Crystal Castles is freakin sweet. I remember playing it in the arcade at the Ground Round. Hahaha. I had the Atari 2600 version too, but i mean looking back the atari version (like the atari version of most arcade games) pretty much blows. Nothing like going back and forth between the 2600 version and the arcade version in emulators on the computer.
While I'm on the rant of bad arcade ports to ancient systems, everybody knows that Pac-Man on 2600 is a joke, but what a lot of people don't realize is how good the Atari 7800 Ms-Pacman port is. I'd say the its best console port of Ms-Pacman short of running an emulation of the actual arcade game on a modern system.
But DVDs are still, indeed, directly linked to NTSC. 16:9 doesn't imply high definition (though high definition implies 16:9.) Since DVDs record at the NTSC resolution (480 lines, 30 frames per second, but interlacing lets you get 60 discrete points in time out of that) and the DVD spec demands that DVDs are output from an mpeg2 decoder at 60 interlaced fields per second (and not 60 progressive frames per second or 1920x1080 lines or anything like that), they are in fact merely a digital recording of an NTSC signal, which when properly made is gonna be as good as ANY SD signal you will see.
Of course, all of this implies "DVD-Video" which is what set top players deal with. Obviously a DVD-Data disc can have whatever it wants on it, which includes a WMV9 compressed version of Terminator 2 for example, but I doubt this is what you're talking about since we're talking about prerecorded movies and the prerecorded movies joe six pack is buying are invariably "DVD-Video."
Uh. Actually DVD is funamdentally tied to NTSC because it uses the ITU-601 NTSC resolution (in the US and japan anyway). 720x480 at 60 interlaced fields per second, which digitally speaking is the same amount of data as 720x480 at 30 frames per second or 720x240 at 60 frames per second. VHS, Laserdiscs, DVD, Betacam SP, all of these formats record 480 active lines that are intended to be displayed on a 525 line tv. (In fact, 45 of those lines are just the line-equivalent time it takes for a CRT to move the electron gun from the bottom of the TV back to the top). Nothing about DVD is high definition, nor is it even "enhanced definition" as it is merely a high quality standard definition digital recording. To be better than NTSC, it would have to be capable of recording 720x480 at 60 frames per second, or "480p" and DVD is NOT capable of doing this. When you watch a 24 FPS hollywood film on DVD, it is in fact converted to 720x480 at 60 interlaced fields per second (not the same as 60 progressive frameseper second) before it is output using a technique known as "3:2 pulldown." Now it HAPPENS that youcan reverse the 3:2 pulldown, and convert it to 60 non interlaced frames per second, but this is not "60p" as 60 individual points in time per second are NOT recorded on 24 frame per second film.
High definition, on the other hand, can be either 1920x1080i using the exact same interlaced formatting as a DVD only at a higher resolution, or else 1280x720p at 60 frames per second. Since the film is 24 FPS, it makes sense to record EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as it is on a DVD except with a higher resolution (1920x1080x24 fps). The high definition movie player then will have the option to repeat fields to create a 1920x1080 60 field per second image, or else it can just downsize it and repeat the whole frames to create a 1280x720 60 frame per second image. The bottom line is its not high definition if its not at least 1280x720, and its not "enhanced definition" if it is 24 FPS 480 line video (since, thats actually "less" than standard definition.)
I personally don't see a problem with this. What with modern technology, it seems like we should be able to build nuclear power plants much safer and more efficient than anything in the past. The threat of the radioactive biproducts is an issue, but it is a much less immediate (and, in the long term anyway, less of an actual threat) than dumping tons of smog in the air until we're out of coal and oil.
Though it doesn't change your point, Joe Sixpack buys a $5000 TV and $200 home theater in a box from my experience. I sell TVs at a major electronics/appliance retailer and nobody realizes that theres better audio out there than the garbage we sell. We do have some awesome TVs though, and people do buy them.
If 720p is 720 lines... then composite video is 525 lines (in NTSC countries anyway.) Not sure where you got "140 lines (120 practical)" from because you can definitely get >400 HORIZONTAL lines from a laserdisc and laserdiscs are recorded in composite video. Even VHS tapes can handle about 240 lines. All NTSC composite connections are 525 lines vertically, with about 486 and a half of them actually being visible on screen and the rest is just the vblank period.
