Okay... but FFX was a far better game in terms of gameplay, updates to overused JRPG ideas, etc. As well, Breath of Fire V was years beyond any of the previous titles.
It's fun to say, "They don't make games like they used to!" but it often isn't true. As well, with RPGs such as Final Fantasy, improved graphics, and more realized characters, add a lot to a game where the major point is said characters, the relationships between them, and their believability.
If ads bother you so much, start the DVD, go make your popcorn, and by the time you come back, you're good to go. Simple as that.
I've never understood people who get so up in arms about the ads before a movie, either at home or in the theater. When you can't skip past them on a DVD, sure, it's annoying - but it isn't bringing life to an end. Go get a drink, go get a snack, whatever.
And while your Dune DVD is sitting on the shelf collecting dust, it is most likely that it isn't deteriorating in quality. The same can't be said for your VHS copy.
If there are any movies that you wish to still be able to watch years from now, I consider it insane to have your format of choice be VHS.
OOG - the audio format of choice for the discerning caveman.
What is ironic about the "Who?" people...
on
Ask mc chris
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· Score: 1
...is that you'd be all over him if he were releasing his music in OGG.
I love how many of you are so "shocked" that some guy you don't know is being talked about, yet keep saying how important it is that a format that nobody knows about be put into everything.
Most of the rational side of me says that I really don't want to see CD die. But yet, there is a small part of me that does.
Online shopping has given us stores that can specialize in extremely niche products, because now one location with one stock of items can service everybody in a particular country, or more. I am a fan of Japanese music, and if I want to buy a CD, I certainly can't find anywhere locally to purchase one. Thanks to the internet, there can now exist America-based J-music stores because their customer base can be everybody in the U.S., not just people in their location.
(Here's the point I'm getting at, coming up.)
In the same kind of way, if music becomes digital instead of physical, because you don't have stores with a set amount of space, and locations that must survive on the local customer base, music companies have far more freedom on what they can offer to whome. J-pop and the like will never be huge when it comes to physical CDs, because there aren't enough people to go to each store and purchase them. But once you don't have stores, but instead just bits of data on a server somewhere, you can offer every kind of music to people anywhere in the world, and as long as one person purchases a song, you've made profit.
If we get away from a physical medium for music, and suddenly the entire world becomes a possible market for the music, then hopefully things will get better for both sides. Music companies don't have to worry about expensive physical media, and they can very cheaply offer their wares to the entire world. Consumers get a huge increase in the amount of music that is available to them, and they can purchase that music more easily and cheaply.
Anime may be one of the more popular genres of product that is fansubbed, but fansubbing is NOT strictly an anime thing. Fansubbing is also done to a host of other products, many of which would never, ever reach other countries.
For example, most of the fansubbed video that I watch are Japanese TV dramas. Stuff like Muko Dono, Gokusen, Koukou Kyoushi, etc. This kind of stuff - at least at this point - is never going to make it to an English-speaking market. The few times that it does - for example, the first (and maybe second) series of Trick was released in a few cities in California - it never then hits video or DVD.
In the case of Japanese drama, yes, it still isn't 100% legal, but as the stuff is not going to come out here anyway, I won't feel immoral for downloading and watching the stuff. If companies were willing to translated the stuff on DVD and release it here, I'd purchase it in a heartbeat. If the Japanese companies were to join the growing trend of Japanese DVDs that have English subs, I'd pay the money for a legit version in a heartbeat.
However, stuff like Japanese drama, or just regular Japanese TV shows, or TV shows from any country that are never going to make it to us English-language-speakers, I see no harm in the fansub community getting a hold of them and giving them a wider audience.
If you are using fansubs in place of purchasing equal legit product, or if fansubs are still around once the product hits the market, or if fansubs are done for something that is a sure release in the English market, THEN I think there's a problem.
I don't think that Macs are as big as they once were in Japan, but there still is a definite market for them over there. When I was living there, the electronics district in Osaka had at least two really decent Mac shops, and there were a number of great Mac magazines. I had a far easier time going to a shop and finding Mac stuff there than I do where I live here in the States.
Are you trying to say that OGG is a more valid format over AAC or WMV?
