Oh, thank you, right on! I was freaking by everyone else's response. I guess the other garbage excuses for scifi mentioned here have to have an audience - and, surprise, they're slashdot readers! Outer Limits is more a scifi drama - but it does a decent job of cramming into an hour some of the IDEAS which make science fiction great.
I've been hoping that all these great advances in computer graphics would enable more of the great stories of scifi to be recreated in film.
Last series I saw that had potential was Crusade, and I beg the producers to bring it back.
Well, very funny, but the guy didn't do his research. I went for a cheap "transitional" hdtv set (Toshiba TW40x81 - $2500) that at least provides better SDTV/DVD watching. Then I added an wintv-d hdtv card to my convergence pc ($300) with an amplified directional antenna ($140). We now have 7 DTV stations in Dallas, with very little HDTV programming and very difficult reception. But every so often, it does work, and it's marvelous.
Re:More detailed specs and use/hack reports
on
Transmeta Webpad
·
· Score: 1
Well, kickass! Thanks - I knew it would be hackable; that is the beauty of linux supported hardware. Let me clarify some points:
"Not intended for the consumer" means these prices are obviously "hospital prices", that is, "appropriately absurd". It also means they're not doing support like consumers would expect.
This is the first transmeta webpad of, I hope, many. Using transmeta chips should mean cheaper, not just long lasting battery life. I think Transmeta still has a lot going for it - the 1GHz cpu is coming, its partnership with AMD, and the software upgradeability of their cpu translation engine.
Prefered uses for a webpad over a notebook. I personally have never liked notebooks, but I would still like portable access anywhere on my estate to my lan. The applications I would like to use in this manner would all be point/drag/drop applications - which is why the touchscreen is so important. All it really needs to do is run an X-server, and the x-clients connecting to it would be using the resources of more powerful computers.
I'm still waiting tho until organic LED screens, 802.11a, and support like that behind the MyLinux PLW project
1) The telemann page does not explicitly say component video out to HDTV and digital audio out. It certainly doesn't look like it from the picture. However, etown claims it can (wait and see).
2) Having used the Hauppauge WinTV-D for a year now on my HDTV, I can say the picture and sound is marvelous already compared to NTSC broadcasts (here in Dallas there are now 5 DTV broadcast channels) The software too is very useful and works well with my remotes. By comparison, the ntsc decode and display thru the card is very second-rate compared to the TV.
3) MAJOR need for improved signal reception and noise rejection (especially of multi-path distortion). It's an incredible pain tuning it to each channel even with an amplified directional antenna.
This is very exciting news since I had given up hope on Hauppauge's WinTV-HD (full resulotion) card, which was never released because of proprietary objections. However, I frankly do not believe that Telemann's full stream recording will ever be made public.
No one else has mentioned it, but the ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder was also supposed to have these capabilities. Obviously, these HDTV features were stripped in order to ship a card for less than $300.
mPowerBox On uncorrelated processing they seem to scale linearly with number of processors. But if this is the only class of problems they help with, then a beowolf cluster of GHz Duron's would be more economical.
WinTV-HD
They're still saying they will be releasing it, but the wintv-d came out last October!
Oh, pci bandwidth is not relevent. The HDTV-out is from the card, and all these kinds of cards use a technique called "vga overlay". The vga signal passes thru the card before going to a monitor.
My Convergence PC:
P3-800/Maxtor DiamondMax Plus/128 Mb PC133 SDRAM
ATI PC2TV
Pioneer DVD-ROM/Sigma Hollywood+
Hauppauge WinTV-D
Cable modem thru a linux firewall.
Toshiba TW40x81 HDTV (upto 1080i)
Yamaha RX-V1 Digital Receiver.
Linn AV51 Speakers
The Toshiba remote controls the TV/VCR and is programmable for the HDTV remote. It controls the WinDVD thru programmable IRMAN (works great for DVD's and CD's!) Wireless AirBoard for keyboard control of surfing, screensavers, and other digital media.
Waiting for:
ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder (next version includes DTV and HDTV-out/component connections)
DC/Pro 24/96 (for dvd-audio)
-Radeon AIW will be an amazing card with TIVO-like quality and functionality.
-Hauppauge's WinTV-D card displays HDTV in downsampled 480P format, but digital decoded sound thru Yamaha 6 channel input sounds great. It seems they are not releasing their WinTV-HD for proprietary reasons - which has really been the whole sad story for all these digital media on PC's.
This has been a major project of mine for almost a year. It's been an incredible pain with windows, and proprietary roadblocks, and running cool yet quiet... Next challenge is getting everything to work under linux.
