Why on EARTH would somebody want to license Dreamcast's obsolete technology? PSX2 I can understand... Sony's tech has a good 2 or three years of consumer life, and even 6 or 7 months of life in the PC peripheral market, but Sega's only "tech" is the ancient PowerVR graphics and the crappy GD-ROM (a 1GB CD-ROM bastardization)
Anybody here actually have the Neon 250? I thought not - that graphics tech is surpassed by the Kyro, which still aims only to beat the previous generation of video chipsets (GeForce 1/Voodoo3). Sony's tech is at least a FULL generation beyond Sega's, so given competitive pricing for the chips, who do you think will get the business?
Sega has lost. Jaleco won't even publish games that have been written for the DC, because of the poor market. Meanwhile, the PSX2 sold in record numbers, and is expected to do the same here in the US - while Sega's execs fabricate the numbers to make themselves look good to the stockholders (they falsely inflated their sales figures by about double).
Nobody wants to license DC technology. It's capable of some very spiffy graphics, but is already outdated and hampered by scads of terrible games that look pretty but play ugly. They should stick to the plan to release Bleem! so they can at least get a few decent titles to play on the system.
Well, as far as converting from DivX, it's simply a matter of changing the 4cc codes, but that doesn't do anything for the AVI format.
Still, from what I've read, it's not too clear if these new boxes will handle a DVD-style format (with MPEG-4 encoded video files) or simply play AVI or ASF files from a CD-R. Considering the proliferation of DivX movies on the internet (pubs, newsgroups, web) I wouldn't be too surprised to see a few Chinese DVD players handling them this way.
My Apex AD-600A reportedly handles CD-Rs with mpg files placed in the root directory (though I haven't check that out personally), so it's not too much of a leap.
Handling ASF would be preferable, since most bootlegs are two-part VCDs transcoded to DivX... and those can be easily stitched together with a simple text ASX file (AVI or ASF segments)
As for audio, WMA support is gaining acceptance in the portable audio world, so perhaps it could be supported by the player as well (Oh, by the way, Layer 3 audio works great with MPEG-1 files played on many "Chinese" DVD players)
Re:That's odd... I have the source code around...
on
Video Shrinks With MP4
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· Score: 1
I remember downloading the original sourcecode for M$ codec a while back.
I'd be interested to know how they can continue to improve and update the codec, if all they are working from is binaries. Disassembly is NOT much of an option on this sort of code.
Geez... DivX has been around for ages!! And it was created from the SOURCE CODE of Microsoft's own MPEG-4 encoder. These two "formats" are interchangable; one is a hack that has seen improvements, the other is Microsoft's own "branch" of the original codec.
As for playability, I can compress an entire 2 hour DVD into around 600MB with a 96kbps MP3 soundtrack, maintaining original letterbox (720x288) resolution.
While CommanderTaco's been sleeping, several companies have already announced set-top players for MPEG-4, and there's even a version of the codec (and player) available for the Mac.
Geez. Ever since I had a little C=64 the term "Cracker" has ALWAYS referred to an individual who writes "cracks" for programs that have copy protection routines.
"Hacker" is a person who infiltrates systems and/or causes damage to said system
"Phreaker" is a person who uses knowledge of the phone system to illegally access it for free phone use.
"Slacker" is any slash-dotter wannabe who can't figure out what the difference is!!!
Really, "Hacker" is the proper term to use... they "hack" into systems. A "Cracker" does not infiltrate systems, not at all. Go out on the web and look up "cracks" - they have NOTHING to do with computer security!! However, a person could be BOTH a hacker AND a cracker.
Look for it at Circuit City - of course, this in-car MP3 player will not have the loopholes menu to disable Macrovision and region coding (heh heh heh)
I haven't seen a price. Apex is also known as L.A. Sound, so I expect the player to be released under that brand. Perhaps it will be sub-US$200 mark.
I've spent the last couple of weeks getting an MP3 player working for our AutoPC project, but the whole thing has been put on hold:( doesn't look like I'll be getting one for my car after all!! It was pretty decent, grabbing MP3s from Flash, CD-ROM or memory, displaying ID3 tag info and encoding info, as well as shuffle play. Works great - but now nobody will probably ever see it. Oh well.
