I've been wishing for that for a long time, but it doesn't seem to be something that too many people are pushing for.
IMAX can use 48 fps. Apparently the first two movies shot with the 70 mm Todd-AO format were done with 30 fps (Around the World in Eighty Days, and Oklahoma!), but after that they switched to the more conventional 24 fps.
One new proposed film format with 48 fps is MaxiVision48. Showscan is done at 60 fps. I'm pretty doubtful that a new film-based format can take off, because of the high cost of switching projection equipment, and because there will be increasing pressure to switch to digital to lower distribution costs. The last few times that I've gone to theaters, I've been appalled at the crappy image quality--I think we've actually gone backwards since the era of 70 mm movies like Laurence of Arabia (I saw a new print of that screened a few years ago, and it was amazing!), and I think the future, unfortunately, will be medium-quality digital, full of banding and compression artifacts.
I think movies with lots of rapid camera movements and hyperkinetic fight scenes would definitely benefit from switching to 48 fps or higher. While most people can't tell the difference between 24, 30, and 60 fps, I think they can subconsciously feel it. On the other hand, there are many people who feel that such "high motion" filming actually interferes with audience's suspension of disbelief, or that acting and directing would have to change to work in that format. (see this article).
Stanley Kubrick (the directory) preferred the 4:3 aspect ratio, and shot most of his movies in that format. I think FMJ was shot in 4:3, so the "widescreen" US theatrical release was just cropped (the European release was 15:9). So, the 4:3 DVD version is actually what the director intended--it's showing the whole frame, unlike most 4:3 videos which are pan+scan crops of widescreen/anamorphic source material.
Although that might not please you if you have a 16:9 TV...
By the time the next generation of consoles come out, a HD-DVD/BR-class drive should have become extremely cheap to manufacture (unless both formats completely fail to gain mass-market penetration), so there would be no good reason for Microsoft to make an drive-less "Xbox 720" that needs a clunky external drive (which probably won't match the styling of the new console) to do anything useful.
If the 360 survives the run of this generation, I could see Microsoft releasing a new rev of the 360 with an internal HD-DVD (or perhaps even combo HD/BR), as it is probably cheaper for them to make one box with one drive in it, rather than two boxes with a cheap drive in one and an expensive drive in the other, plus the extra connector and cable.
This is of course assuming that the next batch of consoles run primarily off of optical disks, not direct download, and I don't think anyone really knows how that will pan out. I think there's still a good chance that both HD-DVD and BR never make it past a niche market (bigger than SACD, but not as big as DVD) and everyone else gets their HD content via digital cable and video on demand, probably horribly compressed but "good enough" for the average joe.
While external console peripherals tend to be losers, the one smart thing for Microsoft here is that even if both Microsoft and Sony are heavily subsidizing their high-defintion optical drives, Sony has to do it for every PS3, while Microsoft can assume that only a smaller fraction of their users will get the drive (and just get the value of making the Xbox 360 seem more valuable by "having that option"). These are interesting times, for sure.
Also, why bother to do it the hard way when you can just take something like ethanol made from switchgrass, where all the carbon came from the air originally, and then just burn it in a regular engine less than $100 of modification. If you include the additional carbon that is sequestered into the ground by the root systems of the switchgrass (harvesting is basically just mowing off the top), it actually ends up as a net loss of carbon to the atmosphere (or at least enough to compensate for using a 15% addition of petroleum for E85). Yes, ethanol in the US is made inefficiently from corn right now, but converting to a more efficient system is a political problem, not a technological one, and not an insurmountable one. See Khosla's video for more info.
I was about to reply that I had heard they had lost the plans to the Saturn V, then thought to myself that perhaps that was an urban legend, and of course, it is just a legend at least according to this page.
Key takeaway (at least according to some random internet source, ha ha):
Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, the Saturn V blueprints have not been lost. They are kept at Marshall Space Flight Center on microfilm.
