Silly wording. "U.S. Democrats Propose Legislation To Ban Internet Fast Lanes" The "fast lane" is what customers pays for and we expect to receive. The "slow lane" means they don't have to give us the bandwidth we pay for. They have no obligation to expand infrastructure to meet most customer's demand. Therefore, destroying net neutrality means everything becomes a slow lane.
And while you are at it, remove the person(s) who made this user-screwing decision. I'm serious. They are not a PC user. Investigate and you'll find they own an iPad, even.
Things I want to see:
1. An Android tablet with a 1TB hard drive. Even if it were bulkier, or with a 4" screen and shaped like a 3.5" disk enclosure. I want an Android device with tons of capacity, that can be used as both a media player as well as portable photo/video offloading device - so I can quickly dump photos from my Vixia or Sony camera flash cards while I'm traveling.
2. Normal PC Laptop that contains a low-power ARM-based Android "accessory" PC that I can jump to (either full-screen via keypress or via client window under Windows/Linux), because let's face it - Android apps like gmail/yelp/fandango/gmaps/facebook/etc/etc/etc/etc/etc beats the holy living sh!tf*ck out of navigating their respective websites or apps (if they even exist), even without a touchscreen interface. In fact, I'm quite happy with bringng along my Motorola Lapdock and MK802 dongle in lieu of a laptop on many occasions - but having both in a single device would be beautiful. And better, a mode for booting up in Android only, only powering up the ARM board, screen and a few accessories. Off a typical laptop battery, that should run for days.
This might be interesting if it weren't for the fact that the content of New York Post's online edition is worth far less than the paper it's printed on (which is zero).
UNDER 1920x1200?!? What, did I fall into a coma and wake up in the era of 20 megabit computer displays?
If it's an RPG with a considerable amount of on-screen text, I can see how this would be an issue. For most games, you just don't notice much difference after a few minutes of gameplay. I'd much rather have silky-smooth framerates at 1024x768.
Yeah, the fillrates on most decent modern GPUs can easily handle smooth gameplay at extreme resolutions, but what really kills is when multiple layers of post-processing effects are being used.
This hype for running PC games at high resolution is unfortunate because one of the great things about console development was that you focused on making your graphics look as good as possible and play as smoothly within the constraints of a fixed screen buffer at a fixed frame-rate.
I see this as becoming more of an issue as GPUs become more and more like general processors, and inevitably use more painterly-like rendering techniques.
I don't see fully ray-traced game engines being that big a deal in the future. It's a bit like in those early 3D movies having shit poked in your eye for WOW factor, going overboard with reflective surfaces in a fully raytraced 3D FPS would look like a mess. Look around you(tm), how many surfaces are fully reflective, how many of those reflect something recognizable?
Answer: Very little...
A simple static sphere map is perfectly sufficient to create the "illusion" of a reflective surface in most games. A separate thread could render a sphere map for any reflective surface in a scene on an as-needed basis for a scene. Or in real-time, creating a much more convincing raytracing effect without much overhead - as GTA IV does, for cars f'instance. As a bonus, you can do a more diffuse reflective mapping for surfaces like plastic.
I think technology like Larabee will be much better used in game engines for accurate lighting models. Again, I simply point to GTA IV.
Crap - hastily typed reply. Should be "This approach does eliminate a huge amount of memory bandwidth wasted in the traditional z-buffer approach..." Also forgot to mention that the Dreamcast doesn't have the capacity for pixel-shader type effects, even if it were done by the CPU since the bandwidth between the CPU and framebuffer is very limited. As I understand, one of the PS2's coprocessors has very fast framebuffer access and could be used for pixel-shader like post-processing effects with little overhead to the other processing units.
Assessing whether the Dreamcast or the PS2 are superior is pointless because they are very different systems. Each system had strengths in certain areas. The Dreamcast's strength came mostly from the PowerVR graphics chipset which used a very efficient technique called 'tiled rendering' which greatly reduced the amount of bandwidth necessary to render plygons. Basically, it's a retained rendering mode where all the polys that comprise a frame are 'retained' in memory before they are ever rendered. The framebuffer is split into 'tiled' sections where each tile maintains a list of polys which intersect, where they are presorted and then rendered at once. This approach doesn't eliminate a huge amount of memory bandwidth wasted in the traditional z-buffer approach generally used on the PS2, but it allows for a great deal of parallelism. The Dreamcast was capable of rendering A LOT of polygons very, very quickly. Jet Grind Radio was a game that resulted from Sega engineers taking a look at the PS2 specs and coming up with a game to show where the Dreamcast really shined. Also, the Dreamcast supports texture-compression, which was put to great use in this game. The amount of visible polygons and very sharp textures was really the strength of this machine.
