You'd be better received if you offered up facts rather than what could be construed as baseless ranting.
And of course using the term 'uneducated Slashbots' really isn't going to garner you any favors around here...ahh, but you knew that already didn't you?
The AppleTV is 10/100? You've got to be joking right? I can understand on the phone...got to try to keep the price down a wee bit somewhere.
(Aside: It's still ludicrously expensive for a phone, especially given it's expected limitations. I know, tonnes will buy it anyways...but I'm finding a strange attitude. Apparently the general opinion is that this is a reasonable price for a phone...but a similar price for a 60GB PS3 is insanely high...imho, this makes the PS3 look down right cheap.)
But 10/100 only for a media centre? Wtf? Ah well, at least I don't have to look any further to know that I want nothing to do with that bit of kit.
This is why the running theory is to drop it at fault points, hopefully in such a way as to allow it to be subducted back into the earths core...IE: No storage at all.
No limit? Are you absolutely sure about that? Without further information on how that data is represented and stored internal to that system I'd have to guess that you do indeed have a limit. This is a well known problem that has bitten a number of systems in the butt in the past.
Dude, I only argue because the Current Market Proves You Wrong. Period.
There are already HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks in just about EVERY store that sells media. There was NEVER SACD/DVD-A media available on that scale. There are accessible and affordable HD players. Two of them happen to be tied to two of the most popular game consoles as well.
You are completely wrong that there is no market for this. Why you keep arguing this when the MARKET ALREADY EXISTS is completely beyond me.
You miss the point though. I wasn't suggesting that the xbox 360 needed HD-DVD to succeed as a console. Obviously, it doesn't. What I was suggesting is that if MS wanted HD-DVD to succeed, they needed it to be a core feature of the 360. As is, chances are very very good that even if MS throws millions at it, it will still go the way of Beta. Whether it loses out to VOD or to Blu-Ray is up in the air. (I'd personally suggest that VOD, even if it comes to light, will not pre-empt the existence of a physical HD media. People still want something to hold, feel, collect, whatever. That's not likely to change in the near future.)
With DVD-A and SACD there was NO perceived benefit by your average consumer, and thus no market. Neither format came out on top as there was simply no market either way. No one cared about a higher definition audio CD. No one needed 'longer' albums.
However, HD is here to stay. Period. Just about all TV's being pushed Right Now are HD. 5 years from now and that will be the only kind of tv you can buy. There WILL be a standard HD format, that is not questionable. The market is there, it already exists, and it's already ballooning.
Even if 'most' people can't actually tell the difference...doesn't matter...they 'think' they can. (And there are actually a LOT more than you give credit for that actually CAN tell the difference.)
If you were right, no one would be buying HD tv's. Fact is, they're selling like hot cakes.
Yes, but the problem appears to be that Vista won't output HD over a digital link regardless of whether HDCP is turned on or not. Further Sony has stated that they are NOT intending on releasing HDCP enabled discs until at least 2010. In other words, MS did indeed screw up. Vista should allow the signal to go out over a digital connection unless the HDCP flag is set on the media itself.
From a purely technical standpoint which is what is being discussed, Beta was superior. Much better quality. The point being it didn't matter. Certainly it didn't help any that VHS could hold a whole movie from the get go though.
Well, the problem with those formats is that they weren't riding the back of anything obviously 'new' from the consumers perspective...they were targetted at being alternatives to existing technologies.
The only reason there is a format war now is that HD is new, all TV's are moving to HD, and there will be a primary standard format for media to go along with it. SACD, DVD-A etc were all niches.
On the one hand, it really is already over, and Sony won. The big studios have sided with Blu-Ray for the most part, and more are joining that camp every day. That really seals the deal.
However, HD won't just go away overnight. Microsoft's pockets are simply too deep. They will do everything they can to make it work and won't stop pouring money into it until there's no carcass left to beat.
Funny thing is, I bet things would be completely and utterly different if MS had waited and treated HD-DVD as a first rate feature of the 360. I truly believe that relegating it to add-on status sealed the fate of HD before it was even released.
So yeah, on the one hand, the war is already over. But like the US in NAM, or like the US now in Iraq...you can spend a lot of time propping something up if you're willing to continue pissing money at it.
