Image from here

The biggest problem of course with moving to digital is how are you going to get the videos or music to where you want them to be.   I’ve really fought with this problem literally for over a decade now (yes in 1995 I had a computer hooked up to a stereo and a TV).

The last incarnation I was using was a first generation Mac Mini.  The problem was that the streaming wasn’t fast enough for the Mac Mini (ironically every other computer in the house streamed just fine).   So I would have to copy video files over to the computer manually to get completely stutter free playback.  I dealt though until just a couple months ago.

Image from here

In November I purchased my first original X-Box (yes I’m behind the times).   I had always wanted to run XBOX Media Center on it, but didn’t want to go through the soldering effort to put a mod chip in, or track down esoteric software with the action replay kit to soft mod it.  I did manage to find instructions on how to mod the x-box and install XBMC with things I already had, such as a computer and screw drivers.  The most frightening thing about it was hot swapping a live IDE hard drive.   Years of tech work has told me this is a no-no, but I did it anyway and it worked.

I even went out and purchased a remote control for the X-Box and can now browse from the couch.   I went back and forth on whether to get a wireless controller or the remote, I settled on the remote because it was cheaper and more intuitive for anyone other then myself.

For MP3 playback we sometimes use the X-Box installation, but more then likely we are either using ipods, our N810′s, or the whole main floor audio we have going.   In the basement we have a computer working as an MP3 jukebox.  Off of this machine there is 3 different sets of speakers (one is the main stereo system) – that can cover the whole first floor of the house in zoned audio.    Each room has it’s own volume control and it works fairly well.  In the next year I will more then likely start running the cables upstairs to work on whole house audio.

This post has multiple parts to it, so fair warning I’m guessing this one is going to be long.   Lately I’ve been more and more annoyed at traditional hard copy media.  It’s a pain in the butt to deal with and takes up way too much physical space (for those that know me you find that sentence greatly amusing).

Pictures

This started happening over the last year with photo albums.   Photo albums are terrible.   It means normally that one person has a copy of the image and you can’t share them.  It is essentially technology of the last generation.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer in having prints, but the pictures themselves.

I’ve made it my mission to start getting the family photos and scanning them in.   I’ve managed to get most of my father’s photos from the era he was with my mother.   The ones I’m missing are any he has of the kids hanging on the walls in his house.   My next run is going to be the pictures from his current family (so a good 15-16 years worth of pictures to go).

My grandmother on the other hand has been very tightfisted with her photos.  I can understand her being protective, but so far I’ve managed to get 59 photos out of her to scan (out of literally over a 1000-2000).   I have managed to scan my photo album, and more recently used the digital SLR and took pictures of my scrap book from high school.   So both of these can be tucked away in boxes that I don’t need to look at and take up physical space in my house.

All the photos I have are now uploaded to Flickr.   You can also read about my photo sharing issue with my mother over here.

Continued tomorrow in part 2

My complete and daily online activity for you to go all voyeuristic on.

