Well...it does and it doesn't, for the reasons you listed. Plus if they're listing PS3 sales since their media blitz as "Blu-Ray players" it's a little disingenuous...but again, I don't know that it matters. I'd be willing to bet that even if both Blu-Ray and HD DVD manufacturers were honest, you'd find that a.) Blu was still winning and b.) sales of both still suck.
Similarly, I have an HD DVD player yet likely won't buy any more HD DVD disks. But I'll keep it, at least until BD is ironed all the way out and less expensive, and for now, Toshiba managed to release a kickass upscaler. Nothing against getting a PS3, but it seems a waste (purely to me) to buy a gaming rig mainly for watching movies.
I understand why some people got upset over HD DVD getting whipped so soundly, and not just because I own a player. If they want to get mad at anyone, though, they should get mad at the people who were in charge of promoting a format. Seriously, how do you take a format that looks great on HDTVs, make it relatively inexpensive for disc manufacturers, make a finalized spec a high priority, give it an instantly recognizable brand name, and NOT win (barring Joe Sixpack caring enough to understand the technical differences)??? By failing to promote it properly, that's how.
I mean, look at every story that Slashdot does on BD vs HD. What do you see advertised? Blu-Ray.
Do you ever see HD DVD promoted that heavily? Nope.
OK, Toshiba and the rest of the DVD Forum, plus people in charge of HD DVD promotion. If you've not given up yet, it's time to pump some cash into this turkey and promote it. Don't count on word of mouth alone; realize that you have people like me, who're just going around pointing out that, if you're scared off by the lack of feature-complete BD players outside of the PS3, and want a damn good upscaler, take advantage of the firesale prices and get Oppo-comparable performance at less than Oppo prices...then again, not everyone's running firesale prices anymore, so you can't even count on that anymore.
I'm betting they'll concede defeat soon. Pity, since while it may be the inferior format, it's currently the "better" format. And if they don't concede defeat soon, and someone doesn't light a fire under 'em, they'll have to either in May when Warner Bros. finally deserts 'em, or October, when dedicated BD-Live players come out.
LOL (btw, you may remember me for such roles as regeya on kuro5hin.org)
I got an HD DVD player. Was going to take it back when less than a week after I bought it WB caught everyone in the HD DVD camp flat-footed at the begining of CES, but it earned a place on my rack--for now--for being a great upscaler. Better than the TV, at least, and better than other units I've tried. I really don't have huge plans to buy loads of HD DVD discs, though.
If you look at the numbers for before Christmas, Blu was outselling HD DVD (which is to say, it was 60% of 2% of the home movie market--whoopty fucking doo for both sides) and studio support was kinda divided 50-50 with Fox mulling over HD DVD and Warner planning to follow their lead.
So no, it wasn't THAT insulting, in all seriousness, but in hindsight, LOL
Do not believe that all members of Other Religion X are doomed to damnation.
Are you kidding? It is even worse than believing they are doomed, but that you must go and punish (kill) them yourself. See Deuteronomy 8-19, 13-6, 13-12, Jeremiah 1-16, and 16-10. And this nearly pales in comparison to Islam.
Either you're trolling or you're greatly misled if you feel this represents Christianity. Old-school Judaism, maybe (oh...right, mentioning that this is really from Judaism is likely anti-Semitism...my bad) but outside the world of Baptists people actually pay attention to the ministry of Christ. Example: Christ's example wrt adultery.
Trying to make web browsers and traffic load lessening measures illegal by posting an asinine copyright notice in every comment you make? I guarantee you won't get me to stop using Squid quite so easily!
Actually, I LOL'ed. Well played.
Back on topic: I maintain that BD+ will be hacked at some point. After all, at SOME point in the chain the video has to be decrypted; whether someone will find a way to "hack" their TVs, some way past it such as hacking a BD+ software player, breaking HDCP (and stripping out whatever counts for identifying the player's unique number, so it'll not get on the revocation list), analog hole (does anyone pirating movies care about PERFECT quality?), or something as extreme as literally tearing apart a TV and getting to the innards, it'll be done. DRM is just a challenge to some.
I fail to understand how these companies think that DRM is GOOD for business. Every time you have a disk mistakenly show up as pirated, or a customer can't play their purchased music on their portable player because it's not the RIGHT kind of portable player, is just pissing customers off and an open invitation to get past the restriction.
I think Apple had it half-right: leave a hole for people. Burning CDs from iTunes was that hole. I can't think of one purchase I made through iTunes Music Store that I didn't immediately burn to audio CD then rip. I have not, however, made the resulting MP3s public; hey, if you want it, buy it yourself! Most people looking for music are f'in mooches anyway; why would I share?
I got a laptop for my wife at Christmas. It shipped with a gig of ram, which means it had the most RAM of any computer in the house. And Vista ran dog slow. Official advice? "Buy another gig of RAM."
I don't have all the ACPI issues (the fan, it's a biggie) sorted out, nor is the internal wireless working, but other than that, Kubuntu Gutsy seems to run just fine and dandy on the thing.
Granted, it's a small office, but aside from a fileserver and wire machine, everything is shut down. At least in theory. At the very least everything goes into sleep mode.
Not included in this is hard drives spinning down. On anything I have my hands on (everything, again in theory) I'd rather not be spinning everything up and down all day. Too much wear and tear. Everything's a compromise, of course: would you rather have powerup/powerdown potential problems, or would you rather have the machine sucking in dirt 24/7? Dust is mostly human skin, and a good conductor to boot.
