Re:External tuner support still a problem with Myt
on
Home Theatre PC Guide
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· Score: 1
Instead of asking what I'm smoking, how about educating me, and either explaining how, or better, pointing me to a resource that explains how to interface to an arbitrary external device?
External tuner support still a problem with Myth
on
Home Theatre PC Guide
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· Score: 1
Basically, MythTV doesn't handle working with external tuner boxes pretty much at all. The documentation is laughable IMO.
Sorry, but any "Tivo replacement" has to have at least some basic/adequate support for this, and Myth just doesn't - or I haven't come across a wonderful external tuner FAQ yet. Either way, I'm sticking with Tivo.
It seems that the cheapest monitor to make these days would be pure digital - digital DVI support only.
Instead, budget monitors come with analog only - which means more complex support circuitry, A/D converter, etc. than what it takes to support digital input.
Since almost all video cards come with one DVI port these days, at least, why not ship something that would be better, cheaper, and likely, more profitable? How about flipping things around and making the analog input optional (and more expensive)? I guess that would make too much sense.
AMD's PR ratings are hardly something that should be used as the basis of comparison. Moreover, they're supposed to suggest, from my understanding, of how a particular AMD model will compare to an Intel CPU ***from the corresponding family***. If you really don't understand this, you're effectively saying that you don't know enough about the industry to be writing about it.
The clock speed or name of the processor just shouldn't matter. Do you really think that your logic would factor into someone's buying decisions? If someone is really, really thinking about throwing down $1100 on the most expensive Intel _enthusiast_ CPU, don't you think that the obvious AMD choice would be to go with the most expensive AMD _enthusiast_ CPU?
The fact that you didn't go with the FX processor because it was "too fast" betrays your bias. Perhaps you should have showed the results of both the FX and 4000+, and let the reader decide which was a better fit for them?
As for being on the take, I may have given you too much credit. It seemed to me to be the most likely reason for such a boneheaded piece of work.
I wouldn't consider Nvida RAID a feature worth buying into at this point.
I have one box under Windows using Nvraid, and it is just terrible. It drops drives from the RAIDs seemingly for fun, and configuring a bootable RAID is difficult under XP, and impossible under Win2k (even with an SP4 slipstream install, in case anyone was going to point that out).
The management software is crude at best. It cannot, for example, email alerts when a drive drops off.
OK, I'm responding to a troll that called me a troll:)
Normally, in a processor comparison, the processors are comparable for a reason - same positioning by the companies involved, same price point, whatever.
In this case, it appears that the only reason why the AMD proc was chosen was to give Intel "wins" in close contests, like LAME MP3 encoding, and to not make Intel's best look too awful in the cases where AMD won.
Point is, Intel was represented with its best game. Why should AMD be presented in a less favorable light?
There is little journalistic integrity with these enthusiast sites.
The review is useless without comparing their test box to an Opteron dually. Since the details regarding how AMD is going to implement dual core is well known, they could take an existing AMD dually, and hobble it with a slower hypertransport setting which would give a pretty accurate simulation.
This lack of comparison indirectly tells me that AMD's dual core solution is going to wipe the floor with Intel's, even more so than the current AMD performance advantage over Intel on single core procs.
I wonder how big a gun Intel put to their head. I also wonder how much AMD is pissed off at being "scooped", when they've been working at this for a much longer time.
Hillary wants to be Madame President. But she has a reputation of being too much of lefty for many to tolerate her.
So, she's been on a campaign to create a history of "moving towards the center" (read: become more palatable to the Christian Right) that will be proudly trumpeted starting in 2007.
This is more than Hillary: notice Rev. Jackson coming to "aid" of Terri Schiavo, but only after her fate has been all but decided (even if they attempted to re-hydrate her now, she's likely too far gone to be saved).
This is all a horrendous effort by the Democrats to remake the party into a Bush Lite organization. They should be ashamed of themselves, really. Moreover, it'll fail.
