms offer extremely good analysis tools, showing you exactly how, when, and why you screwed up so you can do better next time. Like Hearthstone, it’s a quick, addicting, tense, and rewarding way to train your brain and have fun. And it seems more popular now than ever, in part due to a certain Netflix original TV show...

TV

The Queen’s Gambit

I think a lot of people want to be Beth Harmon, even if they know they shouldn’t. It must feel so good to be the best at something and know you’re the best, even while under the influence of certain substances. It’s what makes characters like Dr. Gregory House so fun to watch, though you’d never want to work with the guy. For me, anyway, I always wanted to be a prodigy at something, and what little success I’ve had made The Queen’s Gambit very relatable to me. More so, it’s easy to relate to growing up in a conservative environment with few real friends and fewer outlets of expression, only to realize you’ve finally found your thing, and that no one can take it from you. That’s mostly what I’m going to take from The Queen’s Gambit anyway, more than chess or the Cold War commentary or the problematic relationships Beth has with her cadre of rivals/boyfriends. The show gets a strong recommendation from me for fans of chess as well as lovers of optimistic coming-of-age stories.

March Comes in Like a Lion

Similarly, March Comes in Like a Lion features a protagonist who is scarily close to a version of myself from like eight years ago. My best friend has been urging me to watch this show for years, and I’m still only a few episodes in. But I love how it portrays a young person who’s moved to a big city away from home for the first time, with nothing more than some meager possessions and the hopes of becoming the best in the world at something. And Rei is not confident in himself or outgoing at all, he’s extremely depressed despite pursuing his dreams and trying to distance himself from his somewhat toxic family. It’s a great reminder that the smallest kindnesses can often change our entire perspective on the world, and that even the people that seem the most well-equipped to handle life often still need help. I’ve been very fortunate to have people like that despite mistakes I’ve made, and I hope to be that person for others too.

Umbrella Academy

I’m pretty burnt out on superheroes, but UA put a good enough spin on them that they felt brand new. The show is rough in places, but it’s surprising in some really clever ways. And the comics are some of the wildest stories I’ve ever read, like Hitchhiker’s Guide meets Watchmen.

HunterXHunter

I binged about 100 of the 148 episodes of HxH this year, which I recognize is not a significant number in the wider world of long-running shounen anime, but it’s quite an undertaking for me to finish a show of this length. The series goes places I never expected and made me care so strongly for characters I thought I’d hate at first. It’s the smartest and most endearing show about a band of misfits going on crazy adventures and punching people for the good of the world that you’re likely to find.

Hannibal

This is the rare show that’s simultaneously comforting and nightmare-inducing if watched for extended periods. I can remember nights after binging a few episodes where I couldn’t get many of the disturbing images out of my head. Fair to say, Hannibal is not for the faint of heart, nor is it without some low points. But for those who enjoy gory thrillers or gritty detective dramas, it’s a must-watch. 

Yu-Gi-Oh! Original Series, English Sub

You can probably imagine my surprise as I discovered this year that the Japanese version of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime is not only much better than the 4Kids version we got in the States, but it’s actually a decent show. The plot makes much more sense, it’s more interesting, the stakes are higher, the voices are better, and overall it’s just more enjoyable to watch. I don’t know if I’ll stick with it long enough to finish it this time, but this is definitely the way I’d do it and would recommend to others.

Fargo Season 4

It’s a miracle we even got another season of Fargo this year, let alone on time and of the same high quality as the first two seasons. It has a great setting, cast, and conflict. I love Chris Rock, and it was so cool to see him act so well in such a serious role. There’s a Wizard of Oz homage episode that is nearly flawless. And the post-credits scene at the end of the season is just the cherry on top. If you haven’t checked out Fargo by now, you are really missing out on some of the most interesting stuff happening in TV. I can’t wait to see what Noah Hawley does with the Alien franchise.

Movies

Cats

I had to include this one because it was the last full movie I saw in theaters before the pandemic hit. I technically went to Sonic too, but my friends and I walked out after about 30 minutes. The less said about that movie, the better. Cats, though, is a strange and curious beast (pun intended), adapting an already unruly animal (pun intended) to the big screen and yowling to be recognized (pun intended). But for every awkward or embarrassing scene, there’s one of pure joy and magic, like the extended ballet sequence or Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat. The film knows exactly what it is and leans into it hard, like a familiar yet slightly insane feline begging to be stroked, which I imagine is exactly what fans of the musical wanted.

Children of Men

There’s not much I can say about this film that probably hasn’t been said better elsewhere. I was intrigued to watch it when I learned it was one of my friend’s favorite movies. And I have to say, it’s really profound in a prescient way. Clive Owen gives one of the best performances I’ve ever seen. You should watch it, but only when you feel like taking a severe hit to the feels.

Basic Instinct

Vertigo is probably still my favorite film, so when I learned this year that Paul Verhoeven made a bloody, sex romp homage film to it in the 90s with Michael Douglas starring, I simply had to watch it. And you know, it’s not bad. It’s nowhere near as good as Vertigo, and you can see the ending coming a mile away. But what it does have is the immaculate Sharon Stone, who you cannot take your eyes off for the entire movie. And the movie knows it, making her look as alluring and suggestive as her character is to the detective investigating her. You could do worse than to watch it, just don’t expect any of Hitchcock’s subtlety or looming dread to seep into the final product.

Books

Dune

I finally finished Dune this year, and I can genuinely say it lives up to the hype. It’s not the easiest book to get through, but it’s by no means one of the most difficult either. I’m still bummed that the new film was delayed, but it might give me time to read the rest of the original book series.

The Fifth Season

Another fantastic piece of fiction, I cannot recommend this book enough. N.K. Jemisin is one of the best living authors of our time. If you want an original setting with a brilliant magic system and complex, compelling characters, look no further.

Video Content

Northernlion

I’ve been a fan of NL for years, though I’ve never been that into The Binding of Isaac. He just has a charismatic intelligence to him that sets him apart from most “Let’s Play” YouTubers to me, and he’s very funny to boot. I guess I’d say he seems a lot like me or the person I could picture myself being if I were a professional video content creator. So I was really excited for NL’s series of Spelunky 2 videos, and I still watch them every day, months later. And now he’s teaching me how to get better at chess, being a good 600 ELO higher than myself at the moment. His sarcastic and improv-laden banter have withstood the test of years and gave me some much-needed comfort and laughter in 2020. Somehow, the man even found a way to keep up his prolific output this year while raising his firstborn child. There are those who said it couldn’t be done...

The Command Zone - Game Knights

Josh Lee Kwai and the rest of the crew at The Command Zone continue to put out some of the most well-produced tabletop gameplay videos on the internet. It’s perhaps no surprise, seeing as how Lee Kwai created trailers for such blockbuster films as Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and Jimmy Wong had a supporting role in the live action remake of Disney’s Mulan. But the crew around the two hosts are just as important and talented, and it’s clear that they all share the same singular vision for the channel’s future. They’ve carefully crafted a team of expert editors, animators, cosplayers, and voice actors to deliver one delightful video after the next at a consistently high level. If you’re into Magic: the Gathering at all, you simply need to watch Game Knights.

Cimoooooooo

I found Alex Cimo’s channel shortly after the algorithm learned I was interested in Yu-Gi-Oh! again, and at first, I was less than impressed with him. But it’s clear to me now that he not only loves what he does, he’s an expert Yu-Gi-Oh! player and analyst. Plus, he’s very good at explaining some of the more complex concepts in the game in a way that newcomers can understand. I’ve watched every new episode of The Progression Series and The History of Yu-Gi-Oh! so far, and they’re the best way I’ve found to learn how the game developed and changed over the last 20 years.

Team APS

This is another great Yu-Gi-Oh! channel, focusing more on skits, gimmick videos, and casual games rather than analytical or theoretical content. Mostly, they seem like a really great group of friends that just have a blast playing Yu-Gi-Oh! together, and their love for the game makes me want to play more too.

Tolarian Community College

Somehow, a community college English professor’s channel went from a quirky little deckbox review platform to the most popular Magic: the Gathering channel on YouTube in only a few years. But it’s easy to see why when Brian clearly loves what he’s doing more than most people ever will. He’s not only a fantastic reviewer and MtG scholar, he’s one of the most outspoken voices for positive change in the community and the game. Is he too hard on the Magic team at Wizards of the Coast? Perhaps, but without his measured and well-reasoned takes on all things Magic, I think we’d be much worse off.

IRL

Cooking

Even I get tired of eating the same things every day, so I’ve taken it upon myself to learn how to make more dishes, mostly out of sheer boredom. And I know I’m not alone in that, but I have to say it’s been a rewarding and fun adventure. It’s really surprising what you can throw together with a decent recipe and a little creativity in a modest kitchen when you decide to break away from the microwave for once.

Chinchillin’

Like many people, I felt that I needed a pet to survive this year, and I’ve always wanted a chinchilla. So I took a risk and bought one from a seller on KSL a few months ago, and my life has definitely changed for the better. No longer simply alone with my thoughts all day, I have a furry little companion to commune and bond with. And it’s more difficult to find time to feel sorry for myself when a basically helpless tiny creature depends on me for almost everything. Not to say it’s been a perfect experience however, people don’t say chins are difficult to care for for nothing. And I have learned more about them than perhaps I ever cared to know before, but that’s only made them more interesting to me as a result. Overall, I would recommend them as pets, just be prepared to give them a lot more time and attention than you would to say, a fish or a hamster. I’ve seen the commitment compared to that of a large dog, and I think that’s fair, though chins seem far more difficult to train and are far less cuddly. Basically, imagine a fluffy, super fast squirrel that can jump half your height, shed its fur at will if grabbed too tightly, that sleeps all day and bathes in dust, and that cannot get wet or too hot or eat 99% of human foods without serious complications. And they get lonely, and they all have their own surprisingly distinct personalities, some shy and mischievous, others bright and social, and everything in between. But I’m glad to be part of my little buddy’s life and hope to make it a long and enjoyable one for him. Part of why I wanted a chinchilla so badly is they typically live between 10-20 years, much longer than the average rodent or even many cats and dogs. And they’re sadly endangered in the wild, poached for their incredibly soft fur, which is why I believe it’s critical that we care for and learn more about them now. And above all, I adore my chinchilla’s antics, even when he continually tries to dig up and eat the paper bedding below his cage when I’ve provided perfectly edible hay and pellets for him in much easier to reach locations.

