> Considering that on a decent TV, playing the same DVD via the 3 possible outputs (RCA, S-Video and Component) provides 3 distinguishable results, not being able to differentiate analog capture from the digital source is BS
Spot on.
If you're converting the original to Composite or SVideo, then you've already lost a good chunk of it. Even if your capture card was 100% lossless (impossible) then you'd still be able to easily tell.
> Just one post back you were too fucking blind to tell the difference between a high quality svideo capture and the crap dished out by one of those USB dongles
There is no such thing as a "high quality SVideo". It's not bad, and it's a damn-sight better than Composite - but it's not a patch on a good RGB or Component signal.
If you're capturing with SVideo, then it's EASILY distinguishable from the source... period.
> doesn't matter if the source is perfect or not - if the analog capture cannot be differentiated from the digital source...
This is where your argument falls over.
You have to be part-blind to be unable to see the difference between a lossless source signal, and one that's been converted to Component or SVideo.
> The (now $50) PCI capture card in my system will make caps that are indistinguishable from the DVD source (I've done the comparisons in public forums and there was no definitive consensus which was the digital rip and which was analog)
Absolute tosh.
The $50 PCI card that you're using, is capturing via Composite or SVideo. These are VERY distinguishable from both the RGB/Component that your DVD player sends to your TV, and the lossless digital signal that you rip into your PC
> And if you cannot tell the difference between the video from a $40 PCI capture card and the absolute shit you get from a $100 USB video port, you really, really, need glasses
Oh dear.
If you can't tell the difference between a very poor Composite/SVideo signal, and a top notch RGB/Component signal, then it's you that needs the glasses.
It's irrelevent what interface your capture card uses - if it's not capturing a digital signal (Firewire), then it needs a VERY good analogue signal to get decent results. RGB and Component are your only options - Composite and SVideo simply aren't upto the job.
Your description is correct, for the PS1 at least.
The actual contents of the zero-checksummed sector, is the Region-Code of the disc - SCEE, SCEA, or SCEJ. The PSX first of all checks that the code is present, with a checksum of zero. If it's a Jap machine, it will only continue if the code is SCEJ. If it's a Euro machine, it will only continue if the code is SCEE, and if it's a USA machine, it will only continue if the code is SCEA.
PS1 modchips are very simple PIC chips, that output SCEESCEASCEJ repeatedly. When the PS1 asks the CD-ROM drive for the region code of the disc, it sees the modchip saying SCEESCEASCEJSCEESCEASCEJSCEESCEASCEJ etc. and thinks the disc is valid (because within that string, it sees what it's looking for, be it SCEE, SCEA, or SCEJ). Whether it's a copy or an original, isn't relevent - it disabled the copy protection AND the region code, in one simple step.
Of further interest, is when the first Anti-Modchip games appeared. They simply counted the number of SCEE/SECJ/SCEA recieved. If there was more than one, it knew there was a modchip present, and refused to run. Easily got round by the Stealth Modchips, cos they only outputted the SCEESCEASCEJ string once. You could also fit a switch to your chip, and turn it off as soon as POST had completed, for the same effect.
> They aren't quite the same, as the headphone sends the signal through an amp first.
Lower the volume on the player, so the headphone output level matches a normal line-out level.
> Although the problem I'm having shouldn't be related to that. I imagine my car stereo just isn't installed correctly. If I try to play things from the aux input jack, I hear a lot of weird extra noise that is apparently being picked up from under the hood.
You need a "Ground Loop Isolator" - your local Car Audio store will sell you one for $10
> Headphone, yes, but not line out. But, since it has the FM transmitter, this isn't a big deal. The main thing I'm going for is to have it play through my car stereo.
You seem to be unaware that the Headphone-out and a Line-out are exactly the same !
Plug the Headphone socket into the Line-In on your stereo. Set the volume on the player appropriately, and voila.
All I've ever wanted is a low-speed, low-power, reliable wireless tech that would let me bop around the apartment with a laptop and stay telnetted into my server
Um, it already exists, and it's called Bluetooth. I'm using it right now - why aren't you ?
