I don't think it should surprise anyone that when a new upgrade comes around for OS X that every Mac user is immediately going to descend on it. Let's see how long these figures are sustained.
DivX certainly represents the last significant piece in the puzzle. The PS3 already supports MPEG-2, MP4 pt 2 SP, AVC, jpeg, png, MP3, WMA, AAC, ATRAC and has streaming support via UPnP and DNLA. Next year it's getting PVR functionality in some regions and possibly downloadable content from PSN.
I think it's shaping up to be the ultimate multimedia center. The 360 is also making efforts to improve it's multimedia support, but you'd probably have to get the 120Gb to make any decent use of it.
Good for you. Next you're going to say that your computer is hooked up to your TV and everyone else should do the same?
Fact is the PS3 and the 360 are plugged into a TV by definition and have more than enough power to play music and video. In that capacity it makes perfect sense to utilise them as multimedia jukeboxes.
I think you are right for new content. There is no earthly reason whatsoever for encoding content to ASP if your devices support H264 (AVC). The quality of AVC is better, the compression is better and AVC is the chosen format for portable devices going forward.
ASP is still good for existing legacy content though. Transcoding ASP to AVC yields pretty awful quality vids so anything that allows you to watch them without conversion is a good thing.
The PS3 is already an awesome multimedia device and it just keeps getting better. Europe gets a twin tuner DVB-T and PVR functionality arriving early next year. Korea already has IPTV. It can't be long before a DLC service launches for it too.
The whole point of Ubuntu is to present a simple user interface centered around GNOME. It doesn't need a fancy WM since the whole point is the desktop is a seamless, simple and unobtrusive experience.
What purpose does Enlightenment serve in all this? I wouldn't ever describe Enlightenment as seamless, simple or unobtrusive. E appears to be about eye candy for eye candy's sake and that's about it.
I am very offended in seeing the tag "whining" attached to this article. Soldiers of all nationalities give their lives, often dying gruesome deaths, so that war profiteers and other unscrupulous chickenhawk fatcats win big.
Yes, soldiers die in horrible ways. And some sites use the issue to raise their own profile by complaining about Google. Some sites have a legitimate issue in raising concerns, and some such as WorldNetDaily are whiners. They are religion freaks who have an agenda to piss and moan about anything and everything they consider liberal, atheistic or otherwise not supportive of their extreme views.
Perhaps Google should put a logo up, perhaps they shouldn't. If they do, they should do the same for *every* country that has a national day for soldiers. Let's see the crybaby whiners flip out when they learn that Google puts up an "Army Day" logo for www.google.cn. Maybe Google should stick up a few logos to celebrate Islamic dates, such as the birth / death of the prophet, martyrdoms and so on while they're at it.
Who'd have thought that you could find order in a picture showing order and transform that order into something resembling music? Mind boggling. For an encore this bozo should be searching for bible codes in Slashdot.
From what you said, sales are still 2:1, and with the PS3 selling 10x faster than any standalone HD DVD or Blu Ray player, that ratio is only going to get larger. And that's just considering the US. I think prices of Blu Ray will drop into the HD DVD price zone soon enough too. There are a lot of new models from Samsung, Sharp, LG, Panasonic, Pioneer etc. appearing soon and it's bound to put pressure on prices. Models still appear to be geared at home ethusiasts but I expect there will be a wave of consumer models directly after. Will it happen soon enough to counter HD DVD? I don't know. Does HD DVD have enough momentum to even matter? I don't know.
The world picture is also important here. HD DVD is non-existent in Japan, and barely registers a blip in Europe either. While Blu Ray isn't exactly setting the world alight it still has total dominance of the HD format in both territories. I wouldn't dismiss the possibility that even if HD DVD won in the US, that it would lose in those other places. Part of me thinks the studios would be delighted by that since it's the ultimate region encoding.
I have to say as a Blu Ray owner that I do wish movies were region free. Some apparently are region free but not all. This is something that I like about HD DVD. In virtually every other aspect I consider it to be an inferior standard. I think at the end of the day though players will be so cheap it won't matter which wins. I still want it to be Blu Ray though.
