Looks like that box only draws 90 W and uses a 1.3GHz VIA cpu. A Pentium 4 can draw that much all on its own. I think the biggest difference is the receiver can better distribute where the heat builds up, while a P4 concentrates it on a small coin-sized area. If the Hush box had to dissipate 300 W, the hard drive might easily reach 55 C, and that's pretty bad for it's longevity.
And how do you propose to let air circulate around this box you want? Will it be sandwiched between the reciever and an xbox? Will it have glass doors further keeping air out? Your ideal isn't practical, and Zalman no doubt doesn't want people to think of their case as being suitable for that kind of enclosure.
Going by wikipedia, it was 240x480, so DVD is 3 times as good.
For the aspect ratio stuff, remember a 1.85:1 or 2.39:1 movie has black bars on the the top and bottom of it when displayed on a 4:3 screen. So despite being stored at 720x480, it gets resized and only takes up 268 of the scanlines. That's if it's 2.39:1.
Depends on how we look at it. If we trust this Google Answer, 50% of households had a DVD player at the end of 2003, and 65% did at the end of 2004.
(you need the HDTV, otherwise the DVD player is mostly a dick-measuring item)
Justify that. Going from 640x240 (VHS best case) or 320x240 (VHS worst case) up to 640x480 doubles or quadruples the number of pixels. That's a lot more clarity and detail.
HD-DVD and HDTV won't be taking off, or exploding, or doing much of anything any time soon.
Well yeah, I was replying to the grandparent who thought the Dreamcast lacking DVD playback was a mistake. I replied saying the market situation was different this time around.
HD-DVD won't take off until Joe and Jane consumer have a HDTV capable set. The majority of which are in reality limited to 720p or throw away half the fields in 1080i and line double the rest, resulting in 1920x540 at 30fps.
The problem is in a few years when $500 buys a 32" screen, from six feet away the clarity improvement of HD won't match going from VHS to DVD on a 27" screen. The pixels on the HD are so small that the benefit won't be as much as mathematically predicted. HD-DVD will do wonders for really big screens, but for the low and midrange market which is most consumers, 640x480 is enough detail. Or when they do get an HDTV, their DVDs will instantly show 33 to 50% more detail.
VHS is analog, so it's hard to say if the quality was closer to 640x240 or 320x240. If it was the latter than DVD is over 4X the resolution.
It's also important to look at DVDs when stretched properly on an HD screen. On SDTV a 2.39:1 image stored anamorphically gets squished down to 640x268. That is just 50% of the 720x480 original image. So people upgrading to HDTV get to now enjoy those DVDs with 2X more detail.
Consider the few years in the late 90s when many 3D computer games could be displayed all the way from 320x240 up to 1280x960. Going from 320 to 640 had much more impact than 640 to 1280, even though both steps quadruple the number of pixels. If 640 helps the viewer comprehend objects on screen 4x better than 320, than going to 1280 there is less than 4x improvement in comprehention because perhaps 50% has already been discerned.
At 320 when driving I couldn't read a sign in the distance warning me of a turn. At 640 I could, but at 1280 since I already could see the sign, there is less improvement in comprehention.
So the more pixels are visible, the less valuable additional pixels become. HD-DVD will bring more than double the image quality compared to VHS --> DVD, but the higher resolution will not be as appreciated as much as it was when switching to DVD.
But unlike DVD, where is the consumer excitement for HD-DVD? 90% don't have HDTV despite glowing reports of how wonderful DVDs look when played on them. The visual leap up from VHS was so great, and the additions like commentaries were so compelling that people purchased DVD's of videos they already owned. With HD-DVD or Blu-ray I don't expect this to happen to anywhere near the same extent.
How much was the 32x? About $150? You don't really think MS would charge that much just for a drive that plugs in or piggybacks on the 360, do you?
Do you really think MS would encourage developers to produce HD-DVD only games? The 32x failed because it splintered the Genesis market. There were a handful of games that used the 32x but not the Sega CD. Another handful required both.
Rather than bring up the 32x, you should look instead at the Sega CD, which was in terms of games, a relatively successful addition to the Genesis.
If only Sega had been willing or able to lose money on the Sega CD and included 16-bit color capability to it's video, it would have been a smash hit. Instead it could only output 64 colors on screen at once, crippling video and the SNES maintained it's better looking sprite graphics.
I tried to leave a comment, but it wasn't delivered:
Anyway my comment is:
So the 2K spec doesn't include 30fps? Why would they do that when HDTV can so easily? Will the studios actually make action movies at 48fps instead? 24fps is too slow and I'm disappointed that 4K won't do it. The extra detail will be useless when a simple camera pan or tracking shot blurs everything.
