[Weekly Update] I Hate Modern TVs

I don't know if anyone beside me care about this. Microsoft has changed the default Office font from Calibri to Aptos. And I have to say, it's... not my favourite. Not that Calibri is all that pretty to begin with, but the small aperture of the letterings (The holes in the "R" "a" "e"), plus the double-storey "g" just makes the whole thing less legible than Google Open and Helvetica.

I do like that the lower case "l" has a curve, though. Helps with dyslexia.

(Meanwhile, we decided to change our channel's default font to Times New Roman. I think we might be the only YouTube channel using a serif font right now)

CHANNEL UPDATE

Hope you enjoy our video on Tony Jaa and his first two movies. A few detours were made during the making of this video. If you remember past updates, we were originally going to talk about the Ong-Bak trilogy. Long story short, it went from that to a retrospective on Tony Jaa's entire career, and eventually I pick out only the part that's most interesting, which is the first two movies.

Two videos are currently being written: A video on the first McDull movie, in which we discuss memories of Hong Kong around the late 90s and early 2000s; And a video on Chocolate, the movie that was meant to be a spiritual successor to Ong-Bak. We'll be talking about the rare cases of action movies that appeal to a female audience.

I have finally finished watching Switch. The last hour was pure torture. But the script idea ended up feeling rather similar to our recent video on Fast & Furious, at least tonally. So I'll be putting the video on the back burning, just so we have more variety with our videos.

Also, we'll continue to adjust our new channel art style. If you have suggestions, let me know.

Finally, for this month's bonus video, I'm thinking of talking about Predators, the one with Adrian Brody, and maybe talk about what other predator concept can work after the excellent Prey.

Although, bonus video ideas always change last minute, so... Again, if you have any suggestions, let me know.

MEDIA TALK

You know, I kinda forget the reason why we even have this part of the update. I guess it's really dry to just have channel status updates. I guess I'll take this opportunity to complain a little.

Anyway, so my TV broke down, right? I need to buy a new one. So I went to my local BestBuy. As per usual, most TVs in the store were playing some really bright and colourful stuff, macrophotography of flowers, ocean, drone footage of a clearly not healthy homogeneous man made forest, things like that.

And then there's an expensive section where the shop sells QLED and OLED TVs. I guess they want to show off how deep the dark part of their images are, as that is the selling point. It was an overcast day, the shop was not particularly well-lit. Yet somehow, when the movie fades to black, I can see my face reflected on the screen.

Fortunately, most TV sets have the good sense to have a matted surface. Glare is excusable, that much seems to be unavoidable. But there legit are a few that has a glass-like surface. I hate it on my phone. I hate it on my Mac. And I absolutely hate it on a TV set. Combining with how dark most movies are these days, it just means I'm literally starring at a black mirror half the time.

Another thing that I hate, and I'm sure most of you do, too: Motion smoothing. I don't know how and why it still exists, because everyone I know either know about it and hate it, or don't know about it and don't care. It does make evaluating image quality a lot more difficult, though. No joke, I legit saw a dude asking the employer for a remote, so he can turn it off and see if the TV works properly.

It's also annoying that most TVs these days are unrepairable. Not quite as bad as phones but still close enough. Not that it matters, because my TV came from a brand that went belly up during Covid. I don't even know if I can find parts to repair it.

Of course, the worst part is ads. The worst ones shows you a 10 to 15 second up on boot, while it fakes a loading screen. But even the good ones shows you ads on the side while you configure your TV. I heard there are ones that only shows ads after a period of time, when you can't return your TV anymore. That's just evil. It makes me really paranoid on which brand I should purchase.

One last funny thing: All TVs in the shop are 4K. But every thing they show are in HD. Even after so many years, 4K streaming and movie sources are still not common enough to be the default. Do we really need 4K outside of production and preservation?

Anyway, that was a rant. I'm not usually this negative I swear. But I think a lot of you can feel the same frustration in this regard. Anyway, it's time for me to get back to work. I'll see you soon, hopefully with a new video!