Hidden Gems of Amazon Prime instant videos

Skyfall went up on Prime Instant. IMO it's worth watching even if just for amazing cinematography. One of the most well shot movies I've seen in ages.

And if you like Bond but have somehow not caught it yet... total must see.

I've had this for 2 years and I've never watched anything on it.

I just dislike the UI format. Has it gotten better recently?

karmajay wrote:

I've had this for 2 years and I've never watched anything on it.

I just dislike the UI format. Has it gotten better recently?

What are you watching it on?

I've enjoyed it on both PS3 and iPad. Don't use it on PC much. Although the PC search and browse and add to wishlist is better. And then I go to the other device and just play from wishlist which is much easier than typing.

FYI, it appears that Hannibal has finally landed on Amazon Prime. If you missed the first season, this is a good way to catch up on the best new series in the last year. It looks like season 2 won't start start until April. But you might want to get your belly full early.

Jayhawker wrote:

FYI, it appears that Hannibal has finally landed on Amazon Prime. If you missed the first season, this is a good way to catch up on the best new series in the last year. It looks like season 2 won't start start until April. But you might want to get your belly full early.

Nice!

OG_slinger wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

FYI, it appears that Hannibal has finally landed on Amazon Prime. If you missed the first season, this is a good way to catch up on the best new series in the last year. It looks like season 2 won't start start until April. But you might want to get your belly full early.

Nice!

This was a surprisingly good show. I went in with pretty low expectations on how they were going to pull it off, but they did it and the guy who plays Hannibal is awesome. I'm probably just a sick person but I sat there with a grin on my face every time Hannibal had somebody over for dinner.

Vega wrote:

the guy who plays Hannibal is awesome

Mads Mikkelsen rules. In everything he's in, even if the rest of it is bad.

Thin_J wrote:
Vega wrote:

the guy who plays Hannibal is awesome

Mads Mikkelsen rules. In everything he's in, even if the rest of it is bad.

He was the coolest character in King Arthur. Also starring Hugh Dancy, strangely enough.

Hannibal, etc., etc.

Oh heck yes, that is easily my favorite show to air this year. But the sad truth is now I'll never open my Hannibal BluRay set. Damn you Amazon Prime!

Thin_J wrote:
Vega wrote:

the guy who plays Hannibal is awesome

Mads Mikkelsen rules. In everything he's in, even if the rest of it is bad.

I highly recommend this if you can find it. We watched it during the St. Louis International Film festival, and Mads was freaking awesome. Be wary of trailers, though, as they seem to be pretty much the whole story. It's subtitled, but so worth it. It may be heading back to theaters later.

IMAGE(http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTM4MjM5MzA4OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzA1NjUzMDE@._V1_SX640_SY720_.jpg)
In the 16th century in the Cévennes, a horse dealer by the name of Michael Kohlhaas leads a happy family life. When a lord treats him unjustly, he raises an army and puts the country to fire and sword in order to have his rights restored.

Star Trek: The Next Generation now has just over half of its episodes available in HD.

Yeah they're trailing pretty closely the blu-ray releases.

Kurrelgyre wrote:

Star Trek: The Next Generation now has just over half of its episodes available in HD.

Oh! I'm going to check that. I'm just starting season 3 and the Netflix ones are 480p and uuuuuuuugly. Thanks for posting that!!!

Edit: Ahhhh, much better.

Edit 2: Holy sh*t. This is a billion times better. These must be the versions they did for the Blu-ray releases. I seem to remember someone talking about them redoing the special effects and whatnot. WOW! It's really fun for me because I never watched the series.

Edit: Also, there's a nice 5.1 mix instead of stereo sound! The best thing is, I feel like just watching two seasons in 480p/Stereo on Netflix allows me to fully appreciate what's been done.

THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!

Darmok and Jalard at Tanagra!

Stayed up too late watching an episode. Man, they did a really good job. I wish someone would clean up Bab5 in the same manner.

Grenn wrote:

Darmok and Jalard at Tanagra!

Shaka. When the walls fell.
Translation: this episode is not in HD, yet.

tboon wrote:

Stayed up too late watching an episode. Man, they did a really good job. I wish someone would clean up Bab5 in the same manner.

That's going to be tricky/impossible. B5 was shot on video instead of film, and the CG would have to be re-rendered. Many of those textures were lost in the season 3->4 transition from Foundation Imaging to in-house Netter Digital, which itself is no more.

