Right. However, my point was that Nvidia has not even released the specs for the 3d layer for a TNT2, correct me if I am wrong.
What that means is that if you have a TNT2, and Nvidia drops binary drivers for it, you are looking at buying a new card if you need any 3d out of it.
As the VESA issue is concerned, it is nice that they have a good VESA implementation, given that practically no one has completely implemented it ever. Unfortunately VESA is a standard that is a bit too old. It would be lovely if there comes out a new standard for video cards, which includes high end 2d and 3d, but I think the cards are moving too fast for someone to come up with a new VESA.
I just hope that they do not have crap in it like VESA has: scrolling framebuffers to implement double buffering and text scrolling is quite stupid nowdays IMO.
BTW, you seem to be very well versed in graphics issues. Just wondering what is your background? Judging from previous conversations your knowledge defintily trumps mine, as my knowledge in the graphics field has been reading a bit too many various whitepapers lite, wikipedia articles, and a good cs background, but that is all.
Seeing how this is a very important effort, I would like to see this project/experiment succeed, even if what it produces is not quite what I / others need.
Is there a way that I could give $20-$50 dollars donation unconditionally (I know this is not a charitable donation), and then guarantee that I will purchase the card if it costs less than $200?
Perhaps the developers could offer incentives for people who do this. I do not know hardware, but I assume that FPGA card is the same as ASIC, except that it can be reprogrammed. In that case an incentive could be the card, which then does not have to be repurchased once revisions are made in hardware. (the donation then could be the difference between the FPGA cost and the ASIC cost, and then the donation is not donation, but partial-preorder).
Basically, I am a bit uncomfortable with parting with too much money with no guarantees, but I am willing to part with some. More, if there are more incentives. But idea of pure pre-order will not work, as there is no guarantee that the card will be finished, and $200 is more than I am willing to just throw away.
I am not involved with the project, but I would like to offer counterpoints.
1. The hardware will be underpowered because this group has little experience (if any) designing bleeding edge graphics hardware
It is designed to be underpowered. It is not going to support a billion triangles per second. It is designed to provide many basic features of the video card, and provide them well, in an opensource way.
2. The card will be overpriced because this group doesn't have the manufacturing clout of NVidia or ATI
The card is planned to be overpriced. They believe that the openness of the video card is valuable enough that people will pay for it.
3. The drivers will suck because nobody's going to buy this card and nobody will develop for it.
The openness of this video card means that if there is one kernel dev, and one X11 dev will have this card with time on their hands, it will be 100% supported.
4. The drivers will suck MORE because of all the trans-gamers out there who dual boot, they won't get the card because it won't be supported in Windows (or just very weakly).
The card is not aimed at gamers who play the latest games. It will not have the 3d performance necessary. It will probably have enough to run Tux Racer though
5. The company has no financial backing, so they will crash and burn early on and we will be stuck with abandoned hardware.
No the case, as the entire card spec is open. Even if all the original developers vanish, we will still have the specs for the card.
6. This time, effort and money would be better spent harassing the existing graphics card manufacturers into opening up their drivers, as least the non-trade-secret parts so we can do our magic on it.
It has been tried. A few came close: See Matrox around year 2000. The trend is that although linux is getting more support, more and more of the video card becomes closed an non-reverse engineered. We are currently lucky that nvidia keeps updating their drivers for the older video-cards, as the nv drivers (which are mostly reverse engineered / developed from tiny amounts of nvidia released specifications) suck badly. We are talking mach64 sucking less than nv. Sadly matrox g200 is probably still the most supported and reliable video card in linux. Yes it is better than nvidia, as nvidia drivers are quite famous for freezing X or kernel for no apparent reason.
(RenderAccel being the main culprit, but it happend with it turned off as well. Also without RenderAccel, 2d performance sucks)
7. (asbestos ON) I still don't think any Linux Distro in its current state should even be considered for desktop or gaming. But that's me being an elitist prick. Come up with a cleaner development model, make it "just work", and redo the whole windowing system into something that is NOT X, and maybe then we can start talking. The reason OSX works so well is because it does fifty backflips to almost completely hide the underlying Unix layer. It's not because I know Linux that I want to put up with its PMS all the time, sometimes it's nice to just click things with your brain switched off.
Now this is not a flame, it is just stupid. Linux gaming is possible. Nvidia drivers provide a fast enough direct gl interface, that is adequate for pretty much anything.
Come up with a cleaner development model, make it "just work" GL development already just works. Direct3D is not an inherently better system.
and redo the whole windowing system into something that is NOT X X has very little to do with gaming, as most games use direct rendering or GL layers, and thus bypass X rendering anyway.