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Why on EARTH would somebody want to license Dreamcast's obsolete technology? PSX2 I can understand... Sony's tech has a good 2 or three years of consumer life, and even 6 or 7 months of life in the PC peripheral market, but Sega's only "tech" is the ancient PowerVR graphics and the crappy GD-ROM (a 1GB CD-ROM bastardization)
Anybody here actually have the Neon 250? I thought not - that graphics tech is surpassed by the Kyro, which still aims only to beat the previous generation of video chipsets (GeForce 1/Voodoo3). Sony's tech is at least a FULL generation beyond Sega's, so given competitive pricing for the chips, who do you think will get the business?
Sega has lost. Jaleco won't even publish games that have been written for the DC, because of the poor market. Meanwhile, the PSX2 sold in record numbers, and is expected to do the same here in the US - while Sega's execs fabricate the numbers to make themselves look good to the stockholders (they falsely inflated their sales figures by about double).
Nobody wants to license DC technology. It's capable of some very spiffy graphics, but is already outdated and hampered by scads of terrible games that look pretty but play ugly. They should stick to the plan to release Bleem! so they can at least get a few decent titles to play on the system.
Well, as far as converting from DivX, it's simply a matter of changing the 4cc codes, but that doesn't do anything for the AVI format.
Still, from what I've read, it's not too clear if these new boxes will handle a DVD-style format (with MPEG-4 encoded video files) or simply play AVI or ASF files from a CD-R. Considering the proliferation of DivX movies on the internet (pubs, newsgroups, web) I wouldn't be too surprised to see a few Chinese DVD players handling them this way.
My Apex AD-600A reportedly handles CD-Rs with mpg files placed in the root directory (though I haven't check that out personally), so it's not too much of a leap.
Handling ASF would be preferable, since most bootlegs are two-part VCDs transcoded to DivX... and those can be easily stitched together with a simple text ASX file (AVI or ASF segments)
As for audio, WMA support is gaining acceptance in the portable audio world, so perhaps it could be supported by the player as well (Oh, by the way, Layer 3 audio works great with MPEG-1 files played on many "Chinese" DVD players)
I remember downloading the original sourcecode for M$ codec a while back.
I'd be interested to know how they can continue to improve and update the codec, if all they are working from is binaries. Disassembly is NOT much of an option on this sort of code.
Geez... DivX has been around for ages!! And it was created from the SOURCE CODE of Microsoft's own MPEG-4 encoder. These two "formats" are interchangable; one is a hack that has seen improvements, the other is Microsoft's own "branch" of the original codec.
As for playability, I can compress an entire 2 hour DVD into around 600MB with a 96kbps MP3 soundtrack, maintaining original letterbox (720x288) resolution.
While CommanderTaco's been sleeping, several companies have already announced set-top players for MPEG-4, and there's even a version of the codec (and player) available for the Mac.
OLD NEWS!
Geez. Ever since I had a little C=64 the term "Cracker" has ALWAYS referred to an individual who writes "cracks" for programs that have copy protection routines.
"Hacker" is a person who infiltrates systems and/or causes damage to said system
"Phreaker" is a person who uses knowledge of the phone system to illegally access it for free phone use.
"Slacker" is any slash-dotter wannabe who can't figure out what the difference is!!!
Really, "Hacker" is the proper term to use... they "hack" into systems. A "Cracker" does not infiltrate systems, not at all. Go out on the web and look up "cracks" - they have NOTHING to do with computer security!! However, a person could be BOTH a hacker AND a cracker.
Look for it at Circuit City - of course, this in-car MP3 player will not have the loopholes menu to disable Macrovision and region coding (heh heh heh)
:( doesn't look like I'll be getting one for my car after all!! It was pretty decent, grabbing MP3s from Flash, CD-ROM or memory, displaying ID3 tag info and encoding info, as well as shuffle play. Works great - but now nobody will probably ever see it. Oh well.
I haven't seen a price. Apex is also known as L.A. Sound, so I expect the player to be released under that brand. Perhaps it will be sub-US$200 mark.
I've spent the last couple of weeks getting an MP3 player working for our AutoPC project, but the whole thing has been put on hold