As someone pointed out in another comment, they're getting much higher framerates than that. Plus, their ultimate goal seems to be an OpenRT, roughly analagous to OpenGL, with the goal of interfacing with raytracing gfx cards.
If I go out and pay $400 dollars on a player, I expect it to support the full spectrum of BD features, just like the "doorstop" in my rack right now. But they won't, and never will. To me that's the very definition of crippled; hey, I might not ever use the BD Live features, but I dislike the idea of buying into the format if I know the current players will be that much obsolete before the year is out.
Much as purchasers of higher-end stuff don't like to admit it, more middle-class consumers don't like to blow tha t kind of money on something that's planned do be obsolete in less than a year. In my rack, I also have a CD changer that dates to March 1990. Would I have gotten it if I had known it was going to be totally obsolete in 1991? Doubtful; the thing cost about $300 back then.
The fact is, just being the format that 70% of the studios behind something isn't going to be enough to boost consumer confidence. If anything, having a studio pull the rug out from under me just SHOOK my confidence. How am I to know that, if BD sales don't go up, we won't just see studios drop support for BOTH formats?
Face it; DVD is heavily entrenched and for people like me, had fate not swayed my hand and forced me to replace a burnt-out unit, I would still be cherrily watching movies on my DVD player. As it is, I'm using my HD DVD unit largely as a DVD player, and have no plans to run out and splooge all over myself to get a BD player. After being burnt on one format, I'm not in a big hurry to jump into the other.
And do you think Disney's going to be a big factor in winning parents over to BD? Maybe, but I think not; how many minivans will be shipping with BD players this year?
That has nothing to do with either format. There is nothing in either spec that will give one an advantage, visually. "and with good transfers looks FANTASTIC" What I don't get, is that you seem to understand how a good DVD could be encoded as a bad HD-DVD, but you watch ONE HD-DVD/Blu-ray comparison, and conclude that Blu-ray has inferior video quality.
I hate to tell you this, but every single POS display I've seen for Blu-Ray has video that looks like shit. Not so on the inferior, dead HD DVD format. It's puzzling since both use the same codecs but BD DL disks have higher capacity. I guess they could all be set up wrong, but I would think that the same retail monkey who sets up the BD display would also do the HD display. It's really weird.
So, the customers would somehow "win" if HD-DVD were to succeed? *cough* BS *cough* Oh, you meant HD-DVD customers are getting burned because it went the other way.
Have you tried the things? Take most those features the early Blu players won't have, plus many of the interesting features you'll find in BD players this coming October, and you can purchase such a player at Amazon.com for a very low price.
I love how you managed to get a bitter rant out of arguing with someone who picked the "losing" format. Hey, I'm not bitter; more than likely, you'll see me happily watching movies on Blu-Ray. But it won't be until at least October.
Hell, when it came to DVD, my first dedicated player was 6 years ago. Seriously. I can wait for the bugs to be ironed out, and don't give me any bullshit arguments about how I can get "most" of the features and play the main feature; I don't want to spend $400+ on a crippled player! And no thank you, I'm not buying a 3rd-place gaming console at the same price just to have a future-proof BD player! And if it hadn't been for a freak accident, I wouldn't have "picked a side" on this. Now that I did, I question why HD DVD got buried so quick...but as a realist, I understand that even if there were a major jump in HD DVD disc sales starting tomorrow, Warner will still stop production in May, and everyone else will too, and I'll just have to be happy with the fact that my player is an awesome DVD player that also happens to play an obsolete format, and when cheaper and faster feature-complete BD players come out, I'll likely pick up one of those (unless both formats lose; remember, BOTH formats' sales suck, it's just that BD sucks less.)
Losers? LOSERS? We WIN the format war, and we're LOSERS? Newer profile movies will PLAY in old players, they just won't have PiP, or internet enabled special features. Those who bought standalone BD players knew they didn't have those features when they bought them. Are they going to cry and upgrade already to get the PiP director's commentary? Wow, cheaper==better for you, huh? Sorry, not everyone feels that way.
OK. Someone shows you two cups of coffee. One is for $5, the other $50. The $5 cup of coffee is just plain, ordinary coffee that happens to be of a decent variety, roast, grind, etc. The $50 cup of coffee tastes identical but has added vitamins and minerals, plus the promise that if you're a regular customer, someday it may also extend your life. Which do you purchase?
As much as I'd like to choose the $50 cup of coffee, I must go with the more economical choice. Sorry, but those are the breaks. Not everyone is made of money, and I'd be willing to wager that most people who have movies at home and rent movies are in the same category as me: just because we have a bit of leisure time now and then doesn't mean we're on our yachts and in imminent danger of running out of monocle polish.
'Maybe the real losers will be the studios, when people decide that they're still confused and see Blu constantly trashed...... by a bunch of angry teenagers that bought Xbox HD-DVD add-ons? Sorry, blogs and Slashdot aren't the "press".'
Care to tell me how you extrapolated the "press" from anything I said? No bullshit quotes as if you're quoting me, please.
"and coming out with the format early just to fight off HD DVD, What's wrong with that? I don't think you understand what exactly is different between the Blu-ray profiles. Why don't you look those up before even bothering to reply to this, please and thanks."
I have, thank you, and as I said above, I don't wish to spend what is to me a lot of money for a crippled player. What's so hard to understand about that? Even if we never use the special features, why would we willingly purchase a crippled player when non-crippled players will be out in October? How many Joe Sixpacks are going to understand that you have to go to a website, download an ISO, burn it to CD, tand run that on
I don't know why people keep saying that, since "the battle is over" because the Sony marketing machine plowed down any and all competition. Wow, Sony's such a better company than Microsoft. Not!