I use AAC, by choice, and seeing as how most of the people I know (including Windows users) have now switched to using iTunes, I can pass them along an AAC file no problem.
The only place I EVER hear about OGG is, well, here. I know that Slashdot likes to think that OGG is this great, popular format, but the truth is, the real world doesn't know what it is and doesn't care. At least with AAC, you've got a few better chance of somebody being able to use it simply from the amount of copies of iTunes that are now floating around.
He wasn't calling AAC Apple Lossless. He was saying, "I use AAC (one type of encoding) or Apple Lossless (a different type of encoding, which is really uber-high bitrate AAC)."
Because half of going to see a movie in the theater is the experience. A comedy is a hundred times funnier when you have a whole crowd of people laughing around you. An action movie is more fun when you're in the third row and things are blowing up on this huge screen right in front of you. I love watching movies at home on DVD, but the experience simply cannot compare to going out with your friends on opening night and seeing the same movie in a theater.
Maybe you don't have any decent theaters where you live, but we've got a great chain of local theaters where I live. (Omaha, NE) The seats are great, the walls are insulated enough, the popcorn is great, and the place is almost never totally packed. We can get there ten minutes before showtime and our third row center seats are typically open.
If going to a theater seems too expensive to you, then go to a matinee show on the weekend, and eat before you go so that you're not hungry.
I'm 29, I've enjoyed Legos even since I can remember existing, and they were always just that - "Legos." I've never, EVER heard anybody in a real-world situation refer to them as "Lego bricks."
Will my eyesight get an upgrade too so that I can actually appreciate that the pixels are 0.08 millimetres across instead of 0.25 mm (or whatever it is they are these days, I'm too lazy to do the maths)?
Okay, you can't see the difference. Many of us can. I often see regular DVDs where I'm disappointed by the image quality. Our current DVD technology was a great first step, but that's all it is and should be. The better visually movies get, the worse they will end up on regular DVD.
I want the studios to have as much room as possible, so that they can give me the best looking end result as possible. Human eyesite doesn't need an "upgrade" to appreciate the difference we will be given, at least until the video we are presented with can be presented at a point that it is indistinguishable from what we're looking at in front of us during the rest of the day.
Anybody who loves movies should want the studios to have the ability to increase the quality of said movies as much as they can. That's what HD-DVD and BluRay are going to help do - but they'll also be just another step, and not an end.
For anybody who says the quality difference is minimal and whatnot, then go back to VHS and have fun there.
The beautiful thing about digital cameras is that you CAN just take a ridiculous amount of pictures at the time of the event. That way, when all is said and done, you have a far better chance of having more worthwhile shots.
If you have a limited number of shots, then you have to spend more time making sure that each shot is perfect. If you're a professional photographer, that's probably a good thing. If you're Joe Average who may not have the highest skill at photography, taking a large amount of pics means that you can just snap pictures of everything that is going on and have a better chance of ending up with better pictures.
And there are always variable that you can never account for. Maybe your hand shook a bit while taking the picture. Maybe the light reflected in just the wrong way. While I was in Japan, I would typically take the same picture at least twice, to have a better chance of the pic coming out good. If you're taking pictures somewhere that you might not return to again for a long while, it's better to be safe than sorry.
AAC is now the "blessed" format for iTunes and the iPod. I'm sure there are a lot of iPod users out there who, like me, now have a majority of their music collection in AAC. If I was trying to not only woo new customers, but also get iPod users to switch, wouldn't supporting AAC be a good way to do that? If I was looking for a new player, even if I found a non-iPod player that I liked and was cheaper, I would probably stick with the iPod and pay a bit more just for the sake of not having to re-encode my entire collection.
(Of course, I personally have no desire to switch to any non-iPod player, as the only one that even begins to appeal to me is the funky new Olympus red-on-black one.)
First, I love video games. I've owned game consoles since you could get your hands on a 2600, I've written fanzines about them, I worked at a video game magazine for four years, and I absolutely support the idea of "mature" games. Games aren't just for kids, so there should be games that also cater to an older crowd. Not that older people can't enjoy Mario, Sonic, and whatnot, but sometimes they also want GTA, Halo, or whatever else.
