Actually, I didn't know a lot of that. Thanks for posting it.
I did, in general, know there are ways to find out about quality. Using the grandparent post, for example, I already knew that a full movie of only 700MB is clearly not standard HD compression and will not look as good. But using my example, I would also know that it's common to screw up a rip, and even if the ripper was being 100% honest he could be making the rip much lower quality than he intended. Not everyone has the ear or eye for quality. Lots of people think 128KBS MP3s sound great. I wouldn't automatically assume that the settings used look the best unless I knew the source very well.
This might not be a big deal to a lot of people. A lot of people are saying that DVD is enough quality for them and they don't think they'll ever need to upgrade to HD sources. I figure if I care enough to get HD, I might as well look for the best source possible, and that's going to be the manufacturer.
That's exactly what I do. The work needed to get quality free stuff sort of cut my experiments with file sharing off at the knees. It was easier and more reliable to just buy what I want. That actually works out alright for me because I kind of like paying my own way.
I feel it's well within my rights to "share" on some occasions. I wouldn't hesitate to rip a friend's CD if mine got scratched and there's no way I'm going to pay a second time to get a CD of something I already have on cassette tape. But just taking a bunch of music without paying for it when you know folks spent their time and money to make it and are legally entitled to expect payment? Doesn't really seem fair to me.
Even worse, forcing "fairness" often gives misguided, scientifically wrong viewpoints the size and weight of thoughtful, well researched viewpoints. It is, in fact, the exact kind of argument that intelligent design proponents and global warming skeptics have recently been using. They say there must be a "balanced" view presented on "controversial" issues, thus we need to give their quackery equal footing with science.
Although it's often harder to tell which the bad side is, purely political viewpoints can be just as factual on one side and bunk on the other. Yet with "fairness," the bunk will be elevated to the same level as the sound. For example, politics is full of economic viewpoints that are either factually incorrect, or basically just guesses. As soon as someone has one of these brilliant thoughts, now we have to give him equal billing to spread his nonsense?
I hate Fox news. I've rarely seen such a wretched hive of scum and villainy outside of the Rush Limbaugh show. They elevate bad ideas and squash clear thinking on a regular basis. Politics takes the place of science and dogma takes the place of thought. Yet I'd rather have them, and Brother Rush, even expand their broadcasts than to force thoughtful networks with good fact-checking to distribute ill-conceived, factually incorrect bullshit out of "fairness."
I'm sure it'll fit onto a 700meg cd just like all the others - it'll look much the same on a 15inch laptop display. Like mp3s, it's more important to have a fair few to choose from, rather than filling your 300 gig hard drive with 15 highly polished turds.
This is not meant to be rude. I don't feel I have any right to dictate taste or quality. That said, it's guys like you that keep me off of file sharing networks.
If you want to compress a perfectly good HD rip down to CD size and watch it, go for it, it's your business. But when I see that stuff being offered to me as if it's some kind of precious gift, I'm flabbergasted. Why would someone give me Budweiser under the label "Chimay" and claim "it's just as good"? Why would I seek such things out?
Besides the bad music that's rampant on file sharing networks, there have traditionally been quite a lot of bad rips. Often, there's no way to tell except to download and listen, then wonder whether the artist really wasn't as good as you thought, or whether someone didn't know how to work their ripper. Have you ever seen someone download a 128KBPS file from iTunes, then make a CD, import it at 192KBPS and tell you, with sincerity, and even honesty, that they "ripped it at 192KBPS"? Those are the files you're downloading.
I know Budweiser has it's place. I've been known to down more than a little bit. Sometimes that's all you want or need. I'm more than happy to watch a certain amount of TV or movies on the ol' 13" TV upstairs. But when I'm looking for high quality, why would I want to download something labeled "HD-DVD" that's less than DVD quality? It's idiotic.
I have some advice for you. If you want to make low-quality, overly-compressed movies for the "I don't care" viewer, save some money and buy it on DVD instead of HD-DVD. Then when you rip it, clearly label the source, source compression if relevant, output format and output compression for everything you rip. That way I'll know to avoid your work.
That being said, I think of lot of the PS3's eventual muscle will be deflected or absorbed by the XBox 360. Which would leave the Wii in a much better position. My only message to Nintendo is this: Don't get cocky!
For a variety of reasons, people have made this a Wii/PS3 grudge match, but they're not the only players, and not necessarily the closest competitors. Nintendo will do very well if people decide they want a Wii because of the Wii's merits. But if people who otherwise might like a PS3 for it's merits ultimately decide they can't afford a PS3, can't wait for a PS, don't like the current game lineup or don't like Sony, potentially Microsoft has more to gain than Nintendo.
In other words, a Vote for Wii is a vote for Wii, but a vote against PS3 could very well end up a vote for 360
Despite this, since I am not very often an international traveler, EP exists on just about every player and will work on any tape, and everything else is in tiny numbers, it has no effect on me.
On the other hand, if I want to make a DVD for a Mac user or for a regular ol' DVD play, I have to figure out which format to use. Even DVD RAM has come back to haunt me as a popular format for TV DVD recorders.
When non-tech friends come back from the store with the wrong recordable disk, they get mad. They never come back from the store with the wrong VHS tape.
This is insightful. In addition to the big funding, quality at the user level is also an issue. The 19 inch boxes in many home sjust wont cut it for a movie with a grand vision. Lots of people can't afford nice home theater setups, but they can spend 10 bucks to see a movie at the local cineplex. As soon as a viewing venue with limited supply comes into play(the movie theater) then distribution becomes an issue.
Though it's true that wide distribution over the internet could theoretically drive movie theaters to show an idie film, the actual practice is that distribution is difficult, even if you assume theaters are open to talking with anyone (not likely). Even if an indie film made enough money in home distribution to give theaters reason to believe they'd have a good audience, proper negotiation channels just don't exist between an indie film maker and the massive number of theaters in the country, or world even. The indie film has to partner with someone big enough to ensure the film will get a wide release.
The internet doesn't help in this environment. With such an important distribution channel locked up tight by the big guys, the movie maker who decides to avoid the big companies will miss out on about half of his revenue stream. Considering how hard it is for movies to make money (most films are not "Star Wars"), this kind of a loss is a real problem.
