PowerShell is kind of cool, but not entirely unique. The one thing it has over Ruby/Python/Smalltalk is that it pretends to also be a decent commandline interface, which I very much doubt it is.
If you already have the TV for it, HD-DVD players have gotten so cheap people are just using them for upscaling DVD players. And they do a better job of that than some MUCH more expensive DVD-only upscaling players.
- HiDef is fighting with HiDef*... tick
I'll give you that one -- the DVD format war is over, the HD format war is not.
- HiDef for the average user gives no gain... tick
Other than better picture quality and more features... wait a sec, what do you lose by going HD? Oh yeah, the ability to rip. How many people rip standard DVD?
- HiDef cannot be (in theory) copied to your MP3 player to watch the movie on the player... tick
Managed Copy gives you a legal way of doing that, in theory. In practice, both can be copied, though it is easier for DVD currently (since Managed Copy isn't out yet).
- For computers, HiDef only works on that abomination called Vista... tick
You're full of FUD. Works on XP. In fact, the Microsoft HD-DVD Interactivity Jumpstart Kit -- blech, what a mouthful -- ONLY runs on XP. Not 2K, not Vista.
- HiDef disks (pressed or recordable) are expensive... tick
You win that one, though HiDef discs -- no matter which format -- are available on Netflix, and similar.
- One HiDef format is backed by Microsoft... tick
Wow, that's a big reason not to do something. But hey, Microsoft backs HD-DVD. Sony controls Blu-Ray. Jury's out on which company is more evil.
- Neither HiDef format has a "cool" name... tick
You win that one.
So being generous, your winning arguments are: The format war is still going for HD, the discs themselves are more expensive, and neither format has a cool name.
Oh, and you brought up another point in my favor:
and not have producers enforce region coding (cartel protection).
Guess what? HD-DVDs do not have region coding! So, while it's legal to break the DVD region coding in some places, most places are still going to force that "you can change it five times" bullshit -- and on HD, the issue does not exist at all!
Currently, I'm assuming that people will actually be aware of HD-DVD, but that it sounds similar to DVD will be reassuring. That Blu-Ray will sound new and strange, but HD-DVD will just be more of what was good about DVD. Which isn't entirely innaccurate, as HD-DVD is managed by the DVD forum, the same group that controls DVD.
I do believe HD-DVD is technically better, but I'm biased -- I develop them for a living.
The jump from DVD to High-Def DVD will buy me a better picture, and that's it.
Disclaimer: I work in the industry.
It does have better sound, if you can tell. But HD-DVD, at least, is not all about picture -- if you want, you can put standard-def content on a dual-layer DVD, maybe even a single-layer, and still have it be an HD-DVD format.
So what's the point?
There are actually other features on the disc.
Sure, most are flashy crap. There's "managed copy", which isn't really accessible from script, and doesn't allow you to make a fully functional copy -- it's designed, I suppose, to make it legal to rip it to your video iPod. There's the usual deleted scenes, and there's pointless crap like customizable trailers -- assemble a list of scenes and upload them to the Internet, where other people watching the same movie can download them and watch a trailer, for the same movie. (But they're fun -- top-rated trailer on 300 is probably still "penetration", which is all of the scenes in the movie in which people are either having sex or getting stabbed.
But some of them actually are worthwhile.
A recent example: I was watching Goodfellas, and I had to go somewhere. Figured leaving the HDTV on, with the movie paused, would probably be a waste of power (disc could be kept spinning for all I know), and possibly even a danger of burning the image in.
On Warner titles, there's a button on the remote which bookmarks the current time. So I did that. Bookmarked it, then stopped the movie, turned the TV and player completely OFF. Then came back an hour or two later, turned them all back on, found my bookmark in the menu, and went back there.
And hey -- some of those features are actually kind of cool. Heroes has the ability to pull up the corresponding painting for any scene. It was actually the subject of a bit of debate how this was managed, as the painting was larger than the screen, with the ability to scroll, which is difficult to do without running out of pixel buffer. But it can be done.
None of the above features rely on more storage or better video, though these are nice. But that's really only the beginning.
Try this: Not text-only, but generally consistent. (At least, between the major studios -- so all Warner discs have basically the same layout, and all Universal discs have pretty much identical menus.)