	8:00am	Creeva shared a link on Google Reader. Enjoy the Sounds of Classic Arcade Videogames
	8:00am	Creeva scrobbled 2 songs on Last.fm. (Hide Details) leolaporte – TWiT 180: How Is Babby Formed leolaporte – TWiT 181: I Am Not Spock
	8:22am	Creeva posted 8 items. (Hide Details) LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar [none] [none] [none] We Are Having A Baby [none] [none] [none]
	9:30am	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent tired and cranky.
	10:59am	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar – http://s3nt.com/da0x.
	11:00am	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar – http://s3nt.com/da0x
	11:02am	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar
	11:27am	Creeva posted 14 photos on Flickr. (Hide Details)
	11:27am	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. 02-26-09_1122
	11:38am	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. 02-26-09_1128
	11:54am	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar
	12:36pm	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent so much to do, so little time.
	1:24pm	Creeva dugg 12 links on Digg. (Hide Details)
	1:24pm	Creeva dugg 2 links on Digg. (Hide Details) Riding the Rails? Know Your Hobo Signs (PIC) Will Ferrell & Mark Wahlberg Team Up For A-Team Spoof
	2:34pm	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent water – it does a body good.
	2:48pm	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent This weeks chain mail of the week is about a drug recall from 2000 – not even worth blogging about, so just sending out an fyi.
	4:56pm	Creeva posted 2 items. (Hide Details) LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar We Are Having A Baby
	5:55pm	Creeva posted 2 items. (Hide Details) LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar We Are Having A Baby
	5:55pm	Creeva published 4 blog posts. (Hide Details) LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar We Are Having A Baby We Are Having A Baby LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar
	5:55pm	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent We Are Having A Baby – http://s3nt.com/dbme.
	5:56pm	Creeva bookmarked 14 links on Delicious. (Hide Details) No description available. LeVar Burton – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia No description available. No description available. Burton’s Star on Flickr – Photo Sharing! LeVar Burton — Because 140 characters isn’t always enough Diggnation — Revision3 The TWiT Netcast Network with Leo Laporte The TWiT Netcast Network with Leo Laporte Twitter / BrentSpiner Twitter / creeva Twitter / levarburton LeVar Burton Adobe – Adobe Flash Player
	5:56pm	Creeva posted 6 tweets on Twitter. (Hide Details) tired and cranky LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar – http://s3nt.com/da0x so much to do, so little time water – it does a body good This weeks chain mail of the week is about a drug recall from 2000 – not even worth blogging about, so just sending out an fyi We Are Having A Baby – http://s3nt.com/dbme
	5:56pm	Creeva posted 6 Jaikus on Jaiku. (Hide Details) tired and cranky LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar – http://s3nt.com/da0x so much to do, so little time water – it does a body good This weeks chain mail of the week is about a drug recall from 2000 – not even worth blogging about, so just sending out an fyi We Are Having A Baby – http://s3nt.com/dbme
	5:56pm	Creeva posted 2 items. (Hide Details) LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar We Are Having A Baby
	5:57pm	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. We Are Having A Baby
	6:54pm	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. We Are Having A Baby

Tonight the weather was bad so instead of taking what would be an unsafe over three hour commute home I decided I was going to get a hotel room.   My wife had called and warned me before I was really aware of the weather so she was aware with no surprises.   I managed to get a room that in a clear day would take me less then eight minutes to get to the office.   Tonight it took me over twenty to get here.  The last three minutes was getting into the snow entrenched parking lot that was on a slight incline and had about 5 inches of unplowed snow – I spun the car sideways getting in.

When I was consulting I stayed in many hotels.  I also learned before you went anywhere in bad weather to get a reservation.   So at this hotel close to work I had reserved my room, it came to around forty dollars before tax.    Let’s have a tour through the room and see if it it’s worth it.

The following pictures were taken with my cell phone so please excuse the quality.

This is my coffee table – seems someone didn’t like it very much.

Bathroom shot one – somewhat normal right?

Still somewhat normal – not great by any means though…

OMG – WTF IS THAT????   First here we have the MELTED hair dryer plug  then you have that round knob next to it.   Did you know it took me a good five minutes to get the light on in the bathroom because of that damn knob.   You see you have to turn it, and then the light is on a timer, when the timer runs out the light goes off.   Maybe this is a green initiative by Days Inn.

Another standard Bathroom shot.

Well I at least have tissues I can cry into.

I’m glad it wasn’t hot – I don’t really want to touch the air conditioning knob.

Mobile blogging station / Bed shot.

Another bed shot.

Such neat and orderly hangars they have around here.

Ah – I can iron my clothes with this conveniently placed ironing board.

On closer examination – maybe I don’t want to use this ironing board.

Look a TV, The Bucket List is playing – I don’t think this hotel was on their list of stops in the movie.   Also if you adjusted the location of the TV – the picture goes bad.  It’s not a wiring connection either – it’s just retarded.

My mother had that lamp – she got it over twenty years ago.

My heater that doesn’t fully heat the room

I call this area the west wing.

I think this coffee maker would make a lot of people cry – and those styrofoam cups are the only cups in the room.

My alarm clock, it would be my jelly bean station, but I don’t have any jelly beans.

Cross advertising – I’m not sure which name is getting dragged through the mud on this deal….

This is where the air conditioning would have come out with if it was below freezing outside.

Well at least I have a smoke detector, I’ll be safe for the night.  Something looks a little wrong though.

Yes this is the way I found it.  So if I die in a fire tonight – you all know who is to blame.

I’ve stayed at bad places, but this may be one of the worst.  It does look nice on the outside though.

BTW – I think I know what happened to the iron and why it’s gone.   There seems to be a melted carpet spot in just the shape of an iron on the floor – it didn’t quite come out though – pity.

