Go ahead and shelter your kids if you like. Mine will be no strangers to the knowledge and skills they'll need to be well rounded people. Rather than take responsibility away from them, I'll teach them how to handle it.
That's great for a younger parent, or a parent who's involved in IT enough to understand it. My parents still think "The Internet" is the thing behind the big blue 'E' on the screen (now it's the blue ball with the orange lizard wrapped around it). How are they supposed to teach Internet responsibility when they think Facebook is a binder full of printed photographs?
Don't get me wrong, they taught us responsibility, but it's a good thing I was around to act as a go-between for my younger brother because they had no idea what he did on the Internet or how to go about monitoring it, or even what they should monitor for that matter. I'm the one who taught him Internet responsibility.
When I was around 15-16 I met strangers off the internet. I never got raped, or taken advantage of. What's with all the paranoia against strangers? The world is dangerous but I'd hope your kid has enough judgement of character to judge people. The better they can take responsibility as kids, the better they can do it as adults.
The main stream media blows strangers up into big bad things, and label just about everyone as a rapist, or potential killer. Lay off the news.
Oh, I don't know. My daughter is four now, but when she's a teenager, if she's smart enough to both get root and keep me out of it and encrypt all her network traffic more power to her.
Yes, but does that mean she'll be smart enough to choose not to go meet that really cool girl that's friends with her online?
If I go with provider A because they say, "unlimited service at $50/month," and then they say, "Well, we meant 200M/month and we mess with some protocols," I believe I have a case.
If I go with a vendor who says "quality replica Rolex for $50" and it breaks in a month, do I have a case?
If I go with a car dealer that says "Quality used cars at wholesale prices" and find out that the cars are salvage/rebuilt/flood damaged cars, do I have a case?
If I go with a bargain basement electronics store and find out the products are remanufactured, salvaged, damaged or dented do I have a case?
If I go to a clothing outlet and find that the 80% off retail articles are seconds do I have a case?
Whenever you pay below fair market value for a commodity you get what you paid for and to cry foul after the fact only indicates that being cheap got you bit in the ass. Sometimes that rebuilt car or remanufactured stereo receiver or quality replica watch will give you years of good service, but more often you'll find yourself wishing you'd just bought the genuine article in the first place, or having trouble with and subsequently replacing the item far more often than necessary costing you nearly the same if not more in the long run anyways.
You missed the point by so much of a margin you could work as a government Spin-Doctor. Did you even read the first line?
The ridiculous semantics of a frivolous lawsuit aren't my concern so much as why the lawsuit was filed in the first place and what the outcome of such suits will be. Do you really think the broadband providers will seriously change their ways and cease all traffic shaping efforts and allow truly unlimited pipes to the Internet at ever increasing speeds? Seriously? Or back in reality, providers will instead collectively change their ways, realize it's not a market they need to worry about grassroots competition, and start explicitly offering limited, restricted, time and rate limited "Web, e-mail and multimedia access" services to their clients?
All this fuss and bother is pissing into the wind. The ISPs will have the courts on their side because 'everybody' knows that Peer To Peer technologies are used almost exclusively by pirates and other nefarious people to violate copyright and break the law and take food from the mouths of starving artists so the suits will be dropped without prejudice and life will continue to get more miserable for the whiners out there.
Rather than suing your ISP, why not attempt to change their service model and offer to PAY FOR additional / higher levels of service rather than complaining why you're being throttled even though you're using 80% of the bandwidth in your area on a burstable link at a bargain basement price?
If you're that distressed, go to a higher tier provider along with people in your neighbourhood and get a(n) [E3|T3] assigned and fraction it off to your neighbours for shared cost. Then if your provider does anything nasty you can bring your SLA to court and have at them. Meanwhile, I'd love for you and those with your mindset to cost out such an endeavour and take an informal poll of your neighbourhood and see just how many people would be willing to shell out the extra quid every month for true freedom. G'head. I'll wait.
... You'd think by now, instead of fighting all of these legal battles, they'd stop the throttling, instead of opening themselves to more costly law suits.
Yep, you're right. A Slashdotter's analysis of their legal costs versus bandwidth and peering savings gains is more adept than the corporate lawyers and network engineers. You should fire off a resumee.
It wasn't the fact that they may have used the word "Unlimited" in their advertising, but that they were arguing over the definition of a word or phrase.