Not entirely instant, maybe a half second or so of animation to bring the menu up, but without interrupting the movie. And maybe the scene selections are hard to interpret, but some discs (all Warner discs, at least) allow you to save your own scenes. (As in, press a button, and that timestamp gets added at the end of the chapter list.)
I'm not sure if HD-DVD allows you to view a scene from a different camera angle at HD resolutions, but it does allow picture-in-picture stuff, so you could do it that way.
And that's just subtitles and audio language. Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have programmable menus -- as in, there's a bit of Javascript running on that HD-DVD that can make that menu do more than switch subtitles.
Just an idea, and I don't have time to make a post as long as some of my others on this thread -- just check my posting history...
But an HD-DVD can download new versions of anything on the disc except video, and the only reason for video is that persistent storage bandwidth is less than the video bandwidth (so most video downloads will be standard def). It may even be possible to download additional audio tracks -- I'll have to check with the people who know when I get to work, but it seems likely.
That's not to say that every disc will come with this capability, but every player does come with persistent storage and an Ethernet jack, and any disc that wants to can be connected.
This means that if they wanted to, say, support fansubs, they could. It won't support as flashy subs as, say, the current Dattebayo releases, but it would give you all the features -- animated subtitles, subtitles appearing at arbitrary places (not just the bottom of the screen), etc.
Of course, that's my pitch because I work in the industry, and I could do it myself. I would much rather see us all move to Matroska/h264/aac or something, with fansubs either built-in or available as SRTs or similar. But it is most definitely an improvement over DVD.
By the way -- it may not be as obvious on anime, but the difference is obvious on my 20" monitor at home. But it doesn't have HDCP, and neither does my video card, so I'm stuck with 720p downloads, which are still noticeably better than DVD.
Wait -- doesn't ripping a DVD to a computer already qualify you as a techie?
Thus, your statement is nonsensical, unless you can give me a definition of "techie" which allows people to rip DVDs to a computer, for any reason (legitimate or not), without also being a techie.
I'll argue that it's actually easy enough, and common enough, that plenty of people I'd otherwise consider non-techies are willing to learn that much, so they can fill their video iPod, or take a DVD with them in a laptop.
Standard DVDs have that. Worse, they have region coding, and many of them have additional crap DRM schemes, mostly designed to corrupt the disc in just such a way that computer players, or rippers, won't be able to read it, but normal set-top players will. I say "crap" because this necessarily is retardedly innaccurate -- Sony put out some DVDs this way that wouldn't play with some of their own DVD players.
Now, Blu-Ray has mandatory AACS and optional BD-Mark, and I think it also has region coding, though I'm not sure. HD-DVD has optional AACS (though it'll be on almost all discs, and is currently required to get at persistent storage), and no region coding -- and if the studios would wake up, it also has the ability to have the disc react to the player's preferred language, making the need for region-specific discs entirely obsolete.
2) The ability for the players to "phone home".
That's going to be true of any software. If you're that worried of... well, first off, what are you worried about? That someone will know what movie you're watching?
But really, no one's going to release a movie which requires Internet access. In fact, not all Blu-Ray players have it, and while all HD-DVD players have an ethernet jack, I strongly doubt any of the movies will refuse to play without an Internet connection.
Now, suppose your worst nightmare comes true -- you plug it into the Internet, it phones home, and the studio tells it not to play that disc. All it takes is for you to unplug the network and wipe persistent storage for that title, and you can play the movie again.
3) Any other "feature" that makes it more difficult for the consumer. By this I mean anything that forces the user to do something he does not want to like the PUOPs on standard DVDs. You can be forced to watch previews when you start a disk without having the option to skip forward or advance the track. I expect HD and Blu Ray to be worse in this matter.
Technically, yes. Specifically, the script in HD-DVD can prevent all key input, and then control the playback. If a studio were really stupid, they could show you an animated Goatse and prevent you from doing anything except pressing stop -- and they could delay the stop for two seconds.
However, you suggest that the studios have learned nothing from DVDs. That doesn't seem to be the case -- I work in HD-DVD, and we get discs from all the major studios who are doing that format. None of them do the "You wouldn't steal a car" bullshit. The worst they do is give you a little "This is HD-DVD" commercial before the main movie, which is entirely skippable. The longest thing that's unskippable is the ten second or so studio logo, which, let's be honest, your player is going to take much longer to boot up and to start that disc.