I saw Episode III first on film. Half way through a fire alarm went off and everybody in all the theaters had to leave for about 20 minutes. When we were allowed back inside I took a seat in the digital projection theater of Ep. 3 and watched it there. I found the level of detail a little bit higher than film. However I could see the pixels which I didn't like. The film copy had the more pleasing blur to it, but that blur, the judder, shook too much detail away.
I'm sure the film print did have more resolution than digital, but it was shaking so much I couldn't see it. So the digital projection had more useful resolution.
Agreed it wouldn't warm me towards you. But the fact that basilbrush ignored his or her sig to reply to you implies to me that he or she would read your reply.
I'd say the reason pixels per inch doesn't matter as much as total pixels is because TV sets and monitors come in many sizes. Some people sit eight feet from their 50" screen while others sit six feet from their 27". Consequently there is lots of variation in how many arc seconds per pixel people view at. If someone doesn't want to see pixels they can just sit farther back, but if they want more detail available, the total number of pixels is more important than sitting closer to the screen.
Nope. More like the N64 RAM upgrade which everyone bought if they wanted the latest games.
That said, unless the upgrade is extremely cheap, MS will never ask game publishers to produce HD-DVD-only titles. They've seen what happened to Sega too.
You're giving the disc format wayyyy too much weight in determining which console with succeed. Only 10% of households have HDTVs. Gamers will buy the systems for how good the games are. Most households won't buy a console for HD-DVD if they can buy a stand-alone player for $100 less. That said, I expect Blu-ray to be the HD format winner, but I don't think it's going to affect the console wars that much.
Basilbrush's sig implies AC replies to his or her's posts will be ignored. Granted the last sentence could imply Basilbrush never reads AC comments in reply to other's threads.
So you won't talk to someone who breaks their word, even if they've got a point? Been cheated on much?
If you took a poll I think you'll find the vast majority consider 17% more pixels on a wider screen is the higher resolution even if it has fewer pixels per inch.
As much as I like DDR and side or vertical-scrolling shooters, I'm not very good at them. I can't take in the entire screen of information. I end up focusing only on the arrows or bullets nearest me and not the periphery. While I've spent hours and hours training my brain to see and process all the information, it doesn't. But we've all seen insanely skilled DDR and scrolling-shooter players.
That does need clarifying. The art deco meets mayan visuals were part of what made Grim Fandango so great. Even if the story of a text adventure was equally good, it wouldn't have the visuals to match. I've read many good books, but the descriptions of visuals don't WOW me like a great looking movie or game.
Modern adventure games need to hold their own visually against the other titles on the shelf to bring that WOW factor.
So have a run button, or in Blade Runner cicking once was walking, twice was jogging, three was running, and four was sprinting. That'll cut down on travel time. I'll take this opportunity to state that long backtracks to put object A into socket B a mile away suck big time and always have. Developers need to stop being lazy with long backtracks - and for the most part they have.
I'd say 3D is very important for keeping the visual quality high enough to immerse the player. I'm too young to have played the classic 80's text adventures, but even if someone told me they were as awesome as Grim Fandango, I wouldn't because they have no visuals.
Since there's a lack of branching games, I'd like to see more of them. Branching adds replayability, and when the branches fully split the story in a new direction that's even better. I don't like having the story continue the same path irrespective of if I act like a nice guy or a jerk. It's unrealistic.
I'll bet the story writers have lots of time, it's the art and programming people who don't have time to create the content and test for continuity bugs.
I found Grim Fandango no more difficult to control than Resident Evil, it just had a more interactive environment. Once I got the hang of Grim Fandango's controls (by the time I left El Marrow) Manny was easy to move. The key was mapping my gamepad to him. Turning and walking using a d-pad was super-simple, then hold down a shoulder button to make him run.
Pointing and clicking makes me feel more detached from a character, like I'm not directly controlling him or her. Manny felt more real as he walked realistic paths. I preferred having him walk through some areas instead of run because it seemed more cinematic and true to him. I enjoyed taking a smooth turn around a corner instead of grinding him forward turned at a 45 degree angle against a wall.
It did limit the camera angles Lucas Arts could use to keep things visible. In comparison The Longest Journey could put the camera where it wanted so long as objects and exits were visible. Navigating to them was only a click away and April figured out the line to take. Though when she talked to people, I'd often make sure she was facing them like she was looking at them before selecting the "talk" icon. It seemed strange to have a conversation between two people staring into space at right angles.
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Heh. I didn't get his joke the first time because I didn't find it funny. I thought he was serious, but with your comment it's more amusing.
Why? Is the big bad filter gonna catch the bad clinical words and spank you?
Looks like that box only draws 90 W and uses a 1.3GHz VIA cpu. A Pentium 4 can draw that much all on its own. I think the biggest difference is the receiver can better distribute where the heat builds up, while a P4 concentrates it on a small coin-sized area. If the Hush box had to dissipate 300 W, the hard drive might easily reach 55 C, and that's pretty bad for it's longevity.
