PS Thanks for not being a pedantic twat about my typo, was a refreshing change...
From the way I'm usually a pedantic twat about your typos? I don't remember doing anything like...
Hey, wait a minute!!! If I've done things I don't remember doing, that means either I'm slightly forgetful, or, far more likely, I will eventually learn to TRAVEL THROUGH TIME!
Sorry for the fact that I have been / will be a pedantic twat sometime in my future (which is actually the past.) I'm going to be / was out of line. Perhaps I can / did make it up to you by letting you see the pyramids being built or something cool like that.
When I speculate about it being a clue, I'm not talking about the spin-off, so much as I mean a clue to the ultimate meaning of all the "Torchwood" references within the series itself.
We never meet the eccentric scientist who established the Torchwood Estate. The way the name stretches through history, "Bad Wolf" style, implies some kind of connection to the Doctor, don'tcha think?
It was the most obvious joke you could make, and the first thing I thought of when seeing the headline as well.
Mad props for the "Bad Wolf" reference, even if you did have a typo.
Bad Wolf is old and busted though. The new hotness is "Torchwood." It's mentioned in almost every episode of season 2.
("Torchwood" an anagram of "Doctor Who." Whether that's a clue to anything or just the writers trying to be clever, we will see as the season goes on.)
I can also spread peanut butter on a Kobe steak, but that seems kind of wasteful when I'll get the same peanut butter taste spreading it on Wonder Bread.
Well, the point I was making is that, if you own a 720p system, the best results for converting 1080 resolutions on the fly is usually to pull them down to 1/4 HD and then upscale them.
Likewise, if you have a 540p system (which is what many of the cheaper/older projectors are), you still gain very little when going from a 480p Anamorphic DVD to a 1080i HD-DVD.
That doesn't mean that there aren't current DVD's which look like crap. Some are so badly compressed that they look like crap on conventional SD sets. What I'm saying is that the potential image quality of an ordinary DVD is not that far behind what a lot of people are going to see when playing the new formats on anything less than the top-end systems.
When I saw a 1/4 HD on an 80" screen at a friends house a few months ago. HDTV broadcasts looked very nice on it. When we popped a good-quality DVD into the system, I found myself asking, "how many people are going to look at an image like this and say it's not good enough?"
That's what has me wondering how much real demand there is for either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.
The new formats won't be totally useless... One nice feature will be, when bundling seasons of TV shows, you could probably stuff a lot more episodes on one disk, since the upper bounds of the source material is often far below the specs of HD.
But my point stands. There's no way in hell I'm buying another copy of "The Blues Brothers", just for the sake of HDTV. People replaced their VHS tapes with DVD's because VHS degrades (and was of rather poor image quality to begin with.)
The real evidence that neither format will explode as fast as the industry would like is that there already was a video format with superior quality to DVD at the time that DVD came out: The LD. Remember how that went?
Apple pricing has historically been downright goofy compared to commodity PC's, but this is just let's check it out.
Gyah. Preview, preview, preview.
That was supposed to read:
Apple pricing has historically been downright goofy compared to commodity PC's, but this is just meant to be a quick-and-dirty snapshot of a couple eras... let's check it out.
Why, oh why, does the slashcode still not allow edits, after all these years!?
Forget "inflation". If you really want to compare values, line up the cost of the consoles against the cost of computing hardware.
I used the Mac, because it's conventient to look up past prices on "lowendmac.com", admitedly, Apple pricing has historically been downright goofy compared to commodity PC's, but this is just let's check it out.
In 1985, when the NES was released for $200, the Macintosh 512K (no hard drive) came out for $3,300.
In 1990, when the $200 SNES arrived, the Mac IIfx was introduced at $9,900.
Today, the Wii is expected to be released for $250 (maybe $200), and you can buy a new Mac mini for $600.
There was a time when console gaming was THE gaming solution for those who could not afford to just buy a game computer.
These days, if you want to sell a console, you need some other hook besides price to set it apart. Sony and Microsoft are betting on selling you an uber-fast PC dressed like a console and taking a loss on each unit. Nintendo is hoping their "sideways TV remote" controller will dazzle people.