In the UK at least, they seem to be able to stretch "Unlimited" to mean "Unlimited until you've used 1GB of data per day, in which time your upstream will be LIMITED, your downstream will be LIMITED, and you may be charged for excessive usage of this UNLIMITED (now LIMITED) service (Which, by the way, is LIMITED by the current usage of our backbone which has FAR less bandwidth than we're selling, meaning you never, EVER get the speed you subscribe for). You could also be cut off for exceeding these LIMITS at any time, but that's ok because we already have the money for this year's subscription!,,|,,"
So pay for a connection with an SLA and quit whining.
Oh, you don't want to pay several hundred or thousand dollars (pounds) per month for a few dedicated megabits? Then why are you complaining? You're getting consumer level service. You get what you pay for. Live with it or shell out for a real connection.
That is, if the movie is available on Blu-ray Disc in your region. And unlike HD DVD, BD doesn't offer the option of not using AACS copy prevention, and I've read that a lot of especially smaller studios can't get AACS licenses.
Gosh, you're right; I want to revert to those region free DVDs!
I abjectly refuse to buy any media more than once, its the game they have played since there was more than 1 media choice out there, and that cash cow has got to stop.
You're right. I should try and bring back that book I dropped in the tub. Half the pages are illegible now, so I'm sure the bookstore will just hand over a fresh copy. It's only those evil movie people that are unreasonable and make us buy destroyed copies of their products again.
You're absolutely right and it's not a sentiment that'll be popular around here. See, bits are easily replicated which led to this myth that purchasing a digital copy of something entitled the consumer to that product for life. Moreover, people talk about the relative cost of the media. Sure, it costs the studios mere pennies a copy to press a DVD, BD, HD-DVD, whatever format, but the content they're pressing cost in some cases hundreds of millions of dollars to produce. Like it or lump it actors cost a lot of money, effects, locations cost a lot of money. And let's not forget that profit is not a dirty word. Much as we all like to go to work and get paid more than a living wage for the work we perform as do movie producers and studio executives like to enjoy the status in life their careers afford them.
But hey, I'm with you, let's all boycott Coles and Chapters and Indigo because they won't freely replace books we've destroyed! I've got a couple of really expensive books that are dog eared all to hell. I demand justice!
As to kids seeing one.. hide the TV remote and see if your kid can figure out how to change the station. 'Daddy don't lie! Nobody ever had to get up and touch the TV to change the channel!'
Heh, remotes are so ubiquitous it's actually getting harder. It was only by accident that I found the panel that changes channels on my set. It's on the right side near the top behind the front panel behind a door...
And those who do, probably think it stands for "Video Home System" -- a backronym created by a bunch of marketing types.
That's because they're right. VHS has been Video Home System for decades, probably since its consumer launch (and certainly at least soon afterward).
The engineers might have called it "vertical helical scan", but it wasn't ever widely marketed that way.
Erm, that means the acronym actually stands for "vertical helical scan" my friend. Making up a new meaning for an acronym doesn't change its original meaning. Hence the term used by the OP "backronym" - an explanation that won't scare the neophytes who purchase the technology.
I enjoyed how you cut small segments of my comments and poked at them. Normally I wouldn't waste my time responding, but considering you seem to sell these devices and don't understand them, I'll respond to relevant segments that haven't bastardized.
I am in sales but don't sell electronics, I'll leave you to your assumptions on that one.
The reason I separated individual points of your posting was to point out how each of your assumptions was flawed. Each of your responses are also baseless, unsubstantiated nonsense. Where is your cite for your magical 40-50% acceptance rate for HD capable tuners, and even if the rate is 50% how does that become classified as "early adopter phase"?
The "down scaling" from 1080i to 720p was your reference, not mine, I was telling you it's not done and you responded that it's not done. What are you arguing? My television is 1080i as are virtually all HD units available at all major electronic retailers today and they do, in fact, display 1080i picture. You claimed these sets somehow "down scale" the image to 720p. I'm still waiting for clarification on that.
From the sounds of things you're in a lower to lower-middle class of income and you simply can't justify or afford to upgrade your television sets on even a semi-regular basis. That's well and good; for a lot of people things like televisions, nee home theatres are considered luxury items and aren't a priority, but your ideas that the rest of the world (or the rest of American households) works the same as your household is absurd at best and shows a definite lack of understanding of current trends.
Re-read my posts. I never said anything like that. My point was, now that BR has no competition to drive the price down, it will stagnate, as most don't see the point. Based on this response, you've done nothing but reinforce my opinion.