Why do people see HD DVD as the greater evil here? It's the same puzzled feeling I get when I see people getting warm and fuzzy about Apple vs. Microsoft. Apple is every bit as evil as Microsoft, and they control the hardware to boot! At least with MS, you know that, even though you wish they'd sided with better hardware, they helped keep the computer world as unified as it was all those years...they're evil, yeah, but at least we don't have a half-dozen different incompatible desktop machines out there.
So yeah, I don't understand why people see HDi as that huge of a deal. Yeah, it's MS, but not everything they do is horrible. Check the licensing prices of putting out BD vs. HD, you'll see what I mean.
Neither side is exclusively one company, not even close. In fact, even if Toshiba loses this (and it looks like they will) they're still putting their technology in the best Blu-Ray player out there (Sony PS3.) Some of Microsoft's IP goes into every Blu-Ray player on the market.
To tell you the truth, the thing I'm sickest of in this whole thing is how desperate Blu-Ray fanboys are for me to feel stupid for having an HD DVD player. I don't. My situation is a bit unique; if it had not been for a freak winter lightning storm, I would have stuck with an HD set until next Christmas, along with a SD DVD player. Well, those are gone; after I got the set, I wasn't in much of a mood to spend hundreds more on a player, so it was between a good upscaler and whatever else, and when I saw the price of the HD DVD units, I snatched one up. The more I read up on the things, the gladder I am I didn't get scared off by the WB announcement into returning the thing. SD DVD playback is fantastic! I miss out on the common piracy formats this way, and I don't get to be region-free, but a glance at my DVD collection will tell you that's a non-issue...
So yeah, SD DVD playback may not be that big of a deal to other consumers, but as the word gets out on the players, I think you'll see people snatching them up for that very reason, especially since the BD Live FUD seems to be having a pretty negative effect (heck, it's got me stopped from buying a BD unit for now!) It likely won't be enough to sway any studio execs, but at least we can all continue to sit this thing out.:->
Exactly why I kept my player, that and my old player died, which meant I needed a replacment anyway. Maybe an Oppo would be a better choice...but I really only play Region 1 disks, don't really have any SVCDs to speak of, don't look at JPEGs on TV, and for that reason I'll go for the less expensive option, which just happens to be an HD DVD player.
Now I can wait for Blu to be complete, play my regular DVDs at excellent quality, and I get some on-demand HD content to boot. No reason to be sad or embarrassed; this thing rocks!
Well, yeah; price and the incomplete BR spec are two factors that went into me buying an Toshiba HD-A3 a mere week before Warner's bombshell. I kept mine rather than opting for an Oppo because I only have Region 1 DVDs, don't play SVCDs (and if I do, I have a SD DVD player that does fine for that) and don't care about JPEG slideshows or Divx playback, so for less than an Oppo I got something that plays DVDs about as well as an Oppo. Now, it might be limited to 1080i but at my TV's size (32") I can't really tell the difference...for all I know, the TV just deinterlaces it.
Would I buy into Blu-Ray before Christmas, or possibly before next year? Nope. It's still too much in the air. So from my perspective, the studios just kinda gave up on high-def for now, and went for DRM. Yeah, I know, I know; Blu-Ray is technologically superior. It's also crippled and incomplete, with the crippling being the only reason studios are going nutso over Blu. Better tech for the wrong reason is just wrong tech, in my book.
OTOH, HD DVD, while inferior, is ready NOW and with good transfers looks FANTASTIC. And before you scoff, I've seen it on larger sets, and it does indeed look fantastic. I couldn't help but notice that my local Best Buy FINALLY put an HD DVD display up, and the content they're playing on both...no contest, whoever authored the Blu content was a monkey, as it looks like ass, and the HD DVD content looks fantastic. Hm...$200 to get in on HD that looks nice, or $400 for theoretically superior but looks like ass...hm...
But yeah, if the word gets out that the Toshiba units also make awesome DVD players, likely upscaling better than your TV does, you'll likely see the things start to sell like hotcakes, espec
Here's to you, Blu-Ray fanboys who said 'you knew what you were getting into' when some of us bought HD-DVD players...
"HA-HA!"
Looks like, as I predicted, we're all getting burned, and as usual, the real winners are the hardware manufacturers, who'll be able to sell you yet another player, and the studios, who get even harsher DRM than HD DVD had. The losers are the people who actually believed in a. the future-proof nature of Blu-Ray and b. the people who believed in HD DVD being standardized and cheaper, thus "better."
Oh, well. At least us early HD adopters know we got decent upscaling DVD players, right? LOL
At least the people who bought Toshiba units at Christmas time got Oppo-comparable quality at an Oppo-comparable price. Not that I'm trolling for flames or anything.
Maybe the real losers will be the studios, when people decide that they're still confused and see Blu constantly trashed in the press. It's a great format, don't get me wrong, but hearing stuff like this really does kill consumer confidence, and coming out with the format early just to fight off HD DVD, then having studios cut support for the finalized, cheaper format right as the price gets into interesting range, is, I predict, going to have the effect which Warner was seeking to avoid by dropping HD DVD.
Or maybe none of this will matter at all when the global economic depression hits.
Upgrades of major stuff come with "upgrade guides" that leave out major things that commonly get broken.
Oh, wow. That was one of the reasons I decided to stop using Gentoo...three years ago. Sorry to hear that it's getting worse.
Really, if their leadership was worth a hoot, there'd be a primary emphasis on stability and upgradability, and there'd be a next-generation Portage by now. Instead, oh by gosh by golly, there still seems to be infighting, and the rule of the day seems to be that Gentoo ricers are all dern impressed that they all use Gentoo.
