I can't believe how many posts there are at +5 Insightful and +5 Interesting talking about how the owner has had the same problem and whacking their expensive hard drive based player really helps. We used to have monitors with green guns going out that when you whacked them they would come back on, but eventually the gun would stop firing again, and you'd be left with a pinkish screen. Of course, maybe if I tried to sell them here on slashdot to a Rio owner.... I could even include a troubleshooting guide for handling "What to do when my screen turns pink..." you know, just in case!
I don't think it will have a similar capacity. I wouldn't even bet on it being a microsoft product, as that last bastion of journalistic integrity, as the apple turns has a linked story that has a bit more to chew on (but not much more) than the denver post article.
The quote about the $50 players was left out, but it does still contain the 'look and feel' quote, and he is obviously referring to third-party players that will be launched alongside a new microsoft music download service.
What kind of hard drive could a manufacturer possibly put in a player for less than $50 - none, maybe flash 128/256 - but that's already on the market, and has been for some time. Anyway, I choose to believe this to be just more Microsoft FUD until I see such a $50 iPod killer.
So you can't actually answer any of my questions other than to go on a tangental rant?
that tangential rant was directly in answer to your hostile assumption that all future game development for the mac (or any non-windows platform, I guess you mean consoles too) should be canned based on the sucess, or lack thereof, of Sony with EQ Mac. Why not answer the other questions? because they would be better answered by someone who has paid to play and still pays to play than by someone like me who decided there wasn't even enough there to begin with to get me to part with my money. And all of the people who, like me, stayed away, are part of the reason Sony ceased development, which is what puts those who are paying in the position to answer your other questions.
Or to put it more simply: I try to only speak of what I know personally
Thanks for the info!
you're welcome.
Next time rather than ask questions I would like answers to, I will just paste a bunch of random characters and see what kind of responses I get.
you'll let us know how that works out for you? we'll all be waiting with baited breath...
You could have at least tried to argue why you expect updates after a product is released as final. Do you have this expectation? If so, why?
well, since last time you got so offended by me not answering every quesiton you had, I guess I better keep going, eh? For typical software, you purchase a version, and if you want the latest update, you pay the upgrade price. For MMORPG's, new content is one of the reasons to keeping paying that monthly fee, because if there is no new content any game will grow tiring, otherwise we'd all still be playing galaga and ms. pac-man regularly - there would be no need for new development or new content right? Now I'm aware that in EQ world, they try to make you think that your monthly fee is just for bandwidth, so they can get you to pay for new content as an upgrade fee as well, but I don't play that game, I pay for upgrades or I pay monthly fees, but not both - so I prefer a MMORPG like Lineage where the game is free to download, and your monthly fee gets you any and all updates, and yes, when Lineage stops producing new content, I will have the same problem with it that people are complaining about with EQ, but I know my answer won't be to complain to NCSoft, it will be simply to cancel my account, if it's even still active at the time.
Do you have the unreasonable expectation that because one game is cross-platform, all should be? If so, why?
Absolutely not, I just pointed that out as one reason for EQ Mac failing, right up there with segregating the mac server, and being 3 years late to the party, to boot. Of course, it doesn't hurt to be cross-platform, and it usually helps, as I said I might have given it a chance if I thought there would be a healthy community.
Like you said, its just all your opinion. The facts point to a game that didn't sell, and the players claim that it is due, in part, to the random expectation of continued development of a released game.
maybe I'm just slow, but I think that's backwards, the game not selling is what caused sony to halt future updates (which one could reasonably expect by simple observation of sony's behavior on other platforms, as well as the behavior of many other online games) and I think the game didn't sell for the reasons I've already stated (which were oh, so tangential to the discussion, by the way). So I think you characterizing the expectation as *random* is really, well, random.
But hey, thanks for the opinion
really, no thanks needed, but again you're welcome.
but wait, there's more: as per your request... (don't blame me you wanted my answers)
I am not an Evercrackhead, so what are these bugs that just must be fixed?
I am not an Evercrackhead, so I don't know what these bugs are. (wow, aren't you glad I finally answered t
All I see here is another non-Windows game selling poorly, further fueling the economic arguement not to publish titles for non-Windows OS'
So they wasted their money porting a game, that only works with a mac ghetto server, and they expected to make money? I guess that's what they deserve for thinking mac users were dolts who would rush to send them money in droves to be a part of such a phenominally woeful online world.