And that’s all, folks...

If you’ve read this far, know that I really appreciate it and hope you learned something new about yourself, art, or the world. And please do let me know what’s kept you going the most this year too, as I suspect I’ll still be searching for new distractions next year, even after I’m able to get a Covid vaccine injection. As Red Green would say, we’re all in this together, and I’m pullin’ for ya. <3

[pandemicthestory]

4: tethered

The game has a name. 

The game is called Universe. And it matches the map. 

Thanks Iz.  

Emma sits at her desk, mainlining espresso to the bloodstream, and readying herself to do a deep dive on the internet. Since the beginning of high school, this is how she’s spent many nights--high on caffeine, slouched over her computer, and ravaging the internet for information. Except historically she hadn’t been looking for a faceless man, but researching for the essays of her classmates. 

At up to $300 a paper, Emma had been cleaning up and saving up for two years. Saving for a new life with Julian, away from the family that seemed to have a problem with everything she did. Once she was gone, they could finally turn her bedroom into a gym, or an opium den, really the possibilities were endless. 

Emma has nearly $20,000 in a bank account that no one knows about. No one except Julian. And this means she has almost reached her goal, and that they can finally leave. Get a car, drive somewhere south where it’s warm. Or maybe somewhere north where it’s Canada. They haven’t actually figured that part out yet, but once they get the car, the rest will fall into place. That’s what he’s assured her. And she has chosen to believe him. 

Emma is the kind of best friend who lies. She’s not proud of it, but it’s true. And she feels like she has no other choice. Zoe, Olivia, Madison...they might as well be her sisters. They understand her more clearly than her own sister does. The four of them were connected by the holiest of ways: playing tetherball at recess in first grade. 

In 2020, they had grown into a grungey aspiring comic book creator (Madison), soup-kitchen volunteering empath (Olivia), Harvard-bound jailbait (Zoe), and criminal internet troll (Emma)...but before this, they were four little girls who had one important thing in common: hitting a ball that was tied to a poll. Every day, they’d wait in line together. Madison would always get there first (back then she played soccer and no one could outrun her), and she would “save a spot” for Zoe, who was the most talented player at the time, and her key rival. Olivia, given her sense of morality, would often be called upon to referee any suspicious moves. Wasn’t it remarkable that a sport (that wasn’t even a real sport) could form a sisterhood?

Sisters. Sisters were supposed to know everything about you. But Emma had chosen not tell them about her illegal business. How could they ever understand? All of them with their aspirations and goals, wouldn’t they look at her differently if they knew hers was...money? And a future that in all likelihood would not involve them? That thought was something that caused her a lot of pain and guilt, and one that she made a mental note to talk to Julian about. They hadn’t settled on the terms of their new life together, but they knew that it would have to be a secret from anyone. Otherwise they would be caught and returned. Emma was hoping she could find a way to not cut off her sisters. That he would understand.

*crack*

Emma is startled by her bedroom window opening. Julian has this way of popping up whenever she’s thinking about him. Which happens to be often.

“Dude, can you please text me before you’re gonna come over? Aghh you’re all wet!”

Julian playfully shakes his hair like a dog. 

“It’s raining,” he smiles. 

“No it’s not. I can see out the window.”

“But wouldn’t that be so romantic if I climbed up the side of your house and snuck into your window through the rain?”

“You know, it would, but you didn’t.”

Julian sighs, giving Emma the look that means, “ok stop being an asshole and act like you love me.”  

“Alright I just showered. Look, I brought you flowers.”

“You brought me one flower, and it’s a dandelion from my front yard.” Emma cracks a smile, despite herself.

Julian groans and throws himself down on her bed. 

“Ok, so am I gonna just lay here by myself? You punishing me for something I don’t even know that I did?”

He smiles at her in that “you can’t say no to this smile” type of way. Emma concedes and flops down next to him. He wraps his body around hers, holding her tight. It makes her feel both safe and like she couldn’t get away if she wanted to. Julian is tall and lean, but strong. He has curly hair that always flops in front of his face, and his eyes are dark and wide. He smells like the shower, so that wasn’t a lie. He kisses her neck. She sighs. 

“I missed you.” She says softly. Because she really, really did. 

“I had to go away for a while, to make sure I had my half. And it...took longer than I thought it would.”

Emma sits up. “But you have it?”

He smiles and nods. “What about you, Em?”

Emma gazes off distantly. She’s basically there. If this virus bullshit hadn’t gotten in the way, she would have passed her goal in three weeks, tops. But now…

“I don’t have all of it. Since there’s no school, I’m not sure how I can...but I’m really close.” Emma braces herself for him to be mad, but he isn’t. 

“That’s ok, babe.” 

“It is...?”

“Yeah, we have more than we need. I said 40 because having some extra doesn’t hurt. But we’ll be ok. And we can leave tonight.” 

Emma half chokes, half laughs. “Tonight? Are you insane? I already know the answer to that.”

“Well why not?”

“Um, I mean there’s things I have to do before we go, Julian...lots of stuff actually, I mean I need to pack, square away my accounts, and say goodbye to Isabel, and…”

“Then how bout tomorrow?” 

Julian has a bit of a manic look in his eye, like he hasn’t slept in days, like he’s been doing something he shouldn’t. Emma takes a deep breath, she doesn’t want to know. 

“Give me, um, one week. Ok?” 

Was that a flash of anger that just crossed Julian’s face? It couldn’t be. Those days are past. Julian hides anything that might have been, then just pouts dramatically and nods. 

“One week.”

Emma lays back down with him and they begin to make out. Is one week enough time to sort everything out? To figure out Universe? To find Mason? 

“You haven’t even re-asked me to be your girlfriend yet…” she murmurs. He hushes her. 

They continue to kiss, as Emma’s anxiety grows. Julian’s hand begins to slide under her shirt, but she stops him. Abruptly.

“Julian, I want to tell my friends that we’re leaving.” 

He sits up next to her, immediately serious. 

“You know we can’t, Emma.”

Emma slumps forward. “Am I really just going to disappear without telling them where I’m going?” 

“Yes, that’s exactly what you’re going to do. Anyone who knows what we’re doing is a potential threat to us being discovered. Honestly, what is the point of running away if you’re pretty sure that you’re going to get caught?” 

“But Julian, they’re like my sisters. It isn’t right. They’ll worry.” 

But worse than worry about her, they could forget her. They could close their little circle and be ok with just three sisters. They could be just fine without her. And that is, strangely, the worst fate that Emma can imagine. 

“Emma, no. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” 

He gets off the bed and straightens his clothing. He puts his shoes on. 

“Where are you going?”

Julian flashes her a look. This time, the anger lingers. 

“There is a fucking virus that’s going to kill half this country. Right now, people are quarantining because they agree to it. But what happens when there are cops in the streets, saying they’ll shoot us if we even leave our houses? What happens when there’s no food left? I’m getting out of here before it gets that bad, because I want to be in control of what happens to me. If you wanna come with, great. If not, don’t waste my time.”

And with that, he has disappeared back out the window from which he came. 

Emma tries to catch her breath. She’s not going to cry over him tonight. No. Absolutely not. This is the right thing to do. He’s going to save her. They’re going to save each other. He loves her. He loves her.

*buzz*

Her phone lights up on her desk. The group chat. 

Emma rubs her face and examines her phone. 

OLIVIA: does anyone wanna watch a movie? Netflix does this party mode thing now where you can watch stuff with other people

ZOE: i was just thinking about how i’ve never seen gossip girl. Binge?

MADISON: if we watch something less cringey I’m in. back me up Em?

But Emma can’t respond. And now, is when she begins to cry. 

Because they don’t know so many things. And they wouldn’t forgive her if they did. 

The last time Julian was her boyfriend, he cheated on her with someone Isabel’s age. And when Emma found out (through an unforgettable fight with Isabel), she confronted Julian immediately. Surprisingly, he made himself the victim, claiming that Emma hadn’t been a loving enough girlfriend, and that he was desperate for attention. He made her feel like she wasn’t enough, something she already struggled with, and something that she has carried with ever since. 

So after he started texting her again six months ago, she told the first lie to her friends. A lie of omission, really, as she just didn’t tell them about him at all. And then came the next lie, when Emma opened up her anonymous writing service to her schoolmates. Everyone knew about the sophomore ghostwriter, but no one knew it was Emma Bradford. 

Except Julian. And this knowledge is something that he has over her, but that she is 100% sure he would never use against her. Because he isn’t like that anymore. He wouldn’t hurt her again.

Whether Emma is able to look herself in the mirror and make the judgment or not, she’s smart. Technically, brilliant. It’s always been easy for her to label Zoe as “the smart one,” unable to recognize her own intelligence. But Emma built her own PC when she was 12 years old. She learned Python when she was 13. She wrote her own research program that combs sources for students’ papers, allowing her to have an incredible turnaround rate. While Zoe might be the star of AP Biology, Emma’s intellectual strengths just haven’t been required of her yet. So she can’t see their worth.

Emma sits down at her laptop. 

Universe.

After a quick Google search, she is able to find it rather easily. Although, the game is from 1983? This can’t be right...the graphics she saw over Isabel’s shoulder looked modern. But then again, she didn’t get a good look. 

After Emma is unable to find any other Universe games, she decides to download this one. As she starts the download, she sees that the game takes up an absurd amount of memory--about 20x that of a normal game. Very weird. Luckily, Emma has a spare external hard drive that she can download the game onto. Huh. What the hell can possibly be taking up so much space?

