To avoid paying royalties (the major goal behind the format), the players should not inclue support for MPEG2 etc. So you will need to buy the new EVD media, because old DVDs will not work.
If there is no Encription (often called DRM here), there will be no support from any holywood studio. What am I supposet to play on this glorious device?
Overall the format possibly has a chance in countries with large Indie movie production like India and China, but I dont see it working in US/Canada/Europe (no offence whoever I missed).
We appologize, but we could not find any HP-UX machines to test it on. We tried to fit a Sun Grid into the building but that failed as well. To top it off all Mac developers commited suicide after watching a few Mac vs. PC commercials.
I don't think we should compare CDs with DVD. When you buy a CD you listen to the music over and over again. I listen to my old CDs from time to time and enjoy the fond memories of the "old times".
DVDs are a bit different in the sense that you watch most movies once. Rarely I watch a movie 3-4 times and then I'm so sick of it I never watch it again. Most people buy movies as collectors. This is why Blockbuster and Netflix are so popular.
For your next-gen argument I would disagree, that while I and probably most people can not hear the difference batween a CD and MP3 or AAC track. The difference between iPod/Divx quality video and a DVD is substantial as well as the difference between a DVD and an HD-DVD (I have not seen Blu-ray yet, but should be goot as well).
I'm in shock. I already have a $2400 TV. I need to sell it and get a cheaper one? On the bright side I'll be able to get PS3 and 2 games with the change.
Wery well said. I would add that good NTSC also does fair job. The trouble is good signal is hard to come by. The analog boradcasting has noise and you have to be in a certain location to receive it properly (I'm not).
The cable suxx big time. All cable operators try to squeeze 10 channels in the space of 2 and the quality is beyond bad.
Don't let me even start on "digital" sattelite. Granted it is digital, however trying to transmit 480x480 picture MPEG2 encoded in 1.5MPbs yelds terrible results. I have to rewing some BBC program segments to actually see trough the gray macroblock blur that DirecTV is transmitting.
When I was in Germany Premiere was really good. I suspect in UK the quality is similar. In the US nobody cares about the quality, they simply want to squeeze more channels in the available bandwidth and that is all. The worst thing is that the viewers ate putting up with it.
Actually Comcast offers such STB device around here: 2 tuners, can record 2 HD programs etc. And you got the price right $9.99/month.
Simply put it it just works (by the way using MS software). However there are a few issues:
- you can not get the content out of the box. (I'm burning DVDs with Blues Clues for my son) - The disk space is seriously limited (120G). - Comcast can rise the price at any time, if they feel TiVo is loosing market positions. - You don't own the box, which means they can disable features and add more restrictions at will.
If you can live with that, this is the solution for you. For me personally hacked TiVo works best. The only advantage thet MCE2005 has is that you can add virtually unlimited disk space, however all the shows are recorder with DRM and for me this is a show stopper.
By the way there is no need to complain about the IR blaster: it just works at least between my Replay and my sattelite box.
Resign. Go work for Google. After you get some experience with how a real large scale projects work, go back to the same company to fix whatever mess the guy after you have done.
Notes server sucks big time on Windows. All I can say is: crashes, crashes, crashes. On AIX it is rock solid, however this will cost you an arm and a leg.
Also it consumes a lot of resources. You will need 200K cluster to support 50k users.
The Notes Client is odd at best. And Yes it runs on Linux (crashes, crashes...).
Bottom line is unless you are sitting on a stockpile of cash and are willing to subscribe to IBM robbery services, stay away from notes.
In different words, Microsoft is trying to keep "confidential" exactly what the commission is requiring them to make public.
The commision does not require this information to be made public. The requirement is that the information is made available for licensing - in other words if you pay the license fee and sign the license agreement.
Noboddy requires MS to open sources. What is requested is MS to open APIs to be licensed for $$$.
What the argument is: once company A has paid $$$ and licensed the APIs, if they publish the source of the implementation (aka open source) then nobody in their right mind will pay MS to license the protocols.
Naturally MS thinks this is unfair, since the commision has agreed that MS has the right to collect $$$ for licensing the APIs, but now the commision wants to allow open source implementations, which would mean no $$$ for MS.
One of the few posts worth reading.
A small correction: for one DRM has nothing to do with server protocols. This has to do with media formats and the logic behind this is not to allow implementations which can decrypt the content and defeat the whole purpose of DRM.
Second, if you have application which accesses data in the ActiveDirectory (tm) it is reasonable to require the application not to expose user passwords out in the open and not to corrupt the data.
If you want to innovate feel free to imlement your own network protocols and stuff, nothing prevents you from doing so.
If you want to innovate on top of Microsoft's protocols (I wonder why on eatrh one would do so), then MS have to make sure their furure implementation (extensions) does not clash with your "extensions".
And the reason is: HP and DELL are making quite some $$$ selling windows machines.
