Interesting that you should mention the "end of a star's life." Some astronomers have theorized that the smaller gamma ray bursts may be the energy released when a mass collides with a neutron star (which is one of the possible outcomes of a supernova). It is fascinating to think that the mass of a single grain of sand striking a neutron star the size of Earth releases as much energy as the bomb America dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. Ironic, if you consider that we first started looking for gamma ray bursts as a way to detect Soviet nuclear weapon testing, following World War II.
Even more interesting, to me, is the fact that this gamma ray burst, while extremely long, has an afterglow that appears dimmer than the average gamma ray burst's afterglow.
Until we discovered that gamma ray bursts are not uniformly distributed, they appeared to defy E=MC^2; were they to radiate uniformly, E=MC^2 would suggest impossibly massive sources. Instead, as we understand them right now, they radiate much like a spotlight and cannot be directly measured beyond the penumbra
This article suggests that this gamma ray burst may simply be from a different angle than the continuous bombardments of gamma ray bursts that we have been studying since the beginning of the cold war. 50 years is incomprehensibly short on a cosmic scale, this may well be the first time that we have measured a GRB from this vantage.
In any case, it should prove interesting to observe the afterglow -- it is certainly easy to spot;)
HDMI is a bit of an oddball, because it carries audio and video on a single cable. A device that accepts an HDMI input does not necessarily use BOTH the audio and the video; an A/V receiver may only use the 8 channel audio signal and pass the DVI video signal onto a connected HD display, without changing the HDCP encrypted signal. Only devices that use HDMI for video need HDCP support.
It is not completely unreasonable to imagine a high-end A/V receiver with HDMI/DVI inputs and the capability to "upconvert" all input to HDMI/DVI/Component. My current SONY receiver can upconvert all analog signals to 480i over the component out. The receiver does not have HDMI or DVI inputs, but I suspect A/V receivers with HDMI support will be more common after HD-DVD / BluRay penetrate the market.
Early adopters were already screwed when they bought displays which often had less than 2/3 the necessary vertical resolution to display a 1080 picture... unless they bought a CRT, which can actually display an interlaced picture, and the full 1080 lines.
It makes me laugh when I think about the issue. The RIAA has long accepted lossy analog copies of CDs and cassette tapes, as has the MPAA when it comes to VHS tapes. Not that they really had a choice, but they get in a hissy when consumers can make a lossless copy or transcode the original audio/video source. Component video is an analog format, which makes perfect copies impossible to begin with.
I am not complaining however, as both of my TVs have HDMI inputs and support HDCP. I would like to see HDMI switchboxes or A/V receivers with HDMI inputs though, since my TVs only have 1 HDMI input and I already own 3 devices with HDMI output... on the bright side, I only have to swap 1 cable when I switch between my DVD changer and computer:)
I own two HDTV sets, one large and one 36" CRT. I understand why people like large displays in large rooms, but I also love my 36" SONY Trinitron HDTV - the color contrast and brightness are unlike any LCD/Plasma/DLP display. When I'm alone, I prefer to watch my DVDs on the smaller, but higher quality 36" TV; the speakers in the room are not as powerful as the living room, but you don't need giant speakers in a bedroom;)
Anyway, there is a market for portable DVD players and undoubtedly an underestimated market for portable HD video players.
Perhaps if SONY were an Australian company the claim that the PS3 would be available in Spring would be easier to swallow. However, by the traditional definition of Spring in the northern hemisphere, SONY has a little over three months to finalize the system specs, establish a price point, advertise and compile a list of launch titles. To SONY's credit, however, advertising is not as cut-throat in Japan as it is in the United States - Japanese consumers tend not to care about fancy / clever advertising and flashy packaging or window displays.
It will still be a miracle as far as I am concerned if the PS3 goes on sale before Summer. Hopefully SONY learned something with the US launch of the PSP, 3 months AFTER Christmas is not the ideal time to launch a new platform, particularly with such an abysmal collection of launch titles (Lumines excluded).
Interestingly, SONY didn't deny the claim that the PS3 would sell for or cost $900 to manufacture. The hardware will certainly cost more to manufacture than previous generation hardware, but I think the Merryl Lynch figure is nothing less than absurd.
Moore's law does not specify the density or even number of transistors on an integrated circuit, as many mistakenly assume; it merely states that integrated circuits double in complexity vs. cost to manufacture every 18 months. In fact, new manufacturing techniques alone, which lower the cost to manufacture can satisfy the law.
Moore's law will probably continue after quantum well transistors are implemented and minituarized. The Cell architecture and push for multi-core processors lend themselves well to Moore's law as well. I would wager designing 4-8 core CPUs, multi-core CPUs with shared caches and the new AMD chips that integrate the memory controller rather than using a Northbridge easily satisfy Moore's law.
