I'll quote: "You want to keep guns and shoot them as a hobby, fine, go for it. But don't pretend they give you any extra insurance or autonomy whatsoever against the United States Government; that is a laughable, delusional fiction." That's the crux of it.
Now, I will comment on this quote:
Crime actually INCREASES when stricter gun laws are put into effect as the risk has now decreased for the criminals.
Crime increases in the specific instance of outlawing handguns for private use. It would seem that when criminals feel emboldened, they are more aggresive in crimes like muggings. However this is the only circumstance where this holds up. And it also heavily depends on what you define as 'strict gun laws'. In Canada, we have a much higher ratio of guns-per-capita, which supports your argument on its face; however, closer inspection reveals that the vast majority of guns in Canada are hunting rifles (so-called long guns). If you can enact legislation that actually decreases handgun use (as opposed to simply declaring them illegal to buy), there is indeed a decrease in violence.
And let us not forget two salient points: 1. all (physical) crime, across the board, has been decreasing for years, and 2. The USA has a ridiculously high number of gun deaths per year. If you wonder why both parties are working to curb this, its this stat that is to blame. Washington DC alone has the same number of gun deaths per year as all of Canada. Ponder that.
So if the article's premise is correct, and the failures are the most interesting consoles to have... and the mainstream ones are the least interesting...
I guess I'm getting a PS3 after all!
(ducks)
BTW, this comment from the article: 'Who would have ever thought that Mattel's unlikely Power Glove would become a prototype for Nintendo's primary controller?'
Um... everybody? I sure did. It was a freaking VR glove! I swooned when I saw that thing! Like the Wii Remote.... er. oh. hm.
Love to know how well it works. I'm a bit skeptical, as the HW on my dad's tablet was a big letdown... and that had a huge screen/fast proc/RAM to play with....
Also it is based on Opera 8, should have full Javascript and CSS capabilities (of course no Java or Flash). Opera devs have confirmed that it should be to run any AJAX-enabled site (like GMail for example). Also, because of limited space, no tabbed browsing.
Darn. That's a shame about the Flash (and tabs).
I have a PSP, the browser is quite functional. I've been looking at the DS Lite as I'm not convinced I want to keep it, but... a handheld with Flash functionality and WiFi is a brilliant platform, and that's a big draw for me. Right now its only Flash Lite on PSP, but I believe the 'full' Flash is coming in an update. This would allow me to effectively create (limited) applications for the unit. I hope they add this to the Opera DS browser, as it opens up a lot of possibilities.
I would like to point out that if BOTH the major parties would respect ALL of the people's constitutionally protected rights then perhaps some of us wouldn't feel the need to stock up for Civil War 2.
Man, this makes me laugh every time I see this tired old argument.
And I do not say this to mock you. Truly. The concept of keeping the citizenry armed, to keep the government in check.. that's beautiful. I love it.
But do you honestly think that if "they" want to come get you, that your guns are going to stop them?
Do you know what kind of shit they can deploy? You wouldn't even see them coming! What's your Glock going to do against a sonic array? Or chemical attack?
You want to keep guns and shoot them as a hobby, fine, go for it. But don't pretend they give you any extra insurance or autonomy whatsoever against the United States Government; that is a laughable, delusional fiction.
(By the way, your Constitution was written at a time when people had to deal with bears on their property, ferfuxsake! It was a fact of life at the time, the need to own a gun. Not so much now. Crime's at an all-time low.)
It ate my does-no-equal sign. (Meant to say, Different does not equal prettier.) Thanks for robbing me of context, slashcode. sheesh.
And now this: slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy FUCK this is annoying slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy
why does slashcode assume I am a mentally retarded fingerless mutant who can't type fast?
It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone but gamers want to interact with their environment. How long have we been screaming for fully deformable terrain? When I miss someone with a rocket launcher I want it to take out the fucking wall. Granted the technology hasn't been there, so it's understandable it's taken this long for even a few games to do such a thing.
Yes. I've been saying that for four fucking years. I won't play Yet Another FPS until they do something like this. No, Red Faction doesn't count. (Because it sucked, other than the nifty 'geomod' trick.)
As far as I am concerned, there hasn't been a Quake 1, Quake 2 etc. There has only been Quake, versions 1 through 4 (or is it 5?), same damn game. I liked that game, but I played the crap out of it in 1998, and now I'd like something different. Different prettier.
Because the average gun-owning American is better informed and more level headed than the average Slashdot troll.