IBM sels consultants and mainframes, both don't go well with windows.
Linux brings new life to the dinosaur arhitecture of S/390. Same as Java brougth new life to OS/400.
Linux sells consultants because someone needs to make the thing work with all those other windows boxes in the enterprise. Existing custommers need to be migrated etc.
Lots of oportunities to sell overprised consutants.
But IBM make money because Linux is not easy to use - they sell integration services. If Linux was as easy as Windows, how are they going to push the overpised consultants?
You can say - they will sell hardware, well there are plenty of HW manifacturers and competing for the cheapest gear is not IBMs strongest weapon.
Sony qualiry:
my first Sony DVD player (S300)- would not play CD-R disks as everybody else would. Died after 9 months.
my last Sony DVD player (NS700)- would not play MP3s, Would not play PAL DVDs - as everibody else would. Died after 6 months.
A friend recently was shopping for HDTV 36" tube TV. Compared Toshiba and Sony at Best Buy. At the same price/features, the Toshiba was handling the SD upscaling way way better.
The quality of the Sony equipment is becoming an elusive target.
When was it that Sony did manage to desing a processor?
The EE in PS2 was co-design with Toshiba, which has experience in embedded CPUs.
I know Sony manifactures some obscure ICs for their TVs, but I don't recall them being a big name in the semiconductor industry.
Bigger - better seems to work for most people, who are easily fooled by the numbers. First of all, there is no 32-bit content available on the market. Even 24-bit is not so common either (DVD-A is less than popular and SACD won't play on PC at all). And even if it calims to be 24-bit does not mean that there are 24-bits of significant information out there - mastering process is an art if its own.
Designing proper 24-bit audio output is not an easy thing to do. The main trouble is isolating the high frequencies which tent to travel everywhere. It is not impossible, but very few people will afford to buy it, so no soundcard manifacturer is doing it right.
If you think about it the lower bit in a 24-bit sample would contribute 1/16 milionth(+ change) part of the signal. There would be far too much other noise in the system for anyone to notice that change.
For any practical purposes (audiophile or not) 16-bits are good enough ant 20-bits are more than fine. Evan at that resolution other factors start to play and need to be properly mitigated, before someone could enjoy true high-fidelity audio.
By the way external soundcard is in theory higher quality, but in practice just a way for Creative and others to charge you more for the same crappy hardware.
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To avoid paying royalties (the major goal behind the format), the players should not inclue support for MPEG2 etc. So you will need to buy the new EVD media, because old DVDs will not work.
If there is no Encription (often called DRM here), there will be no support from any holywood studio. What am I supposet to play on this glorious device?
Overall the format possibly has a chance in countries with large Indie movie production like India and China, but I dont see it working in US/Canada/Europe (no offence whoever I missed).
Hell No. I need no viruses on my 360 thank you, I have a PC for that purpose.
We appologize, but we could not find any HP-UX machines to test it on. We tried to fit a Sun Grid into the building but that failed as well. To top it off all Mac developers commited suicide after watching a few Mac vs. PC commercials.
I don't think we should compare CDs with DVD. When you buy a CD you listen to the music over and over again. I listen to my old CDs from time to time and enjoy the fond memories of the "old times".
DVDs are a bit different in the sense that you watch most movies once. Rarely I watch a movie 3-4 times and then I'm so sick of it I never watch it again. Most people buy movies as collectors. This is why Blockbuster and Netflix are so popular.
For your next-gen argument I would disagree, that while I and probably most people can not hear the difference batween a CD and MP3 or AAC track. The difference between iPod/Divx quality video and a DVD is substantial as well as the difference between a DVD and an HD-DVD (I have not seen Blu-ray yet, but should be goot as well).
I'm in shock. I already have a $2400 TV. I need to sell it and get a cheaper one?
On the bright side I'll be able to get PS3 and 2 games with the change.
Wery well said. I would add that good NTSC also does fair job. The trouble is good signal is hard to come by. The analog boradcasting has noise and you have to be in a certain location to receive it properly (I'm not).
The cable suxx big time. All cable operators try to squeeze 10 channels in the space of 2 and the quality is beyond bad.
Don't let me even start on "digital" sattelite. Granted it is digital, however trying to transmit 480x480 picture MPEG2 encoded in 1.5MPbs yelds terrible results. I have to rewing some BBC program segments to actually see trough the gray macroblock blur that DirecTV is transmitting.
When I was in Germany Premiere was really good. I suspect in UK the quality is similar. In the US nobody cares about the quality, they simply want to squeeze more channels in the available bandwidth and that is all. The worst thing is that the viewers ate putting up with it.
Actually Comcast offers such STB device around here: 2 tuners, can record 2 HD programs etc. And you got the price right $9.99/month.
Simply put it it just works (by the way using MS software). However there are a few issues:
- you can not get the content out of the box. (I'm burning DVDs with Blues Clues for my son)
- The disk space is seriously limited (120G).