I agree that it's nicer to put that choice back in the hands of the consumer, but I don't think they're practical issues anymore, only idealogical. And if you've been avoiding them because of that, I doubt you're one to judge the "insignificant increase in video quality" -- it is significant. I was completely surprised when I first saw it, especially on a series like Heroes.
Do I need that level of resolution to watch a tv series or most movies? Maybe I will like the difference on a few action movies, but until the price is under $200 for a player and the cost of movies is on par with standard def, I will not upgrade.
Beat you to it.
Last I checked, there are HD-DVD players under $200. There was one that sold at Wall-Mart for $99 for a weekend or something, but I think they still have players for $150. If you already have an Xbox 360, the HD-DVD drive is under $200, and it will plug into a computer (though I'm not sure if you can use it to play movies on a computer).
So the only thing keeping you from upgrading is the cost of the disc itself. Worst case, you can Netflix them, and the movie prices are dropping.
So buy what looks to be the cheapest -- you can still get an HD-DVD player for under $200, I think.
Then rent movies. Netflix will do either format. You won't be able to rip them to your home media server, but they were rentals anyway.
Disclaimer: I do work in HD DVDs. And while it is perfectly possible to lock you into 10 mins of trailers, when was the last time you saw a DVD do that? The HD DVDs I've seen only ever lock the remote during the studio logo, which takes maybe five seconds -- honestly, you'll spend longer waiting for the player to boot up, and for your disc to spin up. Once the movie starts, it's less intrusive -- the Warner titles, at least, will start the movie immediately, rather than taking you to a menu first, and the menu doesn't take you out of the movie.
Well, recently, it seemed pretty obvious to me -- Intel always has good, open video drivers. But, the performance on Intel video cards sucks compared to nVidia or ATI.
ATI is more open, but their Linux drivers suck, and have pretty much always sucked, for new hardware. You could get a free driver for old hardware, but not everything would be supported.
nVidia is completely closed, but their Linux drivers generally work. You pretty much never have to worry, when upgrading your kernel, whether you're going to break your video drivers -- nor do you have to worry about a particular feature (other than HDCP) being unsupported on Linux.
So, it may become difficult if ATI is suddenly completely open at some point in the near future. But right now, it seems pretty obvious -- for video, buy Intel if you don't need performance, and nVidia if you do.
I could do a similar analysis of various other pieces of hardware. It's been hard to choose a hard drive recently, but at least there's no compatibility issue there. But you can usually find out pretty easily what's supported by Linux, and what isn't.
Many VCRs, at least the ones sold today, will come with remotes with tiny buttons with tiny text, each one different, and many tapes will not play unless you press the "play" button.
The only significant difference with 99% of DVDs is, you have to wait for the menu to come up, then you press "select" or "ok". This is not difficult -- it's a big round button in between all the arrow buttons.
Why are you teaching your elderly parents to do more than just play the movie? And if you are, why are you so disappointed that DVD players are more difficult to use -- considering that they let you do more? That's a necessary part of letting you do more, by the way.
Many people still accept that technology is hard, even that it has to be hard, that there's something intrinsically difficult about it.
So, if you're in front of a group of 20 people, or even 2,000 people, I'd consider these two things:
First, Powerpoint makes you stupid. You don't have to give exactly the same kind of presentation as everyone else, and even the concept of "slides" may not fit. So, yes, you do want to use your laptop, and not that remote. The laptop has more "buttons" (keys and key combinations), but you know where they are and what they do before you go in.
Alternatively, bring your own "universal remote". Have someone make a Web interface for your iPhone or something.
Second, if something goes wrong, it's not the end of the world. Depending on how good you are, it doesn't matter how bad the UI is -- if you screw something up, you can make your audience laugh with you (at you) as you try to fix it.
I don't know enough about the inner workings of either apt or yum, or of dpkg or rpm, but I suspect it's the latter pair that matters.
Consider another distro: Gentoo. Are "# yum install firefox", "#apt-get install firefox", and "#emerge firefox" all equivalent? From a UI perspective, yes, but the lower level is important.
There are MANY subtitle formats, and MANY container formats.
