For the cost of a PS3 or a standalone blu-ray drive, you can purchase and build a very nice HTPC instead, stick a 1 TB harddrive in it, and get all your 720p/1080p content in matroska containers... When the 1TB fills up, delete something, downscale it, or just add another bigger drive. Acquiring legal download content is probably (haven't checked just now) also cheaper than buying blu-ray discs.
So what's the point? The point is most consumers would rather shell out $30 for a physical media then pay $15 and wait 35+ min (700 megs at 3.0 mbit/s) for a download. For HD it's more like 3 and a half hours. For the Geeks it's grand for the majority of the entertainment market physical media makes sense. Bringing up the old axiom "never under estimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of data tapes hurtling down the highway at 60 mph"
4) Since many "High Def" movies are just upscaled DVD video, a upscaling player does the same thing for a lot less. Blu-Ray just doesn't look that much better than a good software algorithm. (Other than a very few exceptions) I'm gonna have to call bullshit on this. A DVD has a limited bit rate, you must do many things to it to make it fit. Part of it is reducign busy scenes to crappy blurs. Many DVD still have digital artifacts in busy scenes. If you took a HD TV at 42" (a modest size) and compared the upscaled version of borne to the HD version there is a obvious and notable difference. A good software algorithm can only invent so much data. A well encoded DVD may be competitive with a poor encoded HD movie but equal effort will result in clearly better picture for HD. Any claims otherwise are delusional.
PS. DVD will stay around, merely because i has a lot of inertia. It took DVD a long time to saturate the market in this way, VHS actually stuck around for a long time too. So while I agree with your conclusion I find your reasoning faulty.
Since three of those links are to corporations with actual funds and reputations behind them, I seriously doubt they'd make accusations of that scale without some backing information. Then again, nothing they're accusing Sony of is illegal AFAIK, but it certainly colors readers views of them. Probably enough that if false, Sony would be going after them for a retraction/correction. Read your post again. You are assuming that simply because a news source is a corprate that they obviously wouldn't write anything that is untrue... Yes, like how Fox news never distorts the news or how Reuters has never been caught "doctoring" the news. No, a large corp won't really dig deeper and report more accurately. What they will do is review any possibly troublesome news story with their lawyers and then make as vague as possible to avoid litigation. So they might have heard a rumor that Dole uses slave labor but instead of investigating further they will say "industry insiders say that Dole may have violated some labor laws." Accuracy and news ought to be an oxymoron.
No its not. If you want and analogy to real life I would say the BlueRay and HDVD war was only the Spanish civil war between Fascist and the Republicans. The real World War is pending between physical media and streaming/downloads. I'll let everyone decide who plays the part Axis, Allies, and Soviets are on their own. I agree downloads will be important, but you vastly over estimate the US internet infrastructure and the US Media consumer. Your still looking at 1 more physical media generation before Downloading will take over.
It's also more expensive, and doesn't really result in higher quality video or sound though. So to the end user, they get the same experience, but it costs more. More expensive to retool a DVD factory to press BD's vs HD DVD. The entire "more expensive" argument is massively over blown. They used essentially the same technology, same codecs, mostly the same DRM. There was few distinguishing hardware features aside form capacity and some software differences but they were in fact almost the same product.
Actually, the latest 3 layer HD-DVD had 51 GB, which is just ahead of BluRay. They were never in commercial production. The DVD standard could technically be expanded to several more layers but as far as I know it's not commercially feasible.
Blu-ray has higher storage and (I think) slightly more DRM, while HD-DVD has no region codes. I'm sure a lot of people won't be affected by region codes, but those of us who get international stuff would have prefered HD-DVD.
Only matters if it's not Japanese international material. NA and JP are the same region.
So I read the article (yeah, yeah - I know...I was bored) and I hope the spreadsheet software used wasn't Excel - we all know how well that counts. You mean the radius of the galaxy isn't 65,535 light years?
