HD-DVD does NOT have region coding, while Blu-Ray DOES have region coding (right here and now). Go buy a BD disk from overseas and see if it plays in your player.
Not only is this wrong, but it's disingenuous. You're making a case that HD-DVD is less DRM encumbered than Blu-ray. There is no significant difference between the distribution and rights control mechanisms of these two formats. HD-DVD currently doesn't enforce region restrictions. Blu-ray does. Both formats and players are capable of this.
Keep in mind the agenda I'm pushing here. Blu-ray is a superior data format. For data storage, Blu-ray is better than HD-DVD and there is no argument against this. The format that wins will become our common data format, because no one wants to have movies on one format and data on another.
The idea of DRM-free media can be realized with either format, the DRM has already been cracked for AACS, and both its implementations.
It's already been proven that you don't need 50G for a full-length movie. Watch King-Kong on HD-DVD and tell me that it could look/sound any better.
It couldn't look much better, but it sure could sound better.
The whole "uncompressed audio" is just a way of saying, "We're wasting space." What you want is lossless audio, which many HD-DVD disks do have. Just because it's compressed, doesn't mean it loses quality and I would assume that/. people would understand that.
Uhh, what? PCM 5.1 is what spits out of an A/D converter. It is the raw input for losselss encoding, which Blu-ray players support. If there is no reason to further it, why do so? Once they go to BD-50, there isn't any more cost for pressing the whole disc of half of it. This PCM audio is as good as it's going to get in terms of sound quality, modulo the hardware involved.
1) Less copy protection - Blu-Ray is BD+ waiting in the wings
So there might be more copy protection in future versions of the system? How is HD-DVD any less vulnerable to this criticism? And AACS is already an insane nightmare, and was cracked in less than a year. If the industry can't see the dead end of more DRM at this point, they're going to run aground anyways.
2) More interactivity - Blu-Ray is STILL waiting for BD-J; watch Tokyo Drift for some cool examples of iHD on HD-DVD)
I submit to you that people care more about titles than interactivity. But I concede your point here. Blu-ray can theoretically support this, but currently it is unused.
3) NO REGION CODING - You can buy a movie from anywhere in the world and play it on your player wihout having to hack it first. In addition, many "blu-ray exclusive" titles in the US are available overseas and in Canada for HD-DVD
Wrong. They do contain region codes. They are just not setting them. This is the same for all the AACS quality-degradation stuff. No one dares turn those bits on, because at this point if things fuck up, then the delicate market might collapse.
I'm not saying BD won't win the war, I'm just saying that it *shouldn't* win the war as the alternative has bigger benefits for customers.
Except that blu-ray's potential as a data format far outweighs these paltry concerns, and Sony is moving much faster to get this into play.
The early BD releases that used MPEG-2 looked like crap, no matter the bitrate. Did you see Fifth Element on BD? By all accounts, the Superbit version looked better.
Not all early HD-DVDs were gems either. Goo look at the recent releases, Blu-ray is meeting or beating HD-DVD now, and doing it with better sound.
Uhh, sure. I guess? But BD's have one thing going for them that HD-DVDs don't. Awesome capacity. And what this tends to translate into is very very good sound. BD-50 disks tend to have uncompressed 5.1 audio, and it makes a difference in a home theater system.
But you're right about this, basically HD-DVD and Blu-ray tie on visual quality, and both support the same codec set.
As for the original question about why it costs more for the HD version -- the manufacturing isn't what's costing the money, it's the encoding process
This is untrue. Blu-rays require new equipment. Offsetting that cost is why Blu-ray discs are more expensive. The encoding is why HD-DVDs are more expensive. You then went on to say:
Studios have to encode it differently for HD (VC-1, MPEG-4) compared to DVD (MPEG-2) -- unless you're Sony in the beginning, thinking that they can get away with encoding in MPEG-2 on BD.
This is true. But you make it sound like Sony is "getting away with" MPEG-2 encoding. MPEG-2 is a very old standard, but is very capable of producing excellent quality HD output if you give it enough kb/sec. And the Blu-ray spec has higher capacity and higher bandwidth requirements off the disc. Using MPEG-2 encoding for now helps offset the price increase due to the equipment. Many shops can produce excellent MPEG-2 encodes, but are still learning all the tricks for other standards. It's just like at the beginning of the DVD format, when some movies looked much worse than others because the people who mastered it didn't do a very good job. Early releases of "Twister" had ugly blocky messes where tornados were meant to be, for example.
Blu-rays use MPEG-2 at silly-high data rates and still have enough room left over for uncompressed audio, so it isn't a problem . Eventually we will see more H.264-spec BD-ROMs as people try and pack more footage onto the format. HD-DVD is already forced to this by their lower capacity per layer.
He went to the store and bought blu-rays, calling them HD-DVDs. You might think it's simple, but for some reason people aren't getting it. He had a blu-ray player, and called them HD-DVDs. He doesn't get that there is a specific product called HD-DVD.