I'm going to reserve judgement until all three consoles are actually out (and a few more games have appeared for each), but so far it's looking like a very easy generatin of consoles to skip, especially when there's an interesting and exciting hand-held game market to eat my available entertainment dollars.
Also by then, a non-HD television to plug it in to will be free. People will beg you to take it, so they can avoid the disposal fee.
So realistically, buying one now with the intention of selling it in six years only costs you $225. Plus, it will enable you to get somebody to take your old TV set when the time comes. That's gotta easily be worth $26 or so.
I might be wrong, but 1080i isn't pulled down to "1/4 HD". At worst, it's being pulled down to 1920×540, or "1/2 HD".
540p is "1/4 HD." You are reducing both the vertical and horizontal rows in half, meaning you could fit four screens into a full 1080 screen. Hence, 1/4 HD.
Of course, if you have one of the many 720p projectors or sets out there (as I do... Panasonic 700u on a glorious HUGE screen) then 1080i sources are already being pulled down to 1/4 HD (540p) and then "upscaled" to 720p.
Unless I'm watching a 720p signal (such as "Lost" on ABC, or "House" on FOX), everything I watch comes from a source which is not much higher in resolution than a 480p DVD.
There are also a ton of native 1/4 HD systems floating around out there, as they are vastly more affordable than a 1080 system. These people also gain very little from resolutions higher than what current DVD's can provide.
Which is why both HD formats are a huge freakin' waste of money, as far as I'm concerned. I might eventually move to whichever format wins, but the makers of these disks are utterly stoned if they think I'm going to bother replacing my existing library with new media just for another 60 theoretical lines of resolution.
Unless my eyes get a whole lot better, or I suddenly have room for a screen bigger than the 119" system that I have now, current DVD's look plenty good enough for me to stand pat.
I think, IF they can sell enough of these puppies, Nintendo's lower graphics specs will bring in a lot of small third-party devs who want to crank out relatively quick and simple games.
However, on the down-side... larger devs who want to sell cross-platform games are going to see a box with far lower graphics performance (both graphics AND CPU-wise) than the other two major consoles, also with less storage space, and a controller with fewer buttons, and will probably decide to skip the Nintendo, especially if a combo of PS3 + 360 looks like it covers around 70% of the market.
Then again, Nintendo's strategy is based on expanding the market beyond traditional gamers, so I'm sure they don't give a crap about future iterations of NBA Street, GTA, Madden, etc. If their strategy pays off and gets them a major chunk of the console market, then all those third-party players will eventually be talking about porting games FROM the Wii instead of to it.
All that aside, if I was running a game production house, and wanted to sell a simple, clever, low-cost game with modest graphics requirements, I would probably be far more inclined to write it for the Nintendo DS. It has a much larger installed user base and is possibly even cheaper to write for than the Wii or even the old GC.
Swerving back on topic: Who gives a crap what they used to demo the new system? It was a PRE-RELEASE DEMO! If they had a fully-functional Wii to demonstration stuff on, then they would probably be just about ready to release it, don'tcha think?
I'm cool with discussing the Wii. The Wii gets several articles written about it each week where you'll never hear me complain about people discussing it. What I'm complaining about is Wii fanboys shilling for it on articles about other stuff.
Buying RAM for a Mac isnt' what it used to be. If I remember right, before the MacIntels, and such, you had to buy special matched/paired memory kits for upgrades, specially from Apple.
You don't remember right.
I've owned Macs for years, and never once used anything other than cheap third-party memory to upgrade them. The G3 Towers were very picky about memory that was up to spec, but even then there was no need to buy from Apple.
And how, exactly, would you suggest installing "matched/paired memory kits" into the SINGLE SLOT in the G4 version of the Mac mini?
Million Dollar Baby Batman Begins The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou The Incredibles House of Flying Daggers Shaun of the Dead Sin City Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story Memoirs of a Geisha Capote Walk the Line Transamerica The Aristocrats March of the Penguins
There are PLENTY of good movies out there, if you look past the crappy Star Wars prequels and Tom Cruise vehicles.
As a former volunteer at our local prison, you're crediting the average criminal with more intelligence then can be proven. Let me tell you, the average criminal lacks the common sense necessary to come out of the rain, let alone do a clean install of OS X.
