Even with hardware scaling, you need a 2-3 GHz+ CPU to play back high def MPEG-2,
Well, maybe for Intel CPUs, or perhaps on Windows (which is a dog on video). My 1.66GHz Athlon (using MPlayer with -vo gl, GeForce 440mx) has no problem with 1080i/p MPEG-2, using up about 40% CPU-time. Whereas hardware decoding with XVMC takes up 30% CPU time. 1080 WMV9 with binary DLLs maxes out the CPU, and 1080 H.264 needs a few hundred MHz more than my system can give:-( but I believe optimizations to the codec will make it playable on this hardware in the near future.
and additional HW acceleration (IDCT, MoComp) offloads 20-30% at best.
Well, that varies greatly depending on the speed of the CPU to begin with. With a slow system, like a super-slow '1GHz' VIA chip, you'll get a big performance improvement, perhaps more than 50%.
(90% of hardware MPEG decoders on the market only support MPEG-2 MP@ML, i.e. standard def content. MP@HL decoders for high def content are rare and expensive.)
I really don't know where you got that number from. I know every single card I've bought in the past 6 years or so supports hardware MPEG-2 decoding at HD resolutions. From my ATI Rage 128, to an ATI 8500, and a couple GeForce4s. Pretty much all the videocards I've seen that have hardware MPEG-2 decoding, could always handle resolutions up to 2048x2048 or there-abouts.
i'm pretty sure that in a 'modern' pc all video decoding is handled on the video card.
Yes, well, you're an idiot for being so sure, even though you're COMPLETELY WRONG. Sorry, but that's the way it is.
Many videocards now have MPEG-2 decoding built-in, but that's not computing-free at all... For instance, a 300MHz system wouldn't be able to playback 1080 MPEG-2 video, even with XVMC hardware acceleration.
Plus, as I've been saying a lot lately, there is a cross-over point, where hardware acceleration becomes counter-productive. With a system that is more than about a 3200+ or so (AMD=2GHz P4=3.2Ghz) you can playback 1080 MPEG-2 video faster in software, than you can with hardware acceleration thanks to overhead of XVMC, interrupts, and many other things like that.
Finally, I don't know of any cards that can decode WMV9 and H.264, which are most widely used for HD content. Those are the most CPU-intensive codecs, and there's no hardware that will handle them.
that's why when you try to 'screen grab' you just get a pink or blue image all the decoding is being done by the video card.
NO NO NO NO NO!!! The blue-screen is called an overlay. It's used because the uncompressed video (WHICH HAS BEEN DECODED BY SOFTWARE) is transferred directly to the videocard (via DMA) rather than being routed through X11's standard (slow) output methods.
The decoding is still done entirely on your CPU.
so as long as you have a gpu capable of decoding HD video,
No such thing. Hardware acceleration has to be designed-in for EACH CODEC you wish to use, which is vastly impractical. So MPEG-2 is the only widely-supported codec.
the cpu overhead should be pretty low.
Also not entirely true. The overhead with hardware decoding is not tiny. And, with a reasonably fast system, software decoding is FASTER.
Speaking just to the power-savings benefit of using a mobile CPU in a home system, unless you are running a home server, the best way to conserve power in any PC would be to turn it off.
First of all, there are a great many things that need to be always-on. Even if you make a habbit of turning your computer off, there will always be numerous times that a large slow download or something else will require you to leave your system running. Many people also have computers set-up as DVRs now, which can't be shut-off, for obvious reasons.
Besides that, low power doesn't just low power at night... It means low power for the 8 hours per day that you're actively using it as well. It means less noise and heat. It means much less power spend on air-conditioning in the summer months. etc.
Personally, I want to save power wherever I can. Less power mean I can get away with much slower fans, and damn-near fanless systems that are still number-crunching monsters (for HD playback, video encoding, compression, encryption, etc).
As much as I like programs like Linux 2.6's cpufreq (or 8rdvcore for Windows) they can't make a high power processor into a very low power processor, and people suggesting them instead of low-power processors don't realize those same techniques make a mobile processor that much more energy-effecient as well.