I don't get how it works either, but several of my relatives and my friends' relatives seem to follow this pattern.
Maybe going with an un-related name made sense, because it required a new device to play. Folks I know who work at Best Buy see a lot of attempted HD-DVD returns because they "don't work." Further interrogation reveals that they didn't understand that HD-DVD-marked disks required new hardware to play.
People who can afford the PS3 and a high-definition television (and maybe a 10x overpriced cord, if they don't wise up).
Seriously, for someone with a large HDTV, Blu-ray turns movis from a grainy experience with mediocre sound and washed out colors into a theater-quality experience. If your TV is larger than 40", 16:9(or 10) aspect, a high-def source is pretty much necessary to lot look blurry and grainy.
I don't own many Blu-ray discs, but I do own a few, and they are awesome to behold.
Yeah, the PS2 wasn't so good. Still, for a lot of people it was a great value to have a DVD player and a game system in one box, if only because it was rare to have many component inputs until the last few years.
But just about every review of the PS3 you can read, including this one, says that the Xbox 360 is the next generation shitty-PS2-esque DVD player. The picture is grainy and ugly. Sony seems to have learned from their mistake on this one, the PS3 is just about the best non-upconverting DVD player I've ever seen, and I've owned a few.
Over the last few years, we've been seeing the appearance of very high production Porn. The movie Pirates (work safe link) was an example of a high production quality movie that needed to recoup its costs via disc sales. And, having seen this movie, it's definitely interesting to have real costumes, real sets, and real sex. That is probably the future of the porn industry, and so disc sales matter.
But all that aside, the Blu-ray-resists-porn thing was only an unfounded rumor. There are several X-rated releases slated for Blu-ray.
There are no 3-format hybrid disks that I can find.
There are 3-format hybrid players. LG released the first one at CES. You may have missed it because it was during the iPhone launch.
Multi-format players really are a win for Blu-ray. Blu-ray disks tend to be slightly better than HD-DVD (usually they tie on video quality, but the low compression audio from the Blu-ray ends up being superior). Once the "expensive player" factors are removed, most consumer see bigger (incomprehensible, but bigger!) numbers on the Blu-ray side, see a brand that the vast majority of Americans identify with good electronics, and choose the Blu-ray.
Also, HD-DVD has the "shitty name" problem. I talked to my grandfather a few months ago and he asked me if I had a "HD-DVD player". I said, "Yes, I can play both HD-DVD and Blu-ray." He paused and said, "I thought Blu-ray was a HD-DVD." I talked to some other people of similar levels of tech literacy and I was surprised to find this happened many times.
The PS3 is probably used only slightly less than my cable box. It's a fantastic DVD player, media player, Blu-ray player, and game console. Once I got over the price, I took the plunge and grabbed it. It's on for a few hours every night, in either linux or crossbar.
What's really ironic is that Sony has made the most open console, and no one seems to want to mention this. If it weren't so expensive, we'd see an incredible surge of hack activity on the product. With a free and fairly good linux distro already available, the sky is really the limit. Not to mention that with a quick conversion it plays nearly any media I download. It also uses Bluetooth peripherals. No overpriced-piece-of-crap microphones or obnoxious cable adaptors. All my mice and keyboards already work with it.
What's most frustrating about being a PS3 owner is that everyone immediately assumes you've wasted your money. If you explain that the PS3 has been a terrific experience, they immediate assume you either: a) Don't have a Wii and are bitter or b) are a Sony shill.
At least Motorstorm is out now. When people come over and I beep on the PS3, their snide comments quickly fall off as they watch a few rounds. And I actually have people coming over to play VF5, which was the first time I had friends want to check out my PS3.
I hope with the upcoming price drop and Home (and Little Big World) on the way, Sony will get the PS3 back on track, because there really is a lot to like about it.
And now I get interrogated. Why aren't I doing more, right? Sure, I already own a hybrid car (which is really f'ing expensive to operate, more than my toyoto matrix ever was).
How many people ride in your car?
1-2. I work at a 5 man company, so the fact I can get to carpool some of the time makes for a major corporate effort. But I could reduce/reuse/close-the-loop by inviting strangers from the Bay Area into my car! Maybe we can all go see "Zodiac" together! Sounds great, where can I sign up?
How much closer to to work could you live?
I consult at lot. So moving is somewhat pointless. Perhaps this is one of my so-called assumptions?
How important is having that job?
I can't believe I'm being told that I can't afford the carbon credit to work where I want to work while living where I want to live! I predicted this was coming in the very post you replied to. Why not just say, "You can always grow rice for my newly forming social class."
Maybe you aren't familiar with how California works, but a commute is pretty much unavoidable here. You just can't get away from it, it's fantastically expensive to live in areas where there are tech jobs. We're economically forced to live further away and commute into another city. But hey, this is the environment we're talking about here. We don't have time to do things properly. We should just latch on to the first plan that a fellow alarmist suggests, no matter how unlikely it is to work.