> I personally find it infuriating that I spent $1000 on a 32" T.V. and only 2/3 of it gets used when I watch a movie
So why on EARTH didn't you buy a Widescreen TV ?
> Flame all you want, but after the first month, approximately 100% of people who watch any movie will be watching it on a T.V., so why the hell wouldn't you design the movie to be seen on that medium?
Precisely. Seeing as about 90% of the TVs sold here in the UK are Widescreen, then it makes sense that movies are shot in Widescreen !
The USA will catch up soon, and if you'd bought a Widescreen TV when you had the chance, you'd be ready.
Bluetooth is slow. If it was 100 time faster, it would catch on faster, becuase there would be more applications for it. With less-than-megabit speeds, the only thing you would EVER want to do is serial I/O (sync stuff, keyboards), and *maybe* a mono audio stream.
Er, that's precisely what it's for ! What else would you want to use it for ?
If you need a quick connection, then use 802.11x, together with the HUGE increase in component size and battery drain that it demands - the whole point of Bluetooth is that it's VERY small, and uses VERY little power (so you can put it in just about anything). If you want speed, you're looking at the wrong technology !
There's a reason you can quite nicely play SNES emulators using a 4 or 5 year old PC, but it takes over a 1 ghz machine to play any GBA emulator that's out there.
Yes, and that reason is that SNES emulators have been around, and in active development, for MANY years, and are heavily optimised. It's not because the GBA is much more advanced.
Try actually using the software, and do a little research on the hardware involved, before you go spouting off based on some news release.
FYI, I've been actively involved in the Emulation scene for about six years now. I'm well aware of what goes into making an emulator, and what affects it's speed. The GBA emulator for GP32, is no different to any of the other emulation milestones (Ultra64, Project Tempest, U64Emu, Impact, and there are MANY more) - they all started off slow and next to useless, to evolve into fast, genuinely useful programs. The initial version has no bearing on the eventual version.
> This thing cannot, repeat CANNOT emulate the GBA. Check the site, there's no mention of this. Even trying it would be stupid - go ahead, run a working GBA emulator on this sort of hardware. Have fun with your 2 frames per second.
http://www.gp32news.com - check the article posted on Monday 21 February 2003 @ 02:59. You obviously have trouble reading, so I'll post you a transcript here:
GBA emu underway, made in France
Yes, gba emu is underway.
Ok it's just a begging, so it only support 4mo roms,
no sound, 5-10fps, but for a first private release it's a good start.
The article is followed by three screenshots of Contra Advance.
5-10fps is a very good starting framerate, and with further optimization, it ought to be able to hit full speed. This is standard fare for first-version emulators of/on other systems.
If the GP32 can emulate a SNES at a reasonable speed, why on earth do you assume "2 frames per second" for a GBA emu ? The GBA is a very low-spec machine (similar to a SNES) - you don't need any more than "this sort of hardware" in order to emulate it !
I've visited that type of plant (OTEC, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion) already in Hawaii (near Kona), where there is one running since quite some years. One problem is that it only works for steep ocean wall drop offs, since otherwise the pipe is getting too long.
It uses about half of the created energy (through a normal Carnot cycle) for pumping (about 120kW). The other half is not quite competetive, but with the nutrient rich and cool water, fish farming and air conditioning can be done, heaving the whole investment to a black zero (or better).
I leave the exercise of finding the link to a Karma-hungry reader.
Maximum transfer rate yes.. performance? no.. SCSI is much higher perofrmance than IDE os SATA. based on the fact that it is a peer- to peer device instead of a master-dumbslave combination.
Assuming normal use (ie, non-RAID, one device), then master-slave/peer-to-peer makes no difference to performance, for obvious reasons. The physical discs themselves are the limiter - the interface has nothing to do with it.
A Drive to drive copy will be much faster with scsi than with IDE or SATA.
How do you figure that out ?