Currently, too many third party softwares come as RPMs. Want to use Sybase? You need to be (somewhat) RPM compatible. Bleh.
I hope that this catches, and that the major distros help with the integration into the native package schemes. This'd be a great thing for folks that actually BUY software for Linux.
Isn't the local monopoly status of most cable companies granted by the local muncipality? Doesn't the local muncipality have the power to insist on common carrier status for Internet access? I know that more savvy communities used to hold the cable companies for community access channels, video equipment, classes, etc.
Is this just another situation where the elected officials are not working in the best interest of their constituents?
You make a good point - but I'd pay the BBC license fee if I could download their stuff legally. Or Tivo it from PBS or BBC America (which I already pay for), should they offer it.
The idea of an "expat" license would be a really, really good idea for the BBC, but it might conflict with their current licensing schemes.
Downloaded it, watched it, and felt that they had captured enough of the original that I want more. I hope that the Beeb does the right thing for those of us across the pond (USA).
They aren't getting just $60 million. They're getting $60 million plus undisclosed licensing revenue - a big difference.
MS will eventually disclose what this amount is on their quarterly reports - it should be fairly simple for someone to determine the extra amount being paid out for royalties and licensing. It won't be a billion, but it'll be many, many millions over a short period.
Think of a fair, small sum for every copy of Windows or Media Player that has been shipped, and every one that ever will be. I have a feeling that Burst is now set for life.
The author misses one crucial factor... investors tend have a bit of a "God Complex". They think that they know at least something about everything, and they almost always generalize from their own specific experience.
I remember pitching my startup to a group of investors. I can confidently say that my project had better prospects, and was a better business concept, than what they ended up investing in - something called gardensupply.com, or grass-seed.com, or some other silly name.
Did it make sense to ship really heavy stuff, like dirt, via expensive freight carriers? To them, yes - they all lived in the burbs, they all had huge lawns and gardens, and they all had lots of money. So for them, paying more for shipping than the cost of a product was a no-brainer.
For the rest of the world, it made no sense whatsoever. The company folded in months.
But then again, mine folded in just under 2 years, so what the hell do I know:)
At any rate, the point is that unless you can make potential investors understand your concept within their narrow, distorted worldview, or unless you can find an investor with an understanding of what you're trying to accomplish (rare), you aren't going to get funding.
My girlfriend moved into a swanky building with broadband pre-installed.
One day, she can't send email anymore via an external server set up to allow relay after POP authentication. Verizon has blocked all outgoing SMTP because most of their users have become spam-spewing zombies. It was easier for them to do this rather than turn off individuals.
Seriously, can my girlfriend complain to the FCC about this? Or, because email isn't as easily monetized a service as VOIP, they simply won't care?
I ordered some cheapo video card for my GF's computer a while back. I ordered a particular model as it supported a DVI monitor, and it supported DirectX 8.
It arrives, and it turns out that the DVI port is just for decoration. Ah, those evil Taiwanese. So I call Newegg.
It takes a bit of arm twisting, but I tell them that I want to return that card for one that supports both DVI and DirectX 8, and the same amount of memory. It can be cheaper, or it can be more expensive. That's what I want.
They send me a card that costs 3x as much:) I go away pretty damned satisfied.
I had an experience that backs up StevenMauer's posting:
I went to visit a friend this weekend past. He was very excited to show me his new plasma TV.
It was big, and it was expensive. But the video looked like total shit. I pretended to be as delighted as he was.
Big mistake: I had to watch a movie from his DirecTivo, non-HDTV. The video was stretched such that folks looked insane, and such that the digital artifacts that you normally can't see were just AWFUL. You'd figure that with familar circular logos now looking egg shaped, he'd get it. Nope.
In other words, his big investment gave him a video picture that is significantly worse than what he had. And that's the key here: my friend spent the money to make him feel like he has a bigger penis, the video itself be damned. He can't see the difference.
