Nope its all written in this mess of VB 1-6 by some guy named Chuck who thought comments were for pussies and when in doubt GOTO it, thus proving we actually live in the evil mirror verse. haven't you noticed all the goatees man? Its a dead giveaway.../strokes goatee while having an evil smirk/
The multi-task icon tray scrolls left and right and mine currently holds 10 icons in my tray. I have no idea how many it can hold, but I'm guessing at least 12, if not more. It also pushes icons out of the first bar of 4 and I don't think you can lock them in place, though you can kick them out.
Remember the mini disk it came before sony bough the film division, it was dead on arrival due to sonys high pricing and the inability to have digital outs as well as their proprietary atrac codec.
This isn't entirely accurate. First, MD was a tremendous hit in Japan and is still relatively popular over there. 2nd, I have the first model of MD player/recorder released in the US and not only did it have an optical digital out, it also had an optical digital in. 3rd, there's a lot of reasons why Sony would have used ATRAC, not least of which would have been the immaturity and high processing power required of MP3 during development of MD.
It could have replaced the aging floppy disks, but it did not. The 3.5 inch floppy disk was pretty much the last open standard they were able to get out of the door, since then it was vendor and user lockin.
It's definitely a shame that Sony wanted to protect their high end MO business so badly as well as remove possible music piracy through the computer. They could have been the Zip drive, only a couple of years earlier. That alone would have made the MD popular in the states. Well that and sane prices on the discs... they charged 3-5 times the cost of discs in the states compared to Japan.
The Japanese have CD rental shops and MDs have always been significantly cheaper there than in the US (I was getting them for $3 each when they wanted $15-$16 in the states). There was a large overlap of time when MD was the only practical way to record music (DAT was more expensive and recordable CD hadn't been created yet or was still in it's infancy). Add in ~$35 CD prices and players far more portable than CD players and it's not too hard to see why MD gained popularity. Dunno if it's still popular today, though. You'd think that portable flash would have killed the market by now.
Ah, typo... sorry it happens sometimes. It's not like slashdot has a Japanese spellchucker.
I also said "similar" not "same". In fact, by definition, a Hikikomori would also have to be a NEET. Most NEETs are social, true, but there's nothing in the definition that says that they have to be.
Of course, I also stated in my original post that the grandparent was thinking of Hikikomori anyway...
Don't know if this is the same problem you're having, but I've seen DDE get corrupted by various Window's patches. You can work around the problem by rebuilding the File Type:
Find and highlight DOC in the file types list and Click Advanced.
In the new window, highlight Open and click the edit button.
Remove/dde from the end of the "Application used to perform action:" box and add "%1" to the very end. Make sure to include the quotes.
Uncheck the "Use DDE" checkbox.
Do the same thing with XLS and PPT. You won't need to do all of the other similar extensions (XLB, etc.) as doing one of the set seems to change them all.
I was under the impression that a slightly modified 1080i is standard for HD-DVD, so you can't expect any HD-DVDs to be 1080p...
That's not quite correct. The stream is a slightly modified 1080p24 stream that adds information for 1080i playback. When the source is 24p (most movies), only 24 frames per second are stored and a player could throw away the 1080i hints and play the source back at 1080p24.
There is one advantage for the consumer... the price you pay for the point cards at retail isn't always a fixed amount. I bought $20 worth of points directly from MS using a CC through the Marketplace back when I first got a 360 two years ago. Since then, I've bought the cards at sales. Averaged out, I've paid about $1 a point instead of $1.20.
I was simply explaining what I felt the GP meant when he said backwards compatibility. I see the term thrown around quite often in relation to the HDM war and that's usually what people mean when they say it. Personally, I would call it forward compatibility (new product works on old device). If the GP meant something else, then I appologize.
Techinally, you're right, you certainly could make a Hybrid Blu Ray/DVD and JVC did demonstrate such a product. However, as I stated in my message, I don't believe they can produce it legally due to license issues. JVC doesn't apear to be working on such a disc anymore and it definitely isn't part of the Blu Ray spec at this time.
