No you don't. DVD players are limited to no more than 480 lines of resolution. This device handles HDTV resolutions of 720p and 1080i. For a still picture at 1080i the resolution will be stunningly better. DVD are nice but not even close to HDTV quality. That is part of the point of this product. It is the first hidef capable media client. I still think $500 is a lot but it is a slickly designed box in its own right.
You get some of the facts right but there are some significant errors. It does not use standard audio cassettes. There was a competing product from Philips that was backward compatible with standard audio cassettes but the digital cassettes were different and more expensive. The lawsuits and threats of lawsuits certainly delayed introduction of DAT in the US market but I think it failed because it wasn't sufficiently attractive and the format battle didn't help.
Any musicians who wanted to use DAT for their own recording could purchase "Pro" versions of DAT equipment which were not much more expensive but did not have SCMS. Even with home equipment it was not difficult to modify and bypass the weak-ass protection.
I managed to get through to the previously slashdotted article and it was even more pathetic than I had imagined. On the other hand I will have to provisionally grant the possibility of "The Office" not sucking like so many other BBC imports. I saw the star from the series on Letterman, he was clever and Letterman showed genuine admiration. I'll check the DVD before considering it for "Family Guy" status.
The point about HDTV and TiVo is that you live in the Third World technology market and just aren't bright enough to have noticed. Finally, who cares what any pin-head entertainment executive thinks? Seriously, you need to find more significant observers like possibly Negroponte. His columns and resulting book from eight years ago are more interesting and relevant.
Oh, blow it out your ass, limey scum. Where do you think TiVo was made, moron? How delightful that you have PHB executives at the BBC who can pontificate on a subject years later. By the way, how does your pathetic standard definition TV look compared to HDTV in the US? I've watched TV in the UK and it was nothing special. Admittedly I didn't spend a lot of time viewing since I was busy viewing plays and musicals. But the main impression both there and in Amsterdam was banal American retreads.
I mistakenly used to have a bit more respect for BBC television. But years of dreadful sitcoms has made it clear what an aberration Monty Python and Fawlty Towers were. Name one recent comedy from the UK that compares to Family Guy.
Why are you forcing yourself to discuss something about which you know so little? For instance:
"the industry is going to have to standardize on the format those broadcasts are going to be in"
The formats have been standardized and used since 1998 when the transition from NTSC to ATSC was started. In some markets all the stations have already made the transition to ATSC. I'm sitting here watching Monday Night Football in remarkable 720p HD on my computer monitor. If you want to buy a TV with an ATSC tuner built in you can get it from Mitsubishi, Samsung and probably several others. The original FCC plan allows stations to maintain both an NTSC and ATSC station until 2006 but there are criteria for extending that deadline.
This whole topic has almost nothing to do with OTA TV (over the air, i.e. broadcast TV). It is about cable TV and conditional access. There is no conditional access in ATSC broadcasting despite the fulmination here. It is all unencrypted by regulation. Every ATSC tuner will play every ATSC broadcast. There is even an open source linux ATSC tuner card and software available (http://www.pchdtv.com). So everyone who is unnecessarily losing sleep over this can go to bed.
By the way, the picture and sound are spectacular. Quite a bit better than DVD. It is also free. You can record programs to your hard drive (assuming you have lots of free space). There is no DRM scam going on, the standard had not been revised for about 50 years so there was plenty of room for improvement and the only nod to DRM that has even been mentioned is something called Broadcast Flag which is about as effective as the copy protection built into consumer DAT recorders. That piece of nonsense hasn't even been ratified.
All of you linux and open source enthusiasts (in the US) can get into HDTV for less than $200. You might want to check a site like www.titanTV.com to insure that you have sufficient updated stations available for your location. If you are a sports fan you want this capability and you do not have to spend thousands of dollars to get it if your PC is sufficiently powerful to play current games (I have an Athlon 2400).
So by your standards does the US or did the former Soviet Union have chemical warfare capabilities? I don't mean defensive technology such as we used to protect our soldiers, but rather offensive capabilities. As far as I'm aware there is no evidence of it ever being deployed. There is always loose journalistic talk as if everyone "knows". But both the US and USSR signed treaties. Without "proof" how irresponsible is it to assume its existence?