Music is a little different because bands control performances and the internet is a perfect distribution channel that doesn't require a big label. But how will people know the band exists and that new music is available? How are people going to find out what this new band sounds like? Podcasts exist now, and internet radio over wireless is at least a possibility, but which ones are the big podcasts or internet radio stations that large numbers of people listen to?
If you want to reach an audience larger than the neighborhood bars, you need your music to be heard by large numbers of people. Although that can happen virally, viral word of mouth only works for a small number of bands and songs at a time and only really works at all for people who have buddies who like to pester them about music. If you want to get the word out about your band, you have to go to an outlet that's popular enough that lots of people will listen to it. Whatever outlet becomes becomes most popular becomes a bottleneck. Whenever a bottleneck exists, large companies are going to try to, and will usually succeed in controlling it, just like they do with radio stations now.
Once again, a band certainly could go it alone, and I applaud those that do, but not being able to get that large listening audience is going to keep most small bands small. It will mean that labels will be able to continue to offer a very compelling service, for a very steep price, if a band wants to hit it big.
As long as you have scarcity and revenue, you'll have big companies trying, and largely succeeding, in controlling the two. I think indies can become much larger than they are now thanks to the internet, but it's highly unlikely they'll become the dominant source of entertainment.
So which version of DVD do I burn for Macs and which do I burn if I want to put my movie ina DVD player?
Dual format is better than nothing, but I'd rather have a "winner." I know that every one of my VHS tapes is going to work in just about every VCR you can find in a home.
Of course it's even better if we don't have a fight at all, like with CD, but I guess it's a little late for that at this point?
"The reason that atmosphere exists is because people like us started the fire and fueled it." No , the reason she died is because she drank way too much water.
Why can't both be true? If you fall or jump off a cliff you have to have access to a cliff. That doesn't make it the cliff's fault, but have you noticed we don't put schools at the tops of cliffs without adding railings and/or fences?
This wouldn't have happened without the curren't atmosphere. That doesn't mean the atmosphere should be blamed or villified, but it also doesn't mean that nothing could be done. Is there no equivilent to railings? Is there absolutely no way we could make the situation better?
Either way it's really sad. People have been getting too wrapped up in "the latest thing" for way too long now.
We were partially responsible for this, as well as the PS3 robberies and shootings. The reason she was killed was because she wanted to win so badly. The reason she wanted this so badly was the exciting "must get it" atmosphere surrounding the product. The reason that atmosphere exists is because people like us started the fire and fueled it.
I know you're probably bristlling. Why shouldn't we be free to talk about something we like? I'm not suggesting you should stop. But that doesn't mean we should ignore it either.
I probably shouldn't be doing this, but I'll bite.
I happen to own a PSP. I have launch games from several studios. Being launch titles, Sony had to court them quite a long time in advance of launch. Sony had to send them dev kits and pre-release hardware. They had to license the games. Despite talk to the contrary, at least two of my launch or near launch titles were not ports of other games. These had to be built from scratch which means Sony had to spend time and effort, maybe money, convincing them that they wouldn't lose their shirts if investors backed the PSP exclusive game.
Now there are shelves full of some really nice PSP titles. More are comming out all the time. If you feel like stopping by your local game store, youll notice that there's a very wide variety, with lots of exclusive games as well as some nice ports. If you pick up a magazine or go to a web site that regularly does PSP reviews, youll see people who play them often find them to be quite fun.
I like convergence quite alot. Until you've taken a long plane trip and been able to watch a movie, play some games, then kick back with your favorite music all without swapping devices, packing power cords to charge them all or having a giant laptop on your tray table, well, you haven't experienced travel the right way. But that's the problem isn't it? Aren't you saying Sony focused on convergence and didn't really focus on games at all?
Bullshit.
The PSP may not be to your taste. I know not everyone likes the style of gaming or layout of controls, or, hell, they even seem to complain that it catchs fingerprints. But saying that this isn't a game machine because it also does convergence is just being thick headed. The truth of the matter is that Sony set out to make a nice game machine and they suceeded. It's a nice enough game machine that it owns a very nice chunk of the market. The fact that Sony also lets you use this game machine to play movies, listen to music and browse the web only means you get extra value for your money.
I dont understand why people would complain about this, but they somehow manage to do so. They say that Sony doesn't care about the games(which take a tremendous amount of energy to negotiat licenses, make dev kits and QA for standards compliance) and only wanted to work on it's picture viewer (no licensees to court and simple software), it's music player (no licensees to court and simple software), it's web browser (no licensees to court, plus it came later) and it's movies (which are mostly Sony-owned movies). I suppose they/you can say anthing they/you want, but when you show me a game machine that has all game controls and no media controls and then you say firmly "Claiming that gaming on the system was a priority is incorrect." well, I just feel a little silly for taking so much time responding. Youve taken the video gaming position equivilent to Intlligent Design. As long as you know the truth, why bother listening to facts?
Relevance. Think relevance. This post was about making the iPhone a gameing platform, with a comparison to another gaming phone thrown in. Though it mentioned the PSP in passing, it was not actually about the PSP.
I'm sure there will be other articles about the PSP very soon. Go ahead and trash PSP in those discusions if you feel you must.
It's too bad. "Some games on a cell phone" does not equal "a gaming phone."
It's really a bummer what happened with Nokia's N-Gage. It was a great idea with poor execution. The real difference with that product was the attempt to get top game companies to write/port for their platform. I remembers seeing Ghost Recon and thinking phone gaming had arrived. It was a noble attempt. It's too bad the games were the size of a postage stamp and the phone part made you look like you were talking into a taco.
By comparison, my Windows SmartPhone has a beautiful display and generally good phone functionality. But the games tend to suck because of the lack of support from the pros.
Getting a little bit of software from armatures on the iPhone will not get you exciting games. The only way the iPhone can compete with the DS or PSP is to do what Nintendo and Sony do, make gaming a priority and get high-quality game developers on board.
BTW, what's that thing sportin' under the hood? Can it fill that beautiful display with beautiful 3D graphics? Inquiring minds want to know.
