I still doubt, that there will be Vorbis support in any consumer product.
Not true. The main hold up is that a v.1x reference encoder/decoder hasn't been released yet. While the file format is stable, and has been forward/backward compatable for some time, some final features are still being added. For commercial use, adding the support in too early would cause customers to want to upgrade...too much of a hassle for most companies when v.1.0 is so much more marketable.
See the Ogg Vorbis FAQ for more details on pending hardware support for Ogg Vorbis. On the Rio device front, there are hints at Ogg support in the near future (nothing formal yet ^ ).
Another reason why Ogg Vorbis support is likely is that MP3 and MP3Pro licencing costs are fairly high. For devices where MP3 support isn't even used -- say small digital players used by joggers -- Ogg is quite interesting.
Re:But where is the Ogg Ethernet player?
on
Ethernet MP3 Player
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Exactly. When v.1.0 ogg vorbis hits, I'm going to run my whole CD collection through it. Some stereo component that can handle Ogg and it's updates would be sweet.
before hurting yourself by laughing so hard, take some time to read the article. Microsoft is paying professional lobbying groups to run pro-MS campaigns. It just so happens that some of these lobbying groups *are* using unethical techniques, and Microsoft should be flogged for not properly managing these organization's strategies. You would think that Steve Balmer is forging his grandmother's signature on letters from the comments I've read about this article
I agree that there is a difference between Microsoft employees doing this campaign, and a marketing firm doing it after getting paid by Microsoft...but not a big difference.
Microsoft hired them. MS paid for this service. True, we don't know exactly what MS asked for, yet MS specifically hired a firm who uses these tactics. Because of that, MS is responsible for any negitive fall out. After all, if they weren't cought, they would have benifited from those same tactics.
My only question is are they doing this in other states? I'd be stunned if they weren't.
Unfortunately, even under Linux, Nvidia has one thing that ATI's cards lack;
A working TV-out _with_ 3D hardware support
If I'm wrong, please let me know. Right now, I am this '' close to buying 2 Nvidia cards instead of the current Radeon I. Yes, I _really_want_ to support a company that supports free software / open source.
If I'm wrong, what screen sizes can the Radeon I scale to fit NTSC? 800x600? 1024x768? (GeForce2 cards typically support 800x600, with 1024x768 on most GeForce3's.)
If you want to support game-related projects -- including graphics engines -- drop by TuxGames.com and make a donation.
Donations to the cross-platform Simple Direct Media Layer project are also being accepted at the libSDL.org site. (SDL, BTW, recieved a $1,000 grant from the Linux Fund, so you might want to look there too.)
Keep in mind that while most of these projects are developed for Linux, ports to Windows and sometimes Mac OS are usually included. So, even if you don't run Linux -- or any *nix -- you can still benifit.
Projects that you can support include...
New Breed Software creates software for both the Agenda handheld (Atari 800 emulator, Agendaroids, Aliens,...) and X (Circus Linux, X-Bomber,...).
www.linux-games.com (note the "-") also has a couple Agenda programs as well as Penguin Command, Castle-combat, Timewarp...
I've been using XFree v.4 with a Voodoo3 2000 since it was released. Problems? Yes. Many? Only OpenGL (DRI) and only when I want to use the bleeding edge stuff. The dri.sourceforge.net site is helpful for released versions, but not friendly; you have to dig through it if you want to try the latest and greatest.
Here's a cheat sheet for getting the latest;
1. Backup/usr/X11R6/etc/X11. If any of this doesn't work, restore these and X should work once again. (Suggestion: backup as root, use "cp -a" to perform the copy -- just to be paranoid!
2. Get the DRI sources; make a directory -- dri_cvs or some such -- on a volume with 1.2gb (minimum) space available. From that location, execute
5. When done, if there are no errors, exit from X and (as root) run "make install".
6. Start X (as user) and check that simple OpenGL programs work. A good one to try is "gears" from Xscreensaver. Use "gears -fps" to check the frames per second. On my system, I get about 40~ (PII-465).
7. If you have a recient kernel (2.4.6~) this may fail. If so, you need to either downgrade or switch to a newer kernel (2.4.8+, 2.4.7-ac11+). If you change kernels, recompile DRI if you encounter a failure. Suggested combination: XFree 4.0.x with an older kernel, or XFree 4.1.x (the one from DRI) with one of the kernels mentioned above.