Well, to be fair... If you work at a prison, you only see the criminals who were dumb enough to get caught, and furthermore too dumb to find a lawyer who could mount a useful enough defense to keep them out of prison.
In the majority of crimes, the perp gets away with it. Only the unlucky and the really, really stupid end up in prison.
Fanboy of what? Pointing out fanboys means I must be a fanboy of something else. Wierd logic you have there.
I don't know what kind of a weird, weird world you live in, but I don't have wet dreams about Zelda, or motion-sensors, nor do I have regular dreams about Zelda, or motion-sensors, or video games, or computer pereipherals.
You must have been home sick the day they were handing out senses of humor.
Note, also, that having longevity as someone who bitches about fanboys isn't really impressive.
Did I say I've been bitching about fanboys for all this time? Heck no! I'm just bitching about Revolution/Wii fanboys because they are the most absurd people I've ever seen on this forum. The object of their affection hasn't even been made yet, and they love it so much they are prepared to scream and yell at me for pointing out that it just very well might turn out to be something less than a complete "revolution" of the industry.
Methinks that you're simply a disappointed Sony fanboi who can't handle the fact that they aren't part of the cool team anymore. Get over it.
Interesting theory. I've never owned a PS2, though, nor the PS before it.
If I salivate over Nintendo's new underpowered, stupidly-named, overpriced (That's right! Overpriced! It's the only one made with hardware so cheap, they are selling it at a profit on launch day! Sony's new $800 box for $600 is too expensive, but Nintendo's $150 box for $250 is a fuckin' rip-off.) and not-yet-released console because it promises to let me pretend to swing swords with a TV remote, will that get me on this "cool team" of yours?
Actually, if you look at his other posts, he pretty much spends every gaming thread bitching about people shilling for Nintendo.
If, by "every gaming thread", you mean "three gaming threads", then yes. However, I've been around and posting on gaming threads since long before you had your first wet dream of playing Zelda with a motion-sensor.
Oh, and look at that... the ONE thread in my current history where you can see I made a similar complaint, it was was ANOTHER thread about a console other than the Nintendo which the fanboys were spamming with cheers for the Wii. What a shock.
As long as the drumbeat of tiresome rah-rah keeps coming up for this console (which hasn't even been released yet) in every goddamn console thread that ISN'T about the Wii, and as long as I have interludes of idle time to joyously point out your fanboyish idiocy, I will continue to do so without apology.
Four replies in to the very first thread of a PS3 story, and already a post shilling for Nintendo. Just about the same thing happens in every X-Box 360 thread.
I have no idea where you got this crazy idea. I grew up in a suburb of Nagoya and my family had a dog in a tiny backyard of our house.
I got that crazy idea from spending some time in Japan, mainly in the Tokyo and Osaka metro areas (which represents more than half of the total population of Japan.) Tiny houses. No yards to speak of.
Even in the small (by Japanese standards) city of Kobe, houses were practically butted up against each other, with their front steps emptying right onto the street.
I didn't get out to Nagoya. Interesting to hear that it's a little different there. Irrelevant to my point, but interesting.
Well, if "Mistshadow24k" says he's not a shill, then maybe there aren't any after all. I mean, it's not like you are a somebody I've never meet or heard of before. I think I should totally take you at your word as you tell us you detailed testimonial about how you are a former X-Box fan who thinks the 360 is unreliable and how excited you are to buy a Wii... even though, for all anybody knows, it could turn out to be even less reliable than the 360.
The Wii has not hit the market yet. It could turn out to be a great console with a lot of fun games. It could end up being completely horrible and useless. Nobody really knows yet, and anybody who says they do is either delusional or a shill.
Slashdot Mirror
PS Thanks for not being a pedantic twat about my typo, was a refreshing change...
From the way I'm usually a pedantic twat about your typos? I don't remember doing anything like...
Hey, wait a minute!!! If I've done things I don't remember doing, that means either I'm slightly forgetful, or, far more likely, I will eventually learn to TRAVEL THROUGH TIME!