And if he can't see the difference, then he'll take any copy of video content with the lowest price - no matter the quality. I have a feeling that analog video is going to make a big comeback for some folks, whether they realize it or not.
* The mail part of the equation is more stable than Thunderbird, which crashes and behaves oddly. I had to downgrade to.8 from 1.0, as.8 seems to be the last stable version.
* You can't middle-button-click on an email link and have it come up as a new tabbed window in FireFox. Very handy behavior.
Running Windows as a non-root user is nearly impossible for Grandma. Nothing will work, nothing installs. Games, most shareware, and even a whole lot of commercialware - they just will not work, or they will not install. And just try to explain the concept of users or permissions to her!
There's a reason why Windows users do what they do - the OS forces you to do so.
Maybe they need to get voice sussed out first
on
The Other VoIP
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· Score: 1
I have BOTH Vonage (personal) and Voicepulse (biz lines). They need to fix/tweak a few things, really little things:
* Use a rational codec for voicemail attachments that are sent out - NOT raw.WAV files. Yes, we have broadband, but we don't like downloading huge files, folks.
* FAX FAX FAX. They really need to bust out some kind of T.38 bridge for their customers. Faxing just doesn't work - which means at least some bucks for Verizon.
* Do for calls what we do for email! C'mon, we're talking about bits now. Why can't I selectively block calls? Have multiple outgoing messages for different callers? Filtering on caller ID (ok, Voicepulse has some crappy attempts at this).
Forget video. No one really wants this - see: "Failure of Videophones that work on POTS lines".
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Instead of asking what I'm smoking, how about educating me, and either explaining how, or better, pointing me to a resource that explains how to interface to an arbitrary external device?
Sorry, but any "Tivo replacement" has to have at least some basic/adequate support for this, and Myth just doesn't - or I haven't come across a wonderful external tuner FAQ yet. Either way, I'm sticking with Tivo.
It seems that the cheapest monitor to make these days would be pure digital - digital DVI support only.
Instead, budget monitors come with analog only - which means more complex support circuitry, A/D converter, etc. than what it takes to support digital input.
Since almost all video cards come with one DVI port these days, at least, why not ship something that would be better, cheaper, and likely, more profitable? How about flipping things around and making the analog input optional (and more expensive)? I guess that would make too much sense.
jh
Your reply is just silly.
AMD's PR ratings are hardly something that should be used as the basis of comparison. Moreover, they're supposed to suggest, from my understanding, of how a particular AMD model will compare to an Intel CPU ***from the corresponding family***. If you really don't understand this, you're effectively saying that you don't know enough about the industry to be writing about it.
The clock speed or name of the processor just shouldn't matter. Do you really think that your logic would factor into someone's buying decisions? If someone is really, really thinking about throwing down $1100 on the most expensive Intel _enthusiast_ CPU, don't you think that the obvious AMD choice would be to go with the most expensive AMD _enthusiast_ CPU?
The fact that you didn't go with the FX processor because it was "too fast" betrays your bias. Perhaps you should have showed the results of both the FX and 4000+, and let the reader decide which was a better fit for them?
As for being on the take, I may have given you too much credit. It seemed to me to be the most likely reason for such a boneheaded piece of work.
jh
I wouldn't consider Nvida RAID a feature worth buying into at this point.
I have one box under Windows using Nvraid, and it is just terrible. It drops drives from the RAIDs seemingly for fun, and configuring a bootable RAID is difficult under XP, and impossible under Win2k (even with an SP4 slipstream install, in case anyone was going to point that out).
The management software is crude at best. It cannot, for example, email alerts when a drive drops off.
My $.02.
jh
OK, I'm responding to a troll that called me a troll :)
Normally, in a processor comparison, the processors are comparable for a reason - same positioning by the companies involved, same price point, whatever.