The problem in re-creating the Saturn V is not finding the drawings, it is finding vendors who can supply mid-1960's vintage hardware (like guidance system components), and the fact that the launch pads and VAB have been converted to Space Shuttle use, so you have no place to launch from.
By the time you redesign to accommodate available hardware and re-modify the launch pads, you may as well have started from scratch with a clean sheet design.
Not to mention the cost of updating the design to include child seat brackets, non-CFC air conditioning, and an MP3 player input...
The last time I went into an arcade, it was full of all kinds of custom input games--games where you sat on a jet-ski that moved, or stood on skies, rode on a horse, etc, not to mention of course DDR and all the lightgun-based games. (Obviously the last two have console equivalents, but not as many people are likely to have dance pads or lightguns). I know in Japan they have a game where you stick a finger-shaped thing into a fake butt. These types of things probably add a lot to the price of the machine, because they have to withstand all kinds of abuse and still work, plus because they require more custom hardware. VR that doesn't suck would be cool, but I suspect that there won't be much of a window between the point where it is feasible to have good arcade VR setups that don't cost $20 per minute to when they are mass produced for home use. Pinball, something that doesn't really feel right on a console, is dying, and is down to only one manufacturer (Stern).
I don't know if the traditional arcade is really ever going to succeed again--I would bet that game machines will linger on in places like bars and nightclubs where you have a captive audience who are unlikely to be carrying handhelds, but that market is probably satisfied with Golden Tee and various low-tech casual games.
It is true that there is an ocean of lousy programmers out there. However, this does beg the question as to why there isn't more "real talent" out there. H1B programs are one way of dealing with a shortage; however without that 'easy out', I have to wonder if the situation wouldn't lead to solutions that would benefit this country more. The first effects of ending H1B would be to drive labor costs up; some of that would lead to increased outsourcing as an alternative, but as companies are beginning to find out, that isn't necessarily the win it seems to be on paper. Additionally, it would cause other effects; companies who can't find qualified people could actually hire people with talent but not the specific skill set for the job at hand and actually TRAIN THEM IN! Companies that currently depend on code monkeys willing to work tons of hours would be forced to actually restructure their work flow, and those that couldn't and are too dependent on the slave-driving mentality can go out of business or relocate elsewhere. Companies that need leads would have to pay more and hire away people who are overqualified for their current job. As a cascading effect, there would be more entry-level jobs opening up, and students would see more incentive to study programming. Perhaps you could even see talent scouts looking for something besides basketball ability in inner-city schools!
This would seem like not the best solution for, e.g., first-person shooter gamers, who mainly want high frame rates to lower the total latency (time between controller movement and seeing the result of that on the screen, not to be confused with network latency). In the worst case, in a Quad AFR setup, if you are running at 30 fps, that would mean each GPU is actually rendering at 7.5 fps, or 133 milliseconds per frame, versus the 33 milliseconds per frame of 30 fps. (Not counting the additional latency incurred by input methods, deferred rendering, double buffering, etc). Obviously 30 fps Quad AFR would still look much smoother than 7.5 fps, but it wouldn't be as responsive as 30 fps non-AFR.
For a demonstration of what true low-latency game-play is like, try playing something like Kaboom! with a paddle on a real Atari 2600... no double-buffering there!
I admit the first thing I thought of was Iraq when I saw that article, but the current estimate is "only" 2399 US Military deaths in Iraq since the war began in March '03. While tragic, that is still a very small fraction of 1750 per day--the bulk of the remainder must be older soldiers dying of natural causes.
I'd never heard of that one before--it makes things look like some weird Linux desktop scheme, and the colors on the close/minimize/zoom buttons are rather tripped out... but it does make everything pretty easy on the eyes... when I turn it back off on this black on white slashdot page it's like having someone walk in to your dark room and turn on a bank of fluorescent lights... ouch!