At this rate, it'll die off, and if there's no progress, that'll be fine if regrettable.
I guess you don't get to enjoy high-def format, since you're so blinded by MS hate...guess you also missed that both formats are fairly DRM-crippled, with Blu-Ray being the greater of two evils...
Every negative HD-DVD story on Slashdot is plastered with Blu-Ray ads. Heh.
Well, I bought one of the HD-DVD players at Christmas time and was quite happy with it...for about a week, when WB cut the legs out from under the format. The only actual title I've bought so far was a WB title. Heck, I took their statements about continuing neutrality to be honesty.
I figured it'd turn out that way, but thought the worse-but-final-and-cheaper format might pull one out. I guessed wrong, but at least I got a good upscaling DVD player out of the deal, and I think I'll go ahead and grab some titles before they disappear.
And as far as Blu-Ray goes, I'll wait until there's a non-sucky entry-level player that doesn't cost more than double my 3rd-gen HD-DVD player. I mean, really, a stand-alone player that sucks ass and costs as much as an entry-level PS3, which also plays Blu-Ray and comes with 5 free movies? What kind of moron is going to buy into that right now? I guess the same kind of suckers who buy brand-new computer tech as soon as it comes out.
The way I look at it, these studios just set HD movies BACK a year, and in that time, people won't be buying as many DVDs either, since the studios will take the attitude, "Just buy the Blu-Ray titles, morons!" before long. So have fun losing that revenue stream, guys.
Well, I "wasted" more than that on a 3rd-gen player. With it I got Bourne Identity and 300, and have the chance to get at least 5 more titles (they pretty much suck, but they're free, eh?) I didn't take advantage of the 1st-gen and 2nd-gen firesales, so I don't get AS MANY movies, but I guess I have a point here:
For the price of a DECENT upscaling DVD player, I got a DECENT upscaling DVD player which also plays a HD format that may be going out. Do I care? Not really...I have no plans to buy Blu-Ray for a while, and the reason I bought an HD set and DVD player was largely because about a month ago my TV and DVD player got fried by lightning.
Warner Brothers hit it on the head, at least for me, but they forgot another issue: With all the FUD surrounding the current BD players, coupled with the price, many of us have no plans whatsoever to buy one, at least for now. Waiting until after people snatched up the 1st- and 2nd-gen players, then (like me) lower-priced 3rd-gen players, and not just that but wait until CES was about to start was just mean-spirited. Their stance toward the whole thing, up until yesterday, left a bad taste in some consumers' mouths. Is it enough to hurt them? Probably not, but I think they may have just extended the format war rather than killing it as intended. I certainly hope I'm wrong about that.
I don't get some people's attitude about HD-DVD being the underdog, though. In one corner you have Sony and Pioneer, along with Sun and a number of companies that're pushing a proprietary format built on a mix of open and closed standards. In the other corner, you have Microsoft and Toshiba, along with a number of other companies, pusing a proprietary format based on a mix of open and closed standards. Both camps have technologies that are similar to each other. Both had their advantages and disadvantages, and they were never as hugely different as many fanboys of both formats made them out to be.
So yeah, I guess you can say that we "wasted" our money, but thus far, most people buying HD stuff have the money to burn, so unless you're living in your parents' basement and blowing your McDonalds wages on HD equipment, this isn't as huge as people seem to be making it out to be. At least we've decided who's going to win the SACD vs DVD-A...excuse me, HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray war.
Yeah, seriously, I don't think Blu-Ray will have a long shelf-life, either. DVD had 10 years. Whoopty doo. My prediction is that in 5 years you'll be tivo-ing all the movies you want to watch, and by "tivo" I mean your PVR will be pulling down your HD content either straight through dish or cable or through your cable/phone/internet combo deal. Blu-Ray will be the format that you'll get when you absolutely, positively don't want to commit your movies to your PVR's hard drive, and for videophiles who'll recognize that the streaming options are inferior to the more popular streaming options.
Look. It's Ogg Vorbis. Ogg is the container. Vorbis is the format. If you can't handle that, if you think it's too geeky, please step away from your computer and smash it to bits, as you're far too stupid to deal with modern technology. Might I suggest a career in waste disposal?
Hey, aren't you the same "authoritative" person I responded to earlier? Second comment, and I'm hoping you're just trolling. Hell, you can even use raw SQL with Rails, so, well, either you're trolling, or you're an idiot. Which is it?
I know I've seen tips and tricks for PostgreSQL before, but I'm having trouble locating them at the moment. D'oh!
It's even covered in the Pragmatic Programmers' book on Rails. My copy is in a duffel bag in my car trunk, and it's raining hard outside. I'm too lazy to go look.;-) I've never had to work with legacy databases, to tell the truth, and only use Rails for an in-house app, so I used their conventions. For what I was (and still am) doing, working against Rails was like pushing rope.
There's a lot of comments on this story that have patently untrue "Informative" statements...but then again, this is Slashdot, where authoritatively-delivered misinformation is rewarded. For example, it's not true that Rails forces conventions on you, but arrogantly stating that it's so garnered high ratings for another comment. People, the "authoritative" people you see here on Slashdot are the same people you roll your eyes at in, say, inter-deparmental meetings, and are usually the guy who qualifies stupid ideas with "and I used to hack in Forth on a PDP-11 before you were born, so I think I know what the #$%! I'm talking about!" So please...if you roll your eyes in real life, don't reward that behavior on/. Having said all that, I'll admit that Rails and/or DB design is a weak subject area for me, so I'll just shut up now;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Well...it does and it doesn't, for the reasons you listed. Plus if they're listing PS3 sales since their media blitz as "Blu-Ray players" it's a little disingenuous...but again, I don't know that it matters. I'd be willing to bet that even if both Blu-Ray and HD DVD manufacturers were honest, you'd find that a.) Blu was still winning and b.) sales of both still suck.