Try looking for 3rd party DSL providers. There are a few that seem to be offering $15/mo, but I obviously haven't looked through each of them very closely.
Those are the same kinds of tricks you can do with ANY video. You filter the video to remove all noise, as well as most fine details, and it compresses down to very low bitrates. I can make MPEG-2 that small, as I said, but it won't look sharp at all. Without the uncompressed, or much-higher bitrate sample to compare to, a single video isn't evidence of anything.
You don't _need_ 50GB per movie.
If you want it to look good, you need much more space than a DVD can provide.
Don't be an asshat if you don't know what you are talking about.
Quite the contrary. I know what I'm talking about all too well. I've encoded tons of material with H.264, and I'm seriously involved with video encoding. I certainly know far, far more than you could imagine.
It's pretty amazing that you think the entire industry would go out of their way to waste tons of money developing Blu-ray and HD-DVD, if DVD could even potentially work.
Besides, bitrate/quality of H.264 was only one of several issues I addressed.
Yes, that's commonly the case in countries where the government has subsidized the process. So, in reality, you're paying much, much more (or somebody is).
Will this new Space Race usher in more new technologies into our daily lives,
YES!
For instance, hardened ceramic roofs, bomb shelters, "incoming meteor" early warning systems, and the like.
Pretty much all the technologies that make it possible to survive the fledgling space-ships disintegrating in the outer atmosphere, left and right. Pretty much all the same things you'd want if "flying cars" or "jet packs" for the average person became a reality.
H.264 on standard DVD, with the upgrade path being ANY sort of higher capacity device.
You could call anything the next technology. I could call MPEG-4 on DVDs the next technology. That doesn't make it true, because it's entirely possible you will NEVER see any studio release anything in that format.
The only HD format currently available is not H.264, but WMV9. HD IMAX DVDs, the Terminator 2 DVD, and a few other WMVHD-DVDs are already being sold, with Microsoft's own DRM, including a phone-home restriction placed on many of them... I sure don't want the next-gen format to be changed at the whim of Microsoft.
H.264 means you can do 1080p (not 1080i, but 1080 progressive) with 5.1 audio in 1 MB/sec.
These are just completely ridiculous assertions. You could do MPEG-2 in 1080p in 1MB/sec as well... It'll just look like complete crap...
You can't possibly just give assertions as to the correct bitrate, as every bit of media will be different, every encoder will be different, and they will vary, WILDLY.
Both of these will cost FAR, FAR less than blu-ray or HD-DVD.
Really? How's that? Same content, same codec, same playback hardware, etc. Should only be a few dollars difference in the media and players, and that will go down to no difference shortly.
Thats technically 480p content. Its playing at 675 kbit/sec, or 84.73 KB/sec. 720p content is similarly small;
That's absolutely ridiculous. 720p is 2.67 times the resolution of 480p. It also has double the framerate if we're not talking about just films. How can you claim with a straight face it's even CLOSE to the same size?
I suspect with a really smart encoder, using intelligent VBR type stuff, you can get 1080p down to an average of 800-900 KB/sec. Perhaps even less.
You can get H.264 down to 100KB/sec if you want, IT WILL JUST LOOK LIKE CRAP. VBR encoding is already being used, and your assertions are all clearly baseless.
Why would I _EVER_ carry a pile of blu-ray disks around when I could simply walk with an iPod, or a mobile phone, or a flash disk, or some other portable media library,
Because most people don't want to pay tremendous ammounts of money to store their movies on expensive media. Discs are so very dirt cheap (and compact, and mostly problem-free) that nothing can touch them.
Heck; strip out the middleman; just buy the movie from iMovie store, or Amazon's movies, or Walmart Video Online. Whatever; it doesn't matter.
Yes, absolutely everyone will be perfectly happy waiting to download 50GBs for each movie they've rented/purchased... Thereby getting charged TWICE... Once for the content, and once for the line they have to dedicated to non-stop movie downloading. Remember, HD-DVD isn't 10 years in the future... it's next month or so.