Or, we could realize there is a problem and rationally work to correct it, without alarmism and working to maximize the ecological benefit while minimizing the economic impact. Alarmists love to say that we're all sinfully wasteful and that Kyoto would have minimal impact anyways, but the truth is that most people are not trying to be wasteful at all, it's just that they can't afford to conserve. Kyoto is all about pretending the problem is going away by swapping money around, much to the detriment of the successful economies involved.
Here are 3 simple ways to encourage people to reduce their emissions without resorting to penalization:
Give a tax credit to someone who does not own a car. Lots of people would benefit, both rich and poor, and it'd cut emissions startlingly.
Make it easier for the average citizen to move. Make it illegal for companies to penalize credit records for more than 1 move a year. This lets people live near where they work.
Give tax credits to companies that can show to a federal inspector their energy have decreased by fixed goals every year. Make sure to reward early compliance with a final goal.
Do you have any constructive suggestions, or are your ideas limited to confiscation and penalty-wrangling? When did this almost catholic self-flagellation element infect the environmental movement anyways?
Yeah, if the price of energy rose by 25%, absolutely nobody would start thinking about using less energy for a change.
Yeah. Because everyone has that option. My fossil fuel consumption is a direct function of my commute. Mass transit is not an option, because I'd also need a bike, and it'd be stolen almost immediately near the mass transit station. My energy consumption is relatively fixed. I have enough to run a laptop most of the time, and a bit extra for basic cooling and heating.
Are you going to tell everyone with outdate consumer utilities (radio, television, refrigerator, etc.) to fuck off and buy newer, more efficient models? Even if they cannot afford them? Will you volunteer to sacrifice from your lifestyle to bring everyone else up to par? So much for universal health care and cheaper higher-level education, eh?
You act like people are wantonly wasting energy left and right, with careless abandon. The real story is far grimmer. But when your only agenda is political tongue-lashing and grabs for yet more governmental power, I guess you can afford to discard reality. Americans are all so wasteful! Nevermind our industrialization is decreasing, and nevermind that global measures like Kyoto conveniently ignore countries like China that are rapidly becoming major impacts on the global ecological stage.
Your complaints are poorly expressed and unfair. Forgive me for pulling them apart one-by-one, but they are just that wrong.
1) Apple also would have to be a team player. Where is AIX blended with OS X running on IBM servers to make things go fast forward? Where are KDE and Gnome features blended with OS X running on regular Intel/AMD servers? Apple really is not a team player at all, but an Ego player just like Bill Gate's "Ego Company" was;-) - so how do they want to go corporate.
Wait. AIX? Why? Even defense contrators are rushing to abandon that platform! I should know, I helped Lockheed get the Air Force off of it. If you are being outpaced by the US government in terms of software, you are dead in the competitive waters, and your shareholders should get their money out while they can.
2) Apple also would have to actively integrate other software. Actively, Apple will support Windows and Linux integration on Macintosh computers. Currently, they tolerate it and allow it, but there seems to be no active support. That is a problem.
Mac OS X's interoperability characteristics are superior to any other product right now with the purchase of Parallels, which is extremely inexpensive. It comes with a native X11 for free. It can easily run any OS inline with the modern models. It is for this reason that most Web Deveopers are moving to macs. You can get multiple platforms to test your work on in one computer.
3) Apple would have to take criticism regarding their sloppy hardware, and their software, serious. Right now they do not take it serious but feel immediately threatened by criticism. That is such a problem that this point of observation alone suffices to abandon Apple as "corporate player" for good. Corporate players stick it out, they hang in, they discuss, they open up when problems arise. There will be a reliable road map, and there will be upgrade plans. Apple? Dig your own hole;-)
What? Apple is the model for corporations to emulate in terms of security. They're got terrific customer satisfaction on the service lines. Their service is excellent and fast. Sometimes they have hardware trouble that cannot easily be fixed (for example, the display noise on G4 15" PowerBooks), but every vendor has those, and they are seldomly deal-breakers. When they are, Apple is fairly good about replacement parts.
4) Standardized parts for hardware repairs being conducted locally. What did Apple think corporate setups were about? Dealing with snobbish representatives all day? That, indeed, is a real problem.
I am not sure exactly what is non-standard about modern macs. The only unusual thing is that they use EFI, but Intel makes the bulk of the hardware. There are a lot of non-Apple-owned repair and maintenance providers, which should show it's not an obstacle.
5) Standardized software interfaces. Why does Apple have to use their own disk format? Why does Apple have to do all kinds of things "their own way"? Of course, they can - as long as they serve individuals. Do you think I want to waste one second trying to hook an external harddrive to a computer and then find out it "can not mount it" because of "wrongful formatting"? Geez. Apple is not a corporate player at all - their technology isn't, and so Apple can't be there.
Why does Microsoft? Why does Linux? You're holding Apple to an unfair standard, and acting like Mac OS X only plays nice with HFS+ disks. Nothing could be further from the truth (although for a boot volume, HFS+ is the fastest choice).Apple is even moving forward faster than Linux, moving towards the open ZFS format in their next operating system.