The computer determines that the download will be completed in 24 hours. 

What?! Truly unheard of. Ok then, well, seemingly she pounded all this coffee for nothing. Nothing to do but, wait. 

*ping* 

A new message to her ghostwriter account. Mason. Her heart skips a beat.  

MASON: Don’t worry, the time will go quickly

And now her pulse begins to quicken. So this means that she’s right. The map is leading to Universe. Or rather, the map is Universe. 

EMMA: are you watching me?? seriously wtf

MASON: No matter what I say, you won’t believe me.

EMMA: ok well… i just ingested enough caffeine to give myself a heart attack, and now i’m gonna be up all night. will you at least talk to me?

A long pause. Emma knows this is weirdly forward but hey, it’s been a crazy night. So why not. 

But then, he’s typing?

MASON: what do you want to talk about?

Pause.

Randomly, shockingly, in this moment, Emma decides to be honest. Which is something she hasn’t done in a long time. To this person who can’t possibly judge her. 

EMMA: I have three best friends, and I really miss them. I miss being close to them. Seeing their faces in person, and telling them the truth. 

EMMA: Too much?

MASON: maybe you should tell them how much you miss them

EMMA: I’m scared to. I don’t know what will happen if...well there’s a lot they don’t know. And I’m scared if I tell them, they won’t look at me the same. And nothing will be the same. And then I’ll be gone, and no one will miss me

MASON: It sounds like in some ways you’re already gone, and i bet they miss you too

Emma sharply exhales. She sits back in her chair. She isn’t use to being read like that, especially by someone who’s never met her.

She doesn’t want to be gone.  

She picks up her phone, and opens the group chat. 

As she begins to craft the message that will open the door to an explanation, she stops herself. Deletes what’s been written. 

EMMA: i’m down to watch gossip girl 

ZOE: Yesssss queen 

MADISON: traitor 

She can’t tell them. Not tonight. But it’s possible that somehow she might. And she has one week to figure it out.  

Back when recesses were spent playing tetherball, Madison would challenge, Zoe would defend, Olivia would judge.

And Emma, oddly enough, would watch. She would sit on the sidelines while most of the girls in her grade lined up to face the defending champion and she would admire it was so easy for all of these girls to play together, to be instant friends. She wondered if she would ever have that. 

* * *

In a different room, far away: 

A boy sits at his computer. He thinks that the neurotic compassion one girl has for her friends is shocking and intriguing. 

He stares at the sky, wondering if she might be doing the same.

[umbrahighpriestofgiratina]

Gen 8 Predictions/Hopes List

Okay, as a successor to the trailer analysis it was only natural to do this, plus I did something like this three years ago for G7. This is where I extrapolate on everything I think we'll get in Sword and Shield and everything I want to get. In no particular order:

-First off, I'm not demanding some Breath Of The Wild or Super Mario Odyssey-esqe leap forward like a lot of people seem to be doing, and I kind of side-eye those people (including some Youtubers I'm disappointed in because I know they're better than that). That's not sustainable for every single Nintendo franchise or hell every single video game franchise period. What I do want is a smaller advancement that keeps the franchise what it is while adding plenty that is new and interesting and not too gimmicky - to quote @enigma-boi on my Discord server more like the difference between Splatoon 1 and Splatoon 2. I want it to be like the breath of fresh air Unova or even Alola were.

-On the note of those two please have a good plot. It's not a dealbreaker but please.

-Also less of a focus on gimmicks. Mega Evolutions and Z-Moves and such are cool but if you try to top them every gen things get... bloated. This is part of why I don't like the Armored Evolution rumor.

-There's probably going to be at least one Eeveelution. Give me Dragon or give me death.

-DITCH THE CATCHING TUTORIAL. LET'S GO HAD A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION THERE. PLEASE.

-Hopefully HMs are gone for good too. I'm optimistic they are but.

-Also put your PC in your bag like Let's Go but make it more like the PCs from Hoenn to Alola.

-Nicknaming your Pokemon on the fly should come back too. And LET US NICKNAME TRADED POKEMON FOR GOD'S SAKE

-I feel we'll get it but give us the Pokemon Amie equivalent. Let me pet my Arceus on my big-screen TV.

-On that note. They said this would be a more handheld-oriented experience but I think when docked there will still be motion control some places like the Amie equivalent and in minigames, which are replaced by the touch screen and/or buttons in handheld mode.

-I'm a little sad gyms are back because the island trials in G7 were a nice change of pace but given that weird logo that's showing up everywhere I still have hope Galar's gyms are unconventional. We'll see.

-Minor nitpick but I hope Pokecenters and Pokemarts are still merged here. I know they've only been unmerged in remakes of games predating that concept but still.

-I'm pretty sure it's not coming back this time but I want co-op to make a return. That was fun in Let's Go, even if most of my experience with it was forcing a RL friend that knows jack shit about Pokemon to play with me.

-Speaking of multiplayer! Go back to an online experience more like G6's. Please. I'm begging you Gamefreak.

-Regarding the Galar region and its UK-y nature my one wish is that we get a bunch of pesudo-Arthurian bullshit as part of the setting lore. If there is none I will be forced to make some (and probably do some silly Fate series crossovers while I'm at it).

-References to UK pop culture would be delightfully silly too.

-For the cover legendaries... the logos make me think twin wolves. There's a rumor that it's a metal snake and wooden horse and while I would be 100% down for the metal serpent and the inevitable Metal Gear Solid jokes it would attract that leaves the question of what the wolf heads represent so I'm currently banking on my first guess.

-This makes me think the third legendary is a cat. Possibly a lion because Britain but we just had Solgaleo. Maybe a Welsh dragon instead. Or a third option of dragon cat. I suddenly want this.

-As for other Pokemon... I'm not really picky as there's no Pokemon design I outright dislike and I doubt that's gonna change, so I'm cool with whatever. But I hope because of the setting we have lots of Dragon types. Also a gryphon/griffin Pokemon. Maybe with a hippogriff as a counterpart

-Also this has nothing to do with the setting but I want a hummingbird and a dolphin

-As for the final forms of the starters... I'm guessing/hoping Grass/Dark for Grookey, Fire/Electric for Scorbunny, and Water/Dragon for Sobble

-On a minor note I hope they either make the Escape Rope a non-consumable key item or have a HM equivalent that lets you nope out of dungeons.

-I assume Trainer customization is back but I'm gonna put it as a request anyway. Additionally, for when we do get it, diversifying hair and eye color beyond "natural" options as much as possible (if the NPCs can have blue hair why can't we? We're the protagonist! We're supposed to be more special™ than they are!) Gen 7 had headway for this but I want MORE. Also a skin tone slider.

-More events that let you catch and name the Pokemon yourself

-There doesn't seem to be a Dark gym on the map so... Give us a lore reason there's not a Dark-type gym. (Is there some Defense Against The Dark Arts bullshit going on here? We need to know!)

-This one is a bit weird but bring back something like the Friend Safari? That was fun.

-Random encounters are back. Sigh. As a hope I hope we get a key item that replaces Repels and lets you toggle them on or off.

-Upgrade a lot of the more held-item-based, out-of-battle-use only, or otherwise lackluster/situational Abilities to be less so.

-Fill out the unused type combos. Especially the unused Fairy combos. GIVE ME FAIRY DARK AND DRAGON BUG

-There will inevitably be cameos of characters from other regions and one of them is going to be Looker. Looker is omnipresent. Looker is omniscient. Looker is a being too powerful for this world. Arceus looks upon Looker and quakes in fear at what they have created.

-And last but not least I think we'll get at least one new hot female NPC and at least one new hot male NPC, because I am a bisexual mess.

Whew! That was mostly hopes because I feel like we could get just about anything this gen but it was fun to write. But that's about it. If anyone wants to throw predictions of their own at me feel free to do so.

[dipulb3]

LG HU810PW projector review: Powerful color and 4K resolution from 2 lasers

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/lg-hu810pw-projector-review-powerful-color-and-4k-resolution-from-2-lasers/

LG HU810PW projector review: Powerful color and 4K resolution from 2 lasers

The LG HU810PW has lasers. Two of them! Lasers are awesome and I won’t hear anyone say otherwise. In this case the two lasers, aided by a green phosphor, let the 810P create some remarkably lifelike colors and a brilliantly sharp image thanks to its 4K DLP chip. Unfortunately, that DLP chip also creates a mediocre contrast ratio that lets down the 810P compared to the best home theater projectors I’ve reviewed.

Like

Lasers create superb color

Exceedingly bright

Super-sharp 4K detail

Don’t Like

Expensive

Contrast ratio is terrible

Confusing settings

Lip-sync issues

What the 810P does right, it really does right. UltraHD 4K resolution is always welcome in a projector, letting every bit of detail in the video impress the eyes. This projector is also very bright, producing roughly 1,500 lumens. It’s the colors that steal the show, however, with deep vibrant reds, blues, greens and more, all at impressively high levels of brightness.

The downside is that with dark scenes the 810P looks pretty mediocre, saddled by grayish black levels and lack of overall punch. At $3,000 it’s also much more expensive than 4K projectors with better contrast, like the Optoma UHD30. Given the flawed contrast I can’t recommend the LG HU810PW to everyone in this price range, but if you crave brightness, color and detail, it’s tough to beat.

4K, 2 lasers, no lamp 

Native resolution: 3,840×2,160 pixels

HDR-compatible: Yes

4K-compatible: Yes

3D-compatible: No

Lumens spec: 2,700

Zoom: Manual (1.6x)

Lens shift: Manual (horizontal and vertical)

Lamp life (Normal mode): <20,000 hours

The HU810P is both 4K and HDR, and does a better job with HDR than most “HDR” projectors I’ve reviewed recently. That said, it’s important to keep in mind no projector can really do HDR. 