How can anyone really say that given the abysmal numbers? Seeing as most of the early adopters are probably people who have a custom cabinet with cooling fans, filters and god only knows what else for their high end equipment. All I know is that every time Sony has put some sort of a laser based reader in an entertainment device it has come up short (PS/PS2). I got burned on the original PS2, (went through 2 of them in 3 and 1/2 months and Sonys response to me was that for 200 bucks they could ship me a refurb. I went from Sony fanboy to bad mouther overnight, that was 5 years ago and come hell or highwater, nothing that is Sony branded will find its way into my household, if that means my daughter has to grow up without Disney movies on the latest high def player? So be it.
People can say it because 6 million PS3s say it. That's six million blu ray players that are reading blu ray game discs if they're not reading blu ray movies. The reliability of the PS3 has generally been superb.
You can probably fault the PS3 about certain things but hardware quality absolutely isn't one of them. Compare and contrast with the 360 red ring of death debacle (amongst other issues) if you want to see what unreliable means.
As for other blu ray or HD DVD players, I really don't see reliability being a product of the technology but of the engineering behind the device. Some devices are going to be good and some terrible. Just like anything.
One big thing in HD-DVDs camp though is the price, the cheapest blu-ray player is the PS3 at $400 and it doesn't have all of the same level of functionality as a high-end stand-alone player would. You can get an HD-DVD player for around $150 now and they're rumored to be even cheaper at Christmas.
And the reason for the price differential is because Toshiba is massively subsidizing the price. This has been their only advantage from day one, and if it doesn't succeed the format is doomed. Notice how Toshiba is about the only manufacturer of HD DVD equipment - it's because there is no incentive at all for any other manufacturer to produce players when they can't possibly compete with Toshiba. They even went as far as selling their A2 player for $99 last week and sold out. On the face it this seems amazing, until you consider those players were probably sat there an entire year not selling. In the same space of time Sony alone has shifted several million PS3s.
While I have a certain emotional tie to Blu Ray (since I own a PS3), I think at the end of the day players will become so cheap it doesn't matter which format "wins". But win what? I see no reason this war is even happening. Blu Ray should have won a long time ago and the only reason HD DVD is still around is because Microsoft is propping it up to prolong the battle indefinitely. I don't think they care at all which side wins - they'd rather a stalemate while they slip in and steal victory with downloadable content.
Actually, it's even worse. If Blu-Ray loses, Blu-Ray players will stop being manufactured. Sony is relying on economies of scale to drive down the costs of Blu-Ray diodes and drives, which will make it even harder for them to make a profit on the PS3.
The costs are already driven down. Blue laser diode list prices are around $6 a pop. It probably makes no difference to Sony if they're churning them out to supply the Blu Ray market or the HD DVD market since both formats use them.
If Blu Ray "lost", Sony would swallow it's pride and produce HD DVD players. The same goes the other way for Toshiba. The Japanese electronics industry is so incestuous that both companies probably have stakes in ventures producing rival kit any way. For example Toshiba is stakeholder and soon owner of the factory manufacturing the Cell processor for Sony!
Ultimately it doesn't make a difference who "wins" since the chances are that hybrid player will be available that play either format for $200. It would be a shame from a technical standpoint if it ends up being HD DVD though.
If Sony's calling it a stalemate, then HD-DVD is already ahead. If all Sony can manage with it's PR department is to call the situation a "stalemate," then HD-DVD likely ahead in real terms. Incidentally, I just conducted an informal, non-scientific poll here in the office. Of 20+ people, only two had heard of Blu-Ray. Half had heard of HD-DVD, but almost all were able to figure out what it was by the name alone. It makes me think that HD-DVD has an advantage just because of its name.
HD DVD isn't ahead. There are 6 million and counting PS3s in the world, plus numerous BD players from other electronics manufacturers. Blu Ray has total dominance in Europe, the US and Japan. The only region even putting up a fight is the US and even there Blu Ray is still winning.
The only reason this "war" is even going on is because Microsoft is bribing studios to switch sides to prolong it as long as possible. The reasons for this should be obvious.
