Uh, automotive recycling has been going on since the day after the first car accident. Is it efficient? You betcha. They start by selling off whole sections of the car in "clips," for accident repairs. Then, they sell everything else from the seats to the individual bolts. You can search for them online or call up your local junkyard, guarantee they have a database and encyclopedic knowledge of cross purposes. Finally, when nothings left of a car, they squash it, and sell the scrap metal for a pretty penney.
As a backyard mechanic who works on both a 1998 VW Passat and a 1973 VW SuperBeetle, I'd have to say that the Passat is the easier to work with.
All this "backyard mechanics can't fix today's cars" talk is just nonsense. Modern parts are lightweight and precision manufactured. There's no banging or clanging to get parts off, no rusted bolts, no tweaking of the carburetor and timing. There's no cables to break, and very little danger of an improperly timed engine pinging itself into oblivion.
Cases in point: the Passat stopped firing on one cylinder. There were three things that could have caused this: a broken plug wire (it was fine), a broken plug (brand new and tested fine) or a problem with the ignition control module. Testing the ICM showed cylinder three was receiving no signal. $100 later, I had a new module which installed in about five minutes.
When I had a similar problem with the Beetle, I had the same three possible sources (plug, wire or ignition control). However, the ignition control system, being mechanical, was far more difficult to troubleshoot. I ended up replacing pretty much everything...the distributor, the condensor, the solenoid...and even then, I spent the better half of an afternoon tweaking it.
Of course, working on the Beetle is more FUN, because the endless possibilities of a custom and delicate relationships between components make it more satisfying.
Here, here. Most of this article is typical future shock and FUD. For one thing, the majority of the more expensive parts on a car are not likely to break, and are even LESS likely to break because of the overengineering.
Which would you prefer -- a set of steel control arms with a 3 year life at a cost of $75 plus labor each time, or a set of aluminum control arms with a ten year life at a cost of $150 plus labor?
Overall, you're saving $75 if you keep the car ten years, and $150 if you keep the car 8 or 9.
Incidentally, this is one of the things that fuels the "American cars are crap" sentiment that is common among many people. Often, American cars use less expensive parts that are also less expensive to repair. Foreign cars are more likely to be made of precision parts, with a massive cost. A new clutch kit for a Ford Taurus is around $300. A new clutch kit for my Passat is clost to $1000.
One solution, btw, is not to abandon the better quality parts, but to create an open parts standard. The more cars that use a specific part, the more generic offerings there are and the cheaper those offerings become. There's also more parts available from used auto parts catalogues.
Apple doesn't HAVE to "compete" on hardware. This is ridiculous. It's like saying that that the Four Seasons will have to match prices with McDonalds, or get out of food.
Apple has made a decision to use a non-standard platform as the vector for their OS. In a lot of ways, that has simplified the task of creating a reliable operating system. So WHAT if they're doomed to charge more than HP for an entry level system...they aren't trying to create a monopoly. So long as enough people buy their computers, devices and software to turn a profit every quarter, they're far better off than the hundreds of other PC manufacturers who can't see past the concept of hardware as a commodity.
Aside from some commonly overengineered parts like power supplies, fans, and ram, all common PC hardware has roughly the same reliability, regardless of vendor or price. What, you think Apple and Dell get better cards from ATI just because they have a higher price point?
The difference is, with a Dell or an Apple you get a year warranty. With most of your whitelabel PCs, you get 90 days. With a year between budget outlays, I'll take the larger up front warranty, thanks.
The irony with the "privacy concerns" over GMail or A9 is that neither is doing nothing new.
"They're reading my email!" So? The SMTP server that delivered your email read it. The Pop3/IMAP servers that display your email read it. Any spam filters or virus scanners on your email server read it. And many of these have logged the source, logged the subject, and in the case of Bayesian filters, logged keywords present in the email. Many, many computers have read your email -- but we're to be outraged that google is "diabolically" adding one more to the list?