In this case, it appears that the only reason why the AMD proc was chosen was to give Intel "wins" in close contests, like LAME MP3 encoding, and to not make Intel's best look too awful in the cases where AMD won.
Point is, Intel was represented with its best game. Why should AMD be presented in a less favorable light?
There is little journalistic integrity with these enthusiast sites.
Hmm, let's see. Let's take an Intel processor with these characteristics:
* Fastest consumer CPU they offer,
* Priced at about $1100, street
And compare it to the AMD offering, with these characteristics:
* Second fastest CPU they offer,
* Price of about half of the Intel offering.
Yes, that is a most fair review. It makes perfect sense to conclude that, on mostly identical chipsets, that Intel is faster.
How much are these sites paid under the table?
The review is useless without comparing their test box to an Opteron dually. Since the details regarding how AMD is going to implement dual core is well known, they could take an existing AMD dually, and hobble it with a slower hypertransport setting which would give a pretty accurate simulation.
This lack of comparison indirectly tells me that AMD's dual core solution is going to wipe the floor with Intel's, even more so than the current AMD performance advantage over Intel on single core procs.
I wonder how big a gun Intel put to their head. I also wonder how much AMD is pissed off at being "scooped", when they've been working at this for a much longer time.
jh
Hillary wants to be Madame President. But she has a reputation of being too much of lefty for many to tolerate her.
So, she's been on a campaign to create a history of "moving towards the center" (read: become more palatable to the Christian Right) that will be proudly trumpeted starting in 2007.
This is more than Hillary: notice Rev. Jackson coming to "aid" of Terri Schiavo, but only after her fate has been all but decided (even if they attempted to re-hydrate her now, she's likely too far gone to be saved).
This is all a horrendous effort by the Democrats to remake the party into a Bush Lite organization. They should be ashamed of themselves, really. Moreover, it'll fail.
Currently, too many third party softwares come as RPMs. Want to use Sybase? You need to be (somewhat) RPM compatible. Bleh.
I hope that this catches, and that the major distros help with the integration into the native package schemes. This'd be a great thing for folks that actually BUY software for Linux.
jh
Isn't the local monopoly status of most cable companies granted by the local muncipality? Doesn't the local muncipality have the power to insist on common carrier status for Internet access? I know that more savvy communities used to hold the cable companies for community access channels, video equipment, classes, etc.
Is this just another situation where the elected officials are not working in the best interest of their constituents?
jh
You make a good point - but I'd pay the BBC license fee if I could download their stuff legally. Or Tivo it from PBS or BBC America (which I already pay for), should they offer it.
The idea of an "expat" license would be a really, really good idea for the BBC, but it might conflict with their current licensing schemes.
Downloaded it, watched it, and felt that they had captured enough of the original that I want more. I hope that the Beeb does the right thing for those of us across the pond (USA).
They aren't getting just $60 million. They're getting $60 million plus undisclosed licensing revenue - a big difference.
MS will eventually disclose what this amount is on their quarterly reports - it should be fairly simple for someone to determine the extra amount being paid out for royalties and licensing. It won't be a billion, but it'll be many, many millions over a short period.
Think of a fair, small sum for every copy of Windows or Media Player that has been shipped, and every one that ever will be. I have a feeling that Burst is now set for life.
jh
The author misses one crucial factor... investors tend have a bit of a "God Complex". They think that they know at least something about everything, and they almost always generalize from their own specific experience.
:)
I remember pitching my startup to a group of investors. I can confidently say that my project had better prospects, and was a better business concept, than what they ended up investing in - something called gardensupply.com, or grass-seed.com, or some other silly name.
Did it make sense to ship really heavy stuff, like dirt, via expensive freight carriers? To them, yes - they all lived in the burbs, they all had huge lawns and gardens, and they all had lots of money. So for them, paying more for shipping than the cost of a product was a no-brainer.
For the rest of the world, it made no sense whatsoever. The company folded in months.
