You should install the lord_pwnalot toolbar, that protects you against spyware and adware too.
I agree with the sentiment -- toolbars are evil. However, there are some toolbars that are trustworthy. Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are the immediate examples that come to mind, and you only need one of those. I wouldn't install any others unless I was intimately familiar with them (either written by me, or open source so that I can inspect the code and make my own changes if I so desire).
The thing I don't really get is why toolbars are so pervasive. IE has an extensibility model just like Firefox and you can add quite a few nice features without having to expose a toolbar. For example, I wrote myself a pop-up blocker for IE as a non-toolbar BHO something like 6 years ago. Now you can't get a pop-up blocker without also getting a space-consuming toolbar in the process, and the pop-up blocking functionality on the toolbar is disabled if the toolbar isn't visible -- that's just dumb. Firefox has a rich add-on community that doesn't revolve around toolbars. IE could have the same type of community, but unfortunately everything useful seems to be a toolbar these days even if there's no reason to implement it that way.
I guess it's time for a new PC. I don't know that I can live without IE 7's new 'anti-phishing' filter.
While I'm sure you're being facetious, you do realize that IE7 is available for XP and has the anti-phishing feature, right? If you still want to stick with IE6 (or have to, like if you're running Win2k), you can get the same anti-phishing protection from the Windows Live Toolbar. It's all the same technology, backed by the same store of anti-phishing data.
Acer sucks quality-wise, however.... ATI and nVidia sell quite a few GPUs to notebook manufacturers that do not stick to the reference designs. Toshiba & HP are other nVidia / ATI notebooks that won't take the default Mobility/ForceWare drivers.
It's not that they change the GPUs (what, you think Acer et al have the ability to re-design and re-fab ATI/nVidia's chips?), but that the drivers just don't have the right enumerations for the laptop hardware. In most cases, this is a simple fix with a tool like DH Mod Tool (there may be something similar for nVidia chipsets, but I have an ATI x300 so this is the tool I use). Works flawlessly for me.
My swiss army which I sharpen every 2 weeks on my electric kitchen sharpener works perfect for opening this stuff.
Your poor knife!
The only downside is I need to buy a new knife every couple of years when it gets low.
Duh. You're sharpening the blade way more often than necessary, and in such a way that you're probably removing way too much material each time as well. I doubt your knife needs to be sharpened more than once every six months, if even that much. Instead, you should buy a honing steel to keep your knife edge "true". A honing steel doesn't sharpen, but it can make your knife seem sharper because it's straightening out the sharp edge that may have been blunted from previous cuttings. In most cases, a "dull" knife actually just has a blunted edge that can be restored with honing.
Is is just a coincidence that both Nvidia and ATI were each awarded Xbox contracts (Nvidia = Xbox, ATI = Xbox 360)? Perhaps there was some behind the scenes deals to thwart the development of FOSS graphics drivers.
Right, because the motivation couldn't have been wanting to get a top-notch GPU at an affordable price from a company that knows how to build GPUs successfully. Nope, it was just one more salvo in Microsoft's covert war against FOSS.
I'm sure the switch to ATI chips in the 360 from nVidia chips in the Xbox had nothing to do with nVidia wanting more of the pie than Microsoft was willing to give while ATI was willing to sell their IP so that Microsoft can do what they like with it in the future (such as integrating it into a 360-on-a-chip at some point in the future, a problem Sony's going to have down the road when they try to build a slimline PSThree and find out that they can't merge chips due to nVidia's licensing agreement...). Instead, I'm 100% positive Microsoft decided to switch to ATI just so they could spread around their patents to foil FOSS development.
With the top two graphics chip companies controlling the majority of the market, this could have happened. Perhaps the "patented code" in the drivers that prevents them from opening the source is Microsoft-owned?
It's surely a possibility, considering that Microsoft, nVidia, ATI, and others all collaborate on the design and development of DirectX features (since many features are useless without hardware support behind them). However, it's more realistic that nVidia and ATI have their own proprietary IP and patents that could severely hurt their business if competitors got their hands on them. For example, how do you think it's possible for nVidia and ATI to get performance increases from several-year-old GPUs with nothing more than a driver update? Oh, wait, conspiracy theory: obviously nVidia and ATI intentionally hinder the performance of their GPUs so that they can slowly trickle out driver updates that will add incremental performance increases. For free. Because that makes sense.
I know that it will never happen, but it would be nice to bring it up just in case someone is listening.
If you installed your tinfoil hat properly you wouldn't have to worry about people listening to your thoughts...
That doesn't necessarily mean the XBox division will start making money. It could (and probably does) mean that they plan to try and hemorrhage less, so that the overall E&D division can finally get in the black.