Sorry for the fact that I have been / will be a pedantic twat sometime in my future (which is actually the past.) I'm going to be / was out of line. Perhaps I can / did make it up to you by letting you see the pyramids being built or something cool like that.
When I speculate about it being a clue, I'm not talking about the spin-off, so much as I mean a clue to the ultimate meaning of all the "Torchwood" references within the series itself.
We never meet the eccentric scientist who established the Torchwood Estate. The way the name stretches through history, "Bad Wolf" style, implies some kind of connection to the Doctor, don'tcha think?
It was the most obvious joke you could make, and the first thing I thought of when seeing the headline as well.
Mad props for the "Bad Wolf" reference, even if you did have a typo.
Bad Wolf is old and busted though. The new hotness is "Torchwood." It's mentioned in almost every episode of season 2.
("Torchwood" an anagram of "Doctor Who." Whether that's a clue to anything or just the writers trying to be clever, we will see as the season goes on.)
So... Does Netcraft confirm it?
I know people who still occasionally fire up their Dreamcast systems. Old consoles are dead when they stop running, not before.
Hey, go easy. If I bought a Neil Diamond CD, I wouldn't want to admit it either.
You know you can plug it into an HDTV, right?
I can also spread peanut butter on a Kobe steak, but that seems kind of wasteful when I'll get the same peanut butter taste spreading it on Wonder Bread.
Wow. This sounds fascinating. Who's Peter Moore, and why should I care what he thinks about these three consoles?
Learn to write a summary. Sheesh!
Well, the point I was making is that, if you own a 720p system, the best results for converting 1080 resolutions on the fly is usually to pull them down to 1/4 HD and then upscale them.
Likewise, if you have a 540p system (which is what many of the cheaper/older projectors are), you still gain very little when going from a 480p Anamorphic DVD to a 1080i HD-DVD.
That doesn't mean that there aren't current DVD's which look like crap. Some are so badly compressed that they look like crap on conventional SD sets. What I'm saying is that the potential image quality of an ordinary DVD is not that far behind what a lot of people are going to see when playing the new formats on anything less than the top-end systems.
When I saw a 1/4 HD on an 80" screen at a friends house a few months ago. HDTV broadcasts looked very nice on it. When we popped a good-quality DVD into the system, I found myself asking, "how many people are going to look at an image like this and say it's not good enough?"
That's what has me wondering how much real demand there is for either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.
The new formats won't be totally useless... One nice feature will be, when bundling seasons of TV shows, you could probably stuff a lot more episodes on one disk, since the upper bounds of the source material is often far below the specs of HD.
But my point stands. There's no way in hell I'm buying another copy of "The Blues Brothers", just for the sake of HDTV. People replaced their VHS tapes with DVD's because VHS degrades (and was of rather poor image quality to begin with.)
The real evidence that neither format will explode as fast as the industry would like is that there already was a video format with superior quality to DVD at the time that DVD came out: The LD. Remember how that went?
Apple pricing has historically been downright goofy compared to commodity PC's, but this is just let's check it out.
Gyah. Preview, preview, preview.
That was supposed to read:
Apple pricing has historically been downright goofy compared to commodity PC's, but this is just meant to be a quick-and-dirty snapshot of a couple eras... let's check it out.
Why, oh why, does the slashcode still not allow edits, after all these years!?
Forget "inflation". If you really want to compare values, line up the cost of the consoles against the cost of computing hardware.
I used the Mac, because it's conventient to look up past prices on "lowendmac.com", admitedly, Apple pricing has historically been downright goofy compared to commodity PC's, but this is just let's check it out.
In 1985, when the NES was released for $200, the Macintosh 512K (no hard drive) came out for $3,300.
In 1990, when the $200 SNES arrived, the Mac IIfx was introduced at $9,900.
Today, the Wii is expected to be released for $250 (maybe $200), and you can buy a new Mac mini for $600.
There was a time when console gaming was THE gaming solution for those who could not afford to just buy a game computer.
These days, if you want to sell a console, you need some other hook besides price to set it apart. Sony and Microsoft are betting on selling you an uber-fast PC dressed like a console and taking a loss on each unit. Nintendo is hoping their "sideways TV remote" controller will dazzle people.