The money is there, all Sony has to do is convince them to part with it. They sold a whole lot of units despite being $250 to $350 more expensive than the Wii. They did that by convincing customers that their product was very good, but also by convincing them that $500 to $600 was the "going rate" for a "really good" gaming console.
Moms don't think twice about paying $800 or more for a sofa, because that's what sofas cost. If Sony can convince even a relatively small number of them that there's nothing wrong with paying $500 or more for a gaming console and that there's value in that purchase, their sales may very well continue to be strong.
A very good percentage of flat panel HDTV sales are fueled by the desire of women to get that big, ugly TV out of their living room. That's a whole lot of moms. They know how much that purchase cost and it was almost always more than a thousand dollars. This is where Blue-Ray becomes part of the value proposition for the PS3. When dad wants HD content for the new TV and junior wants a "next gen" game machine, it's not that hard to do that math and figure that either a PS3 or an 360with the HD-DVD add-on is cheaper than either a Blue Ray or HD-DVD drive plus a gaming console, even if that console is the Wii. Conveniently for Sony, any price advantage for the 360 or Wii disappears at this point. Both the 360 and Xbox will represent good value, and even be seen as money savers, for this particular purchase, while the Wii becomes a non-issue. At this point, the cost of the PS3 will be seen as "the going rate," and other factors will start to drive the decision making process.
I know this isn't an especially large percentage of households at the moment, but it's growing. HDTV manufactures have already succeeded in resetting the "going rate" for a TV and lower income brackets are starting to save up. As this number grows, the above scenario will start to look more and more realistic. In this environment, the cost for the PS3 could cease being an issue for a lot of people.
BTW, have you looked at the TV section Best Buy latley? SDTV has shrunk. It takes up significantly less space than HDTV. Things will flip very soon, if they haven't already.
I put some comments about Super Mario and some other games that were recommended in the reply below yours, just in case you were interested. that's for the recommendations.
I appreciate you taking the time to point out a few games. I agree that launch titles don't do justice to the full visual potential of a new machine. Gears of War far surpasses anything the 360 had a launch. However, launch titles give a glimpse of things to come. Resistance: Fall of Man on the PS3 doesn't look anywhere near as good as GoW, but it does look about as good as 360 launch titles and it looks significantly better than what you could get on the PS2.
Which brings me to Zelda, Metroid and the previous poster's suggestion of Super Mario Galaxy. I looked at a few stills and movies for each of these at IGN.com. I also looked at Resistance and Final Fantasy XII for comparison.
I know it's not fair to compare Zelda to Resistance. Nintendo has been frank about the fact that they didn't intend to compete with the 360 or PS3 on visuals. It was good they got the word out, because it wasn't even close. But I became curious as I looked at Zelda. How would it stack up against Final Fantasy XII? Both of the games are comparable in scope and style, but how would they compare visually?
Zelda came in second. It wasn't a subtle difference that took close inspection, either. Just in case you're wondering, I only payed attention to material that was in-game and interactive, not to FF's always impressive pre-rendered cut-scenes. I was surprised to see this. Even though Nintendo isn't focusing on visuals, I know they made upgrades to their engine. I was expecting it to beat PS2 graphics easily.
Mario was cartoonish. It had a few nice features like lava and partially translucent worlds, but considering how easy the rest was to render, these weren't really stressing the graphics engine. Now cartoonish works terrifically well for Mario. Doing it any other way would be very weird, and I think not as fun (Mario Twilight Princess is a title I don't want to see). They also made it very good cartoonish with nice round bullets and smoothly joined features. But even with the upgrades, this game could have been produced on the PS2 without ever stressing out the optimization programmers.
Metroid seemed a bit better. I didn't compare it to a similarly styled PS2 game, because I wasn't too sure which one to grab. But it also looked very much the quality of many PS2 games I've seen in the past. I have to admit when I saw the silky smooth reticle movement that I immediately wanted to grab a Wiimote and find out for myself what FPSs are like on the platform. But I pretty much felt that other than the controller and the exclusive title, I'd basically be playing a PS2 game.
Does any of this matter? Maybe not. Wii fans don't seem stuck on visuals the way others can be (I'm guilty). The games definitely look pretty good, and I'm sure they're fun. My daughter can't seem to put down the very cartoonish (and old) Crash Bandicoot, even though she plays it on a PS3, so I 100% know that graphics aren't everything. That said, she also plays FF, and seeing her play the nice looking FFXII doesn't hurt my eyes nearly as much as when she was playing FFVII.
I'm sure it does look fantastic, but I'm also sure it doesn't look as good as a movie that isn't compressed so much. I'm doubly sure it doesn't look as good as a movie that hasn't gone through generational loss (the transfer from HD-DV).
Signs of too much compression and poor source material abound in over-the-air and satellite HD broadcasts. It's kind of irritating to those who've seen the good stuff. If you and your customers cant tell the difference that's just fine. You'll see material that looks fantastic to you and you'll be very happy with your choices. That's all anyone can ask.
But please don't tell me consumers don't need HD with pristine source material and low compression rates. I can tell the difference and so could most everyone else if they see them side by side. Suggesting consumers don't need high quality HD because your inferior product is "just as good" is like denying them steak because you've determined hamburger tastes great. If you like burgers that's fine, I like 'em too. Just don't tell me what I need to eat in my own house.
I know a lot of people say that neither Blue-Ray or HD-DVD will win as the next format. The winner, they say, will be broadband and hard drive. In general, I disagree. Enough bandwidth to do High Def is years away, as is the hard drive space to store very many movies. People are going to be hitting the stores for discs of various kinds for quite some time.
But porn is different. There already exists a thriving movie download industry. The quality regularly improves as bandwidth allows. Small studios coexist with large ones without the conltroling cartels that force "legitimate" indie movies to distribution hell. In short, unlike in the "legitimate" movie industry, customers have both accepted the quality and continued to pay for downloadable content in large numbers, despite the greater production values and higher resolution of DVD.
I have no doubt that many people will buy HD-DVD to view porn. There's a market for higher quality and physical media. But I'll be very suprised if the download scene doesn't outpace the HD-DVD scene all the way to the point where HD downloads start making practical sense for everyone.