The reason OSX works so well is because it does fifty backflips to almost completely hide the underlying Unix layer. The unix layer has absolutely nothing to do with graphics. All it needs is a basic terminal, and the darwins kernel just simulates the framebu
There is already such a thing, but it is not quite up to par. NoMachine NX server and a client running on the same machine would work. Basically the server acts like an X server, and holds all connections, while the client gets the server redirected messages.
Similarly an older utility called xmove basically did the same thing.
The main issue is they sucked. Now you ran two xservers, and hence twice the marshalling, hence twice the latency.
Your method of client transfer is pretty good, but it has a lot of challenges, and would require work on the core X protocol. I hope the X11 server gurus are in fact working on it, as it would be very sweet. One instant issue is who will handle the connection if the X server goes down. X11 libs? Needless to say, it would not be easy to fix that in the protocol.
One last thing you can do, and that I suppose how windows will handle it: Keep running the server as if nothing is happening, but stop drawing to the screen, and reset the screen in the meantime. One thing that I would have no clue how it can be handled is direct rendering, as those apps write directly into the video card.
That is the funny part. IIRC, The Moscow subway system is considered a work of art, and hence they get some kind of international art fund grants to keep it clean.
And I am quite certain it is not a new station, as it has been at least 8 years since I have been there, and most new stations will not feature mosaics anyway.
I am in an opposite scenario. The closest airport that has more than 1 flight a day is 1.5 hours by car. And my flight from there would still require a hub connection. The one that does make a flight a day, for my destination requires a 6 hour layover.
As a student I can not afford to have a car, nor do I have any desire (or ability -- I will fall asleep) to drive for 8 hours.
The train takes 8 hours too, but it gets me from start to finish in one sitting, plus I can take the night one and sleep while travelling.
In my opinion, airports are disfunctional for small distances, as they typically require 2 flights if both your cities are non-hub. And if the airlines have too much trouble getting money to run their flights, so be it. Let them go bankrupt. I am surprised how much the government is willing to tolerate them. What company can declare a bankruptcy, only to get a 500 million dollar loan the next day? What kind of company gets to use a public resource created just for them (a hub airport) for practically free.
Given that I am of libertarian nature, I am all for eliminating subsidies for all airlines, and letting them go completely bankrupt. Let the consumers see what costs what. The 200 dollar flight to california. That would be $5000 please. That will put things into perspective, and will really say which technology is really more effective.
But those long flights are needed, and those people who need them will pay for them. Local flights are even bigger drain on resources, as the only reason air companies can keep them is because they pay very little for regional airports, and they absolutely struggle to get anyone who wants to get on to the long distance flight.I say let them go bankrupt. It will give more money to amtrak / other railroads, and the people will start heading to the hub airports using them, and not the tiny planes that cost the most money for airlines. Not every city can support a passenger airport, so why does each city need one.
I am all for eliminating many of the airlines. Their debts per year alone are bigger than Amtrak's yearly budget. And these debts are paid out of my taxes, and I do not even fly planes, and the airlines still do not work well for the places I am going frequently, and cost four times as much. Silly use of govt's money if you ask me.
While it is true that 1920*540*60 is greater than 1280x720*60, many would argue that the 1080i pixels are more useless, as the carry too much horizontal information (too many verticals), and too little horizontal information.
Basically what you get is that 1080i takes more bandwidth to transmit, carries more useless information, and has interlacing artifacts.
Personally, If I were watching fast motion video (I am not sure if sports are fast motion), I would prefer 720p, as I can actually see the objects sliding apart...and it looks absolutely horrible.
I will have to disagree. I take Amtrak about twice a month in the NE corridor and surroundings.
Of the the last 20 times I have taken it, it was late more than 15 minutes twice. One time it was stuck in Boston due to a mechanical failure. The other time it was stuck behind a CSX train in Virginia. The last one is really appaling as the conductor was cursing the CSX operators under his breath the whole time we were stuck behind it. (The CSX train could not move very fast due to ice storm, about 5 mph, and apparently the operators did not want to pause the opposite direction CSX train to let the Amtrak through.)
However, if you said that they are reliably 15 minutes late, then I will agree with you. But actually there is a reason behind the madness. Amtrak trains will wait for connecting trains on many routes, and hence small delays on one train, will delay another. I would say this is a big advantage as well. I once missed a connecting flight by about 15 minutes, and had to wait at the airport for 23 hours, since that airline had that flight once a day, and they did not want to hand me over to another airline for some reason.
True. Car use is a very good competitor for the train. However, what you are forgetting is that a car is not always the most convinient option for everyone. Otherwise, why would people take planes from NY to Boston, and they do. They even take slow trains as well. I am a frequent traveller in the area, and the 8-car trains that run every hour or more durinng daytime are always packed.
Hence, even though more people will take the car in the US compared to France, it is not the case for everyone, and if the trains in the area were high speed, people taking the trains instead of planes for the trip will achieve the critical mass to support the infrastructure.