Picture from here

I could pick on a few things actually, once again I didn’t vote for the guy, but I don’t absolutely detest him.   I’m in wait and see mode.  Ars Technica is reporting about Obama’s plead to push back the transition to digital TV.   If we look at the digital TV migration timeline, we can see the originally scheduled date was Dec. 31 2006.   Because of multiple issues it was pushed back and brings us to this upcoming Feb. 17th as the transition time.

We can argue that the government hasn’t done enough to inform the public or make it easy for the public, but I would argue otherwise.   I was well aware of this migration when it was first discussed over 10 years ago.   All in all the government has pushed out this transition longer then necessary.   You can say that’s it’s a good cautious thing they are doing by waiting and delaying, but every delay costs the tax payers more money.

If we truly want to get through this we need to pull the bandage off as quickly as possible.

You would think from the image I chose for the header that I was doing something cool with the Nintendo Entertainment System.   This unfortunately is not the case.  Where the Nintendo came into play was that it was the object of my desire.   I desperately wanted an NES.  This was sometime around seventh or eighth grade so the years would have 1988 -1989 and the Nintendo was in full swing, you can see one of the commercials below.

Now my father didn’t believe in video games.   About five years earlier he got us a Commodore Vic-20, this is all fine and dandy – my parents fell for the whole “give you kid a computer and he’ll be computer literate for life” crap that they were handing out in the eighties.  A computer was meant for learning and yes there were a few games we had for it, but it was meant to learn something on.   I learned I never wanted to be a programmer, that’s what I learned.  I could go to my neighbors and play the Atari 2600 or play Ultima on his Mac Classic – but me – I was going to have the Vic-20 and like it because I wasn’t getting anything else.

Picture from here

We moved to Vermilion the summer before my seventh grade year.   I’m sure I started begging for a NES around that time if not earlier.   I’m sure the logic explained to me was that if I wanted a Nintendo I was going to have to earn it.    This meant getting a job.   I don’t know about your area but for Vermilion, OH there wasn’t much call in the work force for 12-13 year old kids.   The one thing that did open up was the ability to get a paper route.  The area where we lived in Elyria was a bit too rough for a 11-12 year old to deliver papers, but Vermilion was a quiet small town where such things almost seem nostalgic.

Picture from here (not me)

Another boy was giving up his paper route that was a year younger then me (should have been a sign) and did a week long transition with me so that I could learn the route.   By the end of the week I learned the route, I had my little punch card slip ring for billing, I had a carrier bag, and I also had baskets on the back of my bicycle to carry newspapers in.   I would try to say it was pimp, but I can’t even type that with a straight face.   I rode my bike to school and I got mocked by how stupid it looked.  Of course being a geek on the nth degree anyways there is always other things to get picked on then a bike, so I struggled through it.  I was a newspaper boy for the Lorain Morning Journal.

You may say that I learned character and fiscal responsibility because of that job.   You would also be wrong.  I hated that job with a passion.   I struggled for the first couple months to get through it.  The NES was the apple of my eye and I was going to save the 99.99 (plus tax) for the Action System which included Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (and the pimp NES Zapper).   I was impatient to get it, so impatient that I gave my mother the money to get it while I was at school.   You would think this being the first large purchase of my life I would have wanted to go and hand over the money and buy the system myself, nope I just wanted the damn thing home.

I get home, my mother isn’t there.   I go do my paper route and get back home, my mother isn’t there.   I sit in the grass on the front yard and wait.   Eventually my mother pulls up in that blue dodge caravan (minivan) we had.  She had done other shopping and had a ton of bags.  Which one was my Nintendo?????

My mother stopped me and said she talked to the sales person who told her the Sega Master System was the better system to buy since it was faster and supported more colors.  WTF?  I had worked my butt off in a job hated to have my mother go out and buy me a Sega Master Sytem.  No one owned a Sega Master System, only people with no friends owned a Sega Master System.   I was not going to own a Sega Master System.    I told her with certainty that she had no right to spend the money I earned to buy a Sega Master System.  We were going to get back in the car right then, go to the store and exchange it for a Nintendo Entertainment System.

My mother then started laughing.  Out of the back of the van she pulled out a Nintendo Action Set.   You do not mess with a pre-teen in that way – ever.   She said she was going to go upstairs and use the restroom, after which she would come down and help me hook it up to the TV.  I think by the time she flushed the toilet I was already on World 1-2 of Super Mario Bros.  I had hooked up the Vic-20 so many times that I knew how to do it in my sleep.   The NES was more of the same.