I had assumed it was a debater's trick to bring up the issue of WMD. Winning points that you know are hopelessly tainted. Of course if the US administration really were liars we would have "found" the evidence long ago. Why do you suppose that is not the case? How do you explain that to yourself? What is the source of this lone honest impulse in the assumed maelstrom of deceit?
If Saddam and his cronies are proficient at all, I think there is a good chance that we'll never find them. I judge this to be a possibility mainly because of the way they completely folded with the arrival of allied military forces. It was as though escape and hiding were the only objectives once the fighting began (at least at the top). In other words I think going into hiding with as much of their deadly weapons as possible was decided before the fighting began and they destroyed what they couldn't hope to manage after losing control.
So, yes, I am disappointed that we've not been able to locate their deadliest weapons despite all the chaos. I think it is crucial we continue and intensify the search. What surprises me is that anyone thinks Saddam would give up any weapons based on his success of evading discovery and capture. There are no fewer than two instances where mass deployment of WMD (against Iran and against the Kurds) is not contested by anyone other than Iraq's famous Minister of Information. Once he has such weapons, why would you suppose he would ever give it up? Do you seriously entertain the hypothesis that Saddam had a change of heart and decided to forgo the future use of WMD?
We do need to find his stockpiles but not to prove what any rational observer would already know. They have to be found to prevent their use.
I'll toss you a bone. The first culpable president in this sorry story was Reagan who ordered the retreat of the Marines from Lebanon after the bombing. Clinton may have taken it to a new level but it didn't start with him. Note that I'm not talking about "pissing off people". The problem is showing weakness to evil men.
OK, so rather than me simply hurling more insults maybe you can help me understand the thought process that allows you to apparently doubt the existence or significance of WMD in the possession of Hussein yet also say "note that I do not deny that Iraq had them at one time". No regime change, no change in rhetoric, if anything even more belligerent.
No one has mentioned anything about a potential space elevator. Is it still so unlikely that it couldn't figure in the planning for the next few decades? The widespread distress caused by the inevitable setbacks that occur from putting people on top of massive bombs used for propulsion are debilitating. At least if we were working toward a less explosive means of reaching space we might hope to emerge from this heroic initial phase.
God, you're a moron and exceedingly proud of it. Anyone who rests his position on the lack of "evidence" of WMD is self-deluding of the worse kind. Why don't you interview some of the Kurdish survivors of his chemical attacks? Imbecile. He spent ten years perfecting his techniques of hiding his technology from UN inspectors. The whole apparatus can fit on two railway cars. The worse part of the whole affair is that self important bastards like you are protected from future attacks along with everyone else. If only you could be allowed to live in the sort of world that would result from your "wisdom" while the rest of us could watch from afar. We tried the limp-wrist Clinton approach and ended up with 9-11.
Well, you are full of shit. The French have been comfortably trading with Saddam and his band of thugs and they did not care for their arrangement to be disturbed. I don't doubt there are plenty of fine French citizens. I met several when I was visiting there. But their government is often quite cynical and opportunistic. How long has it been since they liberated any other country from tyranny?
"dScaler allows similar improvements to be made to your ordinary TV - regular cable looks almost as good as HDTV"
It's not a bad idea to clean up a signal so that it doesn't suck so much. But the most you can hope for is something that looks almost as good as SD, not HD. Cleaning up an image does not make up for the lack of resolution in the original.
In fact the lack of HD support is the most disappointing aspect of the product. NTSC is so 20th century. Why are people paying for something that should not have more than three years left before being discarded on the dust heap of history along with 8 track tapes and CRT's?
Apparently I was being too brief in my description. You do not need libdvdcss for your media player if you choose to store your DVD's on your hard drive and play them from there. You do need to use a utility program that will unencrypt and move the content to your hard drive. None of those on Windows or the Mac require that you compile and install libdvdcss. They have that capability built in to them so you do not have to be conversant with any command shell or have a development system installed. You do need a lot of unused hard drive space.