Now I just have to come up with a mnemonic for why it's on the "8" key... I guess ctrl-option-cmd+some other number just beeps, so I can find it again by trial and error.
They could even bundle it with a FloBee! Shed those pounds and get a haircut too! Although cleaning out the vacuum cleaner after all that might be a little rough, especially with a bagless vac...
How about a home stomach-stapling kit? Okay, I'm stopping now... this thread should be moderated (-1) TOO GROSS. Quick, someone start talking about linux or ATI drivers or something...
I honestly can't tell which... it's brilliant, though, either way. What's next, the home cataract removal kit? "Gutcrafters: Kidney transplants in about an hour"?
The PS2,GameCube, and Xbox all have roughly similar poly counts in real world shipping games - somewhere in the 10-20 million range. The PS2 spanks the other two for fillrate type poly effects, and the Xbox does a better job at multi-texture polys. But overall, all three systems are very close in realworld conditions...
However, getting an full game (not just a triangle test) running on the Xbox or GameCube at those speeds was pretty easy, but getting that on a PS2 required much more time and effort (although justified by PS2's dominant market position) as well as causing irreversible brain damage to the programmer, and even some sort of Stockholm-syndrome where you start to identify with the machine that is holding you hostage at work...
Furthermore, most games have so many different strings attached to their IP that it could be pretty hard to put them in the public domain; rights could be split across the publisher and developer, plus any licensed properties used in the game, licensed middleware, etc, etc, plus when one of the rights holders becomes defunct it can be very challenging to acquire rights, even for someone with money and a profit motive, let alone a disinterested public service gesture. Each generation of games (both console and PC) will likely be more and more difficult to emulate, even disregarding legal issues, as the underlying hardware becomes more complicated.
On the other hand, film is to some degree subject to some of the same constraints--in the same way that you can buy a vintage Atari 2600 and a copy of Kaboom! at a garage sale, you could track down a film projector and an old print of some 1940's movie, however, to actually have something useable for normal people it is up to the content owners to convert it to VHS, and now more recently DVD. There is probably the same winnowing process, in that the hit movies will get converted to the latest formats first much as only the "classic" games will make it onto the newest retro gaming pack. I think the biggest difference is that games currently age much more quickly and poorly than movies, so there is less demand to make older games playable on modern hardware beyond a few classics. It remains to be seen whether the technological curve of games starts to taper off. I think right now we've gone from crappy 2D to great 2D to crappy 3D to adequate 3D.
It is worth noting that the PS3 and Revolution, which are likely to stay current until at least 2011, will be able to play games from as far back as 1995 and 1985 respectively; not something that can be said for a DVD player.
I think the programmer who wrote VCL based it off of some school project he had written. I've gotten the impression that it was sort of a black box that nobody at SCEE really understands... it is very handy, though, and you can even use it as a compiler back end for VU code (e.g., emit "naive" sequential assembly and have VCL fold redundant moves and do all the fancy-pants rescheduling and loop unrolling.) I am pretty skeptical that any sort of auto-parallelizing compiler will be used for PS3 games... although given how infrequently VU0 was fully utilized by PS2 games, I can see how they would like to find a way to get "lazy" programmers to use the SPEs...
According to the recent book "1491", the Europeans, at least initially, didn't really have that much of a technological advantage--e.g., early guns couldn't shoot very far or quickly and quickly lost their psychological edge, the Incas didn't have iron but had more advanced textiles. The spread of livestock diseases such as smallpox and the ensuing high mortality rates (thought to be 95%!!!) destabilized the existing political systems enough that the Europeans were able to exploit the situation and play groups off each other. Ironically, the more advanced indigenous societies were more vulnerable, because their transportation systems and higher population densities helped spread the disease faster, plus their centralized control made them more vulnerable when key leaders started dying off, leading to unclear succession and civil war.
The author also makes a joke that if Ghengis Khan had come to Europe right after the Black Plague, we would all be speaking Mongolian...
