Think of this ratio of time spans. The time during which the Earth has existed and the time during which human life has been technically capable of sending and receiving communications over radio waves. That's about 5 billion compared to 100. If we don't move beyond the Earth and suffer a species die-off that includes humans don't astronomers currently estimate about 100 million years between catastrophic events like massive asteroid collision? So during the most recent one part in fifty windows we have had one part in a million time span when an extraterrestrial SETI might detect us.
Not very good odds unless you get off your home rock (yes, I know I'm making anthrocentric assumptions. So sue me). But in that case with exponential growth shouldn't such a successful alien civilization have spread across the galaxy? I think this is a version of Fermi's dilemma. Why bother looking because if they were out there, they would be here already. That only refers to the galactic neighborhood. If you want to get all extra galactic with me that is an entirely different conversation.
"Unless you get the average consumer on board, you will never be able to get more than a few token movies on your new fancy format. How many Laserdisks do you own?"
I'd hate to be too harsh but you should realize that this is an exceptionally clueless question. Although the market penetration (percentage of homes with the device) for laserdisc was about 5%, the selection of movies and other programs was huge. For the movie enthusiast it was significantly better than what was available for VHS because of the technical innovations that were widely used by producers.
Even today, long after the party is over because of DVD, you can find a large range of laserdiscs on eBay, for instance. I would agree that S-VHS as a distribution medium for pre-recorded programs was a failure along with pre-recorded programs for DAT, MiniDisc, SACD, and DVD-Audio among many others. But laserdisc is in an entirely different category.
Other parts of your analysis are also faulty because of the important fact that before long all TV will be HDTV. There are over a thousand stations in the US broadcasting digital TV and after a sufficient amount of pushing and shouting all the analog stations will be turned off. The only question about HDTV is when, not if. It won't be the 'high end' format, it will be the mainstream format. The FCC decided this question whether the market would have agreed or not (I think it would have agreed).
Add one more to the list of PS2 for DVD playback. We have two Macs and a PC which will also play DVD's on their monitors or each other's monitors using VLC. We've had three different DVD players which have one after another been given to friends or relatives. It has been more important to be able to play DVD's in other places than have a stand alone DVD player at home. The TV set is often not used for days or weeks except for the PS2 or XBox. If the computers are in use then playing a DVD on the PS2 is a useful option. It isn't that we never watch TV but with the HDTV card in the PC it has a far better picture than the TV set.
This is only coming back slowly but if I remember correctly now both DCC and MiniDisc introduced digital audio with perceptual based lossy compression before MP3 had become popular. It was the earlier DAT format which was much delayed by lawsuits or threats of lawsuits. DAT was a tape standard for uncompressed digital audio. To avoid the obvious connection with CD's it was forced to record only at a 48 kHz sampling rate while CD's use 44 kHz. DAT was and possibly still is a popular standard for pro audio with MiniDisc making inroads while DCC is nowhere to be found. You could easily see MiniDisc in both Europe and Asia but I've heard that MP3 players like iPod may spell the end of MiniDisc.
Since I actually watch HDTV and current DVDs on my PC monitor I can accurately report that HD video is much more impressive. Project a year or more into the future and it can easily be maintained that just about anyone viewing HD DVD on a PC monitor will also be able to see the difference. If your monitor has resolution no more than 640 x 480 I might agree but how many are that limited?
"if we were to follow the political advice of Ben Franklin we'd be growing hemp and having black slaves pick it."
Do you have evidence for your position or is this just a hit and run? In the 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica in the article about Benjamin Franklin I quote:
"As president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Franklin signed a petition to Congress (12th February 1790) for immediate abolition of salvery,..."
I wouldn't claim Franklin's views, like those of any intelligent person, never changed or evolved. But this was his position at the end of his life. I don't think the evidence favors your view. As for growing hemp, what's the problem with that?
Thanks for taking the time to reply. That is quite encouraging to hear. I didn't find out about your reply sooner because my damn mail program treated the notice from slashdot as junk mail. I'm glad I periodically check to see what the filters are doing.
My concern about issues of standards was caused by the report that accompanied the article which seemed to make odd claims about saved file size.
"the amount of compression varies a great deal between different DVDs"
That factor and the issue of the quality of the source material are both probably more important than 480i versus 480p for DVDs. On the other hand the first time I saw "Fastlane" in widescreen 480p on FOX I got very confused. I was new to HDTV and had heard FOX did not provide "real" HDTV but that picture was very impressive. It seemed sharper and better than any DVD I had seen on my PC.
In the end I'd agree with your statement "it's still not HD, but it's not bad". I am glad ATSC decided to go a lot further than DVD quality.
Ain't it the truth. Last season I had trouble watching football games that were not in HD. I'll be in luck this year because it seems like a lot more games will be available in HD.
I stopped watching the local UPN broadcast of Enterprise because the affiliate is owned by FOX which has declined to upgrade the UPN affiliate station to HD even though UPN is producing it in HD. That's when I discovered suprnova.org and Azureus. The considerably compressed (to 350 MB) file is still much better than the SD broadcast from the local affiliate. I'd happily record and view the local station if it were not for the corporate shenanigans that allow one network to buy another's affiliates (the situation is even slightly more convoluted and tawdry than I've described).