On the other hand, where Dreamcast system architecture is fairly standard PC-like system (I believe it even has a PCI bus), the PS2 appears to be much more complex beast (I've only started learning the system myself). It's understandable that it took years before the PS2 had really great games because the machine is like an enigma. There are something like four or five processors - I'm still not quite certain if the VU0/VU1 are actual processing units or coprocessors to the main CPU. The PS2 appears to have pixel-shader like capability (through the GS?) though blurring doesn't appear to be as smooth. The PS2's capabilities seem limited by the skill of the developer where the Dreamcast is locked into the capabilities/limitations of the PowerVR. Take a look at Okami for an example of what the PS2 can achieve that would be impossible with the Dreamcast.
Let me get this straight, what he is advocating as MegaTexturing seems to be the use of arbitrary-sized continuous textures which the game engine manages in texture memory on the fly, instead of the normal practice of using layers of fixed-sized tiled texture maps.
Isn't this what Google Earth does already?
The author obviously has neither access to any Cell hardware nor any substantial information yet makes the claim that a SETI unit on a single Cell would take 5 minutes to process. Yet in 'references' we read;
5 minutes for a SETI unit? This could be completely wrong... It is based on the difference between a 1.33GHz G4 (6 Hours / unit @ 10 GFlops) and a 250 GFlops Cell, this assumes the SETI client is using Altivec on the G4 at full speed and the PS3 has 4 Cells. I rounded up to 5 minutes to be conservative.
Quick and sloppy review, sorries for excessive typos...
I bought one of these for $250 with the 802.11b wireless PCMCIA card then returned it a week later and bought a Philips DVP-642 for $65 instead, and not a single regret.
The player itself is very well engineered, gorgeous case, and very attractive lighted front. I had no problem playing DVD discs, though I hadn't any success with some DVD+RW burns and gave up. The remote control is cluttered NOT ergonomic, and if you like to be able to operate your remote by feel, you will hate it.
DIVX support is, of course, not built into the DVD player but handled by the media streaming server you install on your PC. Since video content is transcoded from DIVX to MPEG2, you need at least a 2ghz machine for smooth playback. Also, for wireless LANs, you may have to set the quality level down quite a bit to keep video from skipping.
The streaming software appears to use standard media streaming protocols, there is no streaming server equivalent for Linux or Mac yet. It does NOT let you add files that are located on a remotely shared partition (such as SAMBA shares on a Linux box), and mapping the shares as drive letters won't help. Perhaps they've fixed limitation already, but it was present in the latest versions of both the Gateway and the original AMOI software about three weeks ago.
Menus are very attractive and setting up networking is a breeze. It handles DHCP right off the bat. You can browse multiple media streaming servers on your network, then browse files on each server. Since most of my media files are located on a large SAMBA share from my Linux box, this networked DVD feature was mostly useless to me.
So, fed up, I brought it back to the store and shopped around a little more, and then stumbled on the Philips DVP-642 player which does not have networked support, but it have the built-in DIVX5 playback support missing from the Gateway/AMOI NetDVD player. And it cost me $65!
To say this DVD player turned out much better than I expected is an understatement. It's not only capable of playing JPEG, MP3, WMA, AVI, DIVX, MPEG1, MPEG2 files burned right onto a normal DVD, it also can read VOB, AC3 (demux'd Dolby AC-3 files), DVD-Audio, multiple VIDEO_TS dirs, any non-standard bitrate MPEG-1 or MPEG-2, most DIVX files (everything from very low 56kbps video files to DVD-quality 1500kbps).
I've had no incompatibility issues with playing files off of DVD+R/DVD+RW/CDR/CDRW. The player uses a two-column interface for browsing directories, and the display of filenames is limited to 12 characters, but it's usable. (it would have been nicer to have a single column, collapsing tree view) Since the player scans the header of files to determine filetypes (rather than go merely by filename) it isn't very snappy, but not bad. I've heard it mentioned that his player supports.SRT subtitle files, but I have not been able to verify this myself.
The remote on the Philips is small, reasonably ergonomic, streamlined, and easy to use by feel. The player is smaller than the Gateway/AMOI, not as solid but still not flimsy. Menus aren't flashy, but functional. No complaints about video quality though a few people say it's slightly subpar for DVD playback.