As for "getting paid enough", you obviously haven't been following the story. It's not that they're not getting paid enough, it's that they're not getting paid fairly. This is an industry where individual actors can be paid millions of dollars, so there is absolutely no excuse to cut the writers out. But your credibility goes away when we remember that the writers are "whining" about not getting paid, and you're whining about not being entertained -- I wonder which is more important?
But back to the issue at hand... I can put SRT, SSA, ASS, even VOBSUB, combined with pretty much any audio/video format (personal favorite is h.264 for video, and one of vorbis/aac/ac3 or even FLAC for audio), into a Matroska (MKV) file. Or, I can download any container format, even an AVI, if someone is willing to distribute subtitles with it -- I've currently been watching Battlestar Galactica in XVid and AC3 in an AVI container, and I hear well enough not to need subtitles, but it also came with Danish, English, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish subtiles, all in separate SRT files.
There's also the stupid fansubs which embed subtitles in the video itself, but the reason I mention these other formats is, they allow subtitles to be easily distributed with every file. No one's going to bother to strip subtitles out of the mkv, which means that even if 99% of us don't turn them on, you'll be able to, no matter where you get the file from.
So, if you're going to complain about a lack of closed-captioning, don't do it here on Slashdot. Take it to the projects which are planning to do this online distribution. Tell them about formats like Matroska, or at least SRT. But to pretend that the Internet is less "accessible" just because most people are lazy and only throw things on YouTube is a bit insulting to anyone who works on these formats.
There are MANY subtitle formats, and MANY container formats.
As for "getting paid enough", you obviously haven't been following the story. It's not that they're not getting paid enough, it's that they're not getting paid fairly. This is an industry where individual actors can be paid millions of dollars, so there is absolutely no excuse to cut the writers out. But your credibility goes away when we remember that the writers are "whining" about not getting paid, and you're whining about not being entertained -- I wonder which is more important?
But back to the issue at hand... I can put SRT, SSA, ASS, even VOBSUB, combined with pretty much any audio/video format (personal favorite is h.264 for video, and one of vorbis/aac/ac3 or even FLAC for audio), into a Matroska (MKV) file. Or, I can download any container format, even an AVI, if someone is willing to distribute subtitles with it -- I've currently been watching Battlestar Galactica in XVid and AC3 in an AVI container, and I hear well enough not to need subtitles, but it also came with Danish, English, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish subtiles, all in separate SRT files.
There's also the stupid fansubs which embed subtitles in the video itself, but the reason I mention these other formats is, they allow subtitles to be easily distributed with every file. No one's going to bother to strip subtitles out of the mkv, which means that even if 99% of us don't turn them on, you'll be able to, no matter where you get the file from.
So, if you're going to complain about a lack of closed-captioning, don't do it here on Slashdot. Take it to the projects which are planning to do this online distribution. Tell them about formats like Matroska, or at least SRT. But to pretend that the Internet is less "accessible" just because most people are lazy and only throw things on YouTube is a bit insulting to anyone who works on these formats.
If you really want to be 100% fair, rip the original CD to WAV (or FLAC), then reburn it. Then encode those WAVs (or FLACs) as MP3s, then decode them again, and burn that.
You can now play both on the same relatively high-end CD player. (Or you could try playing both from a laptop, if you like, but I'll bet the CD player is better.)
To clear it up, he says if you want a new computer, save up a bit more. If you want something that performs as good as this computer of better, go dig up an old PIII.
Neither of those options apply to the target market.
Grandma could spend more money, and... according to the review, get Vista, which sucks. But the way I see it, if Grandma has an old PIII, she's not going to be willing or able to install Linux on it. (What's more, if you buy something with Linux preinstalled, even if she uses her grandson as tech support, it is just nice to not have to worry about hardware support issues.)
Oh, and wouldn't it be more energy-efficient than that PIII?
If you bought this computer and are looking for something to do with it, set it up as a file server or something (by putting Windows Home Server on it).
No, the recommendation is that you could buy this as a computer to put Windows Home Server on, which ignores both that Windows Home Server is buggy (as in, it eats files), and that if you're just going to install a fileserver anyway, you're probably the kind of person who has a PIII to dig up.
He also recommended that if you want Linux, to just install the regular Ubuntu instead of this weird gOS.
Again, not the target market.