Correct me if I am missing something here, but is not that how the internet already works? There is no guarantee that any two packets will take the same path to get to their destination. Furthermore, the idea of "storing packets on a hard drive" is nothing short of absurd. There are no hard drives large enough or fast enough to record every packet a router receives, much less reassemble them in the proper order.
The infamous Carnivore was one thing, relying on a predictable user-level protocol (SMTP). But the crazy notion that all packets from party A to party B will travel the same path and can somehow be logged is ludicrous. It would take cooperation from dozens of ISPs and precious router CPU time, where carnivore only required cooperation from the ISP who hosts a particular mail server of interest. The idea of tapping 2,000 US phone calls at any given moment to investigate terrorism is clearly a waste of taxpayer money and only lulls the truly stupid into a sense of security; however, the author's idea is just plain stupid no matter how you look at it.
I would not buy IP rights to any of those franchises even if you paid me. If Atari is banking on selling those studios to keep from going under, I am afraid Atari's dead once again. Infogrames (Atari) was doing quite well for itself, this comes as a surprise to me.
Actually, Apple is in a unique position since they exlcusively use ATI chipsets for their laptop hardware. Since the LCD display in most laptops connects directly to the video card using a proprietary interface, there is no chance (practically speaking anyway) that HD video being displayed on the LCD could be intercepted and copied. ATI might be able to circumvent HDCP requirements in that case. Of course Apple's laptop LCD screens cannot handle 1920x1080 in the first place, they'd have to rescale the video or use 720p and the DVI output could only display content at 420p without HDCP support.
Contrary to popular belief, the PC gaming industry is still alive and strong. Consoles are better suited to certain genres and many of those genres are a dime a dozen. PC gaming, however, has RTS, FPS and MMORPGs to its credit. And while consoles have penetrated all three of those genres, they are the bread and butter of the PC gaming industry and they offer a far superior experience.
The idea sounds great in theory, but the method for storing data is admittedly too fragile to be put into practical use anytime in the near future. I recall reading in other articles on the topic that even the slightest external magnetic fields could corrupt data stored this way. Ironically, traditional magnetic storage is far more tolerant to external magnetic fields.
Honestly, I do not see the point of including an HDMI output on a video card... ATI could save millions on royalties and maintain compatibility with computer displays (which use DVI) if they simply provided a $5 DVI to HDMI adaptor. I own a 10" DVI -> HDMI cable, and see no reason whatsoever that my video card should use HDMI instead of a more versatile DVI connecter, since it's merely sending a DVI signal over a cable that's designed to combine 8 channels of audio and DVI into 1 cable. People who own a display that has HDMI inputs but not DVI should not fret over having to purchase a $5 HDMI->DVI adaptor -- DVI cables are less expensive anyway.
Furthermore, I do not know why anyone really cares about HDCP on a PC, short of Media Center PCs. Who would want to watch an HD movie on a small computer monitor with mediocre speakers? Most computer displays with DVI connectivity are LCD; I would much rather watch HD video on the 36" SONY Super Fine Pitch CRT in my bedroom than an LCD display (of any size).
ATI was probably banking on a driver solution for the HDCP output. They could have assigned HDCP keys based on the serial number of a card. Either way, I have seen HDMI and HDCP loosely associated a lot in this thread... they are completely different things. HDCP works on HDMI and DVI, HDMI simply combines up to 8 channels of audio and a DVI signal into one convenient and absurdly expensive cable:)
I love Opera's small screen rendering for my phone, but Opera has notbeen responding to the growing wealth of portable internet capable devices as fast as they should have. It took Opera a couple of years to finally release a browser for the normal version of Windows Mobile (AKA PocketPC). They only offerred it for Windows Mobile Smartphone. Granted, WMSP runs at such a pathetic resolution that even the version of Internet Explorer that comes with Windows Mobile is useless. The truth is, Internet Explorer for Windows Mobile is so awful that there are at least three other commercial browsers for the platform. Opera will make a killing off Opera Mobile after it's out of BETA. While I have a very expensive iPAQ with a beautiful 4" SVGA LCD, I have always thought the DS would make a great platform for a mobile web browser. It is so inexpensive that you can carry it around with you anywhere you want carefree. My PDA, however, is treated with the same panache as a million dollar fabriche egg; ironically, I usually use my more expensive beat up laptop to browse the web when I am away from home;)
I only wonder how Opera intends to manage cache on the DS. Non-volatile memory is pretty slow, as Windows Mobile 5.0 made painfully obvious when applications stopped being stored in RAM. Opera might be able to use the GBA cartridge slot to add RAM with a battery backup to store the cache. Cache is extremely important on a mobile device and it is particularly painful when a brain-dead browser spends most of its time writing the cache to unbearably slow flash memory (naturally, the stupid browser does this in blocking mode... *cough*NetFront*cough*) or letting it eat up the memory that is required just to draw the page.
