Audio Hijack intercepts the audio stream, stores it, and then gives you the option to safe it in diverse formats, including MP3 or a lossless format.
But even if you save the Audio Hijack file losslessly, you still only end up with the quality of the origial.aac iTunes Music Store file (while wasting a bunch of space). Saving it as an.mp3 results in re-compressing an already compressed file which will probably give noticable artifacts.
The beauty of QTFairUse is that it grabs the compressed.aac file and re-writes it as the same file, only un-encrypted -- so you maintain the compressed file size while not loosing any more quality.
I'm not nitpicking you -- your post is accurate and you may already understand this, but I'm posting for others who might not realize...
In all my hiring, I've learned to look first for the aptitude and integrity. You can turn somebody with the aptitude and integrity into somebody with the skills, too.
One of my former managers took this approach as well. In fact, when he hired me, I had very limited skills and knowlege, but I was able to learn as I went because he was willing to invest that. When a new person was hired, the whole team helped teach them the skills they needed (it was a small team of 5 or 10 people).
One way I know his approach actually worked well was because I occasionally did work with another group, not under his control but doing exactly the same work...it was much more miserable. My team was more friendly and helpful, people would actually go help others when they had free time. If someone didn't know how to do something or had a problem, everyone was willing to help. There wasn't as much back-stabbing and I think we all respected each other...in other words, I liked going to work. I didn't always like working on the other team.
Not to mention, now I'm quite loyal to that manager; after all, he was patient with me while I learned and was the first person to give me many opportunities to learn more by making my own decisions and mistakes. So I think you're right on: if you surround yourself with people you trust, have integrity, and have potential; you can usually teach them the skills needed.
Personally, I would like to see an OS that is put onto a ROM and cannot be updated without pulling it and bringing it to a special machine
I've heard of people booting off CD-ROM for this very purpose. For Windows it takes a lot of tweaking, as I recall, but is possible. This page suggests that Microsoft's Windows PE program does this; I think the standard in the past has been BartPE. For Linux, creating a live cd is pretty easy, lots of links around about that. When a new image is needed, burn a new disc. Think you're rooted? Reboot!
Verizon is the most amazing company...they try so hard to *not* get customers, yet somehow stay in business. I'm amazed at the number of stories I hear where they loose orders, miscommunicate between departments, or just plain don't care.
[rant_mode = on]
1) New apartment, need phone service and DSL. I sign up online, get a confirmation number and delivery date. A few days after the date, still no dial-tone, so I call them up (a real pain, since I didn't really know anyone in the area and didn't have a cell phone at the time). Somehow the online ordering system put my order in incorrectly. As in, the tech said it was easier to delete that request and start over. Three weeks later, the phone works but no DSL. The *eventually* get it straightened out
2) I'm about to move, so like a month before the move I go to their web page where they've got a really handy moving section. Enter your new address, a couple of other details, and...it's broken. It just doesn't work. I've never seen a web site have so many problems -- can't connect to the database server, "can't process your request now, try later," and broken links. Finally give in and call someone, who's very friendly and helpful. Everything's set. I move, wait a few days, and have nothing. I check things out and discover they hooked up the wrong line (as in there are two lines to the box outside the house but from there only one line goes in).
I figure okay, no problem, I don't understand how it worked a week before for the previous owners but got changed for me, but whatever, I've got a dial tone. Oh, but no DSL. Call them up and guess what -- there's no record of me ordering DSL for that number. They transfer my call to the DSL people and somehow my DSL transfer didn't get processed -- it was right there in the system, complete with the same delivery date for my dial tone, but just didn't get processed. Somehow. So now they need to send a tech out to test the lines, so I wait another two weeks before getting online again.
Several others have already responded that the frequencies are indeed different, but I'll throw in a little bonus information. The need to have all the frequencies together for cable TV is because it's difficult to amplify such a huge variety of frequencies that broadcast TV uses. For a single TV station to broadcast over the air, they just tune their transmitter to put out, say 10kW, at the transmitter site and don't worry about the rest. Your cable TV company, though, needs to amplify not only one channel, but 50, and the closer they can keep those frequencies together the cheaper those amplifiers are, especially since they're able to work around the huge frequency gaps in over-the-air broadcasts. Also coaxial cable has higher losses at higher frequencies, so re-tuning the UHF stuff down to a lower frequency results in less loss. Hope that helps.