"They're tracking my browsing!" Amazon ALREADY tracks your browsing. They follow you through every web page that has an Amazon graphic and they look up referrers to see what you like. The toolbar just makes it easier.
Honestly, guys, it's silly to get upset and threaten legislation over privacy issues with an OPTIONAL privately run service. If I want to call up Macy's and tell them everything I did today so they can suggest products I want to buy, that should be my choice. If Google and Amazon are honest about collecting this info, and people still use the service, than where's the problem? Personally, I'm less wierded out by machines offering me things automatically than I am by PEOPLE offering me things through intuition. At least no computer will ever read my spam and wonder, "What kind of a guy gets all this barnyard porn?"
You know, this idea that "progressive themes == rock opera" would probably shock a lot of artists. Progressive theme albums in the hip-hop world are actually quite popular, building as they do off of the movements and resolutions progressive jazz. Theme albums are popular in rock as well -- for example, the last release from the Queens of the Stone Age was a progressive work exposing the different emotions exposed by a morning drive listening to the radio.
I like theme albums...they're the kind of thing you can put on and listen to start to finish and your mood adapts to the album, rather than skipping past songs you aren't in the mood for. They don't have to be rock operas, though they often have similarities...check out that last Dream Theatre album, for example. It's not explicitly a rock opera, but it purports to tell a tale of insanity across two disks.
Anyhow: there is plenty of really, really good music being made in every genre right now, so it's not like you can fairly say that "X is dead." The problem is that the music industry has moved beyond the "finding great bands" stage and into a disconcerting "finding marketable bands" stage. If the Beatles were around today, they'd never get signed. They'd still be making good music, but chances are you'd never hear it -- and it wouldn't be the same nor as good without George Martin's production.
1) Actually, the problem is not just one of lines, but of procurement and flow control. A "line" has already been paid for, it's the satelites and converters and multiplexors that cost money.
2) HBO and other ad-free tv's licensing is on a per-customer basis, you give HBO x% of the HBO fee you charge. CSPAN, on the other hand, costs nothing -- and if I recall, you're required by law to make it available to everybody. Public Access channels are the same way. Certain other channels, QVC and HSN for example, pay you to put them up, or offset the cost of other premium channels. Some of these are required in the license with the content provider. Which REALLY makes things complicated. If you wanted JUST HBO, you'd probably still get at least 12 channels (those required by law and HBO). If you wanted HBO and Cartoon Network, you'd probably end up with 18 (after those required by license). Which makes a la carte pricing little more than package pricing anyway.
3) Cable billing is complex enough as it is. The only way a la carte pricing could work is if it were itemized like video on demand PPV. And at that point, thanks to agreements and digital boxes, you've got 200 channels at $55/month to start with.
Very insightful. In fact, you've drilled to the core of the problem with A La Carte pricing. It'll save negligible cash, because the channels you don't want to pay for aren't really costing you anything. They're just there to make what you have to pay seem like a better value.
If the COST of a delivering a single satelite feed -- channel licensing, cable, maintenance, customer service, etc -- for a single feed was $5, they'd need to charge you at least $5 per channel to cover costs. I think we can agree on that. However, on that same feed is a LOT more than just your channel. There may be a hundred channels, or there may be three or four. The cost BEYOND that $5 to deliver another channel would be pennies per.
So, assuming a 50% markup (which is pretty good), they can sell you one channel for $10. Or, they can sell you a dozen channels for $11. Most cable companies figure you'd prefer the latter. That's why channels are offered in such unusual tiers.
Let's say you want Comedy Central. Along with Comedy Central, on the same satelite feed, come 30 other channels. It costs very little above the recoupment cost to give you all 30. So that's what the do. Those 30 might include some strange bedfellows -- religious channels, channels of syndiated programming, shopping channels, nature channels -- but really, you're getting all of them for free, or close to it. You're just paying for Comedy Central. It's not like $35/70 channels = $.50/ channel. It's more like ($28/first channel) + ($.10/additional channel * 70).