Uh huh.
And how do you propose to let air circulate around this box you want? Will it be sandwiched between the reciever and an xbox? Will it have glass doors further keeping air out? Your ideal isn't practical, and Zalman no doubt doesn't want people to think of their case as being suitable for that kind of enclosure.
Going by wikipedia, it was 240x480, so DVD is 3 times as good.
For the aspect ratio stuff, remember a 1.85:1 or 2.39:1 movie has black bars on the the top and bottom of it when displayed on a 4:3 screen. So despite being stored at 720x480, it gets resized and only takes up 268 of the scanlines. That's if it's 2.39:1.
I never said it wasn't.
Compare that step to the one going from VHS to DVD. That doubled or quadrupled the visible pixels and wowed everyone too.
Depends on how we look at it. If we trust this Google Answer, 50% of households had a DVD player at the end of 2003, and 65% did at the end of 2004.
(you need the HDTV, otherwise the DVD player is mostly a dick-measuring item)
Justify that. Going from 640x240 (VHS best case) or 320x240 (VHS worst case) up to 640x480 doubles or quadruples the number of pixels. That's a lot more clarity and detail.
HD-DVD and HDTV won't be taking off, or exploding, or doing much of anything any time soon.
Well yeah, I was replying to the grandparent who thought the Dreamcast lacking DVD playback was a mistake. I replied saying the market situation was different this time around.
Circuit City doesn't sell VHS players anymore.
HD-DVD won't take off until Joe and Jane consumer have a HDTV capable set. The majority of which are in reality limited to 720p or throw away half the fields in 1080i and line double the rest, resulting in 1920x540 at 30fps.
The problem is in a few years when $500 buys a 32" screen, from six feet away the clarity improvement of HD won't match going from VHS to DVD on a 27" screen. The pixels on the HD are so small that the benefit won't be as much as mathematically predicted. HD-DVD will do wonders for really big screens, but for the low and midrange market which is most consumers, 640x480 is enough detail. Or when they do get an HDTV, their DVDs will instantly show 33 to 50% more detail.
VHS is analog, so it's hard to say if the quality was closer to 640x240 or 320x240. If it was the latter than DVD is over 4X the resolution.
It's also important to look at DVDs when stretched properly on an HD screen. On SDTV a 2.39:1 image stored anamorphically gets squished down to 640x268. That is just 50% of the 720x480 original image. So people upgrading to HDTV get to now enjoy those DVDs with 2X more detail.
Consider the few years in the late 90s when many 3D computer games could be displayed all the way from 320x240 up to 1280x960. Going from 320 to 640 had much more impact than 640 to 1280, even though both steps quadruple the number of pixels. If 640 helps the viewer comprehend objects on screen 4x better than 320, than going to 1280 there is less than 4x improvement in comprehention because perhaps 50% has already been discerned.
At 320 when driving I couldn't read a sign in the distance warning me of a turn. At 640 I could, but at 1280 since I already could see the sign, there is less improvement in comprehention.
So the more pixels are visible, the less valuable additional pixels become. HD-DVD will bring more than double the image quality compared to VHS --> DVD, but the higher resolution will not be as appreciated as much as it was when switching to DVD.
Hah, that's an amusing and incredibly stupid idea. Sony wouldn't be that dumb. Yet another non-article.
More like "coming in a year, for the low price of $59, or 79, or 99 dollars." What, you don't think MS will sell an add-on drive?
BTW, some Lord of the Rings fans paid twice for new editions released months later.
Also, early-adopters who bought a first generation PS or PS2 got stuck with more faulty hardware than the later versions.
But unlike DVD, where is the consumer excitement for HD-DVD? 90% don't have HDTV despite glowing reports of how wonderful DVDs look when played on them. The visual leap up from VHS was so great, and the additions like commentaries were so compelling that people purchased DVD's of videos they already owned. With HD-DVD or Blu-ray I don't expect this to happen to anywhere near the same extent.
How much was the 32x? About $150? You don't really think MS would charge that much just for a drive that plugs in or piggybacks on the 360, do you?
Do you really think MS would encourage developers to produce HD-DVD only games? The 32x failed because it splintered the Genesis market. There were a handful of games that used the 32x but not the Sega CD. Another handful required both.
Rather than bring up the 32x, you should look instead at the Sega CD, which was in terms of games, a relatively successful addition to the Genesis.
If only Sega had been willing or able to lose money on the Sega CD and included 16-bit color capability to it's video, it would have been a smash hit. Instead it could only output 64 colors on screen at once, crippling video and the SNES maintained it's better looking sprite graphics.