Since this thread seems more active than the other one you commented in, I'll just refer to my response to you there where I explain how to bookmark MP3s with iTunes.
iTunes recently (I think version 6, but I'm not sure) added support for bookmarking MP3 files. Right click a file, go to file info, "Options" tab, and check "Remember playback position"
Yeah, at least it happens automatically for AAC files, but it's not that hard to do and can probably be scripted rather easily. And as I recall it happens automatically for podcasts now, too, though it may just be a flag set in the particular podcasts I subscribe to.
Besides, that's the kind of thing I'd rather have my player do than the format itself, but you're right, it is nice.
with a 5.1, do you really need a sub, or will it work ok if your fronts are old style biggies with massive woofers?
Yeah, you really need the sub -- essentially the low end is chopped out of the 5 (Left, Center, Right, Left Surround, Right Surround) and only routed to the subwoofer(1). You could probably get around it by re-combining the mono sub channel with the left and right channels feeding your speakers (2), but to do that means first splitting the mono signal -- by the time you do it right you'll have more money in equipment than a cheap subwoofer costs.
That said, there may be some way in software to do what you're trying to...depending on your soundcard software or reciever set up.
Re:5 Stars Rating Systems are Poor Design
on
More iTunes Math
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I think this is because people tend to think of a 5-point rating system as being 5 stars for love it and 0 for hate it -- where as if they hate a song, they probably don't even own it. Even "strongly dislike" which is what most people would figure as 1 or 2 stars, doesn't make the cut to be purchased for my music collection. I like your system, where 5 is exceptionally good and 2 is average; it's much more useful for this type of thing because the music that would typically get rated 0, 1, or 2 isn't even in one's music collection, so the whole rating system needs to compensate for that.
On the other hand, if it's going to be some black-box solution that's actually set up right out of the box, it's kind of idiot proof, no?
What, like the X-Box 360 was unhackable out of the box?
While your point is valid, that's not really what I meant, which can best be explained by two scenarios:
Scenario 1: Some store hears about this and thinks it's great. A college or high school kid with questionable security knowledge is hired to do the work, which results in some sort of clobbered-together solution which depends on being properly configured by people who may not know what WPA and WEP are.
Scenario 2: A company decides this is a great idea, hires a bunch of security uber-geeks, and starts mass producing these custom solutions that are relatively secure, use encryption, and are properly configured. The store owner still doesn't know anything about WPA, but doesn't need to as the support contract for "that box in the back room" ensures that it's well-maintained, kept up with security updates, and that the correct encryption is used(1).
1 - for an example of how this is important, take a look at what encryption method could have been used a few years ago: WEP. In scenario 1, no one knows that it's now insecure because everyone's forgotten about it; in scenario 2 the company producing the box has an obligation to keep it secure.
Interesting, and that supports my black-box theory (as in, any geek could come up with a custom solution that may or may not be secure, but if a company is riding their reputation on making wireless processing devices, they'll make sure it's secure -- or else risk a dirty reputation).
Maybe we Americans are just behind the times.
Here when at a restaurant, the wait-person takes your card to a terminal somewhere. That gives them plenty of time to copy it in their own card scanner, which honestly probably makes the wireless system more secure, but it's not something most people think about.
So how secure is the encryption? I'm not sure I want my credit card number floating around in the clear, and while I imagine Apple did it right, the article mentions that he thinks this should be the future of all business transactions. I don't trust the local mom&pop bookstore to have their encryption together. On the other hand, if it's going to be some black-box solution that's actually set up right out of the box, it's kind of idiot proof, no?
The idea of having no reciept until I get home doesn't bother me, although what happens if they enter the email address wrong for new customers? A mis-type of the associate and all of a sudden you can't return your new toy if it doesn't work?
Argh, I typed up a very lengthy response and slashdot ate it (something about a form key or something, I was too upset about loosing my post to care about the error message)...anyway, I use Picasa which is now owned by Google and free. I'm not a professional photographer; all I photograph are places we go and things we do and the obligitory friends & family photos as we're out and about...but I do have close to 10,000 of them.