On the question of legality, the day they choose to make a case against someone who is backing up their own DVD's to their own hard drive for fair use purposes is the day the DMCA will be struck down as the unconstitutional police state law that it is. So I doubt that will ever happen. Just because a law is passed does not make it legitimate. This is a prime example of a law without legitimacy.
"importing them would be a violation of copyright"
What drugs are you on? The only ones violating laws and treaties in cases of zone locks are the cartels that don't give a damn what the laws are if it gets in the way of profit maximization. I buy DVD's through Amazon.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de or whatever to get the titles I want to pay to see. My drive has been flashed to be region free and it all works fine.
With affordable drives getting ever larger, consider just ripping all your DVD's and playing them from your hard drive. That copy is unencrypted (and region unlocked) so there is no need for libcss and with most home networks you can play them from any Mac or PC on the network. Saves the originals from possibly punishing use (think kids' titles) and the original serves as a backup.
What many Intel bigots don't realize is that unlike pentiums which have their roots in calculator micro controllers, the processors from IBM are scaled down versions of a processor architecture that doesn't really need publicity stunts to enhance its reputation. For instance, were you aware that Deep Blue, the first computer to defeat a chess world champion, was a PowerPC based cluster?
The other ironic fact about your apparently clueless observation is that a super computer has been built from a cluster of PS2's at the national super computer center in Illinois. It didn't appear involve any sort of promotional discounting from Sony and it was said to provide a cost effective method of doing some quantum chromodynamic calculations. So some researchers at the national super computer institute don't seem to share your sarcastic dismissal of the PS2.
So how does this anti-intellectual tripe qualify as insightful? Any yahoo can point at and complain about just about any non-trivial project at a research university whether it is public or private. If they were building it just to attain a certain ranking without any research proposals or plans it wouldn't be hard to find fault. Does anyone that could possibly be the case here? I think this sort of empty headed bushwhacking is a cheap shot and contemptible.
Is there something particularly about building any clusters today that is ill advised? Anything specifically about a cluster built with these parts? Why do any science that involves a large expense when the money could be applied to "lowering tuition"? Maybe because an important part of the mission of some universities is to advance the state of knowledge by performing research that would not be done by other segments of society.
Sure, not only have I noticed it, I record using it on a regular basis. It is called HDTV and it consumes about 9 gigabytes per hour. It is unmistakably superior to DVD and there is a great deal of equipment being designed and sold that make it that much more valuable. It requires about two to three times as much space which puts it about a year behind DVD encoded material on the hard disk price curve.
I wouldn't want anyone to confuse my observation for my own preference. I like buying and having the DVD's. When it is inexpensive enough (it is not today), I might also enjoy having all my DVD's online making it easier to search and play any video I own without the annoyance of searching through my collection, waiting through the FBI threat screens, long and pointless unskippable intros before you get to the first menu, not to mention discs that stop working because of repeated use. Viewing from anywhere in the house over local ethernet on a computer, using a media browser set top box, with a wirelessly accessed laptop anywhere close would also be a plus.
Much as I might like that online scenario, I don't see how the entertainment industry will be able to coexist with computers that can store their product for almost nothing. If the pressure is not enough any specific year just wait a few and it will be. When the death throes of the RIAA are discussed it is usually in the context of P2P networks or MP3 compression. But those are just secondary forces compared to the all consuming hard disk drive. Cost per CD? About 50 cents and dropping quickly.
I was going to be more harsh but you are probably just not paying sufficient attention before you post. Yes, I just purchased "All That Jazz" for less than $11 and it was new, not used. While used prices don't seem to go much below $10, that IS NOT the point. Recall I mentioned that hard drive capacity at fixed cost is growing exponentially. So it does not matter what magical kingdom you live in, there will be a time soon (since the suggested retail price has already been beaten) when the hard drive space will cost less and it is moving relentlessly toward zero!