The cable companies would have to mark up the per channel cost -- or set a "channel mimimum" -- to the point where getting three or four channels was less money, but it wouldn't be that much less. And why should we legislate that? What's next, legislating that K-mart has to sell me only pair of boxer shorts out of the three pack if I want it?
I have never used the valet key that came with my car. But I did not have the option of getting the car without said key. I could have made a fuss about this, but look: the cost of the key was probably close to zilch -- figure it took a few weeks to engineer, a few minutes for a robot to install. Split that over the production run of a several hundred thousand cars, it's still less than a dollar a car. Would I bitch and moan about a dollar when I'm already shelling out 15,000 of them?
So V chip it, you insensitive clod. I can't believe you're too principalled to allow a channel you don't like to go unwatched on your TV, but not principalled enough to use your remote and block the channel.
Eh -- problem here is that 7 colour != 7 bit, because if you add black to any of them you still have black. 7 colours is more like 3 bit, e.g. there are 8 distinct and detectable values: black, cyan, magenta, yellow, blue, red, green and white.
This also discounts bleed, cueing and error correction.
I do it all the time. There are a number of extremely comfortable tissue products made out of a percentage of recycled plastics. Not to mention the ultra soft nylon and polyester fabrics used to make diapers, towels, fleece blankets and underwear.
But of course, rational rebuttals rarely fit on bumper stickers.
It's not always "cutting down trees is bad." That's just the message you're receiving. The real message is generally, "clear cutting old growth trees that house protected species in national forests at the behest of certain lumber companies who didn't properly manage their forests and resist recycling is bad." But some people don't stick around for those details. And the talking heads on the other side make it a "jobs" issue, when generally it's a "specific lumber company cut costs twenty years ago and now doesn't have enough mature trees to fill demand" issue. It's getting better and there are a number -- in fact, a TON -- of American lumber and paper companies that don't pillage the earth and who DO replant more than they take. But as long as lobbying congress to clearcut public lands results in "hey, free trees," there will be somebody to do it.
I mean, everybody needs wood. Most of the environmentalists *I* know use more wood than the average person, from paper bags to wood furniture (although, ironically, they're more likely to build their HOUSES out of recycled plastic, old tires, etc). And lumbering on public lands isn't necessarily bad either...it's a great income stream for national forests who can use the money to pay for rangers and for better services. If you're ever in Ontario, visit Algonquin national park, a massive and beautiful park with tons of playboating and hiking in the south, and managed lumbering to the north. I've never seen a better maintained national park...and the lumber companies love it. The Adirondack High Peaks region is home to a number of logging companies as well, and they're also a beautiful park.
It's only when greedy companies pick out public lands and say "We need to log in X public region, because it will be more profitable than waiting for our own trees to mature," or when the clear cutting of trees leads to soil erosion and the subsequent destruction of arable land, that there is a real environmental problem.
If you wish your Logitech camera worked with iChatAV, complain to Logitech. They're the ones that need to write a driver for it.
All firewire devices work, because all firewire devices use the same hardware interface for accessing video. USB devices, on the other hand, have many different interfaces. Therefore, they need proprietary drivers. Apple can't be expected to write a driver for every USB webcam on the market...that's like expecting Ford to offer an adapter for every kind of windshield wiper.
This would be hilarious if it were not the sort of thing I do all the time.
Basically, if the engine will fit under the hood of the car (and often times, even if it won't), somebody has mounted it thusly. The only real problem is adapting the output of the engine to the transmissions, which can be done using adapter kits from Kennedy Engines and others.
The coolest I've seen is the guy who got his '65 Beetle running with a 1.2l Mazda Wankel Rotary engine. Nice looking car, and 160 hp is pretty good for a car in the 2500 lb region.
