Video Capture

As you've probably noticed, most of the movie reviews on Something Awful feature really crappy video quality and blurry still shots. These wonderful displays of technology gone sour are courtesy of the "Dazzle DPM" USB capture device I had hooked up to my VCR until recently. Now I'm not quite sure if their engineers intentionally designed the card to be awful or if my cat had been secretly sneaking out of his room and urinating all over it while I slept, but regardless, the thing was trash. In a remarkable feat of awfulness, the Dazzle recently beat all odds and somehow managed to become even MORE CRAPPY, causing images to become 600% blurrier and refusing to record any sound on movie clips. This was not "a good thing," and I knew drastic actions had to be taken, so I did what I usually do when making tough decisions: I consulted with my cat.

So I headed to Fry's Electronics to pick up a new video capture device. In case you are not fortunate enough to live in California, Fry's is a chain of retail electronic stores that believe in hiring only the most furious and temperamental of employees, none of which have any qualification in any field of anything. Once hired, I'm fairly sure they just rotate people around random departments of the store every 10 minutes, just to make sure nobody will ever be able to successfully help you. One minute Javier will be selling hard drives, the next moment he'll be sorting through a bathtub full of garden hose and plastic swans.

Another added bonus to shopping at Fry's is the extra convenience of having all products pre-opened for you. Every single item at Fry's has a sticker that reveals it has been opened and returned, but "passed a quality inspection." This means that Billy Joe Wyatt, who bought a Voodoo 5 card so he could get better AM radio reception, used the thing for a couple days and then returned it. To make sure the card wasn't defective, alert Fry's employees ran it through strenuous testing, which consisted of leaving the card in the "RETURNS" bin for three weeks and then looking at the box long enough to shrink wrap it and slap a quality-control sticker on it. Service first, ladies and gents!

Anyway, I made it into Fry's and picked up a "Pinnacle Studio DC10 Plus" image capture board, which I guess just kicks the crap out of the inferior "Pinnacle Studio DC10", you know, because of that whole "plus" thing it has going on. This is actually a surprisingly great board. The image quality is so much better than that Dazzle POS, and the image editing tools are superior in every form. If you're looking for something to yank movies / shows onto, go for the DC10. Just don't buy it at Fry's because you'll never know who returned the one in the box... or what nefarious purposes they tried to use it for.

Since I got a new video capture board, I just had to use it... and the fruits of my loins (wakka chicka) can be seen in my review of the movie "Jacko." Yes, you read that correctly. "Jacko." A movie about some guy with a pumpkin for a head that kills people. Well, the head doesn't kill people, the rest of the body does as well. Bah, just read the review, which is packed full of tons of high quality movie clips and still images.

This is really a terrible movie, folks. I mean BAD. It's the fifth worst movie to ever be reviewed here. However, the video clips I've included (about 20 megs of clips) are some of the finest cinematic gems you'll ever witness. As an added bonus, I threw in a video shot of some girl's boobs. I won't tell you where though, so read the movie review and find out for yourself! Did I mention you should check out all the great videos from it?

Squonkamatic, recovering from his recent bout of Legionnaires Disease, has churned out another fabulous Cranky Steve's Haunted Whorehouse map review, taking a critical look at a critical failure, "NukWasteFac." Since I'm the person who originally discovered this map, I can assure you this much: it's REALLY BAD.

Poison!