Damn straight, I didn't buy it. I played EQOA on PS2 for free, but when the beta ended, why the hell would I pay to play there, either - same shit, different hardware. Why should I patronize SOE with their pc-only, mac-only, and console-only segregationist servers, when there are much better choices like Shadowbane, Lineage I (mac-pc), and FFX (ps2-pc), where the clients for mulitple platforms are built to work with the same servers - making it one big happy online world.
Anyway, in this case it's a not an issue of windows game vs non-windows game. It's a matter of segregationist MMORPG vs multi-platform MMORPG. Of course this is all just my opinion, and I can't speak for other mac (or ps2) users, but had EQ Mac been compatible with pc-servers, I would have at least given it a chance...
Since I don't have one of those, I can only install iPhoto 4 and iMovie 4 on my Mac
If you're really determined, you could make disk images on the other mac that has the DVD burner, and then transfer them back to your mac (same way you'd transfer projects over to burn, right). If you have enough disk space to work on iDVD projects, you should have enough to hold a large disk image long enough to install the programs.
+1 Informative, Very well written and informative - I've never had the time nor interest to delve into the inner workings of iPhoto.
This is basic program design. No-one I know would ever write a program like this...
But someone did. And they gave it away for free.
Perhaps you can't call this a "bug", but it is a serious design flaw in the program
You say po-ta-to (serious design flaw), I say po-tat-o (poor algorithm). I really think we agree, here - I never said it shouldn't be improved. I just disagree with the classification "buggy".
But I'm not willing to shell out $50 for iPhoto to work the way it should have in the first place.
And that's the choice we all have to make. You'll save $50 if you can live with the current version of iPhoto, which might net you a free copy of iPhoto 6 (or whatever version is available) if and when you decide to upgrade from your beige g3.
I still say the current version of iPhoto was worth way more than what I paid for it....
that can't view files in any reasonable time-frame, is buggy... a product needs to be improved to live up to its basic promise.
who's the one to decide reasonable and basic promise? Just because Apple didn't put a hard cap on the number of photos you can import into iPhoto doesn't mean they have an obligation to improve performance for anyone who exceedes the program's performance limits.
Apple gave us a free program that hasn't yet stopped working. It has some limitations, sure, but you get what you pay for right? Now you have the choice of keeping what you've currently got, or paying for a better version. Apple's also charging for this new app called GarageBand. Oh, and they're charging for an update to iMovie (which they've done before). Also they're charging for an update to iDVD (which they've done before). Oh, but as you already know instead of charging $29 or more for each of these upgrades/new programs, you can get them all for just $49 ($29 if you're a student) - or just stick with the free versions you've already got.
I will say it again. The latest version if iPhoto, 4.0, is a bug fix release. The most appealing feature of his version is that it fixes a problem that has been present in iPhoto since version 1.0, the ridiculously slow speeds with large photo libraries.
Just a minute... so you're saying poor performance is a bug?
Sweet! My Palm with a 33MHz processor is kinda sluggish, is that a bug? If I write you a simple flat file database, that works flawlessly, but slowly due to using bubble sorts, is that a bug? If I subsequently write an optimized b-tree sort to improve performance of the database, is that a bug fix?
no, it's not.
It is a feature/enhancement as the output of the program is the same, it just gets to the end result faster.
A bug is when something doesn't work properly, not when something works, albeit slowly. While bugs can cause slowness, you'll have a tough time convincing me that iPhoto was sped up by fixing a bug, rather than the more plausable explanation that Apple put serious development effort into rewriting code to use new algorithms and optimizations....
Actually the most disappointing thing I found (at least with our mac setup - which shows how little disappointing it was really) was that IE was on the thingy bar thing by default, and Safari wasn't, shame, I hope that's not true of normal installs.
I wonder if this will change in Panther - I imagine at some point Apple will have to change this, since IE is not being updated anymore. Someone who has access to the Panther betas might be able to shed some light...?
but they also say that the managed version initially ran faster than the native version. After changing some optimization settings, the native version now runs 15% faster than managed.NET code
Anyone else misread that at first to mean they changed optimization settings on the managed code, and now it runs slower than the native version....
I think you have hit the nail on the head - and I agree with you in so many ways. I keep wondering why everyone makes this association between games causing people to be anti-social, when that isn't it at all - in fact, I think it's exactly the opposite. Games are an outlet and are chosen by people who are inherently anti-social. Games are also played by social people as well, just as reading, watching tv and many other activities are enjoyed by social and anti-social people alike.