Especially when Walmart can distribute videos at a cost of 5-10 cents via electronic (or rental, or flash) distribution, and blu-ray disks cost $23 wholesale!
Nobody can copy 50GBs of data for 10 cents. The cheapest 500GB Maxtor hard drive I could find is just under $350, which means 10 movies per drive, at about $35 each... Gee, what a huge improvement over $23/each Blu-ray discs.
Much of the consumer electronics industry is interested in Blu-ray/HD-DVD, but retailers are going to squeal when they see how much it costs, and are going to squeal again when one of their competitors ships standard DVD products with the same features at 1/10 the price; with the only disadvantage being 2 disk sets versus 1 disk.
HD-DVD players start at $500. Hell, a device to playback 1080 H.264 content off standard DVDs will cost just as much. A computer fast enough to pla
I'll be one of the first to purchase the first consumer level graphics card that puts out an HD signal to a "legacy" DVI monitor.
WTF?
Every DVI videocard sold can output a HD signal to "legacy" DVI monitors. What good would they be if they didn't? They couldn't even be called videocards... they would be non-op devices, with no need for any connectors.
Like that one time, Satan decided that all railroad tracks should be the same distance apart, so that every train could work on every track, so people would ride around on the trains, which sucked out their immortal souls.
We all owe a debt of gratitude to the USSR for fighting Satan on that one...
Oh, and then they standardized screws and bolts,
Really? I was confused by the fact that I need 20 different screwdrivers to disassemble a damn stereo...
And home power standardized on 120V AC, so that everyone could plug their computers in anywhere, allowing Satan to tempt everyone with porn.
Satan must stick to the USA, since most of the rest of the world goes for 240V.
That's my favorite, of course (good old European politics), but a close second is the split over digital TV standards.
I've even seen a Brother label maker wall adapter that has an odd voltage (7.3v), odd amperage, a non-uniform center pin, and inverse polarity.
None of which should pose any trouble at all for a universal AC adapter. I run 6V devices at 4.5V, and vice versa with few side-effects. Any universal AC adapter will have a setting for 7.5V. Ditto for the amperage... it really doesn't matter as long as it's close, preferably slightly above what's necessary. Polarity is a complete non-issue. Finally, the connectors have been pretty well standardized for universal AC adapters. You can walk into any store and find the odd one you need for $1 (eg. Radioshack, Target, etc) and plug it into your current universal AC adapter.
Personally... My solution is quite simple. I don't buy ANYTHING with god-dammed built-in battery packs. I started using 1100mAH NiCd batteries exclusively about 10 years ago. They lasted just about exactly as long as disposable alkaline batteries, even despite the lower voltage. A couple years I upgraded to 2500mAH NiMH batteries, which last about twice as long as the afore-mentioned disposible batteries.
Sure, I COULD use an AC adapter to plug-in my portable Sony CD/MP3 player, but with (2) rechargable AAs lasting approx 100 hours, it's hardly worth it.
Those $15/mo DSL prices are not real, long-term rates.
You can say so all you want, but it won't make it true.
Look at the terms for Verizon's $15/mo plan, and tell me where it says the price will go up after a year.
There are other companies like DSLExtreme.com that service the Verizon/SBC/BellSouth customers (at least in Southern California) which will give you $15/mo internet access if your telco won't.
Politics: This is discussed in 25 cent newspapers and in free public forums.
I haven't seen a 25 cent newspaper in about a decade. The information you'll get in a public forum isn't necessarily accurate, and certainly won't help much for state and federal elections.
Besides, those poor enough to be unable to afford a TV are generally not those who vote.
You have a constitutional right to be informed, and to vote. The fact that you may chose not to doesn't make it legal for anyone to put up unreasonable barriers to you expercising that right. Besides, I'd really like to see your statistics on that... If poorer people didn't vote (the kind unlikely to spend $800 on a TV) Republicans wouldn't be in office.
