I'm looking for something to use my powerbook as an LCD TV. There's a huge selection of tuner and capture devices for the PC but very few for the mac. I don't really need a tuner since my only input will be a satellite dish (composite), so how is this Pyro A/V link for watching TV? It should go without saying that I don't want to have to record the content to watch later (though having the option to do that is of course a big plus)
Do you have a PVR? Would you say a PVR or DVD is the more direct replacement for the VCR?
The article is total BS
on
The VHS is Dead
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I read that article yesterday. It basically says the DVD player has replaced the VCR. They aren't directly comparable products. The VCR's main selling point is it allows you to record TV content to watch at another time. The DVD's main selling point is it allows you to watch pre-recorded content.
The VCR originally beat the laserdisc (and destroyed RCA in the process) because people wanted the ability to record. PVRs or set-top DVD-Rs might be the eventual downfall of the VCR but the current DVD players sure aren't.
The article even has a summary of the VCR that talks about how people loved the ability to record. Apparently, the author's microscopic mind couldn't make the connection that DVD players don't have that ability yet.
The CD player also didn't replace the cassette deck. They lived as complimentry products for many years until mass CD-Rs and mp3 players took over the cassette's market.
Jason ProfQuotes
Frankly I just can't understand the "I don't wanna pay a monthly fee" argument coming from any but the most light-weight players.
This "argument" seems to only exist in your head and other appologists for the MMORPG companies.
I haven't seen anyone here or other places complain about the monthly fee expept for the few who say they'd like to play it a little bit but not enough to justify the monthly fee.
What a lot of people have a problem with is paying the $50 up front for what is essentially a piece of client software for a server. It's like an activation fee. The $15/month is easily justified, there is just no excuse for the $50.
All it does is deter people away from signing up and paying them the $15/month that is their bread and butter. When I was in school and moving every 4 months (co-op program), I paid the telephone company's $50 activation fee twice. Then I smartened up and bought a cell-phone, which factoring in the savings of $50 every 4 months was actually cheaper than a landline. This was 10 years ago when cell phones were still pretty expensive. Now I still refuse to have anything to do with the land-line phone company, so they've lost 10 years of revenue from me. They're also one of the two satellite TV carriers in Canada, and it's because of the phone activation fee that my satellite sevice for the last 6 years has been with the other carrier. So far, they have lost about $7,000 in revenue from me because of one stupid activation fee.
You're right it is insanely expensive for what you get, but if you notice the other responses on the thread, they aren't charging more than the market will bear. If people are willing to pay it, you can't fault the company for charging it:)
Having used iTunes as playback software on my powerbook and having loaded music into my MD player over the netMD interface, I really can't imagine synching music to the iPod is any easier than to the MD player.
I look at it from a slightly different direction. With the MD player I have 50 hours of playback time in my pocket as well has 500 tracks. Adding to that 50 hours is easy by carrying a few extra AA batteries. You can also get AA's anywhere when you're travelling.
What good is 10,000 tracks in your pocket when your 10 hour battery will only let you listen to 200 of them?
To me the fact that I can change the media with extra discs in my special-bag-for-my-media-player is just icing on the cake. The cake is the standard batteries.
I don't want to have to remember to charge my media player every day so I'll be able to use it the next day, and I want a lot more than 10 hours of play time off a charge. There are days when I listen to my MD player for more than 10 hours.
I know there's a lot of people here complaining about the cost of batteries, but come on, alkaline AA's are 40 cents, that's under 1 cent/hour for playback. Over the life of the thing you'll spend less than the difference in price between the minidisc player and the iPod. That also assumes you won't be keeping the iPod more than a few years or you'll have to spend $100 on a battery replacement.
If the iPod took a single AA battery like the MD player, got the same life out of it, and were no bigger than the MD player, I'd have bought one long ago.
This article takes a very narrow view. What about the Mini Disc players. The new HD-MD format has a 1 gig disc that costs $7. 7 bucks for a 1 gig removable media alone should give this line of players a huge boost over most mp3 players. Add in the battery life (40-50 hours on a single AA), and it becomes a great option. Hardware prices start well below the price iPod mini too.
My extra bandwidth usage for the 12 hours since I posted it was only about 1 gig, hardly getting squished in a stampede:). I think the only sites that have a problem with slashdotting are people running it at home on their cable modem or university connection.
I'm just curious why someone modded me off topic, especially since it's an ad-free site to what I think is a generous service.
It's a bloated spywarefilled piece of crap and has been since version 3. I'm still running 2.91. It's funny because every time I run it, it says there's a critical security flaw in version's 3 to 5 and I should upgrade. It's an mp3 player, how can it have critical secuity flaws? That very neatly draws the line of exactly where it died.
Excellent post. I signed up for netflix in May and I've been watched a lot of the TV shows from the past few years I haven't bothered to see when they were first run.
