That's partly because HD-DVD has no region encoding. And the discs are more like £15 each at Movietyme or Amazon. So I don't know anyone who buys them at £25 a shot in HMV anyway, whether or not they have any in stock.
There are standalone players coming with the 1.1 spec, yes. But the vast majority (including the ones Samsung and Sony are rushing out just before that deadline) are only capable of 1.0, and that's because the hardware inside absolutely is not capable of 1.1, and can't be upgraded with a firmware patch.
1.1 means a _lot_ more work. Right now, the only reason to get a BluRay player that isn't a PS3 is if you've got a ludicrously expensive amp that won't take HDMI input, as that's the only way to get lossless surround audio out of the PS3, but some of the more expensive players have analogue output.
Meridian for one haven't released any decoders that take HDMI in, because they're not happy with the huge amount of jitter that comes with the format, and haven't got something they're happy to stick their name to yet. And they're not getting into the transport game until the format war has finished.
On the bright side though, I see that the price of PC-based Blu-Ray drives is coming down dramatically, and the 360's external drive remains a cheap (now even cheaper) way to get HD-DVD to the PC as well. So if you've got suitable hardware you can go dual-format there.
I don't know what the laws are in the US, but here in the UK we specifically have a law against broadcasting without a license - Pirate Stations are done for unauthorized use of that part of the RF spectrum, so we can avoid all that stuff.
While they continue to sell CDs without any (effective) form of DRM or watermarking (since they can't realistically print each disc with an individual watermark, no know who is going to walk into HMV and buy it), then there remains an easy way to get a 'clean' copy to distribute.
But this, like the half-arsed DRM procedures that exist on those CDs and the fact that DVD still makes money when it has been cracked for ages, isn't about 100% stopping things. It's just a far more reasonable balance between a 'keeping honest people honest' hurdle and still allowing you to buy tracks from any shop that will play on any player.
No, we've reached the point where someone is saying "Some bloke installed Kazaa on my machine without my knowledge. I've no clue what it is, but the sneaky piece of crap is designed to serve up all my music files to the entire internet without announcing its continued existence. As far as I'm concerned, the bloody thing's a rootkit, and hardly my fault. Try suing some of these shysters"
Yes it does. The simplest way to get it is to take Sky's bottom package for the free box and installation, cancel after the minimum 12 month contract, and then all the BBC, ITV and radio stations continue working. Pay £20 more for a FreeSat card, and you'll get Channel 4 as well.
I think, realistically, that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are going to be (for now, anyway) the replacement for Laserdisc, not for DVD.
You're right that many people are going to continue to go for the cheap, 'good enough' option. But with this widespread DVD adoption pushing prices way down, they were missing a way to fleece us A/V geeks with premium prices for premium quality.
I can't speak for everyone, but among the reasons I use earbuds are:
1) full-size headphones always seem to pinch my glasses to the side of my head uncomfortably, and I'll give up some sound quality on the move (if I'm at home, then obviously I'll be using my floorstanders instead of headphones) to avoid the pain.
2) portable audio is all about the convenience. That's why I switched from a CD Walkman to an iPod in the first place. So carting a massive pair of Sennheiser cans around with the tiny little device strikes me as a bit insane.
Which iPod earbuds did you hate, by the way? The ones that came with my old iPod Mini were rubbish, and I replaced them with some Sennheiser ones, but when I bought my 5th Gen full-size iPod the headphones with it were better than the ones I bought seperately.
I've got plenty of music on both 12" vinyl and CD formats, because I went through a geeky phase of buying stuff on both because (a) I love the big artwork and probably more importantly (b) with my old CD player and record deck I thought the vinyl sounded better. Then I bought a better CD player, and the CD is the superior format again, for less money than I was spending on that second copy of everything over a year.
Many CDs still sound crap, due to the much-documented overloud mastering that is going on. But if you've got a properly made disc then CD beats vinyl on my setup where both formats have £250 NAD players.
1/4" magtape is fun to play with, but hideously impractical for most things. And cassettes are just _terrible_ sound quality; far worse than the 160kb/s AAC files I now use on my iPod.
You know, that sounds a lot more complex than Alt+Space, Alt+F4, which closed it for me on XP. Not that it was able to cover the taskbar where I could have killed it as well, but that seems to vary from user to user, judging from the article.
Wow, that's nasty. On XP it's (a) not working at all in Firefox for me, (b) failing to obscure the taskbar in IE, and (c) falling to an Alt+Space, Alt+F4 key combo anyway.
I've been running WinQuake under XP for years. Admittedly I've not tried it with Vista yet, but to they use DOSBox for it, then? I'd have expected it was more just for the old stuff (Commander Keen and so on).
When the patent troll's next victims would have been absolutely everyone else who made an mp3 encoder without paying for "their" patent along with the Fraunhofer one that everyone has always thought was sufficient. In addition, the patent looks vague enough to skewer aac and ogg, if I remember.
Yes, because when I say "I want to be able to play the American copy of Katamari Damacy I imported, because the game never received a UK release" you would feel happier to think I'm lying in order to keep that nice fuzzy sense of outrage going.