By NE I mean NorthEast, the Amtrak corridor designation that includes DC, Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Trenton, Newark, New York, Providence, Boston.
The only potentially interesting high speed rail run is into New York City which is currently actually served by Acela. I've even taken it. It sucks. Acela is not a high speed train. It hopes to be one day. The train itself can hit 200 mph, but the tracks keep it at a nice 100 most of the time, and less than 20 mph in really crappy places, like New Rochelle junction.
If you need to go into the suburbs (you will) you need a rent a car, and you will have to drive through the worst traffic and twisty street system you can imagine. This is not different from an airport. That is why most airports have car rental. High speed trains are not designed to replace mass transit. High speed trains are designed to replace airports and roads for 300 - 500 mile runs -- that is it.
You can leave/arrive when you want. It is faster because you don't have to deal with the origination/termination issues. Yeah. You are lucky if your destination is right next to LaGuardia. However, if your destination is Bronx, Manhattan, Northern New Jersey, etc, you are actually worse off being stuck on Long Island, as you will have to drive through the worst traffic anyway. What the train stations do, is they bring you straight into the population center. This may be the place of the worst traffic, but on average you are closer to your home, and there are more transit choices available from that point.
Texas? Texas is bigger than the entire country of France, and has 1/3 or less the population. No way it has the population density. Population Density is only an argument against startup cost. Currently there are a ton of flights a day amoing those three cities. If there are airlines who can afford flights between cities that are that close, then surely one can play a few tracks in the desert, and connect them with high speed train. The same people who took planes will begin to start taking the train, as it will be both faster and more convenient.
You ARE joking, right? California cities invented urban sprawl. San Diego city is 342 freaking square miles. The distance between San Diego and San Francisco is 1600 miles, way more than is practical for a high speed rail run. 1600 miles it is not. I remember driving from LA to SF in about 5 hours. San Diego is at worst about 1[[ miles south, which puts SD and SF in the worst case about 600 miles apart. This I just confirmed with google maps, which pins the distance at 500 miles.
Perhaps you were thinking Seattle?
Besides, what does urban sprawl have to do with anything. Right now everyone drives to the airport, now they will drive to the train station. What is the difference?
Your argument holds any water for only one thing. Trains will be less profitable in US than in Europe, because ridership will be smaller, while infrastructure costs will be higher. This is causing a huge starting cost, and is the reason why they have not been built yet. However, if anyone ever builds the infrastructure, then the maintnance of that infrastructure is cheaper than that of airlines. Combine this with higher speeds and convenience of the trains, and no one will ever take the plane again for the runs I mentioned.
Actually if you read all the posts made above, you would notice that the downloaded file in the new format is playing just fine using mplayer, and it is the streaming that is causing the problem, as apparantly libquicktime/mplayer does not handle it.
Notice no Windows DLLs were used in the running of the file. libquicktime was handling the qt wrapper, while ffmpeg was playing the movie without any trouble.
As for the Windows, I would imagine that anyone with Quicktime Alternative dshow plugin can play these files as well.
Sure you are not going to take a train from NY to LA.
But how about the entirety of NE? Cities in Florida? Cities in Texas? California coast? Chicago, Milwaukee, St.Louis, Minneapolis? All of these groups can be connected by a train that will deliver you from any city in the group to any other city in that group in about 2 hours tops. That will beat an airplane anyday.
There are very few large cities that are completely separate from every other large city. Denver and Boise come to mind. Every other city can use a train link to some other city close to it.
If there is enough population density to support a frequent plane for a short distance, there is definitely enough population density to support a train for that same connection.
Sure the US will have more travel using airplanes than Japan does, but that does not mean that high speed trains do not have their place.
plus the cities are not distributed radially, but along a coastline I wonder why you include this fact. One could say that this hurt the airlines more than it does trains. Trains love to pick people up along a straight line. One track grabs all the cities, no need to construct n squared number of paths to maximize speed.
Re:probably better to just get the real thing
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you'll still be able to record what you want, you just won't be able to re-distribute it
How can you be so sure of this. For now all DVR's are letting you record what you want, but sooner or later someone (most likely NFL) have a reason to not want recording of their show to be made (perhaps they want to sell the broadcast of the superbowl on DVD). Then they find themselves in position to be able to stop all recordings, and poof...bye bye to your DVD. Some will complain, but since it is one show, and not that heavily recorded, the number of complaint will be few, and they will be quashed. Then they will take away another show, and then another, and then the only thing you will be able to record are the sitcoms and the local news.
By the way, I made a mistake on the Broadcast flag, as that will affect over the air recording only. The cable companies will introduce / have introduced their own recording flags, which their own receiver / PVRs support. Law is not going to matter on cable.