Incidentally and to get back on topic, EIO is a surplus electronics shop and hobbiest mecca. They've got a LOT of older LCDs that they pull and sell with instructions, information and forums FULL of smart folks that know how to access older displays. Five years ago, they were the first company to retail a 6" backlit LCD for under $100. That LCD looked great in my van's media center back when I was a dilletante college student with time to burn.
320x240x30 fps is an exclusively computer resolution. You can tell, because though it uses the correct 4:3 ratio, it uses square pixels. NTSC pixels are slightly thinner than they are tall, which is why the MPEG1 VCD standard calls for a resolution of 352x240. 320x240 is an interpolation of this resolution some TV cards perform to prevent the "real" resolution from looking elongated.
But even 352x240 is "half resolution." The real visible resolution is twice that (704x780, the resolution of most DVD movies) plus some extra data on either side that generally doesn't get seen on your TV due to the rounding of the picture tube. This is how some capture cards acheive the resolution 720x480: they show you the edge your TV can't display, which is generally just black anyway (though some video games make use of this area...ever lose the edge of the screen on a game? This is why).
Furthermore, that's wrong too. Your TV doesn't display 720x480 images at 30 frames/s, but rather 360x240 at 60 FIELDS per second. These fields are interlaced with each other, meaning the fields...the TV scans up to show you every other bottom field, then scans down and shows you every other top field. Generally, the top and bottom fields of each frames come together to make the same picture, but occasionally, there will be motion across a field boundary. You see this as a jagged line during motion scenes when you splice it back together, like you will if you watch a TV series on a computer DVD player that doesn't de-interlace.
So, yeah. NTSC is NOT the equivalent of 320x240x30fps unless you're willing to accept throwing out 66% of the data as equivalency.
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Uh, automotive recycling has been going on since the day after the first car accident. Is it efficient? You betcha. They start by selling off whole sections of the car in "clips," for accident repairs. Then, they sell everything else from the seats to the individual bolts. You can search for them online or call up your local junkyard, guarantee they have a database and encyclopedic knowledge of cross purposes. Finally, when nothings left of a car, they squash it, and sell the scrap metal for a pretty penney.
As a backyard mechanic who works on both a 1998 VW Passat and a 1973 VW SuperBeetle, I'd have to say that the Passat is the easier to work with.
All this "backyard mechanics can't fix today's cars" talk is just nonsense. Modern parts are lightweight and precision manufactured. There's no banging or clanging to get parts off, no rusted bolts, no tweaking of the carburetor and timing. There's no cables to break, and very little danger of an improperly timed engine pinging itself into oblivion.
Cases in point: the Passat stopped firing on one cylinder. There were three things that could have caused this: a broken plug wire (it was fine), a broken plug (brand new and tested fine) or a problem with the ignition control module. Testing the ICM showed cylinder three was receiving no signal. $100 later, I had a new module which installed in about five minutes.
When I had a similar problem with the Beetle, I had the same three possible sources (plug, wire or ignition control). However, the ignition control system, being mechanical, was far more difficult to troubleshoot. I ended up replacing pretty much everything...the distributor, the condensor, the solenoid...and even then, I spent the better half of an afternoon tweaking it.
Of course, working on the Beetle is more FUN, because the endless possibilities of a custom and delicate relationships between components make it more satisfying.
Here, here. Most of this article is typical future shock and FUD. For one thing, the majority of the more expensive parts on a car are not likely to break, and are even LESS likely to break because of the overengineering.
Which would you prefer -- a set of steel control arms with a 3 year life at a cost of $75 plus labor each time, or a set of aluminum control arms with a ten year life at a cost of $150 plus labor?
Overall, you're saving $75 if you keep the car ten years, and $150 if you keep the car 8 or 9.
Incidentally, this is one of the things that fuels the "American cars are crap" sentiment that is common among many people. Often, American cars use less expensive parts that are also less expensive to repair. Foreign cars are more likely to be made of precision parts, with a massive cost. A new clutch kit for a Ford Taurus is around $300. A new clutch kit for my Passat is clost to $1000.