6) Now they come out with the iPhone. We all know Apple can't build integrated devices because they always mess up the "integration" part. They just do. So forget a
Few mac users are lame enough to argue that there is no premium on mac products that you pay for style. The Black MacBook is proof enough.
The difference is, most of us have no real problem paying a bit more for something that looks nice and is well-engineered. The average mac is much nicer and more attractive than the average Dell XPS. Sorry. If we're going to be spending >$2000 on a laptop, you can be darn sure I'll buy something attractive as well as functional.
If you think this is frivolous or subjective, that's fine. No one forces you to buy a mac. You'll just be left out of the excellent software experience.
FFXII's plot is hailed as one of the most interested, convoluted, and modern of any FF. People love it. Lots of people have said, "I wish it was released in book form, I'd read it." It was not just a recycled love story. And yet you claim this was one of the game's weaknesses?
I submit to you, sir, that you are simply not the target audience for FF games in general. Your statements and tone suggest that you have not liked the genre in general.
Don't mention your UID as a basis for any statement on/. unless it's lower than 100000. Ever.
Re:3 Reasons: Marketing, name and quality
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Why Do Games Sell?
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And finally, quality. Quality is the poorest seller, and it's amazing how many high quality games collect dust on the shelves simply because nobody ever heard about them. Quality is a seller once someone starts a hype around them, starts recommending them and thus it sells. But this kind of "marketing" is getting more and more out of fashion. Studios prefer to pump their money into marketing instead of programming, and squeeze out yet another "graphics enhanced" version of the same old game to trying something new.
I think on the contrary, it's getting more and more in fashion with the right people. It's just that big companies like EA can't make games that market themselves out of their specific rights holder areas.
If you were right, games like Katamari Damashi wouldn't still be available.
And, it never happened. The promise of excellent technology, never delivered. And (I've posted on this before), the notion of track info associated with CD technology didn't emerge until we, the people, did it ourselves! with CDDB!
"We the people" didn't do CDDB. CDDB is the enterprise of Gracenote, Inc. While generated from user submissions, their database and the legal wrangling surrounding their services are somewhat legendary in the content distribution circles. Gracenote is certainly an arm, or at least in the pocket, of the RIAA.
Uh, welcome to the world of Big Software. Adobe in particular is very bad about it. Apple is about middle-of-the-scale.
But Parallels is one of the most open and transparent projects I've come across. You saying you had to "dig through the Parallels forum" says a lot about your tolerance to this sort of thing.
If Apple didnt really care if people stripped the FairPlay from its songs, why did iTunes version 6 update FairPlay so it couldnt be decrypted by several of the Fairplay stripping apps out at the time?
Are you sure it was intentional? Apple isnt really beholden to anyone to keep their protocols or database formats the same.
But even it was intentional, Im willing to bet my testes that Apple has a contract that says it has to exercise due diligence in countering threats to FairPlay.
No matter how liberal Apple is with the DRM (and Ill admit that they are) I still dont like another company deciding what privileges I have with music that Ive bought. What if Apple gets bought out by Sony 10 years from now and they decide to change the DRM so you cant even burn an audio CD anymore? Those changes would apply retroactively to all music youve bought from them.
Whatd follow is one of the biggest class action lawsuits in the history of the world. EULA claiming rights or not, that wouldnt be accepted by the general community.
This is why Ill continue to vote with my wallet and only buy songs with no DRM. That way, Ill always have control over what I can do with my music.
There are places that do this legally for a large catalogue?
Interesting. I think Sony / MS are overstating the desires of a (quite vocal) minority. So far Sony had the market
crown for 2 generations with the least capable machine.
Maybe two years ago Id agree with you, but hdtv sales are through the roof. This isnt about polycount, this is about not looking awful on a high def tv. And know what? The Wii looks pretty bad on my TV. Not bad enough not to play, but its going to play a factor over time.
If Sony / MS create a Wiimote equivalant, it will fail as the system wasnt built around it. Sure it might have some
novel games, but it would be like the Eye toy or DDR with a few specific games made for it, and ignored by the rest of
the developers/publishers. The Wii has a Wiimote / nunchuck in every box, and allways will, so developers can code with
the flexibility of knowing its there.
I really think another vendor could pull it off. We also dont know the full capabilities of the current Sony controller, so lets not argue this for now and see over time.
It has 2 levels of copy protection, and are easier to damage due to a thinner (and not stronger) protective coating. It also doesnt support 1080p over component.
Verbatim has devised a new, inexpensive coating that solves the problem, and future Blu-ray will use a different fabrication. This problem is solved, pending deployment.
The copy protection on Blu-ray is as onerous as the HD-DVD. Given this, I dont really care about a slight increase in the per-unit cost, I want the best picture possible. Blu-ray has nearly twice the data rate, 2/3 bigger per layer, has more future potential.
Finally, no one is releasing discs that require the reconversion of Blu-ray output when not over an HDCP-covered link. And, HD-DVD can carry this requirement as well.