Emergency sirens: The first wednesday of each month morning, I hear the emergency sirens tested while I'm at work. At home, the sirens go off when there's a tornado. I drive past some other sirens between the two places. Well, you're lucky enough to be in a rare exception. Almost all the sirens were, in-fact, torn down.
Where do you live where there's no emergency siren *and* no newspaper? Seriously.
We've got a few newspaper here, but definately not emergency sirens (nor do 99% of the country). However, I have been to many places throughout California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, etc., that are far to rural to support a newspaper. To make it worse, these are the places were these poorer people, at issue, live.
Just because video killed the radio star (so I've heard), everything with a video analogue must have perished?
Not "must have" just largely "did". Saying you don't believe it, won't change the fact that it happened.
Anyway, if this plan's making the government so damned much money, I want my convertor box subsidized, too.
It almost certainly will be. The plan seems to be two free converter boxes per household, though it's entirely possible that will change by the time the situation comes around.
He mentioned nothing about $13-$15 being limited introductory rates or possible local phone requirements.
Those are not "introductory" rates. You need a 12-month contract, but it's still the perpetual rate, AFAIK.
As far as the "local phone requirements", I thought that much was safe to assume. You need a telephone line for DSL, just as you need a telephone line for dial-up. The story is about dial-up vs. DSL (not DSL vs. Cable) so I assumed everyone would be able to assume that much.
After this "introdutory price," it's probably around $40-$50 per month.
NO! That's completely UNTRUE. It's trivially easy to go to Verizon or SBC's website and verify this, so it's really ridiculous you got modded up for saying something so easily disproven. It is a 12-month commitment, but that's not a big deal.
That DSL modem probably ain't free and must be bought or rented for at least a buck per month.
I'm willing to bet you've never had DSL. Cable companies are fond of "renting" you a modem perpetually, but DSL companies almost always give you one for free when you sign up (minus $10-20 for shipping).
And, like dial-up, you can walk into a store and buy a DSL modem if you chose.
Saying it's only $13-$15 per month is a little misleading when the rate will probably double (at least) after a year.
I would have, if that were the case, but IT'S NOT. You're just oh-so-wrong.
I haven't seen significant price cuts to "regular" broadband rates in the same way I've seen cuts to "introductory rates."
If you keep your eyes shut, you won't see much. Try LOOKING, and you will see them.
Most of the decent DSL providers (speakeasy for instance)
Yes, but "decent" means "not cheap", which puts them outside of this discussion. So, as I was saying, if you're traveling a lot, dial-up could still be cheaper...
I have Verizon myself, and the DSL service is just as good as anywhere else. A bit of downtime now and then, and absolutely terrible technical support, but speeds are exactly what they promise.
Verizon gives you 768 Kbps / 128 Kbps for $15/mo, which you can't possibly claim is anywhere near as good as even the best dial-up service. Not only bandwidth that's about 20X faster, but latency that is far, far, far lower.
If you want to run freeBSD on an iMac, you don't have to do anything.
OS X is based on MACH, not FreeBSD. It has many FreeBSD user-land programs, but that doesn't make it FreeBSD-based.
This is one of the great Slashdot myths... Right up there with AMD's mythical supply problems, NAT making your network more secure, all DVDs being stored interlaced, PAL being close to HDTV resolutions, a 100W computer being just as effecient as a 100W heater, DTS sounding better than AC3, etc.
You certainly don't need a 64bit Athlon CPU or 2GB RAM, since everything is done by the graphics card anyway.
How does your graphics card decode WMV9 and H.264 video? Many videocards have MPEG-2 decoding, but that won't handle anything but OTA HDTV streams. Blu-ray, HD-DVD, HD DirecTV broadcasts (presumably ripped from a DVR), anything downloaded from the Internet, will likely almost never be MPEG-2, cutting you off from most HD videos.
Any equivalent of a 3GHz P4 single-core is plenty of CPU for HDTV.