No, they are more easily controlled by their gov't, because as long as you give them their precious little guns, they will vote for you and not complain about anything else (mentioning God doesn't hurt either). One good troll deserves another.
Definitely. I'm in the same boat as you; I have an HDMI-enabled HDTV, but am underwhelmed with the optical media. (Also an aging PS2, my third as well. Bad, bad lasers in those things. At least the 'slim' ones are more reliable, and don't sound like a leafblower.)
The way I see it playing out is: dual-laser pickup mechanism is developed; both formats receive a tepid response as standalone formats in the marketplace; downloads become more viable and compete with optical media; eventually whichever format is more useful for computers probably wins out. In this case blu-ray has an edge for storage, but in reality it'll probably be a lot more like the difference between DVD-R and DVD+R (i.e. basically nothing).
Sony quality: it does seem to have gone downhill, hasn't it, at least in certain areas. Some of their consumer electronics lines appear to be strong still - witness the Bravia, no one has a problem with those TVs. But the PS2, let's not get into that. What a nightmare. Pro video, they're still pretty strong (i.e. DigiBeta). I like Samsung these days, they are my Sony replacement lately.
I was not a big GameCube fan, although I quite liked the N64. The Wii, that is really intriguing. I just hope it remains intriguing after a few hours of play. I worry about the gimmick factor, and the fact that they are putting so much focus on the controller (which can be ripped off, after all... it is essentially a 3rd-gen lightgun). I think the remote is brilliant, but it almost makes you wonder if they forgot about the actual console... let's hope not.
Anyways, Wii is September and PS3 is November; I'll meet you back here and we can compare notes. Cheers.
Huh? Since when is excitement measured relative to it's competitors? This comment makes no sense.
Perhaps. It seems to me that these things don't ever launch in a vaccum, as it were. When a new console comes out, it is inevitably compared to other offerings as a value proposition. But I see what you mean. In the end, this is subjective. I know people who bought a PSP just for GTA; or a DS just for Advance Wars. So one could be honest and say they were excited about the PSP launch, and another could disagree, and they'd both be right. If we're talking mass markets, I would (subjectively) say the PSP had a ton of advance buzz around it, but Nintendo seems to be soundly thrashing them in word-of-mouth grassroots-style buzz. Just my impression though.
Ummm... that was the price announced by $ony. It's fine with me if you want to wait to pass judgement, though =)
The reason I say this is, I have a hunch (and only an unfounded hunch) that they will change the price up just before launch. Fanboys will scream "yay Sony" and the thing will STILL cost more than it should have; it will just seem more palatable after everyone got used to $600. But this is total speculation on my part.
Hmmm... then show me one review that says Blu-Ray is better then HD-DVD in it's current form. The OP stated that hd-dvd was whooping blu-ray, and from what I can find on the net, he's right.
Ah, well... we're moving the goal posts a bit. That's ok though, we can find common ground here. I am in complete agreement with you re: blu-ray in its current form. I just don't believe the state of either format, as it stands today, is much to talk about. How many of these things are out there in the world? Anyways, the original (GP) point was that Sony had hobbled the PS3 with the expensive blu-ray drive and that this was a bad decision. It remains to be seen.
You stated to the OP that he was wrong. I was just proving his point that the current blu-ray disks are encoded in MPEG-2. Maybe you should read back to what you posted to the OP.
I was speaking of the UMD comparison, and of the idea that blu-ray's 'current form' (MPEG-2 played back on buggy players) will somehow be representative of the format as a whole. I still disagree with this.
What I mentioned was that the blu-ray players currently only read one layer, which you said was unfounded. And I wouldn't call myself a fanboi, more of a anti-fanboi of $ony.
Sorry - I should have been clearer, I am aware of the Samsung unit's 1-layer limitation. (It also sounds like a 747 taking off, by the way. It was obviously shipped too early.)
And I agree with your willingness to discuss these machines without....pigeon-holing.... wait....what the hell exactly does that mean?
Pigeon holes! Never heard that one? Like the little holes that messenger pigeons would fly into. It means to put something in an unnecessarily narrow category, with no context.
Ah, yes. Of course I am a 'fanboi', if I disagree with your conclusions.
Considering that the DS or sales numbers were not even brought into the discussion, where the hell did this come from? The OP was describing the consumer exitement about the PSP and the less then spectacular launch titles for the system, which after the die hard $ony fans had gotten theirs, dropped to apathetic. I don't know anyone that was excited about the PSP mainly due to the lackluster titles at launch.