I have noticed that often you can get non-bluetooth wireless keyboards and mice complete with USB receiver for less than just a bluetooth mouse or keyboard without a dongle!
I looked up Bluetooth licensing, and as far as I can tell, there's an annual "membership" fee of US$7,500 for companies with annual revenue under US$100M that allows companies to use the Bluetooth specs "royalty free". Since $7.5K would be chump change for any "real" manufacturer, plus it would be a fixed cost not tied to any particular device, I would guess it's mostly the complexity of the implementation that makes Bluetooth wireless devices more expensive then their proprietary wireless counterparts.
I guess it doesn't surprise me too much, just because I have become aware how embedded devices really use the lamest possible CPU they can get away with to shave a few pennies; often devices that cost hundreds of dollars are hobbled by incredibly wimpy microcontrollers, as well as, of course, generally shoddy firmware and UI design...
By contrast, the Toshiba-Sony "Emotion Engine" at the heart of the Playstation-2 performs true 128-bit ["quad" precision] floating point calculations in hardware:
The "128-bit" registers on the EE (or more accurately, VU0, VU1) can only be used as 4-vectors of 32-bit (single-precision) floats, just like Cell's SPEs; I think they may also not support the complete IEEE spec. It would have been a complete waste of silicon for them to design double or "quad" precision capacity for a game machine, although it is true that at some point Sony smoked enough of their own crack to actually think the "supercomputer" PS2 could be sold as a workstation (hence all the weird vestigial crap on PS2 development kits like video inputs).
That being said, I don't think double-precision floating point support is required for rendering 3D graphics, even at HDTV resolution. 32-bit accuracy is enormous compared to the screen resolutions (at most 1920x1080) and color depth (8-bits per channel of output--32-bit HDR is PLENTY to drive that; I will guess that 16-bit or 24-bit will be the norm). The only place where I could imagine being limited by single-precision would be complex, non-realtime physics simulations.
But if you really want to buy my PS2 for "billions of dollars", I won't stop you...
We had one classroom that happened thanks to some accidental miracle of 1960s construction technology to have the unique acoustic property that it would amplify a certain frequency. If one or more of us started humming at that special note, the whole classroom would start to resonate. The beauty was that it was totally non-directional, making nearly impossible to figure out who was doing it.
While it is true that cars are much cleaner in terms of pollutants (due to tightening regulations, typically spearheaded by California), efficiency hasn't really gone up, partly because gas-guzzling SUVs, which don't count against corporate fleet averages due to a loophole that isn't closed because it benefits our moribund auto industry, are replacing station wagons and other passenger-carrying vehicles. Engines are clean burning, but the the amount of carbon emissions per gallon of gas consumed is pretty much a constant. Engine technology has improved by leaps and bounds, yes, but the increasing power and weight of passenger vehicles cancel out most of the efficiency. The price of gas is still a very small percentage of the total cost of ownership of a vehicle, which is why a 50 MPG hybrid is actually a bad economic investment when battery replacement is factored in. As long as the price of gas remains at current levels, people will buy overpowered, heavy cars as long as they have a big gas tank to reduce the frequency of fill ups. Suburban sprawl will continue to spread, and mass transit will continue to be an unattractive option.
There is no question that certain groups would bear the brunt of an increased gas tax over other groups, and that being sort of a poll tax, is regressive. However, charging people for the externalities resulting from their actions is one of the few ways to make the "invisible hand" work in the real world. Reducing carbon emissions has some economic impact--unquestionably true. However, when the economic cost of having to switch to less desirable oil sources such as shale oil as reserves are depleted, as well as an ecological catastrophe caused by global warming, will be staggeringly high, and while we may not live to pay it, our descendants most definitely will. If we in the USA will not make the slightest reduction in our fuel consumption, how can we possibly tell China not to burn coal like there's no tomorrow? Oh wait, I forgot, our foreign policy is being run by a bunch of short-sighted, ignorant maniacs who've pissed away all our foreign political capital, after the previous administration sold our sovereignty to help enrich multinational corporations. I guess it doesn't matter then. Carry on. Be happy.
