Considering I've never purchased any of the previous releases, I'm not sure how much of a sucker that makes me. Sure these are the bastardized versions but the DVD transfer is very nice and clean. Besides now I don't have to feel bad about my transferred off laserdisc original trilogy version.
I don't live in the basement and I do get out. In fact being employed full time and having two kids doesn't give me that much time for gaming. Gaming is to me what TV is for majority of the population. I don't watch TV, I game. So I spend as much on a video card as someone else might on a TV ($500 doesn't even get you that much of a TV). On the far end of the scale - you do have some people who take it to the extreme. Look this card does 3 fps better in Doom 3 so I'll pay extra to get it. That's a bit silly. But obsession is always kind of insane. Train since you are 5 years old for that one shot at the gold medal for curling? Your analogy to ricers is apt and is the same as for any tinkering hobby. No matter how silly it may be squeezing that last drop of power out is part of the hobby. Just as much as modifying the look.
As for faster refresh rates than the eye can see - all I'm aiming for is 60. I can SEE the 60hz refresh rate on a desktop and it bugs the crap out of me.
I spent a little under $400 for 6800GT. Why? I play games on a 19" monitor and prefer playing at 1024x168 or higher with antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. I also wanted a video card that would last awhile. Considering that it smokes on every game out there right now, it will be viable for quite awhile. Gaming is my hobby and I enjoy it more with good equipment. Just like any other hobby. Can't afford it? If it matters that much to you, save or get another job or whatever. I busted ass on some freelance work to pay for my computer upgrades. Spent half my profit on upgrades and put the rest in savings. As for your console commment. Sure go for it. It is much cheaper. Also much lower res and if you are used to mouse and keyboard then the controller is kind of lame for FPS games. My other complaint is the there aren't a lot of good strategy games on consoles. No Civilization 3 or Rise of Nations. I have a PS2 and a GameCube - they are good for what they are - but don't get nearly as much usage as the pcs.
Um, ok. Gaming is my hobby. I enjoy it more with high end hardware. I don't brag to anyone about my system - nor do I care what they think about it. I also like having a high end card because I am satisfied with the performance and buying high end has the greatest impact on my gaming experience. Other hobbies have high priced premium products. $500 is NOTHING for golf clubs, let alone green fees. How about the cost of a parachute? Skies and snowboarding equipment? Ricing out a car? Home theater flat panel and surround sound speakers? Why is it that with gaming there are so many people who "can't believe the INSANE amount of money people will spend on a video card"?
All of the PCs I purchase for work now use the onboard (motherboard) video option. For general office work there is no need for 3D graphics and the onboard video works fine. In fact in my workstation I am still using the Matrox dual head AGP card I got for it about 4 years ago although the desktop itself is only about six months old. Onboard video is standard for most lower end PCs. The only problem arises when people skimp on the system memory. Pairing a high speed processor with a shared memory onboard video in a system with 128MB of RAM creates a terrible bottleneck. The only thing I hate is that we no longer have our "team building" Unreal tournament sessions since none of the systems can run 3D for shit.:(
Well that definately depends on what resolution you play your games on and whether or not anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering are important to you. I play on a 19" monitor and 640x480 or 800x600 looks very jagged. I would be interested in seeing what types of framerates you get in Doom 3 or Far Cry on a 9200SE. I went from a 5600 Ultra to a 6800 GT and was blown away by the difference. Being able to run all of my games in 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 with AA and aniso on is awesome. Running 1280x1024 in City of Heroes means my screen isn't cluttered with large interface elements. So the res does actually improve gameplay in some cases. Certainly the importance of high end graphics is dependant on the individual but if all I wanted was 640x480 that Xbox might look better.
Supply and demand. I guess they will charge what the market will bear. These prices have been the norm for several years though. The GeForce 4 series high end 4600 model initially cost $500 with the 4400 coming in at $400 and the 4200 around $300. I do think that this time around parts scarcity has something to do with it. I found it almost impossible to find a 6800 GT when I went looking.
I agree that this was an odd move. Considering that PCI-Express motherboards are in the "early adopter" stage. I think perhaps Nvidia and ATI are hoping to get these cards out in large quantities for the OEM system market in time for the Christmas buying season. Retailers are likely to be pushing the new PCI-Express systems as the wave of the future for the holidays.