Everyone is harping about the new posibilities for physical interaction in Revolution games, but it is safe to say that most gamers (US anyway) are not fond of anything more physical than pressing a button. I know what you're saying... what about DDR? I own a copy of DDR and the dance pad, it is a nice departure from the button mashing nature of video games, but in truth it is the social / competitive nature that gives it popularity. Nintendo might be in a position to cash in on the dwindling arcade industry if they adopt the unique technology for arcade use. I only bought a console version of DDR because of the competition at arcades. In fact, that is the same reason I own a console version of Time Crisis. People stopped going to arcades when console hardware caught up to arcade hardware, but Time Crisis and DDR still pull in profits for many arcades because they draw in crowds of spectators and long lines of people waiting to play.
Most of the games in arcades that use traditional control schemes are never touched where I live. Time Crisis, DDR, and some of the aging SEGA racing games draw the big crowds. Nintendo should encourage developers to develop games that capatalize on the one aspect of arcade gaming that is still profitable. That said, the duality of arcade and console titles does not mean that the game could not survive solely as an arcade or console title, but they certainly seem to sell better.
Is it really wise to launch a new platform at the same time in two countries that speak different languages? Many of the games - actually, all of them - that I own for my PS2 are English translations of Japanese games. The only reason I own a PS2 is in fact for the Japanese console RPGs and Gran Turismo. Unless SONY pulls off a miracle, launch titles in the US will mostly be cross-platform franchise titles (i.e. EA Sports games) and it could be 6+ months until the good Japanese games are released in English / US. I suspect that is partly why the XBOX 360 is selling so poorly in Japan.
SONY clearly realizes that Spring is not the best time to release a new platform. But the question remains, will they rush the console out the door before Christmas even if the selection of US launch titles is as abysmal as the PSP's. You could argue that it can play the existing library of PS1 and PS2 titles, but I do not see many parents justifying the $500 pricetag because it can play their kids' old games and eventually desirable PS3 games. The Revolution on the other hand, if priced reasonably, may be able to fallback on NES/SNES/N64 download service and GameCube backward compatibility at launch.
The only saving grace I see for the PS3 in such a scenario is the BluRay player. I own two HD sets and would gladly fork over $500 for a BluRay player that can also play PS1/PS2/PS3 games;)
If you actually read the article, as part of the deal, Intel plans to optimize the code for their processor. Intel is paying money to optimize the third-party Skype code for their chips, presumably utilizing SSE3. Though, I don't know why the deal extends to Duo chips only - I could understand if Intel had to optimize the code to efficiently utilize Hyper Threading, but Duo chips have two discrete cores; perhaps they're taking the shared cache into account, but AMD's dual core chips have a shared cache too.
If the code were optimized for SSE3, it would only run on recent Intel chips to begin with. I did not read anywhere in the article that said Intel paid to exclude AMD from approaching Skype to optimize their code for "AMD64" (x86-64). That said, the number of phone calls allowable should really be licensed on a per-CPU/core basis. If Skype honestly believes that Intel Duo chips with Intel's optimizations are truly twice as efficient as AMD's dual core chips, a license for 10 calls should be available for quad core AMD products. I have never been a fan of licensing by the number of CPUs, specifically disabling features if a host machine has fewer than X processors, but it has been in use for years.
It's absurd to assume that a machine with fewer than X processors/cores or of a slightly different architecture is not/will not be powerful enough to run suchandsuch a feature within a product's lifespan. They said that the exclusive 10-way calling feature will only be exclusive for a limited time, however. It may be in recognition that AMD64 chips will eventually be able to outperform even SSE3 optimized Intel code, if they cannot already.
The first day(s) have always been industry only...
on
E3 Grows Up - A Little
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· Score: 3, Informative
This article is a little bit misleading. The first couple of days of E3 have always been used for commercial/press conferences. In order to purchase a pass for these days, you _must_ present at least two forms of industry identification, such as a tax stub, business card, etc... And even in the exposition portion of E3, the first day has had restrictions barring many of the stupid GameStop clerks and such from entering.
On the bright side, GameStop clerks and most of the press are mostly relegated to the flashy wings of E3, rarely venturing into the lower cost booths rented by middleware companies - where the business end of things takes place. That said, it would be folly to assume that all of E3 is intended to be industry only. Publishers do not spend millions of dollars setting up the biggest most saturated displays and loudest speakers possible to entice potential investors, they do it to spread hype among their target audience. E3 can be thought of as a slight continuation of GDC, with the focus on marketing.
Your TV must be pretty poor if you do not notice the blocky artifacts from DVD's MPEG2 compression. No amount of upscaling will ever fix that, and noise reduction may smooth them out, but you lose details in other areas. I have seen video using the new Codec that HD-DVD and BluRay both use, and I can never look at a standard DVD or HDTV broadcast signal the same ever again.
