>>>This is one of those crap options that add noise to the picture
Actually you're wrong about that. I'm not sure what purpose "sharpness" serves on a DVD player, but on a television the goal is to take the Composite luma + chroma signal and separate them (via COMB filtering). So you see a sharpness control on a TV does have a purpose, especially for older analog sources like your cable company, VCR, digital-to-analog converter box, or DVD with composite out.
In any case even with sharpness turned down to 0 (off), I still can see artifacts like macroblocking and mosquitos on my DVDs. On Bluray those compression artifacts disappear. Why? Because Bluray has less compression, and also a more-advanced codec base (MPEG4 versus MPEG2) that overall produces a better picture.
..no longer own our government. Time for that city's citizens to fire all the politicians (hopefully peacefully not by force), and rebuild the government from scratch
You are correct. I still have about 200 VHS titles and lots of VHS-C home movies. As long as I've got a VCR, those movies will be mine to watch and view whenever I feel like it. No need to upgrade.
That's your own dumb fault. If you had been smart (like me;-) ), you would have patiently waited for the BD and HDDVD war to be over. I learned that early on, when I bought Betamax instead of VHS. Better to wait to see who has won.
Ya know, I've seen the same thing since I upgraded to Digital over-the-air TV. It's so nice-and-clear that when I watch my brother's analog cable hookup, it looks blurry to my eyes.
I used to think that girl who played "Veronica Mars" was hot when I watched her on live television. Then I got the Bluray and suddenly she was not. She looked no better than the girl next door.:-(
>>>And from that distance, at that screen size, SD and HD are indistinguishable simply due to physical limitations in the human eye related to angular resolution. >>>
Perhaps but you still have the issue of compression artifacts - DVD has them and Bluray doesn't. Don't believe? Take a DVD movie and fast-forward to a dark scene (like a firelight scene). Do you see all the strange blocks floating around in the background? Those are artifacts. Now look at the same scene on Bluray - the blocks disappear.
You can also detect other differences, like "mosquitos" floating around in the bright scenes, which are present on DVD but absent from Bluray. Those are harder to see but stick-out when you know what to look for.
I have a 25" standard def CRT, and even I can see the difference. DVD is "dirty"; Bluray is clean.
My Super VHS vcr can record any television program, even those that DVRs refuse to capture (due to DRM). And the quality is just as good as DVD. There are certain advantages to using analog formats which ignore digital anti-copy schemes.
The menu's not really a big deal IMHO. I've found in most cases I can just keep pressing the "okay" button, and the player will immediately hop from the menu to the movie. Using this method I find I can start the DVD movie faster than on my old VHS tapes (which have 3-4 minutes of lead time).
>>>HD penetration is still not all that impressive, and for your average consumer, the upgrade just ain't worth the trouble
It depends. If someone asked my advice, I'd still recommend buying a Bluray player over yet-another-DVD player. Why? Because even on a standard definition set, you can see the difference in quality (Bluray has no compression artifacts), and also the price differential is not that great. Bluray is the future; might as well prepare yourself now.
Anon. Coward wrote: Can't these companies get it through their thick skulls that Bluray is a dead on arrival format? That consumers don't see it as a necessary update to their plain DVDs, which they see as good enough even with the advent of HD televisions?
I sure as hell don't. Standard def DVDs look like shit on a large (>30 inches) set, especially with all the annoying DVD artifacts. Give me the high-definition movies and tv shows please.
someguy wrote: Nothing wrong with high resolution video, but Bluray is a crappy distribution medium.
I'm going to guess you're like most people, and think a "better" distribution medium is the internet. Well that may work for me, but it won't work over my 750k DSL connection. And what about those millions of Americans still stuck with 50k dialup? Or imposed overage fees if you go over 250 gig?
A disc is still the best way to reach everybody's homes with high-def content. PLUS because it's on a physical disc, it can be sold after you grow tired of it. You can't resell a Download on Ebay, but you can sell a DVD or Bluray
>>>Gopher predates HTTP by a fair number of years.
Not correct. Gopher and HTTP were both released in summer 1991, so virtually the same birthdate. However gopher was available on the IBM PC that same year while HTTP was still confined to Unix systems, so that's why people misremember gopher as being first. (HTTP came to IBM PC, Macs, and Amigas in 1993.)