1. The people that want HD-gaming certainly have "ravenous desire" for it, but lots of them don't have any money, or have other priorities ahead of buying good enough HD sets that it makes a difference from all the way back on the couch.
Where do you get information like this? HD television sales were throught he roof last year, climbing 50%. The prices are dropping rapidly, and the proliferation of cheap DLP 1080p televisions in the sub-$2500US range has completely dropped out the bottom of the 720p LCD and Plasma market.
People are buying more and more HD televisions, and they are getting cheaper and cheaper. No, my friend, don't try and argue that people can't afford HD. America is certainly finding a way.
Lots of people don't have room for a big TV or "home theatre system"; lots of young people, even the ones that do have money, live in apartments and move a lot, and don't want to buy tons of big stuff that would get in the way if they moved; even if HD prices come down the physical size of a TV big enough that HD matters from the couch will get in the way.
Except that Flat Panel TV's are more portable, and easily look terrific in small apartments even with sub-50" screens because people have to sit closer to them.
Apartment dwellers also have to watch the volume on their stereos. How many people do you know that drool over great entertainment systems? How many do you know that actually have them? There's always going to be a big gap there.
I don't have a terrific entertainment system. I have a simple sound system involving 3 speakers (and with SRS output, this sounds fine) and a 60" 1080p-supporting Samsung DLP television that I got on sale during the holidays for $1950+tax. My TV is quite large (and barely fits in my apartment), but most people I know have at least a 40" TV supporting 720p.
2. Speaking of that couch thing, you can play computer games at HD resolutions and actually be close enough to the screen to see the detail without having a gargantuan TV. The comparitively small size of a PC, monitor and headphones is hard to beat among people that don't have a giant TV room to sprawl out in.
You talk about these televisions like they're some kind of inhumanly large device with legs, tubes, and invasive probes. If a 60" television can fit in my apartment comfortably, it can fit anywhere that a small family could live.
3. There are a few people with "ravenous desire" and many, many more that don't care at all. They don't care about HD gaming or HD movies.
Care to back that up? Sales figures in the US say otherwise. If you can't afford an HDTV, I am sorry. Please wait a little longer, I've seen sales for 40" plasma TVs that support 720p for $799, and I don't even look for that sort of thing. Soon it will be within your financial reach.
A vast majority of the people I know fall in this category, and while I don't doubt that there are people out there that care, there are enough that don't to keep DVDs on shelves for years. The hardcore might move on to downloads before HD disk formats ever truly take hold.
We can speculate all you want, but it's undeniable that the Wii's weakest portion is the quality of its output. Even if you don't factor in the high definition aspect, the Wii's graphical capabilities are very, very, very sub-par compared to the new systems. This difference is noticeable even at standard resolutions.
As far as I am concerned, the Wii isn't really competing with the PS3 and the Xbox 360. It's a very simple system with an interesting control scheme that takes the profound lessons of the Nintendo DS (that there is a huge untapped market of people who would play games if not for their arcane and hardcore nature) and extends it. That's great, it's awesome, and I am sure they will do well there.
But the multi-million dollar market that exists currently is something the Wii will only be able to tap if Nintendo can get a lot of 3rd party developers on board, quickly.
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Not only is this wrong, but it's disingenuous. You're making a case that HD-DVD is less DRM encumbered than Blu-ray. There is no significant difference between the distribution and rights control mechanisms of these two formats. HD-DVD currently doesn't enforce region restrictions. Blu-ray does. Both formats and players are capable of this.
Keep in mind the agenda I'm pushing here. Blu-ray is a superior data format. For data storage, Blu-ray is better than HD-DVD and there is no argument against this. The format that wins will become our common data format, because no one wants to have movies on one format and data on another.
The idea of DRM-free media can be realized with either format, the DRM has already been cracked for AACS, and both its implementations.
It couldn't look much better, but it sure could sound better.
Uhh, what? PCM 5.1 is what spits out of an A/D converter. It is the raw input for losselss encoding, which Blu-ray players support. If there is no reason to further it, why do so? Once they go to BD-50, there isn't any more cost for pressing the whole disc of half of it. This PCM audio is as good as it's going to get in terms of sound quality, modulo the hardware involved.
So there might be more copy protection in future versions of the system? How is HD-DVD any less vulnerable to this criticism? And AACS is already an insane nightmare, and was cracked in less than a year. If the industry can't see the dead end of more DRM at this point, they're going to run aground anyways.
I submit to you that people care more about titles than interactivity. But I concede your point here. Blu-ray can theoretically support this, but currently it is unused.
Wrong. They do contain region codes. They are just not setting them. This is the same for all the AACS quality-degradation stuff. No one dares turn those bits on, because at this point if things fuck up, then the delicate market might collapse.
Except that blu-ray's potential as a data format far outweighs these paltry concerns, and Sony is moving much faster to get this into play.
Not all early HD-DVDs were gems either. Goo look at the recent releases, Blu-ray is meeting or beating HD-DVD now, and doing it with better sound.