Have you ever tried? I find my 2GHz Athlon is insufficent for H.264 1080p@24fps. I expect optimizations to libavcodec will improve the situation greatly, but for now, I don't think a 3GHz P4 will cut it. My system is just fast enough for 1080 with WMV9. Still, postprocessing of any kind is out-of-the-question.
I think with regards to the CPU and HDD, people should be getting the best they can afford, within reason. With videocards, any cheapish DVI NVidia card should be fine. You'll have to stick a 6600 or 6800 if you need component outs (via a cheap $15 adapter) both of which have/need cooling fans:-(
For sound, a SB Live is better than anyone could ever need. The 24bit versions are selling in stores for $25.
For a case, I'd get something very cheap, but well-designed (fan in-front of hard drives, power supply not blocking CPU, etc). I think my next case will be a $30 Enermax A106 case. Doesn't look like it belongs in a multimedia cabinet, but some black spray-paint (and replacement rubber feet) will take care of that.
Seasonic power supplies are very effecient, and will vastly reduce the heat output of your system, plus they have rather quiet fans. Or you can go for Enermax or Antec.
Maybe spend a little to get a good copper-base, 80mm heatsink from Alpha, Swiftech, Thermalright, Thermaltake, etc. Artic Silver heatsink paste or similar. Then put a nice, quiet and cheap 80mm Enermax fan (thermal-controlled unless you are getting a CnQ system). They're the best I've found, I just wish they had a much higher MTBF, remaining quite much longer...
I've personally never been able to stand MythTV. It was far to slow, convoluted, and clunky of a program for me. I just put something together with a filemanager, mplayer, and a few scripts. Maybe Freevo might be better, but I never got past the unnecessary manual channel configuration hassle.
I think a Hauppauge PVR-150 is cheap and good enough for anybody, although the more expensive PVR-250 comes with a very nice remote, I've used it daily for years now.
This article seemed to be a list of what's the most expensive and most trendy computer hardware right now.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, maybe for Intel CPUs, or perhaps on Windows (which is a dog on video). My 1.66GHz Athlon (using MPlayer with -vo gl, GeForce 440mx) has no problem with 1080i/p MPEG-2, using up about 40% CPU-time. Whereas hardware decoding with XVMC takes up 30% CPU time. 1080 WMV9 with binary DLLs maxes out the CPU, and 1080 H.264 needs a few hundred MHz more than my system can give
Well, that varies greatly depending on the speed of the CPU to begin with. With a slow system, like a super-slow '1GHz' VIA chip, you'll get a big performance improvement, perhaps more than 50%.
I really don't know where you got that number from. I know every single card I've bought in the past 6 years or so supports hardware MPEG-2 decoding at HD resolutions. From my ATI Rage 128, to an ATI 8500, and a couple GeForce4s. Pretty much all the videocards I've seen that have hardware MPEG-2 decoding, could always handle resolutions up to 2048x2048 or there-abouts.
Yes, well, you're an idiot for being so sure, even though you're COMPLETELY WRONG. Sorry, but that's the way it is.
Many videocards now have MPEG-2 decoding built-in, but that's not computing-free at all... For instance, a 300MHz system wouldn't be able to playback 1080 MPEG-2 video, even with XVMC hardware acceleration.
Plus, as I've been saying a lot lately, there is a cross-over point, where hardware acceleration becomes counter-productive. With a system that is more than about a 3200+ or so (AMD=2GHz P4=3.2Ghz) you can playback 1080 MPEG-2 video faster in software, than you can with hardware acceleration thanks to overhead of XVMC, interrupts, and many other things like that.
Finally, I don't know of any cards that can decode WMV9 and H.264, which are most widely used for HD content. Those are the most CPU-intensive codecs, and there's no hardware that will handle them.
NO NO NO NO NO!!! The blue-screen is called an overlay. It's used because the uncompressed video (WHICH HAS BEEN DECODED BY SOFTWARE) is transferred directly to the videocard (via DMA) rather than being routed through X11's standard (slow) output methods.