Picasa allows one to enter keywords (IPTC keywords, actually, so I could write a (shell|perl|PHP|python) script to manipulate the pictures based on those keywords, unlike some similar programs which use their own keyword method in a proprietary file somewhere. Anyway, once entering the keywords you can search for any of them. My wife is great about adding keywords; she goes through ever now and then to add keywords -- usually the person's name and maybe some general descriptive terms. I store the photos in directories based on date and event, so in the Pictures directory I've got 2005-05-14 - ibennetch's birthday and 2005-02-31 - Springfield Zoo. Picasa searches based on keywords, captions, folder names, and probably some other things I'm not aware of, so a search for "zoo" finds all the pictures in the Springfield Zoo folder and anything with the word "zoo" in the caption. The search interface displays the sub-directory structure so I can easily see the pictures that are from the 2005-02-14 springfield zoo trip and tell them from the Juno Zoo trip of 2000-09-31.
Additionally, Picasa allows simple image editing. Brightness/contrast, color correction, soft focus, sepia/b&w, and some others...pretty much everything the casual user would need, saving me the price tag of Photoshop (or download of The Gimp). It's so easy that my wife can use it, but powerful enough that I use it.
Because having silence would be very awkward. There's a bookstore near here that doesn't really have any music playing. When one is shopping near another customer, there's this sense that you must remain absolutely silent, so as to not disturb them or something. I can't really explain it further, but having silence is very awkward, having a background bed of music allows at least quiet conversation, walking without having to step tenderly, gas passing, all sorts of things that some would feel uncomfortable doing in silence.
Unless you were asking why play that specific music in that setting, in which case I suspect the reason is so as to not offend anyone...having no words makes it sink in to the subconsious background more -- you don't notice it as much. The bland style of reproducing all genres makes it possible to play a wide variety of music while still maintaining a bland unoffensive style. Keep in mind that no everyone likes Metallica, or Hootie and the Blowfish, or Yanni -- but everyone dislikes Muzak equally!!;-)
I suppose it's a little like in TV -- when you're watching a sporting event, and they bring in a full-screen graphic, there's music -- but you rarely notice it. When they do a promo, there's music -- because it needs something to help set it apart from the game, but it's barely noticable. No, I'm not talking about the video-game style sound effects to call your attention to stats and the like, just music beds
FOX saying that 720p is "the best" is an outright lie. FOX is just being cheap.
Are you saying that 720p is somehow cheaper to produce than 1080i? A lot of the equipment is capable of doing both; I'm not sure that I follow how 720 is cheaper. Not to sound like the typical slashdot argumentive sort, but where did you get that information from? For example, one of the more common HD cameras is the LDK-6000, which does both. So does Sony's HDC930 as well as others. The same truck companies will rent out to all of the networks, so it's usually in their best interests to have trucks available that can do whatever format is requested.
It's commonly circulated information that the reason Fox chose to go with 720p is becauase 1080i shows interlace artifacts during motion, such as you'd have during a camera moving to follow a play, or a bunch of players running around on a field. I can see some of the jumping while watching slow motion of a 1080i camera and it is mildly distracting, although I personally can't tell at full speed, not that I look for it though. Also, unless I'm mistaken, ABC and ESPN also shoot their sports in 720p (although their prime time programming may well be 1080i. I wouldn't know; I don't watch it).
That all said, of course you're going to get more resolution with 1080 than you would with 720. It's just the interlacing is distracting, 720p is sometimes chosen over 1080i.
Anyway, with all that out of the way, I tend to agree with you about enjoying the digital signal because with digital (not just HDTV, but any DTV signal) the picture is either there or not. The Cliff Effect gives nice clear video to those of us who used to get snowy video because we're on the fringe of the broadcast station's reach. With the DTV conversion, lots of other variables take effect...like signal propagation is likely different at a station's DTV frequency than at their old analog frequency, so there's lot of engineering effort that goes in to keeping those signals where they belong (which occasionally means someone who used to barely be able to get a snowy picture won't be able to see anything on the new DTV channel, it's just part of the trade-off).
Okay, I've rambled enough for the night...take care.
Er, just an amendment to my post -- I don't want it to seem like I didn't see what you said: you did write that it's the compression, which is correct. My rambling was more about how it's not a problem directly related to HDTV, but can be affected by compressing things anywhere along the path. Or something, it's still early here;-)
Re:Green Field in HDTV
on
CNET's HDTV World
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I don't watch much TV at home, but I'm guessing that SDTV suffers similarly -- even when you think you're watching something in analog, the fiber or satellite transmission from the event to the broadcast stations may well be digitally encoded rather than analog, which would theoretically produce the same effect, depending on how heavily they compress it.