There's more to that though. I've had similar conversations with a lot of people recently...digging at this very thing to try to figure out where the psychology of this battle lies.
And in general, most of the people I've talked to about this assume that HD-DVD is some stopgap hacked on to DVD technology that isn't really anything new. After all it's just a DVD right? Trying to pull the wool over our eyes by calling it High Def DVD, it's still DVD! But Blu-Ray, that's NEW. That has to be better.
Then add in that it's basically what clout Microsoft can muster behind HD versus the bulk of the movie industry (More every day since Blu-Ray production concerns have been satiated) backing Blu-Ray.
Your average person does NOT want to re-purchase all of their DVD's. They just might be interested in upgrading in a 'New and better' technology though.
Sony's using the term Blu-Ray is not nearly as stupid as most people make it out to be...there's a lot of subtle psychology involved in this whole format war.
To the general consumer it basically appears as though there is a next gen format produced by Sony et al, being adopted heavily by the big boys in the movie industry and of course, backed by Sony. 'DRM? What's this DRM?' these consumers say...all they know is that every Sony product they've bought in the past decade has been fully backwards compatible with all their existing media, and will continue to be so.
Versus...
Another format that sounds the same as DVD (HD-DVD..yeah I've got DVD's...over 500 of them, been collecting for years)...which is backed by...well...Microsoft and the most visible available implementation is as a total after thought to their current console.
Your average consumer sees Microsoft in an industry they aren't traditionally involved in playing catchup with the big boys that have been driving this entire industry for decades now.
With DVD, the superior (technically) format won...well, it was really the only format. It was PURELY early adopters and audiophiles that built the viable base for the DVD market to expand from.
However the last battle before that saw VHS vs BETA. BETA was clearly superior there...but they were both presented to the public at a similar time, VHS was cheaper, and there was not enough of a 'high end' videophile market to wedge BETA in there before VHS took off and became the de-facto standard.
This time around, it will have just about nothing to do with the superior product unfortunately. There is no outstanding high end feature on one format that doesn't exist on the other and there is no time for the early adopters to shape the market anyways. It's going to come down to availability and price.
I think Blu-Ray is going to win simply because already it is quite obvious that there are a LOT more movies available for it. Price of Blu-Ray movies is comparable to HD movies...no winner there. Both are priced only about $10 more than their DVD counter-parts. (IE, fairly reasonably attailable. Remember the price of DVD movies for the first couple years they were available?)
The PS3 will be a bit of a factor here. The 360 will only help drive HD-DVD sales via those gamers that give a hoop. Most won't as the 360 fits so well into the 'game console' mold. The PS3 may though as each owner there automatically has Blu-Ray. Looking at the history there...Sony including a DVD player in the PS2 actually allowed for a HUGE surge in the adoption of DVD's as the standard. DVD's were being adopted already, but it wasn't until the PS2 that people really started dropping VHS en masse and moved over to DVD.
Sony isn't stupid, but that doesn't always guarantee them a win either.
Single layer capacity for a Blu-Ray Disc...IE, all currently produced Blu-Ray discs, movies, and PS3 games...is 25GB.
HD-DVD is only 15. Sure, Dual is 30, but they're not being produced very much either...and that is the absolute max for HD-DVD anyways.
More than 25GB is not needed at the moment for Blu-Ray, they know this so haven't done anything stupid to try to rush 50GB dual layer discs through manufacturing...there is basically zero demand at the moment. It does indeed work though and will be in mass production when needed.
FURTHER, Blu-Ray as I'm quite certain you well know is spec'd to handle up to 100GB. In the end, there will be over 3x as much space for data on Blu-Ray as there will be on HD-DVD.
Argue all you want about which is better or which will win...but from a technical standpoint alone, Blu-Ray wins, hands down. It's just silly to try to argue otherwise because it's just not true. Of course that means just about nothing in terms of which will win out as was proven definitively with VHS vs BETA. Less useful but cheaper will likely win out in the long run.
Barely any normal consumer will have or care about this at the moment as to even consider it, one would have to purchase a high def player AND a high def TV. Your average consumer just won't do this. It'll be a good 10 years before the next 'standard' to be found in living rooms is definitive.
It's not even remotely surprising that you don't know any of the early adopters.
