Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2012 January 4

= January 4 =

Why didn't Teletubbies return to PBS?
I checked some Vegas PBS listings for January 2012 but Teletubbies is not seen yet. Do you know why? Can someone please tell me? If you can't find a news article for it, contact your local PBS station and give me the answer. Thanks.

68.224.119.202 (talk) 03:10, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * According to the Wikipedia article Teletubbies the show was produced only until 2001, and only aired nationally until 2005 in re-runs, so you're about 6 years too late to catch it on PBS. I suppose some local stations may have carried it later than that, or maybe it runs in syndication somewhere.  The Wikipedia article does not indicate why it was cancelled, but every show gets cancelled sometime (well, except for a few, like 60 Minutes and The Simpsons).  There can be any number of reasons, but it usually boils down to poor ratings; the network or producers usually believe they can make more money or get better ratings with a different show.  -- Jayron  32  03:26, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your answer. 68.224.119.202 (talk) 05:26, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * If you are interested in seeing it, I believe you can find many episodes on DVD. See .  -- Jayron  32  05:29, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * There was some criticism of TTs, such as them never talking in complete sentences, for example. It's difficult to figure out what exactly were they were supposed to be teaching.  This might be fine for commercial TV, but PBS generally aims for educational kids shows.  This might have had something to do with the cancellation.  StuRat (talk) 05:35, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

unique movies and novels
Friends, please name some movies and/or tv series with a different/unique/unusual screenplay (Ex: non-linear like nolan films, recurring scenes like Groundhogday, Source code). Also name some of the novels with this stuff. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.224.149.10 (talk) 05:33, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * There have been some like He Said, She Said, where the same event is shown from different POVs. Movies involving time travel tend to be non-linear, like The Time Traveler's Wife. StuRat (talk) 05:38, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * If you are looking for non-linear plots, some ideas:
 * Films:
 * Memento (film)
 * Jacob's Ladder (film)
 * Fight Club (also book)
 * Anything directed by Terry Gilliam
 * Books
 * Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (also film)
 * Ulysses (novel) (not for the faint of heart)
 * Gravity's Rainbow
 * The Sound and the Fury
 * I'm sure others will come to recommend some more. -- Jayron  32  05:40, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * There have been some that have multiple story lines that don't seem to be connected but later interweave such as Short Cuts and 2 Days in the Valley. Dismas |(talk) 05:46, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * See Category:Nonlinear narrative films. Searching for "Psychological thrillers" on Google will also give you a good list.--  Obsidi ♠ n   Soul   06:38, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * For novels, there is stuff like Behind Closed Doors by Alina Reyes which is one of those books that gives you choices. You know, there are two doors and if you take the left one, go to chapter 6, while if you take the right one, go to chapter 7.  I think this kind of fiction is more common for young readers than for adults.  Is there a name for it?
 * Also, The Unfortunates by B. S. Johnson, which can be read in any order. --Viennese Waltz 08:50, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Choose Your Own Adventure is the name of the biggest series of those books. Dismas |(talk) 13:46, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, and that article gives the name of the genre – gamebook. I knew it had a name but couldn't think of it. Thanks. --Viennese Waltz 13:51, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Sliding Doors takes as its premise, the effect on someone's life of missing a train, and the film is shot from both perspectives (one of catching the train and one of missing the train). --TammyMoet (talk) 12:55, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Mr. Nobody (2009) takes the plot based on parallel universes even further, though it also uses the choice of boarding a train or not as the first branch.--  Obsidi ♠ n   Soul   13:07, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * And Kieślowski's Blind Chance (1981) also follows the consequences of catching or not catching a train. Since he was first maybe he should sue. --Antiquary (talk) 18:56, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Some films have multiple endings - Clue, for example. Run Lola Run shows roughly the same story three times, with small changes leading to different outcomes. Warofdreams talk 13:30, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * A few directors come to mind: David Fincher, Takeshi Kitano, Stanley Kubrick, David O. Russell, Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze. Vranak (talk) 15:32, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The film Irréversible is told backwards; this narrative technique is also used in Martin Amis's novel Time's Arrow. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:53, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks friends...

Discovery HD world music
what music is that in the latest tv commercial featuring discovery HD world? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.224.149.10 (talk) 05:40, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You're more likely to get an answer if you provide a link to YouTube or something showing the ad. I just YouTubed "discovery hd world" and no recent videos came up, although plenty of old ones did. --Viennese Waltz 13:02, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah thanks friend. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.224.149.10 (talk) 04:00, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

A search glitch in Windows 7 when trying to search files on your J:\ drive that is first used on a Windows XP PC
My Windows XP PC has some issues months ago so I had to use my Windows 7 PC. I have my J:\ (Iomega eGo) and K:\ backup drives connected to it. Whenever I go to Start Menu and search for anything like a video clip on those drives, my Win7 PC doesn't have any privileges to find any of them, so it goes "No files found." I want to keep track of some dates for my videos in chronological order so that I can remember what date to upload videos to YouTube (every day, every week and every year). So, you can't be able to do it unless you use an old PC with Windows XP SP2 on it. What the heck, Microsoft? How did this go unnoticed? Damn, this is even lazier than the glitches Microsoft looked over in Windows Vista. Please help.