That said, I wonder if your problem is more a function of the overcompression that cable and subscription satellite TV companies do to squeeze more channels in to their systems. If you watch anything these days on cable and DirectTV, you're likely to see some compression artifacts and colors jumping around like you describe.
Anyway, I suppose to sum up what I'm saying, it's really not the Hi-Def that's doing that, it's the compression they're using somewhere along the signal path..could be at the last couple of hops before it gets to you, or it could be before leaving the broadcast compound at the football field...but somewhere along the way they're pushing the compression just a little too much. Which -- I agree with you 100% -- bugs the heck out of me.
Fair enough (and thanks for the reply). I agree that POP3 is a fine solution in many cases, although for my personal account I prefer IMAP, I can use mutt via on the server, webmail from an internet cafe, Outlook Express at home, and maintain syncronized folders everywhere, but in a corporate environment I won't disagree with you.
I don't work in corporate IT, but I do have an account at a rather large national corporation where My Documents is mapped to a network drive and anything that's on one's computer's hard drive is not IT's responsibility. My Documents is backed up because it's on the server, but anything on the local disc isn't their problem. I'm not sure where the Outlook message store is, but the messages stay on the server until deleted (but there's a size and time limit, messages older than 2 or 4 weeks are deleted unless moved to a local folder).
That's how I tend to look at things; keep things on the server, let the admins back up the server, and if a machine blows up, re-image it and keep on working. Makes things nice if you want to work from someone else's desk, too.
But yeah, I see how this all can quickly become a hassle no matter what protocol is used or where the messages are stored.
with a million users, 100,000 of them will have to be constantly reminded to delete their mail off the servers. 25,000 of them won't EVER delete their mail no matter what you do, and 5,000 will bitch and whine when you cap their fucking mailboxes
How does IMAP fix this(1)? Or what is your prefered solution?
Also with POP3 you run in to the problem of backing up messages...much easier to back up a single server than each person's computer's message store.
1 - maybe I'm missing a joke or something. Or maybe I don't 'get it'. But seems to me that shouldn't be 'insightful'.
Wow, thanks for the great info. I'll check out all of those links. I had no idea about the battery life/skip issue. Incidentally, the link I found 3 months ago when I was learning this didn't say anything about hex editing, however I admit to not being a Mac user so I defer to your experience. I'm still running an older iTunes version, maybe it's worth the upgrade to see the new recording presets. Anyway, I'll be checking out the mp4box program tonight. Thanks a lot for the response.
Bah, forget running a script; it's as simple as renaming the file from.m4a to.m4b (although running a script scales well for more than a handful of files). I think that's all his script does anyway, but being too lazy to download it and look I'm not 100% sure.
Also, you folks may or may not know this, but in iTunes, before ripping a CD, you can do "Advanced -> Join CD Tracks" -- that makes one long track out of the entire CD. Still wish there'd be an easy lossless way to combine multiple CDs to one track, but this goes a long way.
Finally, my GP was right on with some of the feature enhancements that iTunes could use. I want my music shuffled but not my audiobooks. [sigh]
Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding, but what's wrong with putting (in plain text - I can't convince the slashcode to not automatically convert this to a link) something like:
Slashdot Mirror
The beauty of QTFairUse is that it grabs the compressed
I'm not nitpicking you -- your post is accurate and you may already understand this, but I'm posting for others who might not realize...
Hi Animatst mlfile=SelectingSoundMeters.htm&ID=694
I saw the other guy who replied that you were wrong to use the term A-law, but you were close: what you mean is A weighing: http://www.coleparmer.com/techinfo/techinfo.asp?h
One of my former managers took this approach as well. In fact, when he hired me, I had very limited skills and knowlege, but I was able to learn as I went because he was willing to invest that. When a new person was hired, the whole team helped teach them the skills they needed (it was a small team of 5 or 10 people).
One way I know his approach actually worked well was because I occasionally did work with another group, not under his control but doing exactly the same work...it was much more miserable. My team was more friendly and helpful, people would actually go help others when they had free time. If someone didn't know how to do something or had a problem, everyone was willing to help. There wasn't as much back-stabbing and I think we all respected each other...in other words, I liked going to work. I didn't always like working on the other team.
Not to mention, now I'm quite loyal to that manager; after all, he was patient with me while I learned and was the first person to give me many opportunities to learn more by making my own decisions and mistakes. So I think you're right on: if you surround yourself with people you trust, have integrity, and have potential; you can usually teach them the skills needed.