But returning to the discussion...when the cable / sattelite will say you will not reord this show...you will not record that show with their PVR period. Not even in degraded quality. The whole point of having a standalone box is that you will be able to ignore all their rules completely.
It may be difficult, but it is certainly more free.
Actually Amtrak owns a lot of rails in the NE. That is why they are usually on schedule in the NE, as opposed to their other runs.
The whole CSX issue is not a conspiracy, but CSX rail operators tend to be under pressure that their own trains be on time, and if that means holding an Amtrak train 4-5 hours to get the late CSX train a priority, then so be it, even if the passenger train will delay the CSX train by 10 minutes.
As far as privately owned...that is fine. On the other hand one should remember how they came to be privatly owned...namely land/right of way grants. This means that if the govt wanted to have a functioning system, they could to some extent eminent domain the right of way for passenger use in addition to freight use.
But compound this fact with America's love of the automobile and there is no way rail transportation can work over long distances in the USA.
America's love with the automobile stops when the gas will hit $3 to $4, or when the trip is over 300 miles, which is the point where America's airline love/hate relationship begins.
Re:probably better to just get the real thing
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Build Your Own DVR
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· Score: 1
Meanwhile with a standalone TiVo and a separate receiver, you get: -analog -separate box with poor channel control -multiple remote controls -same crappy epg, as now the boxes are not connected -one channel at once period -"updates" that remove features you want -additional monthly subscription
With a PVR supplied by your TV company, you get: -recording of only those shows they want you to record. Just wait for broadcast flag. -"updates" that remove features you want -potentially poor choice of options (good luck attempting to upgrade the drive on the receiver you do not own) -inability to extract shows in a easy to rad format
The ready solutions have a lot of problems as well. I am taking the option of rolling your own. At least I will be able to record the Superbowl (the first thing that will for SURE broadcast flagged) when my friend asks me to.
Not quite. It is the low speed trains that are a lost cause in the US for precisely the reason you described. They are not competitive with planes on medium to long runs, and are definitely not competitive with cars on the short runs.
High speed trains on the other hand become competitive with planes on medium runs of about 300-500 mi. This results in a lot of connection that can be successful.
The main problem that high speed trains are facing is the reputation of the slow speed trains. Most people think that they are not competitive, and no one wants to throw billions into a service that is now an unproven entity, and is so outdated that a massive rebuilding needs to be done to make it worthwhile.
What is happening is that politicians dangle a few million and say hey Amtrak, show us a high speed train. Amtrak looks over their rails, and fixes a one mile portion of that track, which is about what a million dollars will do. And then it claims that it now can run high speed trains over that one mile. Of course consumers see that while the train runs fast over that mile, but is still a low speed train overall, then the politicians say...see high speed train can not be successful.
What they do not realize is that high speed is either there or not. You improve everything or nothing. Unfortunately no one want to give Amtrak the money to actually build a perfect system. They can design it, they just can not build it. Even splitting their plans into the smallest chucks possible, they still can not convince the govt to fund even one chunk.
With their last attempt they have about 100 miles of track in the NE that is high speed (of course the cheapest 100 they could get), and trains that can use it. They need about 600 more miles of high speed track that is more expensive, to actually run the system there. And this is where Amtrak is stuck.
Meanwhile the people are doing, exactly what they should be doing: taking planes as they are faster and more convenient for now.
In honor of Broadcast flag becoming law on July 1st, EFF hosts a Broadcast flag awareness and PVR building page with many resources on how to build you own. A good starting place to see many solutions and find many links
It is in the US. There are plenty of ridesharing van taxis that run in NYC. Not quite what you are looking for, but pretty close. Also any large campus will have a private mass transit system.
All of these are quite successful, but they do not serve the same purpose as a high speed train does.
You are forgetting plenty of high travel 500 mile corridors.
St. Louis - Chicago - Milwaukee (this is a big one) Pittsburgh - Harrisburg - Lancaster - Philadelphia DC - Richmond - Charlotte - Atlanta Miami - Tampa - Orlando - Jacksonville (this one is perhaps less travelled) The Texas triangle
All of these corridors are a bit too small for efficient flight, and have enough traffic to support a train system.
There are more people going for shorter distances than there are going for long ones. The trains are supposed to provide exactly that travel which is a bit too long for the car, and a bit too expensive and inefficient when flying.
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Right. However, my point was that Nvidia has not even released the specs for the 3d layer for a TNT2, correct me if I am wrong.
What that means is that if you have a TNT2, and Nvidia drops binary drivers for it, you are looking at buying a new card if you need any 3d out of it.
As the VESA issue is concerned, it is nice that they have a good VESA implementation, given that practically no one has completely implemented it ever. Unfortunately VESA is a standard that is a bit too old. It would be lovely if there comes out a new standard for video cards, which includes high end 2d and 3d, but I think the cards are moving too fast for someone to come up with a new VESA.