Console 'excitement' is always measured relative to its competitors. That's where I got that. Infantile spelling of Sony with a $ noted.
That's funny... I get asked all the time by people who know that I am into computers about it. It was featured on the network news, CNN, MSNBC, etc. etc.
I counter your anecdote with my anecdote. Go ask 10 people outside your workplace what a rootkit is.
Natural progression? I think you hit the nail on the head, though. When $ony saw the impression that the Wii controller made, they made the feature a priority... it has nothing to do with saying digital music players are ripping off the i-pod. It's like another music player coming out with a click wheel.
Fair enough.
I noticed that you say nothing of my criticisms of Sony. Fanboi indeed.
Ummm... where have you been? The price has been known for quite awhile now. $499 for the basic, $599 for upgraded system.
Yes, that is the number being tossed around at the moment, but if its all right with you, I'll pass judgement when there's something shipping.
Here, Here, and here
First source admits that the Samsung player has an HDMI scaler bug, and notes that the movies are encoded with MPEG-2, not AVC. Your second source repeats what the first one said, if you'd read your own links. Third source, your most credible, links to an AV forum where the guys who ran out and bought HD-DVD players are announcing that - suprise! - they like their new toys. It is what it is, but this is hardly an authoritative dataset!
Sony's first discs will be encoded in MPEG-2, the same video codec used by today's standard-definition DVDs. The initial reason for doing so was simple: Sony already had encoding tools in place that could easily be adapted to Blu-ray Disc. "We started working with Sony Japan a couple of years ago developing an MPEG-2 encoder specifically for this format," says Eklund.
And this proves... what? That we haven't seen blu-ray demonstrated properly, with a proper codec (VC-1/AVC) yet. That is all. Its worth noting, but if you take from this that all blu-ray discs will be MPEG-2, you are dead wrong.
Once again, bullshit. The manual for the Smasung BD-P1000 states that it is only capable of playing single layer discs. Hopefully $ony has the state of mind to put a dual layer lens in the PS3.
You misread. I wasn't saying the Samsung had issues - I specifically mentioned those. I was speaking to the GP's point about blu-ray being like UMD, and as I said, they are totally different animals. UMD is not backwards compatible with anything, for starters. Who's the fanboi now?
Feel free to talk to someone besides your playstation fanboi friends and your impression will change.
I do, all the time. Believe me I have no dog in this fight. I don't plan on buying any of these consoles. I did receive an X360 as a gift, used it for awhile, then sold it. Now I'm waiting to see what the PS3 and Wii can do.
But don't let that make any sort of dent in your binary worldview. Can we not discuss the issues with these machines without resorting to this pigeon-holing?
Thank you for the references. (although the 2nd link simply references the first, from projectorcentral.)
It's a fact that every Blu Ray movie released so far is on a single layer disc, and that the currently available players are only able to read single layer discs. It's a fact that every Blue Ray movie released so far is using the MPEG2 format. Sure the players can support VC-1 but it doesn't actually help the quality if they're NOT USING IT. As for price. the HD-DVD entry point is $500. The PS3's entry point is $500, but if you want HDMI you'll be paying $600.. Stand alone Blu Ray players are more expensive then that. By christmas the HD-DVD price point is expected to drop. you'd be foolish to thing the PS3's price will drop by the end of the year.
We can't compare a game console with HD-disc capability with a mere Player. By that argument, the X360 will cost much more than the 'non-crippled' PS3 when you buy the HD-DVD add-on drive.
There are two issues with the current state of blu-ray. One, Samsung's player is crap. It can only handle single layer discs (as you pointed out). Two, these early movies have been encoded in MPEG-2, for whatever hairbrained reason. But this only means we don't have an effective demo of blu-ray yet.
I envy you for having electronics stores that have side-by-side comparisons of the two. Nothing like that around me, and I'm in a major city (Toronto).
I feel the need to call bullshit on a few of these....
Sure there are die-hard, rabid, Playstation fanatics who would still buy one if the price was your first born. But if you look at the fact that Sony has always had lame launch titles, the PSP's consumer excitement around it's launch could be described as "apathetic" with the die hard fans camping out for a product that didn't even sell out....
Its true that the DS is handily beating the PSP in sales, especially since the DS Lite launched; but apathetic is alittle strong. The PSP is selling about half as well as the DS. That's still something like 200k units per month.