So your observation is pointless and only tends to imply your lack of a clue. If you had a good reason why this growth will diminish that might be relevant. But last I heard there are another two orders of magnitude density increases that researchers are already certain of achieving in the commercial market.
Did you read the whole post this time and understand what it says? We are all very impressed that you live in such an ideal place and are such a brilliant shopper. So what?
>used DVDs are cheaper than the HD space they take up
Have you seen current hard disk prices? You don't need extraordinary shopping skills to get a price of no more than $1 per gigabyte. A used DVD for $10 would be a good price. Guess how much space that DVD probably takes on your hard drive. I bet it is something like 7 or 8 gigabytes so about $8.
Now bear in mind that often when people claim exponential growth they really just mean really fast growth. But the amount of hard drive storage you can buy for a fixed amount of money really has grown exponentially. So in about 2 years you can expect that DVD to fit in less than $1 worth of hard drive space. Houston, we do have a problem.
Since Alias is on ABC doesn't that make it 1280 x 720? Still plenty of Garner pixels but they are all honest progressively scanned pixels. What may surprise many is how good even 480i and 480p programming is compared to NTSC. The local FOX affiliate was showing episodes of Fastlane in upconverted 720p widescreen (presumably from 480p source) and the picture was amazing (not as good as real 720p or 1080i if you did a screen capture, but still remarkable).
If you enjoy any program on OTA (over the air) TV this sort of product will enhance it immensely. I don't know for sure that this board supports it (the site is properly slashdotted) but the other significant enhancement is 5.1 surround sound. Let's not forget the other advantage is that the programming involves no monthly bill and with the right software it can be recorded to your hard disk (about 9 gig per hour).
My favorite quote on this topic comes from the character played by Burt Lancaster in the movie "Atlantic City". Looking out at the ocean he comments "You should have seen the ocean back then, it was something."
If you don't want to appear sloppy and probably ill informed, then get a spell checker (and use it) and check facts that are easy to verify. When Jerry Pournelle predicted that computer networks would make all knowledge easily available I wonder if he also predicted that so many would not bother to use that capability.
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No you don't. DVD players are limited to no more than 480 lines of resolution. This device handles HDTV resolutions of 720p and 1080i. For a still picture at 1080i the resolution will be stunningly better. DVD are nice but not even close to HDTV quality. That is part of the point of this product. It is the first hidef capable media client. I still think $500 is a lot but it is a slickly designed box in its own right.
You get some of the facts right but there are some significant errors. It does not use standard audio cassettes. There was a competing product from Philips that was backward compatible with standard audio cassettes but the digital cassettes were different and more expensive. The lawsuits and threats of lawsuits certainly delayed introduction of DAT in the US market but I think it failed because it wasn't sufficiently attractive and the format battle didn't help.
Any musicians who wanted to use DAT for their own recording could purchase "Pro" versions of DAT equipment which were not much more expensive but did not have SCMS. Even with home equipment it was not difficult to modify and bypass the weak-ass protection.
I managed to get through to the previously slashdotted article and it was even more pathetic than I had imagined. On the other hand I will have to provisionally grant the possibility of "The Office" not sucking like so many other BBC imports. I saw the star from the series on Letterman, he was clever and Letterman showed genuine admiration. I'll check the DVD before considering it for "Family Guy" status.
The point about HDTV and TiVo is that you live in the Third World technology market and just aren't bright enough to have noticed. Finally, who cares what any pin-head entertainment executive thinks? Seriously, you need to find more significant observers like possibly Negroponte. His columns and resulting book from eight years ago are more interesting and relevant.
Oh, blow it out your ass, limey scum. Where do you think TiVo was made, moron? How delightful that you have PHB executives at the BBC who can pontificate on a subject years later. By the way, how does your pathetic standard definition TV look compared to HDTV in the US? I've watched TV in the UK and it was nothing special. Admittedly I didn't spend a lot of time viewing since I was busy viewing plays and musicals. But the main impression both there and in Amsterdam was banal American retreads.
I mistakenly used to have a bit more respect for BBC television. But years of dreadful sitcoms has made it clear what an aberration Monty Python and Fawlty Towers were. Name one recent comedy from the UK that compares to Family Guy.
