Standard broadcast tv is low resolution and interlaced. Putting progressive component ports on this thing implies display of something higher quality.
Hopefully it can be made to support recording of 1080i (1920x1080) or 720p (1280x720) High Definition TV.
With the interfaces they have listed, the only way this could be done is if the tuner supports ATSC (Digital television). This is doubtful... maybe next version.
I looked through the WWW site for this initiative, but I found no implementation details.
If done correctly, this has the potential to be a very good thing for all involved. But, there are some key criteria that it needs to meet before I would use it. A few that come to mind are:
- The user must have 100% control of their personal data & what can be redistributed?
- Any changes of policy, or distribution of data must require user approval (opt-in), nothing should be done without the user's consent.
- In the "distributed authentication" model, I would want my data stored by an entity I trust. Such as, a non-profit consumer advocacy group.
- The security around storage of my information must be rock solid.
- The protocols used for passing authentication to applications must be secure. The services using the authentication must not have access to my password.
I'll reserve judgement until I can read the implementation details.
I hope you guys will not be travelling by air any time soon.. because what you interpret as your civil liberties will be trampled on.
They will expect you to identify yourself, they will ask for government identification, they will log your name in a computer that will track your movements throughout the US! Oh the horror!
This has been going on as long as we have had public air travel. It will continue to go on as long as we fly. What I suggest is a way to automate these processes. So, instead of waiting in a line for 2 hours every time I want to fly, I go through a thorough process once, and get have only minor hassles each time I fly.
The only difference in what I am suggesting, and what is done now is that the current methods are relatively easy to fake. Fake drivers licenses are easy to get, picture ID verification is weak at best, ID cards can be lost/stolen. Using technological means, I can ensure that the person holding the card is the person that the card is registered to.
As for enforcing this on the rest of the world, you can't. I'm sure many countries would want to do a similar system, which could be easily combined with ours. But, you could never get complete agreement. That is why I said that you could still travel without the card. It will just take you a lot longer to get through the security checks than for card holders.
Norman Mineta (Secretary of Transportation) was on the news today announcing a panel that will be making recommendations on airport security practices.
I hope that they will take a high tech approach to passenger identification. We have the technology to make the system much more secure while keeping it efficient. For example:
Establish a national air traveller identification, which requires very extensive authentication of identity to acquire (birth certificate, drivers license, employment data, social security number, etc.) This slow and painful process is done once and the authenticity of that ID can be trusted, speeding up check in for travel.
The ID can be stored in a smart card, which could also contain information about that person, such as a digital picture. The picture would also provide a basic tie between the card and the card holder, but not enough for security purposes. For positive identification, they should employ a biometric authentication, like a fingerprint, retinal scan, face scan, etc.
It could also be used for crossing the Canadian/Mexican borders, accessing government buildings, etc.
Travel without the card would still be possible, but would require a much greater level of security, questioning, bag searches, biometric registration, digital photograph, etc.
Yes, it would also make it very easy to track the movements of individuals, and all kinds of "Big Brother" things. But, certain activities, like air travel and border crossings, warrant this type of monitoring.
Combine that with Linux on a CompactFlash card, or a hard drive and good power management/spindown, and you would have a good solution. If it has Sleep-to-RAM capabilities, it's pretty much instant-on. And, if you want to run Windows & Office Apps on it, it's fully compatible.
I decided against the earlier Athlons because of their extreme power requirements and heat output.
They required an AMD Certified power supply, and the heat given off required huge heatsinks, CPU fan, case fans, etc. With all the cooling, it would make enough noise to drown out my MP3's. And, when my apartment hits the mid 90's on those hot summer days, I would not be confident in one of these staying up.
When they shrink the die size, why don't they also release some of the lower clock speeds? Like an 800MHz chip that would only need passive cooling, and a 250W power supply.. Yes, I could underclock one of the new ones. But, I want one that's tested & confirmed to work with passive cooling.
It seems there are a lot of companies effected by each of Microsoft's gaping holes. The lose data or experience break-ins, but Microsoft keeps humming merrily along producing bad code.
If this happened to your new car, television, blender, etc. you would demand a refund. If it happened to everyone's new car, there would be a class action lawsuit.
While I'm no fan of this over litigious atmosphere in the U.S. At least it does cause corporations to behave with more concern about the quality/safety of their products. Microsoft could use a LARGE DOSE of this. Creating products that NEED an upgrade is part of their business plan, and a disservice to their customers.