'Unfortunately, the EyeTV 500 respects the so-called "broadcast flag"'
Ouch, are you certain of this? They've implemented it a full year earlier than required? If that is truly the case then I will never buy another product from elgato. They can go out to lunch with Jack Valenti all they want but they will not get another penny of my money.
Are you sure of this? I know they are only shipping with Mac software but if it conforms to FireWire AVC standards it should be possible to drive from the PC. That is part of the beauty of the FireWire stuff: it is supposed to be platform neutral. For instance VirtualDVHS on the Mac works fine with the DVico Fusion I board in my PC. I can record to the Mac over FireWire from the Fusion board and play back on the Mac locally or the PC over FireWire.
Based on what is written in this review I have my doubts if they are conforming to existing standards. For instance where do they get 20 GB per hour? ATSC is no more than a 20 Mbps stream which is less than 10 GB per hour if you just dumped it to your drive. Is this some sort of pre-emptive Broadcast Flag nonsense?
In any case, at this price the Samsung T165 is probably a better buy for Mac users. But the Roku dropped from $500 to $300 (similar product but no tuner or FireWire) so maybe the EyeTV 500 will come down to something closer to $200 where it would be a more attractive choice.
"Most DVD's (at least ones that you rent) are actually encoded as 480P/24"
I wish there were a little more clarity on this issue (at least in my own mind). When I've read the comments of experts on the subject, like Jim Taylor, I get the impression that the DVD video format itself diminshes the source resolution to interlaced even if using 480P/24 source.
In any case I would readily agree that DVD's have superior resolution to NTSC so they benefit from playback on HDTV (and HTPC). On the other hand it is not even close to the resolution afforded by ATSC. That is the surprisingly unrecognized fact that the absolute best resolution video signal available to the home viewer is no longer laserdisc, cable, satellite, or DVD. It is rabbit ears. Commercial supported (or PBS) over the air (OTA) digital TV meets or exceeds the resolution from all the other sources (OK, I've glossed over pre-recorded DVHS but their crippling copy protection and limited life time of the format makes them no more than a footnote).
"My curiousity is this whole "but not with cable" thing. Just how does it block that?"
It doesn't block it. They just use a different modulation scheme for digital cable. 8VSB is used for OTA digital TV while most cable companies use some variant of QAM. You need a QAM demodulator which is fairly rare for PC tuners. DVico makes a PCI board that handles 8VSB and QAM but it is PC only. A reason for the scarcity is that cable companies have a nasty habit of scrambling their signal and requiring you to use their STB. The cable card initiative remains an unfulfilled promise.
On the other hand if this product (EyeTV 500) handles NTSC (ie analog TV) then it should be no big deal to view and record unscrambled analog cable TV. It is digital cable TV which is remains out of reach. Oddly enough some of the chips that provide 8VSB demodulation include QAM but the makers of the PC TV tuners don't enable that capability (see AccessTV for the PC and the recent community efforts).
At the risk of being provocative (what, on slashdot?) I have to ask if you've had your vision checked recently. OTA HDTV blows DVD out of the water! Even if the material on Leno is lame the picture is stunning. Just for the record the resolution of DVD is 720 x 480 interlaced. That is about half the resolution that FOX was using (480p) but is being cranked up to 720p which is 1280 x 720. The other HD resolution is 1080i or 1920 x 1080 interlaced.
Never mind. What I'm guessing you mean is that you enjoy watching DVD's on your HDTV but not the TV stations. Depending on your location there might not be much available to your antenna but all the major networks are doing their new programs in HD. That includes PBS, CBS, NBC, ABC, WB, UPN, and FOX (with FOX making the transition this fall). We get all those in Minneapolis except for UPN. That is a lot of programs and they all put DVD to shame for picture quality but that is no guarantee the story will be similarly improved.
On the other hand if you are watching upconverted regular programming or 480i the picture is usually better than NTSC but seldom as good as DVD.
Well, you certainly have strong opinions. Too bad you have your facts muddled. I would agree they aren't paring the price down to the bone, but it is not exceptional. For the sake of clarity it should be mentioned there is no mpeg encoder for HDTV in the box. The signal is transmitted already digitally compressed with 8VSB modulation (in the US). So you are buying a receiver with 8VSB demodulation and FireWire interface. A similar box from Samsung (the T165) has a list price of $700 but can regularly be found for $300 - $400. It also includes more functionality though I don't know if it is engineered as well. There are also some FireWire based PVR's from LG and Zenith (Zenith is owned by LG ELectronics of S. Korea). They include a hard drive and cost about $1,000.
The beauty of this type of product (TV tuner for a PC or Mac) is the low cost of entry. If you already have a good high resolution monitor and huge cheap hard drive, all you are missing is the tuner to enjoy HDTV. Where are you going to buy an HDTV that includes recording capability for $300? Right now the prices of truly stratospheric for large flat thin monitors (plasma or LCD). This allows you to enjoy HDTV now and wait for the inevitable price drop so your desired monitor is hundreds rather than thousands of dollars.