Verizon is the most amazing company...they try so hard to *not* get customers, yet somehow stay in business. I'm amazed at the number of stories I hear where they loose orders, miscommunicate between departments, or just plain don't care.
[rant_mode = on]
1) New apartment, need phone service and DSL. I sign up online, get a confirmation number and delivery date. A few days after the date, still no dial-tone, so I call them up (a real pain, since I didn't really know anyone in the area and didn't have a cell phone at the time). Somehow the online ordering system put my order in incorrectly. As in, the tech said it was easier to delete that request and start over. Three weeks later, the phone works but no DSL. The *eventually* get it straightened out
2) I'm about to move, so like a month before the move I go to their web page where they've got a really handy moving section. Enter your new address, a couple of other details, and...it's broken. It just doesn't work. I've never seen a web site have so many problems -- can't connect to the database server, "can't process your request now, try later," and broken links. Finally give in and call someone, who's very friendly and helpful. Everything's set. I move, wait a few days, and have nothing. I check things out and discover they hooked up the wrong line (as in there are two lines to the box outside the house but from there only one line goes in).
I figure okay, no problem, I don't understand how it worked a week before for the previous owners but got changed for me, but whatever, I've got a dial tone. Oh, but no DSL. Call them up and guess what -- there's no record of me ordering DSL for that number. They transfer my call to the DSL people and somehow my DSL transfer didn't get processed -- it was right there in the system, complete with the same delivery date for my dial tone, but just didn't get processed. Somehow. So now they need to send a tech out to test the lines, so I wait another two weeks before getting online again.
[rant_mode=off]
Several others have already responded that the frequencies are indeed different, but I'll throw in a little bonus information. The need to have all the frequencies together for cable TV is because it's difficult to amplify such a huge variety of frequencies that broadcast TV uses. For a single TV station to broadcast over the air, they just tune their transmitter to put out, say 10kW, at the transmitter site and don't worry about the rest. Your cable TV company, though, needs to amplify not only one channel, but 50, and the closer they can keep those frequencies together the cheaper those amplifiers are, especially since they're able to work around the huge frequency gaps in over-the-air broadcasts. Also coaxial cable has higher losses at higher frequencies, so re-tuning the UHF stuff down to a lower frequency results in less loss. Hope that helps.
Since this thread seems more active than the other one you commented in, I'll just refer to my response to you there where I explain how to bookmark MP3s with iTunes.
iTunes recently (I think version 6, but I'm not sure) added support for bookmarking MP3 files. Right click a file, go to file info, "Options" tab, and check "Remember playback position"
Yeah, at least it happens automatically for AAC files, but it's not that hard to do and can probably be scripted rather easily. And as I recall it happens automatically for podcasts now, too, though it may just be a flag set in the particular podcasts I subscribe to.
Besides, that's the kind of thing I'd rather have my player do than the format itself, but you're right, it is nice.
Yeah, you really need the sub -- essentially the low end is chopped out of the 5 (Left, Center, Right, Left Surround, Right Surround) and only routed to the subwoofer(1). You could probably get around it by re-combining the mono sub channel with the left and right channels feeding your speakers (2), but to do that means first splitting the mono signal -- by the time you do it right you'll have more money in equipment than a cheap subwoofer costs.
That said, there may be some way in software to do what you're trying to...depending on your soundcard software or reciever set up.
Hope that helps...
(1) using a crossover (http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/speaker8.ht
(2) by using a cheap two-channel mixer or mic combiner, for instance -- just wiring the outputs together is not a good idea, though. You could damage your amp and will likely have phase cancellation problems.
I think this is because people tend to think of a 5-point rating system as being 5 stars for love it and 0 for hate it -- where as if they hate a song, they probably don't even own it. Even "strongly dislike" which is what most people would figure as 1 or 2 stars, doesn't make the cut to be purchased for my music collection. I like your system, where 5 is exceptionally good and 2 is average; it's much more useful for this type of thing because the music that would typically get rated 0, 1, or 2 isn't even in one's music collection, so the whole rating system needs to compensate for that.
Scenario 1: Some store hears about this and thinks it's great. A college or high school kid with questionable security knowledge is hired to do the work, which results in some sort of clobbered-together solution which depends on being properly configured by people who may not know what WPA and WEP are.