I am fairly anti-social, so I choose to game, read, watch tv/movies, etc to pass time - these things did not make me anti-social. I do socialize, but it often seems a chore, so I generally do not enjoy it - and I don't imagine the people I talk to do either - except those few who I have a connection with where conversation doesn't seem like a chore at all.
Wow, way to read the rest of the paragraph! I explictly stated that the automatic advance is unavailable on TiVo's.
So tell me, when you said 'That said, TiVo does have these features... kind of.' what exactly did you mean, because the two features that D&M is removing are Commercial Advance and Send Show. Which of those features does a Tivo have...kind of? That's right, neither. I stand by my original statement.
And I still have full trick play capability -- FF, RW, skip back, skip forward, all up to wherever it is in the current buffer
I don't worry how much is buffered, and I use 30-sec skip, 7-sec skip back, and Commercial Advance fine when streaming. I can't remember if I've used FF or RW when streaming as I use it so infrequently - but I'll try it tonight just to satisfy my own curiosity, now.
You can't do that with Replay -- either that or it is using HD space. Pick one.
It's possible it uses temporary space to cache, but like I said, I can skip forward as much as I want when streaming, so it seems more likely that the stream just readjusts as you go - which is why I can't tell you if FF or RW works, cause in my mind's stream readjustment, it just jumps to a new point, but I suppose it could actually stream a FF or RW stream when asked so I don't see why it shouldn't work.
Not to mention one of the other issues with Replay, that it won't record live TV while watching another show.
yeah and a tivo can't pause live tv for more than 30 minutes before it starts playing back automatically - ReplayTV's don't record live tv when on or watching a previously recorded show. But they use any available space for pausing live tv, so I can pause a baseball game and if I don't get right back to it (I get distracted easily) no big deal, my 5160's both probably could stay paused for over 24 hours. You may think I'm joking, but with my original 10-hour ReplayTV, I actually once left a game paused (actually I kept have to re-pause it to do something else) so long, I was 2.5 or 3 hours behind and it finally ran out of space and started playing on me when I wasn't watching it.
Oh, and network problems? CPU load? Non-issues for TiVo. If either recorder on Replay has issues on either one, you may as well forget it since it's all realtime
Yeah, I've had problems, but I know load problems have become rarer over time (I've been a customer from the start), and I expect the network issues (one of my own recent gripes) to get better over time - hopefully the new 5.0 update will help. Also, after a reset of the machine with problems, it takes no time at all to get back into play mode.
Wishlists, advanced searches, filtering by genre, better conflict resolution, and list of shows recorded/not recorded (and why)/deleted
wishlist? do your wishes get passed on to the networks by tivo or is that just a fancy way of saying advanced search? what's advanced - I can search by title, actor, description, or director, as well as other options such as limiting the day of the week. ReplayZones groups shows by genre, the conflict resolution in the new 5.0 update looks pretty good to me. All my recorded shows show up in the ReplayGuide, but I don't have a list of shows not recorded - oh, well.
If you do like MP3s then HMO is worth it for that alone
Yeah, I already said this option was nice, but it'd be nicer if it were included as part of the regular subscription. Until then I'll make do with my iPod and RCA cable (which is an extra cost in itself, but one I'd have even if my replaytv supported mp3 streaming, so I don't count it as an extra cost.)
Your price is also off slightly - an 80 hour TiVo is currently $299, since they just instituted a $50 discount. But that literally happened Monday, so I'd be surprised if you had that info.
Are you surpised that Tivo doesn't have that info either? My original post on monday was straight off the manufacturers'
Actually, it's not just Washington State. It's probably more Foster High School. An ex-girlfriend of mine went there back in the early 90's (she did the community college thing her junior and senior years because the academic programs at FHS were so poor).
Anyway, I showed her the story last night, and she said "Figures. I thought they were morons then, and it seems they haven't changed."
That said, TiVo does have these features... kind of. There's a secret code to turn 30-second skip on
No it doesn't. Commercial Advance is a feature where commercials are skipped automatically without you even pressing a button on the remote. Nothing like that on a Tivo. ReplayTV also has a 30-second skip button on the remote (you don't have to remember some arcane code each time you reset/unplug your ReplayTV, and you don't lose the functionality of one button on your remote to reprogram it to be a 30-second skip button - and on the subject of secret codes/hacks, go look at DVArchive - it blows the doors off any hack I've seen for DVR's thus far and it runs on all platforms to boot!)