Understand, the target market is buying this because either they have a spare $200 and are looking for a toy, or because they want a "new computer". What they really want is a format and an OS install -- either a new OS, or often their same OS would work just as well. Usually, that kind of sucks because you're spending at least some $500 on a new computer. This one is cheaper.
He had a lot of recommendations, and it takes actually reading the article
Well, to get some of your analysis here, it takes reading between the lines.
Yea, so he recommends a more expensive option. That's because his review concludes, that spending $200 and getting this PC is not a good value. But, for $150 more you could get something that is a good value.
Except it's $250 more. More than twice as much, which kind of puts it out of the same class. Which makes it kind of like reviewing any standard PC versus a new quad-core Mac Pro. Yes, anything the PC can do, the Mac Pro can do better, including run Windows, but it is not at all the same market.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly.
PowerShell is kind of cool, but not entirely unique. The one thing it has over Ruby/Python/Smalltalk is that it pretends to also be a decent commandline interface, which I very much doubt it is.
There are other players than xmms...
Though I suppose when you have 3D, spinning spectrum analyzers, things are looking pretty good.
If you already have the TV for it, HD-DVD players have gotten so cheap people are just using them for upscaling DVD players. And they do a better job of that than some MUCH more expensive DVD-only upscaling players.
I'll give you that one -- the DVD format war is over, the HD format war is not.
Other than better picture quality and more features... wait a sec, what do you lose by going HD? Oh yeah, the ability to rip. How many people rip standard DVD?
Managed Copy gives you a legal way of doing that, in theory. In practice, both can be copied, though it is easier for DVD currently (since Managed Copy isn't out yet).
You're assuming a different brand of stupidity.
Currently, I'm assuming that people will actually be aware of HD-DVD, but that it sounds similar to DVD will be reassuring. That Blu-Ray will sound new and strange, but HD-DVD will just be more of what was good about DVD. Which isn't entirely innaccurate, as HD-DVD is managed by the DVD forum, the same group that controls DVD.
I do believe HD-DVD is technically better, but I'm biased -- I develop them for a living.
Disclaimer: I work in the industry.
It does have better sound, if you can tell. But HD-DVD, at least, is not all about picture -- if you want, you can put standard-def content on a dual-layer DVD, maybe even a single-layer, and still have it be an HD-DVD format.
So what's the point?
There are actually other features on the disc.
Sure, most are flashy crap. There's "managed copy", which isn't really accessible from script, and doesn't allow you to make a fully functional copy -- it's designed, I suppose, to make it legal to rip it to your video iPod. There's the usual deleted scenes, and there's pointless crap like customizable trailers -- assemble a list of scenes and upload them to the Internet, where other people watching the same movie can download them and watch a trailer, for the same movie. (But they're fun -- top-rated trailer on 300 is probably still "penetration", which is all of the scenes in the movie in which people are either having sex or getting stabbed.
But some of them actually are worthwhile.
A recent example: I was watching Goodfellas, and I had to go somewhere. Figured leaving the HDTV on, with the movie paused, would probably be a waste of power (disc could be kept spinning for all I know), and possibly even a danger of burning the image in.
On Warner titles, there's a button on the remote which bookmarks the current time. So I did that. Bookmarked it, then stopped the movie, turned the TV and player completely OFF. Then came back an hour or two later, turned them all back on, found my bookmark in the menu, and went back there.
And hey -- some of those features are actually kind of cool. Heroes has the ability to pull up the corresponding painting for any scene. It was actually the subject of a bit of debate how this was managed, as the painting was larger than the screen, with the ability to scroll, which is difficult to do without running out of pixel buffer. But it can be done.
None of the above features rely on more storage or better video, though these are nice. But that's really only the beginning.
Try this: Not text-only, but generally consistent. (At least, between the major studios -- so all Warner discs have basically the same layout, and all Universal discs have pretty much identical menus.)
Not entirely instant, maybe a half second or so of animation to bring the menu up, but without interrupting the movie. And maybe the scene selections are hard to interpret, but some discs (all Warner discs, at least) allow you to save your own scenes. (As in, press a button, and that timestamp gets added at the end of the chapter list.)
I'm not sure if HD-DVD allows you to view a scene from a different camera angle at HD resolutions, but it does allow picture-in-picture stuff, so you could do it that way.
And that's just subtitles and audio language. Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have programmable menus -- as in, there's a bit of Javascript running on that HD-DVD that can make that menu do more than switch subtitles.
