This post is obviously a spoiler, I would avoid reading it if you have not seen the show! Then again you can probably predict the ending if you have ever imagine up a semi-happy ending to some kind of hero like possible disaster.

Was it just me or was the Heroes big finale on Monday more of a big Fizzle? All season we have a build up to a supposedly spectacular ending that involves a bomb that is supposed to go off (from mysterious circumstances no less) in the middle of New York City. What we end up with is a cookie cutter ending that seems taken directly from any number of super hero comic books. That is all well and good, because obviously Heroes is a super hero show inspired by such works. On the other hand, the show had a kind of sophisticated story line (quasi-Lost like almost) that intrigued us all season. To end on such a predictable and comic book like ending was a let down for me, personally, because I expected some sophistication and surprise.

There were some surprises that we encountered. The little girl, Lilly, who can see anyone in the world and their exact location, mentioned that she knew of a person that was more evil than Silar and could see her when she saw him. Seeing as we are short some villains after the Finale and that the “League of Heroes” is together (corny and predictable), they might as well fight this new super villain (if the next season wasn’t so weird, more on that later).

Peter must live. He is the main character, so I expect him to live through that. I will be disappointed if he did not. I am already disappointed because the future that the showed a couple episodes before the finale, the bleak dark future where Silar is president and Peter is jaded but powerful, the world is splintered, and there is a kind of silent war on “heroes” … now that was interesting! I want a season about that future, not the warm fluffy future where the bomb does not go off and love between brothers conquers evil. Give me a break, I really hoped after seeing that bleak future that Heroes would finally surpass Lost as a sophisticated show (and yes I know Lost has its silly main stream unsophisticated moments). Unfortunately, only a mere couple of episodes later they disappoint me with the finale no less.

Then there is next season.

We could have new people and new storylines and new ideas and new threats and new bad guys and new heroes. So I would prepare the audience for that idea, that it’s not just a continuing serialized storyline about only these people. It’s a little more the 24 model than the Lost model.

I heard rumors that season 2 will be a prequel, however I have not confirmed that on the internet except for the fact that a twin mini-series will run while Heroes takes its break sometime next season called “Heroes:Origins” that explains the back stories of the characters. However, it seems here that we will see the some of the same characters but the writers are giving themselves the opportunity to trash, forget, or create characters at their discretion. You have to be cautious here though, since the story is character based. As Lost has found, introducing new characters can be a tricky affair, and many times people tend to just plain hate new characters because they appear so shallow to the old characters that have been well developed. However, unlike Lost, Heroes characters are not all that well shaped and developed. Instead of having to develop complex character personalities and back stories (ala Lost), Heroes simply adds a simple back story and personality and lets the audience concentrate on their super power. So shuffling characters in and out may work out for Heroes. Only time will tell.

I will say, it is a blessing and a curse, this final episode. One thing that I hate is an epic cliff hanger that I have to wait all summer to find the ending to. One thing that I love is an epic cliff hanger that I have to wait all summer to find the ending to. In the case of the Heroes finale, I won’t have to deal with either situation because it was not epic or much of a cliffhanger at all.

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Unfortunately for me, my computer is quickly becoming a box of dead ends. The socket for my CPU is no longer developed (early AMD 64 socket), my hard drives are not SATA, and my graphics system is AGP. Of course AGP is being replaced by PCI-express, and both ATI and Nvidia have said they will not actively develop any more AGP cards. The last AGP card to hit the market is the Nvidia 7800 GS, and most said it was too expensive, but prices have dropped and unless you upgrade your entire computer this is the best bet to hold you over for another year or so. So I went for it.

I got the eVGA e-GeForce 7800 GS CO Superclocked edition, being the fastest 7800 GS card on the market. Since I had an All In Wonder 9700 Pro before, I needed that TV tuner that I was accustomed to so I ended up ordering an ATI TV Wonder Elite because it is supposed to have great picture quality. This is where ATI drops the ball.

With the 9700 Pro AIW, it came bundled with the ATI Multimedia Center, which has its flaws, but overall has some nice features and was integrated and nicely packaged. However, it seems over the past year or two every release of the MMC has gotten worse. No matter, I thought, Im sure this fairly expensive TV tuner card had some nice software in it to actually watch TV on my PC.