Oops. The 9800 pro i've got does that. You're right, the 9600 pro is gonna want more like 1024x768, trilinear, and maybe some of the graphical settings tweaked and that'll net you about 50 fps.
I don't know where you're spending "$200+" to get a medium end card, unless its Canada or something. My 9800 Pro was less than $200 over a year ago, so of course it can be had for even less right now. Just because they're willing to sell you a $500 video card doesn't mean you need anything near that price to run even the newest games. A 9600 pro does fine in HL2, and that runs under $100. The reality is that people just don't need those super expensive video cards.
And yes, "just fine" does mean >70FPS with all of the game's detail level turned up at 1280x960 resolution and 4x anisotropic filtering.
Your max refresh rate at 1280x960 is always going to be higher than the max refresh rate at 1280x1024. 1024 is more vertical lines, so how could it draw MORE lines in LESS time if it wasn't using more bandwidth? Thus, whatever your monitor can do at 1280x1024, it can definitely do at 1280x960 too. Its just a matter of telling your video card drivers that your monitor can do it... sometimes the drivers are stupid.
All in all, it might be time to replace that 2MB S3 video card.
Yes. The pixels are square no matter what, its just that a 1280x1024 LCD just has "extra" space on the top and bottom (32 pixels on top, 32 pixels on bottom) to make it 5:4.
CRTs, on the other hand, are basically always 4:3 and do not have a fixed pixel resolution. If you are one of the n00bs still trying to use a 5:4 resolution like 1280x1024 on a 4:3 display, the only way to not distort everything you see is to leave black bars on the sides while expanding the monitor screen to fill it up to the top.
If you're using a CRT monitor at 1280x1024, you are looking at a distorted image. Try 1360x1024 or 1280x960, but please for the love of jebus, stop using a 5:4 ratio.
Nah, somebody else took the video from the set I made and added their own menus. If it was called the "TR-47 set" (Long story about that one, its a guy I know and he didn't try to take credit for it but he was the main distributor) then its got the video I made. If it wasn't called that, the other way to check is that there is about 5 seconds of black in the middle of Empire Strikes Back, when they're on the asteroid trying to fix the Millenium Falcon. It is just after Han says they need to fix the negative reverse power coupling and before the infamous Leia welding scene (which is cut off in some pressings and not in others).
To add a little more... first off, the pixels are the same height vs width on a 1280x1024 LCD as they are on ANY LCD, so 1280x1024 isn't 4:3 (1.33:1), its 1.25:1. If you played your game at 1280x1024 and it knows that its a non 1.33:1 ratio, then it will look fine. However, playing at a 4:3 resolution like 640x480 requires black bars on both sides or else it WILL look distorted. (The amount you can tolerate the distortion depends on your attention to detail. A lot of people can't be bothered with details, so it "looks fine" even though it isn't.) Just about as frequently, people get 4:3 crt monitors and run them at 1280x1024 when 1280x960 is the correct resolution.
No. Half of slashdot users are below median. The average isn't always equal to the median. Consider the following data set:
1 8 8 8 8 8 8
The average is 7.125. How many values are below average? "Not half." You can't know the distribution just by knowing the average.
And I'm not some statistics jockey or anything, this is about the extent of statistics I know, but I always cringe when some people try to imply that half the values of a set are below average and half are above.
The Canon 50/1.8 is the lightest EF lens, and also exceptionally sharp considering its price tag of only $65 or so. I'd recommend anyone with a Canon DSLR (that doesn't already have something better) to purchase this. The next best sharpness you can get from a zoom lens without spending more than $1000 is the Tamron 28-75, and even this sells for $385, and only goes as wide as F/2.8.
Usually, people use prime lenses BECAUSE the price vs sharpness ratio is much better. The 50/1.4, which isn't even actually "L-series" glass, is one of the sharpest lenses Canon sells and retails for about 1/3rd of the price of their flagship, the 24-70L. The 85 and 100 are notable as well. The tradeoff of using a prime lens is the flexibility of framing, not the price.
Slashdot Mirror
Crystal Castles is freakin sweet. I remember playing it in the arcade at the Ground Round. Hahaha. I had the Atari 2600 version too, but i mean looking back the atari version (like the atari version of most arcade games) pretty much blows. Nothing like going back and forth between the 2600 version and the arcade version in emulators on the computer.