I'm going to reserve judgement until all three consoles are actually out (and a few more games have appeared for each), but so far it's looking like a very easy generatin of consoles to skip, especially when there's an interesting and exciting hand-held game market to eat my available entertainment dollars.
It won't be $25 at a yard sale yet either.
Sure it will.
In 2012 or so.
Also by then, a non-HD television to plug it in to will be free. People will beg you to take it, so they can avoid the disposal fee.
So realistically, buying one now with the intention of selling it in six years only costs you $225. Plus, it will enable you to get somebody to take your old TV set when the time comes. That's gotta easily be worth $26 or so.
There you go. $199 price-point reached. ^_^
While I largely agree with your technical points, I'm not even going to ask why you have a better HD system in your bedroom than in your living room.
I might be wrong, but 1080i isn't pulled down to "1/4 HD". At worst, it's being pulled down to 1920×540, or "1/2 HD".
540p is "1/4 HD." You are reducing both the vertical and horizontal rows in half, meaning you could fit four screens into a full 1080 screen. Hence, 1/4 HD.
Of course, if you have one of the many 720p projectors or sets out there (as I do... Panasonic 700u on a glorious HUGE screen) then 1080i sources are already being pulled down to 1/4 HD (540p) and then "upscaled" to 720p.
Unless I'm watching a 720p signal (such as "Lost" on ABC, or "House" on FOX), everything I watch comes from a source which is not much higher in resolution than a 480p DVD.
There are also a ton of native 1/4 HD systems floating around out there, as they are vastly more affordable than a 1080 system. These people also gain very little from resolutions higher than what current DVD's can provide.
Which is why both HD formats are a huge freakin' waste of money, as far as I'm concerned. I might eventually move to whichever format wins, but the makers of these disks are utterly stoned if they think I'm going to bother replacing my existing library with new media just for another 60 theoretical lines of resolution.
Unless my eyes get a whole lot better, or I suddenly have room for a screen bigger than the 119" system that I have now, current DVD's look plenty good enough for me to stand pat.
I think, IF they can sell enough of these puppies, Nintendo's lower graphics specs will bring in a lot of small third-party devs who want to crank out relatively quick and simple games.
However, on the down-side... larger devs who want to sell cross-platform games are going to see a box with far lower graphics performance (both graphics AND CPU-wise) than the other two major consoles, also with less storage space, and a controller with fewer buttons, and will probably decide to skip the Nintendo, especially if a combo of PS3 + 360 looks like it covers around 70% of the market.
Then again, Nintendo's strategy is based on expanding the market beyond traditional gamers, so I'm sure they don't give a crap about future iterations of NBA Street, GTA, Madden, etc. If their strategy pays off and gets them a major chunk of the console market, then all those third-party players will eventually be talking about porting games FROM the Wii instead of to it.
All that aside, if I was running a game production house, and wanted to sell a simple, clever, low-cost game with modest graphics requirements, I would probably be far more inclined to write it for the Nintendo DS. It has a much larger installed user base and is possibly even cheaper to write for than the Wii or even the old GC.
Swerving back on topic: Who gives a crap what they used to demo the new system? It was a PRE-RELEASE DEMO! If they had a fully-functional Wii to demonstration stuff on, then they would probably be just about ready to release it, don'tcha think?
I'm cool with discussing the Wii. The Wii gets several articles written about it each week where you'll never hear me complain about people discussing it. What I'm complaining about is Wii fanboys shilling for it on articles about other stuff.
Buying RAM for a Mac isnt' what it used to be. If I remember right, before the MacIntels, and such, you had to buy special matched/paired memory kits for upgrades, specially from Apple.
You don't remember right.
I've owned Macs for years, and never once used anything other than cheap third-party memory to upgrade them. The G3 Towers were very picky about memory that was up to spec, but even then there was no need to buy from Apple.
And how, exactly, would you suggest installing "matched/paired memory kits" into the SINGLE SLOT in the G4 version of the Mac mini?