Sure, some people want to get dodgy games, but your claim that includes every person with a chipped console is as patently false as the attempts of justification the pirates have.
If I'm reading that right, that's every CD or DVD in his house and every one he's rented from Blockbuster in the last couple of years. Then every drive from his employer, employer's ISP and his home ISP.
There is just about no possible way to comply with this order.
That's ok - every title I know that has the limitation so far is a Football Management game, and they're somewhat niche on consoles.
And that's due to the fact that there's no way a full FM save would fit on a memory card without terminally crippling it on the way from the PC, so it may be something of a special bye.
Football Manager 2006 came out on the 13th of April that year, and required the hard drive. So it's clearly possible to demand one, if you argue your case with Microsoft.
Dangermouse's Grey album, like all mashups that haven't had their rights negotiated with the original artists' legal representatives are illegal.
Once upon a time, breaking the law was thought of as vaguely 'bad' and 'disgraceful', so the term sounds fine to me.
Re:I don't like them Putting Words in people's mou
on
The DRM Scorecard
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· Score: 1
Mind you, that's because the DRM isn't on the iPlayer for technical "stop anyone copying it" reasons at all. It's there because the BBC are contractually obliged to "protect" the files, because the rights they've purchased from the production companies don't include handing them out over the internet decrypted.
Nobody is going to bother downloading a file for the iPlayer then stripping the DRM off, because it's all programmes that have been broadcast some time in the last seven days over the air to any and all Freeview-compatible devices (including PC cards and PVRs) as unencrypted MPEG2 streams anyway. Helping yourself to that, or to a torrent from someone else who did, is much simpler.
By the way, Tekken is a download game, not a retail one. Not that I think there's anything wrong with that, by the way; as a 360 owner I seem to spend as much time on Carcassonne and Geometry Wars as I do on Forza 2 and Crackdown.
No, Elton probably doesn't listen to the radio that much.
However, the last I heard he continued to buy EVERY major and most minor CD releases each week, and everything he then liked in a few more copies, one for each house. The guy has got a totally insane collection, and someone employed purely to keep it under control.
I think quite a few people here are misjudging how in- or out-of-touch he actually is.
Since the best definition of "Art" we have is "the stuff that an Artist makes", I'm rather more inclined to take Barker's word on the matter than the guy who watches movies for a living.
Slashdot Mirror
That's partly because HD-DVD has no region encoding. And the discs are more like £15 each at Movietyme or Amazon. So I don't know anyone who buys them at £25 a shot in HMV anyway, whether or not they have any in stock.
There are standalone players coming with the 1.1 spec, yes. But the vast majority (including the ones Samsung and Sony are rushing out just before that deadline) are only capable of 1.0, and that's because the hardware inside absolutely is not capable of 1.1, and can't be upgraded with a firmware patch.
1.1 means a _lot_ more work. Right now, the only reason to get a BluRay player that isn't a PS3 is if you've got a ludicrously expensive amp that won't take HDMI input, as that's the only way to get lossless surround audio out of the PS3, but some of the more expensive players have analogue output.
Meridian for one haven't released any decoders that take HDMI in, because they're not happy with the huge amount of jitter that comes with the format, and haven't got something they're happy to stick their name to yet. And they're not getting into the transport game until the format war has finished.
On the bright side though, I see that the price of PC-based Blu-Ray drives is coming down dramatically, and the 360's external drive remains a cheap (now even cheaper) way to get HD-DVD to the PC as well. So if you've got suitable hardware you can go dual-format there.
I don't know what the laws are in the US, but here in the UK we specifically have a law against broadcasting without a license - Pirate Stations are done for unauthorized use of that part of the RF spectrum, so we can avoid all that stuff.
While they continue to sell CDs without any (effective) form of DRM or watermarking (since they can't realistically print each disc with an individual watermark, no know who is going to walk into HMV and buy it), then there remains an easy way to get a 'clean' copy to distribute.
But this, like the half-arsed DRM procedures that exist on those CDs and the fact that DVD still makes money when it has been cracked for ages, isn't about 100% stopping things. It's just a far more reasonable balance between a 'keeping honest people honest' hurdle and still allowing you to buy tracks from any shop that will play on any player.
As Subject, surely?
No, we've reached the point where someone is saying "Some bloke installed Kazaa on my machine without my knowledge. I've no clue what it is, but the sneaky piece of crap is designed to serve up all my music files to the entire internet without announcing its continued existence. As far as I'm concerned, the bloody thing's a rootkit, and hardly my fault. Try suing some of these shysters"
Which sounds fine to me.
Yes it does. The simplest way to get it is to take Sky's bottom package for the free box and installation, cancel after the minimum 12 month contract, and then all the BBC, ITV and radio stations continue working. Pay £20 more for a FreeSat card, and you'll get Channel 4 as well.
Really? That's not the impression I got from The Register's story on their financials.
I think, realistically, that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are going to be (for now, anyway) the replacement for Laserdisc, not for DVD.