Similarly, I have an HD DVD player yet likely won't buy any more HD DVD disks. But I'll keep it, at least until BD is ironed all the way out and less expensive, and for now, Toshiba managed to release a kickass upscaler. Nothing against getting a PS3, but it seems a waste (purely to me) to buy a gaming rig mainly for watching movies.
I understand why some people got upset over HD DVD getting whipped so soundly, and not just because I own a player. If they want to get mad at anyone, though, they should get mad at the people who were in charge of promoting a format. Seriously, how do you take a format that looks great on HDTVs, make it relatively inexpensive for disc manufacturers, make a finalized spec a high priority, give it an instantly recognizable brand name, and NOT win (barring Joe Sixpack caring enough to understand the technical differences)??? By failing to promote it properly, that's how.
I mean, look at every story that Slashdot does on BD vs HD. What do you see advertised? Blu-Ray.
Do you ever see HD DVD promoted that heavily? Nope.
OK, Toshiba and the rest of the DVD Forum, plus people in charge of HD DVD promotion. If you've not given up yet, it's time to pump some cash into this turkey and promote it. Don't count on word of mouth alone; realize that you have people like me, who're just going around pointing out that, if you're scared off by the lack of feature-complete BD players outside of the PS3, and want a damn good upscaler, take advantage of the firesale prices and get Oppo-comparable performance at less than Oppo prices...then again, not everyone's running firesale prices anymore, so you can't even count on that anymore.
I'm betting they'll concede defeat soon. Pity, since while it may be the inferior format, it's currently the "better" format. And if they don't concede defeat soon, and someone doesn't light a fire under 'em, they'll have to either in May when Warner Bros. finally deserts 'em, or October, when dedicated BD-Live players come out.
LOL (btw, you may remember me for such roles as regeya on kuro5hin.org)
I got an HD DVD player. Was going to take it back when less than a week after I bought it WB caught everyone in the HD DVD camp flat-footed at the begining of CES, but it earned a place on my rack--for now--for being a great upscaler. Better than the TV, at least, and better than other units I've tried. I really don't have huge plans to buy loads of HD DVD discs, though.
If you look at the numbers for before Christmas, Blu was outselling HD DVD (which is to say, it was 60% of 2% of the home movie market--whoopty fucking doo for both sides) and studio support was kinda divided 50-50 with Fox mulling over HD DVD and Warner planning to follow their lead.
So no, it wasn't THAT insulting, in all seriousness, but in hindsight, LOL
Yeah; the ratios are kind of misleading when you leave out DVD to High-Def disc sales. Now THAT one should be sobering to both camps.
Either you're trolling or you're greatly misled if you feel this represents Christianity. Old-school Judaism, maybe (oh...right, mentioning that this is really from Judaism is likely anti-Semitism...my bad) but outside the world of Baptists people actually pay attention to the ministry of Christ. Example: Christ's example wrt adultery.
Trying to make web browsers and traffic load lessening measures illegal by posting an asinine copyright notice in every comment you make? I guarantee you won't get me to stop using Squid quite so easily!
Actually, I LOL'ed. Well played.
Back on topic: I maintain that BD+ will be hacked at some point. After all, at SOME point in the chain the video has to be decrypted; whether someone will find a way to "hack" their TVs, some way past it such as hacking a BD+ software player, breaking HDCP (and stripping out whatever counts for identifying the player's unique number, so it'll not get on the revocation list), analog hole (does anyone pirating movies care about PERFECT quality?), or something as extreme as literally tearing apart a TV and getting to the innards, it'll be done. DRM is just a challenge to some.
I fail to understand how these companies think that DRM is GOOD for business. Every time you have a disk mistakenly show up as pirated, or a customer can't play their purchased music on their portable player because it's not the RIGHT kind of portable player, is just pissing customers off and an open invitation to get past the restriction.
I think Apple had it half-right: leave a hole for people. Burning CDs from iTunes was that hole. I can't think of one purchase I made through iTunes Music Store that I didn't immediately burn to audio CD then rip. I have not, however, made the resulting MP3s public; hey, if you want it, buy it yourself! Most people looking for music are f'in mooches anyway; why would I share?
I got a laptop for my wife at Christmas. It shipped with a gig of ram, which means it had the most RAM of any computer in the house. And Vista ran dog slow. Official advice? "Buy another gig of RAM."
I don't have all the ACPI issues (the fan, it's a biggie) sorted out, nor is the internal wireless working, but other than that, Kubuntu Gutsy seems to run just fine and dandy on the thing.
Granted, it's a small office, but aside from a fileserver and wire machine, everything is shut down. At least in theory. At the very least everything goes into sleep mode.
Not included in this is hard drives spinning down. On anything I have my hands on (everything, again in theory) I'd rather not be spinning everything up and down all day. Too much wear and tear. Everything's a compromise, of course: would you rather have powerup/powerdown potential problems, or would you rather have the machine sucking in dirt 24/7? Dust is mostly human skin, and a good conductor to boot.
As someone pointed out in another comment, they're getting much higher framerates than that. Plus, their ultimate goal seems to be an OpenRT, roughly analagous to OpenGL, with the goal of interfacing with raytracing gfx cards.