Then you really have no understanding of market forces. What competition did DVD have when it came out? None. I think you'll agree it became a raging success. The notion that HD-DVD was the competition that was going to drive down the prices is a complete strawman. Totally fictional. Bullshit from the start. Manufacturers are going to compete on the player market and soon we'll be seeing combination TVs that include BluRay players built-in which will help to further componentize the market and drive prices further down. Studios and distributors will compete on the media level. Prices are high right now because the market will bear it. The products are not at a majority saturation therefore the only people purchasing BluRay discs are the early adopters and slowly the middle class looking to upgrade and future proof their home theatres and these people are willing to pay a premium to get the better content now rather than pay to replace their content a few years down the road.
2-3 years from now you'll see BluRay players selling at sub $300 levels with discount brands popping up probably closer to the $200 level. 5 years from now you'll start to see players ranging from $50-250 with a small smattering of high end units ranging from $300-1000. This is the same progression DVD players took and I'm watching it and waiting for the $200-300 price range myself. At this point in time I personally can't justify buying a player when the content is so limited. My personal justification is my local Rogers Video outlet. When I can rent BluRay discs just as easily as I can rent DVDs I'll buy a player. Now, please don't confuse that with lack of interest or inability to afford a player, and in point of fact I'll likely have a PlayStation 3 as soon as I get around to going to the store, but I will be purchasing a proper BluRay player within 2 years.
You'll have to broaden your understanding of people in income brackets higher than your own. We are the people who set the early market trends and dictate its direction with our wallets. The manufacturers know you and your ilk won't upgrade something until the old
Just because it is getting more difficult/impossible to buy a SD TV doesn't mean people are lining up to buy them. Yes, take a way choice, it will help adoption, but people don't look through the best buy ad they get with their paper(yes, people still get papers) and think, "Wow, I oughta get a new TV since they no longer offer old ones." The average TV should get you at least 7 years use. Lack of choice will simply slowly phase things out. It does not force adoption.
ABS brakes, side curtain airbags, auto climate control, engine immobilizers etc. are in the same situation and cars are a much bigger ticket item than televisions. However thousands of cars and thousands of television sets are sold in every state and province every month.
And FWIW, people in middle to high class income brackets do regularly browse the Brick, Best Buy, and Future Shop ads that come with their weekly newspapers and decide to upgrade the technology around their house. In point of fact, nearly every one of my friends, family and colleagues have high definition televisions right now; some of them have more than one in their home.
HD capable also proves my point. HD Capable, 1080i, etc. does not mean you are getting 1920x1080 pixes. When you consider they are fixed pixel devices that down scale a picture to 720p, you aren't getting the full detal that a 1080p tv offers.
You're also presuming that people really need 1080p. Most HD sources today are 1080i and 720p, as are virtually all available HD television sets. By the way, most 1080i sets do not "down scale" from progessive to interlaced.
I have a CRT TV that can render 1920x1080, even if only 1080i, as well as a Marquee CRT projector which makes the best Best Buy projector look like crap.
Display Capabilities 480i/480p/720p/960p/1080i
So your television can display the same resolution as the Insignia television at Future Shop. What was your point?
The cheap TVs are few and far between, most of which lack HD tuners which every sales rep will bash in hopes of the larger sale.
So you basically have a complete lack of understanding of the sales process is what you're saying. It's ok, I hear this propagandist nonsense from customers of mine even as I'm trying to point them towards the product that fits their needs and budget rather than the more expensive product that makes no sense for their personal situation.
Most of the mindless sheep think a $70 upscaler is as good as a BR player. Which do you think the average clueless user is going to buy.
Actually there are perfectly clear displays at most all retail electronics outlets as well as a plethora of literature everywhere explaining the differences to customers even in places like those very print ads you yourself referred to. Also, how many "mindless sheep" know what an upscaling DVD player is in the first place?
So I'm at a loss here as to what exactly it is you're trying to prove. That nobody has HD, nobody wants HD, nobody understands HD, and that it's a technology available only to geeks?
And I won't buy one until my TV dies and I get an HD one. The majority of Americans still do not have HD TVs, and until they do, BR will still be small compared to DVD.
The majority of Americans don't have Internet connectivity. Until then, high speed Internet will still be small compared to dial-up.