Re:MPEG 4 not MPEG 2!
on
HDTV Over IP
·
· Score: 1
I think it's just the lag time involved in implementing new algorithms.. standard broadcast HDTV uses MPEG2 encoding, so all HD equipment supports this.
Also, 'almost no loss in quality' in a small window on your PC monitor is a lot different than good quality on a 34" to 100" HDTV system. I would be very interested in seeing what MPEG4 could do with a 10 to 15Mbps stream at 1080i or 720p resolutions.
MPEG4 could still be useful in a closed system, like a cable TV provider with a set top box. But, it's too late for broadcast HDTV. Too many boxes are already out there with MPEG2 based HDTV. This includes DirecTV.. there are about 10 different set top boxes that support DirecTV HD.
Re:9+:1 Compressed HD - yummy
on
HDTV Over IP
·
· Score: 1
While I'm sure uncompressed 1080i is spectacular. it's not realistic for anything approaching a consumer level device.
As the sales numbers show, consumers are happy with MPEG compressed video. Look at the number of DVD movies and players that are being sold now.
HDTV takes that wide screen format common to most DVD's, and cranks up the resolution. While you may see some artifacting (use 720p for less of that) everything I have seen in HD looks MUCH better than the equivalent DVD format.
We always want higher resolutions and newer technology.. But, the difference between broadcast HD and standard definition is HUGE. Anyone who says different has never really seen an HD broadcast.
With all the hype around the DMCA, he had to be aware of the risks involved. He was most likely warned about the possible consequences, and decided to make a statement.
This is a perfect case to go to trial, and overthrow the ridiculous - big business paid for - DMCA.
With the incredibly weak 'encryption' that he exposed as a sham, this is proof of how bad the DMCA is for business and consumers. Take it to trial!
As a Canadian, you actually have better access to HDTV than many Americans. DirecTV is severely limited in broadcasting local signals.. They can only offer them within their local broadcast area.
The Canadian satellite TV service (Called StarChoice, I think) is not limited by these regulations, so they offer a couple HDTV channels that consolidate all the HDTV from the American networks.
The next best alternative in the U.S. is the Dish Network. They seem to be more committed to providing HDTV. They worked out a deal with CBS to provide their HDTV programming to U.S. subscribers who could not get it via antenna.
But, probably the best situation is if, like me, you are in an area where all of the local broadcasters have converted to digital broadcasts and you can get the HD content for free with a $15 Radio Shack antenna.
Yes: Allow this popup Window
Yes-All: Allow ALL popup windows from this domain
No: Do not allow this popup Window
No-All: Disallow ALL popup windows from this domain/address.
And, the other benefit is that the 'OnClose' popup windows don't keep popping up faster than you can close them.
Also, when a disabled site is trying to pop up a window, a small icon on the indicator bar on the bottom of the window would be nice. So, if I wanted to allow it, I could do it in real time.
What world are you living in? To suggest Killing a CEO's wife to stop production of something you don't like is crazy! If things like Carnivore are in operation on the Internet, you just moved way up on a couple of watch lists.
Before spouting your moronic bile, you may want to do a reality check. First, check out lawful (and moral) ways to make your voice heard & effect corporate decisions and government policy. Second, check the facts before you jump to conclusions.
"SUVs that fill our environment with toxic fumes at alarming rates" Where do you get this "fact"? Many SUV's are now in the LEV (Low Emmissions Vehicle) category. The whole Ford line of SUV's is in this category, and many from other manufacturers are too. It would do more good to get the OLD cars off the road that really do pollute at an alarming rate.
By the way, it's not that I don't think SUV's are bad for the environment.. they are. They guzzle gas at an alarming rate, which leads to many other issues for our country. But, let's stick to the facts.. Let's push industry and government to raise the bar on fuel efficiency. Or, start with yourself & ride your bike to work a couple times a week.. Take the train or bus once in a while.
An X terminal is great when you HAVE a sysadmin, and you need each user to have their own storage, etc. And, you need a big fast machine to do the NFS serving and X apps.
A standalone device is better where the users do not have storage & performance is important (i.e. they are using low end hardware). Or, a home user type environment, where they don't have a seperate server machine & sysadmin to manage it.
The QNX demo floppy has a simple environment that is very lean/fast/efficient. It is primarily for WWW access via modem or ethernet.
An X terminal is great for some situations, like a school lab environment, where you have a server machine doing NFS for a bunch of terminals. But, in most situations, a standalone machine is better.