As befitting a higher-end projector, the 810P has both horizontal and vertical lens shift. The zoom is decent as well, at 1.6x. The case is about twice the size of lower-end projectors, and significantly heavier. I was shocked something that’s mostly empty space for bouncing light around weighs over 24 pounds. 

Lasers! Instead of a UHP lamp, like most projectors, the 810P has two lasers, one blue and one red. The blue laser, in addition to creating all the blue light, gets split and sends some of its light to a green phosphor. So not only are the lasers creating all the light you’re seeing, but they’re also creating the color. Traditionally, DLP-based projectors separate these two things, with the lamp creating white light, and then color filters allowing some of that light to pass through to the screen, when needed. Color wheels are inherently inefficient, which is one of the reasons why lasers are great in projectors.

Another benefit is that lasers last a lot longer than UHP lamps. The light source in the 810P is rated for up to 20,000 hours, or about 14 years if you run it 4 hours a night. It also turns on and off far faster than most UHP-based projectors, which is a nice bonus.

If you were thinking lasers needed less cooling, and therefore fewer fans, you’d be mistaken. Generally the 810P is quieter than the small, low-priced DLP projectors. It also has a more ignorable lower pitch to its fan noise. It is not, however, silent. Overall I minded the noise less than on any other home theater projector I’ve reviewed in the last year, but it’s also louder than I expected for $3,000.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

Connections for days

HDMI inputs: 3 (2x 2.1, 1x 2.0)

PC input: No

USB port: 2 (0.5A power)

Digital audio output: 1 (Optical)

Internet/LAN: Wi-FI and LAN

12v trigger: No

RS-232 remote port: No

MHL: No 

Remote: Backlit

I’m generally of the opinion that most projectors only need one HDMI input, since it’s far easier to run one long HDMI cable and switch the sources somewhere else. The three HDMI and two USB inputs on the LG certainly don’t hurt, however, and two of them are HDMI 2.1 with ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) and eARC.

The USB inputs are only rated for 0.5 amp, which might cause problems with some streaming sticks. Yes, the 810P has some built-in streaming apps itself, but for some reason lacks Netflix and HBO. In any case I expect people spending $3,000 on a projector will most likely connect an external streaming device this projector, likely via a soundbar or AV receiver, which eliminates these issues. 

The 810P has one of the strangest remotes I’ve used with a projector. It’s similar to LG’s TVs in that a motion-sensitive cursor appears on screen at the slightest of touches. It ends up being faster to use the traditional joypad and clicking through the menus. 

And you’re going to be clicking through a lot of menus. The 810P has what could conservatively called a metric butt-ton of settings. Submenus upon submenus, endless settings to adjust every aspect of performance, many of them confusing. For example, Adaptive Contrast and Dynamic Contrast are in two different submenus, separate from the regular contrast setting. Feel free to join me down the rabbit hole in the Measurement Notes section at the end of the review. 

One very strange problem you can’t fix with any settings is the most egregious lip-sync delay I’ve seen on a display in a very long time. You can adjust the audio timing in the menu, but this only addresses the projector’s own internal speakers. If you’re using an external speaker system like a soundbar or receiver (and let me be clear you should with any projector) it absolutely must have lip sync adjustment. Otherwise anything you watch will appear cheaply dubbed, with the voices not matching the lips on screen at all. 

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

Picture quality comparisons

Since the LG is higher in price than most of the projectors I’ve recently reviewed, finding direct comparisons proved difficult. I settled on two projectors that I think can be used as a framing device for the overall story of the 810P while primarily focusing on how the LG looks. The Optoma is roughly a third of the LG’s price, but is one of the better 4K projectors in that range. The Sony is an older, more expensive model, but one that I’m quite familiar with. Its strengths and weaknesses provided a great counterpoint to the LG. I connected all three via a Monoprice 1×4 distribution amplifier, and viewed them on a 102-inch 1.0-gain screen.

Let me get this out of the way first: The LG’s contrast ratio is bad. Like, really bad. Side by side, the UHD30 at $2,000 less has more depth and looks less washed out, and that projector’s contrast ratio could generously be called “OK.” The first few days I had with the 810P I was constantly reaching for the remote, thinking I’d set the brightness control too high. You just can’t get decent black levels out of it without dropping the entire light output of the projector, which doesn’t actually help the contrast ratio, just makes dimmer. 

This comparison test was the first time in a while I’d watched the Sony, which uses three liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS, or SXRD in Sony parlance) chips, a technology known for its excellent contrast. Here it wasn’t even a competition. The Sony was on another planet compared to the LG. It was like a 100-meter dash against Usain Bolt except he had a head start and was racing me. 

I’m the first one to tell you that contrast ratio is the most important factor of overall picture quality. So you’d think the review would end here. But the LG does just about everything else so well that it can (almost) overcome this serious deficit. 

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

Let’s talk about light output. We’re not at the point that projectors are “bright enough” for most homes. None can truly compete with ambient light, that’s just physics. But being able to watch a movie with some lights on, not having to completely black out a room, that’s useful. Having a bright 100-inch+ image is compelling, to say the least. The image on the Sony is fantastic, as you’d hope for something that, when new, cost several times the LG. It is not, however, what one would call “bright.” Even in its brightest mode, you need a totally dark room to enjoy the Sony. That’s not the case with the LG. 

Those two lasers, plus the phosphor, also let the LG create some impressively rich and vibrant colors. It delvers a wide color gamut in a way that’s extremely difficult for color-wheel-based projectors to do. The BenQ 3550i had excellent color, but it was super dim, compared to its competition. The LG does even better than the 3550i, while being as bright as the brightest projectors I’ve reviewed. That’s an impressive feat, and goes to show how much lasers are the next leap in projector technology that we’ve been hoping for.

Then there’s detail. 4K on a huge screen is what higher resolutions are made for. DLP’s greatest strength is its ability to create an ultra-sharp image with no hint of motion blur. It’s actually the only current technology that lacks motion blur (pour one out for plasma, friends). So every wrinkle, every hair, every blade of grass, it reveals all the fine detail promised with higher resolutions. The UHD30 pretty much matches it in this regard, but the LG seems a little sharper overall. That might be the lens, it might be processing, it might be both, neither of which were great on the Optoma. The Sony, despite being 4K, looks far softer. LCOS still has motion blur, and while black frame insertion helps, that makes the image even dimmer. A tricky trade-off.

So overall the LG HU810PW looks far better than you might expect, given its mediocre contrast ratio. 

Lastly, the LG has an odd artifact that I’ve seen in other laser-based projectors. I want to call it “sparkle” but it’s technically called speckle. It’s like certain pixels are brighter than others. If you’ve ever played with a laser pointer, you might have an idea what this looks like. However, at a normal viewing distance of around 10 feet, it’s hard to notice and after a day or so watching it, I stopped noticing it. Even when I did notice it, it didn’t bother me.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

But lasers!

What the 810P gets right, it really gets right. That’s why, after all the issues mentioned above, I still actually like it. When showing content that plays to its strengths it’s capable of a truly gorgeous image. Detail for days together with some of the best color I’ve seen in a projector at any price. It’s just beautiful. 

I was constantly reaching for the remote trying to fix the black level, however. The contrast ratio is flat out poor. LG has done everything they can to mask that fact, but there’s only so much they can do with the Texas Instruments’ DLP tech compared to something like SXRD. TI’s 4K chips seem to be even worse in this regard than their 1080p chips, and that’s a problem since contrast ratio is by far the most important aspect of overall subjective image quality. 

With brighter scenes the 810P is capable of truly gorgeous images. But when the dark scenes arrive, as they always do, making the whole image dimmer by dropping the light output only partially masks the problem. In the end the HU810PW is good, but not great, and at this price I want great. 

Geek Box

Test Result Score Black luminance (0%) 0.418 Poor Peak white luminance (100%) 116.3 Average Derived lumens 1498 Average Avg. grayscale error (10-100%) 10.372 Poor Dark gray error (20%) 6.416 Average Bright gray error (70%) 11.213 Poor Avg. color error 4.934 Average Red error 2.112 Good Green error 0.651 Good Blue error 4.134 Average Cyan error 13.8 Poor Magenta error 4.264 Average Yellow error 4.642 Average Avg. saturations error 5.97 Poor Avg. color checker error 5.6 Poor Input lag (Game mode) 129.3 Good

Measurement notes

I could spend pages upon pages trying to explain what each setting means and which are the best, but this review is long enough already. Here’s the short(ish) version. 

As mentioned earlier, the labyrinthian menus have endless settings. To help, somewhat, there are pop-up tooltips. Sadly these are often less helpful than you’d hope. Many could refer to anything. For instance, the Black Level control reads “Correct contrast and brightness by adjusting black levels.” If this sounds like what on most displays you’d would call the contrast and brightness controls, you would be correct. Except this has three settings and is completely separate from the actual contrast and brightness controls. 

Then there’s the Real Cinema setting, which reads: “Adjust the frame ratio in the same way with the movie and it provides the feeling of the movie theater.” The owner’s manual just explains that it “Provides a cinema-like experience.” So my guess is it shows 24p content at a multiple of 24, which is great! But it should just say so.  

I don’t mean to harp on this, but there are projectors that cost a fraction of the 810P, from significantly smaller companies, that are easier to use and far more polished. For $3,000 I would hope for more of both. I say this as someone who reviews projectors professionally, have done so for nearly 20 years, have had a projector as my main display for nearly that same amount of time and I found all the settings here almost baffling at best, and frustrating at worst. I hope anyone who buys this either loves spending hours on setup, or is willing to pay someone who is.

One other noteworthy issue when attempting to get an accurate picture, the color temperature varies with the iris setting. At lower brightness levels it drifts noticeably blue.

What follows are some of the more important settings, to help you dial in the 810P without too many hours invested. 

Energy Saving: “Minimum” is brightest, which is technically accurate, but confusing. 