If you want a DVD player to play all your DIVX files, you might consider burning them onto DVD+RW instead and buy a Philips DVP-642 player for 1/4th at price.
Also, the latest firmware now supports playing purchased movies downloaded off the net from DIVX.com. Hmmm, wasn't DIVX a trademarked name for a format that locked itself to playback on a single DVD player once before...?
Wow! An article written about Carmack that doesn't mention his Ferrari! d:^)
STratoHAKster
Re:A PS2 with different games
on
XBox Released
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· Score: 1
Useless review... Despite what anyone says about Microsoft, the XBOX is definitely a bold step ahead of the PS2 and the GameCube. Including a hard drive (as standard, not optional) and a truely workstation-class graphics chipset is something Nintendo or Sony wouldn't have done. Standard PC architecture, Visual Studio development tools... This is a console developer's dream come true...
Do not expect the first XBOX games to really push the system. I've played both HALO and Munch's Odyssey on the XBOX and I agree that the graphics fall short of breathtaking. The first PS2 games were pretty pathetic, too - wait, most PS2 games are STILL pathetic. Check back in a few months when Sega starts releasing some of vast collection of excellent titles. Of course, Sega also has Shenmue 1/2, Crazy Taxi 2, Sonic 2, Ferrari F351, not to mention their sports games like NFL2K2 which beat the crap out of EA's PS2 counterparts.
If you do want to see breathtaking, take a look at screenshots for Double Steal here or here.
If the XBOX needs a "killer app" to survive, I have my money on Jet Set Future (video preview and official page). Jet Grind Radio on the Dreamcast is considered to be a masterpiece among console games (in graphics _and_ gameplay). Even if were a mirror copy of the DC version, it would be a huge hit, but Smilebit is adding multiplayer and much larger worlds to move around in.
STratoHAK
Re:I'm surprised at you geeks
on
SIGGRAPH 2001
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· Score: 1
We had Robert Abel, the inventer of slit scanning (remember the 4th Doctor Who opening?) who produced the graphics for the final 1/3 of the movie (the Jupiter sequence).
Actually, it was Doug Trumbull who invented the slit scanning technique for 2001. Abel and Associates worked on TRON.
Also, I saw Final Fantasy being rendered real-time on a Geforce3 and was seeing about 5fps, definitely not the 20fps that the article claims.
I waited 8 months for this laptop to be released because of it being the first to feature
the Geforce2Go chipset. I was planning on getting a Sony VAIO, but since I dabble a lot
in OpenGL programming and graphics apps, having a decent 3D graphics on a laptop seemed
like an impossible dream. I have to say that the laptop was definitely worth the wait!
Specs:
P3-850MHz, 128mb RAM plus one empty SODIMM (mine easily upgraded to 384mb), 20gb IDE
drive, 16mb Geforce2Go AGP video, DVD/CD-RW combo drive (4x CD-R/CD-RW write, 24x read), integrated ethernet (Intel EtherExpressPro 10/100), two USB
ports, one Firewire port (OHCI), parallel, external VGA, composite video, built-in subwoofer
(excellent sound for a laptop!), can play audio CDs while computer off, headphone jack
with volume control dial on side of computer.
--
OpenGL performance is pretty much as expected from an NVIDIA chipset. Not quite full Geforce2 performance, but beats the crap out of the SGI O2s that I often use. If you need to run your high-end 3D apps on a laptop, this will handle them. Haven't yet tried Quake3 or Unreal Tournament yet, but graphics demos and screensavers (i.e. GizmoZone screensaver) run very nicely.
As LCD display resolution is fixed, it's often the case that lower resolutions tend to look pretty crappy on LCD displays. There is an optional feature to use the Geforce2Go to rescale lower resolutions (or full-screen DOS console) to full screen. The scaling utilizes bilinear filtering so it smooths out the image and happens in real-time. A nice feature I'd love to see is to be able to scale down from higher resolutions. For instance, 1280x1024 would look really slick scaled down to 1024x768 LCD resolution.
One of the coolest features of the Geforce2go chipset is Twinview. This allows you to
plug in an external display (either VGA or composite video) for dual monitor display. In
Win2000, you can split your dual displays using a top/bottom or left/right orientation, or
you can have one display show a zoomed up section of another. The chipsets capability of
smoothly zooming on a section of the screen is pretty slick, and you have a lot of freedom
to choose which display shows what.