I think the interesting thing is that the Wii is selling to a lot of people who would probably never, no matter how Sony would have priced, packaged or marketed it, bought a PS3. Thus, the Wii is increasing the size of the total market, which isn't all bad for Sony. Also, the Wii is cheap enough that for those would WOULD buy one of the other consoles, it's not necessarily an either/or decision-- many can buy a Wii AND a PS3. The lack of success of third party wii games (vs 2nd party ala Metroid Prime 3) may lead to the same situation the GC had. Nintendo does well, 3rd parties support someone else (360/Ps3).
I'm not sure I understand the sentiments of people regarding this format war. I thought that as consumers we were supposed to celebrate our ability to choose between products. And yet with this HD format war, all I hear is people relieved that we have our ability to choose taken away from us. Multiple formats isn't a good choice. Multiple producers are still in the game. Samsung, sony, phillips, etc... Now there is less content "lock in" and true player competition can begin. Segmenting the market with multiple "similar but non compatible" formats tends to stifle real competition. See how the multiple similar but non compatible formats killed Word processor competition, that would have happened here as well if a war persisted too long.
If there was only one standard, maybe prices would be higher for lack of competition One standard does not mean lack of competition. For instance RAM is a single standard with a lot of competition from producers.
Next step will be microsoft creating titles for PS3 I never got into any game produced by Microsoft proper. But having Bungie or Rare make something would be alright.
The Good news, format war is over, the end. The Bad news, better format lost the war, the end.
It's bretty typical that bad choises will always win the first round. Now, we have DRM and all other stuff in our hands what we wouldn't have with HD DVD.
If Sony would be wice, it would allow HD DVD to be movie standard, leaving Blu-ray for console games only and leave Blu-ray burning drives off, so there couldn't be piracy by that way. And then Microsoft and Nintendo could take Blu-Ray for their disk too and etc etc. You not very technical are you? Both had DRM, both had DRM that isn't complete bypassed like DVD. Both had mostly the same DRM. Both were technically similar. the key differences:
1- Capacity 2- Studio support 3- Region Codes 4- Menu coding for Extras
Blu-ray had the advantage on 1 and 2. HD DVD has the edge in 3 and 4. But 3 was only slight because Japan and North America were the same region thus only EU media content were a concern and 4 doesn't matter to that many people and only on early players. Playing a crappy shovel ware Spiderman menu game extra on over priced first generation hardware is not a huge concern. There is no reason for the war to continue. It is best for all concerned that it ended quickly.
Hd-Dvd might still find a niche , if the price of a hd dvd burner and disks reaches a reasonable price point many people may invest in the technology for backups. Given that none of the major (APPLE/DEll/Sony) PC producers except Toshiba are in the HD DVD I find this idea difficult. As well the economies of scale will force BD down to tolerable back up levels long before a niche product like HD DVD. Also if you need back up, there are currently cheaper HDD and SDD options.
Hirsch is the CEO of a mostly offline porn company. Vivids web presence isn't as great as say Girls Gone Wild or even Playboy or Penthouse. Thus he has an economic interest in minimizing competition for porn entertainment dollars by reducing Internet porn availability.
They did a disk copy of the drm data to the new wii or you got your old wii with the info cleaned out. I swapped and they didn't allow and wouldn't support any form of recovery so I am abstaining from purchasing anything from them.
You call them. They give you the points you've spent on a temporary XBox Live account, you redownload the software.
After that they'll run fine not logged in on the 360, or on other 360s logged in with the original account.
Its a pain in the ass -- I've had to do it twice, but its not nearly how the story makes it sound. Why didn't they do that in this case? From my experience some agents will break rules to help others are strict policy followers that cause PR problems.
Don't buy restrictive DRM. Wii shopping and Xbox live content will only survive as long as your warranty and current machine. Otherwise you will be shelling out to have the manufacturer fix the machine, in some corner cases even if you followed their rules you lose content.
In fact, if you haven't seen one at your local coffee shop, bar, or train station yet, you probably live in a cabin in the Ozarks. Or you live in a market where apple has note brokered a sales contract with the local telecom, or basically anywhere except select parts of the US, the UK, Germany, and France. It's got techlust on its side but thus far lacks many of the features smartphone have so it may not crack all of that market yet. I think the only thing it has up on most smart phones is web browsing and hype.