I am looking forward to BluRay instead of Toshiba's cheap hack for one reason only -- larger capacity. It would be a tragedy if Toshiba won the war and we were stuck with a marginally larger disc than the original DVD disc format for the next 10 years. Other than that, I do not see a significant advantage to either format. BluRay discs will cost more to make, but the publishers would undoubtedly mark HD discs up to unreasonably high prices for early adopters anyway. It will not hurt them to pay a couple of extra cents to press a BluRay disc, when they charge perhaps $5-10 more per disc.
Hell, VHS still is not dead, so there is no way DVD is "dead." Even with the introduction of HD-DVD and BluRay, non-HD content will continue to be released on less expensive, more compatible, MPEG2 DVD discs. It would be folly for a company such as ADV, whose content base is almost exclusively standard definition Anime to start releasing HD-DVD or BluRay discs simply because DVD is no longer the latest and greatest. HD-DVD / BluRay will come at a premium initially (and honestly, that premium may eventually become the standard price point:-\); consumers will not pay that premium unless they have something tangible to show for their investment. Only movies and recent seasons of more popular television shows are available in HD. Granted, a season of the average NTSC television show rarely fits on one or two DVDs, but that is not reason enough to insist on moving to HD-DVD or BluRay. Most people who buy television shows on DVD are content to swap discs, and those that are not are always welcome to do as I have and buy a 400 DVD Mega changer. On a side note, It is frustrating when studios think they have a clever solution to the problem and release double-sided DVDs (i.e. Quantum Leap) - because even with a DVD changer, you have to flip the disc manually.:)
I own two HDTV sets and I am not fanatical about the transition to HD-DVD / BluRay. It is going to happen eventually, but considering the crap that has graced the big screen in the past 5 years I would rather just wait until a movie is on Showtime HD, HBO HD, INHD, etc... than pay $5+ extra for a movie that was not even worth seeing in the theatre. Movie studios will not begin to reauthor the good, but older, movies until there is a sufficient player base and there will not be a sufficient player base until there is content worth investing in a new player / TV (for some) to watch.
That said, there are a couple of people who actually buy UMDs and actually I know one of them. Despite the lackluster demand, movie studios continue to publish UMD videos. Which leads me to believe that HD-DVD and BluRay will be a similar boat, it will take studios years to figure out which format the consumer actually prefers. In that time, I am sure we will see hybrid HD-DVD / BluRay players enter the market to fill the gap that SONY and Toshiba could have easily filled before costing the consumer. BluRay discs may be more expensive to produce for the publisher, which is partly why Toshiba was such a... about merging HD-DVD and BluRay, but the consumer is the one who ultimately pays when two very similar but very incompatible formats are allowed to linger.
Indeed, the only reason I own my PS2 is because of Final Fantasy X and Gran Turismo 3/4. Granted there have been hosts of other good games since, but the only thing that set the PS2 apart from my XBOX was its plethora of Japanese import RPGs to chose from. The other genres don't matter to me; and I prefer to purchase the XBOX / XBOX 360 version of a multi-console title because of the in-game 5.1 and 720p / 1080i (that doesn't look like crap, (sorry, GT4)). I'm not a fan of Metal Gar Solid, Tekken, Devil May Cry, etc... My decision to buy a PS3 will probably be based on its support for Blu-Ray playback and the inevitible release of a Final Fantasy and Gran Turismo title (perhaps GT4 @ 1080i won't look so crappy when played in the PS3's backward compatibility mode - like the texture filtering (smoothing) for PS1 games played on a PS2?). I personally believe that the Unreal Tournament series is played best with a keyboard and mouse, but it might be successful in selling _some_ people on the PS3. I would rather bite the bullet and upgrade my PC to play Ut2k7, however.
It is hard to find anything bad to say about instancing. It addresses two paramount issues in MMOGs. The first being the initial over-population all major MMOGs experience at launch, which guarantees that no matter how much content a game has, there will always be more than one group of players working on the same quest or camp.
The second is the eventual crunch that happens as the casual player base evaporates and moves onto other games. With server populations dwindling, and the bulk of active characters on a particular server being high-level / dedicated players, it makes it difficult to win any new customers over; considering the lack of low to mid-level population. One might argue that EQ2's new mentoring system was designed for such a purpose (the advancement of low-level/new characters), but you would be wrong. Granted, it helps low-level characters, but it only works when the person knows someone else playing the game. New players, who are not so fortunate, have to meet other players in their same level range to progress.
The obvious solution to under-population would be to begin merging servers, however, as I already stated, many of the active characters fall into the high-level dedicated range and merging would cause overcrowding for contested raid zones/mobs, quests, etc... Therefore, instancing allows server merges and the associated high-level overcrowding with only minimal inconvenience.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting that you should mention the "end of a star's life." Some astronomers have theorized that the smaller gamma ray bursts may be the energy released when a mass collides with a neutron star (which is one of the possible outcomes of a supernova). It is fascinating to think that the mass of a single grain of sand striking a neutron star the size of Earth releases as much energy as the bomb America dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. Ironic, if you consider that we first started looking for gamma ray bursts as a way to detect Soviet nuclear weapon testing, following World War II.