That doesn't sound like a "generalized bias" to me. The examples you give are some pretty specific reasons—and quite enough to make one distraught that the company behind them is winning the war for control of the next major media format. I don't want to do business with Sony because of those things; now, if I want to buy a copy of a movie in HD, I have to buy Sony Blu-Ray? This bothers me.
Which non-evil mega-conglomerate's high definition media format would you prefer we use instead of BluRay?
That whole price comment is what will screw BR. BR won the war between HD-DVD, but they still haven't won the acceptance war. In all this Toshiba Post-mortum, there has been no news of BR players flying off the shelves, and there has only been a 20% increase prior to the Warner move. It just caused people to sit back on the fence, especially considering HDTVs are still in the early adopter phase, so you have to be an early early adopter to have an HD format.
Early adopter phase? It's getting more and more difficult to buy a NON HD TV nowadays! When you can get decent sized HD TVs for sub-$400 it's hard to argue against it. Tubes are practically obsolete, flat panels are all the rage, and there aren't many flat panels out there that aren't HD capable.
Think about it, the average house hold income is under 60k? Throw some taxes into it, and your basically expecting the average american to drop 1/20th to 1/30th of their salary on a TV and HD player.
Insignia 32" LCD HDTV currently on sale for $499CDN. I could buy that with the leavings from my next paycheque. If you'd prefer something smaller you can get a 26" for $399. If you'd rather a name brand you can get a Toshiba 26" for $499. A few years ago I paid $899 for a 32" Sony Vega CRT that's not HD and now I can buy a slim form factor television for half that that's both widescreen and HD capable. Samsung Blu-ray Player (BD-P1400) on sale for $399. So I can meander into Future Shop and pick up a full HD TV visual experience for $901.74 including all of our Ontario and Canadian sales taxes.
I can assure you that $900 is significantly less than 1/20 or even 1/30 of my personal net income and I'm not exactly wealthy.
So how is it exactly that HD is in its early adopter phase?!?
I guess the network will still exist for a while in Canada? For my job, we are often working way out of range of cell coverage, We use a set of trunked analog two way radios. They're heavy, but indestructible. One survived falling off my belt when I was up on a 68 foot tower, another was totally submerged in water and worked fine.
Pssst; you don't need a carrier network for 2-way radios to function.
The cell phone networks aren't "turning off analog"; they're simply ceasing to offer service for their analog cell phone customers.
Because if they don't, your kid can starve or freeze to death or get cooked in the summer. Babies have died in cars.
So you maintain that professionals in business to earn a living must render their skills for free to help irresponsible people who care more about their car windows than their child's life?
And letting people off "because they can't pay" is complex and leads to scams and paranoia and all kinds of weird legal confusion so it's easier to just say "Screw this, don't worry about the money" and refuse to take payment at all.
If you're going to get into the litigious aspect of things - you don't see a licensed, bonded locksmith being sued because they came out to unlock the doors, free of charge, but got there too late and the child was killed or seriously injured?
Break a damn window or call the fire department. Atleast they're paid to take care of people who screw up and endanger their lives or the lives of others around them.
I guess some people just find it hard to put a price on someone's life, at least a price on a few dollars of gas and 20 minutes of work time against someone's life.
No, the problem is the sheer number of people who lack all sense of personal responsibility. Just because you've endangered your child's well being doesn't invalidate the price of somebody's skill set.
FWIW; firefighters, police officers, EMT Paramedics, emergency room doctors, nurses et al. can very easily put a price on people's lives. They get paid a salary and their primary purpose is to save lives. I guess in your utopian world view it sucks when skilled people get paid to save lives huh? Imagine, all those selfish people wanting to make their mortgage payments. Won't somebody think of the children in all of this!
FWIW, there are security firms that specialize in exactly that. House being one of a personal residence, a corporate office, a warehouse, or any secured facility that a company wants audited. What better way to audit one's security than to hire people with technical knowledge on how to enter establishments they shouldn't be in? It's one of those niche businesses that savvy reformed criminals tend to start up because they're the ones with the unique skill sets to do so.
That still requires the consent of the owner of the property being audited, you cannot have them audit someone else's property.
RealMedia gave me the software and in fact told me I needed it in order to play specific types of rich media content on the Internet. Now the software is installed on my computer as well as those on my LAN, so I'm going to perform an audit on the software to see if it's secure.