Let's see some source for that, can we? If you want to continue spreading the myth that poor=stupid, then at least paste a link. The only thing that differs is what people buy impulsively. Rich people impulse buys cars, middle class people fancy clothes and poor people tickets to the movies. Poor != stupid. Poor = low income vs high expenditure which => stupid.
This (table 2) shows the very lowest income bracket spends more on random things then the two brackets above it. While the other demographics seem proportionate to their income with some skewing due to the cost of living. The literature about IQ and income clearly suggest a correlation with many other factors included and sibling studies suggest Intelligence correlates with income as well. So Poor = stupid may be ham fisted but it's well supported. Note correlation isn't causation and there is ample opportunity for outliers.
1. The impulsiveness of purchases is highest in low income categories. The middle class actually counts pennies much more and the rich have someone counting for them. Example, my wife nearly choked on her dinner watching BBC News awhile ago when they reported the failure of a pyramid "christmas present purchase" scheme predominantly used by the poor. She was very sympathetic until she heard the numbers lost by most families which were in the range of 400-800 pounds. We are reasonably well off and sorry, no way in hell for us to spend that for a Christmas budget. That is more like what we will spend in several years. So after that she immediately switched to a "well deserved, serves you right" mode. I fully agree, ads work best on those with poor impulse control. Poor impulse control tends to correlate with lower incomes.
I honestly don't believe many of the Anonymous protesters have originally had any personal beefs with Scientology. The motivation of joining the pack, and the opportunity to think less but feel important, is probably the driving factor behind this 'War on Scientology'.
Many I know have harbored misgivings about that organization but just never had an outlet and were unwilling to be a single voice against them. Now there is a movement they feel more comfortable about it. I don't mean teens. These are people witnessed the shady emergence of the cult from in 60's.
You can't "outspend" the district attorney ok? You're claiming that crimes are being committed. Where's your evidence? How is the general public supposed to tell the difference between bullshit claims made by hate-mongers and the truth if you don't even have evidence? Interesting choice of words. A definite vested interest i see. So we know of the well documented case where critiques here on slashdot were pulled via copy right. Critique ought to be allowed under copy right of copy righted material but scientologies lawyers harassed slashdot into silence. There is the case of Lisa McPherson. A person is dead, the corners report indicated malnutrition, unconsciouses for days, dehydration and insect bite leading to a conclusion she died from neglect or confinement. She was in the 'care' of scientology.. During the criminal case they harassed the corner, they legally harassed the lawyer, and eventually a circuit judge stopped the case. There is the whole hoopla against the Andrew Morton biography of Cruise. Where they are attempting to suppress it through litigious means. If it's false simply say so. This use of the law as a weapon is contradictory to the spirit of law itself. If they aren't a harmful organization why do they suppress information about their beliefs? There is no redeeming quality to this organization. They charge for 'enlightenment', they recruit people in distress, they silence critics through shady and unethical means (the cases are well documented, Andrew Morton is going through it now), their founders were convicted of fraud, their Founder was mentally unstable enough for his ex wife to want to commit him, their founder came out and said the best scam to make money is to start a religion, their founder hung out with Alister crowley who threw him out because Hubbards followers were trying to scam Crowleys followers.
Really, it's not a religion. It's farce and an affront to justice. I see the attack the attack scheme in your posts. Not very subtle. The public domain evidence against the validity of this organization are massive.
She should demand a refund. No I'm not blowing smoke. Scientology promises full refunds if you ever wish to receive one on the basis that they didn't help. While not the easiest thing to pursue, there is a group out there (shouldn't be hard to find on the net) that assists former members with this process. Considering what they do to critics, customers looking for a refund might be in for more of the same. Then again they might use it as PR and return the ill gotten $50,000.