Even more interesting, to me, is the fact that this gamma ray burst, while extremely long, has an afterglow that appears dimmer than the average gamma ray burst's afterglow.
Until we discovered that gamma ray bursts are not uniformly distributed, they appeared to defy E=MC^2; were they to radiate uniformly, E=MC^2 would suggest impossibly massive sources. Instead, as we understand them right now, they radiate much like a spotlight and cannot be directly measured beyond the penumbra
;)
This article suggests that this gamma ray burst may simply be from a different angle than the continuous bombardments of gamma ray bursts that we have been studying since the beginning of the cold war. 50 years is incomprehensibly short on a cosmic scale, this may well be the first time that we have measured a GRB from this vantage.
In any case, it should prove interesting to observe the afterglow -- it is certainly easy to spot
The real question is, do you even read the article?
HDMI is a bit of an oddball, because it carries audio and video on a single cable. A device that accepts an HDMI input does not necessarily use BOTH the audio and the video; an A/V receiver may only use the 8 channel audio signal and pass the DVI video signal onto a connected HD display, without changing the HDCP encrypted signal. Only devices that use HDMI for video need HDCP support.
It is not completely unreasonable to imagine a high-end A/V receiver with HDMI/DVI inputs and the capability to "upconvert" all input to HDMI/DVI/Component. My current SONY receiver can upconvert all analog signals to 480i over the component out. The receiver does not have HDMI or DVI inputs, but I suspect A/V receivers with HDMI support will be more common after HD-DVD / BluRay penetrate the market.
:)
Early adopters were already screwed when they bought displays which often had less than 2/3 the necessary vertical resolution to display a 1080 picture... unless they bought a CRT, which can actually display an interlaced picture, and the full 1080 lines.
It makes me laugh when I think about the issue. The RIAA has long accepted lossy analog copies of CDs and cassette tapes, as has the MPAA when it comes to VHS tapes. Not that they really had a choice, but they get in a hissy when consumers can make a lossless copy or transcode the original audio/video source. Component video is an analog format, which makes perfect copies impossible to begin with.
I am not complaining however, as both of my TVs have HDMI inputs and support HDCP. I would like to see HDMI switchboxes or A/V receivers with HDMI inputs though, since my TVs only have 1 HDMI input and I already own 3 devices with HDMI output... on the bright side, I only have to swap 1 cable when I switch between my DVD changer and computer
I own two HDTV sets, one large and one 36" CRT. I understand why people like large displays in large rooms, but I also love my 36" SONY Trinitron HDTV - the color contrast and brightness are unlike any LCD/Plasma/DLP display. When I'm alone, I prefer to watch my DVDs on the smaller, but higher quality 36" TV; the speakers in the room are not as powerful as the living room, but you don't need giant speakers in a bedroom ;)
Anyway, there is a market for portable DVD players and undoubtedly an underestimated market for portable HD video players.
Perhaps if SONY were an Australian company the claim that the PS3 would be available in Spring would be easier to swallow. However, by the traditional definition of Spring in the northern hemisphere, SONY has a little over three months to finalize the system specs, establish a price point, advertise and compile a list of launch titles. To SONY's credit, however, advertising is not as cut-throat in Japan as it is in the United States - Japanese consumers tend not to care about fancy / clever advertising and flashy packaging or window displays.
It will still be a miracle as far as I am concerned if the PS3 goes on sale before Summer. Hopefully SONY learned something with the US launch of the PSP, 3 months AFTER Christmas is not the ideal time to launch a new platform, particularly with such an abysmal collection of launch titles (Lumines excluded).
Interestingly, SONY didn't deny the claim that the PS3 would sell for or cost $900 to manufacture. The hardware will certainly cost more to manufacture than previous generation hardware, but I think the Merryl Lynch figure is nothing less than absurd.
Moore's law does not specify the density or even number of transistors on an integrated circuit, as many mistakenly assume; it merely states that integrated circuits double in complexity vs. cost to manufacture every 18 months. In fact, new manufacturing techniques alone, which lower the cost to manufacture can satisfy the law.
Moore's law will probably continue after quantum well transistors are implemented and minituarized. The Cell architecture and push for multi-core processors lend themselves well to Moore's law as well. I would wager designing 4-8 core CPUs, multi-core CPUs with shared caches and the new AMD chips that integrate the memory controller rather than using a Northbridge easily satisfy Moore's law.
Correct me if I am missing something here, but is not that how the internet already works? There is no guarantee that any two packets will take the same path to get to their destination. Furthermore, the idea of "storing packets on a hard drive" is nothing short of absurd. There are no hard drives large enough or fast enough to record every packet a router receives, much less reassemble them in the proper order.