One solution, btw, is not to abandon the better quality parts, but to create an open parts standard. The more cars that use a specific part, the more generic offerings there are and the cheaper those offerings become. There's also more parts available from used auto parts catalogues.
Or maybe more of them will think to use a $.40 inline fuse. Stupid.
I'd rather a computer with fruit than a computer with a goddamn cow on the box. Who designed that shit, my mom?
Apple doesn't HAVE to "compete" on hardware. This is ridiculous. It's like saying that that the Four Seasons will have to match prices with McDonalds, or get out of food.
Apple has made a decision to use a non-standard platform as the vector for their OS. In a lot of ways, that has simplified the task of creating a reliable operating system. So WHAT if they're doomed to charge more than HP for an entry level system...they aren't trying to create a monopoly. So long as enough people buy their computers, devices and software to turn a profit every quarter, they're far better off than the hundreds of other PC manufacturers who can't see past the concept of hardware as a commodity.
Aside from some commonly overengineered parts like power supplies, fans, and ram, all common PC hardware has roughly the same reliability, regardless of vendor or price. What, you think Apple and Dell get better cards from ATI just because they have a higher price point?
The difference is, with a Dell or an Apple you get a year warranty. With most of your whitelabel PCs, you get 90 days. With a year between budget outlays, I'll take the larger up front warranty, thanks.
So you're saying this idea is not so fresh?
The irony with the "privacy concerns" over GMail or A9 is that neither is doing nothing new.
"They're reading my email!" So? The SMTP server that delivered your email read it. The Pop3/IMAP servers that display your email read it. Any spam filters or virus scanners on your email server read it. And many of these have logged the source, logged the subject, and in the case of Bayesian filters, logged keywords present in the email. Many, many computers have read your email -- but we're to be outraged that google is "diabolically" adding one more to the list?
"They're tracking my browsing!" Amazon ALREADY tracks your browsing. They follow you through every web page that has an Amazon graphic and they look up referrers to see what you like. The toolbar just makes it easier.
Honestly, guys, it's silly to get upset and threaten legislation over privacy issues with an OPTIONAL privately run service. If I want to call up Macy's and tell them everything I did today so they can suggest products I want to buy, that should be my choice. If Google and Amazon are honest about collecting this info, and people still use the service, than where's the problem? Personally, I'm less wierded out by machines offering me things automatically than I am by PEOPLE offering me things through intuition. At least no computer will ever read my spam and wonder, "What kind of a guy gets all this barnyard porn?"
You know, this idea that "progressive themes == rock opera" would probably shock a lot of artists. Progressive theme albums in the hip-hop world are actually quite popular, building as they do off of the movements and resolutions progressive jazz. Theme albums are popular in rock as well -- for example, the last release from the Queens of the Stone Age was a progressive work exposing the different emotions exposed by a morning drive listening to the radio.
I like theme albums...they're the kind of thing you can put on and listen to start to finish and your mood adapts to the album, rather than skipping past songs you aren't in the mood for. They don't have to be rock operas, though they often have similarities...check out that last Dream Theatre album, for example. It's not explicitly a rock opera, but it purports to tell a tale of insanity across two disks.
Anyhow: there is plenty of really, really good music being made in every genre right now, so it's not like you can fairly say that "X is dead." The problem is that the music industry has moved beyond the "finding great bands" stage and into a disconcerting "finding marketable bands" stage. If the Beatles were around today, they'd never get signed. They'd still be making good music, but chances are you'd never hear it -- and it wouldn't be the same nor as good without George Martin's production.
Pretty good rebuttal. Some notes:
1) Actually, the problem is not just one of lines, but of procurement and flow control. A "line" has already been paid for, it's the satelites and converters and multiplexors that cost money.