Switching between commerical-free DVDs I was really surprised by how big a difference it makes. Now I can't stand TV commercials. I've cut my satellite service back to the minimum (and I will cancel entirely eventually) and I've upped my netflix level. There's even shows on first-run now that I'm deliberately not watching until they come out on DVD and I can enjoy them properly.
The commercials are bad, but what I find much, much worse is those station logos, especially when they animate and have sound over the show. Even if there were free ad-free TV, I still wouldn't watch it if it still had those station logos. A lot of stations even put ads for other shows or later showings of the same show you're watching on the screen interrupting the current show.
TV just isn't worth it, the ads are so bad, I'd rather have no TV than TV with commercials.
Who said anything about hybrids? Use more fuel per km = polute more = pay more tax....It has nothing to do with "measured" gas mileage; that's exactly the point.
prosecutors throughout the country now worry about juries that refuse to accept eyewitness accounts or even outright confessions
So prosecutors are worried that juries will not be ignorant and give them easy guilty pleas when the accused might be innocent.
Instead, the juries will be more intelligent and demand a better level of proof. Of course prosecutors are against that, it forces them to actually do their job instead of BS and hide the facts. For the rest of use this sounds like a very good thing.
I don't think it is very common, but it should be and I applaud ScrewMaster's efforts to find an installer do it that way.
I can't think of any disadvantages except wasted HD space in duplicating DLLs, but with HD space being under 50 cents/gig, that's not much of a drawback.
There are lots of advantages to a single self-contained program. It's easier to get things to work without worrying about DLL versions, installing one program breaking another, and corrupting the registry. It's also a lot easier to keep your file system organized and prevent junk files from accumulating because you know what everything is for.
Where did I say I had anything against Vivendi or that they were evil (well as a Canadian I'm a bit pissed about that whole Seagram's thing, but not enough to hold it against Vivendi)? I said I wouldn't buy any software rendered defective by product activation.
I also never said I wouldn't buy a game that can only be played online. WoW is a monthly service, you pay a monthly fee to connect to that service, and you actually get something for that money besides permission to play software you've already paid for. HL2 is not a service, and yet you can only play that on your own computer with the permission of the company even though you've paid for it.
You mean once it's been authenticated to activate, you can install it on a completely different computer 2 years later without the need to ask for permission again? As far as I'm concerned if the product doesn't allow you to freely re-install it on different hardware, it's defective beyond use. You know, if I had a bit more time on my hands, I might just buy HL2 so I can sue Valve in small-claims court.
The poster meant it will have one executable that is the whole program. Not one installer file. He wants a set up where there is no DLL crap all over the system and directories full of file, registry edits, etc.
It is much better to just have a single file (that's how the Mac does it), it's makes everything so much simpler and you don't have bloat blogging down the system from junk you thought you'd deleted a year ago.
1) With all the worms floating around it's not that unreasonable for someone to have their main computer with all the best hardware and financial apps not connected to the internet with a secondary one that's not fast enough to run HL2 as an internet terminal. I know I'd do that if I had any data on my machine that I was too concerned about.
3) show me where this is in the contract *and* where this patch is held in the care of an arbitrage service. Because if those 2 things aren't meant, I can guarantee with 100% certainty that Valve will not release any such patch.
That's okay though because there will be cracks. But my opinion on that is if you're going to crack it later (which will be software piracy) why not crack it now and save yourself the $50? I'm usually against software piracy, but personally I hope this is the most pirated piece of software since windows and the company loses most of what they spent developing it.
This is still Completely true. They are not charging any extra fees for Steam.
You think they should charge extra for crippling the software? If I break both your legs will you be happy because I didn't charge you for the service? If anything they shouldn't charge more than $5 for this game with activation because all you're buying is a limited window in which to play it. I doubt I'd even pay $5 under those terms though. I've been looking forward to this game almost as much as WoW. I would have bought it in a second and probably even paid the $90 for the collectors edition, but I won't get it at all.
You would rather be forced to never play the game again in 2 years after paying full price for it (unless you're willing to pirate it even though you've paid for it)? It seems like an easy choice to me.
I said I was willing to pay a monthly fee for a game that was an online service while I was not willing to use a software activation product.
You said it follows from this that I'm using a pirated copy of windowsXP. If I'm using XP follows from what I said, then XP must require a monthly fee because I sure wouldn't be using it if it requires activation.
In fact I am using win2k, and I will switch to the mac when windows is eol'd.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm looking for something to use my powerbook as an LCD TV. There's a huge selection of tuner and capture devices for the PC but very few for the mac. I don't really need a tuner since my only input will be a satellite dish (composite), so how is this Pyro A/V link for watching TV? It should go without saying that I don't want to have to record the content to watch later (though having the option to do that is of course a big plus)
Do you have a PVR? Would you say a PVR or DVD is the more direct replacement for the VCR?