If the two physical drives can sustain 50MB/s, then your "drive to drive copy" is never gonna exceed 50MB/s. You've got 133MB/s to spare on the IDE bus, so your pair of drives aren't being limited by the interface (50MB/s read, 50MB/s write, leaves 33MB/s for overheads).
WRONG!
Quite.
I suggest you go and do some research. There certainly are areas where SCSI performs *much* better than IDE, but you don't seem to know about them.
Our first look at a Serial ATA drive, quite frankly, was a little less than inspiring. That is to say that, even though the SATA 150 standard offers a higher bandwidth interface and those tidy, thin little cables, the performance of the first drive to hit our bench, a Seagate Barracuda V, was about on par with the average ATA100 or ATA133 drive on the market.
Er, what did they expect ?
Internally, the IDE DiamondMax Plus 9 is identical to the SATA one. There's obviously not gonna be any performance difference between a pair of the same drives !
You can't speed a drive up by changing the interface. If they ripped out the IDE electronics, and replaced em with SCSI, it would still be a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9, and would still perform exactly the same.
Out of curiosity, what is the point? Firewire presumably offers comparable performance doesn't it, or is there some compelling reason not to use it such as lower bandwidth or contention issues? And firewire seems to be a standard feature on an increasing number of PCs these days.
Firewire gives a maximum throughput of 400Mb/second (50MB/second), with future versions giving 800Mb/second (100MB/second).
SeialATA gives a maximum throughput of 150MB/second, with future versions giving 300MB/second and then 600MB/second.
SerialATA is MUCH faster. Now granted, modern Hard Drives can't get anywhere near 150MB/second, but one day they will:)
> Amen, brother. I just spent two hours on the phone with a friend who was trying to find the working Windows XP driver for a Linksys 802.11 card.
You clearly don't work in Tech Support! It's never taken me more than a minute with Google and GoogleGroups, to find a suitable driver for any hardware, no matter how obscure.
> Finally, I gave up and told him to email tech support. Turns out that particular card shares a plug and play ID with a card that takes totally different drivers.
So ? Unless you tried to install the other cards drivers (which you wouldn't do, for obvious reasons), then that doesn't affect anything.
> You have to determine the driver you need by looking at markings on the card!
How else can you determine the make and model of a card ?!?!?
> For those of you who have dealt with PnP you know this is a horrible sin. The whole idea of PnP was to let the computer figure this stuff out.
What are you trying to say here ? I agree that two different devices with the same PnP ID is silly, but it doesn't affect anything. Do you think a computer with PnP should automatically go to the LinkSys website, determine what kind of card you've got, and install the appropriate driver ? While this is the case with the WindowsUpdate site, it's obviously not gonna work with 3rd party websites !
Forget about PnP IDs, they're aren't for the end user. All they do is allow Windows to match the driver to the hardware. The driver in question is supplied by YOU. It's upto YOU to find the correct driver for your hardware, using the make and model. All Windows does, is install it - assuming the PnP IDs match.
The p800 is pretty expensive here in the UK. I had a look the other week and it was about £280. I am with Orange and despite spending about $45/£30 a month on my phone they won't give me any discount on it at all. The phone companies need to wise up and discount these new handsets...
Er, where on earth are you buying your phones ?
First site I looked at, sells it for £139.99 on a £30/month tarrif. No doubt it's available cheaper if you hunt around.
Considering it pretty much replaces your PDA, I don't think "the p800 is pretty expensive here in the UK" at all !
> Well, the Audigy 2 (that I pulled from a Dell at work) didn't work properly with SuSE 8.1 or Mandrake 9.1RC2 new installs
If you want to use fancy hardware, does it not occur to you, to choose an OS with decent Hardware Support ? If yours isn't upto the job, then change - there's hardly a shortage of OSs !
> so I yanked it in favor of my onboard AC'97 sound
And you think the two compare ?
I wanted to play Doom III, but I couldn't get my new ATi 9800 working, so I yanked it in favour of my spare GeForce 2 MX....Oh, wait...