Because HD-DVD comes from the DVD group, they can make combo discs that have DVD on one side and HD-DVD on the other. In fact, there's another portion of the spec that allows 1-2 layers of HD-DVD and 1 layer of DVD on the same side (The Freedom Anime DVD released in the US is done this way). This can't be done on Blu Ray because of licensing issues, from what I understand.
This allows, in the future, for a studio to release only one product, a Twin DVD/HD-DVD combo disc that plays in both DVD players and HD-DVD players with High Definition video for the HD-DVD player. Yields are a bit low for that to be a reality today, I think, but it's certainly an interesting option.
I picked up a Toshiba M200 tablet for $500 refurbished. I got it mostly as a sketchpad, but I found that it works great for reading manga as well. Especially as it has a a little joystick built into the face allowing easy turning of the pages in tablet mode. This particular model is better than many of the other tablets in that it's screen resolution is 1280x1024 instead of the more common 1024x768 they put in most tablets. The only real downside is that it's a little heavy.
For example, there's no Image Constraint Token (ICT), so you can actually watch HD DVD movies over component video (not sure if you can with Blu-Ray, maybe you can). Ironically, you need HDMI to upconvert SD DVD.
Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD have implemented the Image Constraint Token in hardware. No movies have implemented this feature and the studios have "pledged" not to use it at this time (at least not until they think they can get away with it, anyway). HDMI for upconverting SD-DVD is a requirement of the CCS license required to play DVDs.
From what I understand, SoundExchange only becomes involved if you wish to play a song without permission from the rights holder. It's a compulsory licensing fee, which means the artist doesn't get any say in it, what-so-ever.
If you negotiate terms with the rights holder yourself, then you don't need a compulsory license and SoundExchange deosn't get any money.
The GP did say he had a 1080p TV, though. You can't view 1080p over Component, but you can get 1080i. In many cases, if your TV has a good enough de-interlacer, there's no discernable difference.
It's not that 1080p can't be done over component, but that AACS contracts forbid outputting HD-DVD or Bluray over component at that resolution. There's no rules for VGA, though, so 1080p (or higher) is ok. The CSS licensing for DVD's prevents upscaling higher than 480p over component for regular DVD's, BTW.
The flag you're referring to allows publishers to limit component outputs to 540p, but the studios have all taken a "we have no plans to use that flag at this time" stance. Of course, none of them have stated that they'll never use it... It's on a title-by-title basis, though, so all of your older titles would still get 1080i even if they decide to use it on future titles.
I agree that DD generally seems to be more efficient than DTS, but in my experience it's not _that_ superior that good old 1.5Mb DTS won't be an improvement.
I've never taken one myself, but I've heard most people can't pick the "better" track in double-blind tests. The major differences between the two formats, however, seems to be that A) DTS is 3 DB louder than DD and B) when both versions were on DVD (at much lower bitrates), they rarely used the same mix.
By the way, have you heard anything more on when we might expect such updates? The last I heard the HD-DVD one had been seperated from the main Spring update (which I'm guessing for sometime in March, based on when the last two came), and presumably that means its coming sooner, but how much sooner I've no idea. Before my Potter 4 disc arrives would be amazing.
I've heard the same thing... I suspect the delay has more to do with fixing disk issues (some HD-DVD titles don't play properly on the 360) than the audio issues. There's only a couple of days left in March, so I'm not expecting either update until next month. Kind of sucks as I've put off watching my HD-DVDs until the issue's been resolved...
The DD bitrate is 640kb currently on the 360, but you can't compare that directly to 1.5Mb DTS. It's like comparing AAC or WMA to MP3. Not saying that 640k DD is superior to 1.5Mb DTS, but don't fall into the trap of thinking that it's necessarily superior either.
The problem with the current 360 DD output is that it is set to "night" mode playback. Apparently, in order to be license compliant, if you don't offer a user controllable setting to turn night mode on or off, you have to default to always on. The upcoming patch will not only add a DTS setting, but a Night Mode setting that is defaulted to off as well. Both DTS and DD will sound far better than DD currently sounds on the 360 add on.