Another EXTREMELY cool feature is the ability to automatically show 'overlay' video full
size on an external display. For instance, start playing an AVI file with mplayer2 (or a
DVD for that matter) in a window, and it will show full screen on your secondary monitor
or TV output. Drag the mplayer2 window to the side of your primary display and the video
still plays. This is definitely the laptop to buy for doing presentations.
One thing that really stands out is the sound. I didn't really buy this laptop with audio in mind but was gladly surprised to find that the Yamaha DS-754 chipset sounds almost as good as my $180 Yamaha SW60XG MIDI card. I've been running the (admittedly crappy) XG Enlightenment Central page for about four or five years. XG is easily the best sounding MIDI standard around, supporting very powerful on-board channelized DSP effects (32 channels of filter/reverb/chorus, solid-state/marshall/tube amp distortion, pitch change, WAH-WAH, EQ, many more!)
Not to plug my site (I don't have any ads, so I don't make money off hits), but I have collected a few hundreds MIDI files on my site mostly done by in-house Yamaha composers. The DS-754's DSP is supposedly software-programmable, which has some some hack value if the SDK ever is released.
On the bad side, I don't care much for the little eraserhead-type mouse thingy. I've gotten a little bit more used to it, but I still would have preferred a touchpad. The DVD/CD-RW combo drive sometimes take about 30 seconds to recognize some CD-R discs. The display is 1024x768, which is fine for some people but I would have easily paid a few hundred more for higher resolution. You can now buy a DELL with Geforce2Go (both 16mb and 32mb) with a higher display resolution, and pretty much all the specs of the Toshiba, but it probably ends up costing quite a bit more. I paid $2500, but the price has dropped to about $2000-$2200 for a similar model with a P3-900.
BTW, I have yet to install Linux on this thing but I've heard it runs quite well except for the Toshiba (Lucent?) AMR WinModem.
(BTW, the only reason the Xbox might succeed is that Microsoft can afford to hemorrage cash for years -- not to mention their serious marketing power.)
And you don't think the mere fact issue of the XBOX specs won't have at least something to do with the XBOX's success? Or perhaps the fact that Sega is now porting games to the XBox? Jet Set Radio Future is reason enough.
Here is a site that contains previews for some upcoming XBOX titles. However, I'll save you some time and suggest just looking at a 9meg MPEG of Double Steal.
With graphics like this, Microsoft should just save their money on marketing and just worry about getting enough XBOXes out to the stores in time.
It's too bad about the Indrema. My impression is that that they never really intended to make another video game console, but a sort of hybrid TIVO/WebTV/DVD with gaming as secondary. Unfortunately, the gaming aspects are what drove the hype.
Maybe if they dropped the specs to the point where they could sell these at profit for 300-400$, they'd be doing okay right now... i know many people including myself who would easily pay $300 just to have a networkable, python-programmable TiVO...
If Indrema was really intent on competing with the likes of Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, I'm sure that they would have picked a more catchy name and appealing box design, maybe even hire the same guy who designed the Xtrem. d:^)
Both Maya and Mental Ray support the use of 3D accelerated hardware. Hardware rendering is occasionally used in commercial production to render certain elements. An SGI Onyx2 can render particle effects (like smoke trails) in hardware very quickly with alpha/z-buffer data intact, for compositing with software-rendered elements.
You can't connect that to a TV. (Maybe you can in Europe over a SCART connection, but I don't have experience with that because I'm on the other side of the drink.)
By the way, the PS2's component outputs are switchable between Y-Cb/Pb-Cr/Pr and R-G-B in the unit's configuration menu.
The Dreamcast handles Composite/S-video/SCART as well.
Uhh, Trinitron monitors don't have any dot pitch, period. They have stripe pitch, which is the spacing of two vertical stripes of the aperture grille.
Whatever. Sony, themselves, use the term dot pitch in referring to WEGA displays. Whatever you call it, it's the same thing.
You're absolutely right -- monitors have a MUCH finer dot pitch than a TV, because you're usually 24 to 36 inches away from the monitor. I (and I'll go out on a limb here: Most people) don't usually sit any closer to their TVs than about 5-7 feet or so, therefore the stripe/dot pitch is pretty much irrelevant.
It's relevent if you are trying to imply that the PS2 interleaved video on a WEGA is comparable to Dreamcast progressive-scan video on an trinitron monitor. They aren't.
I'm glad I didn't waste my money on a PS2. The best games for any console seem to be on the Dreamcast.
