Yeah, they've gone for Mario64 instead of any of the 2D ones, Chaos instead of Starcraft and F1GP instead of Gran Turismo. That's because they've got better taste than you.
Riyad is from the UK, as if I needed to read the whole article to tell; the guy has the good sense to pick Chaos as one of his top 5. I can assure you that all of us who lusted after the thing when it came out called it the PC Engine; it was only later I found out that you Americans had a different name and a different, really, really ugly case for it.
Buy a VGA cable, connect your 360 to your monitor, and shut up. If you didn't want to play your games in HD, you shouldn't have wasted $400 on an XBox 360, you fools.
1) No-one has made a hybrid disc for Blu-Ray and DVD yet, because (a) Sony can't get a second layer to work on Blu-Ray yet, (b) the disc isn't physically thick enough to make flippers, so two layers is your only option, (c) that means only 4.5Gb for the DVD layer, which isn't enough for most current DVD releases and (d) no-one at Blu-Ray can see eye to eye with the rest of the DVD Consortium to get permission to sell one anyway.
2) Sony could press you a dual-layer Blu-Ray, although it would cost you an arm and a leg because the yields are as bad as their laser diodes. But you wouldn't want them to, because no-one has a player that could read it; Samsung's drive is incapable of focussing on the second layer, and everyone else has put their release dates back repeatedly in the hope that someone can figure it out.
3) The full Java BD spec is written down, but neither the Samsung nor Pioneer's much delayed player implements it, only the light version.
So while Blu-Ray looks lovely on paper, it's pretty poor in comparison to HD-DVD out here in the real world right now.
Well, that and Sony being unable to mass-produce dual-layer discs. Or avoid the machines' release dates being a more movable feast than your average Molyneux title. Or get the only Blu-Ray player currently available to read the second layer.
Or, more fundamentally, the fact that it costs a _lot_ more to press even a single-layer Blu-Ray disc than a dual-layer HD-DVD. Even triple-layer HD-DVDs (yes, that's going to require a firmware update) will be out next year, and at 45Gb it's going to be a rare case where the final 5Gb of Blu-Ray will be needed.
This is all about the fact that Sony are upset that they don't enough of the patent pool in HD-DVD, and want it all to themselves.
Hmm, I always get confused with this one. By "Codec" I merely meant Apple Lossless. Which is your only option if you want lossless compression on a iPod.
Many $50 console games can't be completed in 20 hours. All those dull-as-shite RPG things, for a start. Generally, in fact, I wouldn't say that PC games last any longer than console ones. Even in the case of WoW, I'd counter with Final Fantasy 11, but that might sound like I'd find more than 30 seconds of enjoyment in either.
Both mp3 and aac are far, far better than flac for getting a decent amount of music that sounds "good enough" over an iPod in a given amount of space, however.
Flac is lovely (and if you insist on lossless then Apple have their own codec that the iPod will play) but you're not going to get your 500 songs on a 2Gb device with it.
The Treks and Matrices are being prepped for HD-DVD (probably Blu-Ray too, but I've heard no rumours on that front yet). In time for Christmas hopefully, but they may slip to March if that fails.
"One content has a much higher capacity. Less compression is a good thing."
It's a pity that 50Gb Blu-Ray discs aren't working, then.
"One content will cost the same as the other but provide a game console with it. Nice..." Microsoft are bundling a 360 and the add-on HD-DVD drive in November, for less than the PS3.
"One content has all the content providers lined up." All the major ones, anyway (most of the minor guys have been seduced by the vastly lower production costs on HD-DVD). For now. All bar Sony (well, duh) have either already gone dual-format, or told their shareholders that they're watching the situation closely, ready to jump ship in the new year if PS3 doesn't blow everyone away.
"One content provides 1080P out of the gate." Both formats store 1080p on the disc. Toshiba's 2nd-gen models (out before the PS3, or any Blu-Ray player other than the horrid Samsung) will send it to the screen. And it's all completely irrelevant, unless your TV is really quite phenomenally shite at deinterlacing.
If I had to call a winner, I'd say it's probably Blu-Ray. But I very much expect us to see the same situation as DVD-R, DVD+R; i.e. eventually drives will read both.
On the other hand, the copy of Pro Evo 4 for the PS2 sitting on my shelf fits in a bit under 1.8Gb for the whole game, let alone the commentary track. I'm not sure you really need too much extra space.
But then, I'm not sure why you need to ship one SKU with 8 different languages on, either.