While I'm on the rant of bad arcade ports to ancient systems, everybody knows that Pac-Man on 2600 is a joke, but what a lot of people don't realize is how good the Atari 7800 Ms-Pacman port is. I'd say the its best console port of Ms-Pacman short of running an emulation of the actual arcade game on a modern system.
But DVDs are still, indeed, directly linked to NTSC. 16:9 doesn't imply high definition (though high definition implies 16:9.) Since DVDs record at the NTSC resolution (480 lines, 30 frames per second, but interlacing lets you get 60 discrete points in time out of that) and the DVD spec demands that DVDs are output from an mpeg2 decoder at 60 interlaced fields per second (and not 60 progressive frames per second or 1920x1080 lines or anything like that), they are in fact merely a digital recording of an NTSC signal, which when properly made is gonna be as good as ANY SD signal you will see. Of course, all of this implies "DVD-Video" which is what set top players deal with. Obviously a DVD-Data disc can have whatever it wants on it, which includes a WMV9 compressed version of Terminator 2 for example, but I doubt this is what you're talking about since we're talking about prerecorded movies and the prerecorded movies joe six pack is buying are invariably "DVD-Video."
Uh. Actually DVD is funamdentally tied to NTSC because it uses the ITU-601 NTSC resolution (in the US and japan anyway). 720x480 at 60 interlaced fields per second, which digitally speaking is the same amount of data as 720x480 at 30 frames per second or 720x240 at 60 frames per second. VHS, Laserdiscs, DVD, Betacam SP, all of these formats record 480 active lines that are intended to be displayed on a 525 line tv. (In fact, 45 of those lines are just the line-equivalent time it takes for a CRT to move the electron gun from the bottom of the TV back to the top). Nothing about DVD is high definition, nor is it even "enhanced definition" as it is merely a high quality standard definition digital recording. To be better than NTSC, it would have to be capable of recording 720x480 at 60 frames per second, or "480p" and DVD is NOT capable of doing this. When you watch a 24 FPS hollywood film on DVD, it is in fact converted to 720x480 at 60 interlaced fields per second (not the same as 60 progressive frameseper second) before it is output using a technique known as "3:2 pulldown." Now it HAPPENS that youcan reverse the 3:2 pulldown, and convert it to 60 non interlaced frames per second, but this is not "60p" as 60 individual points in time per second are NOT recorded on 24 frame per second film. High definition, on the other hand, can be either 1920x1080i using the exact same interlaced formatting as a DVD only at a higher resolution, or else 1280x720p at 60 frames per second. Since the film is 24 FPS, it makes sense to record EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as it is on a DVD except with a higher resolution (1920x1080x24 fps). The high definition movie player then will have the option to repeat fields to create a 1920x1080 60 field per second image, or else it can just downsize it and repeat the whole frames to create a 1280x720 60 frame per second image. The bottom line is its not high definition if its not at least 1280x720, and its not "enhanced definition" if it is 24 FPS 480 line video (since, thats actually "less" than standard definition.)
I for one welcome our DVDA overlords.
I personally don't see a problem with this. What with modern technology, it seems like we should be able to build nuclear power plants much safer and more efficient than anything in the past. The threat of the radioactive biproducts is an issue, but it is a much less immediate (and, in the long term anyway, less of an actual threat) than dumping tons of smog in the air until we're out of coal and oil.
I want a solar powered light bulb.
Though it doesn't change your point, Joe Sixpack buys a $5000 TV and $200 home theater in a box from my experience. I sell TVs at a major electronics/appliance retailer and nobody realizes that theres better audio out there than the garbage we sell. We do have some awesome TVs though, and people do buy them.
If 720p is 720 lines... then composite video is 525 lines (in NTSC countries anyway.) Not sure where you got "140 lines (120 practical)" from because you can definitely get >400 HORIZONTAL lines from a laserdisc and laserdiscs are recorded in composite video. Even VHS tapes can handle about 240 lines. All NTSC composite connections are 525 lines vertically, with about 486 and a half of them actually being visible on screen and the rest is just the vblank period.
Oops. The 9800 pro i've got does that. You're right, the 9600 pro is gonna want more like 1024x768, trilinear, and maybe some of the graphical settings tweaked and that'll net you about 50 fps.