The infamous Carnivore was one thing, relying on a predictable user-level protocol (SMTP). But the crazy notion that all packets from party A to party B will travel the same path and can somehow be logged is ludicrous. It would take cooperation from dozens of ISPs and precious router CPU time, where carnivore only required cooperation from the ISP who hosts a particular mail server of interest. The idea of tapping 2,000 US phone calls at any given moment to investigate terrorism is clearly a waste of taxpayer money and only lulls the truly stupid into a sense of security; however, the author's idea is just plain stupid no matter how you look at it.
I would not buy IP rights to any of those franchises even if you paid me. If Atari is banking on selling those studios to keep from going under, I am afraid Atari's dead once again. Infogrames (Atari) was doing quite well for itself, this comes as a surprise to me.
Actually, Apple is in a unique position since they exlcusively use ATI chipsets for their laptop hardware. Since the LCD display in most laptops connects directly to the video card using a proprietary interface, there is no chance (practically speaking anyway) that HD video being displayed on the LCD could be intercepted and copied. ATI might be able to circumvent HDCP requirements in that case. Of course Apple's laptop LCD screens cannot handle 1920x1080 in the first place, they'd have to rescale the video or use 720p and the DVI output could only display content at 420p without HDCP support.
Browse on over to: http://www.ati.com/products/RadeonX1900/specs.html .
Scroll down to Avivo(TM) Video and Display Platform and notice where it says
"# Flexible display support
* Dual integrated dual-link DVI transmitters
o DVI 1.0 compliant / HDMI interoperable and HDCP ready"
This article is completely invalid.
Contrary to popular belief, the PC gaming industry is still alive and strong. Consoles are better suited to certain genres and many of those genres are a dime a dozen. PC gaming, however, has RTS, FPS and MMORPGs to its credit. And while consoles have penetrated all three of those genres, they are the bread and butter of the PC gaming industry and they offer a far superior experience.
The idea sounds great in theory, but the method for storing data is admittedly too fragile to be put into practical use anytime in the near future. I recall reading in other articles on the topic that even the slightest external magnetic fields could corrupt data stored this way. Ironically, traditional magnetic storage is far more tolerant to external magnetic fields.
Honestly, I do not see the point of including an HDMI output on a video card... ATI could save millions on royalties and maintain compatibility with computer displays (which use DVI) if they simply provided a $5 DVI to HDMI adaptor. I own a 10" DVI -> HDMI cable, and see no reason whatsoever that my video card should use HDMI instead of a more versatile DVI connecter, since it's merely sending a DVI signal over a cable that's designed to combine 8 channels of audio and DVI into 1 cable. People who own a display that has HDMI inputs but not DVI should not fret over having to purchase a $5 HDMI->DVI adaptor -- DVI cables are less expensive anyway.
:)
Furthermore, I do not know why anyone really cares about HDCP on a PC, short of Media Center PCs. Who would want to watch an HD movie on a small computer monitor with mediocre speakers? Most computer displays with DVI connectivity are LCD; I would much rather watch HD video on the 36" SONY Super Fine Pitch CRT in my bedroom than an LCD display (of any size).
ATI was probably banking on a driver solution for the HDCP output. They could have assigned HDCP keys based on the serial number of a card. Either way, I have seen HDMI and HDCP loosely associated a lot in this thread... they are completely different things. HDCP works on HDMI and DVI, HDMI simply combines up to 8 channels of audio and a DVI signal into one convenient and absurdly expensive cable
I love Opera's small screen rendering for my phone, but Opera has notbeen responding to the growing wealth of portable internet capable devices as fast as they should have. It took Opera a couple of years to finally release a browser for the normal version of Windows Mobile (AKA PocketPC). They only offerred it for Windows Mobile Smartphone. Granted, WMSP runs at such a pathetic resolution that even the version of Internet Explorer that comes with Windows Mobile is useless. The truth is, Internet Explorer for Windows Mobile is so awful that there are at least three other commercial browsers for the platform. Opera will make a killing off Opera Mobile after it's out of BETA. While I have a very expensive iPAQ with a beautiful 4" SVGA LCD, I have always thought the DS would make a great platform for a mobile web browser. It is so inexpensive that you can carry it around with you anywhere you want carefree. My PDA, however, is treated with the same panache as a million dollar fabriche egg; ironically, I usually use my more expensive beat up laptop to browse the web when I am away from home ;)
I only wonder how Opera intends to manage cache on the DS. Non-volatile memory is pretty slow, as Windows Mobile 5.0 made painfully obvious when applications stopped being stored in RAM. Opera might be able to use the GBA cartridge slot to add RAM with a battery backup to store the cache. Cache is extremely important on a mobile device and it is particularly painful when a brain-dead browser spends most of its time writing the cache to unbearably slow flash memory (naturally, the stupid browser does this in blocking mode... *cough*NetFront*cough*) or letting it eat up the memory that is required just to draw the page.