I agree, ultimately, I think that HD-DVD is probably going to be the winner, but really only because the equipment is less expensive, and seems less prone to manufacturing problems.
The equipment isn't more expensive and isn't less prone to manufacturing problems. Aside from fairly minor differences, the hardware and software for HD DVD and Blu Ray is largely similar. It might seem HD DVD is cheaper but that is mainly due to Toshiba massively subsidizing its players. There are more manufacturers of Blu Ray players and so far they seem more content to keep their profit margins rather than price slash to attract business.
I think from the consumer perspective that the formats aren't really different enough to justify two of them. Perhaps if blue ray could offer something compelling that wasn't available in HD-DVD, then they'd have something, but all you get is a bit of extra run time that'll rarely be used and more encryption. Most consumers don't even use all the functionality that regular DVDs provide. Few use the surround sound capabilities that most DVDs have.
There isn't much to distinguish them but Blu Ray is still superior in every way from disc storage, data throughput, to industry support both from studios and electronics suppliers.
Please tell me that those people aren't that stupid. We used to have monitors without standby: they were non-energy efficient and stayed on at full power all the time! If these fools ban standby-- a technology they likely do not understand-- people will just go back to leaving their monitors on full-bore all the time, illuminating the office with images of flying toasters.
First off, this is talking about domestic, consumer devices. I see no reason that DVD players, TVs, set top boxes etc. cannot go into standby by themselves off if no activity is happening or scheduled. How inactivity is defined is an open question but is unreasonable that if a user doesn't press a remote control within 6 hours that the device can shut itself off? Devices with schedule timers may be more problematic but there could be exemptions that allow standby, or batteries to turn devices on / off as required.
People would just accept the change and get over this very minor and trivial change to their lifestyle especially if they saved money on electricity or whatever other schemes come in (e.g. carbon credits).
As for offices etc., the solution is far less technical. Just hike the price of electricity outside of normal office hours. Let's see how keen businesses would be to shutdown non-essential computers, printers, monitors etc. if the out of hours rates were 4x as high. The depressing fact is that every day millions of office devices are left on and doing *nothing*. A little financial pressure could make a dramatic impact on that.
That depends on what is loaded on it. If it's Sugar and all that then I agree. If it's flashed (or can be flashed) with a cut down Fedora, Firefox, OpenOffice etc. then it's an enormously useful, rugged, mobile computer, perfect for travel, lectures, coffee shops etc. Having said that, I ordered my Eee PC today since it appears more consumer oriented than the OLPC.
That still burns me about the first xbox. It's life was way too short. I'd consider getting a 360 since it looks like a great machine, but after the way MS killed the original xbox after 4 years no way. Some 3rd party developers made games to stretch it out to 5 years, but still...
Not just short but artificially shortened. Microsoft basically pulled the plug on the XBox as soon as the 360 appeared. The PS2 is clearly last gen, but Sony are still producing new versions of it even now.
The point is that the BBC could have engineered a mostly platform neutral file delivery / playback platform for no additional cost to themselves or licence payers. For example Java is pretty much ubiquitous from one platform to the next so it would have been entirely feasible to construct an app for showing listings and downloading episodes that ran anywhere. Make the videos use a standard such as H264 and then they'll play back on just about any player too. Supporting multiple platforms would be relatively easy with Java.
Instead of doing this they engineered some bizarro Windows-only, IE-only, WMP-only solution consisting of server side sniffers, activex controls, 3rd party controls and proprietary JS & HTML which is not only horrifically complicated but doesn't even work properly from one Windows OS to the next, or one IE version to the next, or one WMP to the next. Use Vista? Screw you. Use XP with IE7? Screw you. Use XP with Firefox? Screw you.
Even DRM seems like a weak excuse for using WMP. Why not tie content to a TV licence by watermarking it? The user might have to register for the service and login but that's the only inconvenience. Afterwards let them do what they like with the content since its H264. It's not like the market for Eastenders episodes is massive anyway, and if by chance someone did abuse the service you can use the watermark to trace and prosecute them.