Scenario 2: A company decides this is a great idea, hires a bunch of security uber-geeks, and starts mass producing these custom solutions that are relatively secure, use encryption, and are properly configured. The store owner still doesn't know anything about WPA, but doesn't need to as the support contract for "that box in the back room" ensures that it's well-maintained, kept up with security updates, and that the correct encryption is used(1).
1 - for an example of how this is important, take a look at what encryption method could have been used a few years ago: WEP. In scenario 1, no one knows that it's now insecure because everyone's forgotten about it; in scenario 2 the company producing the box has an obligation to keep it secure.
Hope this makes more sense than my first post...
Interesting, and that supports my black-box theory (as in, any geek could come up with a custom solution that may or may not be secure, but if a company is riding their reputation on making wireless processing devices, they'll make sure it's secure -- or else risk a dirty reputation).
Maybe we Americans are just behind the times.
Here when at a restaurant, the wait-person takes your card to a terminal somewhere. That gives them plenty of time to copy it in their own card scanner, which honestly probably makes the wireless system more secure, but it's not something most people think about.
So how secure is the encryption? I'm not sure I want my credit card number floating around in the clear, and while I imagine Apple did it right, the article mentions that he thinks this should be the future of all business transactions. I don't trust the local mom&pop bookstore to have their encryption together. On the other hand, if it's going to be some black-box solution that's actually set up right out of the box, it's kind of idiot proof, no?
The idea of having no reciept until I get home doesn't bother me, although what happens if they enter the email address wrong for new customers? A mis-type of the associate and all of a sudden you can't return your new toy if it doesn't work?
For Windows there's CutePDF and for Linux there are options too, not to mention the tried-and-true ps2pdf...
Not that I don't agree that it shouldn't be supported natively, but there are options...
Argh, I typed up a very lengthy response and slashdot ate it (something about a form key or something, I was too upset about loosing my post to care about the error message)...anyway, I use Picasa which is now owned by Google and free. I'm not a professional photographer; all I photograph are places we go and things we do and the obligitory friends & family photos as we're out and about...but I do have close to 10,000 of them.
Picasa allows one to enter keywords (IPTC keywords, actually, so I could write a (shell|perl|PHP|python) script to manipulate the pictures based on those keywords, unlike some similar programs which use their own keyword method in a proprietary file somewhere. Anyway, once entering the keywords you can search for any of them. My wife is great about adding keywords; she goes through ever now and then to add keywords -- usually the person's name and maybe some general descriptive terms. I store the photos in directories based on date and event, so in the Pictures directory I've got 2005-05-14 - ibennetch's birthday and 2005-02-31 - Springfield Zoo. Picasa searches based on keywords, captions, folder names, and probably some other things I'm not aware of, so a search for "zoo" finds all the pictures in the Springfield Zoo folder and anything with the word "zoo" in the caption. The search interface displays the sub-directory structure so I can easily see the pictures that are from the 2005-02-14 springfield zoo trip and tell them from the Juno Zoo trip of 2000-09-31.
Additionally, Picasa allows simple image editing. Brightness/contrast, color correction, soft focus, sepia/b&w, and some others...pretty much everything the casual user would need, saving me the price tag of Photoshop (or download of The Gimp). It's so easy that my wife can use it, but powerful enough that I use it.
Because having silence would be very awkward. There's a bookstore near here that doesn't really have any music playing. When one is shopping near another customer, there's this sense that you must remain absolutely silent, so as to not disturb them or something. I can't really explain it further, but having silence is very awkward, having a background bed of music allows at least quiet conversation, walking without having to step tenderly, gas passing, all sorts of things that some would feel uncomfortable doing in silence.
Unless you were asking why play that specific music in that setting, in which case I suspect the reason is so as to not offend anyone...having no words makes it sink in to the subconsious background more -- you don't notice it as much. The bland style of reproducing all genres makes it possible to play a wide variety of music while still maintaining a bland unoffensive style. Keep in mind that no everyone likes Metallica, or Hootie and the Blowfish, or Yanni -- but everyone dislikes Muzak equally!! ;-)
I suppose it's a little like in TV -- when you're watching a sporting event, and they bring in a full-screen graphic, there's music -- but you rarely notice it. When they do a promo, there's music -- because it needs something to help set it apart from the game, but it's barely noticable. No, I'm not talking about the video-game style sound effects to call your attention to stats and the like, just music beds
- ncta.com "ESPN HD is delivered in the 720p format
- MNF: "All of
ABC's HDTV programs use 720 Progressive (720P), ABC's selected HDTV format."