Also, that doesn't mean that the console is still selling at a loss. Getting the console sale price to break-even or into profit doesn't automatically mean profit for the division. There's still headcount to pay for, amortized research costs, future R&D, etc. Getting to break-even or better is an excellent first step, but as they say there's still much more to do.
Oh, yeah, and FY08 is July of CY07 (Calendar Year 2007). So they're saying that as early as Q1 FY08 (aka, September/October CY07) tthe E&D division could be in the black on the financial report. Yes, that's about a year away, but it's not as long as it sounds by saying "FY08" instead of "CY07".
Sigh, I miss the lucas arts adventure games days. Crap graphics, damn good fun.
Way to rewrite history, there. LucasArts adventure games had quite good graphics at the time. Certainly better than their competition from Sierra. They're not that great now, but one of the draws of LucasArts games was their excellent graphics direction (not necessarily the best graphics, but consistent and appropriate to the game). Sure shoots a hole in your theory, eh?
Why can't you have both gameplay and graphics? For example, Zelda: Twilight Princess is fun (even though we've all played the game before several times), but it would be better with better graphics. Gears of War has great gameplay and graphics. Yes, some companies do focus on graphics to the detriment of gameplay (*cough*EA*cough*), but that's not everybody.
No sir, my hard drive doesn't even spin that fast. You're off by orders of magnitude.
What does that have to do with DLP color wheels?
Considering that a DLP projector updates the screen 60 times a second, most color wheels spin at 60 or 120Hz. The early projectors had wheels that spun at only 60Hz leading to the unpopular color "shimmering" effect that prevents some people from buying it if they can notice the effect. Later wheels spin faster, reducing the effect greatly, but even these don't exceed 3x the display rate.
If the color wheel only spun 60 times per second, the picture wouldn't even be recognizeable. Assuming a 3-section color wheel, that means you'd only get green, red, or blue every third frame. Our eyes work much faster than that when determining color (motion can be synthesized with very few frames per second, creating colors out of sequential individual base colors requires much more than that).
I may be a little off with my upper-end range (30,000RPM), but 10,000RPM and above is actually quite common. For example:
A randomly chosen current-model 1080p Samsung DLP: color wheel speed is 14,400RPM
I couldn't find RPM ratings for Mitsubishi or Toshiba TVs for comparison (they don't list that on their spec sheets like Samsung does), but it's a safe bet that if Samsung color wheels are running at 10-14K RPMs then so are other DLP sets.
High-end DLP projectors use three emitters (RGB), eliminating the need for a wheel entirely.
High-end DLP projectors, like those used in movie theaters, use three DMDs from a single light source that's been split into component colors via a prism. At least that's how it used to be. They'll probably move to three individual LED-based light sources emitting pure red, green, and blue. Of course they'll still need individual DMDs, which is where the expense comes in (and why consumer-grade sets don't use individual DMDs and thus need color wheels).
I'm suprised nobody has mentioned lamp life yet. It's a pricy part and has a short life.
Because you have the exact same problem with DLP sets, and a similar issue with LCD (backlight). DLP bulbs are replaceable, though they usually last 2-3 years before replacement. Buy yourself a good store warranty for $100 and you'll get a free lamp replacement out of it (the only time store warrantees are worth anything). By the time you need a second lamp replacement (around the 5-6 year mark), you may as well buy a new TV.
No they don't. Plasmas suffer burn-in because they emit colors in the same way as a CRT -- using red, green, and blue phosphors. "Burn-in" happens when the phosphors age non-uniformly, such as when a static image is held in place too long. You can combat this by properly setting your contrast (TVs are set to torch mode in the stores because it looks better under the flourescents; at home you should have your contrast set to a much lower level) and by pixel-shifting, but you can't eliminate it so long as the technology uses a consumable resource for emitting colored light (phosphors).
LCDs and DLPs don't burn in because they use filters over white light to emit colors. DLP does this with a color wheel rotating anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 times per second, with the DMD adjusting for each window of the wheel to emit the correct amount of the base color of light (basic wheels contain red, green, and blue filters. Better wheels double up on the colors and often add several different shades of blue and green since our eyes are more attuned to those colors than red. Non-consumer high-end models have individual DMDs and filters for each color). LCDs have discrete filters for red, green, and blue, and the liquid crystal is set to a state to allow just the right amount of each through (thus you can do sub-pixel rendering, such as Cleartype font-smoothing). But it's still all about emitting filtered light, not emitting colored light from a phosphor. Your backlight may go out, but that's replaceable. Good luck replacing individual phosphors when they burn out.
I'm not very much of a television watcher, but I do sometimes have friends over to watch movies and such. I recently picked up a projector, and now have a 100ish" display that becomes a blank wall when I'm not using it.
Is there something here I'm missing?
There are a number of reasons why people don't want or can't use front projection.
