The general answer is yes. Macrovision is basically a process for ruining the sync signal, and TBC's like to fix exactly that kind of problem. But to be certain, ask the manufacturer of the TBC. Who knows; perhaps they've entered into some unholy pact with the Macrovision people to keep the signal hosed.
Conversions of otherwise pristine signal could indeed introduce an LS bit or so of degradation; however, depending on the precision of the conversion, this may or may not actually be visible. The more high quality bits used in the various A/D and D/A systems the less of a problem this is. But the presumption that the signal is pristine is a bit unlikely. TBC's can do a lot to fix things, from adjusting sync levels and widths to getting the black level back where it belongs to skewing timing and tweaking chroma phase, and the signal that comes from a tape player is usually in need of one or more of these services. So in the end, whatever degradation might be inherent is swamped out by the other benefits. There's a lot to be said for a video signal that is exactly in spec, and tape decks rarely produce such signals. Most any TBC can be taken out of stream with one button press, so if it's actually not helping, you could just switch it out anyway. I've got some pretty nice decks, including some single frame recording decks, and I can tell you that I consider a TBC to be part of the critical path to best results.
Why is an external time base corrector required when you are going to sample and process the signal anyway?
TBC's do a lot - you should read this short page, it is very concise and to the point.
The other two questions are not relevant because you were fed misinformation. You do want an SVHS deck, and you do want to use S-Video as the source if humanly possible. Composite video is more of a compromise than S-Video is. Keeping the chroma and luma separate resolve interference issues you have seen many times such as ties with stripes turning colors.
This AC is correct. Use S-Video from a good SVHS deck; that's the best signal source. Also a TBC and a good digitizer - I use a datavideo DAC-100 which has firewire, composite, S-Video in *and* out, converts any to any and does a very good job. It also lets you select 16- or 12-bit audio conversion (for firewire output.)
Since you're not using a Mac, I have no suggestions for software. The Mac itself is so friendly to this process, I've never experienced any problems of any kind.
Even more to the point, the Amiga had this (Superbitmap windows) in 1985. The window was buffered by the OS, so the app didn't have to redraw revealed window fragments. Smooth sailing and more CPU for the user. At the cost of gfx memory, which was a limited resource. Still, it was often the best choice.
Forcing a logic device to deal with religion is just cruel.
Yes. That's why they indoctrinate children with "Santa", using toys as the bait, and the "easter Bunny", using baskets of candy as the bait, prior to the final destruction of the poor child's budding logic capabilities using supernatural stories about baskets of candy / toys you get after you die. It is child abuse at its finest.
Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but you can run linux on it. Either as linux-only, as multiboot, or hopefully still using multicore shortly, under Parallels, which is by far the coolest way to run another OS on a Mac. I've got a Mac laptop that runs linux, XP and OSX all at the same time. It is beyond convenient, requires no rebooting, just click a window to the front and work away.
There's nothing o sneer at when faced with an easily supported 8-core platform.
The converse of the capacity to suffer is the capacity to enjoy. Life, freedom, companionship, food, sex and so forth. We see this in the most obvious way possible in small animals - even mice, certainly cats and dogs and chimps. I rather think it should be obvious that if you exercise your power to strip the ability to enjoy those things from a living being, ethically speaking, you've stepped out of the role of cohabiter and into that of - at the very least - thief. Though I think that is understating the case. If you commit this kind of thievery among humans, we simply call it murder. No one would quibble about it being painless — it's still murder. The only time murder can be justified is when your life is threatened.
When you ask questions like this, substitute "person" for animal. You'll find the answers a lot faster, because you're going to be a lot more compassionate and honest with yourself. Then you can simply ask yourself why you think an animal deserves less consideration than a person.
You draw the line at the capacity to suffer - in other words, if there is a sensory system and a nerve complex to evaluate the output of that system, and it can be demonstrated that the combination has the capacity to suffer, then you're across the line. If you aren't causing suffering, you are golden, ethically speaking.
You're not allowing for the obvious: My monkey likes to be spanked. As a matter of freedom, it has every right to be spanked, regardless of those who take a dim view of spanking.
So, the question is, can humans enter into any meaningful social contract with chimpanzees? And the answer, I would say, is no.
Clearly, you've never owned a dog, or thought the relationship through if you have. Humans enter into all manner of social contracts with canines. Food and care and love in exchange for protection, warning, even hunting prowess. It seems to me your argument fails before it ever reaches the level of trying to deal with a chimp; not to mention the fact that we routinely award human rights to those humans so disadvantaged that they cannot even do for you what a dog could. The argument extends to all manner of animals; falcons, cats, and so on. It isn't about a social contract. It never was. It is about recognizing that respect and care for those beings that have the capacity to suffer is the basis for high quality ethics. Singer recognizes this, as do many who have similar views. I can torch your argument another way, too. Take a member of a human society that you have no commonality with. Will you eat them? Use them as testbeds for your drugs? Strip their skin for leather? Even if they routinely do things you find abhorrent, such as have sex with children and kill babies that aren't perfect or wanted? I doubt you would - most people would not. Certainly there is no "social contract" with such people; yet we recognize that there are things that are bad to do to them regardless of the disparity from our own outlooks.