Sending a movie across the internet has no equal on a Tivo. In fact, in order to share a movie locally on a Tivo, you have to pay a fee for each Tivo you want to share with - so a minimum of two fees. Not only that, but if I've heard right, you can't just watch a show that's on another Tivo, it has to be sent across the network and stored on the second Tivo's HD taking up 2x the storage.
How does ReplayTV's in-home sharing work? First, no added fees - nothing, nada. Second, choose a show off any ReplayTV in the house and it starts playing instantly. It streams the show as you play it, so you don't have to wait, and it doesn't take up drive space on the second machine.
The next upgrade to the service promises to keep separate markers for each unit so that if I watch half a show in the front room, then decide to finish in the bedroom, I can tell it I want to start from where I left off in the front room. It will allow scheduling a record on any ReplayTV in the house.
they don't have as many features (especially if you get HMO for an additional $99 or $49)
huh? I can think of only 1 feature that Tivo w/HMO has that can't be done on a ReplayTV, that's streaming mp3's. What other features am I missing?
Quick pricing rundown from the tivo and replaytv sites:
Service
TiVo: $299 lifetime or $12.95/mo
ReplayTV: $250 lifetime, $9.95/mo* (after June 16th, $299 lifetime or $12.95/mo)
*customers paying $9.95/mo will only be moved to $12.95/mo if they let their service lapse and then reactivate later
So right now, ReplayTV's are same price as Tivo's w/o HMO and cheaper if you buy the lifetime service, or HMO. After the 16th, They will be $50 more than a Tivo w/o HMO and $50 cheaper than one w/HMO - Maybe I'm not seeing the forest for the trees, but it looks to me like ReplayTV's are competitive in both price and features, even if commercial advance and send show features are removed...
they may not be 'lossy', in the data-compression sense of the word (that's why I said you're technically right), but they are 'lossy' in the sense that they are sampled at a lower rate than is physically and technically possible - we would not have hdcd, sacd, or dvd-audio if it didn't lose 'data' from the live recording. And I'm sure studio master recordings are not generally cd's, just as movie studios don't use dvd as their master recording format.
So, while cd's may not be digitally compressed, they are digitally sampled, which if it can't be called lossy, it can be called 'lossy' - (I can't think of a proper term to describe losing quality via sampling, so 'lossy' it is until you set me straight with a reference to webster - I personally think 'lossy' is an acceptable word for expressing the point, though.)
you could argue every form of music is lossy, including a live band
technically, you are right... but the poster expressed his dislike of 'lossy' formats, and said he would never pay for one.
So tell me, if 128Kbps mp3's are so bad, why aren't we all encoding our mp3's at 640Kbps. It's because somewhere between 128Kbps and 256Kbps, people can't tell the difference between the mp3/aac file and the cd-recording. But never mind that! It's lossy, so it must be worthless...
quick quiz, which is better? (A) a mini-dv recorded video - 640x480 30fps uncompressed, or (B) a high def 1080i/720p compressed 'lossy' video stream....
the high def stream is compressed using a lossy codec, but it looks better... does 'lossy' compression always mean inferior?
Slashdot Mirror
damn, I wish I had mod points...
I can't believe how many posts there are at +5 Insightful and +5 Interesting talking about how the owner has had the same problem and whacking their expensive hard drive based player really helps. We used to have monitors with green guns going out that when you whacked them they would come back on, but eventually the gun would stop firing again, and you'd be left with a pinkish screen. Of course, maybe if I tried to sell them here on slashdot to a Rio owner.... I could even include a troubleshooting guide for handling "What to do when my screen turns pink..." you know, just in case!
Joke all you want, it's all fun and games till someone looses an iPod
...and once that iPod is loose, you better stay out of it's warpath until it loses it's taste for destruction!
I don't think it will have a similar capacity. I wouldn't even bet on it being a microsoft product, as that last bastion of journalistic integrity, as the apple turns has a linked story that has a bit more to chew on (but not much more) than the denver post article.
The quote about the $50 players was left out, but it does still contain the 'look and feel' quote, and he is obviously referring to third-party players that will be launched alongside a new microsoft music download service.
What kind of hard drive could a manufacturer possibly put in a player for less than $50 - none, maybe flash 128/256 - but that's already on the market, and has been for some time. Anyway, I choose to believe this to be just more Microsoft FUD until I see such a $50 iPod killer.