And FYI, lock smiths don't charge for emergency situations; a lock smith will charge you $40 or so just to pop open the lock on your car if you lock your keys in, but if you've locked a kid in the car they go out immediately and do it for free (if not, don't deal with them anymore, find someone else; all the ones I've seen do). It's part of responsible use of your skills.
Why should they? You're telling me that because you were so callous as to lock your child in your car you should get free assistance to let them out? They have to waste their time, energy and fuel to get to your location, provide their valuable skills to you and you expect them to do this for FREE??! What world are you living in?
IANAL. If I had a security exploit that if used could get someone killed and I refused to hand it over and instead sold it to a third party who then used it and killed someone I am pretty sure I would be liable in that instance.
Where are the small children and cute kittens and puppies in your sentiment? I mean, while we're going out on a limb and all...
We're talking one of a million software exploits out there in the great wilds of commercial software packages.
Where, BTW, is the liability for the company who released the defective product in the first place? If this exploit can "get somebody killed" (or whatever actual damages can take place as a result of its use) why shouldn't RealMedia be held liable?
"The public good" is the motivating factor behind both socialism and capitalism. The difference is that socialism tries to address the public good through conditioning people to act with less regard to their own interests, where capitalism believes that providing personal rewards for people who are productive will increase the value of the society as a whole.
Couldn't this lead to a betterment for society, though? Wouldn't you think software vendors would prefer to concentrate more on getting security right in the first place and releasing software of a higher calibre rather than finding themselves on a list of "Exploits For A Buck"? If that were the case, hey, I think this Internet thing might just be a safer place to be.
Besides all that; don't you think this has been going on for years already? Of course it has! This is just the first company with the cajones to step forward and be up-front about their business model.
I think it's great. I like having an industry watchdog out there keeping these software giants honest. Saves me a lot of work as the company and family IT go-to-guy. I'm sick of cleaning malware from everybody's PCs.
Slashdot Mirror
That's great for a younger parent, or a parent who's involved in IT enough to understand it. My parents still think "The Internet" is the thing behind the big blue 'E' on the screen (now it's the blue ball with the orange lizard wrapped around it). How are they supposed to teach Internet responsibility when they think Facebook is a binder full of printed photographs?
Don't get me wrong, they taught us responsibility, but it's a good thing I was around to act as a go-between for my younger brother because they had no idea what he did on the Internet or how to go about monitoring it, or even what they should monitor for that matter. I'm the one who taught him Internet responsibility.
The main stream media blows strangers up into big bad things, and label just about everyone as a rapist, or potential killer. Lay off the news.
So it's never happened to someone you know?
Lay off the generalizations.
Yes, but does that mean she'll be smart enough to choose not to go meet that really cool girl that's friends with her online?
If I go with a vendor who says "quality replica Rolex for $50" and it breaks in a month, do I have a case?
If I go with a car dealer that says "Quality used cars at wholesale prices" and find out that the cars are salvage/rebuilt/flood damaged cars, do I have a case?
If I go with a bargain basement electronics store and find out the products are remanufactured, salvaged, damaged or dented do I have a case?
If I go to a clothing outlet and find that the 80% off retail articles are seconds do I have a case?
Whenever you pay below fair market value for a commodity you get what you paid for and to cry foul after the fact only indicates that being cheap got you bit in the ass. Sometimes that rebuilt car or remanufactured stereo receiver or quality replica watch will give you years of good service, but more often you'll find yourself wishing you'd just bought the genuine article in the first place, or having trouble with and subsequently replacing the item far more often than necessary costing you nearly the same if not more in the long run anyways.
The ridiculous semantics of a frivolous lawsuit aren't my concern so much as why the lawsuit was filed in the first place and what the outcome of such suits will be. Do you really think the broadband providers will seriously change their ways and cease all traffic shaping efforts and allow truly unlimited pipes to the Internet at ever increasing speeds? Seriously? Or back in reality, providers will instead collectively change their ways, realize it's not a market they need to worry about grassroots competition, and start explicitly offering limited, restricted, time and rate limited "Web, e-mail and multimedia access" services to their clients?
All this fuss and bother is pissing into the wind. The ISPs will have the courts on their side because 'everybody' knows that Peer To Peer technologies are used almost exclusively by pirates and other nefarious people to violate copyright and break the law and take food from the mouths of starving artists so the suits will be dropped without prejudice and life will continue to get more miserable for the whiners out there.
Rather than suing your ISP, why not attempt to change their service model and offer to PAY FOR additional / higher levels of service rather than complaining why you're being throttled even though you're using 80% of the bandwidth in your area on a burstable link at a bargain basement price?