Uhh, sure. I guess? But BD's have one thing going for them that HD-DVDs don't. Awesome capacity. And what this tends to translate into is very very good sound. BD-50 disks tend to have uncompressed 5.1 audio, and it makes a difference in a home theater system.
But you're right about this, basically HD-DVD and Blu-ray tie on visual quality, and both support the same codec set.
This is untrue. Blu-rays require new equipment. Offsetting that cost is why Blu-ray discs are more expensive. The encoding is why HD-DVDs are more expensive. You then went on to say:
This is true. But you make it sound like Sony is "getting away with" MPEG-2 encoding. MPEG-2 is a very old standard, but is very capable of producing excellent quality HD output if you give it enough kb/sec. And the Blu-ray spec has higher capacity and higher bandwidth requirements off the disc. Using MPEG-2 encoding for now helps offset the price increase due to the equipment. Many shops can produce excellent MPEG-2 encodes, but are still learning all the tricks for other standards. It's just like at the beginning of the DVD format, when some movies looked much worse than others because the people who mastered it didn't do a very good job. Early releases of "Twister" had ugly blocky messes where tornados were meant to be, for example.
Blu-rays use MPEG-2 at silly-high data rates and still have enough room left over for uncompressed audio, so it isn't a problem . Eventually we will see more H.264-spec BD-ROMs as people try and pack more footage onto the format. HD-DVD is already forced to this by their lower capacity per layer.
You've totally misread what he said.
He went to the store and bought blu-rays, calling them HD-DVDs. You might think it's simple, but for some reason people aren't getting it. He had a blu-ray player, and called them HD-DVDs. He doesn't get that there is a specific product called HD-DVD.
I don't get how it works either, but several of my relatives and my friends' relatives seem to follow this pattern.
Maybe going with an un-related name made sense, because it required a new device to play. Folks I know who work at Best Buy see a lot of attempted HD-DVD returns because they "don't work." Further interrogation reveals that they didn't understand that HD-DVD-marked disks required new hardware to play.
People who can afford the PS3 and a high-definition television (and maybe a 10x overpriced cord, if they don't wise up).
Seriously, for someone with a large HDTV, Blu-ray turns movis from a grainy experience with mediocre sound and washed out colors into a theater-quality experience. If your TV is larger than 40", 16:9(or 10) aspect, a high-def source is pretty much necessary to lot look blurry and grainy.
I don't own many Blu-ray discs, but I do own a few, and they are awesome to behold.
Yeah, the PS2 wasn't so good. Still, for a lot of people it was a great value to have a DVD player and a game system in one box, if only because it was rare to have many component inputs until the last few years.
But just about every review of the PS3 you can read, including this one, says that the Xbox 360 is the next generation shitty-PS2-esque DVD player. The picture is grainy and ugly. Sony seems to have learned from their mistake on this one, the PS3 is just about the best non-upconverting DVD player I've ever seen, and I've owned a few.
Over the last few years, we've been seeing the appearance of very high production Porn. The movie Pirates (work safe link) was an example of a high production quality movie that needed to recoup its costs via disc sales. And, having seen this movie, it's definitely interesting to have real costumes, real sets, and real sex. That is probably the future of the porn industry, and so disc sales matter.
But all that aside, the Blu-ray-resists-porn thing was only an unfounded rumor. There are several X-rated releases slated for Blu-ray.
There are no 3-format hybrid disks that I can find.
There are 3-format hybrid players. LG released the first one at CES. You may have missed it because it was during the iPhone launch.
Multi-format players really are a win for Blu-ray. Blu-ray disks tend to be slightly better than HD-DVD (usually they tie on video quality, but the low compression audio from the Blu-ray ends up being superior). Once the "expensive player" factors are removed, most consumer see bigger (incomprehensible, but bigger!) numbers on the Blu-ray side, see a brand that the vast majority of Americans identify with good electronics, and choose the Blu-ray.
Also, HD-DVD has the "shitty name" problem. I talked to my grandfather a few months ago and he asked me if I had a "HD-DVD player". I said, "Yes, I can play both HD-DVD and Blu-ray." He paused and said, "I thought Blu-ray was a HD-DVD." I talked to some other people of similar levels of tech literacy and I was surprised to find this happened many times.
Ow, My pride...
Yeah.
The PS3 is probably used only slightly less than my cable box. It's a fantastic DVD player, media player, Blu-ray player, and game console. Once I got over the price, I took the plunge and grabbed it. It's on for a few hours every night, in either linux or crossbar.
What's really ironic is that Sony has made the most open console, and no one seems to want to mention this. If it weren't so expensive, we'd see an incredible surge of hack activity on the product. With a free and fairly good linux distro already available, the sky is really the limit. Not to mention that with a quick conversion it plays nearly any media I download. It also uses Bluetooth peripherals. No overpriced-piece-of-crap microphones or obnoxious cable adaptors. All my mice and keyboards already work with it.