2) HBO and other ad-free tv's licensing is on a per-customer basis, you give HBO x% of the HBO fee you charge. CSPAN, on the other hand, costs nothing -- and if I recall, you're required by law to make it available to everybody. Public Access channels are the same way. Certain other channels, QVC and HSN for example, pay you to put them up, or offset the cost of other premium channels. Some of these are required in the license with the content provider. Which REALLY makes things complicated. If you wanted JUST HBO, you'd probably still get at least 12 channels (those required by law and HBO). If you wanted HBO and Cartoon Network, you'd probably end up with 18 (after those required by license). Which makes a la carte pricing little more than package pricing anyway.
3) Cable billing is complex enough as it is. The only way a la carte pricing could work is if it were itemized like video on demand PPV. And at that point, thanks to agreements and digital boxes, you've got 200 channels at $55/month to start with.
Oh yes.
Hi-larious.
Very insightful. In fact, you've drilled to the core of the problem with A La Carte pricing. It'll save negligible cash, because the channels you don't want to pay for aren't really costing you anything. They're just there to make what you have to pay seem like a better value.
If the COST of a delivering a single satelite feed -- channel licensing, cable, maintenance, customer service, etc -- for a single feed was $5, they'd need to charge you at least $5 per channel to cover costs. I think we can agree on that. However, on that same feed is a LOT more than just your channel. There may be a hundred channels, or there may be three or four. The cost BEYOND that $5 to deliver another channel would be pennies per.
So, assuming a 50% markup (which is pretty good), they can sell you one channel for $10. Or, they can sell you a dozen channels for $11. Most cable companies figure you'd prefer the latter. That's why channels are offered in such unusual tiers.
Let's say you want Comedy Central. Along with Comedy Central, on the same satelite feed, come 30 other channels. It costs very little above the recoupment cost to give you all 30. So that's what the do. Those 30 might include some strange bedfellows -- religious channels, channels of syndiated programming, shopping channels, nature channels -- but really, you're getting all of them for free, or close to it. You're just paying for Comedy Central. It's not like $35/70 channels = $.50/ channel. It's more like ($28/first channel) + ($.10/additional channel * 70).
The cable companies would have to mark up the per channel cost -- or set a "channel mimimum" -- to the point where getting three or four channels was less money, but it wouldn't be that much less. And why should we legislate that? What's next, legislating that K-mart has to sell me only pair of boxer shorts out of the three pack if I want it?
I have never used the valet key that came with my car. But I did not have the option of getting the car without said key. I could have made a fuss about this, but look: the cost of the key was probably close to zilch -- figure it took a few weeks to engineer, a few minutes for a robot to install. Split that over the production run of a several hundred thousand cars, it's still less than a dollar a car. Would I bitch and moan about a dollar when I'm already shelling out 15,000 of them?
So V chip it, you insensitive clod. I can't believe you're too principalled to allow a channel you don't like to go unwatched on your TV, but not principalled enough to use your remote and block the channel.
where people could borrow from a large repository of these paper-encoded datasets.
No, you fool! What if presidential assassins use these building as cover?
Brings new meaning to the phrase "notebook computer?"
Eh -- problem here is that 7 colour != 7 bit, because if you add black to any of them you still have black. 7 colours is more like 3 bit, e.g. there are 8 distinct and detectable values: black, cyan, magenta, yellow, blue, red, green and white.
This also discounts bleed, cueing and error correction.
I do it all the time. There are a number of extremely comfortable tissue products made out of a percentage of recycled plastics. Not to mention the ultra soft nylon and polyester fabrics used to make diapers, towels, fleece blankets and underwear.
But of course, rational rebuttals rarely fit on bumper stickers.
It's not always "cutting down trees is bad." That's just the message you're receiving. The real message is generally, "clear cutting old growth trees that house protected species in national forests at the behest of certain lumber companies who didn't properly manage their forests and resist recycling is bad." But some people don't stick around for those details. And the talking heads on the other side make it a "jobs" issue, when generally it's a "specific lumber company cut costs twenty years ago and now doesn't have enough mature trees to fill demand" issue. It's getting better and there are a number -- in fact, a TON -- of American lumber and paper companies that don't pillage the earth and who DO replant more than they take. But as long as lobbying congress to clearcut public lands results in "hey, free trees," there will be somebody to do it.