STratoHAKster
The Sega Dreamcast does output component (RGB) video signals that can drive an SVGA monitor at up to 800x600.
The picture quality of my Dreamcast is somewhat sharper on my 21" trinitron than it is on my WEGA. I'm fairly certain that the XBR model you have has about a.7mm to.9mm dot pitch, is significantly worse than a PC monitor (.2mm to.3mm). Sorry to break the bad news. d:^)
Regarding the games, I doubt anyone can find a game on the PS2 (or even PC) with as much visual detail as Shenmue on the Dreamcast! Fluid fly-over sequences of GrandiaII are nice to. And amazingly car detail in Vanishing Point, Metropolis, Tokyo Racer, etc. It's pretty obvious that tile-based rendering has it's advantages.
Slashdot Mirror
Google has deliberately killed more technologies than Microsoft ever just let wither and die, and Mozilla has been burned by this more than once.
Really? You just throw this assertion out there without spending the extra few seconds to name a few of these technologies? I'm really curious.
Silly wording. "U.S. Democrats Propose Legislation To Ban Internet Fast Lanes" The "fast lane" is what customers pays for and we expect to receive. The "slow lane" means they don't have to give us the bandwidth we pay for. They have no obligation to expand infrastructure to meet most customer's demand. Therefore, destroying net neutrality means everything becomes a slow lane.
And while you are at it, remove the person(s) who made this user-screwing decision. I'm serious. They are not a PC user. Investigate and you'll find they own an iPad, even.
Things I want to see: 1. An Android tablet with a 1TB hard drive. Even if it were bulkier, or with a 4" screen and shaped like a 3.5" disk enclosure. I want an Android device with tons of capacity, that can be used as both a media player as well as portable photo/video offloading device - so I can quickly dump photos from my Vixia or Sony camera flash cards while I'm traveling. 2. Normal PC Laptop that contains a low-power ARM-based Android "accessory" PC that I can jump to (either full-screen via keypress or via client window under Windows/Linux), because let's face it - Android apps like gmail/yelp/fandango/gmaps/facebook/etc/etc/etc/etc/etc beats the holy living sh!tf*ck out of navigating their respective websites or apps (if they even exist), even without a touchscreen interface. In fact, I'm quite happy with bringng along my Motorola Lapdock and MK802 dongle in lieu of a laptop on many occasions - but having both in a single device would be beautiful. And better, a mode for booting up in Android only, only powering up the ARM board, screen and a few accessories. Off a typical laptop battery, that should run for days.
"Objective C compilers were only GPL because RMS refused a request from Jobs to let NeXT make a proprietary fork."
You shouldn't just lie like that, especially when your lies are so easily detected.
According to Wikipedia, Hobart is right and you are out of your scope: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-C#Popularization_through_NeXT
This is of course if you don't edit out that -j64 in Google's main Makefile.
This might be interesting if it weren't for the fact that the content of New York Post's online edition is worth far less than the paper it's printed on (which is zero).
UNDER 1920x1200?!? What, did I fall into a coma and wake up in the era of 20 megabit computer displays? If it's an RPG with a considerable amount of on-screen text, I can see how this would be an issue. For most games, you just don't notice much difference after a few minutes of gameplay. I'd much rather have silky-smooth framerates at 1024x768. Yeah, the fillrates on most decent modern GPUs can easily handle smooth gameplay at extreme resolutions, but what really kills is when multiple layers of post-processing effects are being used. This hype for running PC games at high resolution is unfortunate because one of the great things about console development was that you focused on making your graphics look as good as possible and play as smoothly within the constraints of a fixed screen buffer at a fixed frame-rate. I see this as becoming more of an issue as GPUs become more and more like general processors, and inevitably use more painterly-like rendering techniques.
I don't see fully ray-traced game engines being that big a deal in the future. It's a bit like in those early 3D movies having shit poked in your eye for WOW factor, going overboard with reflective surfaces in a fully raytraced 3D FPS would look like a mess. Look around you(tm), how many surfaces are fully reflective, how many of those reflect something recognizable? Answer: Very little... A simple static sphere map is perfectly sufficient to create the "illusion" of a reflective surface in most games. A separate thread could render a sphere map for any reflective surface in a scene on an as-needed basis for a scene. Or in real-time, creating a much more convincing raytracing effect without much overhead - as GTA IV does, for cars f'instance. As a bonus, you can do a more diffuse reflective mapping for surfaces like plastic. I think technology like Larabee will be much better used in game engines for accurate lighting models. Again, I simply point to GTA IV.