Yes, that's what I was talking about.. Between you & your neighbors, and maybe the rest of the city, you can get excellent performance through a good switched structure.
But, if you are downloading a linux ISO image at 1Gbps, and 10 of your neighbors are doing the same, the upstream pipe needs to be > 11Gbps. That's why I said 'the aggregate bandwidth'.
Even if the provider is running an OC-192 HUGE pipe to the Internet, eventually it will get saturated, and maybe you can only download the CD image at a paultry 100Mbps or so.
With the local environment more able to scale to providing everyone bandwidth approaching 1Gbps, there is a big opportunity metropolitan area applications and services.
HDTV, as broadcast over the air today, uses an MPEG2 video stream at approximately 20Mbps. The compression ratio I have seen quoted for HDTV broadcasts is somewhere around 55 to 1.
That sounds like a lot, but the proof is in the output.. 1080i HDTV looks incredible. It blows away DVD's.
With GigE to the home, the aggregate bandwidth in the network core would obviously not scale. So, real throughput would be something quite a bit less than gigabit.
However, if you are staying in your region, you could get speeds near gigabit levels. Shared resources, like neighborhood file servers would be easily done. This could be another opportunity for the ISP providing these big pipes.
Phone service would take an extremely small fraction of this big pipe.. And, TV services would be no problem. All the standard channels could be multicast to everyone. A whole library of video on demand is also achievable. Even at HDTV resolutions, it only takes 20Mbps/channel.
Tivo needs to make a PVR device with an integrated Digital TV tuner.
HDTV takes about 7GB per hour to record. So, you'll need a couple very large disks. Or, as a compromise, the device could convert the stream to 480p for storage.
Why digital? Convenience. You can record 60 hours worth of material on these PVR's. No juggling video tapes. And, the interface for determining what to record is leaps and bounds ahead of VCR programming.
Also, if you want better quality, go for the Tivo with the integrated DirecTV tuner. That way all the shows are saved directly as their digital stream. There is no conversion/compression/degradation. It is recorded just as broadcast.
I was able to burn an image that booted. I get the Ecos/Redhat boot images, it grabs a BOOTP address & I can telnet into it.
But, when it tries to load the kernel image, I get Unrecognized image type: 4328e3ff
Anyone have more luck?
Come one, let it die... it had a good life.
Move on to something modern, like BeOS. You would still get to fight an uphill battle, constantly claim (rightly) that your OS was better, and complain about the idiots that keep it from succeeding. Sounds perfect for an Amiga fan.
Slashdot Mirror
Standard broadcast tv is low resolution and interlaced. Putting progressive component ports on this thing implies display of something higher quality.
Hopefully it can be made to support recording of 1080i (1920x1080) or 720p (1280x720) High Definition TV.
With the interfaces they have listed, the only way this could be done is if the tuner supports ATSC (Digital television). This is doubtful... maybe next version.
This series is filmed with HDTV cameras. It's too bad UPN doesn't broadcast any HDTV, this would be the perfect content for it (other than sports).
I like all the CBS and ABC shows being broadcast in beautiful 1920x1080 HDTV. But, give me sci-fi any day.
I looked through the WWW site for this initiative, but I found no implementation details.
If done correctly, this has the potential to be a very good thing for all involved. But, there are some key criteria that it needs to meet before I would use it. A few that come to mind are:
- The user must have 100% control of their personal data & what can be redistributed?
- Any changes of policy, or distribution of data must require user approval (opt-in), nothing should be done without the user's consent.
- In the "distributed authentication" model, I would want my data stored by an entity I trust. Such as, a non-profit consumer advocacy group.
- The security around storage of my information must be rock solid.
- The protocols used for passing authentication to applications must be secure. The services using the authentication must not have access to my password.
I'll reserve judgement until I can read the implementation details.
Check him out in the Board listing on their WWW site http://www.valinux.com/about/board.php
Quite the glowing bio.. he's been here since '98, and had some sort of well known usenet posting.
He's also the only one who couldn't figure out where the camera was.
I hope you guys will not be travelling by air any time soon.. because what you interpret as your civil liberties will be trampled on.
They will expect you to identify yourself, they will ask for government identification, they will log your name in a computer that will track your movements throughout the US! Oh the horror!
This has been going on as long as we have had public air travel. It will continue to go on as long as we fly. What I suggest is a way to automate these processes. So, instead of waiting in a line for 2 hours every time I want to fly, I go through a thorough process once, and get have only minor hassles each time I fly.