Brightness Optimizer>Iris Mode: The presets are just steps you can adjust in the User setting, e.g., Bright Room=10

Brightness Optimizer>Adaptive Contrast: Varies the laser power depending on the brightness of the image. Slightly helps with apparent contrast.

Advanced Controls>Dynamic Contrast: Changes contrast and brightness settings based on content. I left it off. Didn’t seem to help much.

Picture Options>Real Cinema: 24fps content displayed at a multiple of 24. On.

Picture Options>TruMotion: Motion interpolation, aka soap opera effect. Off, of course.

Picture Options>Black Level: My guess this deals with 0-255/16-235 ranges. Leave on Auto unless you have an odd issue with some piece of gear.

On the measurement front, the LG was all over the place. In the Warm color temperature setting, the closest to accurate, the image lacked green with brighter images, and had too much red with darker images. Generally the color points with HD content were accurate, with only cyan drifting blue and magenta drifting slightly red.

Brightness was certainly not an issue. I measured 166 nits, or roughly 1,498 lumens, with HD content. The contrast ratio averaged an abysmal 490:1 across multiple modes and settings. Even with the laser adjusting its brightness to the image, the best dynamic contrast ratio I could get was 2,407:1.

With HDR content it was even brighter, maxing out at a massive 290 nits, or 2,600 lumens in the Brightest picture mode. However, this mode was visibly blue/green and wasn’t worth the trade-off in overall image quality. Still, 2,600 lumens! Impressive.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #465

Top Ten Games I’d Like to See on Game Pass in 2021

After a few weeks of earnest thinking and tyring to be creative, I’ve lapsed back into a wishlist this week. I used to do a lot more of these – films I’d like to come to Prime Video, games I’d like to see on Windows Phone, that sort of thing – so regular readers should be thankful that I’ve branched out more as time’s gone on.

In a way today’s list is another chance to review my big Christmas purchase, the Xbox Series X. Through a combination of presents and canny offers I was able to get, alongside the console, a year’s subscription to Game Pass Ultimate. Game Pass has been called Microsoft’s “real next-gen console”, in that they are very clearly positioning the future of their games business around it. And it is a very, very tantalising offer: dozens if not hundreds of games available at the touch of a button, playable on console, PC, and – via streaming – mobile phones. I had Game Pass once before, last year, and it was great; I chose not to keep up the sub because £11 a month (or even £8 for the most basic service) is still quite expensive when you’ve got large games that you own outright sitting there unplayed or uncompleted. But last time around the “xCloud” streaming service was still in closed beta, so it’s nice to see it rolled out more officially now. The interface is better and it seems to run a bit better, and games that support touch controls on a phone certainly perform better. I’ve found it a great way to play Slay the Spire, for instance; a turn-based card game is quite forgiving if you momentarily lose connection or the visuals start artifacting or something. Anyway, it’s great; the whole service is great. I love the fact that you get frequent (if very slight) rewards just for using it. It’s a great incentive to come back regularly or try new games. I wouldn’t have played something like The Medium or Ori and the Will of the Wisps without Game Pass; and allows me to play something like Planet Coaster or Crackdown 3, that I enjoy dipping in and out of, but probably wouldn’t buy at the moment. And for the kids, it’s great; Disneyland Adventure is a really fun game for the nippers. Although they mostly just play Minecraft.

But of course like Alexander Hamilton I’ve never been satisfied, and in that grand old tradition of doing wish lists, this week’s list is just the games that I’d like to see on the service. That’s it! Nothing complicated about it. just ten (or, well, kinda more actually) games that I think should be on Game Pass. Now, I’ve tried to be realistic about this; so I’ve not added games that aren’t actually out on the Xbox yet, such as Fall Guys (which I really hope will be on Game Pass). Ditto games that have just come out; you’ll see Assassin’s Creed down there somewhere, but not Valhalla, as that’s, I dunno, less likely right now? Same with Hitman 3; I really want to play that, it looks excellent, but I’m not expecting it to turn up on Game Pass anytime soon, coz it’s just come out and been a really big hit. There’s a slight exception to this rule though, as you’ll see.

So there we go: if anyone from Xbox is listening, here are the ten games I’d most like to see on Game Pass, if you please. Oh, and everything is meant to be on the Xbox unless otherwise stated.

Civilization VI (2019): and its assorted expansions please! Civ is my absolute must-play always-on go-to game on PC, and from what I’ve played of the console conversion, it’s a very good adaptation. Last year I was on the xCloud beta and Civ VI was one of the games you could stream; but oddly it’s never, to my knowledge, appeared on Game Pass proper. With Quick Resume, dipping in and out of a session would be even easier (and good god damn it takes a long time to load on my PC). Bonus: this works pretty well on mobile, although it can be hard to read the text on a phone screen.

Assassin’s Creed Origins and/or Odyssey (2017/2018): I’ve never really gotten into an Ass Creed game, so it’d be nice to experience one of the newer ones, but that’s not the real reason I want these on the service (besides, the one I really want to play is Valhalla, coz Vikings innit). Last year Ubisoft offered the “Discovery Tour” modes of both these games up for free on PC; my kids ate them up. They loved exploring ancient Egypt and Greece, and it tied into their studies at school. To free up my PC and because they’d look a lot nicer, I’d love them to be on the Xbox, too.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 (2020): I guess Skate or something is on Game Pass through EA Play, so I could scratch my board itch if I wanted, but it’s not quite the same. I want that nostalgia blast of Tony Hawk action. We used to play this on my girlfriend’s (now wife’s) computer, although I must confess I’ve utterly forgotten all the controls. Regardless, it’s a good fun party game and feels perfect for the service. This update in particular looks really worthwhile, with nice graphics but – hopefully – the same excellent gameplay. Dunno if Spider-Man is still in it, mind.

Minecraft (2011): now, yeah, I’m pretty sure Minecraft is actually on Game Pass on the Xbox; and, indeed, we own it. Whilst I feel that Minecraft is now so ubiquitous and has its own ecosystem that maybe it could become free-to-play, I definitely think that the PC version of Minecraft should fall under Game Pass for PC. Although I’m not sure that would really help my kids, as they’d need to be signed into my Game Pass account to play, wouldn’t they? See, MS needs some kind of family account thing going on.

Hades (2020): another PC games! Yeah, I quite fancy Hades. I remember playing the first Diablo, sometime very shortly after the actual fall of Satan, and liking it. Hades has got a lot of good reviews and all the nice people seem to be saying all the nice things about it. So I’d like to try it out, but I know, deep down inside, that I’ll just keep going back to playing Fallen Order and Gears 5 (or Civ on PC), so it’s not really worth buying. But if they added it to Game Pass on PC? Yes please.

Control Ultimate Edition (2021): ah, is this adding a brand new game? Depends on your definition. I really like the look of Control (2019). It looks like the sort of game I’d enjoy playing. And, yes, Control is technically on Game Pass. But with the super-shiny next-gen version imminent (with sexy ray-tracing!) then that’s the version I want to play. Not the filthy old degenerated version that can run on my old Xbox One. There’s a lot of justifiable controversy about the release structure of Control on next-gen, but given how pretty much all Xbox One games on Game Pass automatically give you their Series X/S versions through Smart Delivery, Control really stands out. As Ultimate Edition is on PlayStation Plus, I feel like a Game Pass version should come through sharpish.

Lego Marvel Super Heroes (2013): this is arguably the first of my “just being lazy” picks, and really it could stand in for a few different titles. We love the Lego games in this house, and our favourites (that is, mine and my kids’) probably remains Marvel Super Heroes and its 2017 sequel. Seeing as quite a lot of Xbox 360-era Lego games are on the service, it’d be really cool to add some of the newer ones, what with the excellent-sounding Skywalker Saga imminent. I mean, the first Marvel Super Heroes was an Xbox One launch title; they’re not exactly “new”. We own these, along with several more, but it’d be so nice to be able to hop in and out quickly without having to root around for a disc. And y’know, if they wanted to add the Lego Movie adaptations, or DC Super Villains, then why the heck not?

Cuphead (2017): I really want to play this! It looks amazing. I just want to experience that, y’know? Except here’s the problem: I know I would utterly suck at this. I’m pretty rubbish at platform games in general, and 2D shooters I’m even worse at. I’ve heard this game is quite hard. I am not good at hard games. And especially nowadays, when I only have time to breeze through stuff on super-easy (I have come to terms with playing games in “Story Mode”). So I just don’t think there’s any point in my buying it. But on Game Pass? Instant download.

Marvel’s Avengers (2020): is this “new”? I dunno anymore. Regardless, it feels like it’s had its moment, so coming to Game Pass wouldn’t be too outrageous. I’m gonna be honest, I’ve never felt like this looked particularly good, but then I hear people say how it’s a decent third-person action game where you play as Ms Marvel, and that sounds pretty cool. Maybe divorced of the hype and the unrealistic expectations there’s a fun no-frills game to be found. I’d love to discover it on Game Pass.

Star Wars: Squadrons (2020) or Cyberpunk 2077 (2020): now this is where we really get into lazy territory. I got both of these games for Christmas (and, obviously, they’re both new), and I really like them both (Cyberpunk runs really well on Series X). However, I got them both on disc; Cyberpunk specifically I wanted on disc to get the gubbins such as a map of Night City (I’m a sucker for stuff like that). And I think – yeah this sounds terrible – having to get up and get the box out and put the disc in is actually an impediment to my playing them. Sometimes I’m sat there and I think, shall I play Cyberpunk? And I realise I’d have to move, and I think, nah, I’ll just play Red Dead or Fallen Order or Witcher or Gears Tactics or Forza or Halo or Planet Coaster or Ori or Medium or Slay the Spire or Full Throttle or Crackdown or Two Point Hospital or Minecraft Dungeons or Perfect Dark or Doom or… you get the picture. I know I’m going to hell, don’t worry.

Anyway, there we are! Good games? Good games. Cheers in advance, Microsoft.