Why are you forcing yourself to discuss something about which you know so little? For instance:
"the industry is going to have to standardize on the format those broadcasts are going to be in"
The formats have been standardized and used since 1998 when the transition from NTSC to ATSC was started. In some markets all the stations have already made the transition to ATSC. I'm sitting here watching Monday Night Football in remarkable 720p HD on my computer monitor. If you want to buy a TV with an ATSC tuner built in you can get it from Mitsubishi, Samsung and probably several others. The original FCC plan allows stations to maintain both an NTSC and ATSC station until 2006 but there are criteria for extending that deadline.
This whole topic has almost nothing to do with OTA TV (over the air, i.e. broadcast TV). It is about cable TV and conditional access. There is no conditional access in ATSC broadcasting despite the fulmination here. It is all unencrypted by regulation. Every ATSC tuner will play every ATSC broadcast. There is even an open source linux ATSC tuner card and software available (http://www.pchdtv.com). So everyone who is unnecessarily losing sleep over this can go to bed.
By the way, the picture and sound are spectacular. Quite a bit better than DVD. It is also free. You can record programs to your hard drive (assuming you have lots of free space). There is no DRM scam going on, the standard had not been revised for about 50 years so there was plenty of room for improvement and the only nod to DRM that has even been mentioned is something called Broadcast Flag which is about as effective as the copy protection built into consumer DAT recorders. That piece of nonsense hasn't even been ratified.
All of you linux and open source enthusiasts (in the US) can get into HDTV for less than $200. You might want to check a site like www.titanTV.com to insure that you have sufficient updated stations available for your location. If you are a sports fan you want this capability and you do not have to spend thousands of dollars to get it if your PC is sufficiently powerful to play current games (I have an Athlon 2400).
So by your standards does the US or did the former Soviet Union have chemical warfare capabilities? I don't mean defensive technology such as we used to protect our soldiers, but rather offensive capabilities. As far as I'm aware there is no evidence of it ever being deployed. There is always loose journalistic talk as if everyone "knows". But both the US and USSR signed treaties. Without "proof" how irresponsible is it to assume its existence?
I had assumed it was a debater's trick to bring up the issue of WMD. Winning points that you know are hopelessly tainted. Of course if the US administration really were liars we would have "found" the evidence long ago. Why do you suppose that is not the case? How do you explain that to yourself? What is the source of this lone honest impulse in the assumed maelstrom of deceit?
You can accuse the French government of many things but the charge of being principled is utterly unfair.
If Saddam and his cronies are proficient at all, I think there is a good chance that we'll never find them. I judge this to be a possibility mainly because of the way they completely folded with the arrival of allied military forces. It was as though escape and hiding were the only objectives once the fighting began (at least at the top). In other words I think going into hiding with as much of their deadly weapons as possible was decided before the fighting began and they destroyed what they couldn't hope to manage after losing control.
So, yes, I am disappointed that we've not been able to locate their deadliest weapons despite all the chaos. I think it is crucial we continue and intensify the search. What surprises me is that anyone thinks Saddam would give up any weapons based on his success of evading discovery and capture. There are no fewer than two instances where mass deployment of WMD (against Iran and against the Kurds) is not contested by anyone other than Iraq's famous Minister of Information. Once he has such weapons, why would you suppose he would ever give it up? Do you seriously entertain the hypothesis that Saddam had a change of heart and decided to forgo the future use of WMD?
We do need to find his stockpiles but not to prove what any rational observer would already know. They have to be found to prevent their use.
I'll toss you a bone. The first culpable president in this sorry story was Reagan who ordered the retreat of the Marines from Lebanon after the bombing. Clinton may have taken it to a new level but it didn't start with him. Note that I'm not talking about "pissing off people". The problem is showing weakness to evil men.
OK, so rather than me simply hurling more insults maybe you can help me understand the thought process that allows you to apparently doubt the existence or significance of WMD in the possession of Hussein yet also say "note that I do not deny that Iraq had them at one time". No regime change, no change in rhetoric, if anything even more belligerent.