Also, just a note, my 360's fans aren't very loud. Sure, the DVD drive is a bit noisy (but apparently not as loud as others are), but the whole system is whisper quiet when I'm playing a movie through the HD-DVD player.
Funny you should post this about Oblivion as that game actually does use the hard drive for caching on the 360. The game doesn't load as quickly on the core as it does on the premium, especially when going inside a building and coming back out again.
Now, the 360 doesn't cache multiple gigabytes of data, so it's not likely as efficient as the PS3 version, but it doesn't really have to be as the data is loaded more quickly from the 360 DVD drive in the first place.
Not having a standard hard drive does not preclude developers from taking advantage of it when it's there. They just need to make sure the game runs acceptably on a system without a hard drive. Personally, none of the 360 games I have take a long time to load. They're all much faster than my PS2 and about the same speed or faster than my XBox 1.
HDMI does have a good use, though not necessarily for video. Depending on the display, component could actually look better than HDMI, though that situation isn't very common.
HDMI does bring better audio formats, however, so it isn't completely without merit. The 360 HD-DVD player cannot directly pass TrueHD audio and other high definition audio formats on to a receiver. It has to downconvert them to the optical out first. Currently it's doing a so-so job through 640k Dolby Digital. Rumor has it that they're considering adding 1.5k DTS support which can still go out over the optical output. Anyway, while the 360 HD-DVD player is a great bargin and provides an excellent HD-DVD experience, it doesn't have as good of audio as the Toshiba HD-A1.
Perhaps, in the near future, Microsoft will provide an HDMI option for those of us with an HDMI receiver so we can get these better audio formats in their full glory:)
For gaming, though, HDMI really isn't all that necessary.
-MD
Fanboyism is great isn't it? Anybody who's spent even 5 minutes reading about both formats would find that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are almost identical in every respect, with the only substantial exception being the physical disc.
Can't tell if you're agreeing with me or calling me a fanboy... judging by your other comments, I'll forge ahead and assume you were speaking of the fanboyism of the grandparent.:P
Both are stored in 1080p, at the native frame rate of the source media (usually 24 fps for feature films). Both leave the details of how to display a 24 fps video on a 30 fps display to the player.
One difference here is that HD-DVD supports a 1080p30 storage format and Bluray does not. On the flip side Bluray supports outputting the 1080p24 signal directly while HD-DVD, because of director commentaries and other Picture-in-Picture content, mixes it's video at 1080i60 first. Not a huge deal, but there are differences, if slight.
HD-DVD uses a menu system based on web technologies like XML, JavaScript, etc. Blu-Ray uses Java. I don't spend enough time in DVD menus to care.
Bluray players aren't required to support BD-J (the Java aspect of Bluray). No players, including the PS3, currently support it and no titles are expectied to have it until Spring/Summer 2007. Rumors say that Sony will roll out a PS3 patch for BD-J support at that time, but this has not been confirmed in a press release. This means, for now, no picture-in-picture director commentaries or anything much more advanced than what we saw on DVD. These features are already prevelant on HD-DVD and every HD-DVD player is required to support the full spec. As you said, though, for many consumers, these things probably won't be all that important.
Nobody will be able to tell the difference between a Blu-Ray and an HD-DVD disc side-by side. Many studios are supporting both-- and guess what? They start from the same source, are encoded with the same codecs (and indeed, the same software), using the same settings. They are decoded with the same codecs. There is literally no difference in the output.
Now that Bluray actually has a BD50 disc available for producers, I expect that to be the case. Both formats can currently support transparency to the master. It was a bit rocky up to a couple of months ago, however, as many of the BD discs weren't quite up to par with HD-DVD. Also, don't expect Sony or Fox to adopt the VC-1 codec any time soon. Hopefully, they'll at least adopt AVC, which, while not quite up to the same efficiency as Microsoft's VC-1, has more space and a higher peak bitrate to make up for it.