Not enough room. You need to have a sizeable room for front projection if you really want to get to that 100" size. Being able to project the image is only part of the equation. Optimal viewing distance for a 50" set is between 6 and 10 feet (depending on HD or SD content). Do you really have a room big enough to accomodate a 20ft viewing distance for your 100" image?
Not enough control over ambient lighting. Front projection needs a relatively dark room, much moreso than a rear-projection TV (CRT, LCoS, DLP, LCD) or direct-view (CRT, LCD, Plasma).
Wife-acceptance factor. Try telling your wife that she has to make sure the blackout shades are down if she wants to watch her soaps or Oprah in the middle of the day.
You realize that size isn't everything. Sure, you can get a 100" display, but depending on the technology in your projector you'll likely suffer screen-dooring or pixelization (especially for low-end consumer-grade projectors). 1280x720 (16x9 720p) at 100" diagonal is 14 pixels per inch.
You realize that the price of the projector isn't everything. For proper viewing, you really need a good screen. A flat, white wall is merely "okay". A flat wall with special paint is better. A proper screen is best. Bear in mind that most people don't have truly flat walls, since drywall is usually somewhat textured. It might look flat, but project an image on it and you've suddenly got a bunch of little bumps causing little shadows all throughout the picture. A screen is really the way to go, and that's not cheap, especially if you want a roll-up model so it hides easily.
When all of the variables are right, front-projection is nice. Getting everything to come together for a proper viewing experience either requires extreme luck or large amounts of money. You can certainly go overboard, like a friend of mine who just put in a $15,000 theater, but even a modest projector + screen + blackout curtains will run you more than the $2000 I spent on a 50" rear-projection DLP.
I'd just like to point out that the article you linked is crap. Or, more precisely, it's written by a developer who's apparently never used a GUI design tool. Most of his "problems" boil down to, "You're still going to have to write your own code anyway, regardless of what you do in the GUI builder," which I answer with a great big, "Duh!" In fact, most of his signs of GUI builder use are really just signs that you're dealing with a lazy developer, a non-developer who bought into the idea that he could just drag 'n drop his way to freedom, or a developer (like the author) who's not very familiar with the GUI builder in question and/or has pre-judged the GUI builder tool before even trying to use it.
Granted, 99% of my GUI builder experience has been with Microsoft Visual Studio which is actually very good, so maybe his concerns are valid for other tools. Of his list of signs, Visual Studio makes it trivial to handle the first three (layout management, variable names, and localization), it's possible to fix the fourth one by writing custom controls, and there's nothing wrong with the fifth one (common boiler plate code) though with the use of parital classes in.NET 2.0 Visual Studio does its best to hide that from the developer.
if it's based on their standard DRM stuff you recieve your license the first time the movie is played - WiMP goes onto the net and grabs the license...so in 'theory' it wouldn't start until you actually finish the download.
The expiration period is 3 weeks or 24 hours from first play, whichever comes first. I assume the 3 week period doesn't kick in until you've completed the download, but it'll be three weeks before anybody besides Microsoft will know for sure. Unfortunately, you can start playing the movie while it's still downloading, thus triggering the 24 hour expiration period. That leaves you with a nasty decision -- start playing the movie now while it's downloading and risk having it expire before it's finished, or wait 2-3 days for it to completely download and lose interest in the movie.
The Wii and the PS3 will both have web browsers. If a web browser works great on a game console, great. But if it doesn't work well, you didn't buy it for the web browser anyway. So if the PS3's web browser sucks, I'll give them a pass.
What if Sony ties critical functionality like downloading games (a la Microsoft's XBLA) to the web browser? And what if said web browser makes you use the controller like a mouse rather than having a proper console interface? I'll give Sony a hard time for that. Microsoft doesn't include a web browser for various reasons ("It's a game console", anti-trust speculation, etc), but they provide a very nice and easy interface to interact with their Marketplace. Nintendo has a web browser available (well, eventually), but the Wiimote is very much a mouse and browsing using the Wiimote should be very nice. Sony has a web browser that pretty much requires you to plug in a USB mouse and keyboard to be able to use it. If I wanted to do that, I'd use a PC.
Sure, If I wanted some audiophile hi-fi I wouldn't buy Sony, nor would I buy Bose for that matter. In fact, many of your arguments could easily apply to that brand. I guess it all depends on how much money you have to splash around.
That was kind of the point of bringing Bose into the argument. Everybody knows that for ~$900 you can get a system that sounds better than Bose's $3000 Lifestyle system. Sony's not quite that bad, but you can get better speakers, receivers, DVD players, TVs, cameras, laptops/computers, etc from other brands for $$$s less than Sony's. Sony's not bad, per se, nor do they truly suck. They're just relatively bad and and sucky.
Still, my point stands, Sony hasn't got any worse since the 1980's, but people have become vocal in their opinions. The beauty of the internet is that the crackpot ramblings of one man can be read by millions an a "news" site with a proven history of Sony bashing.