At this point I did not want to do the paper route any more, but my grandfather thought it was good for me so I kept plodding along.    I delivered papers a 3 AM Christmas morning wasn’t that quite the thrill, not.   I would definitely preferred to have been sleeping.    More and more of my customers were moving to prepaid accounts, which cut into my money.   You would think it wouldn’t have effected  my bottom line, but I lost out on tip money from these customers – and to this day I believe the Journal used some creative account billing to the paper boys.    My grandfather thought I was just doing it wrong, but I was let off the hook after about a year.

Me and my grandparents a year or so after the paper route.

My brother took over the paper route with the help of my grandfather and my mother in delivering the newspapers.   Now I don’t know about you but if someone would have driven me on the route every day, I may have been more likely to actually like the job.   He is five and half years younger then me, so they were not going to let him go off alone to do it.  The funniest thing was after about a year they started loosing money also and it became not financially viable for them either.    I guess it wasn’t just me.

You would think that this would end my families relationship with the Journal after so many bad experiences, it didn’t.  For the last few years my sister (now 22) has a motor route in Vermilion delivering papers.   I guess she makes really good money at it.   It would seem the third time is a charm.   I don’t think my brother or my sister ever hated it as much as I did.   I did get my NES though.

Below is a link to Google Maps that shows the actual route location of my paper route.

Picture from here

A couple news sources are reporting today (here, here, and here) that the LA Times is suspending their program of using a wiki for editorials.   Now in a controlled environment like Wikipedia where they have the volunteers to handle un-authorized edits, wiki’s can be a great thing.   In the hands of exposing your edits to the audience of a major newspaper – I wouldn’t have gone that route.

What they were finding is that people would make their own slant on the editorials – such as changing the word abortion ot the word murder.  They also were inundated with spam and porn ads.   Sounds like they didn’t have the best idea on the onset of setting up a wiki or properly staffing what would be a high profile use of the technology.   This is technology that is meant to be changed and updated.   That ability alone has made some people suspect of Wikipedia.   Newspapers are dying out in America – but this example shows why such high profile companies can not hand the keys to the car to just everyone asking.   Citizen media has it’s place, but old media shouldn’t be attempting to tag it on without understanding hte consequences or the work involved in maintaining it.

I wonder if anyone got fired?

Picture from here

A few months ago my home server lost all of my MP3′s from a share.  I was freaking out thinking some process had magically deleted them.  Then I noticed the partition was missing.   I spent a few days banging my head against the wall trying to recover the data and nothing helped.   Since I’m a listener of Security Now, I attempted to use Spin Rite on the drive, even this didn’t help it.   I was freaking out.

I set aside the drive and re-addressed it yesterday.  A friend of mine had a copy of Partition Doctor 3.5 and we ran it against my drive.   In a matter of minutes we managed to get the drive back up and all of the MP3′s were there.   Neither my wife and I were too anxious to go through the 2-3 week ripping process we did last time when we re-ripped at a higher bit rate.

This is not a promotion, I get no money from the links you click, if however you do have an issue with a lost windows partition, try Partition Doctor’s demo version and it will show you if it can be recovered.

Maximum PC recently ran an article titled 50 Skills Every Real Geek Should Have, I wanted to go through and see how I ranked in their skill list.   Let’s find out.

1. Name the Connectors – yes I was able to :)

2. Run your essential apps on a USB stick – no I don’t do this, I could – I just prefer to run everything in the cloud or on my N810 – which is with me most of the time.

3. Straighten Pins on a CPU – I have done this too many times

4. Know the 13 basic HTML Tags – well I kinda know most of them – I use freaking wordpress I hardly need to use HTML and when I do I look it up and hav ethe answer in seconds.   Though I do know quite a few by heart that aren’t listed in the basic 13.

5.  Get through to executive customer service – hey I read the consumerist.

6.  Beat quake in 60 minutes – maybe at one point in time, but I’m not big on FPS games.

7.  Build a Hackintosh – I know how, I just don’t the components that seem to work, and I’m a cheap bastard that won’t buy parts just to run OSX - I’ll stick with ubuntu as my alternative OS.

8.  Watch TV Online legally – um that’s how I watch 100% of my TV these days.

9.  Get around a content filter from a public computer – yes I know how, I’ve helped friends at other companies, it’s not worth it to do it at my own job though.