[mceproductions]

October 2018 Blurbs

10/1/18 31 Nights of Halloween, Freeforms inheritence from its previous incarnations, other than the mandated 700 Club. The month between seasons, otherwise known as candy city. Stockholm Syndrome from Willies departure may be setting in as we had a large truck and only 4 of us to do it. I shouldnt be missing his prescence but somehow i am. Remedy is needed soon. 10/2/18 Im A Christmas Guy, love giving gifts out and decorating. Have done so annually for 16 years and it always starts within the first few days of October as i unblock my Holiday themed movie and TV Shows on digital. Looking forward to the next few weeks especially. Brewers NLDS starts Thursday! 10/3/18 The old tutalige of when it rains it pours, reared its ugly head. Flat by Old El Rancho. That really screws things up for me. Hoping for Miracle. 10/4/18 Well, day minus the Brewers coming back, was a bust. Tire was flat. Hoping I can get it either possibly fixed or a cheap replacement. Wondering how ill get to the store tomorrow. 10/5/18 Apparently massive flu spreading around as Mom picked up whatever Dad was sick with. Ended up replacing tire, but with brand new one. Hopeful not mistake. Also affected things at WallyWorld as Linda and Tyler were feeling cruddy. Hopeful I dont get it. Brewers win and truck got fixed. Still undecided on Venom or Gaga for movie on Saturday. 10/6/18 Ended up going with Gaga and was pleasently stunned by both her and Bradley Cooper. Movie was wonderful and that ending was rough, picked up soundtrack to boot. Sort of took longer than I anticipated coming back from EC thanks to BlueGolds Homecoming. Boy colleges take that far more seriously than High School. Panera for dinner was a great alternative as well. 13th Doctor tomorrow before work! FLCL on the other hand...I'll never say the C word to anyone, but Pets was definetly the C Word to Kana. 10/7/18 Man that was emberassing to watch. Green Bay actually played so lousy I watched Doctor Who, and loved the female 13th looking forward to more of her. Final Season of Walking dead also premired. Wonder how Ricks going out. Gunner and his partner are really intolerable. Reporting that asap, the store is not a place for thier private spats. 10/8/18 Columbus getting squeezed out of his own day is the most PC thing that I can get on board with. Nobody gives a crap about the whole Sailed the ocean blue in 1492 thing anymore. Stuff to do including assignments that I have to go to the library to finish. Hoping internet will be back sooner rather than later. 10/9/18 Woke up to flashing lights by house and realized power line got taken down by tree that Dad had pointed out. A bit more broke than I anticipated. Stuff here i have to do anyway and thankfully work will limit my having to go anywhere. Really could use $300 to pay Patti. Brewers will take on Dodgers in NLCS starting Friday. Mad that Conan for all intent and purpose has been cancelled, adpating is one thing but this is a glorified cancellation. 10/10/18 Rain city continues...Puddles in Bravada. On top of it its getting colder. Winter isnt here yet, but the white ravens are taking flight. 10/11/18 Now comes the cold, and first snow of the year. We had it all today cold, wind, sun and snow. 10/12/18 Store gave me a first look at my future. Gaurantee work on Sunday Monday and Friday every week unless i say so. Which other than one day may be saying much. Could use more variety than that. Also stinks NLCS is on when im working. Pulling for Dodgers in at least 1 game so I can see game 5 on wednesday at least. 10/13/18 They have been hyping the crap out of inventory for the past 3 weeks. Now i see why, Clint made a rare Saturday appearance at the store. Hopeful for the next few days. Got my prediction right about game 5 on Wednesday so thats good. Kanye is nuts as usual, and Kana gave me the best reason yet to finally move forward on the FLCL finale. Cold week ahead. 10/14/18 Andrew and his little notes are getting out of hand. Got called in to do truck early as Inventory closes in on Tuesday. Clint on the other hand, i know ive got to not walk off for a few seconds but he really needs to chill for a bit especially cause we both used to be pushing carts in the first months of the store he should know my rhtyms by now. Stinks about Pete Davidson though, really hope he can recover cause i liked him and Ariana as a couple. Rather unfortunate that they split cause she couldnt deal with her ex commiting suicide. 10/15/18 A missing person is a big deal, when you happen to know someone who is related to said missing person, then you know its huge. Jayme Closs, the cousin of Brody being abducted after her parents were gunned down, sad for all. My only issue is brody reatcing to everyones sympathies, overkill a bit. The other issue i have is the amber alert system that can be sent out to phones. With Trumps ability to text everyone in the country I witnessed a bunch of people who got the alert yesterday complain about it, the others who thought she killed them and fled are the bigger morons. Hopefully shes found safe. Other than that, good night for Wisconsin Sports, Brewers are 2 Out from pennant and Rodgers did his thing once again. 10/16/18 Boring first part of shift as we did basically nothing due to the inventory. But at least the night managed to salvage itself. Dodgers really play dirty. 10/17/18 Nose began to stuff itself again. Bunch of classwork for 2 weeks as i get the inservice day. Milwaukee gave another one away. Hoping Game 6 on Friday will be a turnaround. 10/18/18 Rare thursday day, nose still stuffed. 10/19/18 Library day as i caught up on work, and finally watched A Chrsitmas Story to its ending. A classic, yes just don't feel that strongly about it. Big game from the Crew forcing Game 7. 10/20/18 This day was nuts, a quick 25 minute snowcase that gave way to sunny conditions by noon. Saw Venom, didn't get why it was hated. Quite enjoyable dyanmic and She-Venom was the highlight of it all. Dodgers unfortuantley took the pennant. Great season overall for Milwaukee just bummed my streak of picking the world series winner at the All Star game ended at 4. Also tide pods finally used them, no wonder people ate them they're great for clothes. 10/21/18 First day ever that i skipped NFL Games. Neat concept. 10/22/18 Very long strech of store coming up, especially given that Today we only had 3 total. 10/23/18 Held off on grabbing Mamma Mia 2 Blu Ray. Mainly due to gas situation that had Bravada dying near tracks. I got to figure cash situation out to pay off people. 10/24/18 Lone day off before Halloween. No class today so that made things better. Master Mode on Zelda getting easier to figure out. Did reset on iPhone and Kindle, should fix lone bugs. Really want to play RDR2 and Spiderman PS4. World Series from what I can tell is shaping up as a sweep. Also, whole reason I began watching Sunny aired tonight. First of 2 Part Super Bowl Episode. Charlie in a Bear Trap drinking pee, eww! 10/25/18 First of 6 in a row backwise. The Halloween episodes on TV Usually do wonders for me, not this time. I know this is the final season of Big Bang Theory but Sheldon not realizing how irritating he sounds to others after 12 years and so much maturing seems not the right way to do it. Especially seeing his wife irrate Bernadette. 10/26/18 2nd night, the wheels i dont think feel off, but the were more loose than usual. Hour to set up, hour work, break, 30 minutes to unload hvdc and then didn't finish til after 6. When your down numbers wise you can certainly feel it. FYI The crap with the MAGA Bomber made me mad enough to likely stay off social media until after the election, that made it my breaking point. RWBY Season Premire Tomorrow! 10/27/18 Rooster Teeth First free trial, worth it for watching a great primire that perfectly sets up what comes. My point who is that woman with the Maz Kanata eyewear? Wisconsin stinks. 10/28/18 My issue with the whole core hours thing involves me working on days i know theres something i should be doing. Such as watching the packers. Almost beating LA, hopeful they can actually do that against Brady. 10/29/18 That blue wave better close in next week cause, another shooting and another predictable Trump response occurred. Hate crimes abound in his america. 10/30/18 Last in the back, October really came and went this year. Only thing bad about not working Halloween is the dressup im missing out on. Adam in drag would have been a hoot. 10/31/18 Darkness Falls Across the Land...You Know the rest. Halloween. This day is one back 20 Years ago i would openly love. At least the Candy is still around, albiet smaller and more sugary. Nowadays this day has me DVR'ing all the major shows to see what costumes get put on. Spoiler Alert only episodes of ATH And PTI that I happily record all year. When it comes to applying for scholarships however thats where it blurrs. WITC is really biased against those in the outreach sites hoping i can get help tomorrow when i visit. November came too quickly but, I get to see my nephew in 2 Weeks!

[dipulb3]

LG HU810PW projector review: Powerful color and 4K resolution from 2 lasers

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/lg-hu810pw-projector-review-powerful-color-and-4k-resolution-from-2-lasers-2/

LG HU810PW projector review: Powerful color and 4K resolution from 2 lasers

The LG HU810PW has lasers. Two of them! Lasers are awesome and I won’t hear anyone say otherwise. In this case the two lasers, aided by a green phosphor, let the 810P create some remarkably lifelike colors and a brilliantly sharp image thanks to its 4K DLP chip. Unfortunately, that DLP chip also creates a mediocre contrast ratio that lets down the 810P compared to the best home theater projectors I’ve reviewed.

Like

Lasers create superb color

Exceedingly bright

Super-sharp 4K detail

Don’t Like

Expensive

Contrast ratio is terrible

Confusing settings

Lip-sync issues

What the 810P does right, it really does right. UltraHD 4K resolution is always welcome in a projector, letting every bit of detail in the video impress the eyes. This projector is also very bright, producing roughly 1,500 lumens. It’s the colors that steal the show, however, with deep vibrant reds, blues, greens and more, all at impressively high levels of brightness.

The downside is that with dark scenes the 810P looks pretty mediocre, saddled by grayish black levels and lack of overall punch. At $3,000 it’s also much more expensive than 4K projectors with better contrast, like the Optoma UHD30. Given the flawed contrast I can’t recommend the LG HU810PW to everyone in this price range, but if you crave brightness, color and detail, it’s tough to beat.