Crap - hastily typed reply. Should be "This approach does eliminate a huge amount of memory bandwidth wasted in the traditional z-buffer approach..." Also forgot to mention that the Dreamcast doesn't have the capacity for pixel-shader type effects, even if it were done by the CPU since the bandwidth between the CPU and framebuffer is very limited. As I understand, one of the PS2's coprocessors has very fast framebuffer access and could be used for pixel-shader like post-processing effects with little overhead to the other processing units.
Assessing whether the Dreamcast or the PS2 are superior is pointless because they are very different systems. Each system had strengths in certain areas. The Dreamcast's strength came mostly from the PowerVR graphics chipset which used a very efficient technique called 'tiled rendering' which greatly reduced the amount of bandwidth necessary to render plygons. Basically, it's a retained rendering mode where all the polys that comprise a frame are 'retained' in memory before they are ever rendered. The framebuffer is split into 'tiled' sections where each tile maintains a list of polys which intersect, where they are presorted and then rendered at once. This approach doesn't eliminate a huge amount of memory bandwidth wasted in the traditional z-buffer approach generally used on the PS2, but it allows for a great deal of parallelism. The Dreamcast was capable of rendering A LOT of polygons very, very quickly. Jet Grind Radio was a game that resulted from Sega engineers taking a look at the PS2 specs and coming up with a game to show where the Dreamcast really shined. Also, the Dreamcast supports texture-compression, which was put to great use in this game. The amount of visible polygons and very sharp textures was really the strength of this machine. On the other hand, where Dreamcast system architecture is fairly standard PC-like system (I believe it even has a PCI bus), the PS2 appears to be much more complex beast (I've only started learning the system myself). It's understandable that it took years before the PS2 had really great games because the machine is like an enigma. There are something like four or five processors - I'm still not quite certain if the VU0/VU1 are actual processing units or coprocessors to the main CPU. The PS2 appears to have pixel-shader like capability (through the GS?) though blurring doesn't appear to be as smooth. The PS2's capabilities seem limited by the skill of the developer where the Dreamcast is locked into the capabilities/limitations of the PowerVR. Take a look at Okami for an example of what the PS2 can achieve that would be impossible with the Dreamcast.
...for this so-called so-called gaming card is readable here. I ain't buying it.
Let me get this straight, what he is advocating as MegaTexturing seems to be the use of arbitrary-sized continuous textures which the game engine manages in texture memory on the fly, instead of the normal practice of using layers of fixed-sized tiled texture maps. Isn't this what Google Earth does already?
One word, HIPPA.
They sell radios that can be charged by turning a crank, why not sell a cell phone charger that works that way?
I bought one of these for $250 with the 802.11b wireless PCMCIA card then returned it a week later and bought a Philips DVP-642 for $65 instead, and not a single regret.
The player itself is very well engineered, gorgeous case, and very attractive lighted front. I had no problem playing DVD discs, though I hadn't any success with some DVD+RW burns and gave up. The remote control is cluttered NOT ergonomic, and if you like to be able to operate your remote by feel, you will hate it.
DIVX support is, of course, not built into the DVD player but handled by the media streaming server you install on your PC. Since video content is transcoded from DIVX to MPEG2, you need at least a 2ghz machine for smooth playback. Also, for wireless LANs, you may have to set the quality level down quite a bit to keep video from skipping.
The streaming software appears to use standard media streaming protocols, there is no streaming server equivalent for Linux or Mac yet. It does NOT let you add files that are located on a remotely shared partition (such as SAMBA shares on a Linux box), and mapping the shares as drive letters won't help. Perhaps they've fixed limitation already, but it was present in the latest versions of both the Gateway and the original AMOI software about three weeks ago.
Menus are very attractive and setting up networking is a breeze. It handles DHCP right off the bat. You can browse multiple media streaming servers on your network, then browse files on each server. Since most of my media files are located on a large SAMBA share from my Linux box, this networked DVD feature was mostly useless to me.
So, fed up, I brought it back to the store and shopped around a little more, and then stumbled on the Philips DVP-642 player which does not have networked support, but it have the built-in DIVX5 playback support missing from the Gateway/AMOI NetDVD player. And it cost me $65!
To say this DVD player turned out much better than I expected is an understatement. It's not only capable of playing JPEG, MP3, WMA, AVI, DIVX, MPEG1, MPEG2 files burned right onto a normal DVD, it also can read VOB, AC3 (demux'd Dolby AC-3 files), DVD-Audio, multiple VIDEO_TS dirs, any non-standard bitrate MPEG-1 or MPEG-2, most DIVX files (everything from very low 56kbps video files to DVD-quality 1500kbps).