My TimeWarner PVR cable box is, IIRC, made by Scientific Atlanta, and I don't know who wrote the firmware, but it is pretty crappy--it crashes (and then auto-reboots after a while) relatively often, and even changing the volume can be sluggish. Not too surprising, I suppose, as most embedded devices have terrible GUIs. It would be great if CableCARD actually supported all the cable features, so that consumers could just use whatever device they wanted to--I'm guessing any profits on set-top box rental are dwarfed by the profit on the rest of the cable bill.
The console doesn't use a comb filter to produce the S-Video (two-wire) output from a composite source (1 wire)--it is going the other way from basically an internal component signal (3 wire) down to 2 wire. When the console synthesizes a composite signal, some information is destroyed, especially in NTSC, that can never be brought back. With S-Video, the luminance (Y) signal is transmitted directly with no modulation, and only the UV (or Cr/Cb--I'm being a little fast and loose here) signals are encoded together into a chroma signal, which is less destructive (e.g., more of the original signal can be reconstructed accurately).
Slashdot Mirror
IMAX can use 48 fps. Apparently the first two movies shot with the 70 mm Todd-AO format were done with 30 fps (Around the World in Eighty Days, and Oklahoma!), but after that they switched to the more conventional 24 fps.
One new proposed film format with 48 fps is MaxiVision48. Showscan is done at 60 fps. I'm pretty doubtful that a new film-based format can take off, because of the high cost of switching projection equipment, and because there will be increasing pressure to switch to digital to lower distribution costs. The last few times that I've gone to theaters, I've been appalled at the crappy image quality--I think we've actually gone backwards since the era of 70 mm movies like Laurence of Arabia (I saw a new print of that screened a few years ago, and it was amazing!), and I think the future, unfortunately, will be medium-quality digital, full of banding and compression artifacts.
I think movies with lots of rapid camera movements and hyperkinetic fight scenes would definitely benefit from switching to 48 fps or higher. While most people can't tell the difference between 24, 30, and 60 fps, I think they can subconsciously feel it. On the other hand, there are many people who feel that such "high motion" filming actually interferes with audience's suspension of disbelief, or that acting and directing would have to change to work in that format. (see this article).
Although that might not please you if you have a 16:9 TV...
Studies have shown that subliminal advertising, much like the typical slashdot post, is mostly full of it.
If the 360 survives the run of this generation, I could see Microsoft releasing a new rev of the 360 with an internal HD-DVD (or perhaps even combo HD/BR), as it is probably cheaper for them to make one box with one drive in it, rather than two boxes with a cheap drive in one and an expensive drive in the other, plus the extra connector and cable.
This is of course assuming that the next batch of consoles run primarily off of optical disks, not direct download, and I don't think anyone really knows how that will pan out. I think there's still a good chance that both HD-DVD and BR never make it past a niche market (bigger than SACD, but not as big as DVD) and everyone else gets their HD content via digital cable and video on demand, probably horribly compressed but "good enough" for the average joe.
While external console peripherals tend to be losers, the one smart thing for Microsoft here is that even if both Microsoft and Sony are heavily subsidizing their high-defintion optical drives, Sony has to do it for every PS3, while Microsoft can assume that only a smaller fraction of their users will get the drive (and just get the value of making the Xbox 360 seem more valuable by "having that option"). These are interesting times, for sure.
Also, why bother to do it the hard way when you can just take something like ethanol made from switchgrass, where all the carbon came from the air originally, and then just burn it in a regular engine less than $100 of modification. If you include the additional carbon that is sequestered into the ground by the root systems of the switchgrass (harvesting is basically just mowing off the top), it actually ends up as a net loss of carbon to the atmosphere (or at least enough to compensate for using a 15% addition of petroleum for E85). Yes, ethanol in the US is made inefficiently from corn right now, but converting to a more efficient system is a political problem, not a technological one, and not an insurmountable one. See Khosla's video for more info.