Slashdot Mirror
So what's the point? The point is most consumers would rather shell out $30 for a physical media then pay $15 and wait 35+ min (700 megs at 3.0 mbit/s) for a download. For HD it's more like 3 and a half hours. For the Geeks it's grand for the majority of the entertainment market physical media makes sense. Bringing up the old axiom "never under estimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of data tapes hurtling down the highway at 60 mph"
PS. DVD will stay around, merely because i has a lot of inertia. It took DVD a long time to saturate the market in this way, VHS actually stuck around for a long time too. So while I agree with your conclusion I find your reasoning faulty.
Actually, the latest 3 layer HD-DVD had 51 GB, which is just ahead of BluRay.
They were never in commercial production. The DVD standard could technically be expanded to several more layers but as far as I know it's not commercially feasible.
Blu-ray has higher storage and (I think) slightly more DRM, while HD-DVD has no region codes. I'm sure a lot of people won't be affected by region codes, but those of us who get international stuff would have prefered HD-DVD.
Only matters if it's not Japanese international material. NA and JP are the same region.
The Bad news, better format lost the war, the end.
It's bretty typical that bad choises will always win the first round.
Now, we have DRM and all other stuff in our hands what we wouldn't have with HD DVD.
If Sony would be wice, it would allow HD DVD to be movie standard, leaving Blu-ray for console games only and leave Blu-ray burning drives off, so there couldn't be piracy by that way.
And then Microsoft and Nintendo could take Blu-Ray for their disk too and etc etc. You not very technical are you? Both had DRM, both had DRM that isn't complete bypassed like DVD. Both had mostly the same DRM. Both were technically similar. the key differences:
1- Capacity
2- Studio support
3- Region Codes
4- Menu coding for Extras
Blu-ray had the advantage on 1 and 2. HD DVD has the edge in 3 and 4. But 3 was only slight because Japan and North America were the same region thus only EU media content were a concern and 4 doesn't matter to that many people and only on early players. Playing a crappy shovel ware Spiderman menu game extra on over priced first generation hardware is not a huge concern. There is no reason for the war to continue. It is best for all concerned that it ended quickly.
Hirsch is the CEO of a mostly offline porn company. Vivids web presence isn't as great as say Girls Gone Wild or even Playboy or Penthouse. Thus he has an economic interest in minimizing competition for porn entertainment dollars by reducing Internet porn availability.
They did a disk copy of the drm data to the new wii or you got your old wii with the info cleaned out. I swapped and they didn't allow and wouldn't support any form of recovery so I am abstaining from purchasing anything from them.
After that they'll run fine not logged in on the 360, or on other 360s logged in with the original account.
Its a pain in the ass -- I've had to do it twice, but its not nearly how the story makes it sound. Why didn't they do that in this case? From my experience some agents will break rules to help others are strict policy followers that cause PR problems.
Don't buy restrictive DRM. Wii shopping and Xbox live content will only survive as long as your warranty and current machine. Otherwise you will be shelling out to have the manufacturer fix the machine, in some corner cases even if you followed their rules you lose content.
This (table 2) shows the very lowest income bracket spends more on random things then the two brackets above it. While the other demographics seem proportionate to their income with some skewing due to the cost of living. The literature about IQ and income clearly suggest a correlation with many other factors included and sibling studies suggest Intelligence correlates with income as well. So Poor = stupid may be ham fisted but it's well supported. Note correlation isn't causation and there is ample opportunity for outliers.
I honestly don't believe many of the Anonymous protesters have originally had any personal beefs with Scientology. The motivation of joining the pack, and the opportunity to think less but feel important, is probably the driving factor behind this 'War on Scientology'.
Many I know have harbored misgivings about that organization but just never had an outlet and were unwilling to be a single voice against them. Now there is a movement they feel more comfortable about it. I don't mean teens. These are people witnessed the shady emergence of the cult from in 60's.
Really, it's not a religion. It's farce and an affront to justice. I see the attack the attack scheme in your posts. Not very subtle. The public domain evidence against the validity of this organization are massive.
The word means more then one thing and one of them means to do the other. Odd but thats from meriam-websters.