The decoding is still done entirely on your CPU.
No such thing. Hardware acceleration has to be designed-in for EACH CODEC you wish to use, which is vastly impractical. So MPEG-2 is the only widely-supported codec.
Also not entirely true. The overhead with hardware decoding is not tiny. And, with a reasonably fast system, software decoding is FASTER.
First of all, there are a great many things that need to be always-on. Even if you make a habbit of turning your computer off, there will always be numerous times that a large slow download or something else will require you to leave your system running. Many people also have computers set-up as DVRs now, which can't be shut-off, for obvious reasons.
Besides that, low power doesn't just low power at night... It means low power for the 8 hours per day that you're actively using it as well. It means less noise and heat. It means much less power spend on air-conditioning in the summer months. etc.
Personally, I want to save power wherever I can. Less power mean I can get away with much slower fans, and damn-near fanless systems that are still number-crunching monsters (for HD playback, video encoding, compression, encryption, etc).
As much as I like programs like Linux 2.6's cpufreq (or 8rdvcore for Windows) they can't make a high power processor into a very low power processor, and people suggesting them instead of low-power processors don't realize those same techniques make a mobile processor that much more energy-effecient as well.
Try looking for 3rd party DSL providers. There are a few that seem to be offering $15/mo, but I obviously haven't looked through each of them very closely.
Those are the same kinds of tricks you can do with ANY video. You filter the video to remove all noise, as well as most fine details, and it compresses down to very low bitrates. I can make MPEG-2 that small, as I said, but it won't look sharp at all. Without the uncompressed, or much-higher bitrate sample to compare to, a single video isn't evidence of anything.
If you want it to look good, you need much more space than a DVD can provide.
Quite the contrary. I know what I'm talking about all too well. I've encoded tons of material with H.264, and I'm seriously involved with video encoding. I certainly know far, far more than you could imagine.
It's pretty amazing that you think the entire industry would go out of their way to waste tons of money developing Blu-ray and HD-DVD, if DVD could even potentially work.
Besides, bitrate/quality of H.264 was only one of several issues I addressed.
Yes, that's commonly the case in countries where the government has subsidized the process. So, in reality, you're paying much, much more (or somebody is).
YES!
For instance, hardened ceramic roofs, bomb shelters, "incoming meteor" early warning systems, and the like.
Pretty much all the technologies that make it possible to survive the fledgling space-ships disintegrating in the outer atmosphere, left and right. Pretty much all the same things you'd want if "flying cars" or "jet packs" for the average person became a reality.
You could call anything the next technology. I could call MPEG-4 on DVDs the next technology. That doesn't make it true, because it's entirely possible you will NEVER see any studio release anything in that format.
The only HD format currently available is not H.264, but WMV9. HD IMAX DVDs, the Terminator 2 DVD, and a few other WMVHD-DVDs are already being sold, with Microsoft's own DRM, including a phone-home restriction placed on many of them... I sure don't want the next-gen format to be changed at the whim of Microsoft.
These are just completely ridiculous assertions. You could do MPEG-2 in 1080p in 1MB/sec as well... It'll just look like complete crap...
You can't possibly just give assertions as to the correct bitrate, as every bit of media will be different, every encoder will be different, and they will vary, WILDLY.
Really? How's that? Same content, same codec, same playback hardware, etc. Should only be a few dollars difference in the media and players, and that will go down to no difference shortly.
That's absolutely ridiculous. 720p is 2.67 times the resolution of 480p. It also has double the framerate if we're not talking about just films. How can you claim with a straight face it's even CLOSE to the same size?
You can get H.264 down to 100KB/sec if you want, IT WILL JUST LOOK LIKE CRAP. VBR encoding is already being used, and your assertions are all clearly baseless.
Because most people don't want to pay tremendous ammounts of money to store their movies on expensive media. Discs are so very dirt cheap (and compact, and mostly problem-free) that nothing can touch them.
