The Month of Apple Bugs intended to identify 31 security problems in Apple Software. The Month of Apple Fixes intended to fix those bugs in short order, so that they would not represent as much of a security threat between announcement and release of an official bugfix. Because much of MacOSX is closed source, patched binaries were a means of distributing these fixes. The latest bug was found in the third party tool that was used to patch the binaries at runtime.
Most upscaling DVD players encrypt their DVI or HDMI outputs with hdcp.
I've also used a hdtv tuner that required hdcp when certain feature were used-- luckily those features were not all that interesting to me.
HDCP content looks like white noise when viewed on a "non-compliant" display, a category which, up to very recently, included almost all computer monitors.
Apparently, they differentiate between cancellation, resignation, and suspension, so that they have a 66% chance of keeping your money. And if you ask your credit card company to stop charges, they can fine you $1000 It's all in the contract....
Warnings can sound rather ridiculous when read by a calm individual of sound mind. But not everyone is calm.
Most people would not choose to microwave their cell phones. But suppose that your cell phone did get wet. Would you panic? Would you freak out? Might the microwave seem a plausible solution to your crisis, if you didn't know how to fix it?
I'd recommend that if you really want advice on home theater stuff, that you seek out hometheaterforum.com, though I must admit some of the members are a little too pro-DRM for my taste.
The problem with a lot of CDs is not that the available resolution is so poor, or that they can't produce super high frequencies, but that they are mastered to maximize loudness at the expense of dynamic range. A movie soundtrack, however, is not mastered nearly so poorly--for cheap equipment, dolby supplies various dynamic compression algorithms. It's surround as well, which can add something.
As for curve fitting, wouldn't the "more precise" traces be more precise because of high frequency elements that can't be heard? Something about Nyquist...
SACDs and DVD-Audio are niche formats. Sometimes, they can sound gimmicky, sometimes they sound cool.
The Oppo 971H does not have good component outputs. The DVI, however, is stellar (and unencrypted). The Oppo 970HD apparently has good component outs and a good hdmi out.
Maybe it's just time to experiment. We have the computers, and we shall soon have the content. (or rather somebody does. My lowly Mac G4 does not have a HD-DVD drive, and I doubt I have CPU to spare.) But don't be terribly surprised if the gains are not what you expect.
I was under the impression that the DVD-Video audio section allowed you 5.1 near lossless CD quality plus audio, as a maximum? You would have to encode it specially for that, but it was possible.
dts claims that 1536 kbs rate is very close to lossless. The half bitrate (768 kbs) variety is used more often, though, and from what I've read, it's still lossy.
Think of the two advanced formats as "CDs with six channels instead of two". If you have the ears and the equipment, the stereo tracks can also sound better than CDs.
I also thought that SACD was brought out specifically because it was backwards compatible with current CD players. The front right and left channels are on the CD layer, with the additional tracks on the SACD layer. Again, very hazy on the memory bit, as I haven't looked at one in years.
Sony wanted to bring out a system that sounded superior to CDs. The very first SACD players and discs were stereo. Multichannel came later.
My copy of "Kind of Blue" only has stereo DSD and three-track DSD. The latter uses adds a center speaker, and mimics the original recording session, pre mix. Or something. Anyhow, it's slightly different. It's not playable in a CD player-- which is a pity,
A multichannel hybrid SACD has three separate versions of the same music-- one stereo DSD, one multichannel DSD(up to six channels) and one stereo PCM, the last for CD players.
As for the digital connection, it's important if you want to create a lossless copy for backup/archiving/migration to another format. There's no technical reason for DVD-Audio or SACD to not be transmitted directly via SPDIF other than the manufacturer will violate the licensing terms for those two formats. DenonLink is a proprietary formatted link only compatible with Denon products, as of 3 years ago which, IIRC is also encrypted. I don't know of any players that will output across 1394. HDMI runs you right back into the proprietary encrypted format that is difficult to copy.
Sony doesn't want you backing up the high resolution tracks, but I can rip the CD layers into iTunes. All the digital outputs of an SACD player (if it even has one) are encrypted.
My player (a Sony scd-c2000es, which is also available in a non es version) has bass management of some sort. No digital outputs, though. My DVD-Audio player is a Oppo 971H. It also has bass management. The digital out is stereo only.