I for one welcome our new raytracing overlords...
If I go out and pay $400 dollars on a player, I expect it to support the full spectrum of BD features, just like the "doorstop" in my rack right now. But they won't, and never will. To me that's the very definition of crippled; hey, I might not ever use the BD Live features, but I dislike the idea of buying into the format if I know the current players will be that much obsolete before the year is out.
Much as purchasers of higher-end stuff don't like to admit it, more middle-class consumers don't like to blow tha t kind of money on something that's planned do be obsolete in less than a year. In my rack, I also have a CD changer that dates to March 1990. Would I have gotten it if I had known it was going to be totally obsolete in 1991? Doubtful; the thing cost about $300 back then.
The fact is, just being the format that 70% of the studios behind something isn't going to be enough to boost consumer confidence. If anything, having a studio pull the rug out from under me just SHOOK my confidence. How am I to know that, if BD sales don't go up, we won't just see studios drop support for BOTH formats?
Face it; DVD is heavily entrenched and for people like me, had fate not swayed my hand and forced me to replace a burnt-out unit, I would still be cherrily watching movies on my DVD player. As it is, I'm using my HD DVD unit largely as a DVD player, and have no plans to run out and splooge all over myself to get a BD player. After being burnt on one format, I'm not in a big hurry to jump into the other.
And do you think Disney's going to be a big factor in winning parents over to BD? Maybe, but I think not; how many minivans will be shipping with BD players this year?
I hate to tell you this, but every single POS display I've seen for Blu-Ray has video that looks like shit. Not so on the inferior, dead HD DVD format. It's puzzling since both use the same codecs but BD DL disks have higher capacity. I guess they could all be set up wrong, but I would think that the same retail monkey who sets up the BD display would also do the HD display. It's really weird.
Oh, you meant HD-DVD customers are getting burned because it went the other way.
Have you tried the things? Take most those features the early Blu players won't have, plus many of the interesting features you'll find in BD players this coming October, and you can purchase such a player at Amazon.com for a very low price.
I love how you managed to get a bitter rant out of arguing with someone who picked the "losing" format. Hey, I'm not bitter; more than likely, you'll see me happily watching movies on Blu-Ray. But it won't be until at least October.
Hell, when it came to DVD, my first dedicated player was 6 years ago. Seriously. I can wait for the bugs to be ironed out, and don't give me any bullshit arguments about how I can get "most" of the features and play the main feature; I don't want to spend $400+ on a crippled player! And no thank you, I'm not buying a 3rd-place gaming console at the same price just to have a future-proof BD player! And if it hadn't been for a freak accident, I wouldn't have "picked a side" on this. Now that I did, I question why HD DVD got buried so quick...but as a realist, I understand that even if there were a major jump in HD DVD disc sales starting tomorrow, Warner will still stop production in May, and everyone else will too, and I'll just have to be happy with the fact that my player is an awesome DVD player that also happens to play an obsolete format, and when cheaper and faster feature-complete BD players come out, I'll likely pick up one of those (unless both formats lose; remember, BOTH formats' sales suck, it's just that BD sucks less.)
Losers? LOSERS? We WIN the format war, and we're LOSERS? Newer profile movies will PLAY in old players, they just won't have PiP, or internet enabled special features. Those who bought standalone BD players knew they didn't have those features when they bought them. Are they going to cry and upgrade already to get the PiP director's commentary?
Wow, cheaper==better for you, huh? Sorry, not everyone feels that way.
OK. Someone shows you two cups of coffee. One is for $5, the other $50. The $5 cup of coffee is just plain, ordinary coffee that happens to be of a decent variety, roast, grind, etc. The $50 cup of coffee tastes identical but has added vitamins and minerals, plus the promise that if you're a regular customer, someday it may also extend your life. Which do you purchase?
... by a bunch of angry teenagers that bought Xbox HD-DVD add-ons? Sorry, blogs and Slashdot aren't the "press".'
As much as I'd like to choose the $50 cup of coffee, I must go with the more economical choice. Sorry, but those are the breaks. Not everyone is made of money, and I'd be willing to wager that most people who have movies at home and rent movies are in the same category as me: just because we have a bit of leisure time now and then doesn't mean we're on our yachts and in imminent danger of running out of monocle polish.
'Maybe the real losers will be the studios, when people decide that they're still confused and see Blu constantly trashed...
Care to tell me how you extrapolated the "press" from anything I said? No bullshit quotes as if you're quoting me, please.
"and coming out with the format early just to fight off HD DVD,
What's wrong with that? I don't think you understand what exactly is different between the Blu-ray profiles. Why don't you look those up before even bothering to reply to this, please and thanks."
I have, thank you, and as I said above, I don't wish to spend what is to me a lot of money for a crippled player. What's so hard to understand about that? Even if we never use the special features, why would we willingly purchase a crippled player when non-crippled players will be out in October? How many Joe Sixpacks are going to understand that you have to go to a website, download an ISO, burn it to CD, tand run that on
I don't know why people keep saying that, since "the battle is over" because the Sony marketing machine plowed down any and all competition. Wow, Sony's such a better company than Microsoft. Not!
:->
Why do people see HD DVD as the greater evil here? It's the same puzzled feeling I get when I see people getting warm and fuzzy about Apple vs. Microsoft. Apple is every bit as evil as Microsoft, and they control the hardware to boot! At least with MS, you know that, even though you wish they'd sided with better hardware, they helped keep the computer world as unified as it was all those years...they're evil, yeah, but at least we don't have a half-dozen different incompatible desktop machines out there.