Note that there is the assumption that your viewing needs are no more than a few hours or less per day. The rest of the time your Mac can be devoted to its usual tasks. Even when a program is being broadcast you have the option of recording it in the background and watching when it is convenient. Simply recording the transport stream is a low resource capability that could be accomplished on a rather modest Mac (I know what I'm talking about as I've been using VirtualDVHS on the Mac for some time). It's the MPEG decompression that is taxing and even that is not out of reach if you use the transport stream decoder in VLC (free software from videolan.org). I'm assuming that elgato is recording the transport stream like all the other HDTV tuners.
If you don't make the restriction to former German citizens who were Jewish, but leave it as you appear to as "any Jewish scientists on the Manhattan Project at all" I can think of two immediately: Robert Oppenheimer who was the scientist in charge and Richard Feynman who was young but already one of the brightest stars. I think I recall that it was Feynman's work on the implosion technique that was crucial. I just verified that Leo Szilard was a Jewish German physicist who was forced out of Germany in 1933 when Adolf Hitler passed the first anti-Jewish law that stripped "non-Aryan" scientists of their post. Together with Enrico Fermi he achieved the first controlled chain reaction at the University of Chicago.
Hans Bethe had a Jewish mother (she became a Lutheran but I don't know if this would have done any "good" for Hans). Among the eminent scientists forced to flee from Gottingen were Max Born, James Franck, Eugene Wigner, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and John von Neumann. I'm not sure how many of them were Jewish but you can't dismiss scientists of this caliber and expect good results.
I think there is reasonable speculation that Heisengerg thought the prospect of an atomic bomb was too horrible because that was what many American scientists thought. Perhaps most notably Oppenheimer who was later treated very poorly as a result of his position and the increasing tension due to the rise of the Soviet Union. Given the military realities of post WWII Europe I think that the case could be made that without the volatile presence of nulear weapons there seems little chance that Soviet military ambitions could have been contained in Europe. Perhaps this doesn't disturb you so much but I don't think there was anything guaranteed about the eventual crumbling of Soviet power.
An interesting story about David Hilbert from {http://www.childrenofthemanhattanproject.org}:
About a year after the great purge of Gottingen he [Hilbert] was seated at a banquet in the place of honor next to Hitler's new Minister of Education, Rust. Rust was unwary enough to ask: "Is it really true, Professor, that your institute suffered so much from the departure of the Jews and their friends?" Hilbert snapped back, as coolly as ever: "Suffered? No, it didn't suffer, Herr Minister. It just doesn't exist any more!"
Einstein was designated as wrong by Hitler because he was Jewish and had chosen while quite young to leave Germany (remember he was an employee in the Swiss patent office when his first three famous papers in 1905). Hitler (and others like Philipp Lenard) had a thesis about Jewish science versus Aryan science. It is rather nauseating to read this stuff but it is a part of history. Ironically, if Hitler and his policies had not driven out so many of the best Jewish physicists it seems entirely possible that Germany rather than the US would have had a successful atomic bomb project. Of course, then Hitler would not have been the "Hitler" we recall from history.
No, it isn't. I suspected it might be deficient due to the misleading quotes in the slashdot summary. The author of the article, Randall Stross, knows perdectly well the difference between lossy and lossless audio compression and demonstrates that knowledge in his article. Both AAC and MP3 use lossy compression based on perceptual characteristics of human hearing. They both try to gain space by "throwing out" what we wouldn't be able to hear.
The quote about using half the space refers to Apple Lossless Compression which is yet another entry in the lossless audio compression sweepstakes. So far there are at least three other distinct candidates: APE, FLAC, and SHN. Each does its own 2:1 (approximately) compression which allows for all the bits to be restored during decompression. But 128 Kbps is a 10:1 compression and it is lossy whether one uses MP3, AAC, or ATRAC.
The lossless standards take up about 5 times the space/bandwidth but don't suffer from any loss of quality with respect to the red book audio standard. Since disk space and network bandwidth are cheap and getting cheaper all the time why bother with lossy compression? You could also say why bother with a mere factor of 2 and just use straight CD files but that factor of 2 is free. $50 is still less than $100 but the audio quality is identical.
Apple made a brilliant business decision to move early and decisively with the tools and standards that were available. The challenge now is to evolve to lossless compression as Apple has begun to do and eventually raise the bar for the commercial standard for digitized audio in general. Both SACD and DVD-A are hopelessly compromised by DRM bullshit so who knows if that will ever happen.
Another article written by a journalist with barely a clue. It is a load of crap to refer to the long lived laserdisc format as glitch-prone DiscoVision. I have some of those glitch-prone discs purchased when they first appeared and they play just fine now as they did then. The laserdisc format evolved slowly over the long time it existed (we'll see if DVD can match that). There was a tremendous amount of material, both standard and more exotic, which was made available.
Its main shortcoming was that despite appearances it was an analog video medium which was limited by the analog standard (NTSC, PAL, or SECAM) used to encode it and incapable of loss free archiving. From a mass consumer standpoint it was doomed because the viewer had to get up and flip the disc half way through most films (30 limit for CAV and 60 minute for CLV per side).