Well put. Although technically you can update this particular issue, as evidenced by the 3rd party patch, in many other cases you couldn't. This is a major benefit of the open source community. As long as there are significant numbers of users, there will be patches to take care of the important issues.
I know MS uses issues like this to push upgrades and to reduce their costs. I know that opening up their Win2K source would the equivalent of opening up lots of XP code, because the base is so similar. Having a vested interest in the status quo, it's highly unlikely they'd open up Win2K source. But it would be awfully nice from a user perspective if they'd allow a third party to take over development and distribution of patches and upgrades to their old OSs. Win2K is a clean, fast and reliable OS. If there was third party support, many businesses could continue to make use of it for some time to come.
No disrespect intended toward your wife, but maybe you notice this time of the month in a positive light because the time before and during her period she's less sexy. In other words, if you see it like a wave, maybe it's not that the crest is so high, but that the trough is so low.
The women I've known tend toward grumpiness just before their period, and often during it. In my experience, people who don't feel nice on the inside tend not to show it on the outside. I tend to notice sweat pants more often and less attention paid to the hair. YMMV.
Maybe the researchers should have considered the possibility that women are less attractive than usual near their period than that they are sexier during ovulation. If you only show two photos and don't do anything to see how she looks during the baseline when woman aren't at either peak of their cycle, then either conclusion could be drawn.
Lack of availability at a large number of stores is important. There were widespread reports in the mainstream non-geek news about PS3 shortages so great that people were willing to steal or even kill for them. These reports often mentioned ebay prices in the thousands of dollars. However, the decline in ebay prices and the availability in some stores has not been widely publicized. With this in mind, average folk who go to stores and do not see a PS3 will often make the assumption that they're still hard to find.
In fact, if people don't see them on store shelves they are, by definition, not easy to find. I had a friend who wanted a second Wiimote for Christmas, but he said not to bother because nobody had them. I went to EB games and Best Buy and there were none to be found, so I gave up. I had some other shopping to do at Target and right there on an end-cap was a hanger full of them. In fact, the display was one of the easiest to spot in the entire electronics department and also one of the most eye catching. I grabbed a Wiimote and put it in my shopping basket.
The moral of the story? The most relevant is that people often attribute to everything the things that they see just a few times. I gave up after two stores and just assumed my buddy was dead-on right that they were unavailable. The same thing happens to prospective PS3 buyers. If their Gamestop doesn't have any, and neither does their Best Buy, then they'll often assume that the shortage is still on and will look no further. The rest of those 3700 stores are busy reinforcing this view as we speak.
But their is another moral here. My anecdotal account of one target with several Wiimotes in plain sight and people just walking by, uninterested in the product, does not meant that Wiimotes are easy to find or that people don't want them. All it means is I was able to make my buddy happy with his Christmas present.
BTW, and honestly not trying to be a smart-ass, "thousands" can be as few as 2000. Also, most people would report numbers above a thousand as "more than a thousand" and numbers just below as "nearly a thousand." Hundreds probably meant 200 to 800 in this instance, though we'll never know unless someone talks to him again. My personal interpretation was between a fifth and a quarter all all stores have PS3. A huge number, but not a huge percentage and very much smaller than the ones who don't.
Thanks for the info about Far Cry. I'm a fan of the PC version and I was very disappointed to see such a big drop in visuals. I've only seen a few Wii titles and most of them looked pretty cartoonish, which typically signals that big-time video power was not necessary. When I saw Far Cry I saw it as a confirmation.
What's a good title I can look at that shows off the high end of the video engine?
I had already seen the VGcharts numbers. They actually are interesting in the sense that we can see the results of good execution in delivering a product into consumers hands. The PS3 sucks ass at making sure potential customers can make a purchase, the Wii is doing much better, and the 360 has proven that being first to get enough supply for all your customers and having a product that many people want to buy can generate nice sales.
None of this says anything about which box has features more customers prefer, whether cheap boxes sell better, or, really, about any other quality the game consoles or companies may poses. They most certainly don't say that "nobody" wants a PS3 and that the Wii sales prove that people like it better. I have heard both these things recently from Slashdotters.
Though I may in fact be an ass, it's not whining to insist people don't make up stuff from numbers that don't say that. Some Wii fans are doing that. The one argument that their speculation is accurate amounts to, "but PS3s are not currently in short supply." That's the metric that is in massive speculation, but many have declared that the question is actually decide in favor of PS3s being well stocked on store shelves. That's the thing I've asked them to put up or shut up about.
I'm not saying they're wrong. I am saying that guys seeing stock in some stores doesn't cancel out shortages at other stores and most certainly says nothing about the stock situation in general. Yes, that's true even if 10 to 15 guys say it, mostly because 10 to 15 other guys are saying something else at their location. I had one guy show me an article where someone at game stop said they have PS3s at "hundreds of their stores." Right after that the article mentioned that Gamestop has 3700 stores. He used this as an example of the wide availability of the PS3. So tell me, what percent of 3700 is "hundreds"? I guarantee you it's not the majority. When an authoritative source says three quarters of his stores don't have stock and someone misinterprets that as evidence of wide availability, someone should probably step in an help him with his analysis.
I don't ask for numbers because I don't research, I ask because maybe someone researched better. I don't automatically assume I know everything. I also ask because if they didn't research better, I want to be able to see what they screwed up in their interpretation. I don't mind if someone disagrees with me, but if they claim the Easter Bunny is real because 8 our of 10 five year olds say he is, at least I can point out where he might have gone wrong. But if he just says "the Easter Bunny is real!" I'm left little alternative than just thinking he's a loon.
It'll be difficult to dominate this market. People get tied to their phones for a variety of reasons and those of us who've used PDA style phones have a healthy caution about whether manufacturers are making phone features top notch or just ok.
If their phone features are very good and seamless, and the buzz gets out to that extent, then they have a chance. Otherwise it's going to be a slow grind.
I was glad to see you caught the DS/DSL issue, but it begs the question of whether the rest of the numbers make sense to you now that that's been resolved?
In general, Slashdotters tend to believe stuff that supports their position and reject data that doesn't. You had a good argument to reject this data when you saw what appeared to be a nonsensical number, but what do you think now that the DS issue looks more realistic? Does it say anything about the PS3 and Wii sales?