So yeah, I don't understand why people see HDi as that huge of a deal. Yeah, it's MS, but not everything they do is horrible. Check the licensing prices of putting out BD vs. HD, you'll see what I mean.
Neither side is exclusively one company, not even close. In fact, even if Toshiba loses this (and it looks like they will) they're still putting their technology in the best Blu-Ray player out there (Sony PS3.) Some of Microsoft's IP goes into every Blu-Ray player on the market.
To tell you the truth, the thing I'm sickest of in this whole thing is how desperate Blu-Ray fanboys are for me to feel stupid for having an HD DVD player. I don't. My situation is a bit unique; if it had not been for a freak winter lightning storm, I would have stuck with an HD set until next Christmas, along with a SD DVD player. Well, those are gone; after I got the set, I wasn't in much of a mood to spend hundreds more on a player, so it was between a good upscaler and whatever else, and when I saw the price of the HD DVD units, I snatched one up. The more I read up on the things, the gladder I am I didn't get scared off by the WB announcement into returning the thing. SD DVD playback is fantastic! I miss out on the common piracy formats this way, and I don't get to be region-free, but a glance at my DVD collection will tell you that's a non-issue...
So yeah, SD DVD playback may not be that big of a deal to other consumers, but as the word gets out on the players, I think you'll see people snatching them up for that very reason, especially since the BD Live FUD seems to be having a pretty negative effect (heck, it's got me stopped from buying a BD unit for now!) It likely won't be enough to sway any studio execs, but at least we can all continue to sit this thing out.
Exactly why I kept my player, that and my old player died, which meant I needed a replacment anyway. Maybe an Oppo would be a better choice...but I really only play Region 1 disks, don't really have any SVCDs to speak of, don't look at JPEGs on TV, and for that reason I'll go for the less expensive option, which just happens to be an HD DVD player.
Now I can wait for Blu to be complete, play my regular DVDs at excellent quality, and I get some on-demand HD content to boot. No reason to be sad or embarrassed; this thing rocks!
Well, yeah; price and the incomplete BR spec are two factors that went into me buying an Toshiba HD-A3 a mere week before Warner's bombshell. I kept mine rather than opting for an Oppo because I only have Region 1 DVDs, don't play SVCDs (and if I do, I have a SD DVD player that does fine for that) and don't care about JPEG slideshows or Divx playback, so for less than an Oppo I got something that plays DVDs about as well as an Oppo. Now, it might be limited to 1080i but at my TV's size (32") I can't really tell the difference...for all I know, the TV just deinterlaces it.
Would I buy into Blu-Ray before Christmas, or possibly before next year? Nope. It's still too much in the air. So from my perspective, the studios just kinda gave up on high-def for now, and went for DRM. Yeah, I know, I know; Blu-Ray is technologically superior. It's also crippled and incomplete, with the crippling being the only reason studios are going nutso over Blu. Better tech for the wrong reason is just wrong tech, in my book.
OTOH, HD DVD, while inferior, is ready NOW and with good transfers looks FANTASTIC. And before you scoff, I've seen it on larger sets, and it does indeed look fantastic. I couldn't help but notice that my local Best Buy FINALLY put an HD DVD display up, and the content they're playing on both...no contest, whoever authored the Blu content was a monkey, as it looks like ass, and the HD DVD content looks fantastic. Hm...$200 to get in on HD that looks nice, or $400 for theoretically superior but looks like ass...hm...
But yeah, if the word gets out that the Toshiba units also make awesome DVD players, likely upscaling better than your TV does, you'll likely see the things start to sell like hotcakes, espec
Here's to you, Blu-Ray fanboys who said 'you knew what you were getting into' when some of us bought HD-DVD players...
"HA-HA!"
Looks like, as I predicted, we're all getting burned, and as usual, the real winners are the hardware manufacturers, who'll be able to sell you yet another player, and the studios, who get even harsher DRM than HD DVD had. The losers are the people who actually believed in a. the future-proof nature of Blu-Ray and b. the people who believed in HD DVD being standardized and cheaper, thus "better."
Oh, well. At least us early HD adopters know we got decent upscaling DVD players, right? LOL
At least the people who bought Toshiba units at Christmas time got Oppo-comparable quality at an Oppo-comparable price. Not that I'm trolling for flames or anything.
Maybe the real losers will be the studios, when people decide that they're still confused and see Blu constantly trashed in the press. It's a great format, don't get me wrong, but hearing stuff like this really does kill consumer confidence, and coming out with the format early just to fight off HD DVD, then having studios cut support for the finalized, cheaper format right as the price gets into interesting range, is, I predict, going to have the effect which Warner was seeking to avoid by dropping HD DVD.
Or maybe none of this will matter at all when the global economic depression hits.
Upgrades of major stuff come with "upgrade guides" that leave out major things that commonly get broken.
Oh, wow. That was one of the reasons I decided to stop using Gentoo...three years ago. Sorry to hear that it's getting worse.
Really, if their leadership was worth a hoot, there'd be a primary emphasis on stability and upgradability, and there'd be a next-generation Portage by now. Instead, oh by gosh by golly, there still seems to be infighting, and the rule of the day seems to be that Gentoo ricers are all dern impressed that they all use Gentoo.
At this rate, it'll die off, and if there's no progress, that'll be fine if regrettable.
"[Java-schooled students] had no feeling for the relationship between the source program and what the hardware would actually do,"
And compared to that, Lisp is a solid language???!?
You ARE aware that VC-1 is a WMV format, right?
I guess you don't get to enjoy high-def format, since you're so blinded by MS hate...guess you also missed that both formats are fairly DRM-crippled, with Blu-Ray being the greater of two evils...