[Unix] cost $2500 minimum, CP/M was one tenth that and PC-DOS was one tenth THAT. Had the UNIX guys taken the PC seriously and realized the potential market and priced accordingly, about $50, we'd all be using UNIX today and not having to dual boot. *MS itself would have used UNIX had it been financially feasable.* Indeed, "Quick and Dirty OS" was a quick and dirty ripoff of UNIX needing a few years more development.
I like your rant, but this part is not true.
Hardware costs were the main issue; DOS+apps ran (poorly) in 640K. Unix+apps required a minimum of 2x that amount and a fair more power. As for a cheap *nix, there was Coherent for $100...though it required a 286+ to run it. Once again, we're back to hardware costs.
Only reciently, in the past 4~ years, has hardware become insanely cheap and the cost of the OS and other software is becoming a major factor.
For reference, I'm about to buy a video card with 512 times the amount of RAM on it then I had on my first computer. The 64mb card costs ~$110 new while the 128k PC originally cost ~$3,000 used.
Windows 1,2 - First and Second generation products but groundbreaking as they were the FIRST real saleable GUI's on the market (for the story behind the supposed theft from Aple/Xerox do a bit of reading - it was no such thing (Pirates of Silicon valley gets it very wrong)
Clarification: Win1 & 2 were Word/Excel fishtanks; they only really existed to support those apps and not much else used them. This was very similar to a few different GUIs on the PC at the time, except that MS made Windows.
These chips use something called "Ultrascale" that cleans up the output for display on a TV (PAL/NTSC). The BT869 spec sheet doesn't mention screen sizes that it can convert, but the BT871 spec sheet specifically mentions 1024x768.
References: google.com, search "bt869 bt871". groups.google.com comes up short.
A few places do sell the 511-TV in the US. After digging some more, I found that there is TV out support for the GeForce cards, and that it looks that 3D is not impacted. Maybe gears isn't a very good benchmark?
Along those lines, I found another limit; normally, the TV out supports 640x480 or 800x600. If the GeForce card has a Conexant CX25871 (aka "BT871") TV signal decoder, it can also output 1024x768 to the TV.
This means that if the default desktop is 1024x768, then switching to a TV display will show the same desktop. Since TV (PAL or NTSC) can't handle 1024x768, the signal they actually get will be modified; text won't be as clear, other artifacts of TV display will appear (fuzzy, lower color accuracy), but otherwise will display the full image witout scrolling.
I've fired off a few emails to different manufacturers, asking them what chip they use, but so far...no responses.
Q. Does the card have RCA & S-video outs?
Q. Do you have any idea what your card uses?^
^. Issuing the command...
cat/var/log/messages | grep -i "tv encoder"
...should return something like "NVIDIA(0): TV Encoder detected as BT871"
Using xscreensaver v.3.33, it works fine on a Voodoo3 2000. I've heard that the GeForce cards are touchy, and either up/downgrading drivers tends to work around some of these issues.
If that fails, maybe you are running 2 different versions of gears? Try using locate & which to determine what you have, and manually try both to see if you can duplicate the hang. Ex;
locate gears
(list of files named 'gears' appears)
which gears
(the program named 'gears' that will be executed when you don't specify a path)
/usr/local/bin/gears
/usr/X11R6/lib/xscreensaver/gears
(two possible locations for gears found from using locate)
Damn. Now I'm really puzzled. A GeForce, even on a slower machine, should get over 45fps. Yet, with 3D disabled, the Voodoo3 on the PII ~466 here can do only ~20.
Maybe I'll pick up the same model card that you have just to figure it out. If it doesn't work for games, I'll eat the restocking fee and hunt for something else.
Trust me on this, wait 6 months, and you'll be v happy. That's all I can say.
Thanks for the tip. Unfortunatly, I'm going to have to get something now. In 6 months, I'll take a look around again and if need be buy more hardware. So far, ATI Radeon DDR 32mb is the most likely card I'll get. With ATI, there's only 1 type of TV-out hardware, and the drivers are mostly open source, so the chance of getting something that will be abandoned later is lower.
It doesn't look like TV-out is getting full use of the 3D hardware. For reference, the Voodoo3 2000 I'm using right now (no TV-out) can do ~40 fps in hardware with a PII 466. The Voodoo3 is a 16-bit color depth card with AGP 1x support. The Geforce you have is probably on a much faster machine and uses AGP 2x or 4x.
...not much. It looks like the consensus is that you can't use the card reader as a generic reader. It could be used for simple security, though, but no code seems to exist for it.