> Frankly, a sound card is a sound card.
Is it ?
So they can all encode a Dolby Digital 5.1 stream in hardware (like my nForce 2's onboard Soundstorm), and pipe it to my AV Reciever ?
Please do some research before you post ridiculous blanket statements like that.
> If I want high fidelity, the audigy 2 isn't the answer IMHO.
It's a damn sight closer than the onboard AC'97 that you're now forced to use !
If you don't think the Audigy 2 is a good solution for HiFi sound, then what is ?
"Score:4, Informative" ? Are the mods on crack today ?
The problem with the Sony solution is that the consumer is left in the position of having to set up several subscriptions to different publishers. So, if you have five premium games (some ps2 online games have no subscription model) from five seperate publishers , there are five sets of forms to fill out, five credit checks, and five bills (some monthly, some bimonthly, etc). What a friggin hassle.
Credit Checks ?
So they're excluding the HUGE number of players that are under-18 ? I find that very hard to believe.
Slashdot Mirror
David Foley has posted an official statement on the Ultracade site :
http://www.ultracade.com/mame.pdf
Spot on.
If you're converting the original to Composite or SVideo, then you've already lost a good chunk of it. Even if your capture card was 100% lossless (impossible) then you'd still be able to easily tell.
There is no such thing as a "high quality SVideo". It's not bad, and it's a damn-sight better than Composite - but it's not a patch on a good RGB or Component signal.
If you're capturing with SVideo, then it's EASILY distinguishable from the source ... period.
This is where your argument falls over. You have to be part-blind to be unable to see the difference between a lossless source signal, and one that's been converted to Component or SVideo.
The differentiation is VERY easy !
Of course it does. You get what you pay for.
> The (now $50) PCI capture card in my system will make caps that are indistinguishable from the DVD source (I've done the comparisons in public forums and there was no definitive consensus which was the digital rip and which was analog)
Absolute tosh. The $50 PCI card that you're using, is capturing via Composite or SVideo. These are VERY distinguishable from both the RGB/Component that your DVD player sends to your TV, and the lossless digital signal that you rip into your PC
> And if you cannot tell the difference between the video from a $40 PCI capture card and the absolute shit you get from a $100 USB video port, you really, really, need glasses
Oh dear. If you can't tell the difference between a very poor Composite/SVideo signal, and a top notch RGB/Component signal, then it's you that needs the glasses.
It's irrelevent what interface your capture card uses - if it's not capturing a digital signal (Firewire), then it needs a VERY good analogue signal to get decent results. RGB and Component are your only options - Composite and SVideo simply aren't upto the job.
WOOO!
That was a GREAT ringtone!
You must be one geeeneus of-a-phoneperson, you gotta TEACH ME!
Yeah, you're right. Now all three of those people will probably be very happy !
Considering there's usually somewhere around 3000 people playing it online at any time, that's probably a pretty accurate figure :)
The actual contents of the zero-checksummed sector, is the Region-Code of the disc - SCEE, SCEA, or SCEJ. The PSX first of all checks that the code is present, with a checksum of zero. If it's a Jap machine, it will only continue if the code is SCEJ. If it's a Euro machine, it will only continue if the code is SCEE, and if it's a USA machine, it will only continue if the code is SCEA.
PS1 modchips are very simple PIC chips, that output SCEESCEASCEJ repeatedly. When the PS1 asks the CD-ROM drive for the region code of the disc, it sees the modchip saying SCEESCEASCEJSCEESCEASCEJSCEESCEASCEJ etc. and thinks the disc is valid (because within that string, it sees what it's looking for, be it SCEE, SCEA, or SCEJ). Whether it's a copy or an original, isn't relevent - it disabled the copy protection AND the region code, in one simple step.
Of further interest, is when the first Anti-Modchip games appeared. They simply counted the number of SCEE/SECJ/SCEA recieved. If there was more than one, it knew there was a modchip present, and refused to run. Easily got round by the Stealth Modchips, cos they only outputted the SCEESCEASCEJ string once. You could also fit a switch to your chip, and turn it off as soon as POST had completed, for the same effect.