But just to clarify what the article gets so laughably wrong the laserdisc format was around for no less than 20 years. It never became dominant in the sense of Macdonalds or cockroaches, but there was always way too much good material to purchase more than a small fraction. I don't think the same could be said about DVD-audio or SACD by contrast.
I am happy to agree to disagree on two specific points and I'm not all that attached to the speed limit issue. I do feel that it is important that the institution of public libraries be kept clearly in view when thugs like the RIAA start sermonizing about their "property". Keeping libraries in mind helps clarify that, like public libraries, copyright law is supposed to be about enriching the public domain, not inventing a pernicious new category of 'property'.
I certainly have no problem with someone disagreeing with what I write. I don't always agree with what I've written. But public libraries do constitute the "wholesale [...] distribution of [copyrighted works]." Copying, even analog copying, is a recent development. When Gutenburg invented the printing press there was considerable anger at the disruption that came with it from the previous institutions for distribution of information. We have the option of deciding how laws govern the use of new technology. Copyright law, which was designed to protect publishers from other publishers appears to be broken with respect to its original motivation when it is turned against individuals.
When used against other commercial publishers I think the compromises encompassed by copyright law remains relatively coherent and useful. The mistake was made less than ten years ago when it was modified to use it against non-commercial copying. Again, this is not written in stone tablets brought down from on high. It was not in place as late as 1994. We can and should change it back so it does not have any authority over non-commercial activity.
Please understand that although these legal tussels tend to be over meritrious crap from corporate created nonsense like Britney, I think that is a distraction from the important issues. If other societies, like China, choose not to hobble themselves with new versions of old laws that impede the advancement of art and science, then we will put ourselves at an unnecessary disadvantage. We will be in the position of using the relatively unchallengeable power of the state to prop up aging institutions while others have the opportunity of inventing the future.
The crux of the issue for me is that we have enough real scarcity in this world. It appears just plain stupid to use the police power of the state to create scarcity where it has been banished by physics and technology.
On the issue of speed limits the people have successfully imposed their opinion on the Carter era speed limit reductions. It was grudging but after decades of stupid governance the speed limits were raised again throughout the sparsely populated western states. If "HUNDREDS of millions of people" disagree with the law, then the law is wrong.
For those who have not bothered to read any of the history of this topic I'd like to mention a specific name and case: David LaMacchia. In 1994 the federal government brought criminal charges against David LaMacchia who was a student at MIT who ran a BBS from which people could download copyrighted works. They intended to set an example but were surprised when the case was dismissed without even a trial.
The significant fact was that the BBS was not a site that charged any money. There was no law against noncommercial copying of files. After all, the copyright laws were created by Congress to protect one publisher from another in order to encourage publication. There wasn't originally any intention to prevent individuals from sharing publications at no cost. In fact the creation of public libraries was specifically for the purpose of encouraging the spread of copyrighted publications (books, magazines, recordings and eventually video recordings) at no charge except for late fees.
So when technology evolved to the point that people could spread copyrighted material at no significant cost to everyone else why was this a BAD THING (TM)? Are people so short sighted that they believe all literary, musical, scientific activity would come to a halt? These people want to take what is naturally plentiful (copies) and try to make it behave as though it were scarce. And until 10 years ago there wasn't even a law against non-commercial copying.
Our Constitution included the clause about trying to promote the progress of art and science NOT a clause about creating artificial scarcity for the benefit of corporations defending business models that may or may not work as new technologies emerge. Maybe, just maybe, it will no longer be economically viable to create summer blockbuster movies that require hundreds of millions of dollars to create and promote. I would sort of miss them. BUT SO WHAT?
When you have a new law (forbidding non-commercial copying being less than 10 years old) being flouted by tens of millions of people, I think there is a real issue of our legislators being bought by very narrow special interests. Remember all you moral absolutists, it wasn't even illegal 10 years ago. This is questionable legislation being passed by lap dog legislators creating artificial scarcity for the benefit of a few wealthy, powerful corporations.
OK, you may now resume your (making a copy of a digital file = stealing expensive sports cars) nonsense.
It doesn't appear you are paying attention. Skype is a replacement for PGPFone. The voice and chat traffic is encrypted end to end. That makes connecting to the PSTN a rather questionable idea though I have heard some talk about this from the phone companies recently. I wonder how the encryption issue will be handled. Anyhow, if you want a replacement for PGPFone without the debilitating lag try Skype. The audio quality is also much better.
I've seen it done recently by a product for the Mac called Trans Lucy. It is a DVD player application that prominently features the translucency feature. The company that sells it is CE Software and I seem to recall that they applied for some patent. On the other hand I recall my Apple Quadra 660 AV had similar capability circa 1993 for its video viewing application. I wish the people involved would spend more time creating and less time trying to patent.
No, you're not a liberal, you are a moron. You are incapable of wriring grammatically correct sentences ('your' is a possesive pronoun, not a contraction) and you are the only one harping about piracy. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to bypass the DRM. The most obvious to everyone else here is interoperability. As long as there are substantial non-infringing uses it is legitimate. There are enough nasty folks trying to make matters even more one-sided in favor of the oligopolies, we don't need people implying the laws are worse than they actually are.
