Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	1	2	3	4	5

BBC - Guilty Pleasures (2011)

Posted By: Tutorial

Date: 15 Nov 2016 20:47:55

Two-part documentary which looks at the items valued or desired by men and women over the centuries, focusing particularly on the Classical and Medieval periods.

Part 1: Luxury in Ancient Greece
Luxury isn't just a question of expensive and the beautiful objects for the rich and the powerful. It has always been much more, especially in the ancient and medieval worlds. This first episode follows the debate about luxury which convulsed ancient Greece from the beginning of the classical era. In Athens, it explores the role of luxury in the beginnings of democracy - how certain kinds of luxury came to be forbidden and others embraced. A simple luxury like meat could unite the democracy, and yet a taste for fish could divide it. Some luxuries were associated with effeminacy and foreigners, others with the very idea of democracy. Yet in Sparta, there was a determined attempt to deny luxury, and the guilty contradictions of this eventually brought its downfall. When Sparta was replaced by Macedon, Phillip II's court set new standards for luxury as political propaganda.

Part 2: Luxury in the Middle Ages
This second episode follows the clash between luxury and Christianity which convulsed medieval Europe. Luxury was a roadblock on the road to heaven, so the church was quick to condemn the jewellery and gorgeous weapons of the early medieval world. Yet the church also had its own form of luxury, in the form of manuscripts designed to do the work of God through astonishment and display. And to some extent it worked, as by 1200 medieval boys' toys like warhorses and tournaments were suffused with Christian ideas of chivalry and gentility. But trade growth brought new luxuries to Europe, condemned in turn by the church, like exotic spices from the East - spicy food led to spicy conduct and to the sin of lechery, said the preachers. But soon the Black Death paradoxically liberated luxury from the church by initiating a new world of relative luxury and consumerism - the luxury world we inhabit today.

MediaInfo

General
Unique ID : 173748388984939048120649607553447763868 (0x82B6B8F6A5479BB1B169C3BB4A8A1F9C)
Complete name : Guilty.Pleasures.1of2.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 2
File size : 1.73 GiB
Duration : 58mn 59s
Overall bit rate : 4 194 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2011-07-01 00:51:55
Writing application : mkvmerge v4.8.0 ('I Got The…') built on May 24 2011 03:12:58
Writing library : libebml v1.2.0 + libmatroska v1.1.0

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 6 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 58mn 59s
Bit rate : 4 000 Kbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.174
Stream size : 1.61 GiB (93%)
Writing library : x264 core 115 r2008 4c552d8
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=6 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=24 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=0 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=3 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=125 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=40 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=4000 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 58mn 59s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 81.0 MiB (5%)
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No

Text
ID : 3
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No

Screenshots