Personally I'd prefer a link and I cringe at any sales data that's only a week long, anything can happen in a week, but as an excersise, what would make you accept or reject some data from Slashdotters, but not others?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I didn't know a lot of that. Thanks for posting it.
I did, in general, know there are ways to find out about quality. Using the grandparent post, for example, I already knew that a full movie of only 700MB is clearly not standard HD compression and will not look as good. But using my example, I would also know that it's common to screw up a rip, and even if the ripper was being 100% honest he could be making the rip much lower quality than he intended. Not everyone has the ear or eye for quality. Lots of people think 128KBS MP3s sound great. I wouldn't automatically assume that the settings used look the best unless I knew the source very well.
This might not be a big deal to a lot of people. A lot of people are saying that DVD is enough quality for them and they don't think they'll ever need to upgrade to HD sources. I figure if I care enough to get HD, I might as well look for the best source possible, and that's going to be the manufacturer.
TW
That's exactly what I do. The work needed to get quality free stuff sort of cut my experiments with file sharing off at the knees. It was easier and more reliable to just buy what I want. That actually works out alright for me because I kind of like paying my own way.
I feel it's well within my rights to "share" on some occasions. I wouldn't hesitate to rip a friend's CD if mine got scratched and there's no way I'm going to pay a second time to get a CD of something I already have on cassette tape. But just taking a bunch of music without paying for it when you know folks spent their time and money to make it and are legally entitled to expect payment? Doesn't really seem fair to me.
TW
Even worse, forcing "fairness" often gives misguided, scientifically wrong viewpoints the size and weight of thoughtful, well researched viewpoints. It is, in fact, the exact kind of argument that intelligent design proponents and global warming skeptics have recently been using. They say there must be a "balanced" view presented on "controversial" issues, thus we need to give their quackery equal footing with science.
Although it's often harder to tell which the bad side is, purely political viewpoints can be just as factual on one side and bunk on the other. Yet with "fairness," the bunk will be elevated to the same level as the sound. For example, politics is full of economic viewpoints that are either factually incorrect, or basically just guesses. As soon as someone has one of these brilliant thoughts, now we have to give him equal billing to spread his nonsense?
I hate Fox news. I've rarely seen such a wretched hive of scum and villainy outside of the Rush Limbaugh show. They elevate bad ideas and squash clear thinking on a regular basis. Politics takes the place of science and dogma takes the place of thought. Yet I'd rather have them, and Brother Rush, even expand their broadcasts than to force thoughtful networks with good fact-checking to distribute ill-conceived, factually incorrect bullshit out of "fairness."
TW
This is not meant to be rude. I don't feel I have any right to dictate taste or quality. That said, it's guys like you that keep me off of file sharing networks.
If you want to compress a perfectly good HD rip down to CD size and watch it, go for it, it's your business. But when I see that stuff being offered to me as if it's some kind of precious gift, I'm flabbergasted. Why would someone give me Budweiser under the label "Chimay" and claim "it's just as good"? Why would I seek such things out?
Besides the bad music that's rampant on file sharing networks, there have traditionally been quite a lot of bad rips. Often, there's no way to tell except to download and listen, then wonder whether the artist really wasn't as good as you thought, or whether someone didn't know how to work their ripper. Have you ever seen someone download a 128KBPS file from iTunes, then make a CD, import it at 192KBPS and tell you, with sincerity, and even honesty, that they "ripped it at 192KBPS"? Those are the files you're downloading.
I know Budweiser has it's place. I've been known to down more than a little bit. Sometimes that's all you want or need. I'm more than happy to watch a certain amount of TV or movies on the ol' 13" TV upstairs. But when I'm looking for high quality, why would I want to download something labeled "HD-DVD" that's less than DVD quality? It's idiotic.
I have some advice for you. If you want to make low-quality, overly-compressed movies for the "I don't care" viewer, save some money and buy it on DVD instead of HD-DVD. Then when you rip it, clearly label the source, source compression if relevant, output format and output compression for everything you rip. That way I'll know to avoid your work.
Thanks,
TW
For a variety of reasons, people have made this a Wii/PS3 grudge match, but they're not the only players, and not necessarily the closest competitors. Nintendo will do very well if people decide they want a Wii because of the Wii's merits. But if people who otherwise might like a PS3 for it's merits ultimately decide they can't afford a PS3, can't wait for a PS, don't like the current game lineup or don't like Sony, potentially Microsoft has more to gain than Nintendo.
In other words, a Vote for Wii is a vote for Wii, but a vote against PS3 could very well end up a vote for 360
TW
Despite this, since I am not very often an international traveler, EP exists on just about every player and will work on any tape, and everything else is in tiny numbers, it has no effect on me.
On the other hand, if I want to make a DVD for a Mac user or for a regular ol' DVD play, I have to figure out which format to use. Even DVD RAM has come back to haunt me as a popular format for TV DVD recorders.
When non-tech friends come back from the store with the wrong recordable disk, they get mad. They never come back from the store with the wrong VHS tape.
TW
This is insightful. In addition to the big funding, quality at the user level is also an issue. The 19 inch boxes in many home sjust wont cut it for a movie with a grand vision. Lots of people can't afford nice home theater setups, but they can spend 10 bucks to see a movie at the local cineplex. As soon as a viewing venue with limited supply comes into play(the movie theater) then distribution becomes an issue.
Though it's true that wide distribution over the internet could theoretically drive movie theaters to show an idie film, the actual practice is that distribution is difficult, even if you assume theaters are open to talking with anyone (not likely). Even if an indie film made enough money in home distribution to give theaters reason to believe they'd have a good audience, proper negotiation channels just don't exist between an indie film maker and the massive number of theaters in the country, or world even. The indie film has to partner with someone big enough to ensure the film will get a wide release.
The internet doesn't help in this environment. With such an important distribution channel locked up tight by the big guys, the movie maker who decides to avoid the big companies will miss out on about half of his revenue stream. Considering how hard it is for movies to make money (most films are not "Star Wars"), this kind of a loss is a real problem.
Music is a little different because bands control performances and the internet is a perfect distribution channel that doesn't require a big label. But how will people know the band exists and that new music is available? How are people going to find out what this new band sounds like? Podcasts exist now, and internet radio over wireless is at least a possibility, but which ones are the big podcasts or internet radio stations that large numbers of people listen to?