Which was the result of the Bell Telephone monopoly. They refused to let other non-Bell devices connect to their lines, which forced users to buy *only* Bell products. Man I hate monopolies. I despise them like Teddy Roosevelt despised them.
Fortunately somebody came-up with the idea of the acoustic modem, which connected *indirectly* via the usage of sound. Very primitive but they worked, and they didn't break Bell's rules, and more importantly, they opened-up the market to other companies.
THEN bell announced, if you were using a modem, you had to pay an extra surcharge for overusage of the line you paid for. Or else risk disconnection. Sound familiar? (cough Comcast). Most users ignored Bell's surcharge idea.
the accelerator (compression) is really useful, and I couldn't imagine using dialup without it. It makes those slow 28k or 50k hotel connections look as fast as my home DSL hookup. (Except for the blurry images of course.)
2400 baud == fast enough to fill a screen in 1-2 seconds
9600 baud == seemingly instantaneous
That was back when all you needed was 1 byte to represent a single ASICC character, and therefore could load a full screen quickly. Nowadays it seems as if there are 1000 bytes per character and a screen takes 10-20 seconds to fully load a screen. Don't they teach optimisation anymore?
Wow. That's the first time I've visited a gopher site since.... Fall 1994? I tried gopher, but found the http:/// protocol to be much more useful, especially for looking-up seaQuest, earth2, and other fan sites. It's been a long, long time.
>>>my old trusty telnet to port 80 is still working like the 1st day.
Bah. Humbug. All you need is 1 megahertz 6502 with a 256k RAM expansion. You kiddies today are spoiled.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
P.S.
>>>This is one of those crap options that add noise to the picture
Actually you're wrong about that. I'm not sure what purpose "sharpness" serves on a DVD player, but on a television the goal is to take the Composite luma + chroma signal and separate them (via COMB filtering). So you see a sharpness control on a TV does have a purpose, especially for older analog sources like your cable company, VCR, digital-to-analog converter box, or DVD with composite out.
In any case even with sharpness turned down to 0 (off), I still can see artifacts like macroblocking and mosquitos on my DVDs. On Bluray those compression artifacts disappear. Why? Because Bluray has less compression, and also a more-advanced codec base (MPEG4 versus MPEG2) that overall produces a better picture.
>>>Turn down your fucking Sharpness control.
(checks). My television is set to 0; ditto my DVD and Bluray players. Now don't you feel kinda silly - jumping to false conclusions?
And watch your language young man. ;-)
..no longer own our government. Time for that city's citizens to fire all the politicians (hopefully peacefully not by force), and rebuild the government from scratch
>>>its simply not worth paying triple the price for the blu-ray.
Shop on Ebay, or from private sellers on Amazon. You can get about half your blurays for free, or with significant discounts
You are correct. I still have about 200 VHS titles and lots of VHS-C home movies. As long as I've got a VCR, those movies will be mine to watch and view whenever I feel like it. No need to upgrade.
>>>jumped on the HD-DVD bandwagon
That's your own dumb fault. If you had been smart (like me ;-) ), you would have patiently waited for the BD and HDDVD war to be over. I learned that early on, when I bought Betamax instead of VHS. Better to wait to see who has won.
Ya know, I've seen the same thing since I upgraded to Digital over-the-air TV. It's so nice-and-clear that when I watch my brother's analog cable hookup, it looks blurry to my eyes.
I know what you mean.
I used to think that girl who played "Veronica Mars" was hot when I watched her on live television. Then I got the Bluray and suddenly she was not. She looked no better than the girl next door. :-(
>>>And from that distance, at that screen size, SD and HD are indistinguishable simply due to physical limitations in the human eye related to angular resolution.
>>>
Perhaps but you still have the issue of compression artifacts - DVD has them and Bluray doesn't. Don't believe? Take a DVD movie and fast-forward to a dark scene (like a firelight scene). Do you see all the strange blocks floating around in the background? Those are artifacts. Now look at the same scene on Bluray - the blocks disappear.
You can also detect other differences, like "mosquitos" floating around in the bright scenes, which are present on DVD but absent from Bluray. Those are harder to see but stick-out when you know what to look for.
I have a 25" standard def CRT, and even I can see the difference. DVD is "dirty"; Bluray is clean.
On the other hand:
My Super VHS vcr can record any television program, even those that DVRs refuse to capture (due to DRM). And the quality is just as good as DVD. There are certain advantages to using analog formats which ignore digital anti-copy schemes.