It seems like someone in the BBC is desperately trying to justify a very bad decision by marginalising the critics as unimportant. In reality the BBC ignored a great chance to develop a cross-platform solution and hopped in bed with Microsoft. Now they're wondering why nobody including the few people who got iPlayer to work are happy with piece of crap that produced.
It looks like an incredible idea with a lot of promise, but the shots they've shown so far look like some lumpy rejects from a plastic vacuum forming machine. There is some great potential here to involve people to generate better models by asking them to contribute pics of certain monuments with certain characteristics such as resolution, position and so on.
Silverlight may have a scriptable interface via Javascript but that hardly means it RELIES on JavaScript. More likely JS is the defacto glue for bonding plugins with HTML content. That's where the association ends. I think it's fairly obvious that MS feels threatened by JavaScript getting any richer than it is now. After all, if it becomes expressive and rich enough to stand alongside Java or C#, why bother with either of those things? Not only do they have to implement the new features but those new features diminish any reason to be using a proprietary technology.
As for MS driving ECMA standardization... if they did then good for them. It doesn't mean all their intentions before or since are somehow immune from scrutiny.
My guess is Microsoft realise that compatibility with JavaScript, HTML and other open standards is questionable in most browsers and they absolutely do not want to make it any better. After all, if the open standards were adhered to (and improved such as with ES4), who would care about Silverlight or.NET? I think that's the bottom line here. ES4 makes many fundamental improvements to JavaScript. It's not hard to think that ES4 + HTML + a strong Ajax lib might render Silverlight irrelevant. And Microsoft sure can't let that happen. Better to talk up problems in js and subvert every effort to improve. Meanwhile they'll push Silverlight as the solution to all the problems they're partly responsible for. The sad part is that Flex and venerable Java are still better solutions than Silverlight but we know how the industry loves the next best thing even if there is no need to.
I own virtually every GTA game as well as Bully and I love most of them - the GTA series was getting pretty tired by the PSP versions.
I just hope GTA IV rejuvenates the series and that Rockstar would get their act together, starting with firing whichever asshole greenlit Manhunt 2. It should have been obvious from the start that the game would attract a lot of unwelcome controversy, have a tough time getting a rating and would probably never turn a profit. There's being "controversial" and then there is financial suicide. It seems like they're confusing the two at the moment.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think it should surprise anyone that when a new upgrade comes around for OS X that every Mac user is immediately going to descend on it. Let's see how long these figures are sustained.
As for BC, buy the 60Gb while you can and quit complaining.
I think it's shaping up to be the ultimate multimedia center. The 360 is also making efforts to improve it's multimedia support, but you'd probably have to get the 120Gb to make any decent use of it.
Good for you. Next you're going to say that your computer is hooked up to your TV and everyone else should do the same?
Fact is the PS3 and the 360 are plugged into a TV by definition and have more than enough power to play music and video. In that capacity it makes perfect sense to utilise them as multimedia jukeboxes.
ASP is still good for existing legacy content though. Transcoding ASP to AVC yields pretty awful quality vids so anything that allows you to watch them without conversion is a good thing.
The PS3 is already an awesome multimedia device and it just keeps getting better. Europe gets a twin tuner DVB-T and PVR functionality arriving early next year. Korea already has IPTV. It can't be long before a DLC service launches for it too.
What purpose does Enlightenment serve in all this? I wouldn't ever describe Enlightenment as seamless, simple or unobtrusive. E appears to be about eye candy for eye candy's sake and that's about it.
Yes, soldiers die in horrible ways. And some sites use the issue to raise their own profile by complaining about Google. Some sites have a legitimate issue in raising concerns, and some such as WorldNetDaily are whiners. They are religion freaks who have an agenda to piss and moan about anything and everything they consider liberal, atheistic or otherwise not supportive of their extreme views.
Perhaps Google should put a logo up, perhaps they shouldn't. If they do, they should do the same for *every* country that has a national day for soldiers. Let's see the crybaby whiners flip out when they learn that Google puts up an "Army Day" logo for www.google.cn. Maybe Google should stick up a few logos to celebrate Islamic dates, such as the birth / death of the prophet, martyrdoms and so on while they're at it.