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Think of this ratio of time spans. The time during which the Earth has existed and the time during which human life has been technically capable of sending and receiving communications over radio waves. That's about 5 billion compared to 100. If we don't move beyond the Earth and suffer a species die-off that includes humans don't astronomers currently estimate about 100 million years between catastrophic events like massive asteroid collision? So during the most recent one part in fifty windows we have had one part in a million time span when an extraterrestrial SETI might detect us.
Not very good odds unless you get off your home rock (yes, I know I'm making anthrocentric assumptions. So sue me). But in that case with exponential growth shouldn't such a successful alien civilization have spread across the galaxy? I think this is a version of Fermi's dilemma. Why bother looking because if they were out there, they would be here already. That only refers to the galactic neighborhood. If you want to get all extra galactic with me that is an entirely different conversation.
"Unless you get the average consumer on board, you will never be able to get more than a few token movies on your new fancy format. How many Laserdisks do you own?"
I'd hate to be too harsh but you should realize that this is an exceptionally clueless question. Although the market penetration (percentage of homes with the device) for laserdisc was about 5%, the selection of movies and other programs was huge. For the movie enthusiast it was significantly better than what was available for VHS because of the technical innovations that were widely used by producers.
Even today, long after the party is over because of DVD, you can find a large range of laserdiscs on eBay, for instance. I would agree that S-VHS as a distribution medium for pre-recorded programs was a failure along with pre-recorded programs for DAT, MiniDisc, SACD, and DVD-Audio among many others. But laserdisc is in an entirely different category.
Other parts of your analysis are also faulty because of the important fact that before long all TV will be HDTV. There are over a thousand stations in the US broadcasting digital TV and after a sufficient amount of pushing and shouting all the analog stations will be turned off. The only question about HDTV is when, not if. It won't be the 'high end' format, it will be the mainstream format. The FCC decided this question whether the market would have agreed or not (I think it would have agreed).
Add one more to the list of PS2 for DVD playback. We have two Macs and a PC which will also play DVD's on their monitors or each other's monitors using VLC. We've had three different DVD players which have one after another been given to friends or relatives. It has been more important to be able to play DVD's in other places than have a stand alone DVD player at home. The TV set is often not used for days or weeks except for the PS2 or XBox. If the computers are in use then playing a DVD on the PS2 is a useful option. It isn't that we never watch TV but with the HDTV card in the PC it has a far better picture than the TV set.
This is only coming back slowly but if I remember correctly now both DCC and MiniDisc introduced digital audio with perceptual based lossy compression before MP3 had become popular. It was the earlier DAT format which was much delayed by lawsuits or threats of lawsuits. DAT was a tape standard for uncompressed digital audio. To avoid the obvious connection with CD's it was forced to record only at a 48 kHz sampling rate while CD's use 44 kHz. DAT was and possibly still is a popular standard for pro audio with MiniDisc making inroads while DCC is nowhere to be found. You could easily see MiniDisc in both Europe and Asia but I've heard that MP3 players like iPod may spell the end of MiniDisc.
Since I actually watch HDTV and current DVDs on my PC monitor I can accurately report that HD video is much more impressive. Project a year or more into the future and it can easily be maintained that just about anyone viewing HD DVD on a PC monitor will also be able to see the difference. If your monitor has resolution no more than 640 x 480 I might agree but how many are that limited?
"if we were to follow the political advice of Ben Franklin we'd be growing hemp and having black slaves pick it."
..."
Do you have evidence for your position or is this just a hit and run? In the 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica in the article about Benjamin Franklin I quote:
"As president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Franklin signed a petition to Congress (12th February 1790) for immediate abolition of salvery,
I wouldn't claim Franklin's views, like those of any intelligent person, never changed or evolved. But this was his position at the end of his life. I don't think the evidence favors your view. As for growing hemp, what's the problem with that?
Thanks for taking the time to reply. That is quite encouraging to hear. I didn't find out about your reply sooner because my damn mail program treated the notice from slashdot as junk mail. I'm glad I periodically check to see what the filters are doing.
My concern about issues of standards was caused by the report that accompanied the article which seemed to make odd claims about saved file size.
"the amount of compression varies a great deal between different DVDs"
That factor and the issue of the quality of the source material are both probably more important than 480i versus 480p for DVDs. On the other hand the first time I saw "Fastlane" in widescreen 480p on FOX I got very confused. I was new to HDTV and had heard FOX did not provide "real" HDTV but that picture was very impressive. It seemed sharper and better than any DVD I had seen on my PC.
In the end I'd agree with your statement "it's still not HD, but it's not bad". I am glad ATSC decided to go a lot further than DVD quality.
"SD broadcast looked blurry and fuzzy"
Ain't it the truth. Last season I had trouble watching football games that were not in HD. I'll be in luck this year because it seems like a lot more games will be available in HD.
I stopped watching the local UPN broadcast of Enterprise because the affiliate is owned by FOX which has declined to upgrade the UPN affiliate station to HD even though UPN is producing it in HD. That's when I discovered suprnova.org and Azureus. The considerably compressed (to 350 MB) file is still much better than the SD broadcast from the local affiliate. I'd happily record and view the local station if it were not for the corporate shenanigans that allow one network to buy another's affiliates (the situation is even slightly more convoluted and tawdry than I've described).