The mysmart.com web site seems to be down at the moment, so the company might have gone belly up. Check later...maybe they're using IIS and just need to reboot?:)
Interesting note: There's some comment on the company considering Linux support. Likely? Nope.
For the reasons already mentioned, 3DFX cards aren't what I'm personally looking for. They're still good, though, and available if unsupported. Query Pricewatch for "Video Cards Voodoo 3500" and quite a few show up for ~$70usd.
Suggestion to any White-hat hackers thinking of making a 'Code Green' worm/patch;
Make the patch obnoxious and embarass the slacking admins. Write a file or program that points out that the rest of the world is getting angry that they aren't doing a minimum to secure thier own systems. Put the message in the About...Windows box, put it in a message that pauses the system on boot, put it on the desktop(s), put it on the Start menu somewhere.
I'm sick of this shit. If I weren't a Libertarian, I'd be for licencing admins before they can play on the Internet. Even without MS code on my servers, I still pay for thier shoddy work.
go check out nvidia's cards, as new as you want. Find a card that has a RCA/svideo out (option on all models). Now go grab nvidia's drivers, and read the TWINVIEW readme. It has directions for getting the TV out and the VGA out both seen by X, and the ability to run each display independant of the other.
Been there. The TWINVIEW_README file has no mention of RCA, TV, or S-video. Like Yetti stories, there are comments about support Real Soon Now, and some who say specific GeForce cards could do it...but no eyewitness accounts.
Another downside is that different Geforce cards use different chipsets to program the TV-out. Here are a couple comments on this (grabbed from Usenet via. a groups.google.com search);
comp.os.linux.hardware:
"try to set up twinview according to the READMEs and set up a TV friendly ( NTSC or PAL compatible ) resolution on the second head (*) and then "somehow" program the video encoder on the gfx card to turn on the TV out. Some GF2MX cards use the bt869 encoder, which is documented and even has a driver ( in the lm_sensors package , search on google.com ), I don't know what yours has."
...or this...
comp.windows.x.i386unix:
Hi, is there anybody around who has a working Geforce 2 MX Twinview AGP-card in
dualhead mode under Linux (not nvidia's own driver built-in twinview, but
two different screens with two independent desktops)?
I can't get it working. Twinview works fine, but because the windowmanager
is not able to detect 2 screens, windows are generally opened across both
screens. I'm tired of moving every window to its right place. So I want two
sessions on two independent desktops (kde 2.1.1). Is it possible?
Unfortunately, no followups on either thread. An extensive search showed more of the same; lots of second-hand sightings, but no Yetti.
ATI cards -- also promising -- come up short as well. The TV-out hardware hasn't changed on these cards in years, yet nobody can figure out how to enable it...and ATI isn't helping. The Gatos project has most of ATI's special video features working but still no video out.
One ray of hope comes from the comments of Dalinian (previous message) who seems to have peppy XMMS visual plugins. That's promising. Yet, Dalinian doesn't play 3D games, so couldn't confirm -- yet! (hope!) -- that 3D is actually enabled or that the card is simply faster with the new drivers.
I think Runix, the Linux for the Sony Playstation 2, was released recently. The X Box should be out before Christmas, and I'd think Linux will be ported to that soon as well.
Agreed. Yet, there are so many downsides to either box that it's hard to list them all. Off the top of my head, both are either costly (needs developer kit), unavailable (unreleased, released in Japan to a limited audience), can't run 3D commercial Linux games (Tribes), and for what you get are costly+underpowered+inflexible.
There are also dozens of VGA-to-NTSC converters, some of them listed here.
Not cheap (an old complaint mentioned in the original message). Why spend usd$100+ for a VGA-to-RCA converter, if the video card already has S-video out?
Slashdot Mirror
Not true. The main hold up is that a v.1x reference encoder/decoder hasn't been released yet. While the file format is stable, and has been forward/backward compatable for some time, some final features are still being added. For commercial use, adding the support in too early would cause customers to want to upgrade...too much of a hassle for most companies when v.1.0 is so much more marketable.
See the Ogg Vorbis FAQ for more details on pending hardware support for Ogg Vorbis. On the Rio device front, there are hints at Ogg support in the near future (nothing formal yet ^ ).
Another reason why Ogg Vorbis support is likely is that MP3 and MP3Pro licencing costs are fairly high. For devices where MP3 support isn't even used -- say small digital players used by joggers -- Ogg is quite interesting.
^ - Rio Volt firmware and Ogg Vorbis
Exactly. When v.1.0 ogg vorbis hits, I'm going to run my whole CD collection through it. Some stereo component that can handle Ogg and it's updates would be sweet.