In the end, I ended up going with a player I could buy for cheap. I can enjoy HD movies on my 720p projector now and if the format ends up "losing" the war, I won't care. By the time that happens, the other format would be cheap enough to buy in a stand alone player. Heck, I've got 2 working LD players, my Sony MD player (first model released in the US) still plays MDs and my Dreamcast is still fun to hook up every once in a while to play some old games:)
-AnyNoMouse
Blu-ray movies look as good as they should. Kudos for that. I consider that a token only because I think it would be hard to screw that up. However, as with DVD, the best experiences are to come. Talladega Nights looked good and sounded great, but I really want the Matrix in Blu-ray to confirm it's superiority to HD-DVD.:-)
Then in all likelyhood, you'll be dissapointed. Bluray is fine and all, but that is not a title where you'll see any difference between HD-DVD and Bluray.
Warner uses Microsoft's VC-1 encoder for all of it's titles. For Bluray releases, they use a tool, written by Microsoft, to convert the encodes to a format the Bluray authoring tools like.
The PS3, from the reports I've read, doesn't currently support BD-J, so the HD-DVD version will likely have better extras than the Bluray version and have the exact same picture and sound. There aren't any Bluray players that support BD-J (the Java interpreter for Bluray that allows for advanced interactivity features) currently out or announced, BTW. Expect them sometime mid-to-late 2007.
Like it or not, the extra bandwidth and space avaialble on Bluray isn't turning into better picture quality or sound for Bluray releases at the moment, and may not in the future. Microsoft's codec team has done a spectacular job with their VC-1 tools and they're still making big strides in bringing down the size of HD video. One could argue that they're the primary reason HD-DVD is doing so well today. The only real world advantages that Bluray currently has is studio support (which interestingly enough is not resulting in more titles) and device manufacturer support (ditto).
Blu-ray movies look as good as they should. Kudos for that. I consider that a token only because I think it would be hard to screw that up. However, as with DVD, the best experiences are to come. Talladega Nights looked good and sounded great, but I really want the Matrix in Blu-ray to confirm it's superiority to HD-DVD.:-)
Then in all likelyhood, you'll be dissapointed. Bluray is fine and all, but that is not a title where you'll see any difference between HD-DVD and Bluray.
Warner uses Microsoft's VC-1 encoder for all of it's titles. For Bluray releases, they use a tool, written by Microsoft, to convert the encodes to a format the Bluray authoring tools like.
The PS3, from the reports I've read, doesn't currently support BD-J, so the HD-DVD version will likely have better extras than the Bluray version and have the exact same picture and sound. There aren't any Bluray players that support BD-J (the Java interpreter for Bluray that allows for advanced interactivity features) currently out or announced, BTW. Expect them sometime mid-to-late 2007.
Like it or not, the extra bandwidth and space avaialble on Bluray isn't turning into better picture quality or sound for Bluray releases at the moment, and may not in the future. Microsoft's codec team has done a spectacular job with their VC-1 tools and they're still making big strides in bringing down the size of HD video. One could argue that they're the primary reason HD-DVD is doing so well today. The only real world advantages that Bluray currently has is studio support (which interestingly enough is not resulting in more titles) and device manufacturer support (ditto).
I've been doing a 20-30% redundancy, but at a low block size (128k, I think). It takes several hours on an 2-3 year old P4 2.4Ghz machine... I usually just run them at night in a batch file (it's a secondary machine). Thanks for mentioning the larger block trick. I didn't realize it make that much of a difference in encoding times.
No, the flap never fully bonds with the eye again. You are always at risk from one 3 Stooges re-enactment from having her flap hang-out. What we have reached here however is the crossroads of long-term gain for short-term pain.
You have a reference for that?
My eye doctor said they could peel back the flap up to around a year after surgery (for corrections). After that it would have healed and they'd need to do the intralasik procedure again (If you use the blades to cut the flap instead of a laser, it heals even faster).