I've had no incompatibility issues with playing files off of DVD+R/DVD+RW/CDR/CDRW. The player uses a two-column interface for browsing directories, and the display of filenames is limited to 12 characters, but it's usable. (it would have been nicer to have a single column, collapsing tree view) Since the player scans the header of files to determine filetypes (rather than go merely by filename) it isn't very snappy, but not bad. I've heard it mentioned that his player supports .SRT subtitle files, but I have not been able to verify this myself.
The remote on the Philips is small, reasonably ergonomic, streamlined, and easy to use by feel. The player is smaller than the Gateway/AMOI, not as solid but still not flimsy. Menus aren't flashy, but functional. No complaints about video quality though a few people say it's slightly subpar for DVD playback.
If you want a DVD player to play all your DIVX files, you might consider burning them onto DVD+RW instead and buy a Philips DVP-642 player for 1/4th at price.
Also, the latest firmware now supports playing purchased movies downloaded off the net from DIVX.com. Hmmm, wasn't DIVX a trademarked name for a format that locked itself to playback on a single DVD player once before...?
STratoHAKster
Do not expect the first XBOX games to really push the system. I've played both HALO and Munch's Odyssey on the XBOX and I agree that the graphics fall short of breathtaking. The first PS2 games were pretty pathetic, too - wait, most PS2 games are STILL pathetic. Check back in a few months when Sega starts releasing some of vast collection of excellent titles. Of course, Sega also has Shenmue 1/2, Crazy Taxi 2, Sonic 2, Ferrari F351, not to mention their sports games like NFL2K2 which beat the crap out of EA's PS2 counterparts.
If you do want to see breathtaking, take a look at screenshots for Double Steal here or here.
If the XBOX needs a "killer app" to survive, I have my money on Jet Set Future (video preview and official page). Jet Grind Radio on the Dreamcast is considered to be a masterpiece among console games (in graphics _and_ gameplay). Even if were a mirror copy of the DC version, it would be a huge hit, but Smilebit is adding multiplayer and much larger worlds to move around in.
STratoHAK
Actually, it was Doug Trumbull who invented the slit scanning technique for 2001. Abel and Associates worked on TRON.
Also, I saw Final Fantasy being rendered real-time on a Geforce3 and was seeing about 5fps, definitely not the 20fps that the article claims.
STratoHAKster
Specs:
P3-850MHz, 128mb RAM plus one empty SODIMM (mine easily upgraded to 384mb), 20gb IDE drive, 16mb Geforce2Go AGP video, DVD/CD-RW combo drive (4x CD-R/CD-RW write, 24x read), integrated ethernet (Intel EtherExpressPro 10/100), two USB ports, one Firewire port (OHCI), parallel, external VGA, composite video, built-in subwoofer (excellent sound for a laptop!), can play audio CDs while computer off, headphone jack with volume control dial on side of computer.
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OpenGL performance is pretty much as expected from an NVIDIA chipset. Not quite full Geforce2 performance, but beats the crap out of the SGI O2s that I often use. If you need to run your high-end 3D apps on a laptop, this will handle them. Haven't yet tried Quake3 or Unreal Tournament yet, but graphics demos and screensavers (i.e. GizmoZone screensaver) run very nicely.
As LCD display resolution is fixed, it's often the case that lower resolutions tend to look pretty crappy on LCD displays. There is an optional feature to use the Geforce2Go to rescale lower resolutions (or full-screen DOS console) to full screen. The scaling utilizes bilinear filtering so it smooths out the image and happens in real-time. A nice feature I'd love to see is to be able to scale down from higher resolutions. For instance, 1280x1024 would look really slick scaled down to 1024x768 LCD resolution.
One of the coolest features of the Geforce2go chipset is Twinview. This allows you to plug in an external display (either VGA or composite video) for dual monitor display. In Win2000, you can split your dual displays using a top/bottom or left/right orientation, or you can have one display show a zoomed up section of another. The chipsets capability of smoothly zooming on a section of the screen is pretty slick, and you have a lot of freedom to choose which display shows what.
Another EXTREMELY cool feature is the ability to automatically show 'overlay' video full size on an external display. For instance, start playing an AVI file with mplayer2 (or a DVD for that matter) in a window, and it will show full screen on your secondary monitor or TV output. Drag the mplayer2 window to the side of your primary display and the video still plays. This is definitely the laptop to buy for doing presentations.