Since the Rio Receiver's OS can be updated, can Ogg Vorbis support be added? I'm very curious...
I agree that there is a difference between Microsoft employees doing this campaign, and a marketing firm doing it after getting paid by Microsoft...but not a big difference.
Microsoft hired them. MS paid for this service. True, we don't know exactly what MS asked for, yet MS specifically hired a firm who uses these tactics. Because of that, MS is responsible for any negitive fall out. After all, if they weren't cought, they would have benifited from those same tactics.
My only question is are they doing this in other states? I'd be stunned if they weren't.
[Gates, petting furless cat] Or, shall we say, one billllion dollars! [bites pinky]
Unfortunately, fb = no 3D hardware support.
A working TV-out _with_ 3D hardware support
If I'm wrong, please let me know. Right now, I am this '' close to buying 2 Nvidia cards instead of the current Radeon I. Yes, I _really_want_ to support a company that supports free software / open source.
If I'm wrong, what screen sizes can the Radeon I scale to fit NTSC? 800x600? 1024x768? (GeForce2 cards typically support 800x600, with 1024x768 on most GeForce3's.)
Is full 3D support enabled on the TV-out?
Donations to the cross-platform Simple Direct Media Layer project are also being accepted at the libSDL.org site. (SDL, BTW, recieved a $1,000 grant from the Linux Fund, so you might want to look there too.)
Keep in mind that while most of these projects are developed for Linux, ports to Windows and sometimes Mac OS are usually included. So, even if you don't run Linux -- or any *nix -- you can still benifit.
Projects that you can support include...
New Breed Software creates software for both the Agenda handheld (Atari 800 emulator, Agendaroids, Aliens, ...) and X (Circus Linux, X-Bomber, ...).
www.linux-games.com (note the "-") also has a couple Agenda programs as well as Penguin Command, Castle-combat, Timewarp...
glTron? Nuf' said.
Chromium BSU is another action-diversion.
FreeCiv, PipeNightDreams...well, go see the entire list yourself.
I'm looking around...and so far, nothing in the Balt/DC area(s). One of the LUGs (see linux.com) might have something.
Here's a cheat sheet for getting the latest;
1. Backup /usr/X11R6 /etc/X11. If any of this doesn't work, restore these and X should work once again. (Suggestion: backup as root, use "cp -a" to perform the copy -- just to be paranoid!
2. Get the DRI sources; make a directory -- dri_cvs or some such -- on a volume with 1.2gb (minimum) space available. From that location, execute
export CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs.dri.sourceforge.net :/cvsroot/dri
cvs checkout xc
3. Change to the xc/xc subdirectory.
4. Execute "make World" (note capital "W")
5. When done, if there are no errors, exit from X and (as root) run "make install".
6. Start X (as user) and check that simple OpenGL programs work. A good one to try is "gears" from Xscreensaver. Use "gears -fps" to check the frames per second. On my system, I get about 40~ (PII-465).
7. If you have a recient kernel (2.4.6~) this may fail. If so, you need to either downgrade or switch to a newer kernel (2.4.8+, 2.4.7-ac11+). If you change kernels, recompile DRI if you encounter a failure. Suggested combination: XFree 4.0.x with an older kernel, or XFree 4.1.x (the one from DRI) with one of the kernels mentioned above.
I like your rant, but this part is not true.
Hardware costs were the main issue; DOS+apps ran (poorly) in 640K. Unix+apps required a minimum of 2x that amount and a fair more power. As for a cheap *nix, there was Coherent for $100...though it required a 286+ to run it. Once again, we're back to hardware costs.
Only reciently, in the past 4~ years, has hardware become insanely cheap and the cost of the OS and other software is becoming a major factor.
For reference, I'm about to buy a video card with 512 times the amount of RAM on it then I had on my first computer. The 64mb card costs ~$110 new while the 128k PC originally cost ~$3,000 used.
Clarification: Win1 & 2 were Word/Excel fishtanks; they only really existed to support those apps and not much else used them. This was very similar to a few different GUIs on the PC at the time, except that MS made Windows.
References: google.com, search "bt869 bt871". groups.google.com comes up short.
What are we talkin here? 2-4 days or a whole weeks profit? Nope. No monoply here.
(btw...I agree with most of what you've said. Ignorance accounts for a few of them, but most are intentional acts.)
Damn. The bt869 doesn't support tv-out from a 1024x768 source like the bt871. At best, it'll scroll.