Root kit lost a lot of fans...
Rootkit fiasco lost a lot of nerd fans. Jo Q Public still has no clue. They don't even know what a rootkit is.
... as did Sony's double talk arrogance and bad mouthing of their competition, and lets not forget the clear rip-offs of Nintendo's Wii-mote and Microsoft's Guide button,
Arrogance: check.
Wii rip-off: undecided. Its a natural progression, the tilt sensor they added, if you ask me. More likely this feature was bumped up in priority when Sony saw the impression the Wii remote made. I can see that one either way to be honest. This is sort of like saying that every single digital music player is ripping off the iPod.
MS 'guide' button: what are you talking about? I don't even know what this is. Hardly a feature that's touted as interesting, at any rate.
and perhaps most importantly THE PRICE.
Price is bad, I agree. Way bad in comparison to the other consoles, specifically. Of course, we don't actually know the final price yet.
Heck the reason for the high price was because of the Blu-Ray drive, and reviews thus far have shown that HD-DVD is stomping all over Blu-Ray.
Really! I'd like to see that. Cite a source?
HD-DVD has 2 layer discs (15gig per layer/30gig total) and uses the awesome VC-1 codec.
So? Blu-ray has a max storage of 200 gigs, over six layers. The codec is irrelevant; you can write a Blu-ray disc with MPEG-2, or the awesome VC-1 codec, OR the 'even awesomer' AVC codec. HD-DVD can only use MS-approved codecs and by the way, that has DRM built-in to the wrapper. (H.264/AVC does not necessarily have this stipulation (weak praise I know), but ALL MS codecs will have to deal with this.)
Blu-Ray can't get good yields on dual layer discs and even single layer discs have yield problems forcing them to only be able to use 80% of it... ~20gig.
I've seen this mentioned nowhere, and your use of the word 'yields' for optical media is kind of suspect. Source?
Not to mention they're using the woefully outdated MPEG2 codec and most reviews have said that some of the movies DVD counterparts look better then the Blu-Ray versions..
Yeah you said that before, and its still completely wrong. Check yer facts jack.
Even early Blu-Ray players can only read single layer discs, so will the PS3 be stuck to only reading single layer discs as well? NOT GOOD FOR PS3 SALES particularly if Sony was banking on people buying it as a cheap Blu-Ray player. nobody wants another UMD movie format.
Pure speculation and unfounded at that. UMD is a different animal.
I think low yield might be the least of their problems. Every day I see more and more of the die-hard Playstation fans going from "of course I'm getting one" too "I'll wait and see" or in some cases "I decided to get an 360/Wii instead".
Feel free to get up from Slashdot and leave the PC for a little while, your impression might change.
With chips that are one-by-one and silicon germanium, we can get yields of 95 percent. With a chip like the Cell processor, you?re lucky to get 10 or 20 percent. If you put logic redundancy on it, you can double that. It?s a great strategy, and I?m not sure anyone other than IBM is doing that with logic. Everybody does it with DRAM. There are always extra bits in there for memory. People have not yet moved to logic block redundancy, though.
Does that mean, logic redundancy built into the chip itself? or some other kind of process?
(aside to CmdrTaco: "Now-go-cry-about-the-price dept." No kidding. How much was my last iPod?)
So let's stop acting as if design pros are the only pros who are "creative". They didn't invent creativity, and judging by the current state of the majority of the web, they're not the final word in it either.
What the...?
Defensive much? Who claimed anything of the kind?
I think its simply a commonly-used example, as the odds are quite likely that there are more people out there using Photoshop for work than there are using Final Cut or Logic. Humans are really visual; that's the only thing this example tells us.
Have you noticed how Apple likes a certain symmetry between applications (iTunes brushed aluminum, Safari brushed aluminum) and the Pro enclosure (G5 brushed aluminum)? Apple seems to be experimenting with a lighter, smooth metal theme as seen in the current Mail.app. I hereby conjecture that the new Pro Mac enclosure will likewise be a very light-colored, smooth metal with a similar look.
That sorta makes sense, except that Apple has never shipped anything in 'brushed aluminum'. All their products have been bare, smooth aluminum or polycarbonate.
What about those many billions of dollars spent cleaning up after various virus epidemics and other malware infestations caused by those bugs? Without those costs, other people could spend more than Bill Gates on the same charities.