'Unfortunately, the EyeTV 500 respects the so-called "broadcast flag"'
Ouch, are you certain of this? They've implemented it a full year earlier than required? If that is truly the case then I will never buy another product from elgato. They can go out to lunch with Jack Valenti all they want but they will not get another penny of my money.
Good luck in your lawsuits.
"except it's Mac only"
Are you sure of this? I know they are only shipping with Mac software but if it conforms to FireWire AVC standards it should be possible to drive from the PC. That is part of the beauty of the FireWire stuff: it is supposed to be platform neutral. For instance VirtualDVHS on the Mac works fine with the DVico Fusion I board in my PC. I can record to the Mac over FireWire from the Fusion board and play back on the Mac locally or the PC over FireWire.
Based on what is written in this review I have my doubts if they are conforming to existing standards. For instance where do they get 20 GB per hour? ATSC is no more than a 20 Mbps stream which is less than 10 GB per hour if you just dumped it to your drive. Is this some sort of pre-emptive Broadcast Flag nonsense?
In any case, at this price the Samsung T165 is probably a better buy for Mac users. But the Roku dropped from $500 to $300 (similar product but no tuner or FireWire) so maybe the EyeTV 500 will come down to something closer to $200 where it would be a more attractive choice.
"Most DVD's (at least ones that you rent) are actually encoded as 480P/24"
I wish there were a little more clarity on this issue (at least in my own mind). When I've read the comments of experts on the subject, like Jim Taylor, I get the impression that the DVD video format itself diminshes the source resolution to interlaced even if using 480P/24 source.
In any case I would readily agree that DVD's have superior resolution to NTSC so they benefit from playback on HDTV (and HTPC). On the other hand it is not even close to the resolution afforded by ATSC. That is the surprisingly unrecognized fact that the absolute best resolution video signal available to the home viewer is no longer laserdisc, cable, satellite, or DVD. It is rabbit ears. Commercial supported (or PBS) over the air (OTA) digital TV meets or exceeds the resolution from all the other sources (OK, I've glossed over pre-recorded DVHS but their crippling copy protection and limited life time of the format makes them no more than a footnote).
"My curiousity is this whole "but not with cable" thing. Just how does it block that?"
It doesn't block it. They just use a different modulation scheme for digital cable. 8VSB is used for OTA digital TV while most cable companies use some variant of QAM. You need a QAM demodulator which is fairly rare for PC tuners. DVico makes a PCI board that handles 8VSB and QAM but it is PC only. A reason for the scarcity is that cable companies have a nasty habit of scrambling their signal and requiring you to use their STB. The cable card initiative remains an unfulfilled promise.
On the other hand if this product (EyeTV 500) handles NTSC (ie analog TV) then it should be no big deal to view and record unscrambled analog cable TV. It is digital cable TV which is remains out of reach. Oddly enough some of the chips that provide 8VSB demodulation include QAM but the makers of the PC TV tuners don't enable that capability (see AccessTV for the PC and the recent community efforts).
"I own an HDTV and it makes DVDs look good"
At the risk of being provocative (what, on slashdot?) I have to ask if you've had your vision checked recently. OTA HDTV blows DVD out of the water! Even if the material on Leno is lame the picture is stunning. Just for the record the resolution of DVD is 720 x 480 interlaced. That is about half the resolution that FOX was using (480p) but is being cranked up to 720p which is 1280 x 720. The other HD resolution is 1080i or 1920 x 1080 interlaced.
Never mind. What I'm guessing you mean is that you enjoy watching DVD's on your HDTV but not the TV stations. Depending on your location there might not be much available to your antenna but all the major networks are doing their new programs in HD. That includes PBS, CBS, NBC, ABC, WB, UPN, and FOX (with FOX making the transition this fall). We get all those in Minneapolis except for UPN. That is a lot of programs and they all put DVD to shame for picture quality but that is no guarantee the story will be similarly improved.
On the other hand if you are watching upconverted regular programming or 480i the picture is usually better than NTSC but seldom as good as DVD.
Well, you certainly have strong opinions. Too bad you have your facts muddled. I would agree they aren't paring the price down to the bone, but it is not exceptional. For the sake of clarity it should be mentioned there is no mpeg encoder for HDTV in the box. The signal is transmitted already digitally compressed with 8VSB modulation (in the US). So you are buying a receiver with 8VSB demodulation and FireWire interface. A similar box from Samsung (the T165) has a list price of $700 but can regularly be found for $300 - $400. It also includes more functionality though I don't know if it is engineered as well. There are also some FireWire based PVR's from LG and Zenith (Zenith is owned by LG ELectronics of S. Korea). They include a hard drive and cost about $1,000.
The beauty of this type of product (TV tuner for a PC or Mac) is the low cost of entry. If you already have a good high resolution monitor and huge cheap hard drive, all you are missing is the tuner to enjoy HDTV. Where are you going to buy an HDTV that includes recording capability for $300? Right now the prices of truly stratospheric for large flat thin monitors (plasma or LCD). This allows you to enjoy HDTV now and wait for the inevitable price drop so your desired monitor is hundreds rather than thousands of dollars.
