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January 20

Wow, gaming online? When did they make that?

I've never really done gaming online. That was all supposed to change with the purchase of an Xbox 360. I've set everything up, played hours of games, connected it to the Internet, and set up an Xbox Live account. But one thing boggles my mind; every time I search for people online, I find no one.

Which leaves me to this question that I'm unsure about; can you play over Xbox Live with people you don't know? Can it not go "here's seven random people you don't know; Survivors or Infected?" Several people I've asked say yes, but not with experience, and my multiple (but not a great many) attempts say no. What's the word?--The Ninth Bright Shiner 02:52, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, certainly. The frequency of random opponents appearing to play against you depends entirely on the game you are choosing to play. If you're trying to find a matchup while playing one of the older Xbox Live Arcade games, for example, you could wait multiple hours without a single hit; whereas if you choose Modern Warfare 2 or Halo 3 then you'll find matches right away, against random people you don't have to know. Comet Tuttle (talk) 05:35, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming you are playing Left 4 Dead 2 (as your pipe suggests) you shouldn't have any problem either. I would suggest verifying that you actually have a connection to the internet through your xbox (try accessing something else online that proves it), and then contacting Microsoft Xbox Live customer support. —Akrabbim^talk 13:33, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How to convert Black & white movie to colour format movie ???

Hi.Anybody knows How to convert Black & white movie to colour format movie ??? Please let me know the site i can download free sofware.Thanks Said Nazar —Preceding unsigned comment added by Said Nazar (talk • contribs) 08:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can't. But see film colorization and colour recovery.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:42, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think Said means to convert the file format of a digital movie which is encoded in B&W to a color encoding (without changing anything about how it looks when you play it). And I don't know how. Staecker (talk) 13:36, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Back in the 1960s in the UK you could get a "convertor" for b/w televisions which consisted of a transparent screen that you put in front of your TV. It had, I think, a blue tint at the top, merging to a green tint in the middle, and, a red/brown tint at the bottom. I've no idea what they were called or whether you can pick them up on eBay, but that might be your best bet.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:42, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Out of curiosity, Shantavira, what was the purpose of this screen? To see black and white movies that are tinted blue, green, and red at the top, middle, and bottom? I don't understand that at all. If they were widespread there ought to be a Wikipedia article about them. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:25, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I assume it was like the ones here in the U.S. at the time. There was two parts. One went between the antenna and TV. It saturated the B&W signal with color brightness for Red, then Green, then Blue on each frame of video (from black bar to black bar). In front of the TV, a color wheel spun in sync with the converter on the back. When the red saturation was showing, a red disk was in front of the TV. When the blue saturation was showing, a blue disk was in front of the TV. The same for green. The result was a slightly blurry color picture off a B&W television. -- kainaw ™ 18:31, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also see Homemade Color Converters. Pepso2 (talk) 19:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is not, as far as I know a "Black and white" format for digitally encoded movies. If your movie is in B&W then it's probably got the red, green and blue pixel values all set the same, which make it look black-and-white. There is no way to recover the colour information. DJ Clayworth (talk) 23:20, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Vaguely related, check out the article on Technicolor, which uses (or used) black and white film and color filters to simulate color filming. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Big City Rock/The Remainders

I just saw that Big City Rock, a band I really like had personnel changes. But I am still pretty confused. I would like to know which people were in the band when they released their full album, (the most recent one with ten songs on it). Also, does this mean Big City Rock is done and the Remainders are just a name change? It's just a bit strange to me because I really liked them and don't know who is where now. 134.126.192.188 (talk) 18:03, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As for who was in the band when the album was released, the B&N page for the album lists credits if you click the "Details and Credits" tab:

Performance Credits
Big City Rock          Primary Artist
Nate Bott              Guitar, Vocals
Frank Staniszewski     Keyboards, Vocals
Timothy Resudek        Bass
Kaumyar                Drums

This isn't a complete guarantee, of course; they could have left someone out of the credits out of anger, or whatever, but I think that's really rare. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay thank you, now that Ive seen their facebook page this helps. It looks like they just changed the bassist and the name to the Remainders. Good, hopefully the sound will be the same then. 134.126.192.188 (talk) 00:51, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Recommend wiki articles on TV shows for reference

Which articles on TV series would any of you consider to be ideal examples? I'm thinking of rewriting some articles on some newer shows so that they won't be sacks of trivia. Chelydra MAT ^{This cursed Ograbme!} 18:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The best (or at least best-practice) Wikipedia articles are featured. In particular, you'll find a lot of TV show articles at Wikipedia:Featured articles#Media. I'd pick a couple that are like the one(s) you want to work on (whether they're a single episode, a miniseries, a season, or a whole show), check that they've been made featured reasonably recently (say the last year or two), so you're not copying older standards that may shortly get your paragon de-featured, and work from there. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:12, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, Firefly, and Doctor Who are probably pretty good bets. Lәo_(βǃʘʘɱ) 05:19, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]