Lower the volume on the player, so the headphone output level matches a normal line-out level.
> Although the problem I'm having shouldn't be related to that. I imagine my car stereo just isn't installed correctly. If I try to play things from the aux input jack, I hear a lot of weird extra noise that is apparently being picked up from under the hood.
You need a "Ground Loop Isolator" - your local Car Audio store will sell you one for $10
You seem to be unaware that the Headphone-out and a Line-out are exactly the same !
Plug the Headphone socket into the Line-In on your stereo. Set the volume on the player appropriately, and voila.
Um, it already exists, and it's called Bluetooth. I'm using it right now - why aren't you ?
So why on EARTH didn't you buy a Widescreen TV ?
> Flame all you want, but after the first month, approximately 100% of people who watch any movie will be watching it on a T.V., so why the hell wouldn't you design the movie to be seen on that medium?
Precisely. Seeing as about 90% of the TVs sold here in the UK are Widescreen, then it makes sense that movies are shot in Widescreen ! The USA will catch up soon, and if you'd bought a Widescreen TV when you had the chance, you'd be ready.
Er, that's precisely what it's for ! What else would you want to use it for ?
If you need a quick connection, then use 802.11x, together with the HUGE increase in component size and battery drain that it demands - the whole point of Bluetooth is that it's VERY small, and uses VERY little power (so you can put it in just about anything). If you want speed, you're looking at the wrong technology !
Yes, and that reason is that SNES emulators have been around, and in active development, for MANY years, and are heavily optimised. It's not because the GBA is much more advanced.
Try actually using the software, and do a little research on the hardware involved, before you go spouting off based on some news release.
FYI, I've been actively involved in the Emulation scene for about six years now. I'm well aware of what goes into making an emulator, and what affects it's speed. The GBA emulator for GP32, is no different to any of the other emulation milestones (Ultra64, Project Tempest, U64Emu, Impact, and there are MANY more) - they all started off slow and next to useless, to evolve into fast, genuinely useful programs. The initial version has no bearing on the eventual version.
> This thing cannot, repeat CANNOT emulate the GBA. Check the site, there's no mention of this. Even trying it would be stupid - go ahead, run a working GBA emulator on this sort of hardware. Have fun with your 2 frames per second.
http://www.gp32news.com - check the article posted on Monday 21 February 2003 @ 02:59. You obviously have trouble reading, so I'll post you a transcript here :
GBA emu underway, made in France
Yes, gba emu is underway.
Ok it's just a begging, so it only support 4mo roms, no sound, 5-10fps, but for a first private release it's a good start.
The article is followed by three screenshots of Contra Advance.
5-10fps is a very good starting framerate, and with further optimization, it ought to be able to hit full speed. This is standard fare for first-version emulators of/on other systems.
If the GP32 can emulate a SNES at a reasonable speed, why on earth do you assume "2 frames per second" for a GBA emu ? The GBA is a very low-spec machine (similar to a SNES) - you don't need any more than "this sort of hardware" in order to emulate it !
Score:4 ? HA !
It uses about half of the created energy (through a normal Carnot cycle) for pumping (about 120kW). The other half is not quite competetive, but with the nutrient rich and cool water, fish farming and air conditioning can be done, heaving the whole investment to a black zero (or better).
I leave the exercise of finding the link to a Karma-hungry reader.
More info here, and here
And an OTEC history here
Assuming normal use (ie, non-RAID, one device), then master-slave/peer-to-peer makes no difference to performance, for obvious reasons. The physical discs themselves are the limiter - the interface has nothing to do with it.
A Drive to drive copy will be much faster with scsi than with IDE or SATA.
How do you figure that out ?
If the two physical drives can sustain 50MB/s, then your "drive to drive copy" is never gonna exceed 50MB/s. You've got 133MB/s to spare on the IDE bus, so your pair of drives aren't being limited by the interface (50MB/s read, 50MB/s write, leaves 33MB/s for overheads).
