Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Domains

Domain: whathifi.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to whathifi.com.

Comments · 7

  1. Re:generation mismatch by JamesNorton · · Score: 5, Insightful · on Samsung To Stop Making 4K Blu-Ray Players, Report Says (cnet.com)

    "Streaming" 4K quality is almost never the same quality as 4K on a disc. I prefer the discs. https://www.whathifi.com/featu...

  2. Re:I Don't Miss the Headphone Jack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on 'Two Years Later, I Still Miss the Headphone Port' (techcrunch.com)

    https://www.whathifi.com/advic...

    Someone at Apple should be fired for not marketing a Beats 24 ear-can via lightning port. Such a missed opportunity here.

    Shit served in a can never sounded sooo goooooodd!

    Next, 24bit audio over tin cans and shoe string.

  3. Re:Audiophiles work with hard real-time constraint by Opportunist · · Score: 1 · on $10K Ethernet Cable Claims Audio Fidelity, If You're Stupid Enough To Buy It

    Allow me to state for one last time the obvious.

    Ethernet is a digital protocol. In other words, what's being transmitted is a stream of 0s and 1. Discreet. There's no such thing as a lot of 0 that's almost a little bit of 1. Such a stream has one quite beneficial property: It's trivially easy to check whether it was transmitted correctly. Ethernet does that. Yes, that means that if you have a (really, REALLY) crappy cable that you'll get retransmissions. Which matters little considering the amount of data required to keep an audio stream steady and the speed of Ethernet retransmissions. What does matter, of course, is that the receiving end has a big enough buffer to cover for the retransmissions. But if that buffer wasn't big enough, it would not take an audiophile to notice the difference because, well, the audio would pretty much stop.

    As for how USB cable quality matters, I did take a look around. But I doubt those were the results you got, so you might want to point us to some research that actually DOES find a difference in the sound quality properties of USB cables.

  4. Re:The RAM is the issue. by ciderbrew · · Score: 1 · on Bethesda: We Can't Make Dawnguard Work On the PS3

    http://www.whathifi.com/news/ifa-2012-sony-4k-tv-due-in-the-uk-this-december
    I think the first LCD TV started off at this insane price 10 years ago. This res would have been common for games monitors if T.Vs hadn't stagnated the market with 1080p crap. (xkcd phone res link please). This will be sooner than you think for games. TV & film content not so much.

  5. Audio quality by mr_lizard13 · · Score: 2, Informative · on Zune HD Unveiled, Set For Fall Release

    The Apple devices are the same, terrible audio quality especially if you consider the high price.

    Actually, the audio quality of the iPod is generally regarded very highly

    http://www.whathifi.com/Review/Apple-iPod-Classic-120GB/

    http://www.t3.com/ipod-and-mp3-players/all-mp3-players/apple-ipod-shuffle-third-generation-review

    http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1857401,00.asp>

    It's the piss poor earphones that have always let the side down. Swap them out for something better, and the sound shines through.

  6. NXT, anyone? by tygerstripes · · Score: 4, Interesting · on New Entrant In the Race For Wafer-Thin Speakers

    may reach the market before year's end.

    NXT was (is) a viable and versatile speaker technology with many of the revolutionary properties ascribed to this one. Not as flexible or cheap, but certainly a significant step up from the paper cones of yore.

    Yet, in spite of being a sound technology (sorry), it took years before it finally reached consumer products. Even now the uptake is slow.

    The strongest hurdle was poor bass-reproduction, because it didn't have the physical ability to shift sufficient volumes of air - exactly the same issue faced by this new tech - so NXT speaker systems often have to be augmented with sub-woofers - see the Hitachi AX M133 for an example. This doesn't affect the fact that it is ideal for public-address systems, however, since it is a diffuse source rather than a point, and that whole "sweet spot" nonsense becomes a non-issue.

    In spite of this, it never made a noticeable entry into the PA market. I can only hope this new technology delivers the cheapness and flexibility promised, and we can finally stop bolting big ugly boxes to the walls in every public space.

  7. Re:Yes and no! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Toshiba Paid Off To Drop HD-DVD?
    Some of your points need addressing.

    -had no region codes There were discussions to bring region codes to HD DVD, mostly to try and lure Disney. There was the ability to add region codes, and if somehow Toshiba had been able to lure Disney and Fox region codes would have been one of the major sticking points. http://www.dvdforum.org/34scmtg-resolution.htm http://whathifi.com/forums/t/5138.aspx Dec 20, 2007 9:51 AM Clare Newsome, Editor-in-Chief of What Hi-fi? Sound and Vision Answering the question: "Is all HD DVD multi region ?"

    -supported all codecs out of the box (TruHD and DTS MA support not optional) DTS MA is optional on HD DVD as well. And although TruHD is mandatory, HD DVD still had a much smaller % of titles with lossless audio than Blu-ray.

    -didn't need BD-J updates All HD DVD players and BD players needed updates for playback problems. In fact, HD DVD players had more updates than some BD players. I expect that this will be the norm from now on with all reasonably complex CE equipment.

    -often had a plain old DVD compatible layer (so the same disc will also play in the car/bedroom or such -- i'm not getting a blu-ray player for the car anytime soon, nor buying the same movie twice for that, nor reencoding them) Yet those same discs with DVD on the other side cost more.

    -cost far less (even before price cuts, and sony is also losing money on PS3 sales) They cost far less because Toshiba was willing to lose money selling them. Unfortunately they were the only one willing to lose money to sell machines, because they were the only ones who stood to make a significant amount in licensing fees. Contrast this to Blu-ray, where Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, Pioneer, and Philips all have major stakes (with Panasonic having the largest).

    -from what i've seen, the titles played faster (damn slow BD-J crap, damn slow players, etc) -- it can take seen several minutes of wait to play a Blu-Ray disc... (HD DVD used simple html-like markup, with free dev tools/full docs and all) Just the opposite, most Blu-ray titles started playing faster than HD DVD because most of them used hardly any/none BD-J at all. This is also why when you stopped a BD it was also able to start back up from the same spot, unlike BD-J titles and all HD DVD titles with advanced menus, PIP, etc. where if you pressed stop it would not be able remember where you were last.

    The *ONLY* advantage Blu-Ray had was more disc space, which is unnecessary -- just look at the DVD9-sized x264 reencodes from many groups out there... They look as good as the retail disc to me (on a fairly high end TV, and I'm not blind either). On a 25GB disc, that would still leave you with 14GB left for extra audio tracks and extras. From a computer storage/backup standpoint, that DOES make Blu-Ray better, but as for a entertainment/video format, not.
    Then why did almost all HD-DVDs use 30GB? Wouldn't a cheaper 15GB disc have been enough for everyone?