I disagree. Or rather, I don't believe Sony was all that great in the 1980s either. The main thing they had going for them was the Walkman. They were the Apple of the 80s. Everybody wanted a Walkman (iPod) and all of the knock-offs had subtle (or not-so-subtle) problems that made them worse than the real thing. Sony was cool thanks to the Walkman, and so their other products came along for the ride (well, except for BetaMax, but Sony effectively killed BetaMax all on their own through bad decisions -- you know, kinda like what they later did with MiniDisc, Memory Stick, UMD, and Blu-Ray).
Yes, consumers got more vocal, but Sony didn't get any better either. If anything, their cool cachet diminished significantly in the mid- to late-90s, exposing the mediocrity of the rest of the company.
Sony is still making great products, despite what a vocal, geeky, minority may tell you. I'm sorry.
No, Sony is still making good products at a price premium. There's nothing that Sony does so much better than JVC, Panasonic, Samsung, et al that could justify the price difference between Sony products and everything else. Sony is just the poor man's Bose -- smart people can get better quality products for less, but if you've got to have that brand label then nothing's going to stop you from buying it.
Why do they even have a fixed period of time before a movie is deleted from a person's hard-drive?
Microsoft doesn't get to make that decision. The time period that the movie stays "active" (14 days, or 24 hours after initial viewing) is decided solely by the content providers (ie, the MPAA). In this case, the only choice Microsoft has is no real choice at all: either offer obscure non-MPAA movies and TV shows or bend to the will of the MPAA in terms of DRM usage periods. While the average slashdotter might be willing to use a video service that doesn't contain any popular Hollywood movies, the target audience for this feature won't.
The XBox 360's hard-drive is 20GBs which (should) allow for (about) 20 to 40 SD movies or 5 to 10 HD movies; eventually they will have to 'return' the movie (that is delete it) or they will run out of hard-drive space.
HD movies are on the order of 5-6GB. Bearing in mind that the 20GB hard drive needs to be used for other things as well (demos, XBLA games, game saves, buffers, etc), the fact that 20GB in marketing speak is really only 18.5GB, and that ~5GB of that is reserved by the console for various reasons leaving you only 12-13GB to work with, you'll be lucky to get 2 HD movies on the drive along with your other data.
Searching for a Playstation 3 tech demo on YouTube I found a Gears of Wars like preview of Unreal, on PS3! Today it is marketed as a Microsoft supported game. Does anyone know why that PS3 version has been abandoned? Did Microsoft support it with enough dollars or is this GoW only a preview of the might to come?
As the sibling post says, that's just Unreal 3. Sure, it has a big, beefy human character but that's just Epic's style. As far as GoW on anything but Xbox 360, keep in mind that Microsoft published the game (usually Epic gets published by Atari/Infogrames/GT Interactive/whatever they're calling themselves these days) so unless Epic can shop around to another publisher (no idea what's in their development contract; they may not be able to shop around) they're not going to get GoW published on PS3 or Wii. There's still a chance it may make it to Windows, though probably as a Vista-only gamelike Halo 2.
For those of us who live or work in Redmond, it's a nice boost to have two out of the three console makers in our backyard. If you're a DigiPen student, then chances are you know some folks from NOA and MS, meaning access to both their company stores. Lucky!
And then there's the fact that the two company stores are within a block of each other, and surrounded by both Nintendo and Microsoft buildings.
I see ebay auctions with only a few minutes left closing in on the low 800s now. By the end of next week, ebayers probably won't be able to get retail for one.
Just wait. There's an ebb and flow to these things. We're past the big launch weekend so supplies are high (in the hands of ebayers). As those supplies start to thin out, and with Sony unable to adequately restock retailers, and with breeders getting crazy as the holidays draw closer and closer and they still haven't gotten little Johnny his PS3 yet so he'll love them, ebay auction prices will go back up. They'll go down again after the holiday but should still remain somewhat above retail until Sony can fill the retail channels.
If you're sitting on a PS3 that you're going to ebay, I'd suggest you hold onto it for a week or two before putting up your auction. You're gambling against Sony's inability to fill the market, and the closer you get to Christmas the higher your potential selling price will be. Sell now and get a "guaranteed" $800-900, or wait and maybe get $1500+ but risk getting less than retail if Sony pulls a miracle out of their ass.
OK, I believe you, but the three screenshots you chose to attach to this review look like a bunch of greys and browns. I look forward to seeing the game myself.
By default, the game has a very washed-out look even in places with actual color (the outdoor factory portions of Act 3, as Zonk mentioned). However, you can change that. There are several video options that you can choose beyond the default, like "soft" or "vibrant". I initially played through the game on my 50" DLP under the default setting. I'm playing through again on vibrant (and hardcore), and the visuals have an extra "pop" that wasn't there before. Try playing around with the video settings to see what works best on your TV.