The FDA webside for lasik states you should wait 4 weeks before entering "strenous" contact sports such as boxing, football, karate, etc. This is probably for the blade cut flap, though.
Oblivion, on the other hand, does not have that content shipped with the game. It cannot be unlocked because it doesn't exist. What Bethesda did do, was make a tool set available so that players could make their own content for the game. There are dozens of player created mods available with new content that you can add to the PC VERSION ONLY. One of these player created mods happens to be a naked woman model.
Actually, that's not entirely true, at least in the PC version of the game.
In the packed BSA files there is a nude female mesh torso with a nude female texture associated to it. This mesh is meant to be used with armor and clothing to allow skin to show (arms, neck, upper chest, stomach, etc). The first nude mod released for Morrowind was simply this nude mesh and texture extraced from the BSA archive, renamed and placed in the proper directory.
As proof of this, Bethesda has not released a.nif exporter for Oblivion and only recently have people been able to create models for the game purely through the efforts of a few people reverse engineering the format (it's hardly complete and the support for models is limited at the moment).
Of course, I don't think it will be possible to use this mesh on the 360 version and Bethesda's 1.1 beta patch removes the nipples on the texture. Also, the nude mesh is horribly deformed to make it fit to clothing necklines better.
Just wanted to point out what the reality of the situation is... I think Bethesda is in the right on this matter (and Rockstar as well, btw).
Slashdot Mirror
Nope its all written in this mess of VB 1-6 by some guy named Chuck who thought comments were for pussies and when in doubt GOTO it, thus proving we actually live in the evil mirror verse. haven't you noticed all the goatees man? Its a dead giveaway.../strokes goatee while having an evil smirk/
I think you mean Goatses.
And he was STROKING them?!
The multi-task icon tray scrolls left and right and mine currently holds 10 icons in my tray. I have no idea how many it can hold, but I'm guessing at least 12, if not more. It also pushes icons out of the first bar of 4 and I don't think you can lock them in place, though you can kick them out.
Remember the mini disk it came before sony bough the film division, it was dead on arrival due to sonys high pricing and the inability to have digital outs as well as their proprietary atrac codec.
This isn't entirely accurate. First, MD was a tremendous hit in Japan and is still relatively popular over there. 2nd, I have the first model of MD player/recorder released in the US and not only did it have an optical digital out, it also had an optical digital in. 3rd, there's a lot of reasons why Sony would have used ATRAC, not least of which would have been the immaturity and high processing power required of MP3 during development of MD.
It could have replaced the aging floppy disks, but it did not. The 3.5 inch floppy disk was pretty much the last open standard they were able to get out of the door, since then it was vendor and user lockin.
It's definitely a shame that Sony wanted to protect their high end MO business so badly as well as remove possible music piracy through the computer. They could have been the Zip drive, only a couple of years earlier. That alone would have made the MD popular in the states. Well that and sane prices on the discs... they charged 3-5 times the cost of discs in the states compared to Japan.
The Japanese have CD rental shops and MDs have always been significantly cheaper there than in the US (I was getting them for $3 each when they wanted $15-$16 in the states). There was a large overlap of time when MD was the only practical way to record music (DAT was more expensive and recordable CD hadn't been created yet or was still in it's infancy). Add in ~$35 CD prices and players far more portable than CD players and it's not too hard to see why MD gained popularity. Dunno if it's still popular today, though. You'd think that portable flash would have killed the market by now.
Ah, typo... sorry it happens sometimes. It's not like slashdot has a Japanese spellchucker.
I also said "similar" not "same". In fact, by definition, a Hikikomori would also have to be a NEET. Most NEETs are social, true, but there's nothing in the definition that says that they have to be.
Of course, I also stated in my original post that the grandparent was thinking of Hikikomori anyway...
Hikokomori http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori
There's a similar behavior called NEET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neet
The first one is probably closer to what you're thinking, though.
Do the same thing with XLS and PPT. You won't need to do all of the other similar extensions (XLB, etc.) as doing one of the set seems to change them all.