No one is going to go out and replace 700 movies. (BTW, no one HAS 700 movies in their collection, you are in the minority just in case there was any question about that in your mind)
HOWEVER, there ARE early adopters, as always. My dad got into DVD movies as an early adopter. Heck, about 5 years after he started buying dvd's, he started giving dvd's away to family members at christmas etc. It was still a few more years before anyone even had players to watch them on!
Do you know how many people said they'd never stop using VHS since they already had invested in that format? Yeah, how many of them still are today?
A format will come to the top. Eventually it will be the de-facto standard. Just because it hasn't happened over night doesn't mean it won't happen. History assures you it will.
Granted, a smokin pc that will do Oblivion justice is certainly more expensive than any of the consoles available, and that's certainly a consideration.
I got a new rig last year, and threw in a 24" widescreen monitor and a BFG GeForce 7800OC. Timing was right. That's about the top of the line for the 'current' gen of pc games. IE: DirectX 9 systems. Hopefully it'll last me longer than usual. It should because the next gen is going to require some time for adoption to really pick up, which is at this point dependent on DX10 and Vista being adopted.
Personally I'm quite uninterested in the 360 simply because any of the games I would care to play on there have vastly superior counterparts available for PC.
I still can't bring myself to play FPSs on a console. The control schemes have gotten vastly better over the years, but it's still not even close to the trust mouse and keyboard.
Oblivion on a decent pc makes the 360 version seem like a steaming pile of poo, for a number of reasons. Foremost is the graphics of course, they're just not even close on the console. A very close second is the modability of oblivion on a pc, from fixing outstanding bugs to changing the leveling system to be more like a standard rpg, to having menus that are actually useful.
What system _doesn't_ have games? Certain systems tend to focus more on certain types of games...but what's being implied here is that the Wii will win out because of the games available on it. Other than the fancy controller, what's different about the games available this time around?
Some people prefer non-nintendo games, or at least don't care about them enough to only buy that system.
Most likely is that there will be a larger multi-console camp this time around. Why not? The Wii is cheap enough that even if it is a gimmick in the long run, no big deal.
But chances are very very good that traditional non-nintendo gamers aren't going to 'switch' to the Wii. If anything, they'll get the Wii too. Probably after the 360 if that's your thing, probably before the PS3 if you're more in that camp.
What probably won't happen though is people buying a 360 and a PS3. Yes, of course some will, but in general most won't. Why? Because for all intents and purposes, they're very very similar, and more and more games are coming out for both consoles.
The 360 and the PS3 are similar enough to PC's that this is where the bulk of games are being targeted. Most bang for your development buck. It just makes sense. There's still a few proprietary titles on each system, but that's getting to be fewer and fewer all the time.
Only difference is that you can switch per device on this thing.
Re:Mentioning that you were involved with VRML...
on
Collada
·
· Score: 1
Who exactly is going to use this? Who exactly was involved in it's development? I'd suggest you start there.
Amateurs and little tools companies...riiiight. Because amateurs have such high need for this kind of thing. Little bands of 2 or 3 coders with rendering farms and content creation pipelines.
Fuck you're an idiot. This ONLY makes sense for the big boys in the industry really, and surprise! They're the ones that came up with it!
Read a bit next time would you?
Re:Mentioning that you were involved with VRML...
on
Collada
·
· Score: 1
Just because a group of people took a stab at something way before it's time...come on now. Did you try to put together a markup based 3d standard back in the day? No?
And do you really think that in the interim, these people have learned nothing from their experiences with VRML? It appears they did just that. X3D was a complete fresh start.
And could you keep things in context a little? Please? Taking one single statement completely literally ignoring it's context doesn't make sense. a) This guy deals with web technologies. xml makes a LOT of sense for enabling and defining a web enabled 3D format. b) Collada is an interim file format designed by a bunch of people in the industry that kinda know what they're doing...they chose XML, and for what should be obvious reasons, the reviewer did not want people to focus on that particular design choice because it would be completely and utterly pointless.
Slashdot Mirror
You'd be better received if you offered up facts rather than what could be construed as baseless ranting.
And of course using the term 'uneducated Slashbots' really isn't going to garner you any favors around here...ahh, but you knew that already didn't you?