The only difference in what I am suggesting, and what is done now is that the current methods are relatively easy to fake. Fake drivers licenses are easy to get, picture ID verification is weak at best, ID cards can be lost/stolen. Using technological means, I can ensure that the person holding the card is the person that the card is registered to.
As for enforcing this on the rest of the world, you can't. I'm sure many countries would want to do a similar system, which could be easily combined with ours. But, you could never get complete agreement. That is why I said that you could still travel without the card. It will just take you a lot longer to get through the security checks than for card holders.
Norman Mineta (Secretary of Transportation) was on the news today announcing a panel that will be making recommendations on airport security practices.
I hope that they will take a high tech approach to passenger identification. We have the technology to make the system much more secure while keeping it efficient. For example:
Establish a national air traveller identification, which requires very extensive authentication of identity to acquire (birth certificate, drivers license, employment data, social security number, etc.) This slow and painful process is done once and the authenticity of that ID can be trusted, speeding up check in for travel.
The ID can be stored in a smart card, which could also contain information about that person, such as a digital picture. The picture would also provide a basic tie between the card and the card holder, but not enough for security purposes. For positive identification, they should employ a biometric authentication, like a fingerprint, retinal scan, face scan, etc.
It could also be used for crossing the Canadian/Mexican borders, accessing government buildings, etc.
Travel without the card would still be possible, but would require a much greater level of security, questioning, bag searches, biometric registration, digital photograph, etc.
Yes, it would also make it very easy to track the movements of individuals, and all kinds of "Big Brother" things. But, certain activities, like air travel and border crossings, warrant this type of monitoring.
The limit appears to be $100 now, as my $100 donation went through very quickly with my existing Amazon account info. 3 clicks & it was done.
I wonder why they limit it to $100?
You an me both..
p c.jsp
The closest I have found so far is the VIA InformationPC concept. It is based on their C3 processor, which at 800MHz only requires passive cooling.
http://www.via.com.tw/jsp/en/products/VInternet/i
Combine that with Linux on a CompactFlash card, or a hard drive and good power management/spindown, and you would have a good solution. If it has Sleep-to-RAM capabilities, it's pretty much instant-on. And, if you want to run Windows & Office Apps on it, it's fully compatible.
They required an AMD Certified power supply, and the heat given off required huge heatsinks, CPU fan, case fans, etc. With all the cooling, it would make enough noise to drown out my MP3's. And, when my apartment hits the mid 90's on those hot summer days, I would not be confident in one of these staying up.
When they shrink the die size, why don't they also release some of the lower clock speeds? Like an 800MHz chip that would only need passive cooling, and a 250W power supply.. Yes, I could underclock one of the new ones. But, I want one that's tested & confirmed to work with passive cooling.
If this happened to your new car, television, blender, etc. you would demand a refund. If it happened to everyone's new car, there would be a class action lawsuit.
While I'm no fan of this over litigious atmosphere in the U.S. At least it does cause corporations to behave with more concern about the quality/safety of their products. Microsoft could use a LARGE DOSE of this. Creating products that NEED an upgrade is part of their business plan, and a disservice to their customers.
Also, 'almost no loss in quality' in a small window on your PC monitor is a lot different than good quality on a 34" to 100" HDTV system. I would be very interested in seeing what MPEG4 could do with a 10 to 15Mbps stream at 1080i or 720p resolutions.
MPEG4 could still be useful in a closed system, like a cable TV provider with a set top box. But, it's too late for broadcast HDTV. Too many boxes are already out there with MPEG2 based HDTV. This includes DirecTV.. there are about 10 different set top boxes that support DirecTV HD.
As the sales numbers show, consumers are happy with MPEG compressed video. Look at the number of DVD movies and players that are being sold now.
HDTV takes that wide screen format common to most DVD's, and cranks up the resolution. While you may see some artifacting (use 720p for less of that) everything I have seen in HD looks MUCH better than the equivalent DVD format.
We always want higher resolutions and newer technology.. But, the difference between broadcast HD and standard definition is HUGE. Anyone who says different has never really seen an HD broadcast.
This is a perfect case to go to trial, and overthrow the ridiculous - big business paid for - DMCA.
With the incredibly weak 'encryption' that he exposed as a sham, this is proof of how bad the DMCA is for business and consumers. Take it to trial!
The Canadian satellite TV service (Called StarChoice, I think) is not limited by these regulations, so they offer a couple HDTV channels that consolidate all the HDTV from the American networks.