They have caused a lot of economic damage, but unfortunately its all too easy to argue that they've caused this damage to a sector of the economy that they arguably built, in great part. Its sort of like the old IT argument. If Microsoft was better at their job, there'd be a LOT less jobs overall in IT.
Anyways, I still maintain that saving a few thousand lives is better than a few thousand costly bugs.
I'm saying that those costs were so great that Bill Gates' charity can't make up for it -- Windows has done more harm than the Gates Foundation can possibly do good.
You have got to be kidding.
Over a billion dollars spent from the Gates Foundation on AIDS efforts, child mortality and poverty in developing nations is well worth the annoying bugs in Windows and IE. It's not even comparable. And frankly I find the comparison completely callous.
I think MS makes crappy products too, but let's not kid ourselves. Live are more important than any software, in any state, period, full stop.
So let me get this straight: you want to help a couple make a baby... by making a baby somewhere else, destroying it, harvesting its biological material, and using that material to make another baby, which you then give to the baby-challenged couple?
Where did you see a 'baby' originally? We're talking about stem cells.
Slashdot Mirror
It is you who assumed such a thing. Please see my follow-up comment located at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=191689&cid=157 51655
I'll quote: "You want to keep guns and shoot them as a hobby, fine, go for it. But don't pretend they give you any extra insurance or autonomy whatsoever against the United States Government; that is a laughable, delusional fiction." That's the crux of it.
Now, I will comment on this quote:
Crime increases in the specific instance of outlawing handguns for private use. It would seem that when criminals feel emboldened, they are more aggresive in crimes like muggings. However this is the only circumstance where this holds up. And it also heavily depends on what you define as 'strict gun laws'. In Canada, we have a much higher ratio of guns-per-capita, which supports your argument on its face; however, closer inspection reveals that the vast majority of guns in Canada are hunting rifles (so-called long guns). If you can enact legislation that actually decreases handgun use (as opposed to simply declaring them illegal to buy), there is indeed a decrease in violence.
And let us not forget two salient points: 1. all (physical) crime, across the board, has been decreasing for years, and 2. The USA has a ridiculously high number of gun deaths per year. If you wonder why both parties are working to curb this, its this stat that is to blame. Washington DC alone has the same number of gun deaths per year as all of Canada. Ponder that.
Learn 2 code, n00b
I guess I'm getting a PS3 after all!
(ducks)
BTW, this comment from the article: 'Who would have ever thought that Mattel's unlikely Power Glove would become a prototype for Nintendo's primary controller?'
Um... everybody? I sure did. It was a freaking VR glove! I swooned when I saw that thing! Like the Wii Remote.... er. oh. hm.
"eat up martha"
Darn. That's a shame about the Flash (and tabs).
I have a PSP, the browser is quite functional. I've been looking at the DS Lite as I'm not convinced I want to keep it, but... a handheld with Flash functionality and WiFi is a brilliant platform, and that's a big draw for me. Right now its only Flash Lite on PSP, but I believe the 'full' Flash is coming in an update. This would allow me to effectively create (limited) applications for the unit. I hope they add this to the Opera DS browser, as it opens up a lot of possibilities.
Man, this makes me laugh every time I see this tired old argument.
And I do not say this to mock you. Truly. The concept of keeping the citizenry armed, to keep the government in check.. that's beautiful. I love it.
But do you honestly think that if "they" want to come get you, that your guns are going to stop them?
Do you know what kind of shit they can deploy? You wouldn't even see them coming! What's your Glock going to do against a sonic array? Or chemical attack?
You want to keep guns and shoot them as a hobby, fine, go for it. But don't pretend they give you any extra insurance or autonomy whatsoever against the United States Government; that is a laughable, delusional fiction.
(By the way, your Constitution was written at a time when people had to deal with bears on their property, ferfuxsake! It was a fact of life at the time, the need to own a gun. Not so much now. Crime's at an all-time low.)
It ate my does-no-equal sign. (Meant to say, Different does not equal prettier.) Thanks for robbing me of context, slashcode. sheesh. And now this: slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy FUCK this is annoying slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy slow down cowboy why does slashcode assume I am a mentally retarded fingerless mutant who can't type fast?
Yes. I've been saying that for four fucking years. I won't play Yet Another FPS until they do something like this. No, Red Faction doesn't count. (Because it sucked, other than the nifty 'geomod' trick.)