If you want to reach an audience larger than the neighborhood bars, you need your music to be heard by large numbers of people. Although that can happen virally, viral word of mouth only works for a small number of bands and songs at a time and only really works at all for people who have buddies who like to pester them about music. If you want to get the word out about your band, you have to go to an outlet that's popular enough that lots of people will listen to it. Whatever outlet becomes becomes most popular becomes a bottleneck. Whenever a bottleneck exists, large companies are going to try to, and will usually succeed in controlling it, just like they do with radio stations now.
Once again, a band certainly could go it alone, and I applaud those that do, but not being able to get that large listening audience is going to keep most small bands small. It will mean that labels will be able to continue to offer a very compelling service, for a very steep price, if a band wants to hit it big.
As long as you have scarcity and revenue, you'll have big companies trying, and largely succeeding, in controlling the two. I think indies can become much larger than they are now thanks to the internet, but it's highly unlikely they'll become the dominant source of entertainment.
TW
So which version of DVD do I burn for Macs and which do I burn if I want to put my movie ina DVD player?
Dual format is better than nothing, but I'd rather have a "winner." I know that every one of my VHS tapes is going to work in just about every VCR you can find in a home.
Of course it's even better if we don't have a fight at all, like with CD, but I guess it's a little late for that at this point?
TW
Why can't both be true? If you fall or jump off a cliff you have to have access to a cliff. That doesn't make it the cliff's fault, but have you noticed we don't put schools at the tops of cliffs without adding railings and/or fences?
This wouldn't have happened without the curren't atmosphere. That doesn't mean the atmosphere should be blamed or villified, but it also doesn't mean that nothing could be done. Is there no equivilent to railings? Is there absolutely no way we could make the situation better?
TW
Either way it's really sad. People have been getting too wrapped up in "the latest thing" for way too long now.
We were partially responsible for this, as well as the PS3 robberies and shootings. The reason she was killed was because she wanted to win so badly. The reason she wanted this so badly was the exciting "must get it" atmosphere surrounding the product. The reason that atmosphere exists is because people like us started the fire and fueled it.
I know you're probably bristlling. Why shouldn't we be free to talk about something we like? I'm not suggesting you should stop. But that doesn't mean we should ignore it either.
TW
I probably shouldn't be doing this, but I'll bite.
I happen to own a PSP. I have launch games from several studios. Being launch titles, Sony had to court them quite a long time in advance of launch. Sony had to send them dev kits and pre-release hardware. They had to license the games. Despite talk to the contrary, at least two of my launch or near launch titles were not ports of other games. These had to be built from scratch which means Sony had to spend time and effort, maybe money, convincing them that they wouldn't lose their shirts if investors backed the PSP exclusive game.
Now there are shelves full of some really nice PSP titles. More are comming out all the time. If you feel like stopping by your local game store, youll notice that there's a very wide variety, with lots of exclusive games as well as some nice ports. If you pick up a magazine or go to a web site that regularly does PSP reviews, youll see people who play them often find them to be quite fun.
I like convergence quite alot. Until you've taken a long plane trip and been able to watch a movie, play some games, then kick back with your favorite music all without swapping devices, packing power cords to charge them all or having a giant laptop on your tray table, well, you haven't experienced travel the right way. But that's the problem isn't it? Aren't you saying Sony focused on convergence and didn't really focus on games at all?
Bullshit.
The PSP may not be to your taste. I know not everyone likes the style of gaming or layout of controls, or, hell, they even seem to complain that it catchs fingerprints. But saying that this isn't a game machine because it also does convergence is just being thick headed. The truth of the matter is that Sony set out to make a nice game machine and they suceeded. It's a nice enough game machine that it owns a very nice chunk of the market. The fact that Sony also lets you use this game machine to play movies, listen to music and browse the web only means you get extra value for your money.
I dont understand why people would complain about this, but they somehow manage to do so. They say that Sony doesn't care about the games(which take a tremendous amount of energy to negotiat licenses, make dev kits and QA for standards compliance) and only wanted to work on it's picture viewer (no licensees to court and simple software), it's music player (no licensees to court and simple software), it's web browser (no licensees to court, plus it came later) and it's movies (which are mostly Sony-owned movies). I suppose they/you can say anthing they/you want, but when you show me a game machine that has all game controls and no media controls and then you say firmly "Claiming that gaming on the system was a priority is incorrect." well, I just feel a little silly for taking so much time responding. Youve taken the video gaming position equivilent to Intlligent Design. As long as you know the truth, why bother listening to facts?
TW
Relevance. Think relevance. This post was about making the iPhone a gameing platform, with a comparison to another gaming phone thrown in. Though it mentioned the PSP in passing, it was not actually about the PSP.
I'm sure there will be other articles about the PSP very soon. Go ahead and trash PSP in those discusions if you feel you must.
TW
It's too bad. "Some games on a cell phone" does not equal "a gaming phone."
It's really a bummer what happened with Nokia's N-Gage. It was a great idea with poor execution. The real difference with that product was the attempt to get top game companies to write/port for their platform. I remembers seeing Ghost Recon and thinking phone gaming had arrived. It was a noble attempt. It's too bad the games were the size of a postage stamp and the phone part made you look like you were talking into a taco.
By comparison, my Windows SmartPhone has a beautiful display and generally good phone functionality. But the games tend to suck because of the lack of support from the pros.
Getting a little bit of software from armatures on the iPhone will not get you exciting games. The only way the iPhone can compete with the DS or PSP is to do what Nintendo and Sony do, make gaming a priority and get high-quality game developers on board.
BTW, what's that thing sportin' under the hood? Can it fill that beautiful display with beautiful 3D graphics? Inquiring minds want to know.
TW
The money is there, all Sony has to do is convince them to part with it. They sold a whole lot of units despite being $250 to $350 more expensive than the Wii. They did that by convincing customers that their product was very good, but also by convincing them that $500 to $600 was the "going rate" for a "really good" gaming console.