I read that article yesterday. It basically says the DVD player has replaced the VCR. They aren't directly comparable products. The VCR's main selling point is it allows you to record TV content to watch at another time. The DVD's main selling point is it allows you to watch pre-recorded content.
The VCR originally beat the laserdisc (and destroyed RCA in the process) because people wanted the ability to record. PVRs or set-top DVD-Rs might be the eventual downfall of the VCR but the current DVD players sure aren't.
The article even has a summary of the VCR that talks about how people loved the ability to record. Apparently, the author's microscopic mind couldn't make the connection that DVD players don't have that ability yet.
The CD player also didn't replace the cassette deck. They lived as complimentry products for many years until mass CD-Rs and mp3 players took over the cassette's market. Jason
ProfQuotes
Frankly I just can't understand the "I don't wanna pay a monthly fee" argument coming from any but the most light-weight players.
This "argument" seems to only exist in your head and other appologists for the MMORPG companies.
I haven't seen anyone here or other places complain about the monthly fee expept for the few who say they'd like to play it a little bit but not enough to justify the monthly fee.
What a lot of people have a problem with is paying the $50 up front for what is essentially a piece of client software for a server. It's like an activation fee. The $15/month is easily justified, there is just no excuse for the $50.
All it does is deter people away from signing up and paying them the $15/month that is their bread and butter. When I was in school and moving every 4 months (co-op program), I paid the telephone company's $50 activation fee twice. Then I smartened up and bought a cell-phone, which factoring in the savings of $50 every 4 months was actually cheaper than a landline. This was 10 years ago when cell phones were still pretty expensive. Now I still refuse to have anything to do with the land-line phone company, so they've lost 10 years of revenue from me. They're also one of the two satellite TV carriers in Canada, and it's because of the phone activation fee that my satellite sevice for the last 6 years has been with the other carrier. So far, they have lost about $7,000 in revenue from me because of one stupid activation fee.
You're right it is insanely expensive for what you get, but if you notice the other responses on the thread, they aren't charging more than the market will bear. If people are willing to pay it, you can't fault the company for charging it :)
Once again, what good is 40gig of music storage if the batteries only last a few hours?
Having used iTunes as playback software on my powerbook and having loaded music into my MD player over the netMD interface, I really can't imagine synching music to the iPod is any easier than to the MD player.
I look at it from a slightly different direction. With the MD player I have 50 hours of playback time in my pocket as well has 500 tracks. Adding to that 50 hours is easy by carrying a few extra AA batteries. You can also get AA's anywhere when you're travelling.
What good is 10,000 tracks in your pocket when your 10 hour battery will only let you listen to 200 of them?
To me the fact that I can change the media with extra discs in my special-bag-for-my-media-player is just icing on the cake. The cake is the standard batteries.
I don't want to have to remember to charge my media player every day so I'll be able to use it the next day, and I want a lot more than 10 hours of play time off a charge. There are days when I listen to my MD player for more than 10 hours.
I know there's a lot of people here complaining about the cost of batteries, but come on, alkaline AA's are 40 cents, that's under 1 cent/hour for playback. Over the life of the thing you'll spend less than the difference in price between the minidisc player and the iPod. That also assumes you won't be keeping the iPod more than a few years or you'll have to spend $100 on a battery replacement.
If the iPod took a single AA battery like the MD player, got the same life out of it, and were no bigger than the MD player, I'd have bought one long ago.
This article takes a very narrow view. What about the Mini Disc players. The new HD-MD format has a 1 gig disc that costs $7. 7 bucks for a 1 gig removable media alone should give this line of players a huge boost over most mp3 players. Add in the battery life (40-50 hours on a single AA), and it becomes a great option. Hardware prices start well below the price iPod mini too.
Jason
ProfQuotes
There is no way gasoline will give you stomach cancer.
It will kill you long before a cancer could develop.
My extra bandwidth usage for the 12 hours since I posted it was only about 1 gig, hardly getting squished in a stampede :). I think the only sites that have a problem with slashdotting are people running it at home on their cable modem or university connection.
I'm just curious why someone modded me off topic, especially since it's an ad-free site to what I think is a generous service.
Last month the WiredCD and this month another novel idea.
:) )
(do I get bonus points for an on-topic link to a site I host?
Jason
ProfQuotes
It's a bloated spywarefilled piece of crap and has been since version 3. I'm still running 2.91. It's funny because every time I run it, it says there's a critical security flaw in version's 3 to 5 and I should upgrade. It's an mp3 player, how can it have critical secuity flaws? That very neatly draws the line of exactly where it died.
Excellent post. I signed up for netflix in May and I've been watched a lot of the TV shows from the past few years I haven't bothered to see when they were first run.