So you can't actually answer any of my questions other than to go on a tangental rant?
that tangential rant was directly in answer to your hostile assumption that all future game development for the mac (or any non-windows platform, I guess you mean consoles too) should be canned based on the sucess, or lack thereof, of Sony with EQ Mac. Why not answer the other questions? because they would be better answered by someone who has paid to play and still pays to play than by someone like me who decided there wasn't even enough there to begin with to get me to part with my money. And all of the people who, like me, stayed away, are part of the reason Sony ceased development, which is what puts those who are paying in the position to answer your other questions.
Or to put it more simply: I try to only speak of what I know personally
Thanks for the info!
you're welcome.
Next time rather than ask questions I would like answers to, I will just paste a bunch of random characters and see what kind of responses I get.
you'll let us know how that works out for you? we'll all be waiting with baited breath...
You could have at least tried to argue why you expect updates after a product is released as final. Do you have this expectation? If so, why?
well, since last time you got so offended by me not answering every quesiton you had, I guess I better keep going, eh? For typical software, you purchase a version, and if you want the latest update, you pay the upgrade price. For MMORPG's, new content is one of the reasons to keeping paying that monthly fee, because if there is no new content any game will grow tiring, otherwise we'd all still be playing galaga and ms. pac-man regularly - there would be no need for new development or new content right? Now I'm aware that in EQ world, they try to make you think that your monthly fee is just for bandwidth, so they can get you to pay for new content as an upgrade fee as well, but I don't play that game, I pay for upgrades or I pay monthly fees, but not both - so I prefer a MMORPG like Lineage where the game is free to download, and your monthly fee gets you any and all updates, and yes, when Lineage stops producing new content, I will have the same problem with it that people are complaining about with EQ, but I know my answer won't be to complain to NCSoft, it will be simply to cancel my account, if it's even still active at the time.
Do you have the unreasonable expectation that because one game is cross-platform, all should be? If so, why?
Absolutely not, I just pointed that out as one reason for EQ Mac failing, right up there with segregating the mac server, and being 3 years late to the party, to boot. Of course, it doesn't hurt to be cross-platform, and it usually helps, as I said I might have given it a chance if I thought there would be a healthy community.
Like you said, its just all your opinion. The facts point to a game that didn't sell, and the players claim that it is due, in part, to the random expectation of continued development of a released game.
maybe I'm just slow, but I think that's backwards, the game not selling is what caused sony to halt future updates (which one could reasonably expect by simple observation of sony's behavior on other platforms, as well as the behavior of many other online games) and I think the game didn't sell for the reasons I've already stated (which were oh, so tangential to the discussion, by the way). So I think you characterizing the expectation as *random* is really, well, random.
But hey, thanks for the opinion
really, no thanks needed, but again you're welcome.
but wait, there's more: as per your request... (don't blame me you wanted my answers)
I am not an Evercrackhead, so what are these bugs that just must be fixed?
I am not an Evercrackhead, so I don't know what these bugs are. (wow, aren't you glad I finally answered t
Why do mac users play on a different server?
because that's what sony decided would be best for us (and their pocketbook).
I don't get it.
yeah most mac users put 2 and 2 together and decided not to, either...
I think its pretty safe to say, that if you are serious about playing games, you are better off with a PC than a Mac.
I think it's pretty safe to say, that if you are serious about playing games, you are better off with a console than a PC or Mac.
All I see here is another non-Windows game selling poorly, further fueling the economic arguement not to publish titles for non-Windows OS'
So they wasted their money porting a game, that only works with a mac ghetto server, and they expected to make money? I guess that's what they deserve for thinking mac users were dolts who would rush to send them money in droves to be a part of such a phenominally woeful online world.
Damn straight, I didn't buy it. I played EQOA on PS2 for free, but when the beta ended, why the hell would I pay to play there, either - same shit, different hardware. Why should I patronize SOE with their pc-only, mac-only, and console-only segregationist servers, when there are much better choices like Shadowbane, Lineage I (mac-pc), and FFX (ps2-pc), where the clients for mulitple platforms are built to work with the same servers - making it one big happy online world.
Anyway, in this case it's a not an issue of windows game vs non-windows game. It's a matter of segregationist MMORPG vs multi-platform MMORPG. Of course this is all just my opinion, and I can't speak for other mac (or ps2) users, but had EQ Mac been compatible with pc-servers, I would have at least given it a chance...