The AppleTV is 10/100? You've got to be joking right? I can understand on the phone...got to try to keep the price down a wee bit somewhere.
(Aside: It's still ludicrously expensive for a phone, especially given it's expected limitations. I know, tonnes will buy it anyways...but I'm finding a strange attitude. Apparently the general opinion is that this is a reasonable price for a phone...but a similar price for a 60GB PS3 is insanely high...imho, this makes the PS3 look down right cheap.)
But 10/100 only for a media centre? Wtf? Ah well, at least I don't have to look any further to know that I want nothing to do with that bit of kit.
There's still a large potential for leakage.
This is why the running theory is to drop it at fault points, hopefully in such a way as to allow it to be subducted back into the earths core...IE: No storage at all.
No limit? Are you absolutely sure about that? Without further information on how that data is represented and stored internal to that system I'd have to guess that you do indeed have a limit. This is a well known problem that has bitten a number of systems in the butt in the past.
Dude, I only argue because the Current Market Proves You Wrong. Period.
There are already HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks in just about EVERY store that sells media. There was NEVER SACD/DVD-A media available on that scale. There are accessible and affordable HD players. Two of them happen to be tied to two of the most popular game consoles as well.
You are completely wrong that there is no market for this. Why you keep arguing this when the MARKET ALREADY EXISTS is completely beyond me.
PS3 games absolutely are on Blu-Ray. At least that's what my Resistance, Ridge Racer and Project 8 discs all say on them ;)
You miss the point though. I wasn't suggesting that the xbox 360 needed HD-DVD to succeed as a console. Obviously, it doesn't. What I was suggesting is that if MS wanted HD-DVD to succeed, they needed it to be a core feature of the 360. As is, chances are very very good that even if MS throws millions at it, it will still go the way of Beta. Whether it loses out to VOD or to Blu-Ray is up in the air. (I'd personally suggest that VOD, even if it comes to light, will not pre-empt the existence of a physical HD media. People still want something to hold, feel, collect, whatever. That's not likely to change in the near future.)
It's not the same, and you point to why yourself.
With DVD-A and SACD there was NO perceived benefit by your average consumer, and thus no market. Neither format came out on top as there was simply no market either way. No one cared about a higher definition audio CD. No one needed 'longer' albums.
However, HD is here to stay. Period. Just about all TV's being pushed Right Now are HD. 5 years from now and that will be the only kind of tv you can buy. There WILL be a standard HD format, that is not questionable. The market is there, it already exists, and it's already ballooning.
Even if 'most' people can't actually tell the difference...doesn't matter...they 'think' they can. (And there are actually a LOT more than you give credit for that actually CAN tell the difference.)
If you were right, no one would be buying HD tv's. Fact is, they're selling like hot cakes.
Close...but what mattered to Apple was not no more MS Office, it was 'Hey, we'll save your company, but there are some caveats'.
Using IE was one of those caveats.
Yes, but the problem appears to be that Vista won't output HD over a digital link regardless of whether HDCP is turned on or not. Further Sony has stated that they are NOT intending on releasing HDCP enabled discs until at least 2010. In other words, MS did indeed screw up. Vista should allow the signal to go out over a digital connection unless the HDCP flag is set on the media itself.
Not good.
From a purely technical standpoint which is what is being discussed, Beta was superior. Much better quality. The point being it didn't matter. Certainly it didn't help any that VHS could hold a whole movie from the get go though.
Well, the problem with those formats is that they weren't riding the back of anything obviously 'new' from the consumers perspective...they were targetted at being alternatives to existing technologies.
The only reason there is a format war now is that HD is new, all TV's are moving to HD, and there will be a primary standard format for media to go along with it. SACD, DVD-A etc were all niches.
On the one hand, it really is already over, and Sony won. The big studios have sided with Blu-Ray for the most part, and more are joining that camp every day. That really seals the deal.
However, HD won't just go away overnight. Microsoft's pockets are simply too deep. They will do everything they can to make it work and won't stop pouring money into it until there's no carcass left to beat.
Funny thing is, I bet things would be completely and utterly different if MS had waited and treated HD-DVD as a first rate feature of the 360. I truly believe that relegating it to add-on status sealed the fate of HD before it was even released.