There is one advantage for the consumer... the price you pay for the point cards at retail isn't always a fixed amount. I bought $20 worth of points directly from MS using a CC through the Marketplace back when I first got a 360 two years ago. Since then, I've bought the cards at sales. Averaged out, I've paid about $1 a point instead of $1.20.
I was simply explaining what I felt the GP meant when he said backwards compatibility. I see the term thrown around quite often in relation to the HDM war and that's usually what people mean when they say it. Personally, I would call it forward compatibility (new product works on old device). If the GP meant something else, then I appologize.
Techinally, you're right, you certainly could make a Hybrid Blu Ray/DVD and JVC did demonstrate such a product. However, as I stated in my message, I don't believe they can produce it legally due to license issues. JVC doesn't apear to be working on such a disc anymore and it definitely isn't part of the Blu Ray spec at this time.
Because HD-DVD comes from the DVD group, they can make combo discs that have DVD on one side and HD-DVD on the other. In fact, there's another portion of the spec that allows 1-2 layers of HD-DVD and 1 layer of DVD on the same side (The Freedom Anime DVD released in the US is done this way). This can't be done on Blu Ray because of licensing issues, from what I understand.
This allows, in the future, for a studio to release only one product, a Twin DVD/HD-DVD combo disc that plays in both DVD players and HD-DVD players with High Definition video for the HD-DVD player. Yields are a bit low for that to be a reality today, I think, but it's certainly an interesting option.
I picked up a Toshiba M200 tablet for $500 refurbished. I got it mostly as a sketchpad, but I found that it works great for reading manga as well. Especially as it has a a little joystick built into the face allowing easy turning of the pages in tablet mode. This particular model is better than many of the other tablets in that it's screen resolution is 1280x1024 instead of the more common 1024x768 they put in most tablets. The only real downside is that it's a little heavy.
From what I understand, SoundExchange only becomes involved if you wish to play a song without permission from the rights holder. It's a compulsory licensing fee, which means the artist doesn't get any say in it, what-so-ever.
If you negotiate terms with the rights holder yourself, then you don't need a compulsory license and SoundExchange deosn't get any money.
The GP did say he had a 1080p TV, though. You can't view 1080p over Component, but you can get 1080i. In many cases, if your TV has a good enough de-interlacer, there's no discernable difference.
It's not that 1080p can't be done over component, but that AACS contracts forbid outputting HD-DVD or Bluray over component at that resolution. There's no rules for VGA, though, so 1080p (or higher) is ok. The CSS licensing for DVD's prevents upscaling higher than 480p over component for regular DVD's, BTW.
The flag you're referring to allows publishers to limit component outputs to 540p, but the studios have all taken a "we have no plans to use that flag at this time" stance. Of course, none of them have stated that they'll never use it... It's on a title-by-title basis, though, so all of your older titles would still get 1080i even if they decide to use it on future titles.
The DD bitrate is 640kb currently on the 360, but you can't compare that directly to 1.5Mb DTS. It's like comparing AAC or WMA to MP3. Not saying that 640k DD is superior to 1.5Mb DTS, but don't fall into the trap of thinking that it's necessarily superior either.
The problem with the current 360 DD output is that it is set to "night" mode playback. Apparently, in order to be license compliant, if you don't offer a user controllable setting to turn night mode on or off, you have to default to always on. The upcoming patch will not only add a DTS setting, but a Night Mode setting that is defaulted to off as well. Both DTS and DD will sound far better than DD currently sounds on the 360 add on.
Also, just a note, my 360's fans aren't very loud. Sure, the DVD drive is a bit noisy (but apparently not as loud as others are), but the whole system is whisper quiet when I'm playing a movie through the HD-DVD player.
Funny you should post this about Oblivion as that game actually does use the hard drive for caching on the 360. The game doesn't load as quickly on the core as it does on the premium, especially when going inside a building and coming back out again.
Now, the 360 doesn't cache multiple gigabytes of data, so it's not likely as efficient as the PS3 version, but it doesn't really have to be as the data is loaded more quickly from the 360 DVD drive in the first place.