Everyone is harping about the new posibilities for physical interaction in Revolution games, but it is safe to say that most gamers (US anyway) are not fond of anything more physical than pressing a button. I know what you're saying... what about DDR? I own a copy of DDR and the dance pad, it is a nice departure from the button mashing nature of video games, but in truth it is the social / competitive nature that gives it popularity. Nintendo might be in a position to cash in on the dwindling arcade industry if they adopt the unique technology for arcade use. I only bought a console version of DDR because of the competition at arcades. In fact, that is the same reason I own a console version of Time Crisis. People stopped going to arcades when console hardware caught up to arcade hardware, but Time Crisis and DDR still pull in profits for many arcades because they draw in crowds of spectators and long lines of people waiting to play.
Most of the games in arcades that use traditional control schemes are never touched where I live. Time Crisis, DDR, and some of the aging SEGA racing games draw the big crowds. Nintendo should encourage developers to develop games that capatalize on the one aspect of arcade gaming that is still profitable. That said, the duality of arcade and console titles does not mean that the game could not survive solely as an arcade or console title, but they certainly seem to sell better.
Is it really wise to launch a new platform at the same time in two countries that speak different languages? Many of the games - actually, all of them - that I own for my PS2 are English translations of Japanese games. The only reason I own a PS2 is in fact for the Japanese console RPGs and Gran Turismo. Unless SONY pulls off a miracle, launch titles in the US will mostly be cross-platform franchise titles (i.e. EA Sports games) and it could be 6+ months until the good Japanese games are released in English / US. I suspect that is partly why the XBOX 360 is selling so poorly in Japan.
;)
SONY clearly realizes that Spring is not the best time to release a new platform. But the question remains, will they rush the console out the door before Christmas even if the selection of US launch titles is as abysmal as the PSP's. You could argue that it can play the existing library of PS1 and PS2 titles, but I do not see many parents justifying the $500 pricetag because it can play their kids' old games and eventually desirable PS3 games. The Revolution on the other hand, if priced reasonably, may be able to fallback on NES/SNES/N64 download service and GameCube backward compatibility at launch.
The only saving grace I see for the PS3 in such a scenario is the BluRay player. I own two HD sets and would gladly fork over $500 for a BluRay player that can also play PS1/PS2/PS3 games
If you actually read the article, as part of the deal, Intel plans to optimize the code for their processor. Intel is paying money to optimize the third-party Skype code for their chips, presumably utilizing SSE3. Though, I don't know why the deal extends to Duo chips only - I could understand if Intel had to optimize the code to efficiently utilize Hyper Threading, but Duo chips have two discrete cores; perhaps they're taking the shared cache into account, but AMD's dual core chips have a shared cache too.
If the code were optimized for SSE3, it would only run on recent Intel chips to begin with. I did not read anywhere in the article that said Intel paid to exclude AMD from approaching Skype to optimize their code for "AMD64" (x86-64). That said, the number of phone calls allowable should really be licensed on a per-CPU/core basis. If Skype honestly believes that Intel Duo chips with Intel's optimizations are truly twice as efficient as AMD's dual core chips, a license for 10 calls should be available for quad core AMD products. I have never been a fan of licensing by the number of CPUs, specifically disabling features if a host machine has fewer than X processors, but it has been in use for years.
It's absurd to assume that a machine with fewer than X processors/cores or of a slightly different architecture is not/will not be powerful enough to run suchandsuch a feature within a product's lifespan. They said that the exclusive 10-way calling feature will only be exclusive for a limited time, however. It may be in recognition that AMD64 chips will eventually be able to outperform even SSE3 optimized Intel code, if they cannot already.
This article is a little bit misleading. The first couple of days of E3 have always been used for commercial/press conferences. In order to purchase a pass for these days, you _must_ present at least two forms of industry identification, such as a tax stub, business card, etc... And even in the exposition portion of E3, the first day has had restrictions barring many of the stupid GameStop clerks and such from entering.
On the bright side, GameStop clerks and most of the press are mostly relegated to the flashy wings of E3, rarely venturing into the lower cost booths rented by middleware companies - where the business end of things takes place. That said, it would be folly to assume that all of E3 is intended to be industry only. Publishers do not spend millions of dollars setting up the biggest most saturated displays and loudest speakers possible to entice potential investors, they do it to spread hype among their target audience. E3 can be thought of as a slight continuation of GDC, with the focus on marketing.
Your TV must be pretty poor if you do not notice the blocky artifacts from DVD's MPEG2 compression. No amount of upscaling will ever fix that, and noise reduction may smooth them out, but you lose details in other areas. I have seen video using the new Codec that HD-DVD and BluRay both use, and I can never look at a standard DVD or HDTV broadcast signal the same ever again.