Since I don't have one of those, I can only install iPhoto 4 and iMovie 4 on my Mac
If you're really determined, you could make disk images on the other mac that has the DVD burner, and then transfer them back to your mac (same way you'd transfer projects over to burn, right). If you have enough disk space to work on iDVD projects, you should have enough to hold a large disk image long enough to install the programs.
where there is a will, there is a way....
+1 Informative, Very well written and informative - I've never had the time nor interest to delve into the inner workings of iPhoto.
This is basic program design. No-one I know would ever write a program like this...
But someone did. And they gave it away for free.
Perhaps you can't call this a "bug", but it is a serious design flaw in the program
You say po-ta-to (serious design flaw), I say po-tat-o (poor algorithm). I really think we agree, here - I never said it shouldn't be improved. I just disagree with the classification "buggy".
But I'm not willing to shell out $50 for iPhoto to work the way it should have in the first place.
And that's the choice we all have to make. You'll save $50 if you can live with the current version of iPhoto, which might net you a free copy of iPhoto 6 (or whatever version is available) if and when you decide to upgrade from your beige g3.
I still say the current version of iPhoto was worth way more than what I paid for it....
that can't view files in any reasonable time-frame, is buggy... a product needs to be improved to live up to its basic promise.
who's the one to decide reasonable and basic promise? Just because Apple didn't put a hard cap on the number of photos you can import into iPhoto doesn't mean they have an obligation to improve performance for anyone who exceedes the program's performance limits.
Apple gave us a free program that hasn't yet stopped working. It has some limitations, sure, but you get what you pay for right? Now you have the choice of keeping what you've currently got, or paying for a better version. Apple's also charging for this new app called GarageBand. Oh, and they're charging for an update to iMovie (which they've done before). Also they're charging for an update to iDVD (which they've done before). Oh, but as you already know instead of charging $29 or more for each of these upgrades/new programs, you can get them all for just $49 ($29 if you're a student) - or just stick with the free versions you've already got.
I will say it again. The latest version if iPhoto, 4.0, is a bug fix release. The most appealing feature of his version is that it fixes a problem that has been present in iPhoto since version 1.0, the ridiculously slow speeds with large photo libraries.
... so you're saying poor performance is a bug?
Just a minute
Sweet! My Palm with a 33MHz processor is kinda sluggish, is that a bug? If I write you a simple flat file database, that works flawlessly, but slowly due to using bubble sorts, is that a bug? If I subsequently write an optimized b-tree sort to improve performance of the database, is that a bug fix?
no, it's not.
It is a feature/enhancement as the output of the program is the same, it just gets to the end result faster.
A bug is when something doesn't work properly, not when something works, albeit slowly. While bugs can cause slowness, you'll have a tough time convincing me that iPhoto was sped up by fixing a bug, rather than the more plausable explanation that Apple put serious development effort into rewriting code to use new algorithms and optimizations....
You are off by a year. The new millenium and century started on January 1, 2000.
Huh? Just exactly what kind of a geek are you? Someone revoke his slashdot geek credentials, quick!
Thus I find it interesting that the author of Path Finder, Steve Gehrman, has not yet come forward with a statement.
Huh?
Actually the most disappointing thing I found (at least with our mac setup - which shows how little disappointing it was really) was that IE was on the thingy bar thing by default, and Safari wasn't, shame, I hope that's not true of normal installs.
I wonder if this will change in Panther - I imagine at some point Apple will have to change this, since IE is not being updated anymore. Someone who has access to the Panther betas might be able to shed some light...?
I was hoping he'd change it to "i'm sitting here naked and petrified..." though. We can but hope...
"We" can hope? Be very careful what you wish for, and please stop including the rest of us in those dreams!
I wouldn't use microsoft software unless they offered to pay me $1000! Oh, wait a minute.... crap!
but they also say that the managed version initially ran faster than the native version. After changing some optimization settings, the native version now runs 15% faster than managed .NET code
Anyone else misread that at first to mean they changed optimization settings on the managed code, and now it runs slower than the native version....
I think you have hit the nail on the head - and I agree with you in so many ways. I keep wondering why everyone makes this association between games causing people to be anti-social, when that isn't it at all - in fact, I think it's exactly the opposite. Games are an outlet and are chosen by people who are inherently anti-social. Games are also played by social people as well, just as reading, watching tv and many other activities are enjoyed by social and anti-social people alike.