Note that there is the assumption that your viewing needs are no more than a few hours or less per day. The rest of the time your Mac can be devoted to its usual tasks. Even when a program is being broadcast you have the option of recording it in the background and watching when it is convenient. Simply recording the transport stream is a low resource capability that could be accomplished on a rather modest Mac (I know what I'm talking about as I've been using VirtualDVHS on the Mac for some time). It's the MPEG decompression that is taxing and even that is not out of reach if you use the transport stream decoder in VLC (free software from videolan.org). I'm assuming that elgato is recording the transport stream like all the other HDTV tuners.
If you don't make the restriction to former German citizens who were Jewish, but leave it as you appear to as "any Jewish scientists on the Manhattan Project at all" I can think of two immediately: Robert Oppenheimer who was the scientist in charge and Richard Feynman who was young but already one of the brightest stars. I think I recall that it was Feynman's work on the implosion technique that was crucial. I just verified that Leo Szilard was a Jewish German physicist who was forced out of Germany in 1933 when Adolf Hitler passed the first anti-Jewish law that stripped "non-Aryan" scientists of their post. Together with Enrico Fermi he achieved the first controlled chain reaction at the University of Chicago.
Hans Bethe had a Jewish mother (she became a Lutheran but I don't know if this would have done any "good" for Hans). Among the eminent scientists forced to flee from Gottingen were Max Born, James Franck, Eugene Wigner, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and John von Neumann. I'm not sure how many of them were Jewish but you can't dismiss scientists of this caliber and expect good results.
I think there is reasonable speculation that Heisengerg thought the prospect of an atomic bomb was too horrible because that was what many American scientists thought. Perhaps most notably Oppenheimer who was later treated very poorly as a result of his position and the increasing tension due to the rise of the Soviet Union. Given the military realities of post WWII Europe I think that the case could be made that without the volatile presence of nulear weapons there seems little chance that Soviet military ambitions could have been contained in Europe. Perhaps this doesn't disturb you so much but I don't think there was anything guaranteed about the eventual crumbling of Soviet power.
An interesting story about David Hilbert from {http://www.childrenofthemanhattanproject.org}:
About a year after the great purge of Gottingen he [Hilbert] was seated at a banquet in the place of honor next to Hitler's new Minister of Education, Rust. Rust was unwary enough to ask: "Is it really true, Professor, that your institute suffered so much from the departure of the Jews and their friends?" Hilbert snapped back, as coolly as ever: "Suffered? No, it didn't suffer, Herr Minister. It just doesn't exist any more!"
Einstein was designated as wrong by Hitler because he was Jewish and had chosen while quite young to leave Germany (remember he was an employee in the Swiss patent office when his first three famous papers in 1905). Hitler (and others like Philipp Lenard) had a thesis about Jewish science versus Aryan science. It is rather nauseating to read this stuff but it is a part of history. Ironically, if Hitler and his policies had not driven out so many of the best Jewish physicists it seems entirely possible that Germany rather than the US would have had a successful atomic bomb project. Of course, then Hitler would not have been the "Hitler" we recall from history.
No, it isn't. I suspected it might be deficient due to the misleading quotes in the slashdot summary. The author of the article, Randall Stross, knows perdectly well the difference between lossy and lossless audio compression and demonstrates that knowledge in his article. Both AAC and MP3 use lossy compression based on perceptual characteristics of human hearing. They both try to gain space by "throwing out" what we wouldn't be able to hear.
The quote about using half the space refers to Apple Lossless Compression which is yet another entry in the lossless audio compression sweepstakes. So far there are at least three other distinct candidates: APE, FLAC, and SHN. Each does its own 2:1 (approximately) compression which allows for all the bits to be restored during decompression. But 128 Kbps is a 10:1 compression and it is lossy whether one uses MP3, AAC, or ATRAC.
The lossless standards take up about 5 times the space/bandwidth but don't suffer from any loss of quality with respect to the red book audio standard. Since disk space and network bandwidth are cheap and getting cheaper all the time why bother with lossy compression? You could also say why bother with a mere factor of 2 and just use straight CD files but that factor of 2 is free. $50 is still less than $100 but the audio quality is identical.
Apple made a brilliant business decision to move early and decisively with the tools and standards that were available. The challenge now is to evolve to lossless compression as Apple has begun to do and eventually raise the bar for the commercial standard for digitized audio in general. Both SACD and DVD-A are hopelessly compromised by DRM bullshit so who knows if that will ever happen.
Another article written by a journalist with barely a clue. It is a load of crap to refer to the long lived laserdisc format as glitch-prone DiscoVision. I have some of those glitch-prone discs purchased when they first appeared and they play just fine now as they did then. The laserdisc format evolved slowly over the long time it existed (we'll see if DVD can match that). There was a tremendous amount of material, both standard and more exotic, which was made available.
Its main shortcoming was that despite appearances it was an analog video medium which was limited by the analog standard (NTSC, PAL, or SECAM) used to encode it and incapable of loss free archiving. From a mass consumer standpoint it was doomed because the viewer had to get up and flip the disc half way through most films (30 limit for CAV and 60 minute for CLV per side).