My local Redmond Bear Creek GameStop claimed they would be getting "very few" Wii systems on Friday, probably around 5 or 6. I'll try again after the holidays.
If you're in Redmond, you should make friends with an NOA employee or DigiPen student (DigiPen students need an NOA employee for access to the store, but if they attend DigiPen then it's a safe bet that they know at least one NOA employee). The store discount isn't much, but Nintendo is good about having stock on hand for employees and friends/family.
Disclaimer: I'm not an NOA employee, but I have a friend who is who helped me get my Wii yesterday.
To all of the Ebay resellers that endured week long lines, biting cold, searing heat, slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, all for ownership of a PS3 that they might sell it for 400% of retail price before Christmas, I say unto thee: Ha ha! Pwn3d n00bz!
Nah. The shipments will likely be very small, on the order of 10 or fewer consoles per store (more likely around 2-5 consoles). Given the demand and Sony's inability to satisfy, I think the ebayers will be fine at least through the holiday season and possibly as long as next spring.
We saw what happened when Microsoft had a problem with chip suppliers for the Xbox 360. That was just memory chips. Sony's having a problem getting blue lasers for the BD drives as well as suffering under low yields for Cell chips (some reports have yields as low as 10-20%, though I doubt it's truly that bad). It will take a miracle for Sony to hit their estimate of 2 million consoles on the market by end of this year, and even if they do a fair number of those will fall after the holiday.
None of my friends are playing GoW. Some of us did for a little bit just because it was new, but I am really depressed that a year into the 360's life and this is all we have. Microsoft really should have launched with Halo 3 or at the very worst launched it at the time of GoW. I don't think anyone would give a damn about the broken and limited gameplay in GoW if Halo 3 was out.
Games take time, and Halo has historically taken 3 years between installments (H1: 2001, H2: 2004, H3: 2007). Perhaps Microsoft could've shipped a Halo 2.5 at the 360 launch (one year after H2 shipped), but a Halo 3? No, you just need to be patient. The multiplayer beta/demo will be out next spring, and you can look forward to Halo overload throughout all of next year. And then around November (because Halos release in November, so assume Halo 3 will also release in November) you'll finally have your hands on Halo 3.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with the sentiment -- toolbars are evil. However, there are some toolbars that are trustworthy. Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are the immediate examples that come to mind, and you only need one of those. I wouldn't install any others unless I was intimately familiar with them (either written by me, or open source so that I can inspect the code and make my own changes if I so desire).
The thing I don't really get is why toolbars are so pervasive. IE has an extensibility model just like Firefox and you can add quite a few nice features without having to expose a toolbar. For example, I wrote myself a pop-up blocker for IE as a non-toolbar BHO something like 6 years ago. Now you can't get a pop-up blocker without also getting a space-consuming toolbar in the process, and the pop-up blocking functionality on the toolbar is disabled if the toolbar isn't visible -- that's just dumb. Firefox has a rich add-on community that doesn't revolve around toolbars. IE could have the same type of community, but unfortunately everything useful seems to be a toolbar these days even if there's no reason to implement it that way.
While I'm sure you're being facetious, you do realize that IE7 is available for XP and has the anti-phishing feature, right? If you still want to stick with IE6 (or have to, like if you're running Win2k), you can get the same anti-phishing protection from the Windows Live Toolbar. It's all the same technology, backed by the same store of anti-phishing data.
It's not that they change the GPUs (what, you think Acer et al have the ability to re-design and re-fab ATI/nVidia's chips?), but that the drivers just don't have the right enumerations for the laptop hardware. In most cases, this is a simple fix with a tool like DH Mod Tool (there may be something similar for nVidia chipsets, but I have an ATI x300 so this is the tool I use). Works flawlessly for me.
Your poor knife!
Duh. You're sharpening the blade way more often than necessary, and in such a way that you're probably removing way too much material each time as well. I doubt your knife needs to be sharpened more than once every six months, if even that much. Instead, you should buy a honing steel to keep your knife edge "true". A honing steel doesn't sharpen, but it can make your knife seem sharper because it's straightening out the sharp edge that may have been blunted from previous cuttings. In most cases, a "dull" knife actually just has a blunted edge that can be restored with honing.
Right, because the motivation couldn't have been wanting to get a top-notch GPU at an affordable price from a company that knows how to build GPUs successfully. Nope, it was just one more salvo in Microsoft's covert war against FOSS.
I'm sure the switch to ATI chips in the 360 from nVidia chips in the Xbox had nothing to do with nVidia wanting more of the pie than Microsoft was willing to give while ATI was willing to sell their IP so that Microsoft can do what they like with it in the future (such as integrating it into a 360-on-a-chip at some point in the future, a problem Sony's going to have down the road when they try to build a slimline PSThree and find out that they can't merge chips due to nVidia's licensing agreement ...). Instead, I'm 100% positive Microsoft decided to switch to ATI just so they could spread around their patents to foil FOSS development.