I tried to leave a comment, but it wasn't delivered:
Anyway my comment is:
So the 2K spec doesn't include 30fps? Why would they do that when HDTV can so
easily? Will the studios actually make action movies at 48fps instead? 24fps
is too slow and I'm disappointed that 4K won't do it. The extra detail will be
useless when a simple camera pan or tracking shot blurs everything.
I saw Episode III first on film. Half way through a fire alarm went off and everybody in all the theaters had to leave for about 20 minutes. When we were allowed back inside I took a seat in the digital projection theater of Ep. 3 and watched it there. I found the level of detail a little bit higher than film. However I could see the pixels which I didn't like. The film copy had the more pleasing blur to it, but that blur, the judder, shook too much detail away.
I'm sure the film print did have more resolution than digital, but it was shaking so much I couldn't see it. So the digital projection had more useful resolution.
Agreed it wouldn't warm me towards you. But the fact that basilbrush ignored his or her sig to reply to you implies to me that he or she would read your reply.
I'd say the reason pixels per inch doesn't matter as much as total pixels is because TV sets and monitors come in many sizes. Some people sit eight feet from their 50" screen while others sit six feet from their 27". Consequently there is lots of variation in how many arc seconds per pixel people view at. If someone doesn't want to see pixels they can just sit farther back, but if they want more detail available, the total number of pixels is more important than sitting closer to the screen.
Nope. More like the N64 RAM upgrade which everyone bought if they wanted the latest games.
That said, unless the upgrade is extremely cheap, MS will never ask game publishers to produce HD-DVD-only titles. They've seen what happened to Sega too.
You're giving the disc format wayyyy too much weight in determining which console with succeed. Only 10% of households have HDTVs. Gamers will buy the systems for how good the games are. Most households won't buy a console for HD-DVD if they can buy a stand-alone player for $100 less. That said, I expect Blu-ray to be the HD format winner, but I don't think it's going to affect the console wars that much.
Basilbrush's sig implies AC replies to his or her's posts will be ignored. Granted the last sentence could imply Basilbrush never reads AC comments in reply to other's threads.
So you won't talk to someone who breaks their word, even if they've got a point? Been cheated on much?
If you took a poll I think you'll find the vast majority consider 17% more pixels on a wider screen is the higher resolution even if it has fewer pixels per inch.
As much as I like DDR and side or vertical-scrolling shooters, I'm not very good at them. I can't take in the entire screen of information. I end up focusing only on the arrows or bullets nearest me and not the periphery. While I've spent hours and hours training my brain to see and process all the information, it doesn't. But we've all seen insanely skilled DDR and scrolling-shooter players.
Once you're there getting back will cost another hundred million.
Didn't RTFA
That does need clarifying. The art deco meets mayan visuals were part of what made Grim Fandango so great. Even if the story of a text adventure was equally good, it wouldn't have the visuals to match. I've read many good books, but the descriptions of visuals don't WOW me like a great looking movie or game.
Modern adventure games need to hold their own visually against the other titles on the shelf to bring that WOW factor.
I'm guessing they'll be doing maintenance and repairs to the space station? How many missions before they get back to doing scientific research?
So have a run button, or in Blade Runner cicking once was walking, twice was jogging, three was running, and four was sprinting. That'll cut down on travel time. I'll take this opportunity to state that long backtracks to put object A into socket B a mile away suck big time and always have. Developers need to stop being lazy with long backtracks - and for the most part they have.
I'd say 3D is very important for keeping the visual quality high enough to immerse the player. I'm too young to have played the classic 80's text adventures, but even if someone told me they were as awesome as Grim Fandango, I wouldn't because they have no visuals.
Since there's a lack of branching games, I'd like to see more of them. Branching adds replayability, and when the branches fully split the story in a new direction that's even better. I don't like having the story continue the same path irrespective of if I act like a nice guy or a jerk. It's unrealistic.
I'll bet the story writers have lots of time, it's the art and programming people who don't have time to create the content and test for continuity bugs.
I found Grim Fandango no more difficult to control than Resident Evil, it just had a more interactive environment. Once I got the hang of Grim Fandango's controls (by the time I left El Marrow) Manny was easy to move. The key was mapping my gamepad to him. Turning and walking using a d-pad was super-simple, then hold down a shoulder button to make him run.
Pointing and clicking makes me feel more detached from a character, like I'm not directly controlling him or her. Manny felt more real as he walked realistic paths. I preferred having him walk through some areas instead of run because it seemed more cinematic and true to him. I enjoyed taking a smooth turn around a corner instead of grinding him forward turned at a 45 degree angle against a wall.
It did limit the camera angles Lucas Arts could use to keep things visible. In comparison The Longest Journey could put the camera where it wanted so long as objects and exits were visible. Navigating to them was only a click away and April figured out the line to take. Though when she talked to people, I'd often make sure she was facing them like she was looking at them before selecting the "talk" icon. It seemed strange to have a conversation between two people staring into space at right angles.