Also, Babylon 5 wasn't very good to begin with...

/runaway

Kurrelgyre wrote:
Grenn wrote:

Darmok and Jalard at Tanagra!

Shaka. When the walls fell.
Translation: this episode is not in HD, yet.

tboon wrote:

Stayed up too late watching an episode. Man, they did a really good job. I wish someone would clean up Bab5 in the same manner.

That's going to be tricky/impossible. B5 was shot on video instead of film, and the CG would have to be re-rendered. Many of those textures were lost in the season 3->4 transition from Foundation Imaging to in-house Netter Digital, which itself is no more.

The trick is, Babylon 5 was shot in HD from the get-go. They thought that the switch to HD was right around the corner, so they shot everything in HD and cropped it for the broadcast. The DVD version uses the HD footage for the live-action widescreen shots. Unfortunately, the effect shots weren't done in HD, allegedly because Warner Brothers was too cheap to buy an HD reference monitor for Foundation Imaging.

So on the DVDs/streams the widescreen live action looks great (minus some practical effects not standing up to HD scrutiny). The in-space effects shots are cropped a bit but look as decent as early-90s CG can (some of the battles look really good). But the shots that mix live action & VFX are mostly blurry and cropped, and the greenscreen work suffers. There's not a whole lot of it, but it's an unfortunate weakness.

Of course, if you were doing a Trek-style redo of the VFX you'd have to rebuild all of the models and textures anyway, because the early-90s assets don't really hold up by themselves. A bunch of them predate UV mapping, for starters. Though the station itself has already been redone for the Lost Tales DVD, and a huge chunk of the space VFX for the first season can be covered entirely with those assets.

WipEout wrote:

Also, Babylon 5 wasn't very good to begin with...

/runaway

Death to the infidel!

Persons Unknown - We watched the whole season this past week. Gave a very Lost vibe, which made me think the ending would be disappointing. Of course, it was canceled so there wasn't a proper ending.

Jack Taylor - Had a lot of fun with this series. Really really like Iain Glen, even though he plays a lot of assholes in his other roles.

Copper - Even though it's set in NYC, it has such a BBC feel to it. Which is a good thing.

Chaz wrote:
WipEout wrote:

Also, Babylon 5 wasn't very good to begin with...

/runaway

Death to the infidel!

An excellent counter-example to what the show tried to teach viewers. I was wrong about it being shot on video; must have gotten confused when I read about it using tapes.

Kurrelgyre wrote:
Chaz wrote:
WipEout wrote:

Also, Babylon 5 wasn't very good to begin with...

/runaway

Death to the infidel!

An excellent counter-example to what the show tried to teach viewers. I was wrong about it being shot on video; must have gotten confused when I read about it using tapes.

The editing was done on video, so the final episodes were stored as video, which is probably what you heard about. But the original footage was 35mm film. You can find obsessive fan investigation of the DVD transfer image quality, if you're into that sort of thing.

tboon wrote:

Stayed up too late watching an episode. Man, they did a really good job. I wish someone would clean up Bab5 in the same manner.

Holy yes. I don't get into Star Trek despite, or because, I used to watch it quite a bit. But Babylon 5 for all its warts I remember very fondly.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Copper - Even though it's set in NYC, it has such a BBC feel to it. Which is a good thing.

Also canceled.

TBH, I started out really liking Copper, but something about it just didn't click after a while. The wife and I finished the first season, but we really had no interest in the characters after that. We moved on to Ripper Street (on Netflix), which we found was far better overall.

Also, I posted my last message in the wrong thread. It was supposed to go into the Netflix thread; I don't even know if those items are on Amazon.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Also, I posted my last message in the wrong thread. It was supposed to go into the Netflix thread; I don't even know if those items are on Amazon.

It actually is on Amazon as well, I just checked!

My wife and I started watching The Good Wife. It's got some components that would normally turn us off (procedural with some of the various trappings) but it's generally well written. Also, I'm down with a smart, semi-older lady as the protagonist.

demonbox wrote:

My wife and I started watching The Good Wife. It's got some components that would normally turn us off (procedural with some of the various trappings) but it's generally well written. Also, I'm down with a smart, semi-older lady as the protagonist.

Joy! I'm also a procedural agnostic most of the time, but The Good Wife does a great job of committing a large portion of each episode to the season long arc, especially in later seasons. It's the only show I watch live on Sundays; sorry Bob's Burgers.