One thing that really stands out is the sound. I didn't really buy this laptop with audio in mind but was gladly surprised to find that the Yamaha DS-754 chipset sounds almost as good as my $180 Yamaha SW60XG MIDI card. I've been running the (admittedly crappy) XG Enlightenment Central page for about four or five years. XG is easily the best sounding MIDI standard around, supporting very powerful on-board channelized DSP effects (32 channels of filter/reverb/chorus, solid-state/marshall/tube amp distortion, pitch change, WAH-WAH, EQ, many more!) Not to plug my site (I don't have any ads, so I don't make money off hits), but I have collected a few hundreds MIDI files on my site mostly done by in-house Yamaha composers. The DS-754's DSP is supposedly software-programmable, which has some some hack value if the SDK ever is released.
On the bad side, I don't care much for the little eraserhead-type mouse thingy. I've gotten a little bit more used to it, but I still would have preferred a touchpad. The DVD/CD-RW combo drive sometimes take about 30 seconds to recognize some CD-R discs. The display is 1024x768, which is fine for some people but I would have easily paid a few hundred more for higher resolution. You can now buy a DELL with Geforce2Go (both 16mb and 32mb) with a higher display resolution, and pretty much all the specs of the Toshiba, but it probably ends up costing quite a bit more. I paid $2500, but the price has dropped to about $2000-$2200 for a similar model with a P3-900.
BTW, I have yet to install Linux on this thing but I've heard it runs quite well except for the Toshiba (Lucent?) AMR WinModem.
STratoHAKster
And you don't think the mere fact issue of the XBOX specs won't have at least something to do with the XBOX's success? Or perhaps the fact that Sega is now porting games to the XBox? Jet Set Radio Future is reason enough. Here is a site that contains previews for some upcoming XBOX titles. However, I'll save you some time and suggest just looking at a 9meg MPEG of Double Steal. With graphics like this, Microsoft should just save their money on marketing and just worry about getting enough XBOXes out to the stores in time.
It's too bad about the Indrema. My impression is that that they never really intended to make another video game console, but a sort of hybrid TIVO/WebTV/DVD with gaming as secondary. Unfortunately, the gaming aspects are what drove the hype. Maybe if they dropped the specs to the point where they could sell these at profit for 300-400$, they'd be doing okay right now... i know many people including myself who would easily pay $300 just to have a networkable, python-programmable TiVO...
If Indrema was really intent on competing with the likes of Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, I'm sure that they would have picked a more catchy name and appealing box design, maybe even hire the same guy who designed the Xtrem. d:^)
Pablo
STratoHAKster
By the way, the PS2's component outputs are switchable between Y-Cb/Pb-Cr/Pr and R-G-B in the unit's configuration menu.
The Dreamcast handles Composite/S-video/SCART as well.
Uhh, Trinitron monitors don't have any dot pitch, period. They have stripe pitch, which is the spacing of two vertical stripes of the aperture grille.
Whatever. Sony, themselves, use the term dot pitch in referring to WEGA displays. Whatever you call it, it's the same thing.
You're absolutely right -- monitors have a MUCH finer dot pitch than a TV, because you're usually 24 to 36 inches away from the monitor. I (and I'll go out on a limb here: Most people) don't usually sit any closer to their TVs than about 5-7 feet or so, therefore the stripe/dot pitch is pretty much irrelevant.
It's relevent if you are trying to imply that the PS2 interleaved video on a WEGA is comparable to Dreamcast progressive-scan video on an trinitron monitor. They aren't.
I'm glad I didn't waste my money on a PS2. The best games for any console seem to be on the Dreamcast. STratoHAKster
The Sega Dreamcast does output component (RGB) video signals that can drive an SVGA monitor at up to 800x600.
The picture quality of my Dreamcast is somewhat sharper on my 21" trinitron than it is on my WEGA. I'm fairly certain that the XBR model you have has about a .7mm to .9mm dot pitch, is significantly worse than a PC monitor (.2mm to .3mm). Sorry to break the bad news. d:^)
Regarding the games, I doubt anyone can find a game on the PS2 (or even PC) with as much visual detail as Shenmue on the Dreamcast! Fluid fly-over sequences of GrandiaII are nice to. And amazingly car detail in Vanishing Point, Metropolis, Tokyo Racer, etc. It's pretty obvious that tile-based rendering has it's advantages.
STratoHAKster