If you're that distressed, go to a higher tier provider along with people in your neighbourhood and get a(n) [E3|T3] assigned and fraction it off to your neighbours for shared cost. Then if your provider does anything nasty you can bring your SLA to court and have at them. Meanwhile, I'd love for you and those with your mindset to cost out such an endeavour and take an informal poll of your neighbourhood and see just how many people would be willing to shell out the extra quid every month for true freedom. G'head. I'll wait.
... You'd think by now, instead of fighting all of these legal battles, they'd stop the throttling, instead of opening themselves to more costly law suits.Yep, you're right. A Slashdotter's analysis of their legal costs versus bandwidth and peering savings gains is more adept than the corporate lawyers and network engineers. You should fire off a resumee.
In the UK at least, they seem to be able to stretch "Unlimited" to mean "Unlimited until you've used 1GB of data per day, in which time your upstream will be LIMITED, your downstream will be LIMITED, and you may be charged for excessive usage of this UNLIMITED (now LIMITED) service (Which, by the way, is LIMITED by the current usage of our backbone which has FAR less bandwidth than we're selling, meaning you never, EVER get the speed you subscribe for). You could also be cut off for exceeding these LIMITS at any time, but that's ok because we already have the money for this year's subscription!
So pay for a connection with an SLA and quit whining.
Oh, you don't want to pay several hundred or thousand dollars (pounds) per month for a few dedicated megabits? Then why are you complaining? You're getting consumer level service. You get what you pay for. Live with it or shell out for a real connection.
Gosh, you're right; I want to revert to those region free DVDs!
You're right. I should try and bring back that book I dropped in the tub. Half the pages are illegible now, so I'm sure the bookstore will just hand over a fresh copy. It's only those evil movie people that are unreasonable and make us buy destroyed copies of their products again.
You're absolutely right and it's not a sentiment that'll be popular around here. See, bits are easily replicated which led to this myth that purchasing a digital copy of something entitled the consumer to that product for life. Moreover, people talk about the relative cost of the media. Sure, it costs the studios mere pennies a copy to press a DVD, BD, HD-DVD, whatever format, but the content they're pressing cost in some cases hundreds of millions of dollars to produce. Like it or lump it actors cost a lot of money, effects, locations cost a lot of money. And let's not forget that profit is not a dirty word. Much as we all like to go to work and get paid more than a living wage for the work we perform as do movie producers and studio executives like to enjoy the status in life their careers afford them.
But hey, I'm with you, let's all boycott Coles and Chapters and Indigo because they won't freely replace books we've destroyed! I've got a couple of really expensive books that are dog eared all to hell. I demand justice!
Heh, remotes are so ubiquitous it's actually getting harder. It was only by accident that I found the panel that changes channels on my set. It's on the right side near the top behind the front panel behind a door ...
Seriously? I'd never seen that possibility until just now. "Scuzzy" always seemed so natural. Even though it's not.
That's because they're right. VHS has been Video Home System for decades, probably since its consumer launch (and certainly at least soon afterward).
The engineers might have called it "vertical helical scan", but it wasn't ever widely marketed that way.
Erm, that means the acronym actually stands for "vertical helical scan" my friend. Making up a new meaning for an acronym doesn't change its original meaning. Hence the term used by the OP "backronym" - an explanation that won't scare the neophytes who purchase the technology.
I enjoyed how you cut small segments of my comments and poked at them. Normally I wouldn't waste my time responding, but considering you seem to sell these devices and don't understand them, I'll respond to relevant segments that haven't bastardized.
I am in sales but don't sell electronics, I'll leave you to your assumptions on that one.
The reason I separated individual points of your posting was to point out how each of your assumptions was flawed. Each of your responses are also baseless, unsubstantiated nonsense. Where is your cite for your magical 40-50% acceptance rate for HD capable tuners, and even if the rate is 50% how does that become classified as "early adopter phase"?
The "down scaling" from 1080i to 720p was your reference, not mine, I was telling you it's not done and you responded that it's not done. What are you arguing? My television is 1080i as are virtually all HD units available at all major electronic retailers today and they do, in fact, display 1080i picture. You claimed these sets somehow "down scale" the image to 720p. I'm still waiting for clarification on that.