It's surely a possibility, considering that Microsoft, nVidia, ATI, and others all collaborate on the design and development of DirectX features (since many features are useless without hardware support behind them). However, it's more realistic that nVidia and ATI have their own proprietary IP and patents that could severely hurt their business if competitors got their hands on them. For example, how do you think it's possible for nVidia and ATI to get performance increases from several-year-old GPUs with nothing more than a driver update? Oh, wait, conspiracy theory: obviously nVidia and ATI intentionally hinder the performance of their GPUs so that they can slowly trickle out driver updates that will add incremental performance increases. For free. Because that makes sense.
If you installed your tinfoil hat properly you wouldn't have to worry about people listening to your thoughts ...
Also, that doesn't mean that the console is still selling at a loss. Getting the console sale price to break-even or into profit doesn't automatically mean profit for the division. There's still headcount to pay for, amortized research costs, future R&D, etc. Getting to break-even or better is an excellent first step, but as they say there's still much more to do.
Oh, yeah, and FY08 is July of CY07 (Calendar Year 2007). So they're saying that as early as Q1 FY08 (aka, September/October CY07) tthe E&D division could be in the black on the financial report. Yes, that's about a year away, but it's not as long as it sounds by saying "FY08" instead of "CY07".
Where is this magical wonderland where you live? Where I'm at, the sky is gray, the grass is covered in a blanket of white, and water is frozen.
Yeah, like Microsoft and Geometry Wars.
Way to rewrite history, there. LucasArts adventure games had quite good graphics at the time. Certainly better than their competition from Sierra. They're not that great now, but one of the draws of LucasArts games was their excellent graphics direction (not necessarily the best graphics, but consistent and appropriate to the game). Sure shoots a hole in your theory, eh?
Why can't you have both gameplay and graphics? For example, Zelda: Twilight Princess is fun (even though we've all played the game before several times), but it would be better with better graphics. Gears of War has great gameplay and graphics. Yes, some companies do focus on graphics to the detriment of gameplay (*cough*EA*cough*), but that's not everybody.
What does that have to do with DLP color wheels?
If the color wheel only spun 60 times per second, the picture wouldn't even be recognizeable. Assuming a 3-section color wheel, that means you'd only get green, red, or blue every third frame. Our eyes work much faster than that when determining color (motion can be synthesized with very few frames per second, creating colors out of sequential individual base colors requires much more than that).
I may be a little off with my upper-end range (30,000RPM), but 10,000RPM and above is actually quite common. For example:
- A randomly chosen current-model 1080p Samsung DLP: color wheel speed is 14,400RPM
- My year-old 720p Samsung DLP: 10,800RPM
I couldn't find RPM ratings for Mitsubishi or Toshiba TVs for comparison (they don't list that on their spec sheets like Samsung does), but it's a safe bet that if Samsung color wheels are running at 10-14K RPMs then so are other DLP sets.High-end DLP projectors, like those used in movie theaters, use three DMDs from a single light source that's been split into component colors via a prism. At least that's how it used to be. They'll probably move to three individual LED-based light sources emitting pure red, green, and blue. Of course they'll still need individual DMDs, which is where the expense comes in (and why consumer-grade sets don't use individual DMDs and thus need color wheels).
Because you have the exact same problem with DLP sets, and a similar issue with LCD (backlight). DLP bulbs are replaceable, though they usually last 2-3 years before replacement. Buy yourself a good store warranty for $100 and you'll get a free lamp replacement out of it (the only time store warrantees are worth anything). By the time you need a second lamp replacement (around the 5-6 year mark), you may as well buy a new TV.
No they don't. Plasmas suffer burn-in because they emit colors in the same way as a CRT -- using red, green, and blue phosphors. "Burn-in" happens when the phosphors age non-uniformly, such as when a static image is held in place too long. You can combat this by properly setting your contrast (TVs are set to torch mode in the stores because it looks better under the flourescents; at home you should have your contrast set to a much lower level) and by pixel-shifting, but you can't eliminate it so long as the technology uses a consumable resource for emitting colored light (phosphors).
LCDs and DLPs don't burn in because they use filters over white light to emit colors. DLP does this with a color wheel rotating anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 times per second, with the DMD adjusting for each window of the wheel to emit the correct amount of the base color of light (basic wheels contain red, green, and blue filters. Better wheels double up on the colors and often add several different shades of blue and green since our eyes are more attuned to those colors than red. Non-consumer high-end models have individual DMDs and filters for each color). LCDs have discrete filters for red, green, and blue, and the liquid crystal is set to a state to allow just the right amount of each through (thus you can do sub-pixel rendering, such as Cleartype font-smoothing). But it's still all about emitting filtered light, not emitting colored light from a phosphor. Your backlight may go out, but that's replaceable. Good luck replacing individual phosphors when they burn out.
