Hidden Gems of Hulu and Hulu+

Kurrelgyre wrote:

It's a TV comedy, so I'm not sure it matters as much in that case.

Sure, but it does happen that visual jokes can be ruined by braindead cropping. I never got the aversion to black bars. Does the viewer want to see the image that was intended by the people who produced the media or some bastardized version usually produced by an automated process?

Oh well. This ship sailed in the days of VHS and DVD.

Honestly, people don't want the black bars. No matter how many times you explain it, there is a surprisingly large number of TV viewers that think they are missing some of the picture when black bars are there. I've had this discussion with my mother-in-law to no avail. And really, and ton of people just don't care that much. What they do know is that the show with the black bars has a smaller picture than the cropped show with no black bars.

Personally, I can live with cropped. It's not ideal, and I would prefer the full version, but it’s so not a hill I'm going to die on. But you start stretching and compressing the full picture into a different ratio, and I will lose my mind. I'll bring my own tombstone to that hill.

Jeez, Jay. Calm down. I know this is the internet but you're blowing this all out of...oh, you spoke with reason.

I'll see myself out.

Jayhawker wrote:

Honestly, people don't want the black bars. No matter how many times you explain it, there is a surprisingly large number of TV viewers that think they are missing some of the picture when black bars are there. I've had this discussion with my mother-in-law to no avail. And really, and ton of people just don't care that much. What they do know is that the show with the black bars has a smaller picture than the cropped show with no black bars.

What those people need is a little set of velvet theater curtains that can cover that part of the screen.

Jayhawker wrote:

Honestly, people don't want the black bars. No matter how many times you explain it, there is a surprisingly large number of TV viewers that think they are missing some of the picture when black bars are there. I've had this discussion with my mother-in-law to no avail. And really, and ton of people just don't care that much. What they do know is that the show with the black bars has a smaller picture than the cropped show with no black bars.

Personally, I can live with cropped. It's not ideal, and I would prefer the full version, but it’s so not a hill I'm going to die on. But you start stretching and compressing the full picture into a different ratio, and I will lose my mind. I'll bring my own tombstone to that hill.

Can confirm from working at Hollywood Video in the late 90's. People actively avoided letterboxed VHS and would bring movies back demanding an exchange or refund if they picked one up on accident.

Thinking about it with a more modern perspective, I can kind of see how a letterboxed VHS image would look pretty awful. VHS is 333x480 with wide pixels, so a letterboxed 16:9 movie is effectively 333x270 VHS pixels, with some obscured by overscan.

IMAGE(https://s26.postimg.cc/nbc6zuwpl/nfsmw13-480x360jpg.jpg)

Viewing that full screen, it's pretty yucky. Some movies would be even worse, at 1.85:1 or even 2.39:1.

On a CRT screen, it'd be super blurry. This is closer to actual size if you're viewing this on a desktop monitor, but it would look worse than this because of wide pixels:

IMAGE(https://s26.postimg.cc/w6d1af3ih/nfsmw13_zoom_13-640x480.jpg)

DVD would be slightly better, but still not great. I remember some directors when talking about letterboxing said they preferred pan & scan for DVD because so much detail was lost at 480p resolution (effectively 360p for a 16:9 letterboxed movie). Even though the DVD source was digital, nearly all were watched on analog PAL or NTSC (aka "Never The Same Color") screens. Those displays would smear the image, distort colors, and lose even more fine detail than was already lost due to the primitive (by today's standards) DVD video compression.

What does this have to do with Hulu? Um... er...

The first two seasons of the oddball Canadian comedy Letterkenny are on Hulu.

It's about a town of 5000 people described as hicks, skids and hockey players. It isn't going to be for everyone's taste but my wife and I love it.

Agent 86 wrote:

The first two seasons of the oddball Canadian comedy Letterkenny are on Hulu.

It's about a town of 5000 people described as hicks, skids and hockey players. It isn't going to be for everyone's taste but my wife and I love it.