I am fairly anti-social, so I choose to game, read, watch tv/movies, etc to pass time - these things did not make me anti-social. I do socialize, but it often seems a chore, so I generally do not enjoy it - and I don't imagine the people I talk to do either - except those few who I have a connection with where conversation doesn't seem like a chore at all.
There is nothing wrong with being anti-social.
Wow, way to read the rest of the paragraph! I explictly stated that the automatic advance is unavailable on TiVo's.
So tell me, when you said 'That said, TiVo does have these features... kind of.' what exactly did you mean, because the two features that D&M is removing are Commercial Advance and Send Show. Which of those features does a Tivo have...kind of? That's right, neither. I stand by my original statement.
And I still have full trick play capability -- FF, RW, skip back, skip forward, all up to wherever it is in the current buffer
I don't worry how much is buffered, and I use 30-sec skip, 7-sec skip back, and Commercial Advance fine when streaming. I can't remember if I've used FF or RW when streaming as I use it so infrequently - but I'll try it tonight just to satisfy my own curiosity, now.
You can't do that with Replay -- either that or it is using HD space. Pick one.
It's possible it uses temporary space to cache, but like I said, I can skip forward as much as I want when streaming, so it seems more likely that the stream just readjusts as you go - which is why I can't tell you if FF or RW works, cause in my mind's stream readjustment, it just jumps to a new point, but I suppose it could actually stream a FF or RW stream when asked so I don't see why it shouldn't work.
Not to mention one of the other issues with Replay, that it won't record live TV while watching another show.
yeah and a tivo can't pause live tv for more than 30 minutes before it starts playing back automatically - ReplayTV's don't record live tv when on or watching a previously recorded show. But they use any available space for pausing live tv, so I can pause a baseball game and if I don't get right back to it (I get distracted easily) no big deal, my 5160's both probably could stay paused for over 24 hours. You may think I'm joking, but with my original 10-hour ReplayTV, I actually once left a game paused (actually I kept have to re-pause it to do something else) so long, I was 2.5 or 3 hours behind and it finally ran out of space and started playing on me when I wasn't watching it.
Oh, and network problems? CPU load? Non-issues for TiVo. If either recorder on Replay has issues on either one, you may as well forget it since it's all realtime
Yeah, I've had problems, but I know load problems have become rarer over time (I've been a customer from the start), and I expect the network issues (one of my own recent gripes) to get better over time - hopefully the new 5.0 update will help. Also, after a reset of the machine with problems, it takes no time at all to get back into play mode.
Wishlists, advanced searches, filtering by genre, better conflict resolution, and list of shows recorded/not recorded (and why)/deleted
wishlist? do your wishes get passed on to the networks by tivo or is that just a fancy way of saying advanced search? what's advanced - I can search by title, actor, description, or director, as well as other options such as limiting the day of the week. ReplayZones groups shows by genre, the conflict resolution in the new 5.0 update looks pretty good to me. All my recorded shows show up in the ReplayGuide, but I don't have a list of shows not recorded - oh, well.
If you do like MP3s then HMO is worth it for that alone
Yeah, I already said this option was nice, but it'd be nicer if it were included as part of the regular subscription. Until then I'll make do with my iPod and RCA cable (which is an extra cost in itself, but one I'd have even if my replaytv supported mp3 streaming, so I don't count it as an extra cost.)
Your price is also off slightly - an 80 hour TiVo is currently $299, since they just instituted a $50 discount. But that literally happened Monday, so I'd be surprised if you had that info.
Are you surpised that Tivo doesn't have that info either? My original post on monday was straight off the manufacturers'
It's Washington state.
Actually, it's not just Washington State. It's probably more Foster High School. An ex-girlfriend of mine went there back in the early 90's (she did the community college thing her junior and senior years because the academic programs at FHS were so poor).
Anyway, I showed her the story last night, and she said "Figures. I thought they were morons then, and it seems they haven't changed."
That said, TiVo does have these features... kind of. There's a secret code to turn 30-second skip on
No it doesn't. Commercial Advance is a feature where commercials are skipped automatically without you even pressing a button on the remote. Nothing like that on a Tivo. ReplayTV also has a 30-second skip button on the remote (you don't have to remember some arcane code each time you reset/unplug your ReplayTV, and you don't lose the functionality of one button on your remote to reprogram it to be a 30-second skip button - and on the subject of secret codes/hacks, go look at DVArchive - it blows the doors off any hack I've seen for DVR's thus far and it runs on all platforms to boot!)