You're right that many people are going to continue to go for the cheap, 'good enough' option. But with this widespread DVD adoption pushing prices way down, they were missing a way to fleece us A/V geeks with premium prices for premium quality.
I'm happy with that, to be honest.
I can't speak for everyone, but among the reasons I use earbuds are:
1) full-size headphones always seem to pinch my glasses to the side of my head uncomfortably, and I'll give up some sound quality on the move (if I'm at home, then obviously I'll be using my floorstanders instead of headphones) to avoid the pain.
2) portable audio is all about the convenience. That's why I switched from a CD Walkman to an iPod in the first place. So carting a massive pair of Sennheiser cans around with the tiny little device strikes me as a bit insane.
Which iPod earbuds did you hate, by the way? The ones that came with my old iPod Mini were rubbish, and I replaced them with some Sennheiser ones, but when I bought my 5th Gen full-size iPod the headphones with it were better than the ones I bought seperately.
Neither come close to Shure E2Cs, mind you.
I've got plenty of music on both 12" vinyl and CD formats, because I went through a geeky phase of buying stuff on both because (a) I love the big artwork and probably more importantly (b) with my old CD player and record deck I thought the vinyl sounded better. Then I bought a better CD player, and the CD is the superior format again, for less money than I was spending on that second copy of everything over a year.
Many CDs still sound crap, due to the much-documented overloud mastering that is going on. But if you've got a properly made disc then CD beats vinyl on my setup where both formats have £250 NAD players.
1/4" magtape is fun to play with, but hideously impractical for most things. And cassettes are just _terrible_ sound quality; far worse than the 160kb/s AAC files I now use on my iPod.
You know, that sounds a lot more complex than Alt+Space, Alt+F4, which closed it for me on XP. Not that it was able to cover the taskbar where I could have killed it as well, but that seems to vary from user to user, judging from the article.
Wow, that's nasty. On XP it's (a) not working at all in Firefox for me, (b) failing to obscure the taskbar in IE, and (c) falling to an Alt+Space, Alt+F4 key combo anyway.
I've been running WinQuake under XP for years. Admittedly I've not tried it with Vista yet, but to they use DOSBox for it, then? I'd have expected it was more just for the old stuff (Commander Keen and so on).
When the patent troll's next victims would have been absolutely everyone else who made an mp3 encoder without paying for "their" patent along with the Fraunhofer one that everyone has always thought was sufficient. In addition, the patent looks vague enough to skewer aac and ogg, if I remember.
Yes, because when I say "I want to be able to play the American copy of Katamari Damacy I imported, because the game never received a UK release" you would feel happier to think I'm lying in order to keep that nice fuzzy sense of outrage going.
Sure, some people want to get dodgy games, but your claim that includes every person with a chipped console is as patently false as the attempts of justification the pirates have.
If I'm reading that right, that's every CD or DVD in his house and every one he's rented from Blockbuster in the last couple of years. Then every drive from his employer, employer's ISP and his home ISP.
There is just about no possible way to comply with this order.
That's ok - every title I know that has the limitation so far is a Football Management game, and they're somewhat niche on consoles.
And that's due to the fact that there's no way a full FM save would fit on a memory card without terminally crippling it on the way from the PC, so it may be something of a special bye.
Football Manager 2006 came out on the 13th of April that year, and required the hard drive. So it's clearly possible to demand one, if you argue your case with Microsoft.
Dangermouse's Grey album, like all mashups that haven't had their rights negotiated with the original artists' legal representatives are illegal.
Once upon a time, breaking the law was thought of as vaguely 'bad' and 'disgraceful', so the term sounds fine to me.
Mind you, that's because the DRM isn't on the iPlayer for technical "stop anyone copying it" reasons at all. It's there because the BBC are contractually obliged to "protect" the files, because the rights they've purchased from the production companies don't include handing them out over the internet decrypted.
Nobody is going to bother downloading a file for the iPlayer then stripping the DRM off, because it's all programmes that have been broadcast some time in the last seven days over the air to any and all Freeview-compatible devices (including PC cards and PVRs) as unencrypted MPEG2 streams anyway. Helping yourself to that, or to a torrent from someone else who did, is much simpler.
I think the term you're looking for is "go supernova". Nothing that big would just explode.
By the way, Tekken is a download game, not a retail one. Not that I think there's anything wrong with that, by the way; as a 360 owner I seem to spend as much time on Carcassonne and Geometry Wars as I do on Forza 2 and Crackdown.
No, Elton probably doesn't listen to the radio that much.
However, the last I heard he continued to buy EVERY major and most minor CD releases each week, and everything he then liked in a few more copies, one for each house. The guy has got a totally insane collection, and someone employed purely to keep it under control.
I think quite a few people here are misjudging how in- or out-of-touch he actually is.
Clive Barker. vs. Roger Ebert.
Since the best definition of "Art" we have is "the stuff that an Artist makes", I'm rather more inclined to take Barker's word on the matter than the guy who watches movies for a living.