Key takeaway (at least according to some random internet source, ha ha):
Not to mention the cost of updating the design to include child seat brackets, non-CFC air conditioning, and an MP3 player input...Because those musty old DX9 games do all their physics calculations using, umm... the interrupt controller?
The last time I went into an arcade, it was full of all kinds of custom input games--games where you sat on a jet-ski that moved, or stood on skies, rode on a horse, etc, not to mention of course DDR and all the lightgun-based games. (Obviously the last two have console equivalents, but not as many people are likely to have dance pads or lightguns). I know in Japan they have a game where you stick a finger-shaped thing into a fake butt. These types of things probably add a lot to the price of the machine, because they have to withstand all kinds of abuse and still work, plus because they require more custom hardware. VR that doesn't suck would be cool, but I suspect that there won't be much of a window between the point where it is feasible to have good arcade VR setups that don't cost $20 per minute to when they are mass produced for home use. Pinball, something that doesn't really feel right on a console, is dying, and is down to only one manufacturer (Stern).
I don't know if the traditional arcade is really ever going to succeed again--I would bet that game machines will linger on in places like bars and nightclubs where you have a captive audience who are unlikely to be carrying handhelds, but that market is probably satisfied with Golden Tee and various low-tech casual games.
It is true that there is an ocean of lousy programmers out there. However, this does beg the question as to why there isn't more "real talent" out there. H1B programs are one way of dealing with a shortage; however without that 'easy out', I have to wonder if the situation wouldn't lead to solutions that would benefit this country more. The first effects of ending H1B would be to drive labor costs up; some of that would lead to increased outsourcing as an alternative, but as companies are beginning to find out, that isn't necessarily the win it seems to be on paper. Additionally, it would cause other effects; companies who can't find qualified people could actually hire people with talent but not the specific skill set for the job at hand and actually TRAIN THEM IN! Companies that currently depend on code monkeys willing to work tons of hours would be forced to actually restructure their work flow, and those that couldn't and are too dependent on the slave-driving mentality can go out of business or relocate elsewhere. Companies that need leads would have to pay more and hire away people who are overqualified for their current job. As a cascading effect, there would be more entry-level jobs opening up, and students would see more incentive to study programming. Perhaps you could even see talent scouts looking for something besides basketball ability in inner-city schools!
For a demonstration of what true low-latency game-play is like, try playing something like Kaboom! with a paddle on a real Atari 2600... no double-buffering there!
Now I just have to come up with a mnemonic for why it's on the "8" key... I guess ctrl-option-cmd+some other number just beeps, so I can find it again by trial and error.
How about a home stomach-stapling kit? Okay, I'm stopping now... this thread should be moderated (-1) TOO GROSS. Quick, someone start talking about linux or ATI drivers or something...
I honestly can't tell which... it's brilliant, though, either way. What's next, the home cataract removal kit? "Gutcrafters: Kidney transplants in about an hour"?
On the other hand, film is to some degree subject to some of the same constraints--in the same way that you can buy a vintage Atari 2600 and a copy of Kaboom! at a garage sale, you could track down a film projector and an old print of some 1940's movie, however, to actually have something useable for normal people it is up to the content owners to convert it to VHS, and now more recently DVD. There is probably the same winnowing process, in that the hit movies will get converted to the latest formats first much as only the "classic" games will make it onto the newest retro gaming pack. I think the biggest difference is that games currently age much more quickly and poorly than movies, so there is less demand to make older games playable on modern hardware beyond a few classics. It remains to be seen whether the technological curve of games starts to taper off. I think right now we've gone from crappy 2D to great 2D to crappy 3D to adequate 3D.