Along those lines, I found another limit; normally, the TV out supports 640x480 or 800x600. If the GeForce card has a Conexant CX25871 (aka "BT871") TV signal decoder, it can also output 1024x768 to the TV.
This means that if the default desktop is 1024x768, then switching to a TV display will show the same desktop. Since TV (PAL or NTSC) can't handle 1024x768, the signal they actually get will be modified; text won't be as clear, other artifacts of TV display will appear (fuzzy, lower color accuracy), but otherwise will display the full image witout scrolling.
I've fired off a few emails to different manufacturers, asking them what chip they use, but so far...no responses.
Q. Does the card have RCA & S-video outs?
Q. Do you have any idea what your card uses?^
^. Issuing the command...
...should return something like "NVIDIA(0): TV Encoder detected as BT871"
If that fails, maybe you are running 2 different versions of gears? Try using locate & which to determine what you have, and manually try both to see if you can duplicate the hang. Ex;
locate gears
(list of files named 'gears' appears)
which gears
(the program named 'gears' that will be executed when you don't specify a path)
/usr/local/bin/gears
/usr/X11R6/lib/xscreensaver/gears
(two possible locations for gears found from using locate)
Damn. Now I'm really puzzled. A GeForce, even on a slower machine, should get over 45fps. Yet, with 3D disabled, the Voodoo3 on the PII ~466 here can do only ~20.
Maybe I'll pick up the same model card that you have just to figure it out. If it doesn't work for games, I'll eat the restocking fee and hunt for something else.
Thanks for the tip. Unfortunatly, I'm going to have to get something now. In 6 months, I'll take a look around again and if need be buy more hardware. So far, ATI Radeon DDR 32mb is the most likely card I'll get. With ATI, there's only 1 type of TV-out hardware, and the drivers are mostly open source, so the chance of getting something that will be abandoned later is lower.
It doesn't look like TV-out is getting full use of the 3D hardware. For reference, the Voodoo3 2000 I'm using right now (no TV-out) can do ~40 fps in hardware with a PII 466. The Voodoo3 is a 16-bit color depth card with AGP 1x support. The Geforce you have is probably on a much faster machine and uses AGP 2x or 4x.
The mysmart.com web site seems to be down at the moment, so the company might have gone belly up. Check later...maybe they're using IIS and just need to reboot? :)
Interesting note: There's some comment on the company considering Linux support. Likely? Nope.
For the reasons already mentioned, 3DFX cards aren't what I'm personally looking for. They're still good, though, and available if unsupported. Query Pricewatch for "Video Cards Voodoo 3500" and quite a few show up for ~$70usd.
I'm sick of this shit. If I weren't a Libertarian, I'd be for licencing admins before they can play on the Internet. Even without MS code on my servers, I still pay for thier shoddy work.
Been there. The TWINVIEW_README file has no mention of RCA, TV, or S-video. Like Yetti stories, there are comments about support Real Soon Now, and some who say specific GeForce cards could do it...but no eyewitness accounts.
Another downside is that different Geforce cards use different chipsets to program the TV-out. Here are a couple comments on this (grabbed from Usenet via. a groups.google.com search);
...or this...
I can't get it working. Twinview works fine, but because the windowmanager is not able to detect 2 screens, windows are generally opened across both screens. I'm tired of moving every window to its right place. So I want two sessions on two independent desktops (kde 2.1.1). Is it possible?
Unfortunately, no followups on either thread. An extensive search showed more of the same; lots of second-hand sightings, but no Yetti.
ATI cards -- also promising -- come up short as well. The TV-out hardware hasn't changed on these cards in years, yet nobody can figure out how to enable it...and ATI isn't helping. The Gatos project has most of ATI's special video features working but still no video out.
One ray of hope comes from the comments of Dalinian (previous message) who seems to have peppy XMMS visual plugins. That's promising. Yet, Dalinian doesn't play 3D games, so couldn't confirm -- yet! (hope!) -- that 3D is actually enabled or that the card is simply faster with the new drivers.
Agreed. Yet, there are so many downsides to either box that it's hard to list them all. Off the top of my head, both are either costly (needs developer kit), unavailable (unreleased, released in Japan to a limited audience), can't run 3D commercial Linux games (Tribes), and for what you get are costly+underpowered+inflexible.
There are also dozens of VGA-to-NTSC converters, some of them listed here.
Not cheap (an old complaint mentioned in the original message). Why spend usd$100+ for a VGA-to-RCA converter, if the video card already has S-video out?