I agree with you on most of it, but most movies *will* see improvements - anything shot on reasonably quality film (basically anything since about 1950) will see an improvement since the resolution of film is far higher than HD.
IMO them main advantage of DVD over VHS was the same as CD over cassette - no need to rewind, fast forward, etc.
I can see both Blu-Ray and HD DVD fail because their model explicitly denies rental - the disk is linked to a specific machine and will not play on another one. Blockbusters and the like are in trouble if it takes off... OTOH I don't think it will - Most people I know with DVD players rent movies.. if they can't do that with Bluray then it will fail.
What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Apparently by someone called Billy Madison (not heard of him before).
It's mandatory that HD only travels over an HDCP protected connection - HDMI or DVI.
It's also mandatory that component is downscaled. I don't think MS really want to take on the media companies just after spending so much money cozying up the them - the XBox 360 HD-DVD player will have a separate HDMI output for video & component will be SD.
They've been pushing the 'imminent' hidef stuff for a year now. So I made the decision to stop buying DVDs.
Unfortunately there's no HD broadcast here and no HD media, so the only way to get it is off usenet... They really shot themselves in the foot - pushing HD like it was the second coming then making it so the only way to get any was do download ripped copies - and that situation isn't likely to change for a good 6 months too...
Depends on the DVD.. some DVDs look fantastic on a large screen.. others are horrid.
Even a horrid DVD is streets ahead of anything broadcast over terrestrial or sattelite (we don't have hidef broadcasts in this country yet).
I've seen a few of the hidef films and they're definately better (inc. Gladiator BEV which is supposed to be the benchmark 'best' HD film), but the difference basically disappears once you're more than a couple of feet from the screen... depends on how much of a perfectionist you are.
It's definately not the same as comparing VHS to DVD - that was a jump from 260 lines to 575 lines vs. a jump from 575 lines to 720 lines.
If you were in a region where the speed of light was faster how would you know? If you measured it it would appear to be going at exactly the same speed... it's just your idea of 'second' would be out of whack (probably your idea of 'metre' as well).
I'm pretty sure poking uranium with a pencil is not enough to make it go critical... making nuclear bombs is harder than that, requiring enormous force to generate the reaction.
No, they're just companies that can't spend half a million dollars upgrading hardware and software just to run the latest whizz-bang eye candy from microsoft, when what they have works just fine.
Over 40% of our customers are NT4 shops. Some of them are *big*.
It's easy for admins to plan their downtimes unless they have windows update run automaticaly every day or sometinh - there is even a tool that lets admins collect patches and roll them out locally on a schedule (although it needs a dedicated machine and insane amounts of resources... the minimum is 512MB and it isn't happy in less than 1GB, so many admins understandably can't run it due to hardware/budget limitations).
There are a *lot* of companies still using that on the backend servers and on the desktop (not sure if it's still the majority but it's very significant).
HDMI only has been built in to the spec from the start. It's been common knowledge for a year now... it's got nothing to do with the product being rushed.
HDMI to component or unprotected DVI boxes are not uncommon any more.. it's been standard in Europe for a while (indeed in the UK it's illegal to call a TV 'HD Ready' unless it has HDMI (leading to the non-HDMI ones being sold as 'HDTV Ready' instead. Sigh.)).
They're still relatively expensive, but once the korean production lines start up that price will drop quite fast.
Rural votes would have exactly the same effect per person as city votes. There's just a lot more people in the cities.. that's life. It's still much fairer to do it that way.
Don't remind me.. I was at a company that used these for years - eventually they abandoned them after they realized that over 80% of support questions were due to dongles. eg. Large customer pays $50,000 for a contract for the software (yes it cost that much) - boss wants to run it on his laptop, laptop has no parallel port. Support call at 9pm, irate customer and contract is jepoardised.
The smaller things caused headaches.. the dongles had a high failure rate and blanks were expensive and had to be bought in batches of 100 or more. Many, many customers had printers attached to their machines and were more than slightly pissed off that they had to remove them to run the software.
It was such a breath of fresh air to get rid of them... we had the afternoon off and got drunk when the decision was announced.
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I agree with you on most of it, but most movies *will* see improvements - anything shot on reasonably quality film (basically anything since about 1950) will see an improvement since the resolution of film is far higher than HD.
IMO them main advantage of DVD over VHS was the same as CD over cassette - no need to rewind, fast forward, etc.
I can see both Blu-Ray and HD DVD fail because their model explicitly denies rental - the disk is linked to a specific machine and will not play on another one. Blockbusters and the like are in trouble if it takes off... OTOH I don't think it will - Most people I know with DVD players rent movies.. if they can't do that with Bluray then it will fail.
The actual line is:
What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Apparently by someone called Billy Madison (not heard of him before).
It's mandatory that HD only travels over an HDCP protected connection - HDMI or DVI.