Who'd have thought that you could find order in a picture showing order and transform that order into something resembling music? Mind boggling. For an encore this bozo should be searching for bible codes in Slashdot.
The world picture is also important here. HD DVD is non-existent in Japan, and barely registers a blip in Europe either. While Blu Ray isn't exactly setting the world alight it still has total dominance of the HD format in both territories. I wouldn't dismiss the possibility that even if HD DVD won in the US, that it would lose in those other places. Part of me thinks the studios would be delighted by that since it's the ultimate region encoding.
I have to say as a Blu Ray owner that I do wish movies were region free. Some apparently are region free but not all. This is something that I like about HD DVD. In virtually every other aspect I consider it to be an inferior standard. I think at the end of the day though players will be so cheap it won't matter which wins. I still want it to be Blu Ray though.
People can say it because 6 million PS3s say it. That's six million blu ray players that are reading blu ray game discs if they're not reading blu ray movies. The reliability of the PS3 has generally been superb.
You can probably fault the PS3 about certain things but hardware quality absolutely isn't one of them. Compare and contrast with the 360 red ring of death debacle (amongst other issues) if you want to see what unreliable means.
As for other blu ray or HD DVD players, I really don't see reliability being a product of the technology but of the engineering behind the device. Some devices are going to be good and some terrible. Just like anything.
And the reason for the price differential is because Toshiba is massively subsidizing the price. This has been their only advantage from day one, and if it doesn't succeed the format is doomed. Notice how Toshiba is about the only manufacturer of HD DVD equipment - it's because there is no incentive at all for any other manufacturer to produce players when they can't possibly compete with Toshiba. They even went as far as selling their A2 player for $99 last week and sold out. On the face it this seems amazing, until you consider those players were probably sat there an entire year not selling. In the same space of time Sony alone has shifted several million PS3s.
While I have a certain emotional tie to Blu Ray (since I own a PS3), I think at the end of the day players will become so cheap it doesn't matter which format "wins". But win what? I see no reason this war is even happening. Blu Ray should have won a long time ago and the only reason HD DVD is still around is because Microsoft is propping it up to prolong the battle indefinitely. I don't think they care at all which side wins - they'd rather a stalemate while they slip in and steal victory with downloadable content.
The costs are already driven down. Blue laser diode list prices are around $6 a pop. It probably makes no difference to Sony if they're churning them out to supply the Blu Ray market or the HD DVD market since both formats use them.
If Blu Ray "lost", Sony would swallow it's pride and produce HD DVD players. The same goes the other way for Toshiba. The Japanese electronics industry is so incestuous that both companies probably have stakes in ventures producing rival kit any way. For example Toshiba is stakeholder and soon owner of the factory manufacturing the Cell processor for Sony!
Ultimately it doesn't make a difference who "wins" since the chances are that hybrid player will be available that play either format for $200. It would be a shame from a technical standpoint if it ends up being HD DVD though.
The only reason this "war" is even going on is because Microsoft is bribing studios to switch sides to prolong it as long as possible. The reasons for this should be obvious.
The equipment isn't more expensive and isn't less prone to manufacturing problems. Aside from fairly minor differences, the hardware and software for HD DVD and Blu Ray is largely similar. It might seem HD DVD is cheaper but that is mainly due to Toshiba massively subsidizing its players. There are more manufacturers of Blu Ray players and so far they seem more content to keep their profit margins rather than price slash to attract business.
I think from the consumer perspective that the formats aren't really different enough to justify two of them. Perhaps if blue ray could offer something compelling that wasn't available in HD-DVD, then they'd have something, but all you get is a bit of extra run time that'll rarely be used and more encryption. Most consumers don't even use all the functionality that regular DVDs provide. Few use the surround sound capabilities that most DVDs have.
There isn't much to distinguish them but Blu Ray is still superior in every way from disc storage, data throughput, to industry support both from studios and electronics suppliers.
Anyone who's watched The Siege knows terrorists like eating pizza.