Lastly, only an extremely exclusive few players have bass management of which even fewer have decent bass management, and only innordinately expensive players, by todays standards, will even have the DACs nowadays. I was just recently looking, and most have punted on DACs, letting the receiver/TV handle it since they have HDMI outputs anyways. (I was just looking for a decently priced, roughly $100-160 dvd player that merely had built-in DACs for DD/DTS and didn't find any)
Maybe you'd be happy with a Oppo 970hd-- sacd and dvd-audio, as well as decent, if not truly stellar dvd performance.
SACDs? I have a few. Tower Records closed down, though, and most of the other retailers aren't terribly keen on them.
The audio portion of a DVD-Video disc is limited. Either you get CD quality stereo tracks (called LPCM), or you get surround tracks in a lossy format (dts/dolby-digital). DVD-Audio adds "Advanced Resolution Stereo", which at 192KHz/24 bits can (well, theoretically, anyway) sound even better than a CD, and Advanced Resolution Surround, which is a lossless surround track. It's pretty cool, if you have decent home theater speakers.
SACD ditches Pulse Code Modulation for something called DSD. The supposed advantages of DSD are debatable, and only audible on expensive systems. Cheaper players convert the DSD into PCM anyway... Many of the SACD also hare a lossless multichannel track.
Some SACDs are known as hybrid discs, and incorporate both an SACD and a CD layer. CD Players can't read the SACD layer, so they play the CD layer instead.
My DVD-Audio player can output 192/24 stereo over spdif, though most players limit the sampling frequency to 48 KHz. SPDIF isn't configured to stream lossless surround tracks, so if you want a digital connection, DenonLink, 1394, or HDMI are your options. DSD is incompatible with SPDIF, too. so it's turned off when a SACD layer is played.
I'm not sure why a digital connection is so important anyway. Bass management and time correction can be done by the player, and players have decent built in DACs.
The fact that HD-DVD supports MPEG-2 does not mean that, say, "Full Metal Jacket" is encoded using the codec, In fact, it's encoded with VC-1, and any attempt to shrink those massive files will produce artifacts. The impact of these artifacts may be slight, or it may destroy the very elements that make the HD-DVD so visually and sonically compelling.
If you can deal with those artifacts, might I interest you in an upsampling DVD player?
Strictly speaking, decss is a windows program (often distributed without source) that decrypts some DVDs onto the hard drive. libdvdcss is the truly interesting library.) Granted, decss was useful in writing linux dvd players-- it provided test data while kernel hackers implemented the necessary key exchange algorithms, but it's obsolete.
Windows already has dvd players, libdvdcss allowed people to write their own for linux, freebsd, etc. Decss can be defeated through key revocation. libdvdcss cannot.
Yes, Chomsky's a professor of linguistics. Period.
You like sticking people into nice little labeled cubbyholes, don't you? this 1972 article reprinted from the New York Review of Books, should go some way towards explaining what linguistics are, and Chomsky's reputation in the field.
And if linguistics still sounds rather esoteric, and inapplicable to, other things, say, Artificial Intelligence, what of it? Would he be more qualified to speak of East Timor if he taught political science or worked for Fox News?
HD-DVD and Bluray players have component video outputs. In the future, resolution reduction may be used, but right now, the full resolution of the disc is output. Granted, some players have buggy 720p outputs, but that's another issue entirely.
Putting aside the whole "re-compressing adds artifacts" argument for the moment, the only reason DVDs can be further compressed is that MPEG-4 is more efficient than MPEG-2. HD-DVDs use vc-1, which is roughly comparable to mpeg-4. It's already quite compressed.
Do XVID rips still reduce the multichannel Dolby Digital down to mp3?
But CSS can be brute forced. Although it uses a 40 bit key, flaws in the algorithm reduce it to about 25 bits strength, and the correct key can be found in 18 seconds on a PIII-450. It doesn't rely on anything that can be revoked.
We don't know if this system is as vulnerable to such an attack. Key revocation could protect future titles from this particular program.
the aim of the new drm things is to transform the merely inconvenient into the impossible. Sometimes I think that the cyberpunk dystopia (with shady "data slicers" in dark alleys) is just around the corner.