Quite frankly the ATI TV Wonder Elite has the shittiest software I have ever seen bundled with hardware. Seriously, you can barely even watch TV on your PC with the scaled down, terrible piece of junk that is Cyberlinks PowerCinema 3.0 ATI Version. It is a step down from MMC circa 5 years ago. It didn’t even have a program guide when it was first released, and to fix that ATI simply bundled their Guide Plus+ program (that came with the AIW cards) later. By bundled I don’t mean integrated to make it a seamless product, I mean simply gave us Guide Plus+ to install with no connection what so ever to the TV. So I decided to uninstall that crap.

I went to the newest MMC, even though I thought it was a step backward from the last version. Besides, version 9.13 was the only one that apparently worked with the TV Wonder Elite. So I install it. First of all, you lose some features that you had in the previous MMC version (such as video soap). It is slower. It is bulkier. It makes your hard drive spin like its dying (time shifting is ALWAYS on, with NO WAY to turn it off). So its constantly copying TV to your hard drive and this slows down your TV, especially if you have any other program running. The guide through Guide Plus+ also apparently broke with 9.13 so that TV is no longer preview-able in the Guide window. This disconnects the guide with TV once again. Inexcusable.

Exhausting through the ATI line. I went commercial. I tried BeyondTV. This is alright I guess. Hmm, the guide isn’t working. What’s this? My hard drive is going crazy. Time shifting … great. A quick google, you cannot turn it off. Wonderful. Next!

SageTV is nice. It is also 80 bucks. Ouch. Again, I don’t think you can turn off time shifting. I don’t care about pausing live TV. Stop killing my hard drive, let me turn the stupid thing off.

ChrisTV. Wow this isn’t bad. Its a little cluttered, but there are many power user functions to clean up the image. It’s 50 bucks. Blah. There is no guide to speak of. The author says he is making a new version and you have to buy it when it comes out (no free upgrade). Not going to pay for a product at the virtual end of its life cycle. No thanks.

Cyberlink PowerCinema 4 is the full edition to the crap that ATI gave me. No guide offered AT ALL to USA users … what are they smoking?

So now that all the commercial applications are done, I moved on to open source freeware. The first I tried was GB-PVR. It didn’t seem to have the support for the hardware functionality of my card. I also have some trouble setting it up. I uninstalled it.

The final one is MediaPortal. I didn’t have much trouble setting it up, and it is actively being developed. Running it is another story. The configuration program sometimes hangs and does not shut down, ditto for the actual program. It does not work when you try to make it fullscreen from windowed mode. It has numerous bugs for me. For some reason it will not show some channels that I receive fine in other programs. The guide, while integrated, is a pain to set up (with xmltv) and I still haven’t gotten the times to show up correctly.

All in all I can thank ATI for all of this trouble that still hasn’t been sorted out. Why sell a product with some really crappy software and leave your customers hanging and looking for another solution? Oh wait, this is the company that releases buggier drivers every single release that get worse and worse. No wonder I switched to Nvidia.

On the bright side I do love my new video card. Nvidia also has a nice feature for LCD screens to make the graphics card adapt to a smaller resolution that looks nicer than when the LCD itself does it, and it also allows you to play in a lower resolution with a “box” around the area you aren’t using (like a letterbox) that does not degrade the quality. Nice.

Anyone know of any good TV solutions for the PC? I would love to know.

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This is George Lucas. He likes money, A LOT.

So it’s happening, George Lucas intends to put the final nail in the coffin with a TV series. I honestly hope that this new TV series featuring a young Luke in growing up on Tatooine is an early April Fools joke. I doubt it is, as I’m sure every marketing person and Lucas himself sees dollar signs in their eyes.

What the series should be

Let’s see, Luke sitting around, fixing moisture vaporators, hanging out at Toshi Station buying power converters, and blasting whomp rats with his T-16. This is the only thing it can be because it is what the story says Luke was doing. When he got into his whole mess in Episode 4 he was an ignorant and oblivious farm boy who knew nothing about anything. I cannot stress this enough. His innocence to the whole galactic war was the main selling of his character as an unlikely hero for the alliance. So, if the world is perfect, and George Lucas and his money grubbing cronies have found the error in their ways, the show should bomb because no one wants to watch a kid fix moisture vaporators all day.