The "Hot Coffee" mod was so tame that I really don't see what all the fuss was about.
First off, this is talking about domestic, consumer devices. I see no reason that DVD players, TVs, set top boxes etc. cannot go into standby by themselves off if no activity is happening or scheduled. How inactivity is defined is an open question but is unreasonable that if a user doesn't press a remote control within 6 hours that the device can shut itself off? Devices with schedule timers may be more problematic but there could be exemptions that allow standby, or batteries to turn devices on / off as required.
People would just accept the change and get over this very minor and trivial change to their lifestyle especially if they saved money on electricity or whatever other schemes come in (e.g. carbon credits).
As for offices etc., the solution is far less technical. Just hike the price of electricity outside of normal office hours. Let's see how keen businesses would be to shutdown non-essential computers, printers, monitors etc. if the out of hours rates were 4x as high. The depressing fact is that every day millions of office devices are left on and doing *nothing*. A little financial pressure could make a dramatic impact on that.
That depends on what is loaded on it. If it's Sugar and all that then I agree. If it's flashed (or can be flashed) with a cut down Fedora, Firefox, OpenOffice etc. then it's an enormously useful, rugged, mobile computer, perfect for travel, lectures, coffee shops etc. Having said that, I ordered my Eee PC today since it appears more consumer oriented than the OLPC.
Not just short but artificially shortened. Microsoft basically pulled the plug on the XBox as soon as the 360 appeared. The PS2 is clearly last gen, but Sony are still producing new versions of it even now.
Instead of doing this they engineered some bizarro Windows-only, IE-only, WMP-only solution consisting of server side sniffers, activex controls, 3rd party controls and proprietary JS & HTML which is not only horrifically complicated but doesn't even work properly from one Windows OS to the next, or one IE version to the next, or one WMP to the next. Use Vista? Screw you. Use XP with IE7? Screw you. Use XP with Firefox? Screw you.
Even DRM seems like a weak excuse for using WMP. Why not tie content to a TV licence by watermarking it? The user might have to register for the service and login but that's the only inconvenience. Afterwards let them do what they like with the content since its H264. It's not like the market for Eastenders episodes is massive anyway, and if by chance someone did abuse the service you can use the watermark to trace and prosecute them.
It seems like someone in the BBC is desperately trying to justify a very bad decision by marginalising the critics as unimportant. In reality the BBC ignored a great chance to develop a cross-platform solution and hopped in bed with Microsoft. Now they're wondering why nobody including the few people who got iPlayer to work are happy with piece of crap that produced.
It looks like an incredible idea with a lot of promise, but the shots they've shown so far look like some lumpy rejects from a plastic vacuum forming machine. There is some great potential here to involve people to generate better models by asking them to contribute pics of certain monuments with certain characteristics such as resolution, position and so on.
As for MS driving ECMA standardization... if they did then good for them. It doesn't mean all their intentions before or since are somehow immune from scrutiny.
My guess is Microsoft realise that compatibility with JavaScript, HTML and other open standards is questionable in most browsers and they absolutely do not want to make it any better. After all, if the open standards were adhered to (and improved such as with ES4), who would care about Silverlight or .NET? I think that's the bottom line here. ES4 makes many fundamental improvements to JavaScript. It's not hard to think that ES4 + HTML + a strong Ajax lib might render Silverlight irrelevant. And Microsoft sure can't let that happen. Better to talk up problems in js and subvert every effort to improve. Meanwhile they'll push Silverlight as the solution to all the problems they're partly responsible for. The sad part is that Flex and venerable Java are still better solutions than Silverlight but we know how the industry loves the next best thing even if there is no need to.
I just hope GTA IV rejuvenates the series and that Rockstar would get their act together, starting with firing whichever asshole greenlit Manhunt 2. It should have been obvious from the start that the game would attract a lot of unwelcome controversy, have a tough time getting a rating and would probably never turn a profit. There's being "controversial" and then there is financial suicide. It seems like they're confusing the two at the moment.
Publicity doesn't necessarily equate to sales. I would be surprised if MH2 recoups even half the money spent on producing it.