- Comcast can rise the price at any time, if they feel TiVo is loosing market positions.
- You don't own the box, which means they can disable features and add more restrictions at will.
If you can live with that, this is the solution for you. For me personally hacked TiVo works best. The only advantage thet MCE2005 has is that you can add virtually unlimited disk space, however all the shows are recorder with DRM and for me this is a show stopper.
By the way there is no need to complain about the IR blaster: it just works at least between my Replay and my sattelite box.
Resign. Go work for Google. After you get some experience with how a real large scale projects work, go back to the same company to fix whatever mess the guy after you have done.
Notes server sucks big time on Windows. All I can say is: crashes, crashes, crashes. On AIX it is rock solid, however this will cost you an arm and a leg. Also it consumes a lot of resources. You will need 200K cluster to support 50k users. The Notes Client is odd at best. And Yes it runs on Linux (crashes, crashes...). Bottom line is unless you are sitting on a stockpile of cash and are willing to subscribe to IBM robbery services, stay away from notes.
In different words, Microsoft is trying to keep "confidential" exactly what the commission is requiring them to make public.
The commision does not require this information to be made public. The requirement is that the information is made available for licensing - in other words if you pay the license fee and sign the license agreement.
Noboddy requires MS to open sources. What is requested is MS to open APIs to be licensed for $$$.
What the argument is: once company A has paid $$$ and licensed the APIs, if they publish the source of the implementation (aka open source) then nobody in their right mind will pay MS to license the protocols.
Naturally MS thinks this is unfair, since the commision has agreed that MS has the right to collect $$$ for licensing the APIs, but now the commision wants to allow open source implementations, which would mean no $$$ for MS.
One of the few posts worth reading.
A small correction: for one DRM has nothing to do with server protocols. This has to do with media formats and the logic behind this is not to allow implementations which can decrypt the content and defeat the whole purpose of DRM.
Second, if you have application which accesses data in the ActiveDirectory (tm) it is reasonable to require the application not to expose user passwords out in the open and not to corrupt the data.
If you want to innovate feel free to imlement your own network protocols and stuff, nothing prevents you from doing so.
If you want to innovate on top of Microsoft's protocols (I wonder why on eatrh one would do so), then MS have to make sure their furure implementation (extensions) does not clash with your "extensions".
Except MS have not been found guilty in a court of law.
And the reason is: HP and DELL are making quite some $$$ selling windows machines.
IBM sels consultants and mainframes, both don't go well with windows.
Linux brings new life to the dinosaur arhitecture of S/390. Same as Java brougth new life to OS/400.
Linux sells consultants because someone needs to make the thing work with all those other windows boxes in the enterprise. Existing custommers need to be migrated etc.
Lots of oportunities to sell overprised consutants.
But IBM make money because Linux is not easy to use - they sell integration services. If Linux was as easy as Windows, how are they going to push the overpised consultants?
You can say - they will sell hardware, well there are plenty of HW manifacturers and competing for the cheapest gear is not IBMs strongest weapon.
Crap. Someody did beat me for this.
...a beowolf cluster of these...
Sony qualiry:
my first Sony DVD player (S300)- would not play CD-R disks as everybody else would. Died after 9 months.
my last Sony DVD player (NS700)- would not play MP3s, Would not play PAL DVDs - as everibody else would. Died after 6 months.
A friend recently was shopping for HDTV 36" tube TV. Compared Toshiba and Sony at Best Buy. At the same price/features, the Toshiba was handling the SD upscaling way way better.
The quality of the Sony equipment is becoming an elusive target.
When was it that Sony did manage to desing a processor? The EE in PS2 was co-design with Toshiba, which has experience in embedded CPUs. I know Sony manifactures some obscure ICs for their TVs, but I don't recall them being a big name in the semiconductor industry.
Next year expect 64 bit audio at 384kHz as well.
Bigger - better seems to work for most people, who are easily fooled by the numbers. First of all, there is no 32-bit content available on the market. Even 24-bit is not so common either (DVD-A is less than popular and SACD won't play on PC at all). And even if it calims to be 24-bit does not mean that there are 24-bits of significant information out there - mastering process is an art if its own.
Designing proper 24-bit audio output is not an easy thing to do. The main trouble is isolating the high frequencies which tent to travel everywhere. It is not impossible, but very few people will afford to buy it, so no soundcard manifacturer is doing it right.
If you think about it the lower bit in a 24-bit sample would contribute 1/16 milionth(+ change) part of the signal. There would be far too much other noise in the system for anyone to notice that change.
For any practical purposes (audiophile or not) 16-bits are good enough ant 20-bits are more than fine. Evan at that resolution other factors start to play and need to be properly mitigated, before someone could enjoy true high-fidelity audio.
By the way external soundcard is in theory higher quality, but in practice just a way for Creative and others to charge you more for the same crappy hardware.