Just an idea, and I don't have time to make a post as long as some of my others on this thread -- just check my posting history...
But an HD-DVD can download new versions of anything on the disc except video, and the only reason for video is that persistent storage bandwidth is less than the video bandwidth (so most video downloads will be standard def). It may even be possible to download additional audio tracks -- I'll have to check with the people who know when I get to work, but it seems likely.
That's not to say that every disc will come with this capability, but every player does come with persistent storage and an Ethernet jack, and any disc that wants to can be connected.
This means that if they wanted to, say, support fansubs, they could. It won't support as flashy subs as, say, the current Dattebayo releases, but it would give you all the features -- animated subtitles, subtitles appearing at arbitrary places (not just the bottom of the screen), etc.
Of course, that's my pitch because I work in the industry, and I could do it myself. I would much rather see us all move to Matroska/h264/aac or something, with fansubs either built-in or available as SRTs or similar. But it is most definitely an improvement over DVD.
By the way -- it may not be as obvious on anime, but the difference is obvious on my 20" monitor at home. But it doesn't have HDCP, and neither does my video card, so I'm stuck with 720p downloads, which are still noticeably better than DVD.
Wait -- doesn't ripping a DVD to a computer already qualify you as a techie?
Thus, your statement is nonsensical, unless you can give me a definition of "techie" which allows people to rip DVDs to a computer, for any reason (legitimate or not), without also being a techie.
I'll argue that it's actually easy enough, and common enough, that plenty of people I'd otherwise consider non-techies are willing to learn that much, so they can fill their video iPod, or take a DVD with them in a laptop.
They should be happy to know that HD-DVD has NO region coding, and discs can either have AACS or no DRM.
Blu-Ray requires AACS and allows even harsher DRM.
Disclaimer: I work in HD-DVD.
Standard DVDs have that. Worse, they have region coding, and many of them have additional crap DRM schemes, mostly designed to corrupt the disc in just such a way that computer players, or rippers, won't be able to read it, but normal set-top players will. I say "crap" because this necessarily is retardedly innaccurate -- Sony put out some DVDs this way that wouldn't play with some of their own DVD players.
Now, Blu-Ray has mandatory AACS and optional BD-Mark, and I think it also has region coding, though I'm not sure. HD-DVD has optional AACS (though it'll be on almost all discs, and is currently required to get at persistent storage), and no region coding -- and if the studios would wake up, it also has the ability to have the disc react to the player's preferred language, making the need for region-specific discs entirely obsolete.
That's going to be true of any software. If you're that worried of... well, first off, what are you worried about? That someone will know what movie you're watching?
But really, no one's going to release a movie which requires Internet access. In fact, not all Blu-Ray players have it, and while all HD-DVD players have an ethernet jack, I strongly doubt any of the movies will refuse to play without an Internet connection.
Now, suppose your worst nightmare comes true -- you plug it into the Internet, it phones home, and the studio tells it not to play that disc. All it takes is for you to unplug the network and wipe persistent storage for that title, and you can play the movie again.
Technically, yes. Specifically, the script in HD-DVD can prevent all key input, and then control the playback. If a studio were really stupid, they could show you an animated Goatse and prevent you from doing anything except pressing stop -- and they could delay the stop for two seconds.
However, you suggest that the studios have learned nothing from DVDs. That doesn't seem to be the case -- I work in HD-DVD, and we get discs from all the major studios who are doing that format. None of them do the "You wouldn't steal a car" bullshit. The worst they do is give you a little "This is HD-DVD" commercial before the main movie, which is entirely skippable. The longest thing that's unskippable is the ten second or so studio logo, which, let's be honest, your player is going to take much longer to boot up and to start that disc.
I agree that it's nicer to put that choice back in the hands of the consumer, but I don't think they're practical issues anymore, only idealogical. And if you've been avoiding them because of that, I doubt you're one to judge the "insignificant increase in video quality" -- it is significant. I was completely surprised when I first saw it, especially on a series like Heroes.
Beat you to it.
Last I checked, there are HD-DVD players under $200. There was one that sold at Wall-Mart for $99 for a weekend or something, but I think they still have players for $150. If you already have an Xbox 360, the HD-DVD drive is under $200, and it will plug into a computer (though I'm not sure if you can use it to play movies on a computer).