10. Recite Pi to 23 decimal places – nope – I have no inclination to ever learn either.

11. Replace the controller board on a hard drive – hey I did that once, it’s not a skill that comes up at parties though.

12.  Benchmark your computer – really?  Is this even on this list? Yes, I was doing this before I fully understood what the benchmarks meant on my 386 DX40.

13. Decorate your room with only printer paper – am I physically in the skill set to be able to do this?  Yes I am – would I?  No.  I’m more likely to decorate with NES cartridges.

14. Securely erase your data so it can’t be recovered – yes I am capable – it would be easier if you encrypted it first though.

15.  Get into a windows computer if you don’t have a password – yes I’ve done this quite a few times.

16.  Hide data from anyone – yes encryption, hidden volumes, stegnography (which I got bored with in 2001) – I am capable of doing all that – I’m more likely ot share my data then hide it though.

17. Explain what e=mc2 means – yes I would like the e=MC2 with a side of fries please – yes I am capable, but refuse to put in the details here since I want to make it through this list.

18.  Abstain from buying extended warranties – I may have bought one, once – it was on something i thoguht it fall apart though – so it’s all good.

19.  Use photoshop or gimp – yes I am capable.

20. Use a DSLR in full manual mode – I can – I’m just lazy and prefer it to do the work.

21. Mooch your neighbors wi-fi – my neighbor doesn’t have wi-fi but I’m ready to mooch when they do.

22. Protext your wi-fi – Wep2 currently – For a while I had mac filtering, I hated to keep getting mac addresses from visitors though.

23. Create an animated spray in Valve games – um – I don’t think I’ve played a single one for more then 5 minutes….so this one is a no.

24.  Setup RAID – yes I’ve done this a few times over the years for my home network.  Now implement Iscsi raid across multiple computers – that’s a challenge.

25. Calculate a Pitchers ERA – no I don’t know how – but I know google will give me the answer quicker then I can calculate it.

26. Run two Operating Systems – um I dual boot currently……

27. Install a hard drive in laptop – done before and some day I’ll do it again.

28. Pull off an elaborate prank – I think have the skill set and knowledge – I just never have – unless stealing street signs as a teenager counts.

29.  Rocket jump with a macro – um – I said I don’t really do FPS games – so no I can’t do this.

30.  Wire your home with ethernet – um every place I’ve lived with my wife we have had wired ethernet – we even used RG58 at one point.

31.  Know the 6 most important linux commands – yes I get command not found when I’m not thinking and run them in windows.

31. Rip your CDs to Flac – we did this for awhile then went back to MP3

32.  Stream Music, Movies, Pictures to any TV in the house – I’ve done this before – now we just carry our laptops around – shrug.

33.  Install and configure a VM – yes I’ve done this for literally years (maybe even a decade by now)

34.  Run multiple monitors – yes I use to dual monitor and run SWG on two different ones at the same time – I’m sad I know.

35. Run hacked firmware on a router – yes liek the rest of hte world I have a hacked linksys router /yawn.

36.  Pick a lock – I’m not good at it, but I’ve done it a couple times.

37.  Tell the difference between Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb – it’s been awhile but I think I could.

38.  Avoid DRM on everything – well streaming video legally that they talked about above seems to contradict this one doesn’t it.   However all my local video, music, picutres, and ebooks are DRM free.

39. Download a flash video and reformat it – yes I’ve done this – youtube videos locally stored on the N810 ftw.

40.  Get around in DOS – I grew up and DOS and resisted windows for a long time – so let’s just say yes.

41. Rip a DVD to h.264 – yes been there done that.

42.  Overclock your PC – yes I’ve done this my pride and joy was overclocking my AMD 133 mhz 486 to 160 MHZ – and it benchmarked and ran like a pentium 133 for half the cost.

43.  Use remote desktop – it’s part of my job – so yes.

44. Debate the merits of a star destroyer vs. the enterprise – yes, and the star destroyer would win.

45. Buld your own computer – built too many to actually count – I’m serious to – I worked at a small PC store and we sold hundreds – thousands of machines – so I cna build my own.

In irony they don’t seem to actually have 50 things on their list – so I think most geeks should know how to count also.

Stargate Atlantis Season 3- more Stargate goodness.