What the show will be

Luke Skywalker finds himself magically attuned to some kind of power that he seemingly can’t explain. He gets into all kinds of wacky adventures with every single piece of trash in the galaxy. He is visited multiple times by every evil and good character we already know, and every single poorly thought out character we don’t. Jar Jar Binks (a very old Jar Jar) visits and everyone watching will want to kill themselves. Luke will learn about the force and use a lightsaber which will make the original movie incoherent when he asks what the hell this force thing really is. You don’t think Lucas will do it? How about that Obi Wan who had all those adventures with C-3PO and R2D2 and then magically ignores his knowledge of them in Episode 4.

I don’t even know anything about this show yet and I already hate it. He says, “that it was unlikely any of the stars of the movies would be involved in the TV series.” Right … but we can make up Jedi Masters right? And Empire admirals and new Darth’s. That is until the ratings drop, then we can bring in Leia! But before that we should bring in Mark Hamill to play a different character, boy that would be a hoot!

There is one promising aspect to this, as they said the series would be “much more dramatic and darker.” Great, at least it won’t be all jokes and marketing trash. But the only way to save the series would be to make it very dark, like KILL LUKE SKYWALKER AND PRETEND IT NEVER HAPPENED. Yeah, at the end of the series, just say it was a dream. Then maybe we will all forgive you.

Until then, Star Wars is officially dead (except for the few writers who actually understand Star Wars), because George Lucas has completely lost touch.

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“Soon the Killer Bees will occupy territory north to San Francisco and Richmond, essentially half the United States”

Well, I for one, await our Killer Bee overlords. And I am still waiting, some ten years later. Where did they go? I guess these bees weren’t the conquering sort.

This bee decides to forgo blood lust for a flower instead. How nice

So, since I haven’t been mauled by a hive of angry bees every time I walk outside, I can assume I was pretty much the victim of sensationalist journalism. Where can I get back all those sleepless nights? But seriously, a lot of people worry about a lot of things. These people have problems. You should never worry about anything you cannot control. It’s a futile waste of time.

The news media is here for one reason. To make money! Don’t be fooled by some mission statement to give practical and honest reporting of the news to the masses. Those people are reporters, they are under some kind of delusion they work for someone who isn’t in a suite looking at revenue figures. When some reporter reports a 20 second clip on a murder, or a 3 minute segment on those killer bees that are going to take over the United States, use some common sense and skeptical nature.

Remember this when the Earth’s magnetic field collapses, the flu pandemic comes, aliens attack, the earth stops rotating, global warming melts the ice caps causing Water World, global warming causes an ice age, hurricanes destroy everything, the Chinese invade, or a Texan becomes president.

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Lets examine here, some quick pictoral evidence. I might be able to get a more convincing comparison if I say took a shot from the DVD of Frodo when he was pale white and when Octavia was pale white in that episode. But since I am very lazy, I just took a quick screen cap of Rome and searched Google for pictures of Frodo.

Can you see the similarities? I sure can, I am sure someone else has noticed this! Next time you watch you just be thinking Frodo. It will change the whole experience.

Lord of the Rings, Frodo, Elijah Wood, Rome, Kerry Condon

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By the way, if you dont have HBO I wouldnt want you to miss this great show, so download it and piss off everyone who cares! Download it at mininova or another suitable bittorrent place (BT rocks in case you have been living in a cave).

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Rome is much more realistic than that tired imagery of pristine marble buildings and sterile Roman life. Those of us who have anything more than a passing knowledge of the Roman world know that it was not so pretty. Romans loved their violence, their sex and their political intrigue. I mean come on, what sounds like a better nitty-gritty HBO drama than that? Not only is it usually more shocking than the Sopranos, but the Romans were doing it in Italy 3 millennia before Tony was even born!

The acting is superb, as is expected from a prime HBO show. There are standouts, like Polly Walker who plays Atia of the Julii. She practically steals every scene she is in, playing the part of Roman mistress seductress, plotting the next scheme, perfectly. The two soldiers, who form the unlikely pair and focus in the story, are also well played.

I recommend anyone who likes a good action oriented drama with political intrigue (who fucking doesn’t?!) watch Rome on Sundays. Remember, for those of us who are not lucky enough to have retarded fucking Adelphia (thanks for being retarded you idiots, free premium channels), and unfortunately does not have HBO … there is that website.

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