Tell me about it! My BMW M Roadster, made in America, has 240 horsepower, while the European version has 340. On top of that, it is electronically limited to 142 mph, when the accelerator is still only slightly depressed.
Well, I did. I read their book. As a reader of Skeptical Inquirer, it dismayed me that there wasn't more controversy over this singular demonstration of the paranormal. It's no joke and they've gone to extremes to do rigorous science. However, the effect they found is so minute, that I decided it was indistinguishable from experimental artifact. Check it out at PEAR . IMHO there is a fundamental problem with these ideas: the presumption that there is some link between our mental representations of reality and reality itself. "willing" sub-atomic particles into particular states just don't happen folks...
Not fair. Sigma Designs is developing linux drivers for a new DVD-decoding card, the Netstream 2000. The reason given is that the new card does proprietary AC3 decoding in hardware, which they don't have to license. These drivers are close to being released. The news group mentioned is primarily for this new card.
check out their site http://www.starbridgesystems.com. They have functioning systems, but appear to be surviving on government funding right now. The cheap home desktop supercomputer originally due in Q1'01 appears to be too optimistic. IMHO, the potential of the hardware will not be realized until major software advances.
I don't see mention of xmovie - the binary already plays dvd's. I have already bought Sigma Design's Netstream 2000, which they promise will have linux drivers soon.
When, Jim?! I'm leaning toward Directv because they're already downloading and have a settop box planned for Dec. I'd much rather have a linux box with direct access to the MPEG stream! (hint: ethernet port)
First off, Thanks Scott for whatever part you played in making this happen! Can you give us an insiders view of the difficulty involved in supporting Environmental Audio? I thought it was itself proprietary. What is the situation with regard to directx support under linux? Will this become a part of the kernel so I don't have to patch something everytime I upgrade?
quite right that current dvd doesn't support hdtv resolutions. But it's just a scaling problem. DVD's are usually encoded at 480p (480x640 frames @ 30 fps). Highest HDTV is 1080x1920 progressive or about 19.3 Mbps or 2.4 MBps (Most broadcasts will be in 720p which is only 8.8 Mbps) By comparison, my 10x DVD-ROM does 13MBps.
The recent experiment on rats regenerating "supposedly permanently dormant" neurons thru intracranial Nerve Growth Factor, led me to research alternative NGF stimulants. Acetyl-l-carnitine does just this, with significant effects in human patients, and (shhh, quiet) it can be bought on health food store shelves. Time to reawaken brain cells!
I would wish windows only on my worst enemy. All its defenders here are so pathetic, stuck with their primitive, yet familiar, concepts of human/computer interfaces. When installation and hardware compatibility are ruled out, there is no question whatsoever which platform is easier to learn and use, because X-windows is incomparably more configurable for whomever the intended user is. By the way, my mom said she would never use a computer until she didn't have to type or mouse. A group is already working on the next generation interface (speech recognition) that, not surprisingly, will be based on linux.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been hoping that all these great advances in computer graphics would enable more of the great stories of scifi to be recreated in film.
Last series I saw that had potential was Crusade, and I beg the producers to bring it back.
Well, very funny, but the guy didn't do his research. I went for a cheap "transitional" hdtv set (Toshiba TW40x81 - $2500) that at least provides better SDTV/DVD watching. Then I added an wintv-d hdtv card to my convergence pc ($300) with an amplified directional antenna ($140). We now have 7 DTV stations in Dallas, with very little HDTV programming and very difficult reception. But every so often, it does work, and it's marvelous.
I'm still waiting tho until organic LED screens, 802.11a, and support like that behind the MyLinux PLW project
the trick is to escape shell processing when defining PS1:
PS1=`hostname`':$PWD$ '
gives:
genesis:/usr/local$ _
on my toolbar: javascript:location.href='http://www.google.com/se arch?q='+escape(document.getSelection());
Quasimodo is also smp enabled.
1) The telemann page does not explicitly say component video out to HDTV and digital audio out. It certainly doesn't look like it from the picture. However, etown claims it can (wait and see).
2) Having used the Hauppauge WinTV-D for a year now on my HDTV, I can say the picture and sound is marvelous already compared to NTSC broadcasts (here in Dallas there are now 5 DTV broadcast channels) The software too is very useful and works well with my remotes. By comparison, the ntsc decode and display thru the card is very second-rate compared to the TV.
3) MAJOR need for improved signal reception and noise rejection (especially of multi-path distortion). It's an incredible pain tuning it to each channel even with an amplified directional antenna.
This is very exciting news since I had given up hope on Hauppauge's WinTV-HD (full resulotion) card, which was never released because of proprietary objections. However, I frankly do not believe that Telemann's full stream recording will ever be made public.