Amazon Synopsis:

With Stargate SG-1 now permanently off the data screen (except for a TV movie or two) after ten productive seasons, it appears that the fate of the universe is now the responsibility of the Stargate Atlantis crew. Based on the latter’s third season, whose 20 episodes (plus a wealth of bonus features) are made available here on five discs, we’re in good hands.
Three years into it, Atlantis has retained numerous familiar elements while continuing to evolve steadily. The core cast is intact, with the cocky wiseacre-hero Lt. Col. John Sheppard (Joe Flanigan) and the egotistical, neurotic genius Dr. Rodney McKay (David Hewlett) still the most entertaining of the bunch; as the series explores the characters’ personal lives and backstories, we even meet (in “McKay and Mrs. Miller”) the latter’s sister, who’s every bit the wiz that he is. On the other hand, the roles of team leader Dr. Elizabeth Weir (Torri Higginson) and members Teyla (Rachel Luttrell) and Ronon Dex (Jason Momoa) are neither especially well-written nor well-played. The return of Richard Dean Anderson (and his sense of humor) as General Jack O’Neill, the SG-1 mainstay during most of its run, for a few cameos is most welcome, as is the presence of the Wraith, the series’ principal villains (SG-1 fans will also recognize the “sentient machines” known as the Replicators from that series). With their flowing white locks, cat-like eyes, pale, almost translucent skin, ultra-fine black leather dusters, and, in one case, shades that would make a Hollywood hipster envious, the Wraith remain the coolest bad guys on the sci-fi scene. We already knew that they feed on humans, but this season brings some startling new revelations, particularly in “Common Ground,” an excellent episode that finds Sheppard and a Wraith (Christopher Heyerdahl) forming an unlikely alliance against a mutual enemy; we also witness the return of the Wraith known as Michael (Connor Trinneer), who was the subject of the Atlantis team’s ongoing “retro-virus” experiment (designed to make Wraiths human) in Season Two and plays a significant recurring role in Season Three. Other developments are apparent as well, but most dramatic of all is the death of one of the team’s key members.
Stargate Atlantis isn’t the most original TV show ever created; in fact, elements of The Running Man, Alien, The Abyss, Enemy Mine, and other sci-fi works are sometimes so obvious that the characters themselves mention them in dialogue. But as always, the action sequences, special effects, models, and other technical elements are first-rate, as are the bonus features, which include episode commentaries, featurettes, and photo galleries.

Stargate Season 1, I’ll be going over all of my box sets so with the Stargate franchise there is going to be alot of redundancy.   When I first heard they were going to a series on Stargate I thought it was a stupid idea.  Macgyver has the team lead, HA – I love Macgyver and all but I didn’t think Richard Dean Anderson could have pulled it off.  I was wrong.

Stargate is one of my favorite TV franchises of all time now.

Now since I have 10 of these to write – I’ll give you Amazon’s review:

Hollywood’s film archives overflow with the carcasses of dismal movies based on lame ’60s and ’70s television shows, a syndrome that shows no sign of abating. But here’s evidence that the reverse effect, turning a movie into a TV series, can have surprisingly positive results. Indeed, based on the 21 episodes produced for the first season of Stargate SG-1, it could be argued that this show is significantly better than the 1994 feature it’s derived from.

The central conceit of the original Stargate–the existence of an artificially created “wormhole” through which one can travel to different worlds light years away from Earth–was an intriguing one. In seizing on the obvious possibilities for expanding on that premise, series executive producers-writers Jonathan Glassner and Brad Wright have smartly retained some of the film’s basic elements (its amalgam of myth and theoretical hokum, or the ongoing clash of wills between scientists and soldiers), while adding a variety of fresh ideas (including new characters, new locations, and a welcome dose of humor, much of it supplied by Richard Dean Anderson, MacGyver himself, who replaces Kurt Russell in the central role of Colonel Jack O’Neill). The result is a show with multidimensional heroes and villains and consistently compelling story lines (many of them introduced in the pilot and carried forward through subsequent episodes) balancing excellent special effects and production values. All this and full frontal nudity, too (at least in the aforementioned pilot). Who can resist?

The first season is spread out over five DVDs; the 100-minute pilot shares the first volume with two other episodes, while discs 2 to 5 contain anywhere from three to five shows each. Sound and visuals (in widescreen format) alike will take full advantage of any home system’s capabilities. But aside from language and subtitle options, bonus features are limited to brief featurettes that play like commercials and provide little in the way of background information or insight (there are no features at all on the first disc). Then again, if you really want to know what that symbol on Teal’c's forehead means, or why the nasty, parasitic Goa’ulds look a lot like the fledgling stomach monsters in the Alien series, there is no doubt a Web site out there just for you.