I just hope that they do not have crap in it like VESA has: scrolling framebuffers to implement double buffering and text scrolling is quite stupid nowdays IMO.
BTW, you seem to be very well versed in graphics issues. Just wondering what is your background? Judging from previous conversations your knowledge defintily trumps mine, as my knowledge in the graphics field has been reading a bit too many various whitepapers lite, wikipedia articles, and a good cs background, but that is all.
Seeing how this is a very important effort, I would like to see this project/experiment succeed, even if what it produces is not quite what I / others need.
Is there a way that I could give $20-$50 dollars donation unconditionally (I know this is not a charitable donation), and then guarantee that I will purchase the card if it costs less than $200?
Perhaps the developers could offer incentives for people who do this. I do not know hardware, but I assume that FPGA card is the same as ASIC, except that it can be reprogrammed. In that case an incentive could be the card, which then does not have to be repurchased once revisions are made in hardware. (the donation then could be the difference between the FPGA cost and the ASIC cost, and then the donation is not donation, but partial-preorder).
Basically, I am a bit uncomfortable with parting with too much money with no guarantees, but I am willing to part with some. More, if there are more incentives. But idea of pure pre-order will not work, as there is no guarantee that the card will be finished, and $200 is more than I am willing to just throw away.
I am not involved with the project, but I would like to offer counterpoints.
1. The hardware will be underpowered because this group has little experience (if any) designing bleeding edge graphics hardware
It is designed to be underpowered. It is not going to support a billion triangles per second. It is designed to provide many basic features of the video card, and provide them well, in an opensource way.
2. The card will be overpriced because this group doesn't have the manufacturing clout of NVidia or ATI
The card is planned to be overpriced. They believe that the openness of the video card is valuable enough that people will pay for it.
3. The drivers will suck because nobody's going to buy this card and nobody will develop for it.
The openness of this video card means that if there is one kernel dev, and one X11 dev will have this card with time on their hands, it will be 100% supported.
4. The drivers will suck MORE because of all the trans-gamers out there who dual boot, they won't get the card because it won't be supported in Windows (or just very weakly).
The card is not aimed at gamers who play the latest games. It will not have the 3d performance necessary. It will probably have enough to run Tux Racer though
5. The company has no financial backing, so they will crash and burn early on and we will be stuck with abandoned hardware.
No the case, as the entire card spec is open. Even if all the original developers vanish, we will still have the specs for the card.
6. This time, effort and money would be better spent harassing the existing graphics card manufacturers into opening up their drivers, as least the non-trade-secret parts so we can do our magic on it.
It has been tried. A few came close: See Matrox around year 2000. The trend is that although linux is getting more support, more and more of the video card becomes closed an non-reverse engineered. We are currently lucky that nvidia keeps updating their drivers for the older video-cards, as the nv drivers (which are mostly reverse engineered / developed from tiny amounts of nvidia released specifications) suck badly. We are talking mach64 sucking less than nv. Sadly matrox g200 is probably still the most supported and reliable video card in linux. Yes it is better than nvidia, as nvidia drivers are quite famous for freezing X or kernel for no apparent reason.
(RenderAccel being the main culprit, but it happend with it turned off as well. Also without RenderAccel, 2d performance sucks)
7. (asbestos ON) I still don't think any Linux Distro in its current state should even be considered for desktop or gaming. But that's me being an elitist prick. Come up with a cleaner development model, make it "just work", and redo the whole windowing system into something that is NOT X, and maybe then we can start talking. The reason OSX works so well is because it does fifty backflips to almost completely hide the underlying Unix layer. It's not because I know Linux that I want to put up with its PMS all the time, sometimes it's nice to just click things with your brain switched off.
Now this is not a flame, it is just stupid.
Linux gaming is possible. Nvidia drivers provide a fast enough direct gl interface, that is adequate for pretty much anything.
Come up with a cleaner development model, make it "just work"
GL development already just works. Direct3D is not an inherently better system.
and redo the whole windowing system into something that is NOT X
X has very little to do with gaming, as most games use direct rendering or GL layers, and thus bypass X rendering anyway.
The reason OSX works so well is because it does fifty backflips to almost completely hide the underlying Unix layer.
The unix layer has absolutely nothing to do with graphics. All it needs is a basic terminal, and the darwins kernel just simulates the framebu
There is already such a thing, but it is not quite up to par. NoMachine NX server and a client running on the same machine would work. Basically the server acts like an X server, and holds all connections, while the client gets the server redirected messages.
Similarly an older utility called xmove basically did the same thing.
The main issue is they sucked. Now you ran two xservers, and hence twice the marshalling, hence twice the latency.