The next best alternative in the U.S. is the Dish Network. They seem to be more committed to providing HDTV. They worked out a deal with CBS to provide their HDTV programming to U.S. subscribers who could not get it via antenna.
But, probably the best situation is if, like me, you are in an area where all of the local broadcasters have converted to digital broadcasts and you can get the HD content for free with a $15 Radio Shack antenna.
Instead of just saying yes/no, it could say:
Yes: Allow this popup Window Yes-All: Allow ALL popup windows from this domain No: Do not allow this popup Window No-All: Disallow ALL popup windows from this domain/address.
And, the other benefit is that the 'OnClose' popup windows don't keep popping up faster than you can close them.
Also, when a disabled site is trying to pop up a window, a small icon on the indicator bar on the bottom of the window would be nice. So, if I wanted to allow it, I could do it in real time.
Before spouting your moronic bile, you may want to do a reality check. First, check out lawful (and moral) ways to make your voice heard & effect corporate decisions and government policy. Second, check the facts before you jump to conclusions.
"SUVs that fill our environment with toxic fumes at alarming rates" Where do you get this "fact"? Many SUV's are now in the LEV (Low Emmissions Vehicle) category. The whole Ford line of SUV's is in this category, and many from other manufacturers are too. It would do more good to get the OLD cars off the road that really do pollute at an alarming rate.
By the way, it's not that I don't think SUV's are bad for the environment.. they are. They guzzle gas at an alarming rate, which leads to many other issues for our country. But, let's stick to the facts.. Let's push industry and government to raise the bar on fuel efficiency. Or, start with yourself & ride your bike to work a couple times a week.. Take the train or bus once in a while.
A standalone device is better where the users do not have storage & performance is important (i.e. they are using low end hardware). Or, a home user type environment, where they don't have a seperate server machine & sysadmin to manage it. The QNX demo floppy has a simple environment that is very lean/fast/efficient. It is primarily for WWW access via modem or ethernet.
For a great single floppy system, check out the QNX Demo Floppy http://www.qnx.com/demodisk/
I'm sure similar things exist based on Linux. I think I even saw a Boot-CD based linux system that included a lot more applications.
But, if you are downloading a linux ISO image at 1Gbps, and 10 of your neighbors are doing the same, the upstream pipe needs to be > 11Gbps. That's why I said 'the aggregate bandwidth'.
Even if the provider is running an OC-192 HUGE pipe to the Internet, eventually it will get saturated, and maybe you can only download the CD image at a paultry 100Mbps or so.
With the local environment more able to scale to providing everyone bandwidth approaching 1Gbps, there is a big opportunity metropolitan area applications and services.
That sounds like a lot, but the proof is in the output.. 1080i HDTV looks incredible. It blows away DVD's.
Check out the Digital TV "crash course" on the PBS web site for a lot better info than I can provide: http://www.pbs.org/opb/crashcourse/
With GigE to the home, the aggregate bandwidth in the network core would obviously not scale. So, real throughput would be something quite a bit less than gigabit. However, if you are staying in your region, you could get speeds near gigabit levels. Shared resources, like neighborhood file servers would be easily done. This could be another opportunity for the ISP providing these big pipes. Phone service would take an extremely small fraction of this big pipe.. And, TV services would be no problem. All the standard channels could be multicast to everyone. A whole library of video on demand is also achievable. Even at HDTV resolutions, it only takes 20Mbps/channel.
Tivo needs to make a PVR device with an integrated Digital TV tuner. HDTV takes about 7GB per hour to record. So, you'll need a couple very large disks. Or, as a compromise, the device could convert the stream to 480p for storage.
Why digital? Convenience. You can record 60 hours worth of material on these PVR's. No juggling video tapes. And, the interface for determining what to record is leaps and bounds ahead of VCR programming. Also, if you want better quality, go for the Tivo with the integrated DirecTV tuner. That way all the shows are saved directly as their digital stream. There is no conversion/compression/degradation. It is recorded just as broadcast.
I was able to burn an image that booted. I get the Ecos/Redhat boot images, it grabs a BOOTP address & I can telnet into it. But, when it tries to load the kernel image, I get Unrecognized image type: 4328e3ff Anyone have more luck?
Come one, let it die... it had a good life. Move on to something modern, like BeOS. You would still get to fight an uphill battle, constantly claim (rightly) that your OS was better, and complain about the idiots that keep it from succeeding. Sounds perfect for an Amiga fan.