However, the video game industry needs to get serious about the "M" rating. Right now, they want it both ways - they want to not have restrictions on what can go into an M-rated game, yet at the same time they also want no restrictions on who can buy the games. As soon as somebody brings up the idea of allowing only 18 and older gamers to be able to purchase M-rated games, they get themselves worked up into a tizzy, cry foul, and hide behind the First Ammendment. What makes video games any different than movies? Why are movies expected to work by that rule, but video games aren't? I know why - because a forced ratings system is still not into place, and the video game companies don't want to see their sales decrease. That isn't a valid reason for not wanting to get their act together, though, I'm afraid.
The video game industry needs to grow up, and earn itself more legitimacy. They need to be serious about the M-rating, and put an "ID or no sale" policy into place. Doesn't have to be 18 per say - it could be 17, or even 16.
If the video game industry did this, it would be less likely that any form of government would try to step in and muck around like we see here, and creators would also have more freedom for expressing "mature" ideas and themes in their games.
iTunes = Apple-created music playing application
iTunes Music Store (aka iTMS) = Apple-created online music purchasing / downloading "store"
Seriously... how hard it is to understand the difference between the two?
If that's the station I'm thinking of, far too much of their "J-pop" is crap anime music. Plus, ripping a low-quality stream and being able to purchase good quality singles with proper tags and cover art are two different things.
I, too, would love to get my hands on the ability to use a Japanese iTMS once it becomes available.
I never understand why, when we hear about new cellphones with these fancy features, people get so riled up and speak of them as if they were the devil. If you don't want one, guess what? Don't buy one! There are plenty of crappy old phones with nothing but a monochrome display and no features but an address book. Don't say that there aren't, because I see plenty of them whenever I go to look at cell phones.
Some of us, however, DO want things like this. I'd love to have a cell phone that has a camera inside of it that can better the actual digital camera that I have. That way, if I want to go somewhere and have both my phone and a camera, I can take one handy little item instead of two. If I have a phone that can also play music or get TV reception or play games, should I want to, why not? I don't want a big, bulky PDA, but I do want to ability to do a number of things in a small package.
If you enjoy carrying eight different pieces of technology with you somewhere, go right ahead. I, however, eagery await the day I can have different things at my disposal, should the need or desire come up, all wrapped in one small, easy to take with me package.
I've got about 70+ Dreamcast games, and I'd say at least half of those are must haves. Stuff like Jet Grind Radio, Chu Chu Rocket, Test Drive: Le Mans, Metropolis Street Racer, Rival Schools, Ecco the Dolphin, Dead or Alive 2, Crazy Taxi, Mark of the Wolves, Last Blade 2, FirePro, etc.
The Dreamcast had an amazing library of games. Granted, as time goes on, some of the games now have better versions (DOA3 vs. DOA2, GameCube Skis of Arcadia vs. DC version, etc.), but for the time, IMHO, the DC library absolutely shamed the library of any other system out there.
>To me, $0.99 per song is still a jack. If a track has 13-15 >songs per album, that's $13 - $15 for all the tracks on the CD. >Considering that I get no artwork, no packaging, no permanent >format, that's a rip off.
Picked at random: Maroon 5, their album Songs about Jane. 12 tracks. Album price, $9.99.
If you buy each track individually and end up paying $12 instead of $10, that's your choice.
*heh* That's really funny, because I've got an AT&T cell phone, and it indeed does exactly that. I can always tell I'm getting a call three seconds before my phone actually rings.
Yes yes, I see the privacy concerns. But on the other hand, people in stores currently aren't exactly trying to remember who you are and what you like. If they have a palm whatever to give them a better understanding of your tastes, they can be far more helpful in less time.
Getting past the personal buying history, however, those dressing rooms are certainly okay in my book. I like the idea of tags in the clothing displaying information on a screen, and come on... that "magic mirror" would make trying on clothing so much more enjoyable an experience. (At least, for those of us who actually care enough to put some effort in the way we dress.)
Slashdot Mirror
Okay... but FFX was a far better game in terms of gameplay, updates to overused JRPG ideas, etc. As well, Breath of Fire V was years beyond any of the previous titles.