Your method of client transfer is pretty good, but it has a lot of challenges, and would require work on the core X protocol. I hope the X11 server gurus are in fact working on it, as it would be very sweet. One instant issue is who will handle the connection if the X server goes down. X11 libs? Needless to say, it would not be easy to fix that in the protocol.
One last thing you can do, and that I suppose how windows will handle it: Keep running the server as if nothing is happening, but stop drawing to the screen, and reset the screen in the meantime. One thing that I would have no clue how it can be handled is direct rendering, as those apps write directly into the video card.
Cool idea nonetheless.
That is the funny part. IIRC, The Moscow subway system is considered a work of art, and hence they get some kind of international art fund grants to keep it clean.
And I am quite certain it is not a new station, as it has been at least 8 years since I have been there, and most new stations will not feature mosaics anyway.
But then again, I spent a while browsing http://metro.ru/stations/ and could not find it.
I am in an opposite scenario. The closest airport that has more than 1 flight a day is 1.5 hours by car. And my flight from there would still require a hub connection. The one that does make a flight a day, for my destination requires a 6 hour layover.
As a student I can not afford to have a car, nor do I have any desire (or ability -- I will fall asleep) to drive for 8 hours.
The train takes 8 hours too, but it gets me from start to finish in one sitting, plus I can take the night one and sleep while travelling.
In my opinion, airports are disfunctional for small distances, as they typically require 2 flights if both your cities are non-hub. And if the airlines have too much trouble getting money to run their flights, so be it. Let them go bankrupt. I am surprised how much the government is willing to tolerate them. What company can declare a bankruptcy, only to get a 500 million dollar loan the next day? What kind of company gets to use a public resource created just for them (a hub airport) for practically free.
Given that I am of libertarian nature, I am all for eliminating subsidies for all airlines, and letting them go completely bankrupt. Let the consumers see what costs what. The 200 dollar flight to california. That would be $5000 please. That will put things into perspective, and will really say which technology is really more effective.
But those long flights are needed, and those people who need them will pay for them. Local flights are even bigger drain on resources, as the only reason air companies can keep them is because they pay very little for regional airports, and they absolutely struggle to get anyone who wants to get on to the long distance flight.I say let them go bankrupt. It will give more money to amtrak / other railroads, and the people will start heading to the hub airports using them, and not the tiny planes that cost the most money for airlines. Not every city can support a passenger airport, so why does each city need one.
I am all for eliminating many of the airlines. Their debts per year alone are bigger than Amtrak's yearly budget. And these debts are paid out of my taxes, and I do not even fly planes, and the airlines still do not work well for the places I am going frequently, and cost four times as much. Silly use of govt's money if you ask me.
Was the subway picture taken at 4am? The station looks too clean, and too empty.
BTW, which station is that. I recall being there, but do not remember it. My guess it is on the loop track, but my memory is failing me.
720p is 60hz as well.
While it is true that 1920*540*60 is greater than 1280x720*60, many would argue that the 1080i pixels are more useless, as the carry too much horizontal information (too many verticals), and too little horizontal information.
Basically what you get is that 1080i takes more bandwidth to transmit, carries more useless information, and has interlacing artifacts.
Personally, If I were watching fast motion video (I am not sure if sports are fast motion), I would prefer 720p, as I can actually see the objects sliding apart...and it looks absolutely horrible.
I will have to disagree. I take Amtrak about twice a month in the NE corridor and surroundings.
Of the the last 20 times I have taken it, it was late more than 15 minutes twice. One time it was stuck in Boston due to a mechanical failure. The other time it was stuck behind a CSX train in Virginia. The last one is really appaling as the conductor was cursing the CSX operators under his breath the whole time we were stuck behind it. (The CSX train could not move very fast due to ice storm, about 5 mph, and apparently the operators did not want to pause the opposite direction CSX train to let the Amtrak through.)
However, if you said that they are reliably 15 minutes late, then I will agree with you. But actually there is a reason behind the madness. Amtrak trains will wait for connecting trains on many routes, and hence small delays on one train, will delay another. I would say this is a big advantage as well. I once missed a connecting flight by about 15 minutes, and had to wait at the airport for 23 hours, since that airline had that flight once a day, and they did not want to hand me over to another airline for some reason.
True. Car use is a very good competitor for the train. However, what you are forgetting is that a car is not always the most convinient option for everyone. Otherwise, why would people take planes from NY to Boston, and they do. They even take slow trains as well. I am a frequent traveller in the area, and the 8-car trains that run every hour or more durinng daytime are always packed.
Hence, even though more people will take the car in the US compared to France, it is not the case for everyone, and if the trains in the area were high speed, people taking the trains instead of planes for the trip will achieve the critical mass to support the infrastructure.
Isn't there a distinction between treason and high treason?