There are a number of reasons why people don't want or can't use front projection.
- Not enough room. You need to have a sizeable room for front projection if you really want to get to that 100" size. Being able to project the image is only part of the equation. Optimal viewing distance for a 50" set is between 6 and 10 feet (depending on HD or SD content). Do you really have a room big enough to accomodate a 20ft viewing distance for your 100" image?
- Not enough control over ambient lighting. Front projection needs a relatively dark room, much moreso than a rear-projection TV (CRT, LCoS, DLP, LCD) or direct-view (CRT, LCD, Plasma).
- Wife-acceptance factor. Try telling your wife that she has to make sure the blackout shades are down if she wants to watch her soaps or Oprah in the middle of the day.
- You realize that size isn't everything. Sure, you can get a 100" display, but depending on the technology in your projector you'll likely suffer screen-dooring or pixelization (especially for low-end consumer-grade projectors). 1280x720 (16x9 720p) at 100" diagonal is 14 pixels per inch.
- You realize that the price of the projector isn't everything. For proper viewing, you really need a good screen. A flat, white wall is merely "okay". A flat wall with special paint is better. A proper screen is best. Bear in mind that most people don't have truly flat walls, since drywall is usually somewhat textured. It might look flat, but project an image on it and you've suddenly got a bunch of little bumps causing little shadows all throughout the picture. A screen is really the way to go, and that's not cheap, especially if you want a roll-up model so it hides easily.
When all of the variables are right, front-projection is nice. Getting everything to come together for a proper viewing experience either requires extreme luck or large amounts of money. You can certainly go overboard, like a friend of mine who just put in a $15,000 theater, but even a modest projector + screen + blackout curtains will run you more than the $2000 I spent on a 50" rear-projection DLP.I'd just like to point out that the article you linked is crap. Or, more precisely, it's written by a developer who's apparently never used a GUI design tool. Most of his "problems" boil down to, "You're still going to have to write your own code anyway, regardless of what you do in the GUI builder," which I answer with a great big, "Duh!" In fact, most of his signs of GUI builder use are really just signs that you're dealing with a lazy developer, a non-developer who bought into the idea that he could just drag 'n drop his way to freedom, or a developer (like the author) who's not very familiar with the GUI builder in question and/or has pre-judged the GUI builder tool before even trying to use it.
Granted, 99% of my GUI builder experience has been with Microsoft Visual Studio which is actually very good, so maybe his concerns are valid for other tools. Of his list of signs, Visual Studio makes it trivial to handle the first three (layout management, variable names, and localization), it's possible to fix the fourth one by writing custom controls, and there's nothing wrong with the fifth one (common boiler plate code) though with the use of parital classes in .NET 2.0 Visual Studio does its best to hide that from the developer.
The expiration period is 3 weeks or 24 hours from first play, whichever comes first. I assume the 3 week period doesn't kick in until you've completed the download, but it'll be three weeks before anybody besides Microsoft will know for sure. Unfortunately, you can start playing the movie while it's still downloading, thus triggering the 24 hour expiration period. That leaves you with a nasty decision -- start playing the movie now while it's downloading and risk having it expire before it's finished, or wait 2-3 days for it to completely download and lose interest in the movie.
What if Sony ties critical functionality like downloading games (a la Microsoft's XBLA) to the web browser? And what if said web browser makes you use the controller like a mouse rather than having a proper console interface? I'll give Sony a hard time for that. Microsoft doesn't include a web browser for various reasons ("It's a game console", anti-trust speculation, etc), but they provide a very nice and easy interface to interact with their Marketplace. Nintendo has a web browser available (well, eventually), but the Wiimote is very much a mouse and browsing using the Wiimote should be very nice. Sony has a web browser that pretty much requires you to plug in a USB mouse and keyboard to be able to use it. If I wanted to do that, I'd use a PC.
That was kind of the point of bringing Bose into the argument. Everybody knows that for ~$900 you can get a system that sounds better than Bose's $3000 Lifestyle system. Sony's not quite that bad, but you can get better speakers, receivers, DVD players, TVs, cameras, laptops/computers, etc from other brands for $$$s less than Sony's. Sony's not bad, per se, nor do they truly suck. They're just relatively bad and and sucky.
I disagree. Or rather, I don't believe Sony was all that great in the 1980s either. The main thing they had going for them was the Walkman. They were the Apple of the 80s. Everybody wanted a Walkman (iPod) and all of the knock-offs had subtle (or not-so-subtle) problems that made them worse than the real thing. Sony was cool thanks to the Walkman, and so their other products came along for the ride (well, except for BetaMax, but Sony effectively killed BetaMax all on their own through bad decisions -- you know, kinda like what they later did with MiniDisc, Memory Stick, UMD, and Blu-Ray).