As far as I am concerned, there hasn't been a Quake 1, Quake 2 etc. There has only been Quake, versions 1 through 4 (or is it 5?), same damn game. I liked that game, but I played the crap out of it in 1998, and now I'd like something different. Different prettier.
No, they are more easily controlled by their gov't, because as long as you give them their precious little guns, they will vote for you and not complain about anything else (mentioning God doesn't hurt either). One good troll deserves another.
The way I see it playing out is: dual-laser pickup mechanism is developed; both formats receive a tepid response as standalone formats in the marketplace; downloads become more viable and compete with optical media; eventually whichever format is more useful for computers probably wins out. In this case blu-ray has an edge for storage, but in reality it'll probably be a lot more like the difference between DVD-R and DVD+R (i.e. basically nothing).
Sony quality: it does seem to have gone downhill, hasn't it, at least in certain areas. Some of their consumer electronics lines appear to be strong still - witness the Bravia, no one has a problem with those TVs. But the PS2, let's not get into that. What a nightmare. Pro video, they're still pretty strong (i.e. DigiBeta). I like Samsung these days, they are my Sony replacement lately.
I was not a big GameCube fan, although I quite liked the N64. The Wii, that is really intriguing. I just hope it remains intriguing after a few hours of play. I worry about the gimmick factor, and the fact that they are putting so much focus on the controller (which can be ripped off, after all... it is essentially a 3rd-gen lightgun). I think the remote is brilliant, but it almost makes you wonder if they forgot about the actual console... let's hope not.
Anyways, Wii is September and PS3 is November; I'll meet you back here and we can compare notes. Cheers.
Huh? Since when is excitement measured relative to it's competitors? This comment makes no sense.
Perhaps. It seems to me that these things don't ever launch in a vaccum, as it were. When a new console comes out, it is inevitably compared to other offerings as a value proposition. But I see what you mean. In the end, this is subjective. I know people who bought a PSP just for GTA; or a DS just for Advance Wars. So one could be honest and say they were excited about the PSP launch, and another could disagree, and they'd both be right. If we're talking mass markets, I would (subjectively) say the PSP had a ton of advance buzz around it, but Nintendo seems to be soundly thrashing them in word-of-mouth grassroots-style buzz. Just my impression though.
Ummm... that was the price announced by $ony. It's fine with me if you want to wait to pass judgement, though =)
The reason I say this is, I have a hunch (and only an unfounded hunch) that they will change the price up just before launch. Fanboys will scream "yay Sony" and the thing will STILL cost more than it should have; it will just seem more palatable after everyone got used to $600. But this is total speculation on my part.
Hmmm... then show me one review that says Blu-Ray is better then HD-DVD in it's current form. The OP stated that hd-dvd was whooping blu-ray, and from what I can find on the net, he's right.
Ah, well... we're moving the goal posts a bit. That's ok though, we can find common ground here. I am in complete agreement with you re: blu-ray in its current form. I just don't believe the state of either format, as it stands today, is much to talk about. How many of these things are out there in the world? Anyways, the original (GP) point was that Sony had hobbled the PS3 with the expensive blu-ray drive and that this was a bad decision. It remains to be seen.
You stated to the OP that he was wrong. I was just proving his point that the current blu-ray disks are encoded in MPEG-2. Maybe you should read back to what you posted to the OP.
I was speaking of the UMD comparison, and of the idea that blu-ray's 'current form' (MPEG-2 played back on buggy players) will somehow be representative of the format as a whole. I still disagree with this.
What I mentioned was that the blu-ray players currently only read one layer, which you said was unfounded. And I wouldn't call myself a fanboi, more of a anti-fanboi of $ony.
Sorry - I should have been clearer, I am aware of the Samsung unit's 1-layer limitation. (It also sounds like a 747 taking off, by the way. It was obviously shipped too early.)
And I agree with your willingness to discuss these machines without ....pigeon-holing.... wait....what the hell exactly does that mean?
Pigeon holes! Never heard that one? Like the little holes that messenger pigeons would fly into. It means to put something in an unnecessarily narrow category, with no context.
Thanks for the response! Very helpful.
Considering that the DS or sales numbers were not even brought into the discussion, where the hell did this come from? The OP was describing the consumer exitement about the PSP and the less then spectacular launch titles for the system, which after the die hard $ony fans had gotten theirs, dropped to apathetic. I don't know anyone that was excited about the PSP mainly due to the lackluster titles at launch.
Console 'excitement' is always measured relative to its competitors. That's where I got that. Infantile spelling of Sony with a $ noted.
