Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Shogun

My one goal for this three-day Memorial Day weekend is to binge watch the entire 10-episode run of Shogun (streaming on Disney Plus). Long ago have I read James Clavell’s acclaimed novel of the same name. It was therefore super exciting to see it visualized in a new medium.

Verdict: Shogun is magnificently done. The cinematography is amazing, and the acting is superb (Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai should win lots of awards for their performance. Moeka Hoshi is a bonafide scene-stealer). Fans of the book - I would include myself - can be wholly satisfied with the show-runners’ interpretation of the base material. It’s largely faithful to the book. The subtle changes made contribute to better storytelling for television.

The depiction of Lady Mariko leading Toranaga’s retinue out of Osaka Castle, Mariko fighting through the samurai blockade, is wonderfully breathtaking.

The feudal period of Japan is my absolute favorite historical period - of any country. Before I read Shogun the book, what got me into this slice of history is the book Taiko, by Eiji Yoshikawa. Taiko narrates the story of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s rise from lowly peasant to the Taiko - ruler of Japan - during the Sengoku period. That book is where I first learned of these giants of Japanese history: Oda Nobunaga - the unifier of feudal Japan, and Tokugawa Ieyasu - founder of the great Tokugawa Shogunate.

Shogun is actually a fictionalized version of Tokugawa’s maneuvers to claim the supreme title, during the period after the Taiko’s death.

I immediately wanted to play Ghost of Tsushima again after finishing the show.

Apple TV 4K

I’ve always been a big proponent of spending money to make your life easier. It’s a wonder then why I waited so long to get an Apple TV 4K unit for my LG television. Farewell, LG’s utterly crappy WebOS! No more apps crashing, paused shows not starting back up, and general unresponsiveness. More importantly: LG can no longer harvest my usage information.

The reason I delayed on getting the Apple TV is the price. After spending $1,800 on the LG OLED, I really didn’t want to immediately spend another $129 (plus tax) for something that duplicates what the TV can already do (albeit poorly). One year later, I’m finally fed up. Still determined to save money, I bought my Apple TV 4K from the Apple Refurbished store, for a $20 saving. Combined with a $100 Apple Gift Card that I bought for $90, it brings the Apple TV to a price just palatable enough to click checkout.

If you’re going to run a TV operating system, you really want the power of the iPhone. The A15 chip in the Apple TV 4K makes everything buttery smooth. Apps launch super quickly; there’s nothing you the user can do to flummox the unit. Best of all, the exquisitely-built aluminum Apple TV remote can serve duty to control the LG TV as well. While it lacks buttons to switch the TV’s inputs (I have a PlayStation 5 plugged in as well), merely starting up the PS5 (using its own controller) will cause the TV to switch to the appropriate input automatically.

Consumer tech is as its best when it can delight like that. I can now relegate the LG remote to storage.

The only thing preventing Apple TV 4K from being perfect, is the inability to act as an interface for over-the-air TV signals. It would be sweet if I didn’t have to leave Apple TV to watch local broadcast channels. Perhaps in future iterations? Overall I am incredibly happy with the purchase.

Go watch Ted Lasso

Hello there! Strange to be writing the first blog entry of June in the middle of June. I am sad to report that I’ve suffered a right-hand injury two weeks back. Naturally, that makes it slightly difficult to do hand-related activities, such as typing (washing my hair was an inarticulate mess). I’m glad my BMW M2 has an automatic transmission, because were it the manual, I wouldn’t have been able to drive.

I am on the mend, obviously, and therefore able to type on these pages again. Nothing will make you value your overall health like when it’s taken away from you. With an injured hand, I haven’t been able to workout with weights. Shame, because I just bought a 40 pound kettlebell to replace the measly 26 pounder I’ve been using the past few years. I ordered from Amazon because it was the cheapest, though the poor delivery person had to schlep that 40 pounds from the truck to our front door step. Sorry!

In the meantime, I’ve been lounging on the couch and watching episodes of Ted Lasso. What a wonderfully fantastic series! I’ve heard people refer it as a happy go-lucky show, but there’s so much layers to that cake. You don’t get that happiness and positivity without being emotionally vulnerable and dealing with your demons. The second season especially, shows the titular character finally confronting the darkness stemming from the lost of his father. Ted Lasso narrates all of that in a wrapper that reminds audiences to be kind and selfless towards others, and ourselves.

The series is an easy recommendation, well worth the $7 to subscribe to Apple TV+ (for one month) to watch all three seasons in one go.

When it works

Dehumidifiers are awesome. I run a tiny one in my bathroom to keep down the moisture. Every few days I would check the reservoir and it’s always amazing to see there’s water collected. I don’t pretend to know or care how exactly does a dehumidifier work to suck water out of the air. All I know is this little thing I bought from Costco nearly a year ago have continued to work magnificently, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Not bad for a $40 dollar thing that’s made in China.

I do love it when a product does its designated function well. Unfortunately I cannot say that for my LG OLED TV. Indeed it puts out an exquisite picture: 4K HDR content looks spectacular on it. However, there’s one big annoyance: the TV’s underlying operating system is absolute garbage. It’s so slow and unreliable that I wonder if LG really want people do use their native OS! I am this close to getting a Google Chromecast or an Apple TV device.

The interface’s slowness I can somewhat deal with. Once a show gets going, the issue becomes unobtrusive. What I cannot tolerate is getting unceremoniously kicked out of the app I’m currently using. I would be watching a Youtube video and then suddenly I’m back out to the no input selection screen. With zero warning! How did LG screw this up so badly? Did they blow the entire budget on the display itself? I mean, it is a super gorgeous display!