Yes, absolutely everyone will be perfectly happy waiting to download 50GBs for each movie they've rented/purchased... Thereby getting charged TWICE... Once for the content, and once for the line they have to dedicated to non-stop movie downloading. Remember, HD-DVD isn't 10 years in the future... it's next month or so.
Nobody can copy 50GBs of data for 10 cents. The cheapest 500GB Maxtor hard drive I could find is just under $350, which means 10 movies per drive, at about $35 each... Gee, what a huge improvement over $23/each Blu-ray discs.
HD-DVD players start at $500. Hell, a device to playback 1080 H.264 content off standard DVDs will cost just as much. A computer fast enough to pla
WTF?
Every DVI videocard sold can output a HD signal to "legacy" DVI monitors. What good would they be if they didn't? They couldn't even be called videocards... they would be non-op devices, with no need for any connectors.
We all owe a debt of gratitude to the USSR for fighting Satan on that one...
Really? I was confused by the fact that I need 20 different screwdrivers to disassemble a damn stereo...
Satan must stick to the USA, since most of the rest of the world goes for 240V.
That's my favorite, of course (good old European politics), but a close second is the split over digital TV standards.
None of which should pose any trouble at all for a universal AC adapter. I run 6V devices at 4.5V, and vice versa with few side-effects. Any universal AC adapter will have a setting for 7.5V. Ditto for the amperage... it really doesn't matter as long as it's close, preferably slightly above what's necessary. Polarity is a complete non-issue. Finally, the connectors have been pretty well standardized for universal AC adapters. You can walk into any store and find the odd one you need for $1 (eg. Radioshack, Target, etc) and plug it into your current universal AC adapter.
Personally... My solution is quite simple. I don't buy ANYTHING with god-dammed built-in battery packs. I started using 1100mAH NiCd batteries exclusively about 10 years ago. They lasted just about exactly as long as disposable alkaline batteries, even despite the lower voltage. A couple years I upgraded to 2500mAH NiMH batteries, which last about twice as long as the afore-mentioned disposible batteries.
Sure, I COULD use an AC adapter to plug-in my portable Sony CD/MP3 player, but with (2) rechargable AAs lasting approx 100 hours, it's hardly worth it.
Perhaps SBC is being screwy, but Verizon is offering 768 down for $15/mo.
You can say so all you want, but it won't make it true.
Look at the terms for Verizon's $15/mo plan, and tell me where it says the price will go up after a year.
There are other companies like DSLExtreme.com that service the Verizon/SBC/BellSouth customers (at least in Southern California) which will give you $15/mo internet access if your telco won't.
I haven't seen a 25 cent newspaper in about a decade. The information you'll get in a public forum isn't necessarily accurate, and certainly won't help much for state and federal elections.
You have a constitutional right to be informed, and to vote. The fact that you may chose not to doesn't make it legal for anyone to put up unreasonable barriers to you expercising that right. Besides, I'd really like to see your statistics on that... If poorer people didn't vote (the kind unlikely to spend $800 on a TV) Republicans wouldn't be in office.
If you aren't a gamer (latency), you might do better to get a high-speed Satellite internet connection, which start at $70 or so (no landline needed).
*cough* *cough*
I AM the parent poster, as a matter of fact...
Those are not "introductory" rates. You need a 12-month contract, but it's still the perpetual rate, AFAIK.
As far as the "local phone requirements", I thought that much was safe to assume. You need a telephone line for DSL, just as you need a telephone line for dial-up. The story is about dial-up vs. DSL (not DSL vs. Cable) so I assumed everyone would be able to assume that much.
$15/mo.
I've had Verizon DSL for a couple years now. I called them a week ago and got them to switch me over to the $15/mo plan.
NO! That's completely UNTRUE. It's trivially easy to go to Verizon or SBC's website and verify this, so it's really ridiculous you got modded up for saying something so easily disproven. It is a 12-month commitment, but that's not a big deal.
I'm willing to bet you've never had DSL. Cable companies are fond of "renting" you a modem perpetually, but DSL companies almost always give you one for free when you sign up (minus $10-20 for shipping).