But then again, mine folded in just under 2 years, so what the hell do I know
At any rate, the point is that unless you can make potential investors understand your concept within their narrow, distorted worldview, or unless you can find an investor with an understanding of what you're trying to accomplish (rare), you aren't going to get funding.
My girlfriend moved into a swanky building with broadband pre-installed.
One day, she can't send email anymore via an external server set up to allow relay after POP authentication. Verizon has blocked all outgoing SMTP because most of their users have become spam-spewing zombies. It was easier for them to do this rather than turn off individuals.
Seriously, can my girlfriend complain to the FCC about this? Or, because email isn't as easily monetized a service as VOIP, they simply won't care?
jh
They wasted so much promise with this show that it really does deserve to die. I will miss Jolene Blalock's overall yuminess, however.
This is correct. Moreover, when one resolution was interlaced, and the other wasn't, it'd "line-double" the interlaced screen.
It was every easy to impress PC users once you started "sliding" screens up and down, revealing a stack of them.
JH
I ordered some cheapo video card for my GF's computer a while back. I ordered a particular model as it supported a DVI monitor, and it supported DirectX 8.
:) I go away pretty damned satisfied.
It arrives, and it turns out that the DVI port is just for decoration. Ah, those evil Taiwanese. So I call Newegg.
It takes a bit of arm twisting, but I tell them that I want to return that card for one that supports both DVI and DirectX 8, and the same amount of memory. It can be cheaper, or it can be more expensive. That's what I want.
They send me a card that costs 3x as much
JH
Forget video - what if I want to, say, do word processing on this thing, too?
JH
Look at the proto's screen res - 704x480. Could be used as a notebook replacement easily enough.
This version is not worth $800.
JH
I had an experience that backs up StevenMauer's posting:
I went to visit a friend this weekend past. He was very excited to show me his new plasma TV.
It was big, and it was expensive. But the video looked like total shit. I pretended to be as delighted as he was.
Big mistake: I had to watch a movie from his DirecTivo, non-HDTV. The video was stretched such that folks looked insane, and such that the digital artifacts that you normally can't see were just AWFUL. You'd figure that with familar circular logos now looking egg shaped, he'd get it. Nope.
In other words, his big investment gave him a video picture that is significantly worse than what he had. And that's the key here: my friend spent the money to make him feel like he has a bigger penis, the video itself be damned. He can't see the difference.
And if he can't see the difference, then he'll take any copy of video content with the lowest price - no matter the quality. I have a feeling that analog video is going to make a big comeback for some folks, whether they realize it or not.
JH
Two reasons to keep Mozilla Suite:
.8 from 1.0, as .8 seems to be the last stable version.
* The mail part of the equation is more stable than Thunderbird, which crashes and behaves oddly. I had to downgrade to
* You can't middle-button-click on an email link and have it come up as a new tabbed window in FireFox. Very handy behavior.
JH
Running Windows as a non-root user is nearly impossible for Grandma. Nothing will work, nothing installs. Games, most shareware, and even a whole lot of commercialware - they just will not work, or they will not install. And just try to explain the concept of users or permissions to her!
There's a reason why Windows users do what they do - the OS forces you to do so.
I have BOTH Vonage (personal) and Voicepulse (biz lines). They need to fix/tweak a few things, really little things:
.WAV files. Yes, we have broadband, but we don't like downloading huge files, folks.
* Use a rational codec for voicemail attachments that are sent out - NOT raw
* FAX FAX FAX. They really need to bust out some kind of T.38 bridge for their customers. Faxing just doesn't work - which means at least some bucks for Verizon.
* Do for calls what we do for email! C'mon, we're talking about bits now. Why can't I selectively block calls? Have multiple outgoing messages for different callers? Filtering on caller ID (ok, Voicepulse has some crappy attempts at this).
Forget video. No one really wants this - see: "Failure of Videophones that work on POTS lines".
JH