I don't know where you're spending "$200+" to get a medium end card, unless its Canada or something. My 9800 Pro was less than $200 over a year ago, so of course it can be had for even less right now. Just because they're willing to sell you a $500 video card doesn't mean you need anything near that price to run even the newest games. A 9600 pro does fine in HL2, and that runs under $100. The reality is that people just don't need those super expensive video cards. And yes, "just fine" does mean >70FPS with all of the game's detail level turned up at 1280x960 resolution and 4x anisotropic filtering.
Kiss me, I'm a nerd.
MAC, or "Media Access Controller" is what makes network cards work. "Mac" or "Macintosh" is the computer Apple sells.
pwned? chown? CHPWNED!
I thought they were referring to the "Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator"
Your max refresh rate at 1280x960 is always going to be higher than the max refresh rate at 1280x1024. 1024 is more vertical lines, so how could it draw MORE lines in LESS time if it wasn't using more bandwidth? Thus, whatever your monitor can do at 1280x1024, it can definitely do at 1280x960 too. Its just a matter of telling your video card drivers that your monitor can do it... sometimes the drivers are stupid.
All in all, it might be time to replace that 2MB S3 video card.
Yes. The pixels are square no matter what, its just that a 1280x1024 LCD just has "extra" space on the top and bottom (32 pixels on top, 32 pixels on bottom) to make it 5:4. CRTs, on the other hand, are basically always 4:3 and do not have a fixed pixel resolution. If you are one of the n00bs still trying to use a 5:4 resolution like 1280x1024 on a 4:3 display, the only way to not distort everything you see is to leave black bars on the sides while expanding the monitor screen to fill it up to the top. If you're using a CRT monitor at 1280x1024, you are looking at a distorted image. Try 1360x1024 or 1280x960, but please for the love of jebus, stop using a 5:4 ratio.
Do you pronounce cheque as "check-kay" or "check-kwah?"
Nah, somebody else took the video from the set I made and added their own menus. If it was called the "TR-47 set" (Long story about that one, its a guy I know and he didn't try to take credit for it but he was the main distributor) then its got the video I made. If it wasn't called that, the other way to check is that there is about 5 seconds of black in the middle of Empire Strikes Back, when they're on the asteroid trying to fix the Millenium Falcon. It is just after Han says they need to fix the negative reverse power coupling and before the infamous Leia welding scene (which is cut off in some pressings and not in others).
lol, those DVD-R ISOs of the Definitive Collection made from LD? I made that. Good to see people enjoying them.
525 scan lines = vertical. VHS very much uses all of it. Betamax has slightly more horizontal bandwidth than VHS, but its not night an day.
To add a little more... first off, the pixels are the same height vs width on a 1280x1024 LCD as they are on ANY LCD, so 1280x1024 isn't 4:3 (1.33:1), its 1.25:1. If you played your game at 1280x1024 and it knows that its a non 1.33:1 ratio, then it will look fine. However, playing at a 4:3 resolution like 640x480 requires black bars on both sides or else it WILL look distorted. (The amount you can tolerate the distortion depends on your attention to detail. A lot of people can't be bothered with details, so it "looks fine" even though it isn't.) Just about as frequently, people get 4:3 crt monitors and run them at 1280x1024 when 1280x960 is the correct resolution.
No. Half of slashdot users are below median. The average isn't always equal to the median. Consider the following data set:
1 8 8 8 8 8 8
The average is 7.125. How many values are below average? "Not half." You can't know the distribution just by knowing the average.
And I'm not some statistics jockey or anything, this is about the extent of statistics I know, but I always cringe when some people try to imply that half the values of a set are below average and half are above.
The Canon 50/1.8 is the lightest EF lens, and also exceptionally sharp considering its price tag of only $65 or so. I'd recommend anyone with a Canon DSLR (that doesn't already have something better) to purchase this. The next best sharpness you can get from a zoom lens without spending more than $1000 is the Tamron 28-75, and even this sells for $385, and only goes as wide as F/2.8.
Usually, people use prime lenses BECAUSE the price vs sharpness ratio is much better. The 50/1.4, which isn't even actually "L-series" glass, is one of the sharpest lenses Canon sells and retails for about 1/3rd of the price of their flagship, the 24-70L. The 85 and 100 are notable as well. The tradeoff of using a prime lens is the flexibility of framing, not the price.
I believe it was either a stage select or infinite life (or maybe both) code for TMNT2: The Arcade Game on NES. The Contra code is:
Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A
A third of the release day games are mahjong.
I guess those Japanese GOTTA have their mahjong.