Switching between commerical-free DVDs I was really surprised by how big a difference it makes. Now I can't stand TV commercials. I've cut my satellite service back to the minimum (and I will cancel entirely eventually) and I've upped my netflix level. There's even shows on first-run now that I'm deliberately not watching until they come out on DVD and I can enjoy them properly.
The commercials are bad, but what I find much, much worse is those station logos, especially when they animate and have sound over the show. Even if there were free ad-free TV, I still wouldn't watch it if it still had those station logos. A lot of stations even put ads for other shows or later showings of the same show you're watching on the screen interrupting the current show.
TV just isn't worth it, the ads are so bad, I'd rather have no TV than TV with commercials.
Who said anything about hybrids? Use more fuel per km = polute more = pay more tax....It has nothing to do with "measured" gas mileage; that's exactly the point.
prosecutors throughout the country now worry about juries that refuse to accept eyewitness accounts or even outright confessions
So prosecutors are worried that juries will not be ignorant and give them easy guilty pleas when the accused might be innocent.
Instead, the juries will be more intelligent and demand a better level of proof. Of course prosecutors are against that, it forces them to actually do their job instead of BS and hide the facts. For the rest of use this sounds like a very good thing.
Witnesses lie, confessions can be forced.
Jason
ProfQuotes
That's always the way; every copy protection scheme is cracked, usually within days, so it only hurts the legitimate users.
Can you sell the game (transfer you license)? ... Nope
... Nope
Can you install the software after Valve goes out of business (it will happen with crap like this)
"The horror" is right.
I don't think it is very common, but it should be and I applaud ScrewMaster's efforts to find an installer do it that way.
I can't think of any disadvantages except wasted HD space in duplicating DLLs, but with HD space being under 50 cents/gig, that's not much of a drawback.
There are lots of advantages to a single self-contained program. It's easier to get things to work without worrying about DLL versions, installing one program breaking another, and corrupting the registry. It's also a lot easier to keep your file system organized and prevent junk files from accumulating because you know what everything is for.
Where did I say I had anything against Vivendi or that they were evil (well as a Canadian I'm a bit pissed about that whole Seagram's thing, but not enough to hold it against Vivendi)? I said I wouldn't buy any software rendered defective by product activation.
I also never said I wouldn't buy a game that can only be played online. WoW is a monthly service, you pay a monthly fee to connect to that service, and you actually get something for that money besides permission to play software you've already paid for. HL2 is not a service, and yet you can only play that on your own computer with the permission of the company even though you've paid for it.
You mean once it's been authenticated to activate, you can install it on a completely different computer 2 years later without the need to ask for permission again? As far as I'm concerned if the product doesn't allow you to freely re-install it on different hardware, it's defective beyond use. You know, if I had a bit more time on my hands, I might just buy HL2 so I can sue Valve in small-claims court.
The poster meant it will have one executable that is the whole program. Not one installer file. He wants a set up where there is no DLL crap all over the system and directories full of file, registry edits, etc.
It is much better to just have a single file (that's how the Mac does it), it's makes everything so much simpler and you don't have bloat blogging down the system from junk you thought you'd deleted a year ago.
1) With all the worms floating around it's not that unreasonable for someone to have their main computer with all the best hardware and financial apps not connected to the internet with a secondary one that's not fast enough to run HL2 as an internet terminal. I know I'd do that if I had any data on my machine that I was too concerned about.
3) show me where this is in the contract *and* where this patch is held in the care of an arbitrage service. Because if those 2 things aren't meant, I can guarantee with 100% certainty that Valve will not release any such patch.
That's okay though because there will be cracks. But my opinion on that is if you're going to crack it later (which will be software piracy) why not crack it now and save yourself the $50? I'm usually against software piracy, but personally I hope this is the most pirated piece of software since windows and the company loses most of what they spent developing it.
This is still Completely true. They are not charging any extra fees for Steam.
You think they should charge extra for crippling the software? If I break both your legs will you be happy because I didn't charge you for the service? If anything they shouldn't charge more than $5 for this game with activation because all you're buying is a limited window in which to play it. I doubt I'd even pay $5 under those terms though. I've been looking forward to this game almost as much as WoW. I would have bought it in a second and probably even paid the $90 for the collectors edition, but I won't get it at all.
You would rather be forced to never play the game again in 2 years after paying full price for it (unless you're willing to pirate it even though you've paid for it)? It seems like an easy choice to me.
I said I was willing to pay a monthly fee for a game that was an online service while I was not willing to use a software activation product.
You said it follows from this that I'm using a pirated copy of windowsXP. If I'm using XP follows from what I said, then XP must require a monthly fee because I sure wouldn't be using it if it requires activation.
In fact I am using win2k, and I will switch to the mac when windows is eol'd.