From the sounds of things you're in a lower to lower-middle class of income and you simply can't justify or afford to upgrade your television sets on even a semi-regular basis. That's well and good; for a lot of people things like televisions, nee home theatres are considered luxury items and aren't a priority, but your ideas that the rest of the world (or the rest of American households) works the same as your household is absurd at best and shows a definite lack of understanding of current trends.
Re-read my posts. I never said anything like that. My point was, now that BR has no competition to drive the price down, it will stagnate, as most don't see the point. Based on this response, you've done nothing but reinforce my opinion.
Then you really have no understanding of market forces. What competition did DVD have when it came out? None. I think you'll agree it became a raging success. The notion that HD-DVD was the competition that was going to drive down the prices is a complete strawman. Totally fictional. Bullshit from the start. Manufacturers are going to compete on the player market and soon we'll be seeing combination TVs that include BluRay players built-in which will help to further componentize the market and drive prices further down. Studios and distributors will compete on the media level. Prices are high right now because the market will bear it. The products are not at a majority saturation therefore the only people purchasing BluRay discs are the early adopters and slowly the middle class looking to upgrade and future proof their home theatres and these people are willing to pay a premium to get the better content now rather than pay to replace their content a few years down the road.
2-3 years from now you'll see BluRay players selling at sub $300 levels with discount brands popping up probably closer to the $200 level. 5 years from now you'll start to see players ranging from $50-250 with a small smattering of high end units ranging from $300-1000. This is the same progression DVD players took and I'm watching it and waiting for the $200-300 price range myself. At this point in time I personally can't justify buying a player when the content is so limited. My personal justification is my local Rogers Video outlet. When I can rent BluRay discs just as easily as I can rent DVDs I'll buy a player. Now, please don't confuse that with lack of interest or inability to afford a player, and in point of fact I'll likely have a PlayStation 3 as soon as I get around to going to the store, but I will be purchasing a proper BluRay player within 2 years.
You'll have to broaden your understanding of people in income brackets higher than your own. We are the people who set the early market trends and dictate its direction with our wallets. The manufacturers know you and your ilk won't upgrade something until the old
ABS brakes, side curtain airbags, auto climate control, engine immobilizers etc. are in the same situation and cars are a much bigger ticket item than televisions. However thousands of cars and thousands of television sets are sold in every state and province every month.
And FWIW, people in middle to high class income brackets do regularly browse the Brick, Best Buy, and Future Shop ads that come with their weekly newspapers and decide to upgrade the technology around their house. In point of fact, nearly every one of my friends, family and colleagues have high definition televisions right now; some of them have more than one in their home.
HD capable also proves my point. HD Capable, 1080i, etc. does not mean you are getting 1920x1080 pixes. When you consider they are fixed pixel devices that down scale a picture to 720p, you aren't getting the full detal that a 1080p tv offers.You're also presuming that people really need 1080p. Most HD sources today are 1080i and 720p, as are virtually all available HD television sets. By the way, most 1080i sets do not "down scale" from progessive to interlaced.
I have a CRT TV that can render 1920x1080, even if only 1080i, as well as a Marquee CRT projector which makes the best Best Buy projector look like crap. Display Capabilities 480i/480p/720p/960p/1080iSo your television can display the same resolution as the Insignia television at Future Shop. What was your point?
The cheap TVs are few and far between, most of which lack HD tuners which every sales rep will bash in hopes of the larger sale.So you basically have a complete lack of understanding of the sales process is what you're saying. It's ok, I hear this propagandist nonsense from customers of mine even as I'm trying to point them towards the product that fits their needs and budget rather than the more expensive product that makes no sense for their personal situation.
Most of the mindless sheep think a $70 upscaler is as good as a BR player. Which do you think the average clueless user is going to buy.Actually there are perfectly clear displays at most all retail electronics outlets as well as a plethora of literature everywhere explaining the differences to customers even in places like those very print ads you yourself referred to. Also, how many "mindless sheep" know what an upscaling DVD player is in the first place?
So I'm at a loss here as to what exactly it is you're trying to prove. That nobody has HD, nobody wants HD, nobody understands HD, and that it's a technology available only to geeks?
Well, I haven't heard of Toshiba trying to install a rootkit on anybody's machine lately...
Aww, sorry, but HD-DVD is also backed by Microsoft and well, we all know how that goes. Here's some matches to take care of that strawman of yours.
My question stands; Which non-evil mega-conglomerate's high definition media format would you prefer we use instead of BluRay?