It's also mandatory that component is downscaled. I don't think MS really want to take on the media companies just after spending so much money cozying up the them - the XBox 360 HD-DVD player will have a separate HDMI output for video & component will be SD.
That'll be WMV then.
Heh. Exactly my thought.
They've been pushing the 'imminent' hidef stuff for a year now. So I made the decision to stop buying DVDs.
Unfortunately there's no HD broadcast here and no HD media, so the only way to get it is off usenet... They really shot themselves in the foot - pushing HD like it was the second coming then making it so the only way to get any was do download ripped copies - and that situation isn't likely to change for a good 6 months too...
Depends on the DVD.. some DVDs look fantastic on a large screen.. others are horrid.
Even a horrid DVD is streets ahead of anything broadcast over terrestrial or sattelite (we don't have hidef broadcasts in this country yet).
I've seen a few of the hidef films and they're definately better (inc. Gladiator BEV which is supposed to be the benchmark 'best' HD film), but the difference basically disappears once you're more than a couple of feet from the screen... depends on how much of a perfectionist you are.
It's definately not the same as comparing VHS to DVD - that was a jump from 260 lines to 575 lines vs. a jump from 575 lines to 720 lines.
Hey how did you get my password!
150GB aint enough these days, with movies at 20GB a throw.
If they were a bit bigger I'd consider them, but with 300GB drives at throwaway prices now why pay the extra for a bit of plastic?
If you were in a region where the speed of light was faster how would you know? If you measured it it would appear to be going at exactly the same speed... it's just your idea of 'second' would be out of whack (probably your idea of 'metre' as well).
I'm pretty sure poking uranium with a pencil is not enough to make it go critical... making nuclear bombs is harder than that, requiring enormous force to generate the reaction.
No, they're just companies that can't spend half a million dollars upgrading hardware and software just to run the latest whizz-bang eye candy from microsoft, when what they have works just fine.
Over 40% of our customers are NT4 shops. Some of them are *big*.
Nah the majority of the work was getting the animation sequences for clippy right.
It's easy for admins to plan their downtimes unless they have windows update run automaticaly every day or sometinh - there is even a tool that lets admins collect patches and roll them out locally on a schedule (although it needs a dedicated machine and insane amounts of resources... the minimum is 512MB and it isn't happy in less than 1GB, so many admins understandably can't run it due to hardware/budget limitations).
So what about NT4?
There are a *lot* of companies still using that on the backend servers and on the desktop (not sure if it's still the majority but it's very significant).
Yeah, like the PS2 lost so heavily to the nintendo.
Oh wait...
I'm sat in front of 7 right now, and that doesn't include the NAS that actually stores all my music files.
There's another 4 in the living room, plus a Showcenter 200 which gets used a lot for playing MP3s.
I'm maybe not your average user, but 5 uses really isn't a lot. Even my Mac Mini would use 2 (OSX 10.4 and OSX 10.3 boots) for one machine.
Then again I won't pay itunes prices... my local music store sells the real CDs for less.
The radio license was abolished decades ago.
The TV license gives us advert free TV, and soon it'll give us internet downloads of most of the TV programmes too... bargain.
Radio over here is generally very good... probably why podcasting hasn't really caught on over here (Adam Curry notwithstanding).
In the UK a well known shampoo uses it in their catchphrases... I bet they've trademarked several of them too.
As long as both sides have money it'll keep going.
The winner will be the one with most money (which luckily for us isn't SCO).
HDMI only has been built in to the spec from the start. It's been common knowledge for a year now... it's got nothing to do with the product being rushed.
HDMI to component or unprotected DVI boxes are not uncommon any more.. it's been standard in Europe for a while (indeed in the UK it's illegal to call a TV 'HD Ready' unless it has HDMI (leading to the non-HDMI ones being sold as 'HDTV Ready' instead. Sigh.)).
They're still relatively expensive, but once the korean production lines start up that price will drop quite fast.
Rural votes would have exactly the same effect per person as city votes. There's just a lot more people in the cities.. that's life. It's still much fairer to do it that way.
You also don't pay tax (VAT in this country) on the laptop because technically the company purchased it, so you win at both ends.
Don't remind me.. I was at a company that used these for years - eventually they abandoned them after they realized that over 80% of support questions were due to dongles. eg. Large customer pays $50,000 for a contract for the software (yes it cost that much) - boss wants to run it on his laptop, laptop has no parallel port. Support call at 9pm, irate customer and contract is jepoardised.
The smaller things caused headaches.. the dongles had a high failure rate and blanks were expensive and had to be bought in batches of 100 or more. Many, many customers had printers attached to their machines and were more than slightly pissed off that they had to remove them to run the software.
It was such a breath of fresh air to get rid of them... we had the afternoon off and got drunk when the decision was announced.
Why? This is common, and saves a lot of money on larger purchases. The company does not benefit - it's an employee perk.
In the past I've saved thousands this way.