Sending a movie across the internet has no equal on a Tivo. In fact, in order to share a movie locally on a Tivo, you have to pay a fee for each Tivo you want to share with - so a minimum of two fees. Not only that, but if I've heard right, you can't just watch a show that's on another Tivo, it has to be sent across the network and stored on the second Tivo's HD taking up 2x the storage.
How does ReplayTV's in-home sharing work? First, no added fees - nothing, nada. Second, choose a show off any ReplayTV in the house and it starts playing instantly. It streams the show as you play it, so you don't have to wait, and it doesn't take up drive space on the second machine.
The next upgrade to the service promises to keep separate markers for each unit so that if I watch half a show in the front room, then decide to finish in the bedroom, I can tell it I want to start from where I left off in the front room. It will allow scheduling a record on any ReplayTV in the house.
they don't have as many features (especially if you get HMO for an additional $99 or $49)
huh? I can think of only 1 feature that Tivo w/HMO has that can't be done on a ReplayTV, that's streaming mp3's. What other features am I missing?
Quick pricing rundown from the tivo and replaytv sites:
Service
TiVo: $299 lifetime or $12.95/mo
ReplayTV: $250 lifetime, $9.95/mo* (after June 16th, $299 lifetime or $12.95/mo)
*customers paying $9.95/mo will only be moved to $12.95/mo if they let their service lapse and then reactivate later
Units
40 hour: Tivo, $249 - ReplayTV $299 ($50 rebate thru 6/15)
80 hour: Tivo, $349 - ReplayTV $399 ($50 rebate thru 6/15)
160 hour: Tivo, n/a - ReplayTV $499 ($50 rebate thru 6/15)
Refurb: Tivo 80hr $249 - ReplayTV 40hr w/lifetime activation $329
HMO: Tivo, $99 - ReplayTV, included free
So right now, ReplayTV's are same price as Tivo's w/o HMO and cheaper if you buy the lifetime service, or HMO. After the 16th, They will be $50 more than a Tivo w/o HMO and $50 cheaper than one w/HMO - Maybe I'm not seeing the forest for the trees, but it looks to me like ReplayTV's are competitive in both price and features, even if commercial advance and send show features are removed...
Umm, wrong? The 30 second skip isn't that useful, nor is commercial skip. Neither works all that well.
play with them a while and you'll see they are better than you realize - of course you'd have to dump your tivo and buy a replay tv to do that, right?
Tivo has it right - you just hit FF three times, wait a few sconds, and hit play. Commercials skipped within about 3 seconds.
yeah, cause Replay TV doesn't have 20x fast forward... oh, wait...
My friend has a copy of MGS2:Substance that says "Only on X-Box"
unless it's bungie, that phrase means "Only on X-Box for about 6 months, then if it sold well, it will be ported" (see: Splinter Cell)
I wasn't sure if CDs somehow really were lossy
they may not be 'lossy', in the data-compression sense of the word (that's why I said you're technically right), but they are 'lossy' in the sense that they are sampled at a lower rate than is physically and technically possible - we would not have hdcd, sacd, or dvd-audio if it didn't lose 'data' from the live recording. And I'm sure studio master recordings are not generally cd's, just as movie studios don't use dvd as their master recording format.
So, while cd's may not be digitally compressed, they are digitally sampled, which if it can't be called lossy, it can be called 'lossy' - (I can't think of a proper term to describe losing quality via sampling, so 'lossy' it is until you set me straight with a reference to webster - I personally think 'lossy' is an acceptable word for expressing the point, though.)
you could argue every form of music is lossy, including a live band
technically, you are right... but the poster expressed his dislike of 'lossy' formats, and said he would never pay for one.
So tell me, if 128Kbps mp3's are so bad, why aren't we all encoding our mp3's at 640Kbps. It's because somewhere between 128Kbps and 256Kbps, people can't tell the difference between the mp3/aac file and the cd-recording. But never mind that! It's lossy, so it must be worthless...
quick quiz, which is better? (A) a mini-dv recorded video - 640x480 30fps uncompressed, or (B) a high def 1080i/720p compressed 'lossy' video stream....
the high def stream is compressed using a lossy codec, but it looks better... does 'lossy' compression always mean inferior?