The majority of Americans don't have Internet connectivity. Until then, high speed Internet will still be small compared to dial-up.
{zing!}
ROTFL! DRM is a component of content producers, not distribution formats.
BTW - HD DVD didn't have DRM capabilities? Oh stop, my sides!
Which non-evil mega-conglomerate's high definition media format would you prefer we use instead of BluRay?
Early adopter phase? It's getting more and more difficult to buy a NON HD TV nowadays! When you can get decent sized HD TVs for sub-$400 it's hard to argue against it. Tubes are practically obsolete, flat panels are all the rage, and there aren't many flat panels out there that aren't HD capable.
Think about it, the average house hold income is under 60k? Throw some taxes into it, and your basically expecting the average american to drop 1/20th to 1/30th of their salary on a TV and HD player.Insignia 32" LCD HDTV currently on sale for $499CDN. I could buy that with the leavings from my next paycheque. If you'd prefer something smaller you can get a 26" for $399. If you'd rather a name brand you can get a Toshiba 26" for $499. A few years ago I paid $899 for a 32" Sony Vega CRT that's not HD and now I can buy a slim form factor television for half that that's both widescreen and HD capable. Samsung Blu-ray Player (BD-P1400) on sale for $399. So I can meander into Future Shop and pick up a full HD TV visual experience for $901.74 including all of our Ontario and Canadian sales taxes.
I can assure you that $900 is significantly less than 1/20 or even 1/30 of my personal net income and I'm not exactly wealthy.
So how is it exactly that HD is in its early adopter phase?!?
Pssst; you don't need a carrier network for 2-way radios to function.
The cell phone networks aren't "turning off analog"; they're simply ceasing to offer service for their analog cell phone customers.
So you maintain that professionals in business to earn a living must render their skills for free to help irresponsible people who care more about their car windows than their child's life?
And letting people off "because they can't pay" is complex and leads to scams and paranoia and all kinds of weird legal confusion so it's easier to just say "Screw this, don't worry about the money" and refuse to take payment at all.If you're going to get into the litigious aspect of things - you don't see a licensed, bonded locksmith being sued because they came out to unlock the doors, free of charge, but got there too late and the child was killed or seriously injured?
Break a damn window or call the fire department. Atleast they're paid to take care of people who screw up and endanger their lives or the lives of others around them.
I guess some people just find it hard to put a price on someone's life, at least a price on a few dollars of gas and 20 minutes of work time against someone's life.No, the problem is the sheer number of people who lack all sense of personal responsibility. Just because you've endangered your child's well being doesn't invalidate the price of somebody's skill set.
FWIW; firefighters, police officers, EMT Paramedics, emergency room doctors, nurses et al. can very easily put a price on people's lives. They get paid a salary and their primary purpose is to save lives. I guess in your utopian world view it sucks when skilled people get paid to save lives huh? Imagine, all those selfish people wanting to make their mortgage payments. Won't somebody think of the children in all of this!
That still requires the consent of the owner of the property being audited, you cannot have them audit someone else's property.
RealMedia gave me the software and in fact told me I needed it in order to play specific types of rich media content on the Internet. Now the software is installed on my computer as well as those on my LAN, so I'm going to perform an audit on the software to see if it's secure.
Where'd your analogy go?
Why should they? You're telling me that because you were so callous as to lock your child in your car you should get free assistance to let them out? They have to waste their time, energy and fuel to get to your location, provide their valuable skills to you and you expect them to do this for FREE??! What world are you living in?
Where are the small children and cute kittens and puppies in your sentiment? I mean, while we're going out on a limb and all ...
We're talking one of a million software exploits out there in the great wilds of commercial software packages.
Where, BTW, is the liability for the company who released the defective product in the first place? If this exploit can "get somebody killed" (or whatever actual damages can take place as a result of its use) why shouldn't RealMedia be held liable?
Couldn't this lead to a betterment for society, though? Wouldn't you think software vendors would prefer to concentrate more on getting security right in the first place and releasing software of a higher calibre rather than finding themselves on a list of "Exploits For A Buck"? If that were the case, hey, I think this Internet thing might just be a safer place to be.
Besides all that; don't you think this has been going on for years already? Of course it has! This is just the first company with the cajones to step forward and be up-front about their business model.
I think it's great. I like having an industry watchdog out there keeping these software giants honest. Saves me a lot of work as the company and family IT go-to-guy. I'm sick of cleaning malware from everybody's PCs.