Hi all. New member.

[zogzog]

New member here. Hello everyone.
I’m posting here out of courtesy before replying to other topics.
English isn’t my native language, so thanks to modern translation tools ^^

[usually_quiet]

Welcome to the forum.

[Baldrick]

Please just don't spam.... :P

[abolibibelot]

New member here apparently subscribed specifically to “summon” me, asking about a rare movie I had mentioned in an old-ass thread, the very same day I came back here after a 4+ years leave of absence, then spent the better part of my Sunday afternoon uploading said rare movie for aforementioned new member here, and writing a long-ass reply expressing how glad I was to feel useful for once, but then new member here didn't come back to check it... Oh well... People are so fickle these days...
(Or perhaps Mistah zogzog he dead? Perhaps he pulled an Elvis check-out that very same afternoon? Am I that much of a harbinger of bad luck?)

[geek gift]

abolibibelot, but you did get an amazing story out of it !

there was film that did well with award season last year.

and neighbor said they hadn't seen it but was curious wanted to. i said i could hmm burn a copy for them.

i thought they'd at least have a blu ray player. but no...

it was still dvds to them.

so despite not working with dvd since the 1920's (how can/do i get this work ? what's the rules again...)

i some how figure it out even got some dvd-r 8.5 gb blanks to try to hrlp make the image extra snazzy.


not only has he not watched the film. he hasn't even put it in his player for three seconds to see if it works/what the vid quality is like.

and he's had months and months and months.

and did i mention he was cool with me doing this, and encouraged me to do because he wanted to see the film ?

normal people...

[abolibibelot]

@“geek gift” Well, thanks for the bit of compassion, but now ain't the right time to waste my very limited amounts of will and “mental energy” doing convoluted stuff that ultimately amounts to nothing but a somewhat cool story to tell (“amazing” might be a somewhat excessive qualifier in that particular case). Now was not the right time to come back here and make goofy posts like this, either. I'm in an extremely precarious situation, as in, I could be homeless within the next few weeks unless some miracle happens, and I've been waiting for a miracle for over six months with very little result so far.

And yeah, the vast majority of people nowadays are either nigh impossible to reach, or highly fickle, or both, which makes it all the more tricky to find a solution in such a situation.

(By the way, I just noticed an oddity: you made a single short post in 2014, then came back in 2025 and have had a somewhat regular activity since... I thought that my own 1500+ days of “suspended animation” was a somewhat rare occurrence!)

(I've used the word “somewhat” four times in that post... well that makes it five... I'm feeling somewhat somewhat today, I really could use some extra Watt...)

[geek gift]

crossing my fingers and my intestines that you get a miracle !!!!!

and "goofy" posts are great we can't live on video restoration alone.

no really, seems you have enough stress in life. if anything can get you to smile or lighten the mood that sounds essential.

an to "add" to the oddity mysetery. i was a lurker for years before i joined the site or even before i made that post.

and then i went back to lurking for years. ha ha.

this site was abit intimidating with all the names knowing everything and even those making a living in video related professions.

and i'm still struggling, with how can i get a good encode from a retail disc.

and i think i *somewhat* know the answer to your getting some extra watt !

there's power amps, receivers, integrated amps, digital amps, tube amps...

[zogzog]

Good evening everyone,

I will probably become a bit of a ghost user here rather quickly — but don’t worry, I’m not a bot or a spammer.

In a previous life on the internet I used to moderate several forums, so I’m quite familiar with both the strict rules… and the usual habits of forum communities. As a side note, I also spent quite a bit of time around video-related topics back then, and even had a decent level with AviSynth.

I must admit that I registered here for a very specific reason. For years I had been hoping to match the French audio from a worn-out VHS with a US rip of the same movie. By pure chance I stumbled upon an old thread where a fellow French member had already done all the hard work. That was completely unexpected.

So yes — I confess that I created this account mainly so I could send him a private message.

In my defense, the reason I took a while to reply and thank him is that we limit our kids’ screen time at home. I really wanted to express my gratitude only after I had the chance to watch the movie together with my young son.

Before I get banned for this opportunistic account, let me share a small anecdote.

It has nothing to do with video, but the fact that I arrived here a bit like a “hair in the soup” (a French expression for someone appearing out of nowhere) reminded me of another unusual first post I once made on a forum about twenty years ago.

One evening while fishing at dusk, I saw a strange animal — something like a shrew-insect hybrid with yellow reflections. Curious about it, I went home and registered on a wildlife photography forum to describe what I had seen.

Unsurprisingly, I received quite a bit of criticism for my approach — mostly because I had absolutely no photo to show.

I eventually explained that I knew perfectly well I had no real reason to be on their forum, but I simply didn’t know where else to ask. In the end I wasn’t doing anything harmful — just presenting a kind of guessing game to people who knew a lot about animals.

At the time, contacting a zoo director or some kind of wildlife expert to ask something like “I saw a black and yellow creature with spines like a caterpillar… maybe an insect? maybe a mammal?” didn’t exactly seem like an easy option.

Eventually a kind — and knowledgeable — person replied.

The animal turned out to be a **lowland streaked tenrec**.

An animal that absolutely has no business being in the middle of the countryside in central France. Nowadays it appears quite often in lists of strange animals, but at the time I had never even heard of it.

I was fully aware that I had selfishly bypassed the usual etiquette of that forum — but at least the discussion may have entertained a few readers.

I doubt my arrival here to talk about *The World's Strongest Man* — or my suspicious “new member” profile — will have the same effect.

But I still wanted to publicly say a huge **thank you to abolibibelot**.

[Dangerwood84]

I'm a newbie too.

[ProJiJi]

I always feel funny about welcoming a member to a Community, as I am an old fart and in the brick-and-mortar world I was raised in when it was still only black-and-white TV and the radio, it was only the top dogs in the Community that were supposed to welcome a new member/citizen to a Community.

But this is a mighty interesting 'welcome thread' so let me do a "Hi, Everyone!" post.

By the way, geek gift, I sure got nailed by your insight; I was so sure I knew everything until I read your post and realized there must be others that also know everything, and I didn't know about them. Of course, my wife has been informing me for years that I don't know everything, but what does she know.(?)

EDIT: By the way, dangerwood84, we are all newbies. It is the dinosaurs that are the elders and they are super smart; they started hiding some hundreds of thousands of years ago and left only a few of their kind visible to spy on us humans. Elephants are super clever spies, aren't they?