By NE I mean NorthEast, the Amtrak corridor designation that includes DC, Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Trenton, Newark, New York, Providence, Boston.
The only potentially interesting high speed rail run is into New York City which is currently actually served by Acela. I've even taken it. It sucks.
Acela is not a high speed train. It hopes to be one day. The train itself can hit 200 mph, but the tracks keep it at a nice 100 most of the time, and less than 20 mph in really crappy places, like New Rochelle junction.
If you need to go into the suburbs (you will) you need a rent a car, and you will have to drive through the worst traffic and twisty street system you can imagine.
This is not different from an airport. That is why most airports have car rental. High speed trains are not designed to replace mass transit. High speed trains are designed to replace airports and roads for 300 - 500 mile runs -- that is it.
You can leave/arrive when you want. It is faster because you don't have to deal with the origination/termination issues.
Yeah. You are lucky if your destination is right next to LaGuardia. However, if your destination is Bronx, Manhattan, Northern New Jersey, etc, you are actually worse off being stuck on Long Island, as you will have to drive through the worst traffic anyway. What the train stations do, is they bring you straight into the population center. This may be the place of the worst traffic, but on average you are closer to your home, and there are more transit choices available from that point.
Texas? Texas is bigger than the entire country of France, and has 1/3 or less the population. No way it has the population density.
Population Density is only an argument against startup cost. Currently there are a ton of flights a day amoing those three cities. If there are airlines who can afford flights between cities that are that close, then surely one can play a few tracks in the desert, and connect them with high speed train. The same people who took planes will begin to start taking the train, as it will be both faster and more convenient.
You ARE joking, right? California cities invented urban sprawl. San Diego city is 342 freaking square miles. The distance between San Diego and San Francisco is 1600 miles, way more than is practical for a high speed rail run.
1600 miles it is not. I remember driving from LA to SF in about 5 hours. San Diego is at worst about 1[[ miles south, which puts SD and SF in the worst case about 600 miles apart. This I just confirmed with google maps, which pins the distance at 500 miles.
Perhaps you were thinking Seattle?
Besides, what does urban sprawl have to do with anything. Right now everyone drives to the airport, now they will drive to the train station. What is the difference?
Your argument holds any water for only one thing. Trains will be less profitable in US than in Europe, because ridership will be smaller, while infrastructure costs will be higher. This is causing a huge starting cost, and is the reason why they have not been built yet. However, if anyone ever builds the infrastructure, then the maintnance of that infrastructure is cheaper than that of airlines. Combine this with higher speeds and convenience of the trains, and no one will ever take the plane again for the runs I mentioned.
Or just begins podcasting some of the MC Hawking's finest.
/I am a three-sandwich eating....
I will post this just to break your parade.
No, you can not place Ogg into AVI. What you meant is that you can place Vorbis into AVI.
However, thank you, as I was specifically looking for the person who will point out that AVI is not a codec, but a container.
If the infrastructure were there, the trains would be cheaper, and it would be the airlines that would have to leave.
This is why they are petitioning the govt to bankrupt Amtrak. They fear it.
Actually if you read all the posts made above, you would notice that the downloaded file in the new format is playing just fine using mplayer, and it is the streaming that is causing the problem, as apparantly libquicktime/mplayer does not handle it.
Notice no Windows DLLs were used in the running of the file. libquicktime was handling the qt wrapper, while ffmpeg was playing the movie without any trouble.
As for the Windows, I would imagine that anyone with Quicktime Alternative dshow plugin can play these files as well.
A FEW???????
Sure you are not going to take a train from NY to LA.
But how about the entirety of NE? Cities in Florida? Cities in Texas? California coast? Chicago, Milwaukee, St.Louis, Minneapolis?
All of these groups can be connected by a train that will deliver you from any city in the group to any other city in that group in about 2 hours tops. That will beat an airplane anyday.
There are very few large cities that are completely separate from every other large city. Denver and Boise come to mind. Every other city can use a train link to some other city close to it.
If there is enough population density to support a frequent plane for a short distance, there is definitely enough population density to support a train for that same connection.
Sure the US will have more travel using airplanes than Japan does, but that does not mean that high speed trains do not have their place.
plus the cities are not distributed radially, but along a coastline
I wonder why you include this fact. One could say that this hurt the airlines more than it does trains. Trains love to pick people up along a straight line. One track grabs all the cities, no need to construct n squared number of paths to maximize speed.
you'll still be able to record what you want, you just won't be able to re-distribute it
How can you be so sure of this. For now all DVR's are letting you record what you want, but sooner or later someone (most likely NFL) have a reason to not want recording of their show to be made (perhaps they want to sell the broadcast of the superbowl on DVD). Then they find themselves in position to be able to stop all recordings, and poof...bye bye to your DVD. Some will complain, but since it is one show, and not that heavily recorded, the number of complaint will be few, and they will be quashed. Then they will take away another show, and then another, and then the only thing you will be able to record are the sitcoms and the local news.