But just to clarify what the article gets so laughably wrong the laserdisc format was around for no less than 20 years. It never became dominant in the sense of Macdonalds or cockroaches, but there was always way too much good material to purchase more than a small fraction. I don't think the same could be said about DVD-audio or SACD by contrast.
I am happy to agree to disagree on two specific points and I'm not all that attached to the speed limit issue. I do feel that it is important that the institution of public libraries be kept clearly in view when thugs like the RIAA start sermonizing about their "property". Keeping libraries in mind helps clarify that, like public libraries, copyright law is supposed to be about enriching the public domain, not inventing a pernicious new category of 'property'.
I certainly have no problem with someone disagreeing with what I write. I don't always agree with what I've written. But public libraries do constitute the "wholesale [...] distribution of [copyrighted works]." Copying, even analog copying, is a recent development. When Gutenburg invented the printing press there was considerable anger at the disruption that came with it from the previous institutions for distribution of information. We have the option of deciding how laws govern the use of new technology. Copyright law, which was designed to protect publishers from other publishers appears to be broken with respect to its original motivation when it is turned against individuals.
When used against other commercial publishers I think the compromises encompassed by copyright law remains relatively coherent and useful. The mistake was made less than ten years ago when it was modified to use it against non-commercial copying. Again, this is not written in stone tablets brought down from on high. It was not in place as late as 1994. We can and should change it back so it does not have any authority over non-commercial activity.
Please understand that although these legal tussels tend to be over meritrious crap from corporate created nonsense like Britney, I think that is a distraction from the important issues. If other societies, like China, choose not to hobble themselves with new versions of old laws that impede the advancement of art and science, then we will put ourselves at an unnecessary disadvantage. We will be in the position of using the relatively unchallengeable power of the state to prop up aging institutions while others have the opportunity of inventing the future.
The crux of the issue for me is that we have enough real scarcity in this world. It appears just plain stupid to use the police power of the state to create scarcity where it has been banished by physics and technology.
On the issue of speed limits the people have successfully imposed their opinion on the Carter era speed limit reductions. It was grudging but after decades of stupid governance the speed limits were raised again throughout the sparsely populated western states. If "HUNDREDS of millions of people" disagree with the law, then the law is wrong.
For those who have not bothered to read any of the history of this topic I'd like to mention a specific name and case: David LaMacchia. In 1994 the federal government brought criminal charges against David LaMacchia who was a student at MIT who ran a BBS from which people could download copyrighted works. They intended to set an example but were surprised when the case was dismissed without even a trial.
The significant fact was that the BBS was not a site that charged any money. There was no law against noncommercial copying of files. After all, the copyright laws were created by Congress to protect one publisher from another in order to encourage publication. There wasn't originally any intention to prevent individuals from sharing publications at no cost. In fact the creation of public libraries was specifically for the purpose of encouraging the spread of copyrighted publications (books, magazines, recordings and eventually video recordings) at no charge except for late fees.
So when technology evolved to the point that people could spread copyrighted material at no significant cost to everyone else why was this a BAD THING (TM)? Are people so short sighted that they believe all literary, musical, scientific activity would come to a halt? These people want to take what is naturally plentiful (copies) and try to make it behave as though it were scarce. And until 10 years ago there wasn't even a law against non-commercial copying.
Our Constitution included the clause about trying to promote the progress of art and science NOT a clause about creating artificial scarcity for the benefit of corporations defending business models that may or may not work as new technologies emerge. Maybe, just maybe, it will no longer be economically viable to create summer blockbuster movies that require hundreds of millions of dollars to create and promote. I would sort of miss them. BUT SO WHAT?
When you have a new law (forbidding non-commercial copying being less than 10 years old) being flouted by tens of millions of people, I think there is a real issue of our legislators being bought by very narrow special interests. Remember all you moral absolutists, it wasn't even illegal 10 years ago. This is questionable legislation being passed by lap dog legislators creating artificial scarcity for the benefit of a few wealthy, powerful corporations.
OK, you may now resume your (making a copy of a digital file = stealing expensive sports cars) nonsense.
It doesn't appear you are paying attention. Skype is a replacement for PGPFone. The voice and chat traffic is encrypted end to end. That makes connecting to the PSTN a rather questionable idea though I have heard some talk about this from the phone companies recently. I wonder how the encryption issue will be handled. Anyhow, if you want a replacement for PGPFone without the debilitating lag try Skype. The audio quality is also much better.
I've seen it done recently by a product for the Mac called Trans Lucy. It is a DVD player application that prominently features the translucency feature. The company that sells it is CE Software and I seem to recall that they applied for some patent. On the other hand I recall my Apple Quadra 660 AV had similar capability circa 1993 for its video viewing application. I wish the people involved would spend more time creating and less time trying to patent.
No, you're not a liberal, you are a moron. You are incapable of wriring grammatically correct sentences ('your' is a possesive pronoun, not a contraction) and you are the only one harping about piracy. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to bypass the DRM. The most obvious to everyone else here is interoperability. As long as there are substantial non-infringing uses it is legitimate. There are enough nasty folks trying to make matters even more one-sided in favor of the oligopolies, we don't need people implying the laws are worse than they actually are.