Nothing at all? These were simple rendering tests, measured in minutes. Most people out there using photoshop & illustrator in combination with after effects, at least commercially, deal with rendering times in hours or tens of hours. Extrapolate the performance differences under those considerations, and tell me then that a big deal is being made of 'nothing at all.'
Neither design is either very revolutionary or very reliable from the looks of their respective websites. I still don't see where whomever posted the/. note got 640mb, because the math simply doesn't add up. The only thing I can figure is if they are releasing a StorageArray with 72gb drives and haven't gotten around to posting it yet.
As for that ExaDrive 3U unit, it looks extremely sketchy at best. I mean, I don't know how far I trust the combination of Fibre Channel and IDE in the first place, but they aren't even using ATA100 drives, you can't hot swap ONE drive at a time, you need to remove the 2 drive tray to do it, which leaves me at a loss as to how it would even work. There are no specs on the drives themselves other than the fact that they're ATA66. And how can you trust a company to build a reliable SAN-ready array when they can't even build a website?
Ugh, IDE is NOT the way to go for any type of serious storage solution, I don't care how cheap you need it.
There were two reasons TiVo was a more viable option for me personally than the ReplayTV package, and I'll list them here.
Price. TiVo simply offered more storage and features for less money. The choice in this department wasn't very hard.
Programming. The TiVo's program guide offers comprehensive data about programming, and extensive searchability/indexing, as well as season pass programming (which, granted, needs a bit of work). As far as I know, ReplayTV does none of this.
Also, an important thing to note, but which may not be a big deal to everyone, is this. TiVo has strong ties with DirecTV. I believe they're coming out with a new version of the TiVo which doubles as a DirecTV satellite receiver as well, but putting that aside for a moment, the current TiVo offer the ability to decode DirecTV Pay Per View movies. ReplayTV cannot do this. I tend to get 3 or 4 PPV movies a month, some of which I transfer to my SVHS VCR to watch again. If I had gone with ReplayTV, I couldn't have done this.
Sure you can. In doing so, you defeat the purpose of having the TiVo in the first place. Maybe Rob didn't make clear the distinction between the 'TiVo' entity and Philips, the company that designed the hardware the TiVo runs on. I'm not quite sure if TiVo is owned by Philips or not. For the sake of argument, lets assume it is, but they are separate entities. Philips being the hardware/support entity, and TiVo being the programming/software entity.
When you buy the TiVo, you're buying a piece of philips hardware and a piece of TiVo software. Then you pay $10/mo or $200/lifetime for the TiVo _service_. This essentially consists of the TiVo program guide (downloaded two or three times a week), TiVolution magazine, which is basically an online TV Guide. It creatively groups movies and TV shows by genre and presents 'what's on' that week in such a format. These things (program guide and TiVo programming, as well as any software rev patches the TiVo needs to grab, which isn't often) are downloaded via modem built into the TiVo in the wee hours of the morning a couple of times a week. You can program the time you want the TiVo to poll, or you can force it manually whenever you want, but in order for the TiVo's menu guide and substantial indexing/searching capabilities to work, you need to make those modem calls.
I tend to agree with sirket on this one. I've used belkin products in the past, and for simple cabling issues they tend to do the trick, but I wouldn't trust belkin to provide me a high-quality, high-performance switching solution. Black Box makes great quality products. We use all different versions of their 'Servswitch' line at the office. From an ultra-compact 2 port Mac KVM switch all the way up to a their ServSwitch Multi, and we've been pleased with all of them. I personally use the ServSwitch Ultra because it supports PC, Mac, and Sun boxes through the same switch, and I have one of each in my office. http://www.blackbox.com
With regard to SBus vs. PCI, keep in mind that SBus is a very dated technology compared to PCI. It is only a 25mhz bus w/ a max. theoretical throughput of 200 Mb/s, with actual being much lower, as compared to PCI, which is already at 100Mhz speeds with a max throughput of over 500 Mb/s.
I think one of the reasons Sun stuck with SBus so long (and continues to in some of its Enterprise level servers, notably the 4x00 models) is because of SBus's small footprint, which works nicely with the system tray design Sun has been using in its machines for years now.
As for USB vs. Firewire, USB seems to be turning into Yet Another Processor Hog, which will forever keep the technology in the PC realm. I could personally see firewire move into the upper echelons of server technology once it's become more proven in the industry, though.
I've heard tell about some sort of IO standard that Intel's been pushing of late that supposedly 'replaces all current bus technology'. Anybody know more about this?
I think Trey Parker and Matt Stone took a rather unique angle in terms of avoiding the PC issue with South Park... especially the movie. They set out from the get-go to offend people unilaterally. I think they've slandered every racial, ethnic, and religious group that's out there, and if they havent yet, have faith... they will.:)
With regards to the final scene (made the movie, IHMO), Mike took off downstairs well in advance of Heather, who was hysterical and stumbling anyway. You saw with his camera (the B&W) when he got down there it was forcefully jarred from him and fell to the ground. I took from this that he was struck from behind in some way and maneuvered into the corner, leaving him either stunned or unconscious altogether. The scene just happened too quickly for anything else to happen, and he certainly wouldn't be standing there of his own volition. That scene still gets me! As for the contents of the bundle, my friends and I had a small debate about that as well, and we all came to the conclusion that there were definitely teeth in there, but in addition to that different people saw different things. Comments were made about eyes and personally I thought I saw a chunk of tongue.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing at all? These were simple rendering tests, measured in minutes. Most people out there using photoshop & illustrator in combination with after effects, at least commercially, deal with rendering times in hours or tens of hours. Extrapolate the performance differences under those considerations, and tell me then that a big deal is being made of 'nothing at all.'