So the only thing keeping you from upgrading is the cost of the disc itself. Worst case, you can Netflix them, and the movie prices are dropping.
HD-DVD is, in fact, by the DVD Forum, the same guys who manage DVD itself. So, more than Blu-Ray, an HD-DVD could actually be called a "High-Def DVD".
Of course, that's all politics...
So buy what looks to be the cheapest -- you can still get an HD-DVD player for under $200, I think.
Then rent movies. Netflix will do either format. You won't be able to rip them to your home media server, but they were rentals anyway.
Disclaimer: I do work in HD DVDs. And while it is perfectly possible to lock you into 10 mins of trailers, when was the last time you saw a DVD do that? The HD DVDs I've seen only ever lock the remote during the studio logo, which takes maybe five seconds -- honestly, you'll spend longer waiting for the player to boot up, and for your disc to spin up. Once the movie starts, it's less intrusive -- the Warner titles, at least, will start the movie immediately, rather than taking you to a menu first, and the menu doesn't take you out of the movie.
Gameplay in Nexuiz doesn't seem solid? Huh. I love that gameplay, particularly the ability to remote-detonate rockets.
Oh well, at least you didn't try Open Arena.
Well, recently, it seemed pretty obvious to me -- Intel always has good, open video drivers. But, the performance on Intel video cards sucks compared to nVidia or ATI.
ATI is more open, but their Linux drivers suck, and have pretty much always sucked, for new hardware. You could get a free driver for old hardware, but not everything would be supported.
nVidia is completely closed, but their Linux drivers generally work. You pretty much never have to worry, when upgrading your kernel, whether you're going to break your video drivers -- nor do you have to worry about a particular feature (other than HDCP) being unsupported on Linux.
So, it may become difficult if ATI is suddenly completely open at some point in the near future. But right now, it seems pretty obvious -- for video, buy Intel if you don't need performance, and nVidia if you do.
I could do a similar analysis of various other pieces of hardware. It's been hard to choose a hard drive recently, but at least there's no compatibility issue there. But you can usually find out pretty easily what's supported by Linux, and what isn't.
Many VCRs, at least the ones sold today, will come with remotes with tiny buttons with tiny text, each one different, and many tapes will not play unless you press the "play" button.
The only significant difference with 99% of DVDs is, you have to wait for the menu to come up, then you press "select" or "ok". This is not difficult -- it's a big round button in between all the arrow buttons.
Why are you teaching your elderly parents to do more than just play the movie? And if you are, why are you so disappointed that DVD players are more difficult to use -- considering that they let you do more? That's a necessary part of letting you do more, by the way.
Many people still accept that technology is hard, even that it has to be hard, that there's something intrinsically difficult about it.
So, if you're in front of a group of 20 people, or even 2,000 people, I'd consider these two things:
First, Powerpoint makes you stupid. You don't have to give exactly the same kind of presentation as everyone else, and even the concept of "slides" may not fit. So, yes, you do want to use your laptop, and not that remote. The laptop has more "buttons" (keys and key combinations), but you know where they are and what they do before you go in.
Alternatively, bring your own "universal remote". Have someone make a Web interface for your iPhone or something.
Second, if something goes wrong, it's not the end of the world. Depending on how good you are, it doesn't matter how bad the UI is -- if you screw something up, you can make your audience laugh with you (at you) as you try to fix it.
May you go blind in the very near future. See if you still don't care about accessibility.
I don't know enough about the inner workings of either apt or yum, or of dpkg or rpm, but I suspect it's the latter pair that matters.
Consider another distro: Gentoo. Are "# yum install firefox", "#apt-get install firefox", and "#emerge firefox" all equivalent? From a UI perspective, yes, but the lower level is important.
There are MANY subtitle formats, and MANY container formats.
As for "getting paid enough", you obviously haven't been following the story. It's not that they're not getting paid enough, it's that they're not getting paid fairly. This is an industry where individual actors can be paid millions of dollars, so there is absolutely no excuse to cut the writers out. But your credibility goes away when we remember that the writers are "whining" about not getting paid, and you're whining about not being entertained -- I wonder which is more important?