4K, 2 lasers, no lamp 

Native resolution: 3,840×2,160 pixels

HDR-compatible: Yes

4K-compatible: Yes

3D-compatible: No

Lumens spec: 2,700

Zoom: Manual (1.6x)

Lens shift: Manual (horizontal and vertical)

Lamp life (Normal mode): <20,000 hours

The HU810P is both 4K and HDR, and does a better job with HDR than most “HDR” projectors I’ve reviewed recently. That said, it’s important to keep in mind no projector can really do HDR. 

As befitting a higher-end projector, the 810P has both horizontal and vertical lens shift. The zoom is decent as well, at 1.6x. The case is about twice the size of lower-end projectors, and significantly heavier. I was shocked something that’s mostly empty space for bouncing light around weighs over 24 pounds. 

Lasers! Instead of a UHP lamp, like most projectors, the 810P has two lasers, one blue and one red. The blue laser, in addition to creating all the blue light, gets split and sends some of its light to a green phosphor. So not only are the lasers creating all the light you’re seeing, but they’re also creating the color. Traditionally, DLP-based projectors separate these two things, with the lamp creating white light, and then color filters allowing some of that light to pass through to the screen, when needed. Color wheels are inherently inefficient, which is one of the reasons why lasers are great in projectors.

Another benefit is that lasers last a lot longer than UHP lamps. The light source in the 810P is rated for up to 20,000 hours, or about 14 years if you run it 4 hours a night. It also turns on and off far faster than most UHP-based projectors, which is a nice bonus.

If you were thinking lasers needed less cooling, and therefore fewer fans, you’d be mistaken. Generally the 810P is quieter than the small, low-priced DLP projectors. It also has a more ignorable lower pitch to its fan noise. It is not, however, silent. Overall I minded the noise less than on any other home theater projector I’ve reviewed in the last year, but it’s also louder than I expected for $3,000.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

Connections for days

HDMI inputs: 3 (2x 2.1, 1x 2.0)

PC input: No

USB port: 2 (0.5A power)

Digital audio output: 1 (Optical)

Internet/LAN: Wi-FI and LAN

12v trigger: No

RS-232 remote port: No

MHL: No 

Remote: Backlit

I’m generally of the opinion that most projectors only need one HDMI input, since it’s far easier to run one long HDMI cable and switch the sources somewhere else. The three HDMI and two USB inputs on the LG certainly don’t hurt, however, and two of them are HDMI 2.1 with ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) and eARC.

The USB inputs are only rated for 0.5 amp, which might cause problems with some streaming sticks. Yes, the 810P has some built-in streaming apps itself, but for some reason lacks Netflix and HBO. In any case I expect people spending $3,000 on a projector will most likely connect an external streaming device this projector, likely via a soundbar or AV receiver, which eliminates these issues. 

The 810P has one of the strangest remotes I’ve used with a projector. It’s similar to LG’s TVs in that a motion-sensitive cursor appears on screen at the slightest of touches. It ends up being faster to use the traditional joypad and clicking through the menus. 

And you’re going to be clicking through a lot of menus. The 810P has what could conservatively called a metric butt-ton of settings. Submenus upon submenus, endless settings to adjust every aspect of performance, many of them confusing. For example, Adaptive Contrast and Dynamic Contrast are in two different submenus, separate from the regular contrast setting. Feel free to join me down the rabbit hole in the Measurement Notes section at the end of the review. 

One very strange problem you can’t fix with any settings is the most egregious lip-sync delay I’ve seen on a display in a very long time. You can adjust the audio timing in the menu, but this only addresses the projector’s own internal speakers. If you’re using an external speaker system like a soundbar or receiver (and let me be clear you should with any projector) it absolutely must have lip sync adjustment. Otherwise anything you watch will appear cheaply dubbed, with the voices not matching the lips on screen at all. 

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

Picture quality comparisons

Since the LG is higher in price than most of the projectors I’ve recently reviewed, finding direct comparisons proved difficult. I settled on two projectors that I think can be used as a framing device for the overall story of the 810P while primarily focusing on how the LG looks. The Optoma is roughly a third of the LG’s price, but is one of the better 4K projectors in that range. The Sony is an older, more expensive model, but one that I’m quite familiar with. Its strengths and weaknesses provided a great counterpoint to the LG. I connected all three via a Monoprice 1×4 distribution amplifier, and viewed them on a 102-inch 1.0-gain screen.

Let me get this out of the way first: The LG’s contrast ratio is bad. Like, really bad. Side by side, the UHD30 at $2,000 less has more depth and looks less washed out, and that projector’s contrast ratio could generously be called “OK.” The first few days I had with the 810P I was constantly reaching for the remote, thinking I’d set the brightness control too high. You just can’t get decent black levels out of it without dropping the entire light output of the projector, which doesn’t actually help the contrast ratio, just makes dimmer. 

This comparison test was the first time in a while I’d watched the Sony, which uses three liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS, or SXRD in Sony parlance) chips, a technology known for its excellent contrast. Here it wasn’t even a competition. The Sony was on another planet compared to the LG. It was like a 100-meter dash against Usain Bolt except he had a head start and was racing me. 

I’m the first one to tell you that contrast ratio is the most important factor of overall picture quality. So you’d think the review would end here. But the LG does just about everything else so well that it can (almost) overcome this serious deficit. 

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

Let’s talk about light output. We’re not at the point that projectors are “bright enough” for most homes. None can truly compete with ambient light, that’s just physics. But being able to watch a movie with some lights on, not having to completely black out a room, that’s useful. Having a bright 100-inch+ image is compelling, to say the least. The image on the Sony is fantastic, as you’d hope for something that, when new, cost several times the LG. It is not, however, what one would call “bright.” Even in its brightest mode, you need a totally dark room to enjoy the Sony. That’s not the case with the LG. 

Those two lasers, plus the phosphor, also let the LG create some impressively rich and vibrant colors. It delvers a wide color gamut in a way that’s extremely difficult for color-wheel-based projectors to do. The BenQ 3550i had excellent color, but it was super dim, compared to its competition. The LG does even better than the 3550i, while being as bright as the brightest projectors I’ve reviewed. That’s an impressive feat, and goes to show how much lasers are the next leap in projector technology that we’ve been hoping for.

Then there’s detail. 4K on a huge screen is what higher resolutions are made for. DLP’s greatest strength is its ability to create an ultra-sharp image with no hint of motion blur. It’s actually the only current technology that lacks motion blur (pour one out for plasma, friends). So every wrinkle, every hair, every blade of grass, it reveals all the fine detail promised with higher resolutions. The UHD30 pretty much matches it in this regard, but the LG seems a little sharper overall. That might be the lens, it might be processing, it might be both, neither of which were great on the Optoma. The Sony, despite being 4K, looks far softer. LCOS still has motion blur, and while black frame insertion helps, that makes the image even dimmer. A tricky trade-off.

So overall the LG HU810PW looks far better than you might expect, given its mediocre contrast ratio. 

Lastly, the LG has an odd artifact that I’ve seen in other laser-based projectors. I want to call it “sparkle” but it’s technically called speckle. It’s like certain pixels are brighter than others. If you’ve ever played with a laser pointer, you might have an idea what this looks like. However, at a normal viewing distance of around 10 feet, it’s hard to notice and after a day or so watching it, I stopped noticing it. Even when I did notice it, it didn’t bother me.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

But lasers!

What the 810P gets right, it really gets right. That’s why, after all the issues mentioned above, I still actually like it. When showing content that plays to its strengths it’s capable of a truly gorgeous image. Detail for days together with some of the best color I’ve seen in a projector at any price. It’s just beautiful. 

I was constantly reaching for the remote trying to fix the black level, however. The contrast ratio is flat out poor. LG has done everything they can to mask that fact, but there’s only so much they can do with the Texas Instruments’ DLP tech compared to something like SXRD. TI’s 4K chips seem to be even worse in this regard than their 1080p chips, and that’s a problem since contrast ratio is by far the most important aspect of overall subjective image quality. 

With brighter scenes the 810P is capable of truly gorgeous images. But when the dark scenes arrive, as they always do, making the whole image dimmer by dropping the light output only partially masks the problem. In the end the HU810PW is good, but not great, and at this price I want great. 

Geek Box

Test Result Score Black luminance (0%) 0.418 Poor Peak white luminance (100%) 116.3 Average Derived lumens 1498 Average Avg. grayscale error (10-100%) 10.372 Poor Dark gray error (20%) 6.416 Average Bright gray error (70%) 11.213 Poor Avg. color error 4.934 Average Red error 2.112 Good Green error 0.651 Good Blue error 4.134 Average Cyan error 13.8 Poor Magenta error 4.264 Average Yellow error 4.642 Average Avg. saturations error 5.97 Poor Avg. color checker error 5.6 Poor Input lag (Game mode) 129.3 Good

Measurement notes

I could spend pages upon pages trying to explain what each setting means and which are the best, but this review is long enough already. Here’s the short(ish) version. 

As mentioned earlier, the labyrinthian menus have endless settings. To help, somewhat, there are pop-up tooltips. Sadly these are often less helpful than you’d hope. Many could refer to anything. For instance, the Black Level control reads “Correct contrast and brightness by adjusting black levels.” If this sounds like what on most displays you’d would call the contrast and brightness controls, you would be correct. Except this has three settings and is completely separate from the actual contrast and brightness controls. 

Then there’s the Real Cinema setting, which reads: “Adjust the frame ratio in the same way with the movie and it provides the feeling of the movie theater.” The owner’s manual just explains that it “Provides a cinema-like experience.” So my guess is it shows 24p content at a multiple of 24, which is great! But it should just say so.  

I don’t mean to harp on this, but there are projectors that cost a fraction of the 810P, from significantly smaller companies, that are easier to use and far more polished. For $3,000 I would hope for more of both. I say this as someone who reviews projectors professionally, have done so for nearly 20 years, have had a projector as my main display for nearly that same amount of time and I found all the settings here almost baffling at best, and frustrating at worst. I hope anyone who buys this either loves spending hours on setup, or is willing to pay someone who is.