On the other hand, perhaps the media companies believe that inconvenience can be transformed into an additional sale. Instead of audiophile buying a hybrid SACD, with a highly encrypted high resolution surround sound program for the home theatre, a standards compliant CD layer for the car, ripped audio for an mp3/ogg/flac player and possibly a cellphone ringtone (or some equally marginal byproduct), the sale would come in the form of multiple licenses.
If I remember, Microsoft bailed on bluray because of something called managed copy. From one point of view, this seems rather more flexible than one monolithic , high definition stream that is resistant to all uses except one-- watching it on a HD display. But it also allows certain companies, like MS, to get in to the lucrative license sales business.
The government wants to replace analog NTSC with digital ATSC so it can use the TV spectrum for other purposes. At present, TV channels assignments are widely spaced, so as to avoid interference-- and from a certain point of view, that spectrum is wasted. When the digital switchover is complete, the guard bands won't be necessary, and the unused blocks of spectrum freed up.
The mandate from the FCC says nothing about HD vs SD: it just so happens that "CBS in high resolution" is more appealing than 'several channels of CBS", at least to those people who can afford new tuners/televisions.
My first HDTV tuner originally listed for maybe $700, because of all the custom chips. $700 for high definition-- well, some people have money to spend. $700 for multiple SDTV channels? Why bother? Cable's far cheaper. Now, the price did plummet by the time I got mine, but the selling point was still "high definition."
At present, Best Buy sells SDTVs that happen to have ATSC tuners. They're relatively cheap, but those who know about OTA DTV still associate it with HDTV. Of course, there are others who associate HDTV with a horizontally stretched, badly scaled NTSC image, but hey...
The game is also absolutely gorgeous. The details in just the asphalt are amazing. And these kinds of details are much appreciated as every visual clue helps me understand the characteristics of the road which better enables me to drive a quicker lap.
Assuming that the physics model reflects the eye candy, yes...
HDTV-- a big improvement over NTSC TV. More resolution, better sound, stable colors.
HD Audio -- (SACD, DVD-Audio). A marginal improvement over CD, unless you have a quiet listening room, and good equipment, or like surround sound music.
HD-DVD/Bluray-- HD resolution, yes, but DVD was already far superior to NTSC TV. Allegedly necessary on larger screens, but on smaller screens the improvement is more subtle. Sometimes gives the illusion of being 3D, and objects with, erm, specular lighting effects-- water, skin-tones, etc.--- can look more realistic.
HD-Radio-- Digital radio with less bandwidth than an mp3. Allows partitioning of a channel several simultaneous audio streams. "HD" must have sounded cool at the time.
Slashdot Mirror
The Month of Apple Bugs intended to identify 31 security problems in Apple Software. The Month of Apple Fixes intended to fix those bugs in short order, so that they would not represent as much of a security threat between announcement and release of an official bugfix. Because much of MacOSX is closed source, patched binaries were a means of distributing these fixes. The latest bug was found in the third party tool that was used to patch the binaries at runtime.
Yes, It will be downgraded to 960x540.
Most upscaling DVD players encrypt their DVI or HDMI outputs with hdcp.
I've also used a hdtv tuner that required hdcp when certain feature were used-- luckily those features were not all that interesting to me.
HDCP content looks like white noise when viewed on a "non-compliant" display, a category which, up to very recently, included almost all computer monitors.
Apparently, they differentiate between cancellation, resignation, and suspension, so that they have a 66% chance of keeping your money. And if you ask your credit card company to stop charges, they can fine you $1000 It's all in the contract....
Warnings can sound rather ridiculous when read by a calm individual of sound mind. But not everyone is calm.
Most people would not choose to microwave their cell phones. But suppose that your cell phone did get wet. Would you panic? Would you freak out? Might the microwave seem a plausible solution to your crisis, if you didn't know how to fix it?
I'd recommend that if you really want advice on home theater stuff, that you seek out hometheaterforum.com, though I must admit some of the members are a little too pro-DRM for my taste.
The problem with a lot of CDs is not that the available resolution is so poor, or that they can't produce super high frequencies, but that they are mastered to maximize loudness at the expense of dynamic range. A movie soundtrack, however, is not mastered nearly so poorly--for cheap equipment, dolby supplies various dynamic compression algorithms. It's surround as well, which can add something.