No one has mentioned anything about a potential space elevator. Is it still so unlikely that it couldn't figure in the planning for the next few decades? The widespread distress caused by the inevitable setbacks that occur from putting people on top of massive bombs used for propulsion are debilitating. At least if we were working toward a less explosive means of reaching space we might hope to emerge from this heroic initial phase.
God, you're a moron and exceedingly proud of it. Anyone who rests his position on the lack of "evidence" of WMD is self-deluding of the worse kind. Why don't you interview some of the Kurdish survivors of his chemical attacks? Imbecile. He spent ten years perfecting his techniques of hiding his technology from UN inspectors. The whole apparatus can fit on two railway cars. The worse part of the whole affair is that self important bastards like you are protected from future attacks along with everyone else. If only you could be allowed to live in the sort of world that would result from your "wisdom" while the rest of us could watch from afar. We tried the limp-wrist Clinton approach and ended up with 9-11.
Well, you are full of shit. The French have been comfortably trading with Saddam and his band of thugs and they did not care for their arrangement to be disturbed. I don't doubt there are plenty of fine French citizens. I met several when I was visiting there. But their government is often quite cynical and opportunistic. How long has it been since they liberated any other country from tyranny?
"dScaler allows similar improvements to be made to your ordinary TV - regular cable looks almost as good as HDTV"
It's not a bad idea to clean up a signal so that it doesn't suck so much. But the most you can hope for is something that looks almost as good as SD, not HD. Cleaning up an image does not make up for the lack of resolution in the original.
In fact the lack of HD support is the most disappointing aspect of the product. NTSC is so 20th century. Why are people paying for something that should not have more than three years left before being discarded on the dust heap of history along with 8 track tapes and CRT's?
Apparently I was being too brief in my description. You do not need libdvdcss for your media player if you choose to store your DVD's on your hard drive and play them from there. You do need to use a utility program that will unencrypt and move the content to your hard drive. None of those on Windows or the Mac require that you compile and install libdvdcss. They have that capability built in to them so you do not have to be conversant with any command shell or have a development system installed. You do need a lot of unused hard drive space.
On the question of legality, the day they choose to make a case against someone who is backing up their own DVD's to their own hard drive for fair use purposes is the day the DMCA will be struck down as the unconstitutional police state law that it is. So I doubt that will ever happen. Just because a law is passed does not make it legitimate. This is a prime example of a law without legitimacy.
"importing them would be a violation of copyright"
What drugs are you on? The only ones violating laws and treaties in cases of zone locks are the cartels that don't give a damn what the laws are if it gets in the way of profit maximization. I buy DVD's through Amazon.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de or whatever to get the titles I want to pay to see. My drive has been flashed to be region free and it all works fine.
With affordable drives getting ever larger, consider just ripping all your DVD's and playing them from your hard drive. That copy is unencrypted (and region unlocked) so there is no need for libcss and with most home networks you can play them from any Mac or PC on the network. Saves the originals from possibly punishing use (think kids' titles) and the original serves as a backup.
What many Intel bigots don't realize is that unlike pentiums which have their roots in calculator micro controllers, the processors from IBM are scaled down versions of a processor architecture that doesn't really need publicity stunts to enhance its reputation. For instance, were you aware that Deep Blue, the first computer to defeat a chess world champion, was a PowerPC based cluster?
The other ironic fact about your apparently clueless observation is that a super computer has been built from a cluster of PS2's at the national super computer center in Illinois. It didn't appear involve any sort of promotional discounting from Sony and it was said to provide a cost effective method of doing some quantum chromodynamic calculations. So some researchers at the national super computer institute don't seem to share your sarcastic dismissal of the PS2.
So how does this anti-intellectual tripe qualify as insightful? Any yahoo can point at and complain about just about any non-trivial project at a research university whether it is public or private. If they were building it just to attain a certain ranking without any research proposals or plans it wouldn't be hard to find fault. Does anyone that could possibly be the case here? I think this sort of empty headed bushwhacking is a cheap shot and contemptible.