Moms don't think twice about paying $800 or more for a sofa, because that's what sofas cost. If Sony can convince even a relatively small number of them that there's nothing wrong with paying $500 or more for a gaming console and that there's value in that purchase, their sales may very well continue to be strong.
A very good percentage of flat panel HDTV sales are fueled by the desire of women to get that big, ugly TV out of their living room. That's a whole lot of moms. They know how much that purchase cost and it was almost always more than a thousand dollars. This is where Blue-Ray becomes part of the value proposition for the PS3. When dad wants HD content for the new TV and junior wants a "next gen" game machine, it's not that hard to do that math and figure that either a PS3 or an 360with the HD-DVD add-on is cheaper than either a Blue Ray or HD-DVD drive plus a gaming console, even if that console is the Wii. Conveniently for Sony, any price advantage for the 360 or Wii disappears at this point. Both the 360 and Xbox will represent good value, and even be seen as money savers, for this particular purchase, while the Wii becomes a non-issue. At this point, the cost of the PS3 will be seen as "the going rate," and other factors will start to drive the decision making process.
I know this isn't an especially large percentage of households at the moment, but it's growing. HDTV manufactures have already succeeded in resetting the "going rate" for a TV and lower income brackets are starting to save up. As this number grows, the above scenario will start to look more and more realistic. In this environment, the cost for the PS3 could cease being an issue for a lot of people.
BTW, have you looked at the TV section Best Buy latley? SDTV has shrunk. It takes up significantly less space than HDTV. Things will flip very soon, if they haven't already.
TW
I put some comments about Super Mario and some other games that were recommended in the reply below yours, just in case you were interested. that's for the recommendations.
I appreciate you taking the time to point out a few games. I agree that launch titles don't do justice to the full visual potential of a new machine. Gears of War far surpasses anything the 360 had a launch. However, launch titles give a glimpse of things to come. Resistance: Fall of Man on the PS3 doesn't look anywhere near as good as GoW, but it does look about as good as 360 launch titles and it looks significantly better than what you could get on the PS2.
Which brings me to Zelda, Metroid and the previous poster's suggestion of Super Mario Galaxy. I looked at a few stills and movies for each of these at IGN.com. I also looked at Resistance and Final Fantasy XII for comparison.
I know it's not fair to compare Zelda to Resistance. Nintendo has been frank about the fact that they didn't intend to compete with the 360 or PS3 on visuals. It was good they got the word out, because it wasn't even close. But I became curious as I looked at Zelda. How would it stack up against Final Fantasy XII? Both of the games are comparable in scope and style, but how would they compare visually?
Zelda came in second. It wasn't a subtle difference that took close inspection, either. Just in case you're wondering, I only payed attention to material that was in-game and interactive, not to FF's always impressive pre-rendered cut-scenes. I was surprised to see this. Even though Nintendo isn't focusing on visuals, I know they made upgrades to their engine. I was expecting it to beat PS2 graphics easily.
Mario was cartoonish. It had a few nice features like lava and partially translucent worlds, but considering how easy the rest was to render, these weren't really stressing the graphics engine. Now cartoonish works terrifically well for Mario. Doing it any other way would be very weird, and I think not as fun (Mario Twilight Princess is a title I don't want to see). They also made it very good cartoonish with nice round bullets and smoothly joined features. But even with the upgrades, this game could have been produced on the PS2 without ever stressing out the optimization programmers.
Metroid seemed a bit better. I didn't compare it to a similarly styled PS2 game, because I wasn't too sure which one to grab. But it also looked very much the quality of many PS2 games I've seen in the past. I have to admit when I saw the silky smooth reticle movement that I immediately wanted to grab a Wiimote and find out for myself what FPSs are like on the platform. But I pretty much felt that other than the controller and the exclusive title, I'd basically be playing a PS2 game.
Does any of this matter? Maybe not. Wii fans don't seem stuck on visuals the way others can be (I'm guilty). The games definitely look pretty good, and I'm sure they're fun. My daughter can't seem to put down the very cartoonish (and old) Crash Bandicoot, even though she plays it on a PS3, so I 100% know that graphics aren't everything. That said, she also plays FF, and seeing her play the nice looking FFXII doesn't hurt my eyes nearly as much as when she was playing FFVII.
Thanks and happy gaming,
TW
I'm sure it does look fantastic, but I'm also sure it doesn't look as good as a movie that isn't compressed so much. I'm doubly sure it doesn't look as good as a movie that hasn't gone through generational loss (the transfer from HD-DV).
Signs of too much compression and poor source material abound in over-the-air and satellite HD broadcasts. It's kind of irritating to those who've seen the good stuff. If you and your customers cant tell the difference that's just fine. You'll see material that looks fantastic to you and you'll be very happy with your choices. That's all anyone can ask.
But please don't tell me consumers don't need HD with pristine source material and low compression rates. I can tell the difference and so could most everyone else if they see them side by side. Suggesting consumers don't need high quality HD because your inferior product is "just as good" is like denying them steak because you've determined hamburger tastes great. If you like burgers that's fine, I like 'em too. Just don't tell me what I need to eat in my own house.
TW
I know a lot of people say that neither Blue-Ray or HD-DVD will win as the next format. The winner, they say, will be broadband and hard drive. In general, I disagree. Enough bandwidth to do High Def is years away, as is the hard drive space to store very many movies. People are going to be hitting the stores for discs of various kinds for quite some time.
But porn is different. There already exists a thriving movie download industry. The quality regularly improves as bandwidth allows. Small studios coexist with large ones without the conltroling cartels that force "legitimate" indie movies to distribution hell. In short, unlike in the "legitimate" movie industry, customers have both accepted the quality and continued to pay for downloadable content in large numbers, despite the greater production values and higher resolution of DVD.
I have no doubt that many people will buy HD-DVD to view porn. There's a market for higher quality and physical media. But I'll be very suprised if the download scene doesn't outpace the HD-DVD scene all the way to the point where HD downloads start making practical sense for everyone.
TW
Well put. Although technically you can update this particular issue, as evidenced by the 3rd party patch, in many other cases you couldn't. This is a major benefit of the open source community. As long as there are significant numbers of users, there will be patches to take care of the important issues.