As for curve fitting, wouldn't the "more precise" traces be more precise because of high frequency elements that can't be heard? Something about Nyquist...
SACDs and DVD-Audio are niche formats. Sometimes, they can sound gimmicky, sometimes they sound cool.
The Oppo 971H does not have good component outputs. The DVI, however, is stellar (and unencrypted). The Oppo 970HD apparently has good component outs and a good hdmi out.
Maybe it's just time to experiment. We have the computers, and we shall soon have the content. (or rather somebody does. My lowly Mac G4 does not have a HD-DVD drive, and I doubt I have CPU to spare.) But don't be terribly surprised if the gains are not what you expect.
dts claims that 1536 kbs rate is very close to lossless. The half bitrate (768 kbs) variety is used more often, though, and from what I've read, it's still lossy.
Think of the two advanced formats as "CDs with six channels instead of two". If you have the ears and the equipment, the stereo tracks can also sound better than CDs.
Sony wanted to bring out a system that sounded superior to CDs. The very first SACD players and discs were stereo. Multichannel came later.
My copy of "Kind of Blue" only has stereo DSD and three-track DSD. The latter uses adds a center speaker, and mimics the original recording session, pre mix. Or something. Anyhow, it's slightly different. It's not playable in a CD player-- which is a pity,
A multichannel hybrid SACD has three separate versions of the same music-- one stereo DSD, one multichannel DSD(up to six channels) and one stereo PCM, the last for CD players.
Sony doesn't want you backing up the high resolution tracks, but I can rip the CD layers into iTunes. All the digital outputs of an SACD player (if it even has one) are encrypted.
My player (a Sony scd-c2000es, which is also available in a non es version) has bass management of some sort. No digital outputs, though. My DVD-Audio player is a Oppo 971H. It also has bass management. The digital out is stereo only.
SACDs? I have a few. Tower Records closed down, though, and most of the other retailers aren't terribly keen on them.
The audio portion of a DVD-Video disc is limited. Either you get CD quality stereo tracks (called LPCM), or you get surround tracks in a lossy format (dts/dolby-digital). DVD-Audio adds "Advanced Resolution Stereo", which at 192KHz/24 bits can (well, theoretically, anyway) sound even better than a CD, and Advanced Resolution Surround, which is a lossless surround track. It's pretty cool, if you have decent home theater speakers.
SACD ditches Pulse Code Modulation for something called DSD. The supposed advantages of DSD are debatable, and only audible on expensive systems. Cheaper players convert the DSD into PCM anyway... Many of the SACD also hare a lossless multichannel track.
Some SACDs are known as hybrid discs, and incorporate both an SACD and a CD layer. CD Players can't read the SACD layer, so they play the CD layer instead.
My DVD-Audio player can output 192/24 stereo over spdif, though most players limit the sampling frequency to 48 KHz. SPDIF isn't configured to stream lossless surround tracks, so if you want a digital connection, DenonLink, 1394, or HDMI are your options. DSD is incompatible with SPDIF, too. so it's turned off when a SACD layer is played.
I'm not sure why a digital connection is so important anyway. Bass management and time correction can be done by the player, and players have decent built in DACs.
The fact that HD-DVD supports MPEG-2 does not mean that, say, "Full Metal Jacket" is encoded using the codec, In fact, it's encoded with VC-1, and any attempt to shrink those massive files will produce artifacts. The impact of these artifacts may be slight, or it may destroy the very elements that make the HD-DVD so visually and sonically compelling.
If you can deal with those artifacts, might I interest you in an upsampling DVD player?
Quite right. He's American, for one.
Set the field back by decades? Explain. Where would your field be without Chomsky?
Strictly speaking, decss is a windows program (often distributed without source) that decrypts some DVDs onto the hard drive. libdvdcss is the truly interesting library.) Granted, decss was useful in writing linux dvd players-- it provided test data while kernel hackers implemented the necessary key exchange algorithms, but it's obsolete.
Windows already has dvd players, libdvdcss allowed people to write their own for linux, freebsd, etc. Decss can be defeated through key revocation. libdvdcss cannot.
Yes, Chomsky's a professor of linguistics. Period.
You like sticking people into nice little labeled cubbyholes, don't you?
this 1972 article reprinted from the New York Review of Books, should go some way towards explaining what linguistics are, and Chomsky's reputation in the field.