68.224.119.202 (talk) 20:02, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * This problem is caused because of the way Windows 7 searches for files. Before it can search on a drive, it needs to 'index' all the files on that drive. However, Windows 7 does not index files on removable drives. There is a workaround, though. Follow the instructions here, and then post back here if the problem is not solved. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 20:44, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * One small note. This question would be better placed on the Computing Reference Desk.  See WP:RD/C.  Dismas |(talk) 20:51, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I obviously need more sleep - I assumed this WAS the Computing desk, and was trying to work out why the other questions were about things I didn't understand... - Cucumber Mike (talk) 20:54, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Why is WildTangent Speedway no longer up for download?!?
When I little, I used to play this game on my first Windows XP PC before it was broken but not anymore. On the Fortune City website, every time I go to the download link for it, it takes me to some random "About WildTangent" website. Please click on the link below and you will see why. Oh, and don't forget to reply to this section, if you please. Thank you.

http://members.fortunecity.com/mpegx/aplugingame.shtml

68.224.119.202 (talk) 21:07, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You'll need to ask WildTangent why the URL is a redirect. RudolfRed (talk) 02:07, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks. How can I do that? 68.224.119.202 (talk) 04:27, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * There are a couple of different ways to contact them here on their contact page.
 * APL (talk) 11:02, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I could probably e-mail them, but I may not be responsible enough because I'm 13. I don't know if I wanna do it either with or without my mom and dad's parental permission. 68.224.119.202 (talk) 18:10, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

F connector
Friend of mine is insisting that he's receiving 1080i HD video via a simple analogue F connector. Is it possible? My suspicion is that 1080i is just the upscaled resolution his TV capturing card (that said F connector is plugged into) is set to. --79.193.60.126 (talk) 22:59, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * F connectors are often used to connect a coaxial cable to an HDTV receiver. This can carry the over-the-air signal from the television antenna to the receiver.  The HDTV receiver is capable of producing 1080i resolution from this signal by using its internal ATSC tuner.  --Thomprod (talk) 23:53, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * But surely, the analogue coaxial F connector cable can't carry a digital HDTV signal, can it? I'm not talking about the receiver upscaling it, just what the cable is carrying. I mean, I can upscale a 320x240 VCD MPEG into a 720x480 DV, but I still won't get rid of the low-rez MPEG block artifacts introduced by the VCD bottleneck in the conversion chain, right? --79.193.60.126 (talk) 02:27, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, it can. The coax and connector can carry a digital signal as well as an analog one, HDTV, SD or radio.  The nature of the signal at this point is not important.  It still has to be demodulated in the tuner. --Thomprod (talk) 11:33, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * But is the cable's bandwith even sufficient for it? It was made for a terrestrial bandwith of only 6MHz, after all. --79.193.52.191 (talk) 12:31, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Conventional normal-definition analog TV signals are transmitted at far higher frequencies than 6MHz. --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:05, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Frequency is different from bandwith. --79.193.52.191 (talk) 14:26, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * And digital is different from analog. The bandwidth depends on the encoding and the frequency. --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:10, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Frequency refers to the carrier wave that the audio and video signal is modulated on top of, whereas the frequency only works like a resolution or samplerate per pre-defined bandwith, not vice versa. It's like with dots per x, whereas x would be the bandwidth. Your inch doesn't get bigger by putting more dots in there, all you get is smaller dots. The same goes for frequency and bandwith: You can increase the frequency all you want all the way up until UHF without changing the bandwith of each channel, which with NTSC is standardized as 6MHz, all you get is a finer frequency resolution per given channel. That's why with analogue FM radio, the higher frequency range is a competitive market, even though all radio channels have the same standardized bandwith.


 * I guess we've reached a stage where we'd have to tackle sampling frequencies, aka: How do bits and bytes relate to the Hertz frequency of a D/A video converter's analogue sinus wave output? How many bits per second can be squeezed into an analogue 6MHz sinus wave? And since you're saying we're dealing with 1080i HDTV here, we require the full standard kbps rate for MPEG-4 at that resolution, which is what, 35mbps? --79.193.52.191 (talk) 15:48, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Over-the-air digital television can carry 1080i video. So can digital cable. Both use a coax cable with an F connector. I don't know enough about the technical details to convince you, but for the North American transmission formats, have a look at ATSC - Modulation and transmission. It says one 6 MHz channel can carry about 19 Mbit/s of data using the over-the-air format (8VSB) or about 38 Mbit/s using the highest digital cable format (256QAM). ATSC uses MPEG-2, which seems to have various profiles and levels from .096 Mbit/s to 300 Mbit/s. I'm unsure if over-the-air ATSC can use it, but MPEG-4 actually uses even less bits per second. The various levels listed range from .064 Mbit/s to 8 Mbit/s (64 kbit/s to 8000 kbit/s).


 * For over-the-air digital TV in the US, RabbitEars.info can help you confirm the video format being broadcast by the stations in your area (as opposed to the format your converter box or TV is actually converting it to for display). Click on a city name (NOT the rank number), then click on a station's call letters. Or enter a station's call letters in the search box at the top. --Bavi H (talk) 04:55, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Alternate ending?
I distinctly remember the film Let It Ride ending with Richard Dreyfuss's character betting everything on a horse and losing, whereupon all his newly acquired "friends" drop him like a hot potato, but the synopsis and a youtube clip show him winning. Was there an alternate ending, am I thinking of a different movie, or am I losing the few marbles I still possess? Clarityfiend (talk) 23:38, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I would never comment on the possibility of marbles gone missing, but the article on Let It Ride says it is winner takes all. Bielle (talk) 02:18, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * These things happen. W.C. Fields once said, "Lady Godiva put everything she had on a horse." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:22, 5 January 2012 (UTC)