I know MS uses issues like this to push upgrades and to reduce their costs. I know that opening up their Win2K source would the equivalent of opening up lots of XP code, because the base is so similar. Having a vested interest in the status quo, it's highly unlikely they'd open up Win2K source. But it would be awfully nice from a user perspective if they'd allow a third party to take over development and distribution of patches and upgrades to their old OSs. Win2K is a clean, fast and reliable OS. If there was third party support, many businesses could continue to make use of it for some time to come.
TW
No disrespect intended toward your wife, but maybe you notice this time of the month in a positive light because the time before and during her period she's less sexy. In other words, if you see it like a wave, maybe it's not that the crest is so high, but that the trough is so low.
The women I've known tend toward grumpiness just before their period, and often during it. In my experience, people who don't feel nice on the inside tend not to show it on the outside. I tend to notice sweat pants more often and less attention paid to the hair. YMMV.
Maybe the researchers should have considered the possibility that women are less attractive than usual near their period than that they are sexier during ovulation. If you only show two photos and don't do anything to see how she looks during the baseline when woman aren't at either peak of their cycle, then either conclusion could be drawn.
Lack of availability at a large number of stores is important. There were widespread reports in the mainstream non-geek news about PS3 shortages so great that people were willing to steal or even kill for them. These reports often mentioned ebay prices in the thousands of dollars. However, the decline in ebay prices and the availability in some stores has not been widely publicized. With this in mind, average folk who go to stores and do not see a PS3 will often make the assumption that they're still hard to find.
In fact, if people don't see them on store shelves they are, by definition, not easy to find. I had a friend who wanted a second Wiimote for Christmas, but he said not to bother because nobody had them. I went to EB games and Best Buy and there were none to be found, so I gave up. I had some other shopping to do at Target and right there on an end-cap was a hanger full of them. In fact, the display was one of the easiest to spot in the entire electronics department and also one of the most eye catching. I grabbed a Wiimote and put it in my shopping basket.
The moral of the story? The most relevant is that people often attribute to everything the things that they see just a few times. I gave up after two stores and just assumed my buddy was dead-on right that they were unavailable. The same thing happens to prospective PS3 buyers. If their Gamestop doesn't have any, and neither does their Best Buy, then they'll often assume that the shortage is still on and will look no further. The rest of those 3700 stores are busy reinforcing this view as we speak.
But their is another moral here. My anecdotal account of one target with several Wiimotes in plain sight and people just walking by, uninterested in the product, does not meant that Wiimotes are easy to find or that people don't want them. All it means is I was able to make my buddy happy with his Christmas present.
BTW, and honestly not trying to be a smart-ass, "thousands" can be as few as 2000. Also, most people would report numbers above a thousand as "more than a thousand" and numbers just below as "nearly a thousand." Hundreds probably meant 200 to 800 in this instance, though we'll never know unless someone talks to him again. My personal interpretation was between a fifth and a quarter all all stores have PS3. A huge number, but not a huge percentage and very much smaller than the ones who don't.
TW
Thanks for the info about Far Cry. I'm a fan of the PC version and I was very disappointed to see such a big drop in visuals. I've only seen a few Wii titles and most of them looked pretty cartoonish, which typically signals that big-time video power was not necessary. When I saw Far Cry I saw it as a confirmation.
What's a good title I can look at that shows off the high end of the video engine?
TW
I had already seen the VGcharts numbers. They actually are interesting in the sense that we can see the results of good execution in delivering a product into consumers hands. The PS3 sucks ass at making sure potential customers can make a purchase, the Wii is doing much better, and the 360 has proven that being first to get enough supply for all your customers and having a product that many people want to buy can generate nice sales.
None of this says anything about which box has features more customers prefer, whether cheap boxes sell better, or, really, about any other quality the game consoles or companies may poses. They most certainly don't say that "nobody" wants a PS3 and that the Wii sales prove that people like it better. I have heard both these things recently from Slashdotters.
Though I may in fact be an ass, it's not whining to insist people don't make up stuff from numbers that don't say that. Some Wii fans are doing that. The one argument that their speculation is accurate amounts to, "but PS3s are not currently in short supply." That's the metric that is in massive speculation, but many have declared that the question is actually decide in favor of PS3s being well stocked on store shelves. That's the thing I've asked them to put up or shut up about.
I'm not saying they're wrong. I am saying that guys seeing stock in some stores doesn't cancel out shortages at other stores and most certainly says nothing about the stock situation in general. Yes, that's true even if 10 to 15 guys say it, mostly because 10 to 15 other guys are saying something else at their location. I had one guy show me an article where someone at game stop said they have PS3s at "hundreds of their stores." Right after that the article mentioned that Gamestop has 3700 stores. He used this as an example of the wide availability of the PS3. So tell me, what percent of 3700 is "hundreds"? I guarantee you it's not the majority. When an authoritative source says three quarters of his stores don't have stock and someone misinterprets that as evidence of wide availability, someone should probably step in an help him with his analysis.
I don't ask for numbers because I don't research, I ask because maybe someone researched better. I don't automatically assume I know everything. I also ask because if they didn't research better, I want to be able to see what they screwed up in their interpretation. I don't mind if someone disagrees with me, but if they claim the Easter Bunny is real because 8 our of 10 five year olds say he is, at least I can point out where he might have gone wrong. But if he just says "the Easter Bunny is real!" I'm left little alternative than just thinking he's a loon.
TW
It'll be difficult to dominate this market. People get tied to their phones for a variety of reasons and those of us who've used PDA style phones have a healthy caution about whether manufacturers are making phone features top notch or just ok.
If their phone features are very good and seamless, and the buzz gets out to that extent, then they have a chance. Otherwise it's going to be a slow grind.
TW
I was glad to see you caught the DS/DSL issue, but it begs the question of whether the rest of the numbers make sense to you now that that's been resolved?
In general, Slashdotters tend to believe stuff that supports their position and reject data that doesn't. You had a good argument to reject this data when you saw what appeared to be a nonsensical number, but what do you think now that the DS issue looks more realistic? Does it say anything about the PS3 and Wii sales?
Personally I'd prefer a link and I cringe at any sales data that's only a week long, anything can happen in a week, but as an excersise, what would make you accept or reject some data from Slashdotters, but not others?
TW