I guess you hate your work laptop? Seriously I have a Dell Latitude D600 at work which is a solid machine and works well. Sure the Powerbook is prettier - but its not like Apple has never made a machine with design flaws. My friend just had to pick up replacement hinges for his Powerbook (not the latest but one generation back PR G4) due to the problem with the weakness of the double hinge design on that model. BTW your post may have valid points but they are pretty much negated by the tone and extreme bias. You hate wintel - you love Apple. Yet another Mac zealot just like the ones who modded you informative. I have no problem with Apple - I just happen to enjoy not being shoehorned into specific hardware configurations. Want a mid range Mac with a good video card? Guess what? You are out of luck. Don't have $3000 for the tower plus monitor to get a Mac with a good video card? Too bad. With x86 I get flexibility in hardware choices at low cost as well as several operating systems to choose from and the largest software base in the world. And while OSX is a nice operating system, I'll take the flexibility of x86 over it. Some day in the distant future perhaps Mac users and the rest of the world will be able to have a reasonable discussion about computers without it degenerating into drivel. But then again perhaps not. Disclaimer: I use and administer Mac OS 9 and OS X, Windows 98-XP, FreeBSD 4.10 and various Linux distros. They all have their good points and they all have their bad. Some are best for certain tasks (Mac for DTP) and others for different tasks (Windows XP for games). I've been OS agnostic since the Amiga died. Now if you want to talk about a REAL computer...;)
NTFS is not a problem to deal with. Go get yourself a Knoppix Linux distro on CD. Boot off of it and use the NT tools to recover the data off of the NTFS drive. If you don't do Linux look picking up a copy of ERD Commander or other similar recovery CD products. ERD Commander is nice in that it can roll XP back to any available system restore states as well as recover data off of NTFS. That being said - is there any reason to use NTFS over FAT32? Hell yeah. 4k block sizes versus the 32k or higher for modern drives on FAT32. You will get MUCH less wasted disk space out of the drive. Additionally NTFS is more reliable than FAT32 and less prone to unrecoverable crap outs.
Ah, but the pirated market did. The second time I ever saw Star Wars we in the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia. About 100 people gathered around a 15 inch black and white T.V. and a honking huge VCR. For most of the staff there, it was the first time they had seen it. I was lucky enough to see it on the big screen during a trip back to the states.
NTSC is interlaced at a rate of 60Hz (60 fields per second) which gives you 30 frames per second (an interlaced field being half of the frame). PAL is 50Hz, 50 fields a second, 25 frames per second. PAL also has a greater vertical resolution at 576. It should be noted that the aspect ratio of the DVD actually affects the resolution that the DVD check out the chart at:
And in a perfect world every DVD would be properly remastered and cleaned up before release. Unfortunately, it seems like some DVDs - particularly earlier releases that were rushed to market have horrible transfers. I have some DVDs that look grainy and spotted with a flat color range. Oftentimes these movies are cleaned up and rereleased on DVD later as a special or deluxe edition with a cleaner transfer. It's a a good idea to check out DVD review sites for information about the quality of the films transfer.
Judge not a book by its length. I really don't care if a book is long or short provided it's a good read. I do frequently get annoyed by a lot of recent books which seem to be long just for the sake of padding it out. Books that don't really have much to say and take forever to say it are annoying. I do love writers who can write long and stay interesting. Dan Simmons Hyperion series was a blast and I also enjoyed his recent Ilium.
Sure in a corporate environment where you havea the funding standardization for basic desktops is the way to go. If you have virtually NO budget for computers (my son's school has a budget of $2000 for computers) then this approach is a good one. It should be noted that by using the ltsp software the client computers are diskless and boot off of the server. You couldn't use Ghost on them if you wanted to! The point is to make the clients cheap and relatively disposable. Also taking out the hard drives removes a common failure point and means that you only need to secure the server. No need for antivirus or adware removal etc. on the clients.
As the AC noted - the highend laserdisc version was completely uncompressed. Sure its an analog out - but if you have a decent player you can do a capture of seperated video rather then composite. The quality is excellent. So your encode to mpeg 2 format for the DVDs would be very close in quality to the actual laserdisc with probably no real loss in quality. Of course you need to know what you are doing to make the transfer and encode come out nice - and you won't get the 5.1 sound but it is certainly better than keeping the honking huge ass laserdisc around. Before you open your mouth why don't you actually get some experience in video - you idiot.
Supposedly there are additional changes from the Special Edition version. The most talked about one is the replacement of the actor who played Anakin in Return of the Jedi with Hayden Christensen (Anakin from episodes 2 and 3).
Wow. I wonder what type of encoding they were using. Encoding 2 hours of video to DIVX on my old Pentium 3 850 took about 10 hours, when I moved to a P4 2.4GHz encoding time dropped to 2.5 hours.
So then a dual-core chip with hyperthreading counts as four cpus for licensing? Now that would be retarded. In fact requiring a two cpu license for a hyperthreading chip is also extremely stupid.
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Lt. Orora
That would Lt. Uhura. And man she showed some tight abs in that mirror universe episode.
Considering I've never purchased any of the previous releases, I'm not sure how much of a sucker that makes me.
Sure these are the bastardized versions but the DVD transfer is very nice and clean.
Besides now I don't have to feel bad about my transferred off laserdisc original trilogy version.