One other noteworthy issue when attempting to get an accurate picture, the color temperature varies with the iris setting. At lower brightness levels it drifts noticeably blue.

What follows are some of the more important settings, to help you dial in the 810P without too many hours invested. 

Energy Saving: “Minimum” is brightest, which is technically accurate, but confusing. 

Brightness Optimizer>Iris Mode: The presets are just steps you can adjust in the User setting, e.g., Bright Room=10

Brightness Optimizer>Adaptive Contrast: Varies the laser power depending on the brightness of the image. Slightly helps with apparent contrast.

Advanced Controls>Dynamic Contrast: Changes contrast and brightness settings based on content. I left it off. Didn’t seem to help much.

Picture Options>Real Cinema: 24fps content displayed at a multiple of 24. On.

Picture Options>TruMotion: Motion interpolation, aka soap opera effect. Off, of course.

Picture Options>Black Level: My guess this deals with 0-255/16-235 ranges. Leave on Auto unless you have an odd issue with some piece of gear.

On the measurement front, the LG was all over the place. In the Warm color temperature setting, the closest to accurate, the image lacked green with brighter images, and had too much red with darker images. Generally the color points with HD content were accurate, with only cyan drifting blue and magenta drifting slightly red.

Brightness was certainly not an issue. I measured 166 nits, or roughly 1,498 lumens, with HD content. The contrast ratio averaged an abysmal 490:1 across multiple modes and settings. Even with the laser adjusting its brightness to the image, the best dynamic contrast ratio I could get was 2,407:1.

With HDR content it was even brighter, maxing out at a massive 290 nits, or 2,600 lumens in the Brightest picture mode. However, this mode was visibly blue/green and wasn’t worth the trade-off in overall image quality. Still, 2,600 lumens! Impressive.

[dipulb3]

Epson Home Cinema 880 projector review: Bright and cheap, but that's about it

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/epson-home-cinema-880-projector-review-bright-and-cheap-but-thats-about-it/

Epson Home Cinema 880 projector review: Bright and cheap, but that's about it

The Epson 880 is a tale of two specs and a price. On one hand, it’s the brightest projector I’ve measured recently, dethroning the previous champ after less than a month. On the other hand it also has the worst contrast ratio I’ve ever measured, worse than even cheap portable projectors that are much dimmer. On the third hand (third hand? Whatever, go with me here), it’s only $600. So it’s inexpensive, but you sacrifice a lot compared to projectors that cost just a little bit more. 

Like

Stupendously bright

Prodigiously bright

Bright

Don’t Like

Weak overall image quality

Terrible contrast

Details look soft

No zoom

Few projectors can better compete with ambient light than the 880. It will still lose to the sun or some lamps, but it will be more watchable than most projectors in less-than-completely-dark conditions. It can create a massive and bright image. It’s small and highly portable, while being significantly brighter than a true portable projector — one that runs on batteries. It even has excellent color.

Unfortunately the image is quite washed out, it looks softer than its 1080p resolution suggests and with no zoom or lens shift, it’s far harder to position in a room. While the $600 price tag is tempting, my advice is to save up for something like the BenQ HT2050A.

Lumens, lumens, lumens

Native resolution: 1,920×1,080 pixels

HDR-compatible: No

4K-compatible: No

3D-compatible: No

Lumens spec: 3,300

Zoom: None

Lens shift: No

Lamp life (Normal mode): 6,000 hours

1080p resolution for $600 is pretty impressive. It wasn’t too long ago $1,000 was the full HD threshold. As you’d expect for a budget projector, it’s not HDR, 3D, nor 4K compatible. That’s fine at this price.

One way Epson saved money to get you resolution and brightness is by removing a zoom control from the lens. The lack of zoom makes it harder to position the 880 in your room. The projector has one place it can sit/hang to fill a specific-sized screen and that’s it. If you don’t have a fixed screen, like you’re just shining it on a wall, then this isn’t an issue.

Let’s talk about those lumens. This thing is a beast. I measured a remarkable 232 nits in its most accurate modes. This converts to roughly 2,085 lumens. That blows away our previous light output champ, also an Epson, by 20%. It’s always a fair assumption with TVs and projectors that prices will go down while brightness and resolution will go up. Even so, that’s a big, impressive leap. In eye-bleed Dynamic mode you can get 359 nits out of this thing! That’s over 3,000 lumens and brighter even than the LG laser projector that costs $3,000. It wasn’t long ago that TVs struggled to produce 3,000 lumens. 

Remarkably, the 880 runs on a regular lamp and not some mixture of phosphorus and napalm. It’s rated for 6,000 hours in Normal brightness mode, which I’ll be surprised if you use often. The dimmer-but-still-bright ECO mode gets around twice that.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

Budget-level connections

HDMI inputs: 1

PC input: No

USB port: 2

Audio input and output: 3.5mm stereo output

Digital audio output: No

Internet: No

12v trigger: No

RS-232 remote port: No

MHL: No

Remote: Not backlit

Inputs are sparse, which is again fine at this price. One HDMI gets the job done along with 2 USBs. There’s a 3.5mm audio output, or you can use the meager built-in speaker.

The small remote has tiny buttons, but thankfully you only really need to use it for setup and to turn the projector on and off.

In the Normal lamp mode the 880 is pretty loud, which is typical for small, bright projectors. This might be more of an issue than usual depending how big your screen is, since without a zoom you might be forced to place it closer to your seats than you’d like.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

Picture quality comparisons

The 2250 isn’t a direct competitor at twice the price of the 880, however it does show what’s possible if you want to go with an LCD projector. The BenQ HT2050A is still one of our favorite projectors. When new it was around $1,000, but now it’s often around $750. While that’s technically 25% more than the 880, as you’ll see I feel this is a reasonable amount to spend for the increase in performance. I connected all three via a Monoprice 1×4 distribution amplifier and viewed all on a 102-inch 1.0-gain screen.

There’s no escaping the 880’s poor contrast ratio. While viewing a movie with letterbox bars, in this case Thor: Ragnarok, the bars go from black on the BenQ, to fairly black on the 2250, to flat out gray on the 880. The image looks very washed out and flat. I measured an average contrast ratio of 221:1, the lowest I think I’ve ever measured. The 2250, for comparison, is 1,026:1 and the BenQ is twice that. Interestingly, in person the 880 doesn’t look that much brighter than the 2250 despite measuring 20% higher light output. Both Epsons are so bright the 880 doesn’t draw the eye as much as you’d think. In turn both are definitely brighter than the 2050A, but that projector isn’t exactly dim.

A bit more surprising is how soft the 880’s image looks. All three projectors are 1080p. The DLP-based BenQ looks sharpest, as is that technology’s biggest strength. You’d think the 2250 and 880 would look fairly close, since they’re both the same resolution and are LCD-based, but not so much. My guess is that a combination of a cheaper lens and low contrast are making fine detail less apparent.

The 880’s color is good, I’ll give it that. Spot on greens, reds and blues. In this regard it actually measures better than many projectors that cost far more. This isn’t as noticeable as you’d hope, however, given the contrast. It doesn’t hurt to have good color, of course, especially when bright DLP projectors usually have fairly mediocre color.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

The 2250 shows that LCD can look good, though perhaps it’s just expensive to do so. $1,000 is a lot of money for a 1080p projector these days. Which brings us back, as we often go, to the HT2050A. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but it does most things right, looks great and just costs about $150 more than the Epson. Yes, that’s 25%, but this is one of the rare cases that I recommend spending a bit more since you’ll get a much better image.

I didn’t have the Optoma HD146X or HD28HDR on hand, both of which are closer in price to the 880. Going over my notes and measurements, the 146X had a contrast ratio of 568:1 and the 28HDR a 716:1. Neither are great numbers, but both would have more apparent depth and look less washed out than the 880. Both were dimmer and had worse color, but I think most people would prefer the better contrast ratio and sharper image of those projectors compared to the 880. That said, in all three cases spending a little more gets you a much better picture.

Sing me home, Bruce

You’ve got to hand it to Epson for making something so impressively bright for so little money. It wasn’t long ago that this kind of brightness was unheard of in projectors and 1080p was unheard of at this price. But I spent a lot of my time with the 880 trying to figure out who this projector is for. What’s the niche? And to be honest, I couldn’t quite figure it out. Sure it’s bright, but a lot of projectors are bright. It’s small, but a lot of projectors are small. Gaming maybe? But the input lag is an issue there.

What I finally settled on is that the 880 is a muscle car. If all you want is a flashy 0-60 time for not a lot of money, this is definitely your 1970 Dodge Charger. But beyond blinding lights, it falters. I adore the price and I rarely, rarely, rarely recommend spending more on gear than you need to, but in this case the picture quality available for just a bit more money is worth the extra outlay.

Geek Box

Test Result Score Black luminance (0%) 0.946 Poor Peak white luminance (100%) 231.5 Good Derived lumens 2085 Good Avg. grayscale error (10-100%) 2.401 Good Dark gray error (20%) 2.688 Good Bright gray error (70%) 2.225 Good Avg. color error 3.737 Average Red error 2.019 Good Green error 6.949 Average Blue error 5.381 Average Cyan error 3.365 Average Magenta error 3.239 Average Yellow error 1.469 Good Avg. saturations error 2.58 Good Avg. color checker error 2.2 Good Input lag (Game mode) 51.5 Average

Measurement Notes

The Cinema picture mode and 3 color temperature setting proved to be the most accurate. The darkest images, well, as dark as you can get with this projector, were noticeably blue. A full-black image was more like a full-navy image. Bright images lacked blue slightly, though this wasn’t as noticeable to the naked eye.

Colors were impressively accurate. Red was very slightly orange, but otherwise the other primaries and secondaries were pretty much spot on their Rec 709 targets.

In this mode, the 880 produced 231.5 nits and an average contrast ratio of 221:1. A new record, albeit an inglorious one. The Dynamic mode, which lacks any semblance of accuracy, did manage to produce a remarkable 359 nits.