Is there something particularly about building any clusters today that is ill advised? Anything specifically about a cluster built with these parts? Why do any science that involves a large expense when the money could be applied to "lowering tuition"? Maybe because an important part of the mission of some universities is to advance the state of knowledge by performing research that would not be done by other segments of society.
Sure, not only have I noticed it, I record using it on a regular basis. It is called HDTV and it consumes about 9 gigabytes per hour. It is unmistakably superior to DVD and there is a great deal of equipment being designed and sold that make it that much more valuable. It requires about two to three times as much space which puts it about a year behind DVD encoded material on the hard disk price curve.
I wouldn't want anyone to confuse my observation for my own preference. I like buying and having the DVD's. When it is inexpensive enough (it is not today), I might also enjoy having all my DVD's online making it easier to search and play any video I own without the annoyance of searching through my collection, waiting through the FBI threat screens, long and pointless unskippable intros before you get to the first menu, not to mention discs that stop working because of repeated use. Viewing from anywhere in the house over local ethernet on a computer, using a media browser set top box, with a wirelessly accessed laptop anywhere close would also be a plus.
Much as I might like that online scenario, I don't see how the entertainment industry will be able to coexist with computers that can store their product for almost nothing. If the pressure is not enough any specific year just wait a few and it will be. When the death throes of the RIAA are discussed it is usually in the context of P2P networks or MP3 compression. But those are just secondary forces compared to the all consuming hard disk drive. Cost per CD? About 50 cents and dropping quickly.
I was going to be more harsh but you are probably just not paying sufficient attention before you post. Yes, I just purchased "All That Jazz" for less than $11 and it was new, not used. While used prices don't seem to go much below $10, that IS NOT the point. Recall I mentioned that hard drive capacity at fixed cost is growing exponentially. So it does not matter what magical kingdom you live in, there will be a time soon (since the suggested retail price has already been beaten) when the hard drive space will cost less and it is moving relentlessly toward zero!
So your observation is pointless and only tends to imply your lack of a clue. If you had a good reason why this growth will diminish that might be relevant. But last I heard there are another two orders of magnitude density increases that researchers are already certain of achieving in the commercial market.
Did you read the whole post this time and understand what it says? We are all very impressed that you live in such an ideal place and are such a brilliant shopper. So what?
>used DVDs are cheaper than the HD space they take up
Have you seen current hard disk prices? You don't need extraordinary shopping skills to get a price of no more than $1 per gigabyte. A used DVD for $10 would be a good price. Guess how much space that DVD probably takes on your hard drive. I bet it is something like 7 or 8 gigabytes so about $8.
Now bear in mind that often when people claim exponential growth they really just mean really fast growth. But the amount of hard drive storage you can buy for a fixed amount of money really has grown exponentially. So in about 2 years you can expect that DVD to fit in less than $1 worth of hard drive space. Houston, we do have a problem.
Since Alias is on ABC doesn't that make it 1280 x 720? Still plenty of Garner pixels but they are all honest progressively scanned pixels. What may surprise many is how good even 480i and 480p programming is compared to NTSC. The local FOX affiliate was showing episodes of Fastlane in upconverted 720p widescreen (presumably from 480p source) and the picture was amazing (not as good as real 720p or 1080i if you did a screen capture, but still remarkable).
If you enjoy any program on OTA (over the air) TV this sort of product will enhance it immensely. I don't know for sure that this board supports it (the site is properly slashdotted) but the other significant enhancement is 5.1 surround sound. Let's not forget the other advantage is that the programming involves no monthly bill and with the right software it can be recorded to your hard disk (about 9 gig per hour).
My favorite quote on this topic comes from the character played by Burt Lancaster in the movie "Atlantic City". Looking out at the ocean he comments "You should have seen the ocean back then, it was something."
Imbecile!
If you don't want to appear sloppy and probably ill informed, then get a spell checker (and use it) and check facts that are easy to verify. When Jerry Pournelle predicted that computer networks would make all knowledge easily available I wonder if he also predicted that so many would not bother to use that capability.