What's most frustrating about being a PS3 owner is that everyone immediately assumes you've wasted your money. If you explain that the PS3 has been a terrific experience, they immediate assume you either: a) Don't have a Wii and are bitter or b) are a Sony shill.
At least Motorstorm is out now. When people come over and I beep on the PS3, their snide comments quickly fall off as they watch a few rounds. And I actually have people coming over to play VF5, which was the first time I had friends want to check out my PS3.
I hope with the upcoming price drop and Home (and Little Big World) on the way, Sony will get the PS3 back on track, because there really is a lot to like about it.
1-2. I work at a 5 man company, so the fact I can get to carpool some of the time makes for a major corporate effort. But I could reduce/reuse/close-the-loop by inviting strangers from the Bay Area into my car! Maybe we can all go see "Zodiac" together! Sounds great, where can I sign up?
I consult at lot. So moving is somewhat pointless. Perhaps this is one of my so-called assumptions?
I can't believe I'm being told that I can't afford the carbon credit to work where I want to work while living where I want to live! I predicted this was coming in the very post you replied to. Why not just say, "You can always grow rice for my newly forming social class."
Maybe you aren't familiar with how California works, but a commute is pretty much unavoidable here. You just can't get away from it, it's fantastically expensive to live in areas where there are tech jobs. We're economically forced to live further away and commute into another city. But hey, this is the environment we're talking about here. We don't have time to do things properly. We should just latch on to the first plan that a fellow alarmist suggests, no matter how unlikely it is to work.
Or, we could realize there is a problem and rationally work to correct it, without alarmism and working to maximize the ecological benefit while minimizing the economic impact. Alarmists love to say that we're all sinfully wasteful and that Kyoto would have minimal impact anyways, but the truth is that most people are not trying to be wasteful at all, it's just that they can't afford to conserve. Kyoto is all about pretending the problem is going away by swapping money around, much to the detriment of the successful economies involved.
Here are 3 simple ways to encourage people to reduce their emissions without resorting to penalization:
Do you have any constructive suggestions, or are your ideas limited to confiscation and penalty-wrangling? When did this almost catholic self-flagellation element infect the environmental movement anyways?
Actually, I own a Prius. But thanks. Nice try.
Next you'll say, "You can't afford that job." Gee, this environmentalism message is crystal clear.
Yeah. Because everyone has that option. My fossil fuel consumption is a direct function of my commute. Mass transit is not an option, because I'd also need a bike, and it'd be stolen almost immediately near the mass transit station. My energy consumption is relatively fixed. I have enough to run a laptop most of the time, and a bit extra for basic cooling and heating.
Are you going to tell everyone with outdate consumer utilities (radio, television, refrigerator, etc.) to fuck off and buy newer, more efficient models? Even if they cannot afford them? Will you volunteer to sacrifice from your lifestyle to bring everyone else up to par? So much for universal health care and cheaper higher-level education, eh?
You act like people are wantonly wasting energy left and right, with careless abandon. The real story is far grimmer. But when your only agenda is political tongue-lashing and grabs for yet more governmental power, I guess you can afford to discard reality. Americans are all so wasteful! Nevermind our industrialization is decreasing, and nevermind that global measures like Kyoto conveniently ignore countries like China that are rapidly becoming major impacts on the global ecological stage.
Help us, Lars T. You're our only hope.
Wait. AIX? Why? Even defense contrators are rushing to abandon that platform! I should know, I helped Lockheed get the Air Force off of it. If you are being outpaced by the US government in terms of software, you are dead in the competitive waters, and your shareholders should get their money out while they can.
Mac OS X's interoperability characteristics are superior to any other product right now with the purchase of Parallels, which is extremely inexpensive. It comes with a native X11 for free. It can easily run any OS inline with the modern models. It is for this reason that most Web Deveopers are moving to macs. You can get multiple platforms to test your work on in one computer.
What? Apple is the model for corporations to emulate in terms of security. They're got terrific customer satisfaction on the service lines. Their service is excellent and fast. Sometimes they have hardware trouble that cannot easily be fixed (for example, the display noise on G4 15" PowerBooks), but every vendor has those, and they are seldomly deal-breakers. When they are, Apple is fairly good about replacement parts.
I am not sure exactly what is non-standard about modern macs. The only unusual thing is that they use EFI, but Intel makes the bulk of the hardware. There are a lot of non-Apple-owned repair and maintenance providers, which should show it's not an obstacle.
Why does Microsoft? Why does Linux? You're holding Apple to an unfair standard, and acting like Mac OS X only plays nice with HFS+ disks. Nothing could be further from the truth (although for a boot volume, HFS+ is the fastest choice).Apple is even moving forward faster than Linux, moving towards the open ZFS format in their next operating system.
Few mac users are lame enough to argue that there is no premium on mac products that you pay for style. The Black MacBook is proof enough.
The difference is, most of us have no real problem paying a bit more for something that looks nice and is well-engineered. The average mac is much nicer and more attractive than the average Dell XPS. Sorry. If we're going to be spending >$2000 on a laptop, you can be darn sure I'll buy something attractive as well as functional.