I mean, everybody needs wood. Most of the environmentalists *I* know use more wood than the average person, from paper bags to wood furniture (although, ironically, they're more likely to build their HOUSES out of recycled plastic, old tires, etc). And lumbering on public lands isn't necessarily bad either...it's a great income stream for national forests who can use the money to pay for rangers and for better services. If you're ever in Ontario, visit Algonquin national park, a massive and beautiful park with tons of playboating and hiking in the south, and managed lumbering to the north. I've never seen a better maintained national park...and the lumber companies love it. The Adirondack High Peaks region is home to a number of logging companies as well, and they're also a beautiful park.
It's only when greedy companies pick out public lands and say "We need to log in X public region, because it will be more profitable than waiting for our own trees to mature," or when the clear cutting of trees leads to soil erosion and the subsequent destruction of arable land, that there is a real environmental problem.
Wow. I thought my brain made the Boob Missiles up.
If you wish your Logitech camera worked with iChatAV, complain to Logitech. They're the ones that need to write a driver for it.
All firewire devices work, because all firewire devices use the same hardware interface for accessing video. USB devices, on the other hand, have many different interfaces. Therefore, they need proprietary drivers. Apple can't be expected to write a driver for every USB webcam on the market...that's like expecting Ford to offer an adapter for every kind of windshield wiper.
Most Fox comedies don't have laugh tracks these days.
This would be hilarious if it were not the sort of thing I do all the time.
Basically, if the engine will fit under the hood of the car (and often times, even if it won't), somebody has mounted it thusly. The only real problem is adapting the output of the engine to the transmissions, which can be done using adapter kits from Kennedy Engines and others.
The coolest I've seen is the guy who got his '65 Beetle running with a 1.2l Mazda Wankel Rotary engine. Nice looking car, and 160 hp is pretty good for a car in the 2500 lb region.
Incidentally and to get back on topic, EIO is a surplus electronics shop and hobbiest mecca. They've got a LOT of older LCDs that they pull and sell with instructions, information and forums FULL of smart folks that know how to access older displays. Five years ago, they were the first company to retail a 6" backlit LCD for under $100. That LCD looked great in my van's media center back when I was a dilletante college student with time to burn.
This is about as wrong as can be.
320x240x30 fps is an exclusively computer resolution. You can tell, because though it uses the correct 4:3 ratio, it uses square pixels. NTSC pixels are slightly thinner than they are tall, which is why the MPEG1 VCD standard calls for a resolution of 352x240. 320x240 is an interpolation of this resolution some TV cards perform to prevent the "real" resolution from looking elongated.
But even 352x240 is "half resolution." The real visible resolution is twice that (704x780, the resolution of most DVD movies) plus some extra data on either side that generally doesn't get seen on your TV due to the rounding of the picture tube. This is how some capture cards acheive the resolution 720x480: they show you the edge your TV can't display, which is generally just black anyway (though some video games make use of this area...ever lose the edge of the screen on a game? This is why).
Furthermore, that's wrong too. Your TV doesn't display 720x480 images at 30 frames/s, but rather 360x240 at 60 FIELDS per second. These fields are interlaced with each other, meaning the fields...the TV scans up to show you every other bottom field, then scans down and shows you every other top field. Generally, the top and bottom fields of each frames come together to make the same picture, but occasionally, there will be motion across a field boundary. You see this as a jagged line during motion scenes when you splice it back together, like you will if you watch a TV series on a computer DVD player that doesn't de-interlace.
So, yeah. NTSC is NOT the equivalent of 320x240x30fps unless you're willing to accept throwing out 66% of the data as equivalency.
I think you confuse the thrust of my argument. A steady timeslow can make a funny show easier to find, but it won't make a dull show funnier.
The shows I mentioned are funny no matter when they're on.