It's fun to say, "They don't make games like they used to!" but it often isn't true. As well, with RPGs such as Final Fantasy, improved graphics, and more realized characters, add a lot to a game where the major point is said characters, the relationships between them, and their believability.
If ads bother you so much, start the DVD, go make your popcorn, and by the time you come back, you're good to go. Simple as that. I've never understood people who get so up in arms about the ads before a movie, either at home or in the theater. When you can't skip past them on a DVD, sure, it's annoying - but it isn't bringing life to an end. Go get a drink, go get a snack, whatever.
And while your Dune DVD is sitting on the shelf collecting dust, it is most likely that it isn't deteriorating in quality. The same can't be said for your VHS copy.
If there are any movies that you wish to still be able to watch years from now, I consider it insane to have your format of choice be VHS.
I'm running Tiger just fine on a 550MHz G4 TiBook.
Call me crazy, but I'm pretty certain that a G5 iMac starting at 1.6GHz can run Tiger.
OOG - the audio format of choice for the discerning caveman.
...is that you'd be all over him if he were releasing his music in OGG.
I love how many of you are so "shocked" that some guy you don't know is being talked about, yet keep saying how important it is that a format that nobody knows about be put into everything.
Most of the rational side of me says that I really don't want to see CD die. But yet, there is a small part of me that does.
Online shopping has given us stores that can specialize in extremely niche products, because now one location with one stock of items can service everybody in a particular country, or more. I am a fan of Japanese music, and if I want to buy a CD, I certainly can't find anywhere locally to purchase one. Thanks to the internet, there can now exist America-based J-music stores because their customer base can be everybody in the U.S., not just people in their location.
(Here's the point I'm getting at, coming up.)
In the same kind of way, if music becomes digital instead of physical, because you don't have stores with a set amount of space, and locations that must survive on the local customer base, music companies have far more freedom on what they can offer to whome. J-pop and the like will never be huge when it comes to physical CDs, because there aren't enough people to go to each store and purchase them. But once you don't have stores, but instead just bits of data on a server somewhere, you can offer every kind of music to people anywhere in the world, and as long as one person purchases a song, you've made profit.
If we get away from a physical medium for music, and suddenly the entire world becomes a possible market for the music, then hopefully things will get better for both sides. Music companies don't have to worry about expensive physical media, and they can very cheaply offer their wares to the entire world. Consumers get a huge increase in the amount of music that is available to them, and they can purchase that music more easily and cheaply.
Anime may be one of the more popular genres of product that is fansubbed, but fansubbing is NOT strictly an anime thing. Fansubbing is also done to a host of other products, many of which would never, ever reach other countries.
For example, most of the fansubbed video that I watch are Japanese TV dramas. Stuff like Muko Dono, Gokusen, Koukou Kyoushi, etc. This kind of stuff - at least at this point - is never going to make it to an English-speaking market. The few times that it does - for example, the first (and maybe second) series of Trick was released in a few cities in California - it never then hits video or DVD.
In the case of Japanese drama, yes, it still isn't 100% legal, but as the stuff is not going to come out here anyway, I won't feel immoral for downloading and watching the stuff. If companies were willing to translated the stuff on DVD and release it here, I'd purchase it in a heartbeat. If the Japanese companies were to join the growing trend of Japanese DVDs that have English subs, I'd pay the money for a legit version in a heartbeat.
However, stuff like Japanese drama, or just regular Japanese TV shows, or TV shows from any country that are never going to make it to us English-language-speakers, I see no harm in the fansub community getting a hold of them and giving them a wider audience.
If you are using fansubs in place of purchasing equal legit product, or if fansubs are still around once the product hits the market, or if fansubs are done for something that is a sure release in the English market, THEN I think there's a problem.
I don't think that Macs are as big as they once were in Japan, but there still is a definite market for them over there. When I was living there, the electronics district in Osaka had at least two really decent Mac shops, and there were a number of great Mac magazines. I had a far easier time going to a shop and finding Mac stuff there than I do where I live here in the States.