It is worth noting that the PS3 and Revolution, which are likely to stay current until at least 2011, will be able to play games from as far back as 1995 and 1985 respectively; not something that can be said for a DVD player.
I think the programmer who wrote VCL based it off of some school project he had written. I've gotten the impression that it was sort of a black box that nobody at SCEE really understands... it is very handy, though, and you can even use it as a compiler back end for VU code (e.g., emit "naive" sequential assembly and have VCL fold redundant moves and do all the fancy-pants rescheduling and loop unrolling.) I am pretty skeptical that any sort of auto-parallelizing compiler will be used for PS3 games... although given how infrequently VU0 was fully utilized by PS2 games, I can see how they would like to find a way to get "lazy" programmers to use the SPEs...
The author also makes a joke that if Ghengis Khan had come to Europe right after the Black Plague, we would all be speaking Mongolian...
I looked up Bluetooth licensing, and as far as I can tell, there's an annual "membership" fee of US$7,500 for companies with annual revenue under US$100M that allows companies to use the Bluetooth specs "royalty free". Since $7.5K would be chump change for any "real" manufacturer, plus it would be a fixed cost not tied to any particular device, I would guess it's mostly the complexity of the implementation that makes Bluetooth wireless devices more expensive then their proprietary wireless counterparts.
I guess it doesn't surprise me too much, just because I have become aware how embedded devices really use the lamest possible CPU they can get away with to shave a few pennies; often devices that cost hundreds of dollars are hobbled by incredibly wimpy microcontrollers, as well as, of course, generally shoddy firmware and UI design...
That being said, I don't think double-precision floating point support is required for rendering 3D graphics, even at HDTV resolution. 32-bit accuracy is enormous compared to the screen resolutions (at most 1920x1080) and color depth (8-bits per channel of output--32-bit HDR is PLENTY to drive that; I will guess that 16-bit or 24-bit will be the norm). The only place where I could imagine being limited by single-precision would be complex, non-realtime physics simulations.
But if you really want to buy my PS2 for "billions of dollars", I won't stop you...
Not that we abused this or anything...
There is no question that certain groups would bear the brunt of an increased gas tax over other groups, and that being sort of a poll tax, is regressive. However, charging people for the externalities resulting from their actions is one of the few ways to make the "invisible hand" work in the real world. Reducing carbon emissions has some economic impact--unquestionably true. However, when the economic cost of having to switch to less desirable oil sources such as shale oil as reserves are depleted, as well as an ecological catastrophe caused by global warming, will be staggeringly high, and while we may not live to pay it, our descendants most definitely will. If we in the USA will not make the slightest reduction in our fuel consumption, how can we possibly tell China not to burn coal like there's no tomorrow? Oh wait, I forgot, our foreign policy is being run by a bunch of short-sighted, ignorant maniacs who've pissed away all our foreign political capital, after the previous administration sold our sovereignty to help enrich multinational corporations. I guess it doesn't matter then. Carry on. Be happy.
My TimeWarner PVR cable box is, IIRC, made by Scientific Atlanta, and I don't know who wrote the firmware, but it is pretty crappy--it crashes (and then auto-reboots after a while) relatively often, and even changing the volume can be sluggish. Not too surprising, I suppose, as most embedded devices have terrible GUIs. It would be great if CableCARD actually supported all the cable features, so that consumers could just use whatever device they wanted to--I'm guessing any profits on set-top box rental are dwarfed by the profit on the rest of the cable bill.
The console doesn't use a comb filter to produce the S-Video (two-wire) output from a composite source (1 wire)--it is going the other way from basically an internal component signal (3 wire) down to 2 wire. When the console synthesizes a composite signal, some information is destroyed, especially in NTSC, that can never be brought back. With S-Video, the luminance (Y) signal is transmitted directly with no modulation, and only the UV (or Cr/Cb--I'm being a little fast and loose here) signals are encoded together into a chroma signal, which is less destructive (e.g., more of the original signal can be reconstructed accurately).