Some very good recent movies (YMMV, obviously):
Million Dollar Baby
Batman Begins
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
The Incredibles
House of Flying Daggers
Shaun of the Dead
Sin City
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Memoirs of a Geisha
Capote
Walk the Line
Transamerica
The Aristocrats
March of the Penguins
There are PLENTY of good movies out there, if you look past the crappy Star Wars prequels and Tom Cruise vehicles.
As a former volunteer at our local prison, you're crediting the average criminal with more intelligence then can be proven. Let me tell you, the average criminal lacks the common sense necessary to come out of the rain, let alone do a clean install of OS X.
Well, to be fair... If you work at a prison, you only see the criminals who were dumb enough to get caught, and furthermore too dumb to find a lawyer who could mount a useful enough defense to keep them out of prison.
In the majority of crimes, the perp gets away with it. Only the unlucky and the really, really stupid end up in prison.
Fanboy alert.
Fanboy of what? Pointing out fanboys means I must be a fanboy of something else. Wierd logic you have there.
I don't know what kind of a weird, weird world you live in, but I don't have wet dreams about Zelda, or motion-sensors, nor do I have regular dreams about Zelda, or motion-sensors, or video games, or computer pereipherals.
You must have been home sick the day they were handing out senses of humor.
Note, also, that having longevity as someone who bitches about fanboys isn't really impressive.
Did I say I've been bitching about fanboys for all this time? Heck no! I'm just bitching about Revolution/Wii fanboys because they are the most absurd people I've ever seen on this forum. The object of their affection hasn't even been made yet, and they love it so much they are prepared to scream and yell at me for pointing out that it just very well might turn out to be something less than a complete "revolution" of the industry.
Methinks that you're simply a disappointed Sony fanboi who can't handle the fact that they aren't part of the cool team anymore. Get over it.
Interesting theory. I've never owned a PS2, though, nor the PS before it.
If I salivate over Nintendo's new underpowered, stupidly-named, overpriced (That's right! Overpriced! It's the only one made with hardware so cheap, they are selling it at a profit on launch day! Sony's new $800 box for $600 is too expensive, but Nintendo's $150 box for $250 is a fuckin' rip-off.) and not-yet-released console because it promises to let me pretend to swing swords with a TV remote, will that get me on this "cool team" of yours?
Actually, if you look at his other posts, he pretty much spends every gaming thread bitching about people shilling for Nintendo.
If, by "every gaming thread", you mean "three gaming threads", then yes. However, I've been around and posting on gaming threads since long before you had your first wet dream of playing Zelda with a motion-sensor.
Oh, and look at that... the ONE thread in my current history where you can see I made a similar complaint, it was was ANOTHER thread about a console other than the Nintendo which the fanboys were spamming with cheers for the Wii. What a shock.
As long as the drumbeat of tiresome rah-rah keeps coming up for this console (which hasn't even been released yet) in every goddamn console thread that ISN'T about the Wii, and as long as I have interludes of idle time to joyously point out your fanboyish idiocy, I will continue to do so without apology.
Four replies in to the very first thread of a PS3 story, and already a post shilling for Nintendo. Just about the same thing happens in every X-Box 360 thread.
You need to read this.
kthxbye.
I have no idea where you got this crazy idea. I grew up in a suburb of Nagoya and my family had a dog in a tiny backyard of our house.
I got that crazy idea from spending some time in Japan, mainly in the Tokyo and Osaka metro areas (which represents more than half of the total population of Japan.) Tiny houses. No yards to speak of.
Even in the small (by Japanese standards) city of Kobe, houses were practically butted up against each other, with their front steps emptying right onto the street.
I didn't get out to Nagoya. Interesting to hear that it's a little different there. Irrelevant to my point, but interesting.
Well, if "Mistshadow24k" says he's not a shill, then maybe there aren't any after all. I mean, it's not like you are a somebody I've never meet or heard of before. I think I should totally take you at your word as you tell us you detailed testimonial about how you are a former X-Box fan who thinks the 360 is unreliable and how excited you are to buy a Wii... even though, for all anybody knows, it could turn out to be even less reliable than the 360.
The Wii has not hit the market yet. It could turn out to be a great console with a lot of fun games. It could end up being completely horrible and useless. Nobody really knows yet, and anybody who says they do is either delusional or a shill.