WRONG!
Quite.
I suggest you go and do some research. There certainly are areas where SCSI performs *much* better than IDE, but you don't seem to know about them.
Er, what did they expect ? Internally, the IDE DiamondMax Plus 9 is identical to the SATA one. There's obviously not gonna be any performance difference between a pair of the same drives !
You can't speed a drive up by changing the interface. If they ripped out the IDE electronics, and replaced em with SCSI, it would still be a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9, and would still perform exactly the same.
Firewire gives a maximum throughput of 400Mb/second (50MB/second), with future versions giving 800Mb/second (100MB/second). :)
SeialATA gives a maximum throughput of 150MB/second, with future versions giving 300MB/second and then 600MB/second.
SerialATA is MUCH faster. Now granted, modern Hard Drives can't get anywhere near 150MB/second, but one day they will
You clearly don't work in Tech Support! It's never taken me more than a minute with Google and GoogleGroups, to find a suitable driver for any hardware, no matter how obscure.
> Finally, I gave up and told him to email tech support. Turns out that particular card shares a plug and play ID with a card that takes totally different drivers.
So ? Unless you tried to install the other cards drivers (which you wouldn't do, for obvious reasons), then that doesn't affect anything.
> You have to determine the driver you need by looking at markings on the card!
How else can you determine the make and model of a card ?!?!?
> For those of you who have dealt with PnP you know this is a horrible sin. The whole idea of PnP was to let the computer figure this stuff out.
What are you trying to say here ? I agree that two different devices with the same PnP ID is silly, but it doesn't affect anything. Do you think a computer with PnP should automatically go to the LinkSys website, determine what kind of card you've got, and install the appropriate driver ? While this is the case with the WindowsUpdate site, it's obviously not gonna work with 3rd party websites !
Forget about PnP IDs, they're aren't for the end user. All they do is allow Windows to match the driver to the hardware. The driver in question is supplied by YOU. It's upto YOU to find the correct driver for your hardware, using the make and model. All Windows does, is install it - assuming the PnP IDs match.
No, I am not trolling. I would just love to have that phone with a non-Sony specific memory card interface.
Why ?
A quick look at komplett.co.uk, shows that a 64MB Memory Stick only carries a £7 premium over the equivalent MMC. So cost isn't an issue.
A USB 2.0 read-anything (7in1) flash-reader costs less than £20, so compatibility isn't an issue either.
There is more than one Flash Memory format. Live with it.
Er, where on earth are you buying your phones ?
First site I looked at, sells it for £139.99 on a £30/month tarrif. No doubt it's available cheaper if you hunt around.
Considering it pretty much replaces your PDA, I don't think "the p800 is pretty expensive here in the UK" at all !
If you want to use fancy hardware, does it not occur to you, to choose an OS with decent Hardware Support ? If yours isn't upto the job, then change - there's hardly a shortage of OSs !
> so I yanked it in favor of my onboard AC'97 sound
And you think the two compare ?
I wanted to play Doom III, but I couldn't get my new ATi 9800 working, so I yanked it in favour of my spare GeForce 2 MX....Oh, wait...
> Frankly, a sound card is a sound card.
Is it ?
So they can all encode a Dolby Digital 5.1 stream in hardware (like my nForce 2's onboard Soundstorm), and pipe it to my AV Reciever ?
Please do some research before you post ridiculous blanket statements like that.
> If I want high fidelity, the audigy 2 isn't the answer IMHO.
It's a damn sight closer than the onboard AC'97 that you're now forced to use !
If you don't think the Audigy 2 is a good solution for HiFi sound, then what is ?
"Score:4, Informative" ? Are the mods on crack today ?
Credit Checks ?
So they're excluding the HUGE number of players that are under-18 ? I find that very hard to believe.
Which games exactly ? I've run a pair of N64 pads via USB adaptors for a few years now, and never found anything incompatible.