Not having a standard hard drive does not preclude developers from taking advantage of it when it's there. They just need to make sure the game runs acceptably on a system without a hard drive. Personally, none of the 360 games I have take a long time to load. They're all much faster than my PS2 and about the same speed or faster than my XBox 1.
HDMI does have a good use, though not necessarily for video. Depending on the display, component could actually look better than HDMI, though that situation isn't very common. HDMI does bring better audio formats, however, so it isn't completely without merit. The 360 HD-DVD player cannot directly pass TrueHD audio and other high definition audio formats on to a receiver. It has to downconvert them to the optical out first. Currently it's doing a so-so job through 640k Dolby Digital. Rumor has it that they're considering adding 1.5k DTS support which can still go out over the optical output. Anyway, while the 360 HD-DVD player is a great bargin and provides an excellent HD-DVD experience, it doesn't have as good of audio as the Toshiba HD-A1. Perhaps, in the near future, Microsoft will provide an HDMI option for those of us with an HDMI receiver so we can get these better audio formats in their full glory :)
For gaming, though, HDMI really isn't all that necessary.
-MD
In the end, I ended up going with a player I could buy for cheap. I can enjoy HD movies on my 720p projector now and if the format ends up "losing" the war, I won't care. By the time that happens, the other format would be cheap enough to buy in a stand alone player. Heck, I've got 2 working LD players, my Sony MD player (first model released in the US) still plays MDs and my Dreamcast is still fun to hook up every once in a while to play some old games :)
-AnyNoMouse
Warner uses Microsoft's VC-1 encoder for all of it's titles. For Bluray releases, they use a tool, written by Microsoft, to convert the encodes to a format the Bluray authoring tools like.
The PS3, from the reports I've read, doesn't currently support BD-J, so the HD-DVD version will likely have better extras than the Bluray version and have the exact same picture and sound. There aren't any Bluray players that support BD-J (the Java interpreter for Bluray that allows for advanced interactivity features) currently out or announced, BTW. Expect them sometime mid-to-late 2007.
Like it or not, the extra bandwidth and space avaialble on Bluray isn't turning into better picture quality or sound for Bluray releases at the moment, and may not in the future. Microsoft's codec team has done a spectacular job with their VC-1 tools and they're still making big strides in bringing down the size of HD video. One could argue that they're the primary reason HD-DVD is doing so well today. The only real world advantages that Bluray currently has is studio support (which interestingly enough is not resulting in more titles) and device manufacturer support (ditto).
I've been doing a 20-30% redundancy, but at a low block size (128k, I think). It takes several hours on an 2-3 year old P4 2.4Ghz machine... I usually just run them at night in a batch file (it's a secondary machine). Thanks for mentioning the larger block trick. I didn't realize it make that much of a difference in encoding times.
You have a reference for that?
My eye doctor said they could peel back the flap up to around a year after surgery (for corrections). After that it would have healed and they'd need to do the intralasik procedure again (If you use the blades to cut the flap instead of a laser, it heals even faster).
The FDA webside for lasik states you should wait 4 weeks before entering "strenous" contact sports such as boxing, football, karate, etc. This is probably for the blade cut flap, though.
http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/LASIK/expect.htm
Actually, that's not entirely true, at least in the PC version of the game.
In the packed BSA files there is a nude female mesh torso with a nude female texture associated to it. This mesh is meant to be used with armor and clothing to allow skin to show (arms, neck, upper chest, stomach, etc). The first nude mod released for Morrowind was simply this nude mesh and texture extraced from the BSA archive, renamed and placed in the proper directory.
As proof of this, Bethesda has not released a
Of course, I don't think it will be possible to use this mesh on the 360 version and Bethesda's 1.1 beta patch removes the nipples on the texture. Also, the nude mesh is horribly deformed to make it fit to clothing necklines better.
Just wanted to point out what the reality of the situation is... I think Bethesda is in the right on this matter (and Rockstar as well, btw).
-MD