Are you trying to say that OGG is a more valid format over AAC or WMV? I use AAC, by choice, and seeing as how most of the people I know (including Windows users) have now switched to using iTunes, I can pass them along an AAC file no problem. The only place I EVER hear about OGG is, well, here. I know that Slashdot likes to think that OGG is this great, popular format, but the truth is, the real world doesn't know what it is and doesn't care. At least with AAC, you've got a few better chance of somebody being able to use it simply from the amount of copies of iTunes that are now floating around.
He wasn't calling AAC Apple Lossless. He was saying, "I use AAC (one type of encoding) or Apple Lossless (a different type of encoding, which is really uber-high bitrate AAC)."
Because half of going to see a movie in the theater is the experience. A comedy is a hundred times funnier when you have a whole crowd of people laughing around you. An action movie is more fun when you're in the third row and things are blowing up on this huge screen right in front of you. I love watching movies at home on DVD, but the experience simply cannot compare to going out with your friends on opening night and seeing the same movie in a theater.
Maybe you don't have any decent theaters where you live, but we've got a great chain of local theaters where I live. (Omaha, NE) The seats are great, the walls are insulated enough, the popcorn is great, and the place is almost never totally packed. We can get there ten minutes before showtime and our third row center seats are typically open.
If going to a theater seems too expensive to you, then go to a matinee show on the weekend, and eat before you go so that you're not hungry.
I'm 29, I've enjoyed Legos even since I can remember existing, and they were always just that - "Legos." I've never, EVER heard anybody in a real-world situation refer to them as "Lego bricks."
Might just be a "soda/pop" kind of thing.
Will my eyesight get an upgrade too so that I can actually appreciate that the pixels are 0.08 millimetres across instead of 0.25 mm (or whatever it is they are these days, I'm too lazy to do the maths)?
Okay, you can't see the difference. Many of us can. I often see regular DVDs where I'm disappointed by the image quality. Our current DVD technology was a great first step, but that's all it is and should be. The better visually movies get, the worse they will end up on regular DVD.
I want the studios to have as much room as possible, so that they can give me the best looking end result as possible. Human eyesite doesn't need an "upgrade" to appreciate the difference we will be given, at least until the video we are presented with can be presented at a point that it is indistinguishable from what we're looking at in front of us during the rest of the day.
Anybody who loves movies should want the studios to have the ability to increase the quality of said movies as much as they can. That's what HD-DVD and BluRay are going to help do - but they'll also be just another step, and not an end.
For anybody who says the quality difference is minimal and whatnot, then go back to VHS and have fun there.
The beautiful thing about digital cameras is that you CAN just take a ridiculous amount of pictures at the time of the event. That way, when all is said and done, you have a far better chance of having more worthwhile shots. If you have a limited number of shots, then you have to spend more time making sure that each shot is perfect. If you're a professional photographer, that's probably a good thing. If you're Joe Average who may not have the highest skill at photography, taking a large amount of pics means that you can just snap pictures of everything that is going on and have a better chance of ending up with better pictures. And there are always variable that you can never account for. Maybe your hand shook a bit while taking the picture. Maybe the light reflected in just the wrong way. While I was in Japan, I would typically take the same picture at least twice, to have a better chance of the pic coming out good. If you're taking pictures somewhere that you might not return to again for a long while, it's better to be safe than sorry.
Blu-ray supports H.264 as well.
...where is the support for AAC?
AAC is now the "blessed" format for iTunes and the iPod. I'm sure there are a lot of iPod users out there who, like me, now have a majority of their music collection in AAC. If I was trying to not only woo new customers, but also get iPod users to switch, wouldn't supporting AAC be a good way to do that? If I was looking for a new player, even if I found a non-iPod player that I liked and was cheaper, I would probably stick with the iPod and pay a bit more just for the sake of not having to re-encode my entire collection.
(Of course, I personally have no desire to switch to any non-iPod player, as the only one that even begins to appeal to me is the funky new Olympus red-on-black one.)
First, I love video games. I've owned game consoles since you could get your hands on a 2600, I've written fanzines about them, I worked at a video game magazine for four years, and I absolutely support the idea of "mature" games. Games aren't just for kids, so there should be games that also cater to an older crowd. Not that older people can't enjoy Mario, Sonic, and whatnot, but sometimes they also want GTA, Halo, or whatever else.