Well every graphics card I have purchased since 1996 is still in use in a computer system.
Not as my primary, but as the kids and secondary test box.
I don't live in the basement and I do get out. In fact being employed full time and having two kids doesn't give me that much time for gaming. Gaming is to me what TV is for majority of the population. I don't watch TV, I game. So I spend as much on a video card as someone else might on a TV ($500 doesn't even get you that much of a TV).
On the far end of the scale - you do have some people who take it to the extreme. Look this card does 3 fps better in Doom 3 so I'll pay extra to get it. That's a bit silly. But obsession is always kind of insane. Train since you are 5 years old for that one shot at the gold medal for curling?
Your analogy to ricers is apt and is the same as for any tinkering hobby. No matter how silly it may be squeezing that last drop of power out is part of the hobby. Just as much as modifying the look.
As for faster refresh rates than the eye can see - all I'm aiming for is 60. I can SEE the 60hz refresh rate on a desktop and it bugs the crap out of me.
I spent a little under $400 for 6800GT. Why? I play games on a 19" monitor and prefer playing at 1024x168 or higher with antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. I also wanted a video card that would last awhile. Considering that it smokes on every game out there right now, it will be viable for quite awhile.
Gaming is my hobby and I enjoy it more with good equipment. Just like any other hobby.
Can't afford it? If it matters that much to you, save or get another job or whatever. I busted ass on some freelance work to pay for my computer upgrades. Spent half my profit on upgrades and put the rest in savings.
As for your console commment. Sure go for it. It is much cheaper. Also much lower res and if you are used to mouse and keyboard then the controller is kind of lame for FPS games.
My other complaint is the there aren't a lot of good strategy games on consoles. No Civilization 3 or Rise of Nations.
I have a PS2 and a GameCube - they are good for what they are - but don't get nearly as much usage as the pcs.
"people's vanity, greed and poor judgment"
Um, ok. Gaming is my hobby. I enjoy it more with high end hardware. I don't brag to anyone about my system - nor do I care what they think about it. I also like having a high end card because I am satisfied with the performance and buying high end has the greatest impact on my gaming experience.
Other hobbies have high priced premium products. $500 is NOTHING for golf clubs, let alone green fees. How about the cost of a parachute? Skies and snowboarding equipment? Ricing out a car? Home theater flat panel and surround sound speakers?
Why is it that with gaming there are so many people who "can't believe the INSANE amount of money people will spend on a video card"?
All of the PCs I purchase for work now use the onboard (motherboard) video option. For general office work there is no need for 3D graphics and the onboard video works fine. :(
In fact in my workstation I am still using the Matrox dual head AGP card I got for it about 4 years ago although the desktop itself is only about six months old.
Onboard video is standard for most lower end PCs. The only problem arises when people skimp on the system memory. Pairing a high speed processor with a shared memory onboard video in a system with 128MB of RAM creates a terrible bottleneck.
The only thing I hate is that we no longer have our "team building" Unreal tournament sessions since none of the systems can run 3D for shit.
Well that definately depends on what resolution you play your games on and whether or not anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering are important to you.
I play on a 19" monitor and 640x480 or 800x600 looks very jagged.
I would be interested in seeing what types of framerates you get in Doom 3 or Far Cry on a 9200SE.
I went from a 5600 Ultra to a 6800 GT and was blown away by the difference. Being able to run all of my games in 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 with AA and aniso on is awesome.
Running 1280x1024 in City of Heroes means my screen isn't cluttered with large interface elements. So the res does actually improve gameplay in some cases.
Certainly the importance of high end graphics is dependant on the individual but if all I wanted was 640x480 that Xbox might look better.
Supply and demand. I guess they will charge what the market will bear. These prices have been the norm for several years though. The GeForce 4 series high end 4600 model initially cost $500 with the 4400 coming in at $400 and the 4200 around $300.
I do think that this time around parts scarcity has something to do with it. I found it almost impossible to find a 6800 GT when I went looking.
I agree that this was an odd move. Considering that PCI-Express motherboards are in the "early adopter" stage.
I think perhaps Nvidia and ATI are hoping to get these cards out in large quantities for the OEM system market in time for the Christmas buying season. Retailers are likely to be pushing the new PCI-Express systems as the wave of the future for the holidays.
I guess you hate your work laptop? ;)
Seriously I have a Dell Latitude D600 at work which is a solid machine and works well.
Sure the Powerbook is prettier - but its not like Apple has never made a machine with design flaws. My friend just had to pick up replacement hinges for his Powerbook (not the latest but one generation back PR G4) due to the problem with the weakness of the double hinge design on that model.
BTW your post may have valid points but they are pretty much negated by the tone and extreme bias. You hate wintel - you love Apple. Yet another Mac zealot just like the ones who modded you informative.