- Home Theater MagazineLike ABC, ESPN's high-def format is 720P
You can google for the Cliff Effect and camera specs...g'night slashdotters.That all said, of course you're going to get more resolution with 1080 than you would with 720. It's just the interlacing is distracting, 720p is sometimes chosen over 1080i.
Anyway, with all that out of the way, I tend to agree with you about enjoying the digital signal because with digital (not just HDTV, but any DTV signal) the picture is either there or not. The Cliff Effect gives nice clear video to those of us who used to get snowy video because we're on the fringe of the broadcast station's reach. With the DTV conversion, lots of other variables take effect...like signal propagation is likely different at a station's DTV frequency than at their old analog frequency, so there's lot of engineering effort that goes in to keeping those signals where they belong (which occasionally means someone who used to barely be able to get a snowy picture won't be able to see anything on the new DTV channel, it's just part of the trade-off).
Okay, I've rambled enough for the night...take care.
Er, just an amendment to my post -- I don't want it to seem like I didn't see what you said: you did write that it's the compression, which is correct. My rambling was more about how it's not a problem directly related to HDTV, but can be affected by compressing things anywhere along the path. Or something, it's still early here ;-)
I don't watch much TV at home, but I'm guessing that SDTV suffers similarly -- even when you think you're watching something in analog, the fiber or satellite transmission from the event to the broadcast stations may well be digitally encoded rather than analog, which would theoretically produce the same effect, depending on how heavily they compress it.
That said, I wonder if your problem is more a function of the overcompression that cable and subscription satellite TV companies do to squeeze more channels in to their systems. If you watch anything these days on cable and DirectTV, you're likely to see some compression artifacts and colors jumping around like you describe.
Anyway, I suppose to sum up what I'm saying, it's really not the Hi-Def that's doing that, it's the compression they're using somewhere along the signal path..could be at the last couple of hops before it gets to you, or it could be before leaving the broadcast compound at the football field...but somewhere along the way they're pushing the compression just a little too much. Which -- I agree with you 100% -- bugs the heck out of me.
Fair enough (and thanks for the reply). I agree that POP3 is a fine solution in many cases, although for my personal account I prefer IMAP, I can use mutt via on the server, webmail from an internet cafe, Outlook Express at home, and maintain syncronized folders everywhere, but in a corporate environment I won't disagree with you.
I don't work in corporate IT, but I do have an account at a rather large national corporation where My Documents is mapped to a network drive and anything that's on one's computer's hard drive is not IT's responsibility. My Documents is backed up because it's on the server, but anything on the local disc isn't their problem. I'm not sure where the Outlook message store is, but the messages stay on the server until deleted (but there's a size and time limit, messages older than 2 or 4 weeks are deleted unless moved to a local folder).
That's how I tend to look at things; keep things on the server, let the admins back up the server, and if a machine blows up, re-image it and keep on working. Makes things nice if you want to work from someone else's desk, too.
But yeah, I see how this all can quickly become a hassle no matter what protocol is used or where the messages are stored.
Also with POP3 you run in to the problem of backing up messages...much easier to back up a single server than each person's computer's message store.
1 - maybe I'm missing a joke or something. Or maybe I don't 'get it'. But seems to me that shouldn't be 'insightful'.
Wow, thanks for the great info. I'll check out all of those links. I had no idea about the battery life/skip issue. Incidentally, the link I found 3 months ago when I was learning this didn't say anything about hex editing, however I admit to not being a Mac user so I defer to your experience. I'm still running an older iTunes version, maybe it's worth the upgrade to see the new recording presets. Anyway, I'll be checking out the mp4box program tonight. Thanks a lot for the response.
Bah, forget running a script; it's as simple as renaming the file from .m4a to .m4b (although running a script scales well for more than a handful of files). I think that's all his script does anyway, but being too lazy to download it and look I'm not 100% sure.
Also, you folks may or may not know this, but in iTunes, before ripping a CD, you can do "Advanced -> Join CD Tracks" -- that makes one long track out of the entire CD. Still wish there'd be an easy lossless way to combine multiple CDs to one track, but this goes a long way.
Finally, my GP was right on with some of the feature enhancements that iTunes could use. I want my music shuffled but not my audiobooks. [sigh]
Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding, but what's wrong with putting (in plain text - I can't convince the slashcode to not automatically convert this to a link) something like:
see our recent product additions:
http://www.example.com/new_products.html