The Sony Clie TH55 made Hollywood!

[daver]

Hi all,

I'm letting all of your know that the TH55 is Hollywood approved! I'm watching "The Pacifier" with my girlfriend - she's on a washroom break (how many times do you have to tell people to go before the show starts? :D ) - and only 30 minutes into the movie, the jog dial, back button, and camera lens of the TH55 shows up. I'll post screenshots in a minute. Just thought it would be nice to prove that the Sony Clie TH55 is still the best there is!

daver

[SonyStyle]

wohooo we all knew the th55 would become a star some day, we just hope sony realizes it

[JAmerican]

Sony might not, but Sony Ericsson might :)

JAmerican

[Kosmonoko]

cool i wanna see it... Wow and it's been about a year when clie left.
I also saw a clie in 24 season 1 during spring break and one of the terrorist had one i think it was an SL22.

[Karim]

lol, buy Sony PDAs... AND THE TERRORISTS WIN.

[daver]

Movie's over, screen shot time. People, prepare to meet Vin Diesel's digital sidekick: the Sony Clie TH55 (re-painted, re-vamped, and Hollywoodized).

http://www.geocities.com/viper_2256/TH55_1.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/viper_2256/TH55_2.jpg http://www.geocities.com/viper_2256/TH55_3.jpg


Sorry about the changing sizes.Those are the clearest screenshots I could get. As you can see, the last screenshot has a little blue blip, obviously a Hollywood alteration.

Well, Hollywood obviously thinks highly of our TH55's. So, happy TH55ing people!

daver

[psau3]

lol, buy Sony PDAs... AND THE TERRORISTS WIN.


Yep, but over here in Europe our TH55s have both BT and WiFi.

That means the terrorists should go for us first, as we have twice as many (wireless) freedoms. :rolleyes:

Well, Hollywood obviously thinks highly of our TH55's.

Or highly enough to mould the lens surround area and cast it badly in resin for a cheesy prop. I assume the rest of the movie is of similar quality? :D

[daver]

Or highly enough to mould the lens surround area and cast it badly in resin for a cheesy prop. I assume the rest of the movie is of similar quality? :Dactually, Vin Diesel uses the digital whatever-it-really-is as a kinda GPS tracker... i don't want to ruin it for people who may want to watch the movie. but i'm pretty sure it's an actual TH55 with an extremely terrible paint job. With that kind of screen size, and especially the blue-ish tinge of the screen (that tinge always shows up when a screen like that is recorded with a digital media, doesn't it?) of the very bottom screen shot, it's more believable that it's actually a PDA under the gross looking green case playing a flash movie or an AVI, or something. and if it is a PDA, it's very likely that Disney would be too lazy to go out and buy 2 different PDAs just for the back and the front.

http://www.geocities.com/viper_2256/TH55_4.jpg http://www.geocities.com/viper_2256/TH55_6.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/viper_2256/TH55_5.jpg

also, if you look very carefully at the back side of the prop in the first picture in my first post with screenshots, you'll see the 7 pin holes for the TH55's built-in speaker. and just around the camera lens, you'll see faint marks for the wording about the camera type, as well as the "back" word on the back button. the screen shots aren't crystal clear because they are all in motion, and i brought down the image quality so they wouldn't take up too much space (all images are easily between 10-30 kb). that's why the TH55 looks so cheaply made (but it probably is).

[rcxAsh]

Wow! Nice find daver. That's definately a TH55 in some sort of ruggedized form.

I also remember that Jackie Chan also uses a Clie in The Medallion. IIRC, it was an older N series though.

[MrNako]

A Tunsgsten C is the protagonist in Little Black Book and a Tungsten T3 appears in the beginning of Blade Trinity.

[jjesusfreak01]

And there is a Clie something NZ or NX in "Catch That Kid", not that I watched that stupid movie.

[daver]

Sasha Alexander from NCIS uses an NX80 or something similar with the clamshell design (definitely not the UX though) in the show.

[psau3]

i don't want to ruin it for people who may want to watch the movie.

It's got Vin Diesel. That's enough of a hint. ;)

but i'm pretty sure it's an actual TH55 with an extremely terrible paint job..... also, if you look very carefully at the back side of the prop in the first picture in my first post with screenshots, you'll see the 7 pin holes for the TH55's built-in speaker. and just around the camera lens, you'll see faint marks for the wording about the camera type, as well as the "back" word on the back button.