I have no problem with Apple - I just happen to enjoy not being shoehorned into specific hardware configurations. Want a mid range Mac with a good video card? Guess what? You are out of luck. Don't have $3000 for the tower plus monitor to get a Mac with a good video card? Too bad.
With x86 I get flexibility in hardware choices at low cost as well as several operating systems to choose from and the largest software base in the world. And while OSX is a nice operating system, I'll take the flexibility of x86 over it.
Some day in the distant future perhaps Mac users and the rest of the world will be able to have a reasonable discussion about computers without it degenerating into drivel. But then again perhaps not.
Disclaimer: I use and administer Mac OS 9 and OS X, Windows 98-XP, FreeBSD 4.10 and various Linux distros. They all have their good points and they all have their bad. Some are best for certain tasks (Mac for DTP) and others for different tasks (Windows XP for games). I've been OS agnostic since the Amiga died. Now if you want to talk about a REAL computer...
NTFS is not a problem to deal with. Go get yourself a Knoppix Linux distro on CD. Boot off of it and use the NT tools to recover the data off of the NTFS drive. If you don't do Linux look picking up a copy of ERD Commander or other similar recovery CD products. ERD Commander is nice in that it can roll XP back to any available system restore states as well as recover data off of NTFS.
That being said - is there any reason to use NTFS over FAT32? Hell yeah. 4k block sizes versus the 32k or higher for modern drives on FAT32. You will get MUCH less wasted disk space out of the drive. Additionally NTFS is more reliable than FAT32 and less prone to unrecoverable crap outs.
All three have been posted to suprnova.org within the last week. Go there and check out the movies section.
Ah, but the pirated market did. The second time I ever saw Star Wars we in the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia. About 100 people gathered around a 15 inch black and white T.V. and a honking huge VCR. For most of the staff there, it was the first time they had seen it. I was lucky enough to see it on the big screen during a trip back to the states.
NTSC is interlaced at a rate of 60Hz (60 fields per second) which gives you 30 frames per second (an interlaced field being half of the frame). PAL is 50Hz, 50 fields a second, 25 frames per second. PAL also has a greater vertical resolution at 576.
It should be noted that the aspect ratio of the DVD actually affects the resolution that the DVD check out the chart at:
PAL vs NTSC
And in a perfect world every DVD would be properly remastered and cleaned up before release. Unfortunately, it seems like some DVDs - particularly earlier releases that were rushed to market have horrible transfers. I have some DVDs that look grainy and spotted with a flat color range.
Oftentimes these movies are cleaned up and rereleased on DVD later as a special or deluxe edition with a cleaner transfer.
It's a a good idea to check out DVD review sites for information about the quality of the films transfer.
Judge not a book by its length. I really don't care if a book is long or short provided it's a good read. I do frequently get annoyed by a lot of recent books which seem to be long just for the sake of padding it out. Books that don't really have much to say and take forever to say it are annoying.
I do love writers who can write long and stay interesting. Dan Simmons Hyperion series was a blast and I also enjoyed his recent Ilium.
Yeah but you have to admit from an open source perspective this a good sort of FUD. :)
Sure in a corporate environment where you havea the funding standardization for basic desktops is the way to go.
If you have virtually NO budget for computers (my son's school has a budget of $2000 for computers) then this approach is a good one.
It should be noted that by using the ltsp software the client computers are diskless and boot off of the server. You couldn't use Ghost on them if you wanted to!
The point is to make the clients cheap and relatively disposable. Also taking out the hard drives removes a common failure point and means that you only need to secure the server. No need for antivirus or adware removal etc. on the clients.
As the AC noted - the highend laserdisc version was completely uncompressed. Sure its an analog out - but if you have a decent player you can do a capture of seperated video rather then composite. The quality is excellent. So your encode to mpeg 2 format for the DVDs would be very close in quality to the actual laserdisc with probably no real loss in quality.
Of course you need to know what you are doing to make the transfer and encode come out nice - and you won't get the 5.1 sound but it is certainly better than keeping the honking huge ass laserdisc around.
Before you open your mouth why don't you actually get some experience in video - you idiot.
Supposedly there are additional changes from the Special Edition version. The most talked about one is the replacement of the actor who played Anakin in Return of the Jedi with Hayden Christensen (Anakin from episodes 2 and 3).
Seven words: Laser Disc Definitive Collection - converted to DVD.
No it's called Vagina Dentata and Freud's been out of fashion for quite some time.
Wow. I wonder what type of encoding they were using. Encoding 2 hours of video to DIVX on my old Pentium 3 850 took about 10 hours, when I moved to a P4 2.4GHz encoding time dropped to 2.5 hours.
So then a dual-core chip with hyperthreading counts as four cpus for licensing?
Now that would be retarded. In fact requiring a two cpu license for a hyperthreading chip is also extremely stupid.