I think this will be one of the quality-of-life- annoyances that it would be best to just throw money at it and fix once and for all. Instead of death by a thousand cuts. Apple TV puck here I come!

The downside of OLED

OLED televisions have stunningly beautiful picture, an infinite contrast ratio, and perfect blacks. What you usually don’t read about is that OLED technology is best suited for very dark rooms. If you have windows that otherwise cannot be shaded completely, you’re going to have a bad time watching content on a sunny afternoon. Because current OLED televisions cannot get as bright as their LED counterparts. Sports and gaming you can get away with, but for movies and serious TV shows, OLED may not be the best.

This past Sunday afternoon I decided to watch The Batman. Thanks to my homie with a full HBO Max subscription, I get to watch the latest rendition of the cape crusader in the comforts of my own home. But I made a huge mistake: I should have watched the movie during nighttime. The reflections of my windows off of the TV’s glass surface wrecked havoc on the picture quality. It was a struggle to make out the dark details clearly. And for a film that makes an homage to film noir, it was doubly not ideal.

Most new movies and TVs shows these days are mastered in HDR. Meaning, you can’t really adjust the brightness. However well your TV can fight through the glare and reflections during the daytime, you’re stuck with it. For a room with multiple windows, I really should have bought an LED TV instead. Alas, the inky true blacks of OLED got to me. Henceforth I just have to relegate any movie watching to the evening hours.

Lesson here is: if your room have windows that you cannot install black-out curtains for, do not get an OLED TV.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Batman. It’s a nice change of pace to see the character act out his title of the world’s greatest detective. Robert Pattinson offers a fantastic take on the emotions of a young Batman, while Paul Dano’s Riddler provides a mirroring counterpart that’s every bit as intriguing. I honestly don’t understand how the movie got its lukewarm reviews. Sure, it’s not paced like a typical super hero movie, but I greatly enjoyed the immense amount of substance crammed into the hefty runtime.

The cinematography and the score is top notch as well. The Batman theme is so simple yet hauntingly weaved throughout the film.

Are you not entertained?

What a wonderful weekend of football. All four games going down to the very last play. It’s great to see the San Francisco 49ers beat the Green Bay Packers in the frozen tundra to advance to the championship round. I didn’t think the team would be in this position when the season started, but here they are. And how crazy was that ending to the Bills versus Chiefs game? The final two minutes of regulation and overtime was absolutely insane. What a treat for us that we get to see quarterbacks Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes duke it out for many many years to come.

I’m just glad that both of them are in the AFC instead of the NFC, where the 49ers are.

Having bought a 4K television recently, I really notice how poor the broadcast quality of free over-the-air local channels are. I don’t think any of them (FOX, CBS, NBC, ABC) are even doing 1080p quality, much less 4K. The result is that the football games of this past weekend don't look quite as good and sharp as they really should be. Worse, even when I use the broadcaster’s own streaming app to watch (in this case, NBC’s Peacock app), the maximum quality is still only 1080P. Why on earth is America’s favorite game not in 4K already?

The Super Bowl - the most watched event in this country by a huge margin - will not be in 4K! That’s unacceptable.

Of course this is indeed a first world problem. Remember how stunning 1080P looked compared to the 480i signals we’ve been seeing for decades? Such is the progression of technology that 1080P have become the sort of baseline. I would say the ideal signal for the televisions you can buy these days is 4K HDR. Movies in Dolby Vision quality on Disney Plus look incredible (I rather enjoyed Eternals). Honestly if something is only 1080P at the maximum, I rather watch it on the smaller display of my computer.

I got a new TV!

Late last week I wrote that I was finally able to purchase a PlayStation 5. On that Sunday, I picked up the notoriously scarce gaming console at my local Best Buy. Was I a bit self conscious carrying the PS5 to the car? You bet! With the rampant retail crime going on in the Bay Area, some thugs could have rolled up in a Honda Accord sedan and rip the PS5 from my hands in a flash. In hindsight I probably shouldn’t have parked at the lot on the roof. By myself.

Thank providence I made it home with the console unscathed. But now there’s another problem: I don’t have a television to plug the PS5 into. It’s been more than a year since I’ve moved to this new spot, and yet a TV still hasn’t materialized. I’ve always planned to buy one, but it’s definitely been on the back-burner, seeing as I don’t really watch that much TV. Other things I used more often were worth spending the money on, like a new MacBook Pro.

Because if I’m getting a TV, it’s got to be a good one. None of the poverty-spec models that costs in the hundreds. So it’s going to be spendy. The best in the business right now is the OLED televisions from LG. Dubbed the best TV for the PlayStation 5 by RTINGS.com, the LG C1 OLED is the one to purchase. 65-inch is the size I bought; could have gone bigger but alas I’m not made of money, despite appearances.

I’d thought about returning to Best Buy to buy the TV, but the 5% back at Amazon with my Chase Amazon card is too irresistible. What’s another few days of wait? Besides, I didn’t have to bug a friend with a large enough vehicle to transport the thing. It was white-glove delivery by a third-party contractor from Amazon. I know this because afterwards, Amazon emailed me a customer satisfaction survey regarding the delivery. I gave the team high marks as I’m sure their pay would be docked otherwise.

Needless to say I am loving the LG OLED TV. The picture quality is expectedly amazing. I’m happy to see the display has a glass cover, which enhances contrast and it’s easier to clean. Cheaper units would have been polycarbonate. Indeed the LG wasn’t cheap, but much like my Pro Display XDR, I’m looking to keep this for a very long time.