A more positive way to view it is that Microsoft lost! :)
How do you figure that? WMV VC-1 is part of the Blu-Ray spec, too.
lookie
Every negative HD-DVD story on Slashdot is plastered with Blu-Ray ads. Heh.
Well, I bought one of the HD-DVD players at Christmas time and was quite happy with it...for about a week, when WB cut the legs out from under the format. The only actual title I've bought so far was a WB title. Heck, I took their statements about continuing neutrality to be honesty.
I figured it'd turn out that way, but thought the worse-but-final-and-cheaper format might pull one out. I guessed wrong, but at least I got a good upscaling DVD player out of the deal, and I think I'll go ahead and grab some titles before they disappear.
And as far as Blu-Ray goes, I'll wait until there's a non-sucky entry-level player that doesn't cost more than double my 3rd-gen HD-DVD player. I mean, really, a stand-alone player that sucks ass and costs as much as an entry-level PS3, which also plays Blu-Ray and comes with 5 free movies? What kind of moron is going to buy into that right now? I guess the same kind of suckers who buy brand-new computer tech as soon as it comes out.
The way I look at it, these studios just set HD movies BACK a year, and in that time, people won't be buying as many DVDs either, since the studios will take the attitude, "Just buy the Blu-Ray titles, morons!" before long. So have fun losing that revenue stream, guys.
For the price of a DECENT upscaling DVD player, I got a DECENT upscaling DVD player which also plays a HD format that may be going out. Do I care? Not really...I have no plans to buy Blu-Ray for a while, and the reason I bought an HD set and DVD player was largely because about a month ago my TV and DVD player got fried by lightning.
Warner Brothers hit it on the head, at least for me, but they forgot another issue: With all the FUD surrounding the current BD players, coupled with the price, many of us have no plans whatsoever to buy one, at least for now. Waiting until after people snatched up the 1st- and 2nd-gen players, then (like me) lower-priced 3rd-gen players, and not just that but wait until CES was about to start was just mean-spirited. Their stance toward the whole thing, up until yesterday, left a bad taste in some consumers' mouths. Is it enough to hurt them? Probably not, but I think they may have just extended the format war rather than killing it as intended. I certainly hope I'm wrong about that.
I don't get some people's attitude about HD-DVD being the underdog, though. In one corner you have Sony and Pioneer, along with Sun and a number of companies that're pushing a proprietary format built on a mix of open and closed standards. In the other corner, you have Microsoft and Toshiba, along with a number of other companies, pusing a proprietary format based on a mix of open and closed standards. Both camps have technologies that are similar to each other. Both had their advantages and disadvantages, and they were never as hugely different as many fanboys of both formats made them out to be.
So yeah, I guess you can say that we "wasted" our money, but thus far, most people buying HD stuff have the money to burn, so unless you're living in your parents' basement and blowing your McDonalds wages on HD equipment, this isn't as huge as people seem to be making it out to be. At least we've decided who's going to win the SACD vs DVD-A...excuse me, HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray war.
Yeah, seriously, I don't think Blu-Ray will have a long shelf-life, either. DVD had 10 years. Whoopty doo. My prediction is that in 5 years you'll be tivo-ing all the movies you want to watch, and by "tivo" I mean your PVR will be pulling down your HD content either straight through dish or cable or through your cable/phone/internet combo deal. Blu-Ray will be the format that you'll get when you absolutely, positively don't want to commit your movies to your PVR's hard drive, and for videophiles who'll recognize that the streaming options are inferior to the more popular streaming options.
Looks like you're both in agreement.
Look. It's Ogg Vorbis. Ogg is the container. Vorbis is the format. If you can't handle that, if you think it's too geeky, please step away from your computer and smash it to bits, as you're far too stupid to deal with modern technology. Might I suggest a career in waste disposal?
Hey, aren't you the same "authoritative" person I responded to earlier? Second comment, and I'm hoping you're just trolling. Hell, you can even use raw SQL with Rails, so, well, either you're trolling, or you're an idiot. Which is it?
Not true. You can work with a number of different conventions...easier on the DBA, but harder on the person developing the Rails app.
;-) I've never had to work with legacy databases, to tell the truth, and only use Rails for an in-house app, so I used their conventions. For what I was (and still am) doing, working against Rails was like pushing rope.
/. Having said all that, I'll admit that Rails and/or DB design is a weak subject area for me, so I'll just shut up now ;-)
I don't think this is entirely the best way, but here's ONE way I found by Googling: http://lindsaar.net/2007/11/28/connecting-active-record-to-a-legacy-database-with-stored-procedures
I know I've seen tips and tricks for PostgreSQL before, but I'm having trouble locating them at the moment. D'oh!
It's even covered in the Pragmatic Programmers' book on Rails. My copy is in a duffel bag in my car trunk, and it's raining hard outside. I'm too lazy to go look.
There's a lot of comments on this story that have patently untrue "Informative" statements...but then again, this is Slashdot, where authoritatively-delivered misinformation is rewarded. For example, it's not true that Rails forces conventions on you, but arrogantly stating that it's so garnered high ratings for another comment. People, the "authoritative" people you see here on Slashdot are the same people you roll your eyes at in, say, inter-deparmental meetings, and are usually the guy who qualifies stupid ideas with "and I used to hack in Forth on a PDP-11 before you were born, so I think I know what the #$%! I'm talking about!" So please...if you roll your eyes in real life, don't reward that behavior on
Yeah, and I'll put ME on good hardware up against an eMachine running FreeBSD any day. ;->