So yeah, on the one hand, the war is already over. But like the US in NAM, or like the US now in Iraq...you can spend a lot of time propping something up if you're willing to continue pissing money at it.
There's more to that though. I've had similar conversations with a lot of people recently...digging at this very thing to try to figure out where the psychology of this battle lies.
And in general, most of the people I've talked to about this assume that HD-DVD is some stopgap hacked on to DVD technology that isn't really anything new. After all it's just a DVD right? Trying to pull the wool over our eyes by calling it High Def DVD, it's still DVD! But Blu-Ray, that's NEW. That has to be better.
Then add in that it's basically what clout Microsoft can muster behind HD versus the bulk of the movie industry (More every day since Blu-Ray production concerns have been satiated) backing Blu-Ray.
Your average person does NOT want to re-purchase all of their DVD's. They just might be interested in upgrading in a 'New and better' technology though.
Sony's using the term Blu-Ray is not nearly as stupid as most people make it out to be...there's a lot of subtle psychology involved in this whole format war.
My thoughts exactly.
To the general consumer it basically appears as though there is a next gen format produced by Sony et al, being adopted heavily by the big boys in the movie industry and of course, backed by Sony. 'DRM? What's this DRM?' these consumers say...all they know is that every Sony product they've bought in the past decade has been fully backwards compatible with all their existing media, and will continue to be so.
Versus...
Another format that sounds the same as DVD (HD-DVD..yeah I've got DVD's...over 500 of them, been collecting for years)...which is backed by...well...Microsoft and the most visible available implementation is as a total after thought to their current console.
Your average consumer sees Microsoft in an industry they aren't traditionally involved in playing catchup with the big boys that have been driving this entire industry for decades now.
That depends.
With DVD, the superior (technically) format won...well, it was really the only format. It was PURELY early adopters and audiophiles that built the viable base for the DVD market to expand from.
However the last battle before that saw VHS vs BETA. BETA was clearly superior there...but they were both presented to the public at a similar time, VHS was cheaper, and there was not enough of a 'high end' videophile market to wedge BETA in there before VHS took off and became the de-facto standard.
This time around, it will have just about nothing to do with the superior product unfortunately. There is no outstanding high end feature on one format that doesn't exist on the other and there is no time for the early adopters to shape the market anyways. It's going to come down to availability and price.
I think Blu-Ray is going to win simply because already it is quite obvious that there are a LOT more movies available for it. Price of Blu-Ray movies is comparable to HD movies...no winner there. Both are priced only about $10 more than their DVD counter-parts. (IE, fairly reasonably attailable. Remember the price of DVD movies for the first couple years they were available?)
The PS3 will be a bit of a factor here. The 360 will only help drive HD-DVD sales via those gamers that give a hoop. Most won't as the 360 fits so well into the 'game console' mold. The PS3 may though as each owner there automatically has Blu-Ray. Looking at the history there...Sony including a DVD player in the PS2 actually allowed for a HUGE surge in the adoption of DVD's as the standard. DVD's were being adopted already, but it wasn't until the PS2 that people really started dropping VHS en masse and moved over to DVD.
Sony isn't stupid, but that doesn't always guarantee them a win either.
Not true, not even close to true.
Single layer capacity for a Blu-Ray Disc...IE, all currently produced Blu-Ray discs, movies, and PS3 games...is 25GB.
HD-DVD is only 15. Sure, Dual is 30, but they're not being produced very much either...and that is the absolute max for HD-DVD anyways.
More than 25GB is not needed at the moment for Blu-Ray, they know this so haven't done anything stupid to try to rush 50GB dual layer discs through manufacturing...there is basically zero demand at the moment. It does indeed work though and will be in mass production when needed.
FURTHER, Blu-Ray as I'm quite certain you well know is spec'd to handle up to 100GB. In the end, there will be over 3x as much space for data on Blu-Ray as there will be on HD-DVD.
Argue all you want about which is better or which will win...but from a technical standpoint alone, Blu-Ray wins, hands down. It's just silly to try to argue otherwise because it's just not true. Of course that means just about nothing in terms of which will win out as was proven definitively with VHS vs BETA. Less useful but cheaper will likely win out in the long run.
Well duhh. How many early adopters do you expect?