No one else has mentioned it, but the ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder was also supposed to have these capabilities. Obviously, these HDTV features were stripped in order to ship a card for less than $300.
Yes it uses mpeg2. No, you can't use this to watch it. Cable uses a modulation encoding.
woops. mPower again
On uncorrelated processing they seem to scale linearly with number of processors. But if this is the only class of problems they help with, then a beowolf cluster of GHz Duron's would be more economical.
You might inquire on OpenPPC
WinTV-HD
They're still saying they will be releasing it, but the wintv-d came out last October!
Oh, pci bandwidth is not relevent. The HDTV-out is from the card, and all these kinds of cards use a technique called "vga overlay". The vga signal passes thru the card before going to a monitor.
P3-800/Maxtor DiamondMax Plus/128 Mb PC133 SDRAM
ATI PC2TV
Pioneer DVD-ROM/Sigma Hollywood+
Hauppauge WinTV-D
Cable modem thru a linux firewall.
Toshiba TW40x81 HDTV (upto 1080i)
Yamaha RX-V1 Digital Receiver.
Linn AV51 Speakers
The Toshiba remote controls the TV/VCR and is programmable for the HDTV remote. It controls the WinDVD thru programmable IRMAN (works great for DVD's and CD's!) Wireless AirBoard for keyboard control of surfing, screensavers, and other digital media.
Waiting for:
ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder (next version includes DTV and HDTV-out/component connections)
DC/Pro 24/96 (for dvd-audio)
-Radeon AIW will be an amazing card with TIVO-like quality and functionality.
-Hauppauge's WinTV-D card displays HDTV in downsampled 480P format, but digital decoded sound thru Yamaha 6 channel input sounds great. It seems they are not releasing their WinTV-HD for proprietary reasons - which has really been the whole sad story for all these digital media on PC's. This has been a major project of mine for almost a year. It's been an incredible pain with windows, and proprietary roadblocks, and running cool yet quiet... Next challenge is getting everything to work under linux.
Tell me about it! My BMW M Roadster, made in America, has 240 horsepower, while the European version has 340. On top of that, it is electronically limited to 142 mph, when the accelerator is still only slightly depressed.
Not fair. Sigma Designs is developing linux drivers for a new DVD-decoding card, the Netstream 2000. The reason given is that the new card does proprietary AC3 decoding in hardware, which they don't have to license. These drivers are close to being released. The news group mentioned is primarily for this new card.
check out their site http://www.starbridgesystems.com.
They have functioning systems, but appear to be surviving on government funding right now. The cheap home desktop supercomputer originally due in Q1'01 appears to be too optimistic. IMHO, the potential of the hardware will not be realized until major software advances.
I don't see mention of xmovie - the binary already plays dvd's. I have already bought Sigma Design's Netstream 2000, which they promise will have linux drivers soon.
Latest thing in hollywood is direct digital cameras. Film, thankfully, is goin' bye-bye.
When, Jim?! I'm leaning toward Directv because they're already downloading and have a settop box planned for Dec. I'd much rather have a linux box with direct access to the MPEG stream! (hint: ethernet port)
Yes it's true. Part of FCC's "digital" initiative. Try http://www.nab.org/legal/
First off, Thanks Scott for whatever part you played in making this happen! Can you give us an insiders view of the difficulty involved in supporting Environmental Audio? I thought it was itself proprietary. What is the situation with regard to directx support under linux? Will this become a part of the kernel so I don't have to patch something everytime I upgrade?
quite right that current dvd doesn't support hdtv resolutions. But it's just a scaling problem. DVD's are usually encoded at 480p (480x640 frames @ 30 fps). Highest HDTV is 1080x1920 progressive or about 19.3 Mbps or 2.4 MBps (Most broadcasts will be in 720p which is only 8.8 Mbps) By comparison, my 10x DVD-ROM does 13MBps.
I notice on the WINE application DB, that Sound Forge works completely under linux. Has anyone else tried it?
The recent experiment on rats regenerating "supposedly permanently dormant" neurons thru intracranial Nerve Growth Factor, led me to research alternative NGF stimulants. Acetyl-l-carnitine does just this, with significant effects in human patients, and (shhh, quiet) it can be bought on health food store shelves. Time to reawaken brain cells!
I would wish windows only on my worst enemy. All its defenders here are so pathetic, stuck with their primitive, yet familiar, concepts of human/computer interfaces. When installation and hardware compatibility are ruled out, there is no question whatsoever which platform is easier to learn and use, because X-windows is incomparably more configurable for whomever the intended user is.
By the way, my mom said she would never use a computer until she didn't have to type or mouse. A group is already working on the next generation interface (speech recognition) that, not surprisingly, will be based on linux.