However, the video game industry needs to get serious about the "M" rating. Right now, they want it both ways - they want to not have restrictions on what can go into an M-rated game, yet at the same time they also want no restrictions on who can buy the games. As soon as somebody brings up the idea of allowing only 18 and older gamers to be able to purchase M-rated games, they get themselves worked up into a tizzy, cry foul, and hide behind the First Ammendment. What makes video games any different than movies? Why are movies expected to work by that rule, but video games aren't? I know why - because a forced ratings system is still not into place, and the video game companies don't want to see their sales decrease. That isn't a valid reason for not wanting to get their act together, though, I'm afraid.
The video game industry needs to grow up, and earn itself more legitimacy. They need to be serious about the M-rating, and put an "ID or no sale" policy into place. Doesn't have to be 18 per say - it could be 17, or even 16.
If the video game industry did this, it would be less likely that any form of government would try to step in and muck around like we see here, and creators would also have more freedom for expressing "mature" ideas and themes in their games.
iTunes = Apple-created music playing application iTunes Music Store (aka iTMS) = Apple-created online music purchasing / downloading "store" Seriously... how hard it is to understand the difference between the two?
If that's the station I'm thinking of, far too much of their "J-pop" is crap anime music. Plus, ripping a low-quality stream and being able to purchase good quality singles with proper tags and cover art are two different things.
I, too, would love to get my hands on the ability to use a Japanese iTMS once it becomes available.
I never understand why, when we hear about new cellphones with these fancy features, people get so riled up and speak of them as if they were the devil. If you don't want one, guess what? Don't buy one! There are plenty of crappy old phones with nothing but a monochrome display and no features but an address book. Don't say that there aren't, because I see plenty of them whenever I go to look at cell phones.
Some of us, however, DO want things like this. I'd love to have a cell phone that has a camera inside of it that can better the actual digital camera that I have. That way, if I want to go somewhere and have both my phone and a camera, I can take one handy little item instead of two. If I have a phone that can also play music or get TV reception or play games, should I want to, why not? I don't want a big, bulky PDA, but I do want to ability to do a number of things in a small package.
If you enjoy carrying eight different pieces of technology with you somewhere, go right ahead. I, however, eagery await the day I can have different things at my disposal, should the need or desire come up, all wrapped in one small, easy to take with me package.
I've got about 70+ Dreamcast games, and I'd say at least half of those are must haves. Stuff like Jet Grind Radio, Chu Chu Rocket, Test Drive: Le Mans, Metropolis Street Racer, Rival Schools, Ecco the Dolphin, Dead or Alive 2, Crazy Taxi, Mark of the Wolves, Last Blade 2, FirePro, etc.
The Dreamcast had an amazing library of games. Granted, as time goes on, some of the games now have better versions (DOA3 vs. DOA2, GameCube Skis of Arcadia vs. DC version, etc.), but for the time, IMHO, the DC library absolutely shamed the library of any other system out there.
>To me, $0.99 per song is still a jack. If a track has 13-15
>songs per album, that's $13 - $15 for all the tracks on the CD.
>Considering that I get no artwork, no packaging, no permanent
>format, that's a rip off.
Picked at random: Maroon 5, their album Songs about Jane. 12 tracks. Album price, $9.99.
If you buy each track individually and end up paying $12 instead of $10, that's your choice.
*heh* That's really funny, because I've got an AT&T cell phone, and it indeed does exactly that. I can always tell I'm getting a call three seconds before my phone actually rings.
...part of me says, who cares?
Yes yes, I see the privacy concerns. But on the other hand, people in stores currently aren't exactly trying to remember who you are and what you like. If they have a palm whatever to give them a better understanding of your tastes, they can be far more helpful in less time.
Getting past the personal buying history, however, those dressing rooms are certainly okay in my book. I like the idea of tags in the clothing displaying information on a screen, and come on... that "magic mirror" would make trying on clothing so much more enjoyable an experience. (At least, for those of us who actually care enough to put some effort in the way we dress.)