There could be a TH55 in that horrible shell, but the 7-hole grille is really in the wrong place for that to be the back of the PDA plastic - too low down and too far away. I'm not seeing the top bevelled edge of the chromed plastic detail / TH55 - it'd have to have been sawn off to appear as in the pics. Not good for a working PDA. Also, the back button is the same colour as the surround. This probably isn't a real surround detail - it really does look like it was moulded and cast in resin, then spray-painted chrome.


that's why the TH55 looks so cheaply made (but it probably is).

My guess is that there were a number of dummy devices used for the shoot, and at least one 'hero' for closeup and insert work. I've made stuff for stage, screen and shop display, and that's how it's usually done.

Besides, I've had experience of this kind of thing. Our first wireless PDA/phone was released during pre-production of the last Bond movie. We contacted the production team to see if they would be interested in using it as a multipurpose gadget/locator/phone thing. Well, they were interested in the £100K product-placement fee. We were only a little startup.

As a consolation prize, our CEO bargained the producers of another film down from a similar-value bribe to 3 free PDAs. The film? Secret Agent Cody Banks. Oh well...

And the hero device, carefully reinforced and internally ruggedized by yours truly, came back gutted and mangled. The FX team had pulled out the display matrix to make room for the 'holographic display'. :(

[danopoly]

i also saw a kid with a TH55 from this paid program about stock market. he has a Cena case too.

[tonyreynolds]

Many times the shot of the screen is pasted in post-production. They'll use a green chroma-key place-holder for the screen and then drop the "screen image" in later.

That "modified TH55" could very well be a non-working, Hollywood prop hack-job.

Tony :cool:

[MrNako]

Also, the back button is the same colour as the surround. This probably isn't a real surround detail - it really does look like it was moulded and cast in resin, then spray-painted chrome.

Not only the back button looks different but also the jog dial and the up/down buttons. Even though they are the same color as the camera they look weird, like they have been inverted. In the original picture the shadows look white. I inverted the picture and this is what I got, I think the shadow effect looks more realistic:

[psau3]

I inverted the picture and this is wI got, I think the shadow effect looks more realistic:

Metallic paint does strange things. :)

I vaguely remembered seeing the OS5 interface in something recently. Turned out to be a slightly-modified Clie in the trailer for After the Sunset (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367479/). There's a Treo in there too.

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~nausicaa/after%20the%20sunset%20small.jpg

Bigger image here (http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~nausicaa/after%20the%20sunset.jpg).

[Tam Hanna]

The dialog box is what really gives it away as PalmOS.
The typical round blue on white form-I saw it on the IIIc for the first time and lack the healty, saturatd blue ever since(now that my gal has lent out the IIIc and I have a buzzing and humming and digitizer drifting T3).

BTW, there was a Treo 600 on ione of the Top 10 Albums in Austria some time ago, but I cannot remember which one!

[jhintonh]

cool i wanna see it... Wow and it's been about a year when clie left.
I also saw a clie in 24 season 1 during spring break and one of the terrorist had one i think it was an SL22.

Good Morning-

It was an n610c. Not a n760 because it did not have a headphone jack. The n610c was my device at the time (still have it) and I saw it and felt warm and fuzzy like you always do when you see someone else using an electronic device that you personally own. Wierdness.

BTW, "24" is the greatest television show of all time.

-Jhintonh

[krhainos]

The dialog box is what really gives it away as PalmOS.
The typical round blue on white form-I saw it on the IIIc for the first time a...

Look at the big screenshot, and you'll be able to make out the Clie statusbar at the bottom of the screen ;) Looks like it's missing the MemoryStick and at about 75% batt. Looks like it's also 2:29pm ;)

[psau3]

Many times the shot of the screen is pasted in post-production. They'll use a green chroma-key place-holder for the screen and then drop the "screen image" in later.

I wish that's what had happened in our case. The FX guys added electrical-tape 'X's for the match-move software to key on to. :)

[jjesusfreak01]

I wish that's what had happened in our case. The FX guys added electrical-tape 'X's for the match-move software to key on to. :)
Why not just turn the brightness up, and just display a shot fullscreen?

[psau3]

Why not just turn the brightness up, and just display a shot fullscreen?

Two reasons:

1. The display was a reflective TFT. You'd get extremely variable results when under film-set illumination, I guess. Even in insert shots.

2. They ended up comping in a 3D 'holographic' display...

Another related film inclusion - in Final Fantasy, the Zeus orbital cannon has a familiar PalmOS logo in the corner of the UI. We watched a preview in one of the effects houses in Soho. None of the staff knew why us PDA users were grinning during the 'end of the world' serious bit. :D

[Thelonious]

Nice discovery!

I also like the "hollywoodized" TH55 in psau3's avatar :)

[strider_mt2k]

Cool thread!
Bummer about what they did to that TH55 tho. :(