The menu's not really a big deal IMHO. I've found in most cases I can just keep pressing the "okay" button, and the player will immediately hop from the menu to the movie. Using this method I find I can start the DVD movie faster than on my old VHS tapes (which have 3-4 minutes of lead time).
>>>HD penetration is still not all that impressive, and for your average consumer, the upgrade just ain't worth the trouble
It depends. If someone asked my advice, I'd still recommend buying a Bluray player over yet-another-DVD player. Why? Because even on a standard definition set, you can see the difference in quality (Bluray has no compression artifacts), and also the price differential is not that great. Bluray is the future; might as well prepare yourself now.
Anon. Coward wrote:
Can't these companies get it through their thick skulls that Bluray is a dead on arrival format? That consumers don't see it as a necessary update to their plain DVDs, which they see as good enough even with the advent of HD televisions?
I sure as hell don't. Standard def DVDs look like shit on a large (>30 inches) set, especially with all the annoying DVD artifacts. Give me the high-definition movies and tv shows please.
someguy wrote:
Nothing wrong with high resolution video, but Bluray is a crappy distribution medium.
I'm going to guess you're like most people, and think a "better" distribution medium is the internet. Well that may work for me, but it won't work over my 750k DSL connection. And what about those millions of Americans still stuck with 50k dialup? Or imposed overage fees if you go over 250 gig?
A disc is still the best way to reach everybody's homes with high-def content. PLUS because it's on a physical disc, it can be sold after you grow tired of it. You can't resell a Download on Ebay, but you can sell a DVD or Bluray
Yes it's obviously Verizon that deserves blame. The summary says "0.02kb"
I'm guessing the guy meant 0.02 kilobytes (KB), not kilobits, which is 20 characters. An extremely ridiculous threshold for Verizon to establish.
Just shut up and hand me my tit sling
I don't understand why geocities old IP addresses would be a bad location? Why was geocities.com filtered?
>>>Gopher predates HTTP by a fair number of years.
Not correct. Gopher and HTTP were both released in summer 1991, so virtually the same birthdate. However gopher was available on the IBM PC that same year while HTTP was still confined to Unix systems, so that's why people misremember gopher as being first. (HTTP came to IBM PC, Macs, and Amigas in 1993.)
>>>acoustic-coupled modem
Which was the result of the Bell Telephone monopoly. They refused to let other non-Bell devices connect to their lines, which forced users to buy *only* Bell products. Man I hate monopolies. I despise them like Teddy Roosevelt despised them.
Fortunately somebody came-up with the idea of the acoustic modem, which connected *indirectly* via the usage of sound. Very primitive but they worked, and they didn't break Bell's rules, and more importantly, they opened-up the market to other companies.
THEN bell announced, if you were using a modem, you had to pay an extra surcharge for overusage of the line you paid for. Or else risk disconnection. Sound familiar? (cough Comcast). Most users ignored Bell's surcharge idea.
But seriously...
the accelerator (compression) is really useful, and I couldn't imagine using dialup without it. It makes those slow 28k or 50k hotel connections look as fast as my home DSL hookup. (Except for the blurry images of course.)
How is Links superior to Lynx?
300 baud == reading speed
1200 baud == skimming speed
2400 baud == fast enough to fill a screen in 1-2 seconds
9600 baud == seemingly instantaneous
That was back when all you needed was 1 byte to represent a single ASICC character, and therefore could load a full screen quickly. Nowadays it seems as if there are 1000 bytes per character and a screen takes 10-20 seconds to fully load a screen. Don't they teach optimisation anymore?
Someone already invented this.
It's called Opera browser
>>>Remember when a 768kbps DSL line was whizzo fast?
I'm on a 768k connection you insensitive clod! And it IS whizzo fast, compared to my other 50k Dialup ISP
Wow. That's the first time I've visited a gopher site since.... Fall 1994? I tried gopher, but found the http:/// protocol to be much more useful, especially for looking-up seaQuest, earth2, and other fan sites. It's been a long, long time.
>>>my old trusty telnet to port 80 is still working like the 1st day.
Bah. Humbug. All you need is 1 megahertz 6502 with a 256k RAM expansion. You kiddies today are spoiled. ;-)
Try the K-Meleon browser. Your moth will drop.
Your mouth will probably drop too.