I am looking forward to BluRay instead of Toshiba's cheap hack for one reason only -- larger capacity. It would be a tragedy if Toshiba won the war and we were stuck with a marginally larger disc than the original DVD disc format for the next 10 years. Other than that, I do not see a significant advantage to either format. BluRay discs will cost more to make, but the publishers would undoubtedly mark HD discs up to unreasonably high prices for early adopters anyway. It will not hurt them to pay a couple of extra cents to press a BluRay disc, when they charge perhaps $5-10 more per disc.
Hell, VHS still is not dead, so there is no way DVD is "dead." Even with the introduction of HD-DVD and BluRay, non-HD content will continue to be released on less expensive, more compatible, MPEG2 DVD discs. It would be folly for a company such as ADV, whose content base is almost exclusively standard definition Anime to start releasing HD-DVD or BluRay discs simply because DVD is no longer the latest and greatest. HD-DVD / BluRay will come at a premium initially (and honestly, that premium may eventually become the standard price point :-\); consumers will not pay that premium unless they have something tangible to show for their investment. Only movies and recent seasons of more popular television shows are available in HD. Granted, a season of the average NTSC television show rarely fits on one or two DVDs, but that is not reason enough to insist on moving to HD-DVD or BluRay. Most people who buy television shows on DVD are content to swap discs, and those that are not are always welcome to do as I have and buy a 400 DVD Mega changer. On a side note, It is frustrating when studios think they have a clever solution to the problem and release double-sided DVDs (i.e. Quantum Leap) - because even with a DVD changer, you have to flip the disc manually. :)
... about merging HD-DVD and BluRay, but the consumer is the one who ultimately pays when two very similar but very incompatible formats are allowed to linger.
I own two HDTV sets and I am not fanatical about the transition to HD-DVD / BluRay. It is going to happen eventually, but considering the crap that has graced the big screen in the past 5 years I would rather just wait until a movie is on Showtime HD, HBO HD, INHD, etc... than pay $5+ extra for a movie that was not even worth seeing in the theatre. Movie studios will not begin to reauthor the good, but older, movies until there is a sufficient player base and there will not be a sufficient player base until there is content worth investing in a new player / TV (for some) to watch.
That said, there are a couple of people who actually buy UMDs and actually I know one of them. Despite the lackluster demand, movie studios continue to publish UMD videos. Which leads me to believe that HD-DVD and BluRay will be a similar boat, it will take studios years to figure out which format the consumer actually prefers. In that time, I am sure we will see hybrid HD-DVD / BluRay players enter the market to fill the gap that SONY and Toshiba could have easily filled before costing the consumer. BluRay discs may be more expensive to produce for the publisher, which is partly why Toshiba was such a
http://www.activeworlds.com/
Indeed, the only reason I own my PS2 is because of Final Fantasy X and Gran Turismo 3/4. Granted there have been hosts of other good games since, but the only thing that set the PS2 apart from my XBOX was its plethora of Japanese import RPGs to chose from. The other genres don't matter to me; and I prefer to purchase the XBOX / XBOX 360 version of a multi-console title because of the in-game 5.1 and 720p / 1080i (that doesn't look like crap, (sorry, GT4)). I'm not a fan of Metal Gar Solid, Tekken, Devil May Cry, etc... My decision to buy a PS3 will probably be based on its support for Blu-Ray playback and the inevitible release of a Final Fantasy and Gran Turismo title (perhaps GT4 @ 1080i won't look so crappy when played in the PS3's backward compatibility mode - like the texture filtering (smoothing) for PS1 games played on a PS2?). I personally believe that the Unreal Tournament series is played best with a keyboard and mouse, but it might be successful in selling _some_ people on the PS3. I would rather bite the bullet and upgrade my PC to play Ut2k7, however.
It is hard to find anything bad to say about instancing. It addresses two paramount issues in MMOGs. The first being the initial over-population all major MMOGs experience at launch, which guarantees that no matter how much content a game has, there will always be more than one group of players working on the same quest or camp.
The second is the eventual crunch that happens as the casual player base evaporates and moves onto other games. With server populations dwindling, and the bulk of active characters on a particular server being high-level / dedicated players, it makes it difficult to win any new customers over; considering the lack of low to mid-level population. One might argue that EQ2's new mentoring system was designed for such a purpose (the advancement of low-level/new characters), but you would be wrong. Granted, it helps low-level characters, but it only works when the person knows someone else playing the game. New players, who are not so fortunate, have to meet other players in their same level range to progress.
The obvious solution to under-population would be to begin merging servers, however, as I already stated, many of the active characters fall into the high-level dedicated range and merging would cause overcrowding for contested raid zones/mobs, quests, etc... Therefore, instancing allows server merges and the associated high-level overcrowding with only minimal inconvenience.