Short answer? Because this is for PS1 games on the PSP, and there is (a) no current PS1 emulator for the PSP, (ii) Sony are actually doing a bit of work on the conversion to sort out the way the controls will map to a single analogue and two triggers and (3) I can't find a copy of Symphony Of The Night in any shop here anyway, as it was a very limited release in the UK.
Just to be clear, my precise point is that the appeal of the Wii is all about opting out of the graphical arms race that Sony is engaging in with Microsoft. The machine might be 'underpowered' in comparison to the other two, but that extra power is for pushing around giant texture files appropriate to the HD resolutions those consoles run at. There's plenty enough power for what its trying to do.
You'd like an iPod without DRM? Just don't buy anything from the iTunes Music Store. It's not exactly complex, you just use any other method whatsoever to get your music on there.
There really do seem to be a lot of people around who think that because the iTMS exists, you can't just use CDs, mp3 files or whatever. You can.
It only hides the iPod by default, and the place to enable the device for plain 'ol disk use is documented in the manual.
The real reason iTunes hides the device by default is that the OS (on all platforms) has a whine if you disconnect a drive without going through the hassle of unmounting it first. With disk mode disabled, iTunes handles the mounting itself, and you don't need to bother.
If you don't want DRM, go buy your unencrypted mp3 files from Bleep, assuming that they stock them. iTunes will play them just as well. AmaroK's inability to support DRMed music is NOT a feature.
Ah, but that's where the people came from. Under that procedure, we'd be destroying Leeds for the 7/7 bombings. No, we go after some handy "intelligence" claims the money comes from, and that happens to be Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Syria and Iran.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, they've gone for Mario64 instead of any of the 2D ones, Chaos instead of Starcraft and F1GP instead of Gran Turismo. That's because they've got better taste than you.
Or at least, taste that better reflects mine...
Riyad is from the UK, as if I needed to read the whole article to tell; the guy has the good sense to pick Chaos as one of his top 5. I can assure you that all of us who lusted after the thing when it came out called it the PC Engine; it was only later I found out that you Americans had a different name and a different, really, really ugly case for it.
Black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, to maintain the aspect ratio they designed, or anamorphic?
Sorry, I've not got one myself; stupidly enough, by the time I'd spent the money on a HDTV, I didn't have any left for the 360...
Buy a VGA cable, connect your 360 to your monitor, and shut up. If you didn't want to play your games in HD, you shouldn't have wasted $400 on an XBox 360, you fools.
No, in a frankly shocking move, it seems that they decided to hold off announcing such a thing was possible until they had tried it successfully.
Unlike, say, Sony's announcement that they can make 8-layer Blu-Ray discs, when it turns out even 2 are beyond them at the moment.
1) No-one has made a hybrid disc for Blu-Ray and DVD yet, because (a) Sony can't get a second layer to work on Blu-Ray yet, (b) the disc isn't physically thick enough to make flippers, so two layers is your only option, (c) that means only 4.5Gb for the DVD layer, which isn't enough for most current DVD releases and (d) no-one at Blu-Ray can see eye to eye with the rest of the DVD Consortium to get permission to sell one anyway.
2) Sony could press you a dual-layer Blu-Ray, although it would cost you an arm and a leg because the yields are as bad as their laser diodes. But you wouldn't want them to, because no-one has a player that could read it; Samsung's drive is incapable of focussing on the second layer, and everyone else has put their release dates back repeatedly in the hope that someone can figure it out.
3) The full Java BD spec is written down, but neither the Samsung nor Pioneer's much delayed player implements it, only the light version.
So while Blu-Ray looks lovely on paper, it's pretty poor in comparison to HD-DVD out here in the real world right now.
Well, that and Sony being unable to mass-produce dual-layer discs. Or avoid the machines' release dates being a more movable feast than your average Molyneux title. Or get the only Blu-Ray player currently available to read the second layer.
Or, more fundamentally, the fact that it costs a _lot_ more to press even a single-layer Blu-Ray disc than a dual-layer HD-DVD. Even triple-layer HD-DVDs (yes, that's going to require a firmware update) will be out next year, and at 45Gb it's going to be a rare case where the final 5Gb of Blu-Ray will be needed.
This is all about the fact that Sony are upset that they don't enough of the patent pool in HD-DVD, and want it all to themselves.
Hmm, I always get confused with this one. By "Codec" I merely meant Apple Lossless. Which is your only option if you want lossless compression on a iPod.