And, like dial-up, you can walk into a store and buy a DSL modem if you chose.
I would have, if that were the case, but IT'S NOT. You're just oh-so-wrong.
If you keep your eyes shut, you won't see much. Try LOOKING, and you will see them.
http://www22.verizon.com/ForHomeDSL/channels/dsl/
https://swot.sbc.com/swot/dslMassMarketCatalog.do
Hopefully it's obvious that I said that backwards:
Verizon gives you 768 Kbps / 128 Kbps for $15/mo, which you can't possibly claim isn't far better than even the best dial-up service.
Yes, but "decent" means "not cheap", which puts them outside of this discussion. So, as I was saying, if you're traveling a lot, dial-up could still be cheaper...
You think you don't have to pay taxes for dial-up access?
You're right, it's only fair to add on a $2 FUSF to that price, but it doesn't really affect my point.
I have Verizon myself, and the DSL service is just as good as anywhere else. A bit of downtime now and then, and absolutely terrible technical support, but speeds are exactly what they promise.
Verizon gives you 768 Kbps / 128 Kbps for $15/mo, which you can't possibly claim is anywhere near as good as even the best dial-up service. Not only bandwidth that's about 20X faster, but latency that is far, far, far lower.
OS X is based on MACH, not FreeBSD. It has many FreeBSD user-land programs, but that doesn't make it FreeBSD-based.
This is one of the great Slashdot myths... Right up there with AMD's mythical supply problems, NAT making your network more secure, all DVDs being stored interlaced, PAL being close to HDTV resolutions, a 100W computer being just as effecient as a 100W heater, DTS sounding better than AC3, etc.
How does your graphics card decode WMV9 and H.264 video? Many videocards have MPEG-2 decoding, but that won't handle anything but OTA HDTV streams. Blu-ray, HD-DVD, HD DirecTV broadcasts (presumably ripped from a DVR), anything downloaded from the Internet, will likely almost never be MPEG-2, cutting you off from most HD videos.
Have you ever tried? I find my 2GHz Athlon is insufficent for H.264 1080p@24fps. I expect optimizations to libavcodec will improve the situation greatly, but for now, I don't think a 3GHz P4 will cut it. My system is just fast enough for 1080 with WMV9. Still, postprocessing of any kind is out-of-the-question.
I think with regards to the CPU and HDD, people should be getting the best they can afford, within reason. With videocards, any cheapish DVI NVidia card should be fine. You'll have to stick a 6600 or 6800 if you need component outs (via a cheap $15 adapter) both of which have/need cooling fans
For sound, a SB Live is better than anyone could ever need. The 24bit versions are selling in stores for $25.
For a case, I'd get something very cheap, but well-designed (fan in-front of hard drives, power supply not blocking CPU, etc). I think my next case will be a $30 Enermax A106 case. Doesn't look like it belongs in a multimedia cabinet, but some black spray-paint (and replacement rubber feet) will take care of that.
Seasonic power supplies are very effecient, and will vastly reduce the heat output of your system, plus they have rather quiet fans. Or you can go for Enermax or Antec.
Maybe spend a little to get a good copper-base, 80mm heatsink from Alpha, Swiftech, Thermalright, Thermaltake, etc. Artic Silver heatsink paste or similar. Then put a nice, quiet and cheap 80mm Enermax fan (thermal-controlled unless you are getting a CnQ system). They're the best I've found, I just wish they had a much higher MTBF, remaining quite much longer...
I've personally never been able to stand MythTV. It was far to slow, convoluted, and clunky of a program for me. I just put something together with a filemanager, mplayer, and a few scripts. Maybe Freevo might be better, but I never got past the unnecessary manual channel configuration hassle.
I think a Hauppauge PVR-150 is cheap and good enough for anybody, although the more expensive PVR-250 comes with a very nice remote, I've used it daily for years now.
This article seemed to be a list of what's the most expensive and most trendy computer hardware right now.