And if linguistics still sounds rather esoteric, and inapplicable to, other things, say, Artificial Intelligence, what of it? Would he be more qualified to speak of East Timor if he taught political science or worked for Fox News?
HD-DVD layers are just like DVD layers-- they add to the discs capacity in a seamless way. And HD-DVD discs are weighing in at 27-28 GB already
HD-DVD and Bluray players have component video outputs. In the future, resolution reduction may be used, but right now, the full resolution of the disc is output. Granted, some players have buggy 720p outputs, but that's another issue entirely.
Putting aside the whole "re-compressing adds artifacts" argument for the moment, the only reason DVDs can be further compressed is that MPEG-4 is more efficient than MPEG-2. HD-DVDs use vc-1, which is roughly comparable to mpeg-4. It's already quite compressed.
Do XVID rips still reduce the multichannel Dolby Digital down to mp3?
But CSS can be brute forced. Although it uses a 40 bit key, flaws in the algorithm reduce it to about 25 bits strength, and the correct key can be found in 18 seconds on a PIII-450. It doesn't rely on anything that can be revoked.
We don't know if this system is as vulnerable to such an attack. Key revocation could protect future titles from this particular program.
the aim of the new drm things is to transform the merely inconvenient into the impossible. Sometimes I think that the cyberpunk dystopia (with shady "data slicers" in dark alleys) is just around the corner.
On the other hand, perhaps the media companies believe that inconvenience can be transformed into an additional sale. Instead of audiophile buying a hybrid SACD, with a highly encrypted high resolution surround sound program for the home theatre, a standards compliant CD layer for the car, ripped audio for an mp3/ogg/flac player and possibly a cellphone ringtone (or some equally marginal byproduct), the sale would come in the form of multiple licenses.
If I remember, Microsoft bailed on bluray because of something called managed copy. From one point of view, this seems rather more flexible than one monolithic , high definition stream that is resistant to all uses except one-- watching it on a HD display. But it also allows certain companies, like MS, to get in to the lucrative license sales business.
What was "it"? The drafting of the declaration? The constitutional convention? The early Senate and House?
I'm not even this can be resolved in software-- it appears to have s-video in, and composite in/out. HD is usually component, DVI, or HDMI.
The government wants to replace analog NTSC with digital ATSC so it can use the TV spectrum for other purposes. At present, TV channels assignments are widely spaced, so as to avoid interference-- and from a certain point of view, that spectrum is wasted. When the digital switchover is complete, the guard bands won't be necessary, and the unused blocks of spectrum freed up.
The mandate from the FCC says nothing about HD vs SD: it just so happens that "CBS in high resolution" is more appealing than 'several channels of CBS", at least to those people who can afford new tuners/televisions.
My first HDTV tuner originally listed for maybe $700, because of all the custom chips. $700 for high definition-- well, some people have money to spend. $700 for multiple SDTV channels? Why bother? Cable's far cheaper. Now, the price did plummet by the time I got mine, but the selling point was still "high definition."
At present, Best Buy sells SDTVs that happen to have ATSC tuners. They're relatively cheap, but those who know about OTA DTV still associate it with HDTV. Of course, there are others who associate HDTV with a horizontally stretched, badly scaled NTSC image, but hey...
The game is also absolutely gorgeous. The details in just the asphalt are amazing. And these kinds of details are much appreciated as every visual clue helps me understand the characteristics of the road which better enables me to drive a quicker lap.
Assuming that the physics model reflects the eye candy, yes...
"HD" is supposed to be a big selling point.
HDTV-- a big improvement over NTSC TV. More resolution, better sound, stable colors.
HD Audio -- (SACD, DVD-Audio). A marginal improvement over CD, unless you have a quiet listening room, and good equipment, or like surround sound music.
HD-DVD/Bluray-- HD resolution, yes, but DVD was already far superior to NTSC TV. Allegedly necessary on larger screens, but on smaller screens the improvement is more subtle. Sometimes gives the illusion of being 3D, and objects with, erm, specular lighting effects-- water, skin-tones, etc.--- can look more realistic.
HD-Radio-- Digital radio with less bandwidth than an mp3. Allows partitioning of a channel several simultaneous audio streams. "HD" must have sounded cool at the time.