Yes, consumers got more vocal, but Sony didn't get any better either. If anything, their cool cachet diminished significantly in the mid- to late-90s, exposing the mediocrity of the rest of the company.
No, Sony is still making good products at a price premium. There's nothing that Sony does so much better than JVC, Panasonic, Samsung, et al that could justify the price difference between Sony products and everything else. Sony is just the poor man's Bose -- smart people can get better quality products for less, but if you've got to have that brand label then nothing's going to stop you from buying it.
Microsoft doesn't get to make that decision. The time period that the movie stays "active" (14 days, or 24 hours after initial viewing) is decided solely by the content providers (ie, the MPAA). In this case, the only choice Microsoft has is no real choice at all: either offer obscure non-MPAA movies and TV shows or bend to the will of the MPAA in terms of DRM usage periods. While the average slashdotter might be willing to use a video service that doesn't contain any popular Hollywood movies, the target audience for this feature won't.
HD movies are on the order of 5-6GB. Bearing in mind that the 20GB hard drive needs to be used for other things as well (demos, XBLA games, game saves, buffers, etc), the fact that 20GB in marketing speak is really only 18.5GB, and that ~5GB of that is reserved by the console for various reasons leaving you only 12-13GB to work with, you'll be lucky to get 2 HD movies on the drive along with your other data.
As the sibling post says, that's just Unreal 3. Sure, it has a big, beefy human character but that's just Epic's style. As far as GoW on anything but Xbox 360, keep in mind that Microsoft published the game (usually Epic gets published by Atari/Infogrames/GT Interactive/whatever they're calling themselves these days) so unless Epic can shop around to another publisher (no idea what's in their development contract; they may not be able to shop around) they're not going to get GoW published on PS3 or Wii. There's still a chance it may make it to Windows, though probably as a Vista-only gamelike Halo 2.
And then there's the fact that the two company stores are within a block of each other, and surrounded by both Nintendo and Microsoft buildings.
Just wait. There's an ebb and flow to these things. We're past the big launch weekend so supplies are high (in the hands of ebayers). As those supplies start to thin out, and with Sony unable to adequately restock retailers, and with breeders getting crazy as the holidays draw closer and closer and they still haven't gotten little Johnny his PS3 yet so he'll love them, ebay auction prices will go back up. They'll go down again after the holiday but should still remain somewhat above retail until Sony can fill the retail channels.
If you're sitting on a PS3 that you're going to ebay, I'd suggest you hold onto it for a week or two before putting up your auction. You're gambling against Sony's inability to fill the market, and the closer you get to Christmas the higher your potential selling price will be. Sell now and get a "guaranteed" $800-900, or wait and maybe get $1500+ but risk getting less than retail if Sony pulls a miracle out of their ass.
By default, the game has a very washed-out look even in places with actual color (the outdoor factory portions of Act 3, as Zonk mentioned). However, you can change that. There are several video options that you can choose beyond the default, like "soft" or "vibrant". I initially played through the game on my 50" DLP under the default setting. I'm playing through again on vibrant (and hardcore), and the visuals have an extra "pop" that wasn't there before. Try playing around with the video settings to see what works best on your TV.
If you're in Redmond, you should make friends with an NOA employee or DigiPen student (DigiPen students need an NOA employee for access to the store, but if they attend DigiPen then it's a safe bet that they know at least one NOA employee). The store discount isn't much, but Nintendo is good about having stock on hand for employees and friends/family.
Disclaimer: I'm not an NOA employee, but I have a friend who is who helped me get my Wii yesterday.
Nah. The shipments will likely be very small, on the order of 10 or fewer consoles per store (more likely around 2-5 consoles). Given the demand and Sony's inability to satisfy, I think the ebayers will be fine at least through the holiday season and possibly as long as next spring.
We saw what happened when Microsoft had a problem with chip suppliers for the Xbox 360. That was just memory chips. Sony's having a problem getting blue lasers for the BD drives as well as suffering under low yields for Cell chips (some reports have yields as low as 10-20%, though I doubt it's truly that bad). It will take a miracle for Sony to hit their estimate of 2 million consoles on the market by end of this year, and even if they do a fair number of those will fall after the holiday.
Games take time, and Halo has historically taken 3 years between installments (H1: 2001, H2: 2004, H3: 2007). Perhaps Microsoft could've shipped a Halo 2.5 at the 360 launch (one year after H2 shipped), but a Halo 3? No, you just need to be patient. The multiplayer beta/demo will be out next spring, and you can look forward to Halo overload throughout all of next year. And then around November (because Halos release in November, so assume Halo 3 will also release in November) you'll finally have your hands on Halo 3.