If you think this is frivolous or subjective, that's fine. No one forces you to buy a mac. You'll just be left out of the excellent software experience.
Wait, wait.
FFXII's plot is hailed as one of the most interested, convoluted, and modern of any FF. People love it. Lots of people have said, "I wish it was released in book form, I'd read it." It was not just a recycled love story. And yet you claim this was one of the game's weaknesses?
I submit to you, sir, that you are simply not the target audience for FF games in general. Your statements and tone suggest that you have not liked the genre in general.
Your post delivers. :) At least I multipled my UID by 10 and rounded. You had the balls to go for 1.5-2x. Awesome.
Don't mention your UID as a basis for any statement on /. unless it's lower than 100000. Ever.
I think on the contrary, it's getting more and more in fashion with the right people. It's just that big companies like EA can't make games that market themselves out of their specific rights holder areas.
If you were right, games like Katamari Damashi wouldn't still be available.
Or maybe iPods are small high-capacity video players which are convenient to carry and to populate with video.
Does "Free iPod!" really sweeten the deal to someone who makes at least half a million dollars a season?
"We the people" didn't do CDDB. CDDB is the enterprise of Gracenote, Inc. While generated from user submissions, their database and the legal wrangling surrounding their services are somewhat legendary in the content distribution circles. Gracenote is certainly an arm, or at least in the pocket, of the RIAA.
Uh, welcome to the world of Big Software. Adobe in particular is very bad about it. Apple is about middle-of-the-scale.
But Parallels is one of the most open and transparent projects I've come across. You saying you had to "dig through the Parallels forum" says a lot about your tolerance to this sort of thing.
Are you sure it was intentional? Apple isnt really beholden to anyone to keep their protocols or database formats the same.
But even it was intentional, Im willing to bet my testes that Apple has a contract that says it has to exercise due diligence in countering threats to FairPlay.
Whatd follow is one of the biggest class action lawsuits in the history of the world. EULA claiming rights or not, that wouldnt be accepted by the general community.
There are places that do this legally for a large catalogue?
Maybe two years ago Id agree with you, but hdtv sales are through the roof. This isnt about polycount, this is about not looking awful on a high def tv. And know what? The Wii looks pretty bad on my TV. Not bad enough not to play, but its going to play a factor over time.
I really think another vendor could pull it off. We also dont know the full capabilities of the current Sony controller, so lets not argue this for now and see over time.
Verbatim has devised a new, inexpensive coating that solves the problem, and future Blu-ray will use a different fabrication. This problem is solved, pending deployment.
The copy protection on Blu-ray is as onerous as the HD-DVD. Given this, I dont really care about a slight increase in the per-unit cost, I want the best picture possible. Blu-ray has nearly twice the data rate, 2/3 bigger per layer, has more future potential.
Finally, no one is releasing discs that require the reconversion of Blu-ray output when not over an HDCP-covered link. And, HD-DVD can carry this requirement as well.
Where do you get information like this? HD television sales were throught he roof last year, climbing 50%. The prices are dropping rapidly, and the proliferation of cheap DLP 1080p televisions in the sub-$2500US range has completely dropped out the bottom of the 720p LCD and Plasma market.
People are buying more and more HD televisions, and they are getting cheaper and cheaper. No, my friend, don't try and argue that people can't afford HD. America is certainly finding a way.
Except that Flat Panel TV's are more portable, and easily look terrific in small apartments even with sub-50" screens because people have to sit closer to them.
I don't have a terrific entertainment system. I have a simple sound system involving 3 speakers (and with SRS output, this sounds fine) and a 60" 1080p-supporting Samsung DLP television that I got on sale during the holidays for $1950+tax. My TV is quite large (and barely fits in my apartment), but most people I know have at least a 40" TV supporting 720p.
You talk about these televisions like they're some kind of inhumanly large device with legs, tubes, and invasive probes. If a 60" television can fit in my apartment comfortably, it can fit anywhere that a small family could live.
Care to back that up? Sales figures in the US say otherwise. If you can't afford an HDTV, I am sorry. Please wait a little longer, I've seen sales for 40" plasma TVs that support 720p for $799, and I don't even look for that sort of thing. Soon it will be within your financial reach.
We can speculate all you want, but it's undeniable that the Wii's weakest portion is the quality of its output. Even if you don't factor in the high definition aspect, the Wii's graphical capabilities are very, very, very sub-par compared to the new systems. This difference is noticeable even at standard resolutions.
As far as I am concerned, the Wii isn't really competing with the PS3 and the Xbox 360. It's a very simple system with an interesting control scheme that takes the profound lessons of the Nintendo DS (that there is a huge untapped market of people who would play games if not for their arcane and hardcore nature) and extends it. That's great, it's awesome, and I am sure they will do well there.
But the multi-million dollar market that exists currently is something the Wii will only be able to tap if Nintendo can get a lot of 3rd party developers on board, quickly.