I caught some clips of this the other day and they cracked me up to no end. It was in a sports gaming forum where hockey was being discussed, and folks started sharing.

Will definitely watch.

One more, because my wife was crying because this is so relevant to me.

That first clip is from their webisodes.

Here is that same scene from the show:

Squirrely Dan is my spirit animal:

Warning: Both scenes contain NSFW language.

That looks amazing

Corner Gas for adults?

Aaaaand now another show to watch.

I recently watched Please Stand By. It gave me many warm fuzzies. Dakota Fanning is amazing.

And hey, how about this: an awesome film in which the three primary characters are all women! They're all white women, but ... they're women!

Well, we "binged" the first three episodes of Castle Rock, and it is damn good creepy TV, with a heaping of Stephen King nostalgia, and better acting and writing than you might expect. Really liking the story. It has some serious dread, and my wife as literally jumped and gasped a few times. And there are several great characters to enjoy.

This is not as fun as something like Stranger Things. This feels darker and grittier, but still has some decent levity to balance out the bleakness.

And Pajiba has a nice article up about why all the Easter eggs are actually well done, and contribute to the story.

Unlike most streaming TV, they are just uploading these one episode a week, on Wednesdays. One then one hand, I want more now. On the other, it does create a better event around which we can discuss the story online, as most of us are at the same point.

Anybody watch Active Measures yet?

I'm honestly surprised that Castle Rock isn't being discussed more in this corner of the tubes but I thought it was a great series that had a thought provoking ending that I didn't expect from something coming out of the King universe. Not bashing Stephen King at all but usually his endings are a lot more explosive and conclusive but as this was only based off his writings then it does make sense. The acting was well done by everyone involved and the pacing was just about perfect for the story being told. Highly recommended and I am hoping Hulu takes more chances like this.

I think it was discussed in the main TV thread for some reason. I definitely remember some talk.

I watched the last episode of Castle Rock tonight. Overall a very interesting and well done show. At one point I had read every Stephen King book he'd written (he's since written a few more that I haven't gotten around to yet) and I enjoyed being able to pick out some of the callouts to other stories, although I'm sure I missed a bunch.

Also, another show on Hulu, Sarah Silverman's I Love You America is back. And it's better than ever. The most recent episode features a monologue about the recent James Gunn/Guardian's of the Galaxy firing that was great.

Zero Days, a documentary about Stuxnet. Poses some interesting questions about the future of cyber and the lack of public discussion about it.

The First has been...interesting. I was expecting grand science fiction but it's mostly been a character drama so far.

BIG NEWS King of the Hill is now available on Hulu!

Yep.

Uh huh

Kurrelgyre wrote:

The First has been...interesting. I was expecting grand science fiction but it's mostly been a character drama so far.

I’m in the mood for some grand science fiction so thanks for saving me the time. I might still go for character drama but not right now.

Yay, they finally added Killing Eve back to Hulu. I started watching it on recommendations from my wife, made it up to episode 6 or 7, only to have it pulled. Couldn't see buying it when I was that close, so was waiting for it to show back up somewhere.

If you have BBC America, their app has all the episodes, too. But I do think you need to have cable subscription, though.

Jayhawker wrote:

If you have BBC America, their app has all the episodes, too. But I do think you need to have cable subscription, though.

It didn't when I checked before. I think I even checked within the last month. Even installed the app on the Roku, and couldn't watch the whole season.

At some point in the last month they quietly added seasons 3-6 of Letterkenny. I was rewatching some episodes this morning and was delightfully surprised when it kept autoplaying after season 2. Pitter patter.

Still enjoying Runaways. Lots of changes from the comics as the story goes farther but mostly I've been ok with it.

Stele wrote:

Still enjoying Runaways. Lots of changes from the comics as the story goes farther but mostly I've been ok with it.

We're still watching too. Not as good as the first season, but still good. I like that they’re leaning into the family/team stuff.