By the way, I made a mistake on the Broadcast flag, as that will affect over the air recording only. The cable companies will introduce / have introduced their own recording flags, which their own receiver / PVRs support. Law is not going to matter on cable.
But returning to the discussion...when the cable / sattelite will say you will not reord this show...you will not record that show with their PVR period. Not even in degraded quality. The whole point of having a standalone box is that you will be able to ignore all their rules completely.
It may be difficult, but it is certainly more free.
Actually Amtrak owns a lot of rails in the NE. That is why they are usually on schedule in the NE, as opposed to their other runs.
The whole CSX issue is not a conspiracy, but CSX rail operators tend to be under pressure that their own trains be on time, and if that means holding an Amtrak train 4-5 hours to get the late CSX train a priority, then so be it, even if the passenger train will delay the CSX train by 10 minutes.
As far as privately owned...that is fine. On the other hand one should remember how they came to be privatly owned...namely land/right of way grants. This means that if the govt wanted to have a functioning system, they could to some extent eminent domain the right of way for passenger use in addition to freight use.
But compound this fact with America's love of the automobile and there is no way rail transportation can work over long distances in the USA.
America's love with the automobile stops when the gas will hit $3 to $4, or when the trip is over 300 miles, which is the point where America's airline love/hate relationship begins.
Meanwhile with a standalone TiVo and a separate receiver, you get:
-analog
-separate box with poor channel control
-multiple remote controls
-same crappy epg, as now the boxes are not connected
-one channel at once period
-"updates" that remove features you want
-additional monthly subscription
With a PVR supplied by your TV company, you get:
-recording of only those shows they want you to record. Just wait for broadcast flag.
-"updates" that remove features you want
-potentially poor choice of options (good luck attempting to upgrade the drive on the receiver you do not own)
-inability to extract shows in a easy to rad format
The ready solutions have a lot of problems as well. I am taking the option of rolling your own. At least I will be able to record the Superbowl (the first thing that will for SURE broadcast flagged) when my friend asks me to.
Not quite. It is the low speed trains that are a lost cause in the US for precisely the reason you described. They are not competitive with planes on medium to long runs, and are definitely not competitive with cars on the short runs.
High speed trains on the other hand become competitive with planes on medium runs of about 300-500 mi. This results in a lot of connection that can be successful.
The main problem that high speed trains are facing is the reputation of the slow speed trains. Most people think that they are not competitive, and no one wants to throw billions into a service that is now an unproven entity, and is so outdated that a massive rebuilding needs to be done to make it worthwhile.
What is happening is that politicians dangle a few million and say hey Amtrak, show us a high speed train. Amtrak looks over their rails, and fixes a one mile portion of that track, which is about what a million dollars will do. And then it claims that it now can run high speed trains over that one mile. Of course consumers see that while the train runs fast over that mile, but is still a low speed train overall, then the politicians say...see high speed train can not be successful.
What they do not realize is that high speed is either there or not. You improve everything or nothing. Unfortunately no one want to give Amtrak the money to actually build a perfect system. They can design it, they just can not build it. Even splitting their plans into the smallest chucks possible, they still can not convince the govt to fund even one chunk.
With their last attempt they have about 100 miles of track in the NE that is high speed (of course the cheapest 100 they could get), and trains that can use it. They need about 600 more miles of high speed track that is more expensive, to actually run the system there. And this is where Amtrak is stuck.
Meanwhile the people are doing, exactly what they should be doing: taking planes as they are faster and more convenient for now.
In honor of Broadcast flag becoming law on July 1st, EFF hosts a Broadcast flag awareness and PVR building page with many resources on how to build you own. A good starting place to see many solutions and find many links
It is in the US. There are plenty of ridesharing van taxis that run in NYC. Not quite what you are looking for, but pretty close. Also any large campus will have a private mass transit system.
All of these are quite successful, but they do not serve the same purpose as a high speed train does.
You are forgetting plenty of high travel 500 mile corridors.
St. Louis - Chicago - Milwaukee (this is a big one)
Pittsburgh - Harrisburg - Lancaster - Philadelphia
DC - Richmond - Charlotte - Atlanta
Miami - Tampa - Orlando - Jacksonville (this one is perhaps less travelled)
The Texas triangle
All of these corridors are a bit too small for efficient flight, and have enough traffic to support a train system.
There are more people going for shorter distances than there are going for long ones. The trains are supposed to provide exactly that travel which is a bit too long for the car, and a bit too expensive and inefficient when flying.
Look on the bright side. Firefox is 5000 times more successful than RIAA.