Many $50 console games can't be completed in 20 hours. All those dull-as-shite RPG things, for a start. Generally, in fact, I wouldn't say that PC games last any longer than console ones. Even in the case of WoW, I'd counter with Final Fantasy 11, but that might sound like I'd find more than 30 seconds of enjoyment in either.
Both mp3 and aac are far, far better than flac for getting a decent amount of music that sounds "good enough" over an iPod in a given amount of space, however.
Flac is lovely (and if you insist on lossless then Apple have their own codec that the iPod will play) but you're not going to get your 500 songs on a 2Gb device with it.
The Treks and Matrices are being prepped for HD-DVD (probably Blu-Ray too, but I've heard no rumours on that front yet). In time for Christmas hopefully, but they may slip to March if that fails.
"One content has a much higher capacity. Less compression is a good thing."
It's a pity that 50Gb Blu-Ray discs aren't working, then.
"One content will cost the same as the other but provide a game console with it. Nice..."
Microsoft are bundling a 360 and the add-on HD-DVD drive in November, for less than the PS3.
"One content has all the content providers lined up."
All the major ones, anyway (most of the minor guys have been seduced by the vastly lower production costs on HD-DVD). For now. All bar Sony (well, duh) have either already gone dual-format, or told their shareholders that they're watching the situation closely, ready to jump ship in the new year if PS3 doesn't blow everyone away.
"One content provides 1080P out of the gate."
Both formats store 1080p on the disc. Toshiba's 2nd-gen models (out before the PS3, or any Blu-Ray player other than the horrid Samsung) will send it to the screen. And it's all completely irrelevant, unless your TV is really quite phenomenally shite at deinterlacing.
If I had to call a winner, I'd say it's probably Blu-Ray. But I very much expect us to see the same situation as DVD-R, DVD+R; i.e. eventually drives will read both.
That's a fair point.
On the other hand, the copy of Pro Evo 4 for the PS2 sitting on my shelf fits in a bit under 1.8Gb for the whole game, let alone the commentary track. I'm not sure you really need too much extra space.
But then, I'm not sure why you need to ship one SKU with 8 different languages on, either.
Short answer? Because this is for PS1 games on the PSP, and there is (a) no current PS1 emulator for the PSP, (ii) Sony are actually doing a bit of work on the conversion to sort out the way the controls will map to a single analogue and two triggers and (3) I can't find a copy of Symphony Of The Night in any shop here anyway, as it was a very limited release in the UK.
Just to be clear, my precise point is that the appeal of the Wii is all about opting out of the graphical arms race that Sony is engaging in with Microsoft. The machine might be 'underpowered' in comparison to the other two, but that extra power is for pushing around giant texture files appropriate to the HD resolutions those consoles run at. There's plenty enough power for what its trying to do.
Don't localise the audio or video, then. Subtitles are better than dubs, nobody wants 50Hz video anyway.
And? Fun games are still fun at 480p.
Even though I've got a HDTV, I'm going where the fun games are at a price I can afford.
Trackmania allows your previous laps to be seen as ghost cars, so I presume that's how its done.
So these are visual ads, not audio ones? That seems a tad pointless when I set up a playlist and turn the monitor off.
They threaten Geometry Wars 'clones'? Does that include threatening Midway every time they re-release Robotron on some new platform, I wonder?
Hey, I like Geometry Wars. But claiming it has an ounce of originality to it is laughable.
You'd like an iPod without DRM? Just don't buy anything from the iTunes Music Store. It's not exactly complex, you just use any other method whatsoever to get your music on there.
There really do seem to be a lot of people around who think that because the iTMS exists, you can't just use CDs, mp3 files or whatever. You can.
All of the stuff on my hard drive that you're capable of using on yours is DRM unencumbered, too.
The fact that you're not able to do something isn't a feature.
It only hides the iPod by default, and the place to enable the device for plain 'ol disk use is documented in the manual.
The real reason iTunes hides the device by default is that the OS (on all platforms) has a whine if you disconnect a drive without going through the hassle of unmounting it first. With disk mode disabled, iTunes handles the mounting itself, and you don't need to bother.
iTunes Music Store gives you DRMed music, yes.
If you don't want DRM, go buy your unencrypted mp3 files from Bleep, assuming that they stock them. iTunes will play them just as well. AmaroK's inability to support DRMed music is NOT a feature.
Ah, but that's where the people came from. Under that procedure, we'd be destroying Leeds for the 7/7 bombings. No, we go after some handy "intelligence" claims the money comes from, and that happens to be Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Syria and Iran.
Rather conveniently.