That's funny... I get asked all the time by people who know that I am into computers about it. It was featured on the network news, CNN, MSNBC, etc. etc.
I counter your anecdote with my anecdote. Go ask 10 people outside your workplace what a rootkit is.
Natural progression? I think you hit the nail on the head, though. When $ony saw the impression that the Wii controller made, they made the feature a priority... it has nothing to do with saying digital music players are ripping off the i-pod. It's like another music player coming out with a click wheel.
Fair enough.
I noticed that you say nothing of my criticisms of Sony. Fanboi indeed.
Ummm... where have you been? The price has been known for quite awhile now. $499 for the basic, $599 for upgraded system.
Yes, that is the number being tossed around at the moment, but if its all right with you, I'll pass judgement when there's something shipping.
Here, Here, and here
First source admits that the Samsung player has an HDMI scaler bug, and notes that the movies are encoded with MPEG-2, not AVC. Your second source repeats what the first one said, if you'd read your own links. Third source, your most credible, links to an AV forum where the guys who ran out and bought HD-DVD players are announcing that - suprise! - they like their new toys. It is what it is, but this is hardly an authoritative dataset!
Sony's first discs will be encoded in MPEG-2, the same video codec used by today's standard-definition DVDs. The initial reason for doing so was simple: Sony already had encoding tools in place that could easily be adapted to Blu-ray Disc. "We started working with Sony Japan a couple of years ago developing an MPEG-2 encoder specifically for this format," says Eklund.
And this proves... what? That we haven't seen blu-ray demonstrated properly, with a proper codec (VC-1/AVC) yet. That is all. Its worth noting, but if you take from this that all blu-ray discs will be MPEG-2, you are dead wrong.
Once again, bullshit. The manual for the Smasung BD-P1000 states that it is only capable of playing single layer discs. Hopefully $ony has the state of mind to put a dual layer lens in the PS3.
You misread. I wasn't saying the Samsung had issues - I specifically mentioned those. I was speaking to the GP's point about blu-ray being like UMD, and as I said, they are totally different animals. UMD is not backwards compatible with anything, for starters. Who's the fanboi now?
Feel free to talk to someone besides your playstation fanboi friends and your impression will change.
I do, all the time. Believe me I have no dog in this fight. I don't plan on buying any of these consoles. I did receive an X360 as a gift, used it for awhile, then sold it. Now I'm waiting to see what the PS3 and Wii can do.
But don't let that make any sort of dent in your binary worldview. Can we not discuss the issues with these machines without resorting to this pigeon-holing?
It's a fact that every Blu Ray movie released so far is on a single layer disc, and that the currently available players are only able to read single layer discs. It's a fact that every Blue Ray movie released so far is using the MPEG2 format. Sure the players can support VC-1 but it doesn't actually help the quality if they're NOT USING IT. As for price. the HD-DVD entry point is $500. The PS3's entry point is $500, but if you want HDMI you'll be paying $600.. Stand alone Blu Ray players are more expensive then that. By christmas the HD-DVD price point is expected to drop. you'd be foolish to thing the PS3's price will drop by the end of the year.
We can't compare a game console with HD-disc capability with a mere Player. By that argument, the X360 will cost much more than the 'non-crippled' PS3 when you buy the HD-DVD add-on drive.
There are two issues with the current state of blu-ray. One, Samsung's player is crap. It can only handle single layer discs (as you pointed out). Two, these early movies have been encoded in MPEG-2, for whatever hairbrained reason. But this only means we don't have an effective demo of blu-ray yet.
I envy you for having electronics stores that have side-by-side comparisons of the two. Nothing like that around me, and I'm in a major city (Toronto).
Sure there are die-hard, rabid, Playstation fanatics who would still buy one if the price was your first born. But if you look at the fact that Sony has always had lame launch titles, the PSP's consumer excitement around it's launch could be described as "apathetic" with the die hard fans camping out for a product that didn't even sell out....
Its true that the DS is handily beating the PSP in sales, especially since the DS Lite launched; but apathetic is alittle strong. The PSP is selling about half as well as the DS. That's still something like 200k units per month.
Root kit lost a lot of fans...
Rootkit fiasco lost a lot of nerd fans. Jo Q Public still has no clue. They don't even know what a rootkit is.
Arrogance: check.