But back to the issue at hand... I can put SRT, SSA, ASS, even VOBSUB, combined with pretty much any audio/video format (personal favorite is h.264 for video, and one of vorbis/aac/ac3 or even FLAC for audio), into a Matroska (MKV) file. Or, I can download any container format, even an AVI, if someone is willing to distribute subtitles with it -- I've currently been watching Battlestar Galactica in XVid and AC3 in an AVI container, and I hear well enough not to need subtitles, but it also came with Danish, English, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish subtiles, all in separate SRT files.
There's also the stupid fansubs which embed subtitles in the video itself, but the reason I mention these other formats is, they allow subtitles to be easily distributed with every file. No one's going to bother to strip subtitles out of the mkv, which means that even if 99% of us don't turn them on, you'll be able to, no matter where you get the file from.
So, if you're going to complain about a lack of closed-captioning, don't do it here on Slashdot. Take it to the projects which are planning to do this online distribution. Tell them about formats like Matroska, or at least SRT. But to pretend that the Internet is less "accessible" just because most people are lazy and only throw things on YouTube is a bit insulting to anyone who works on these formats.
There are MANY subtitle formats, and MANY container formats. As for "getting paid enough", you obviously haven't been following the story. It's not that they're not getting paid enough, it's that they're not getting paid fairly. This is an industry where individual actors can be paid millions of dollars, so there is absolutely no excuse to cut the writers out. But your credibility goes away when we remember that the writers are "whining" about not getting paid, and you're whining about not being entertained -- I wonder which is more important? But back to the issue at hand... I can put SRT, SSA, ASS, even VOBSUB, combined with pretty much any audio/video format (personal favorite is h.264 for video, and one of vorbis/aac/ac3 or even FLAC for audio), into a Matroska (MKV) file. Or, I can download any container format, even an AVI, if someone is willing to distribute subtitles with it -- I've currently been watching Battlestar Galactica in XVid and AC3 in an AVI container, and I hear well enough not to need subtitles, but it also came with Danish, English, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish subtiles, all in separate SRT files. There's also the stupid fansubs which embed subtitles in the video itself, but the reason I mention these other formats is, they allow subtitles to be easily distributed with every file. No one's going to bother to strip subtitles out of the mkv, which means that even if 99% of us don't turn them on, you'll be able to, no matter where you get the file from. So, if you're going to complain about a lack of closed-captioning, don't do it here on Slashdot. Take it to the projects which are planning to do this online distribution. Tell them about formats like Matroska, or at least SRT. But to pretend that the Internet is less "accessible" just because most people are lazy and only throw things on YouTube is a bit insulting to anyone who works on these formats.
If you really want to be 100% fair, rip the original CD to WAV (or FLAC), then reburn it. Then encode those WAVs (or FLACs) as MP3s, then decode them again, and burn that.
You can now play both on the same relatively high-end CD player. (Or you could try playing both from a laptop, if you like, but I'll bet the CD player is better.)
Neither of those options apply to the target market.
Grandma could spend more money, and... according to the review, get Vista, which sucks. But the way I see it, if Grandma has an old PIII, she's not going to be willing or able to install Linux on it. (What's more, if you buy something with Linux preinstalled, even if she uses her grandson as tech support, it is just nice to not have to worry about hardware support issues.)
Oh, and wouldn't it be more energy-efficient than that PIII?
No, the recommendation is that you could buy this as a computer to put Windows Home Server on, which ignores both that Windows Home Server is buggy (as in, it eats files), and that if you're just going to install a fileserver anyway, you're probably the kind of person who has a PIII to dig up.
Again, not the target market.
Understand, the target market is buying this because either they have a spare $200 and are looking for a toy, or because they want a "new computer". What they really want is a format and an OS install -- either a new OS, or often their same OS would work just as well. Usually, that kind of sucks because you're spending at least some $500 on a new computer. This one is cheaper.
Well, to get some of your analysis here, it takes reading between the lines.
Except it's $250 more. More than twice as much, which kind of puts it out of the same class. Which makes it kind of like reviewing any standard PC versus a new quad-core Mac Pro. Yes, anything the PC can do, the Mac Pro can do better, including run Windows, but it is not at all the same market.
Why WAV, when there's lossless compression?
Firefox did not always have the free money you speak of. From what I remember, even before Firefox, Mozilla had more users than Opera.
Firefox would be nowhere near what it is, but it would probably still be ahead of Opera.