Yup. I went through 3 of them before I ditched the thinkpad altogether in favor of an inspiron.
"habitually underpromises and overdelivers?" Riiiiight. Have you heard of a game called Dragon Quest 7?
Neither design is either very revolutionary or very reliable from the looks of their respective websites. I still don't see where whomever posted the /. note got 640mb, because the math simply doesn't add up. The only thing I can figure is if they are releasing a StorageArray with 72gb drives and haven't gotten around to posting it yet.
As for that ExaDrive 3U unit, it looks extremely sketchy at best. I mean, I don't know how far I trust the combination of Fibre Channel and IDE in the first place, but they aren't even using ATA100 drives, you can't hot swap ONE drive at a time, you need to remove the 2 drive tray to do it, which leaves me at a loss as to how it would even work. There are no specs on the drives themselves other than the fact that they're ATA66. And how can you trust a company to build a reliable SAN-ready array when they can't even build a website?
Ugh, IDE is NOT the way to go for any type of serious storage solution, I don't care how cheap you need it.
Price. TiVo simply offered more storage and features for less money. The choice in this department wasn't very hard.
Programming. The TiVo's program guide offers comprehensive data about programming, and extensive searchability/indexing, as well as season pass programming (which, granted, needs a bit of work). As far as I know, ReplayTV does none of this.
Also, an important thing to note, but which may not be a big deal to everyone, is this. TiVo has strong ties with DirecTV. I believe they're coming out with a new version of the TiVo which doubles as a DirecTV satellite receiver as well, but putting that aside for a moment, the current TiVo offer the ability to decode DirecTV Pay Per View movies. ReplayTV cannot do this. I tend to get 3 or 4 PPV movies a month, some of which I transfer to my SVHS VCR to watch again. If I had gone with ReplayTV, I couldn't have done this.
Sure you can. In doing so, you defeat the purpose of having the TiVo in the first place. Maybe Rob didn't make clear the distinction between the 'TiVo' entity and Philips, the company that designed the hardware the TiVo runs on. I'm not quite sure if TiVo is owned by Philips or not. For the sake of argument, lets assume it is, but they are separate entities. Philips being the hardware/support entity, and TiVo being the programming/software entity.
When you buy the TiVo, you're buying a piece of philips hardware and a piece of TiVo software. Then you pay $10/mo or $200/lifetime for the TiVo _service_. This essentially consists of the TiVo program guide (downloaded two or three times a week), TiVolution magazine, which is basically an online TV Guide. It creatively groups movies and TV shows by genre and presents 'what's on' that week in such a format. These things (program guide and TiVo programming, as well as any software rev patches the TiVo needs to grab, which isn't often) are downloaded via modem built into the TiVo in the wee hours of the morning a couple of times a week. You can program the time you want the TiVo to poll, or you can force it manually whenever you want, but in order for the TiVo's menu guide and substantial indexing/searching capabilities to work, you need to make those modem calls.
I tend to agree with sirket on this one. I've used belkin products in the past, and for simple cabling issues they tend to do the trick, but I wouldn't trust belkin to provide me a high-quality, high-performance switching solution. Black Box makes great quality products. We use all different versions of their 'Servswitch' line at the office. From an ultra-compact 2 port Mac KVM switch all the way up to a their ServSwitch Multi, and we've been pleased with all of them. I personally use the ServSwitch Ultra because it supports PC, Mac, and Sun boxes through the same switch, and I have one of each in my office.
http://www.blackbox.com
-Tex
With regard to SBus vs. PCI, keep in mind that SBus is a very dated technology compared to PCI. It is only a 25mhz bus w/ a max. theoretical throughput of 200 Mb/s, with actual being much lower, as compared to PCI, which is already at 100Mhz speeds with a max throughput of over 500 Mb/s.
I think one of the reasons Sun stuck with SBus so long (and continues to in some of its Enterprise level servers, notably the 4x00 models) is because of SBus's small footprint, which works nicely with the system tray design Sun has been using in its machines for years now.
As for USB vs. Firewire, USB seems to be turning into Yet Another Processor Hog, which will forever keep the technology in the PC realm. I could personally see firewire move into the upper echelons of server technology once it's become more proven in the industry, though.
I've heard tell about some sort of IO standard that Intel's been pushing of late that supposedly 'replaces all current bus technology'. Anybody know more about this?
I think Trey Parker and Matt Stone took a rather unique angle in terms of avoiding the PC issue with South Park... especially the movie. They set out from the get-go to offend people unilaterally. I think they've slandered every racial, ethnic, and religious group that's out there, and if they havent yet, have faith... they will. :)
With regards to the final scene (made the movie, IHMO), Mike took off downstairs well in advance of Heather, who was hysterical and stumbling anyway. You saw with his camera (the B&W) when he got down there it was forcefully jarred from him and fell to the ground. I took from this that he was struck from behind in some way and maneuvered into the corner, leaving him either stunned or unconscious altogether. The scene just happened too quickly for anything else to happen, and he certainly wouldn't be standing there of his own volition. That scene still gets me! As for the contents of the bundle, my friends and I had a small debate about that as well, and we all came to the conclusion that there were definitely teeth in there, but in addition to that different people saw different things. Comments were made about eyes and personally I thought I saw a chunk of tongue.