Wii rip-off: undecided. Its a natural progression, the tilt sensor they added, if you ask me. More likely this feature was bumped up in priority when Sony saw the impression the Wii remote made. I can see that one either way to be honest. This is sort of like saying that every single digital music player is ripping off the iPod.
MS 'guide' button: what are you talking about? I don't even know what this is. Hardly a feature that's touted as interesting, at any rate.
and perhaps most importantly THE PRICE.
Price is bad, I agree. Way bad in comparison to the other consoles, specifically. Of course, we don't actually know the final price yet.
Heck the reason for the high price was because of the Blu-Ray drive, and reviews thus far have shown that HD-DVD is stomping all over Blu-Ray.
Really! I'd like to see that. Cite a source?
HD-DVD has 2 layer discs (15gig per layer/30gig total) and uses the awesome VC-1 codec.
So? Blu-ray has a max storage of 200 gigs, over six layers. The codec is irrelevant; you can write a Blu-ray disc with MPEG-2, or the awesome VC-1 codec, OR the 'even awesomer' AVC codec. HD-DVD can only use MS-approved codecs and by the way, that has DRM built-in to the wrapper. (H.264/AVC does not necessarily have this stipulation (weak praise I know), but ALL MS codecs will have to deal with this.)
Blu-Ray can't get good yields on dual layer discs and even single layer discs have yield problems forcing them to only be able to use 80% of it... ~20gig.
I've seen this mentioned nowhere, and your use of the word 'yields' for optical media is kind of suspect. Source?
Not to mention they're using the woefully outdated MPEG2 codec and most reviews have said that some of the movies DVD counterparts look better then the Blu-Ray versions..
Yeah you said that before, and its still completely wrong. Check yer facts jack.
Even early Blu-Ray players can only read single layer discs, so will the PS3 be stuck to only reading single layer discs as well? NOT GOOD FOR PS3 SALES particularly if Sony was banking on people buying it as a cheap Blu-Ray player. nobody wants another UMD movie format.
Pure speculation and unfounded at that. UMD is a different animal.
I think low yield might be the least of their problems. Every day I see more and more of the die-hard Playstation fans going from "of course I'm getting one" too "I'll wait and see" or in some cases "I decided to get an 360/Wii instead".
Feel free to get up from Slashdot and leave the PC for a little while, your impression might change.
With chips that are one-by-one and silicon germanium, we can get yields of 95 percent. With a chip like the Cell processor, you?re lucky to get 10 or 20 percent. If you put logic redundancy on it, you can double that. It?s a great strategy, and I?m not sure anyone other than IBM is doing that with logic. Everybody does it with DRAM. There are always extra bits in there for memory. People have not yet moved to logic block redundancy, though.
Does that mean, logic redundancy built into the chip itself? or some other kind of process?
(aside to CmdrTaco: "Now-go-cry-about-the-price dept." No kidding. How much was my last iPod?)
What the...?
Defensive much? Who claimed anything of the kind?
I think its simply a commonly-used example, as the odds are quite likely that there are more people out there using Photoshop for work than there are using Final Cut or Logic. Humans are really visual; that's the only thing this example tells us.
That sorta makes sense, except that Apple has never shipped anything in 'brushed aluminum'. All their products have been bare, smooth aluminum or polycarbonate.
I think your guess is pretty good, nonetheless.
They have caused a lot of economic damage, but unfortunately its all too easy to argue that they've caused this damage to a sector of the economy that they arguably built, in great part. Its sort of like the old IT argument. If Microsoft was better at their job, there'd be a LOT less jobs overall in IT.
Anyways, I still maintain that saving a few thousand lives is better than a few thousand costly bugs.
Dude, get off the computer and walk outside. Ask 10 random people to simply name a "good brand of TV". What do you think they're gonna say?
I know we're pissed off because PS3 is expensive and I got rootkitted and they nerfed my wookie, but most people don't know about any of that.
You have got to be kidding.
Over a billion dollars spent from the Gates Foundation on AIDS efforts, child mortality and poverty in developing nations is well worth the annoying bugs in Windows and IE. It's not even comparable. And frankly I find the comparison completely callous.
I think MS makes crappy products too, but let's not kid ourselves. Live are more important than any software, in any state, period, full stop.
The one little mod point awarded to this post brings a secular tear to my eye. *sniff*
Where did you see a 'baby' originally? We're talking about stem cells.
As long as there are spiders in the world, you still have a purpose. But its precarious, I agree.
Um, has the church commented on this, by any chance? Can't see them taking the news too well.