Barely any normal consumer will have or care about this at the moment as to even consider it, one would have to purchase a high def player AND a high def TV. Your average consumer just won't do this. It'll be a good 10 years before the next 'standard' to be found in living rooms is definitive.
It's not even remotely surprising that you don't know any of the early adopters.
No one is going to go out and replace 700 movies. (BTW, no one HAS 700 movies in their collection, you are in the minority just in case there was any question about that in your mind)
HOWEVER, there ARE early adopters, as always. My dad got into DVD movies as an early adopter. Heck, about 5 years after he started buying dvd's, he started giving dvd's away to family members at christmas etc. It was still a few more years before anyone even had players to watch them on!
Do you know how many people said they'd never stop using VHS since they already had invested in that format? Yeah, how many of them still are today?
A format will come to the top. Eventually it will be the de-facto standard. Just because it hasn't happened over night doesn't mean it won't happen. History assures you it will.
Granted, a smokin pc that will do Oblivion justice is certainly more expensive than any of the consoles available, and that's certainly a consideration.
I got a new rig last year, and threw in a 24" widescreen monitor and a BFG GeForce 7800OC. Timing was right. That's about the top of the line for the 'current' gen of pc games. IE: DirectX 9 systems. Hopefully it'll last me longer than usual. It should because the next gen is going to require some time for adoption to really pick up, which is at this point dependent on DX10 and Vista being adopted.
Very good points.
Personally I'm quite uninterested in the 360 simply because any of the games I would care to play on there have vastly superior counterparts available for PC.
I still can't bring myself to play FPSs on a console. The control schemes have gotten vastly better over the years, but it's still not even close to the trust mouse and keyboard.
Oblivion on a decent pc makes the 360 version seem like a steaming pile of poo, for a number of reasons. Foremost is the graphics of course, they're just not even close on the console. A very close second is the modability of oblivion on a pc, from fixing outstanding bugs to changing the leveling system to be more like a standard rpg, to having menus that are actually useful.
Anyways, just my reasoning for my own choices.
You're only partially right.
What system _doesn't_ have games? Certain systems tend to focus more on certain types of games...but what's being implied here is that the Wii will win out because of the games available on it. Other than the fancy controller, what's different about the games available this time around?
Some people prefer non-nintendo games, or at least don't care about them enough to only buy that system.
Most likely is that there will be a larger multi-console camp this time around. Why not? The Wii is cheap enough that even if it is a gimmick in the long run, no big deal.
But chances are very very good that traditional non-nintendo gamers aren't going to 'switch' to the Wii. If anything, they'll get the Wii too. Probably after the 360 if that's your thing, probably before the PS3 if you're more in that camp.
What probably won't happen though is people buying a 360 and a PS3. Yes, of course some will, but in general most won't. Why? Because for all intents and purposes, they're very very similar, and more and more games are coming out for both consoles.
The 360 and the PS3 are similar enough to PC's that this is where the bulk of games are being targeted. Most bang for your development buck. It just makes sense. There's still a few proprietary titles on each system, but that's getting to be fewer and fewer all the time.
What gives you the idea that posting those emails was illegal? That's crazy talk.
Only difference is that you can switch per device on this thing.
Who exactly is going to use this? Who exactly was involved in it's development? I'd suggest you start there.
Amateurs and little tools companies...riiiight. Because amateurs have such high need for this kind of thing. Little bands of 2 or 3 coders with rendering farms and content creation pipelines.
Fuck you're an idiot. This ONLY makes sense for the big boys in the industry really, and surprise! They're the ones that came up with it!
Read a bit next time would you?
Just because a group of people took a stab at something way before it's time...come on now. Did you try to put together a markup based 3d standard back in the day? No?
And do you really think that in the interim, these people have learned nothing from their experiences with VRML? It appears they did just that. X3D was a complete fresh start.
And could you keep things in context a little? Please? Taking one single statement completely literally ignoring it's context doesn't make sense. a) This guy deals with web technologies. xml makes a LOT of sense for enabling and defining a web enabled 3D format. b) Collada is an interim file format designed by a bunch of people in the industry that kinda know what they're doing...they chose XML, and for what should be obvious reasons, the reviewer did not want people to focus on that particular design choice because it would be completely and utterly pointless.