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I have an iPod but half the time it's connected to my stereo system -- dont you realize people will probably connect this to their home systems or friend systems?! If you are paying $300+ for this wouldn't you want the latest in multi-channel sound!? Also, if you can play movies on this device then the ability to know how to deliver the sound is very important even if being down converted to stereo. They have headphones for 5.1 and read this review for a 2.0 vs 5.1 headphone comparison. No, for games it might not be as important but for watching movies on a flight it could make a difference because to me audio is just as important as visuals.

I was looking other day to see if any CD's I wanted had been released on DVD-audio and I found this site. Looks like the releases are quite limited but in the near future the numbers should increase. But only one Mozart release and no more in the works? That's a big mistake. I'd buy a recording of Requiem fast

Here is some food for thought, both pro-and-con Atlantis/Nadia connections:
DVDAngle: an introduction to the controversy
Nadia/Atlantis: The evil Disney Empire rips off Anime, again...
Nadia/Atlantis: an opposing view
Nadia/Atlantis: list of "homages" in Nadia

In synopsis, the technology is called "Anamorphic pan&scan," it does precisely what you're bitching about: it encodes screen placement for the DVD for those with the 4:3 option set on their DVD players. Currently it is only seen on some Columbia/Tristar releases, but if it got the recognition it deserved we wouldn't have the MGM debacle where the extras are one side of the disc and the widescreen/pan&scan version of the film is on the other.

Also, since those links I posted above are slashdotted to hell, make sure you check some of these links for information:

The Digital Bits

DVD Angle

DVD @ IGN

In synopsis, the technology is called "Anamorphic pan&scan," it does precisely what you're bitching about: it encodes screen placement for the DVD for those with the 4:3 option set on their DVD players. Currently it is only seen on some Columbia/Tristar releases, but if it got the recognition it deserved we wouldn't have the MGM debacle where the extras are one side of the disc and the widescreen/pan&scan version of the film is on the other.

Also, since those links I posted above are slashdotted to hell, make sure you check some of these links for information:

The Digital Bits

DVD Angle

DVD @ IGN

It's big. It's brawny. It's darker, it's scarier, it's downright vicious compared to the kicked dog that is now the original "Blade."

Sure the names are simple and the action is over-energetic. This is a living comic book folks, and anybody who's ever read a comic book will easily see the connection. We have the "cool" shots of him putting on his sunglasses, the "slow-mo-coming-out-of-the-water-with-big-guns" shot, etc. The framing is specific and easy to follow. The story for "Blade 2," like any well-plotted comic book, is driven by action. Unlike other superhero films (*cough*TombRaider*cough*) that rely on "stopping points" to explain plot, "Blade 2" just throws it all at you and expects you to keep up. The new Reapers are easily the most frightening thing I've seen on the big screen in the past few years, I don't know about you.

The plot of course is that Blade helps the vampires destroy the vampire-eaters. But, and this is going to sound a bit strange, it still manages to convey the importance of loyalty, tells a love story, and captures betrayal in a non-cringing and original way. This is especially important for a film such as this, where such melodrama is encouraged, but normally goes too far to remain serious. And now that we've moved past the "origin story" film, scribe David Goyas finally breathes life into a character who desperately needs it.

And you have to give a hand to director Guillermo Del Toro. Look at a few of his past few films: The first brilliant 1/2 hour of "Mimic" and the exceptional ghost story "The Devil's Backbone". Del Toro takes a gritty sense of realism and blends it with a stylish take that the original "Blade" was painfully missing. The editing is the true defintion of "The Fast and the Furious," with jump-jump cuts and brutal slow-down that was tried in "Moulin Rouge" but is brought to perfection here.

Let's face it folks, it's a popcorn film. It's meant to be seen with friends so they, just like yourself, can spout Blade's one-liners for the next few weeks and groan in unison at the most gruesome spots.

Del Toro's amazing direction and Goyer's much-better-than-the-first-Blade script make this a solid hit. See it loud and proud on the big screen in a dark room with strangers. This one's a true crowd pleaser.

Evan (blog); I write for here and here.

Let's see .. playing a media stream at varying speeds. In MPEG video, it's moderately complex to skip frames, but I would be surprised if it were not discussed in mpeg literature for use in systems which cannot decode the full stream in realtime, but must instead decode every Nth frame (N=2-4). Playing more slowly just involves showing a frame for more than one retrace. Any decent MPEG player should already have frameskip control, and wiring a timebase multiplier to a UI knob is not rocket science.

Playing and recording at the same time is a simple matter of having a multitasking OS, a disk fast enough to handle the bandwidth of two streams, and separate encoder/decoder hardware.

As for "connecting DVRs to a network in the home", DVRs are just another piece of network hardware. Streaming media technology is probably the subject of patents that precede DVRs. Besides, the hard parts of streaming are when bandwidth is scarse, which isn't the case over ethernet (2mbps wireless excepted)

Playing backwards is a little more complex than playing forward at variable rate, but again most DVD players have this capability. This patent has a April 1998 application date, but DVDs date to 1995 ("December 09, 1995: The final DVD format is originally announced.") Since DVDs are streams of video, the capabilities of DVDs to manipulate the order in which the stream is presented seem relevant. Surely "play in reverse" wasn't missing from DVD for their first two years of existence..

Other posters have discussed how SonicBlue and TiVO will probably cross-license, and the patents wouldn't stand up to scrutiny anyway, so the only thing they'll be good for is to raise the bar against additional participants in the DVR market (those who don't have deep-enough pokets to withstand a lawsuit, which means any startup...) and maybe to furnish C&D-letter fodder for OpenDVR software projects.