We are animals; they are animals. What should be done is obvious. Rationales for making another animal suffer for your benefit are ethically corrupt. It really is just that simple.
Next thing you'll be saying cannibalism is ok, as long as you only eat people who don't vote!
Actually, that's pretty much what most people say. They just use "animal" in place of "people" so they have an illusory barrier to hold off the moral and ethical issues. Unless they're so far down the gaussian they can't understand those issues, but then, of course, they depend upon the rationales of those upstream.
Second, but probably more important, giving cats a right to vote can't _possibly_ make it any worse.
Actually, this isn't far off from the truth. Because if you look at democratic voting honestly, it is a system that gives two uninformed individuals the ability to outvote an informed person. Adding a cat's (presumably random) vote to that would give the informed person more power from time to time, and otherwise, it wouldn't affect the outcome - because the fact is, informed people are in the minority at all times. And not just because of the rarity of being out on the intelligent end of the gaussian; you don't have to be all that intelligent to be informed. It's more about complacency and gullibility, IMHO. Whatever it is, though, it sure makes itself felt in no uncertain terms.
There were two issues. One was games at 720p. They fixed that. The other was Blueray at 720p. They did NOT fix that. There are links in the thread. Please follow them for more details.
Verifiedproblemwith PS3Bluray playback which is NOT the same as game playback, and at NO time did I conflate the two. I don't know what your problem is, why the facts are so annoying to you, but no matter how much you pose and posture, you can't change the facts. Read the links - READ them, don't skim them. You are wrong, you've been wrong since your first post, and that's not going to change until you change your position.
As I pointed out to you in a different post, the specs for that projector show that it is designed to support 1080i input.
That's completely irrelevant. The fact is, it does NOT accept 1080i. You can browse "projector central" until you're blue in your face and it isn't going to change the fact that the projector won't do anything useful with 1080i, period, end of story. Furthermore, this is ONE example out of many, the links I gave you show the technical community's acknowledgment that this problem is one with the PS3; you can't be bothered to look, that's fine, but that just makes you uninformed, not correct.
But it is true that I didn't look for known bugs on a projector that I don't own. I shouldn't have to.
The links are to the problem with the PS3. Not the Infocus. I'm not claiming that the infocus is the problem. I just said I could duplicate the problem using it. I'm saying that the PS3 has a problem. Don't believe me? Fine. But there are a lot of people out there, some of whom I linked to, who are FAR more trustworthy than you are - and THEY say there is a problem. That makes what you say irrelevant.
You are making claims about the PS3 and Blu-Ray that are blatantly wrong.
No I most certainly am not. My claims are (1) the PS3 will not output 720p when playing back Blueray. This is a known fact, and I have provided many links to verify it. (2) That this is a problem for people with sets that do not accept 1080i AND that there are such sets, and again, the clamor of complaints from people all over the net, as well as the technical sites agreeing, should serve to knock some sense into your stubborn head that this claim has little to do with me and a great deal to do with the current state of affairs. (3) I have a projector in my rec room that, for WHATEVER blinking reason, ALSO will not accept above 720p, and that I can verify this with the flick of a menu option, and DID SO in order to make sure I hadn't misconstrued my own situation, EVEN THOUGH my situation isn't what is at issue here, because my PS3 is on a full native 1080p projector system. Were I to connect the PS3 to it, it would not play back blueray EXCEPT at 480p, WHICH IS WHAT I SAID IN THE FIRST POST! My projectors are not the point here; the lack of 720p playback and its inconvenience to numerous Sony customers is the issue, and I provided the links to verify that. Now go do some research for goodness sake before your foot gets so far in your mouth they have to do a colostomy to allow you to tie your shoelaces!
I swear, the product of the IQ's in the responses in this thread must be near zero... look. I use a Sony 1080p system with my PS3. I am not having any trouble. OTHER people are having trouble. I can DUPLICATE their problem easily by feeding my infocus 5000 1080i, but that's not a problem for me. OK? Got that thru your thick little head? Now, FOLLOW THE LINKS TO THE TECHNICAL FORUMS and you can VERIFY the problem with the PS3. The PS3, NOT the TV SETS. It is WELL FUCKING KNOWN. If you can't be bothered to do that, I can't be bothered to talk to you. You're a complete waste of everyone's time, posting misinformation, not verifying issues, posing as if you knew things you don't. Now piss off. I've had enough of a bunch of wanna-bes pretending to technical knowledge they don't have. I made a perfectly factual post and you IDIOTS are giving me crap without taking ANY effort to verify your positions, or mine. I really don't know why I bother. And the slashdot mods aren't any fucking better, modding WRONG posts "informative" and down-modding posts that are 100% factual.
Maynard - What the heck is wrong with you - I HAVE a 5000, and it does NOT take 1080i and produce anything useful. PERIOD. This has NOTHING to do with 1080p, other than as a footnote that it doesn't accept that, either. Aside from that, elsewhere in the thread, I have provided MULTIPLE REFERENCES to RESPECTED FORUMS that detail the problem, and WHY it is a problem on MANY types of displays, that VERIFIES that many sets won't take 1080i as an input. Do you spend all your time denying reality? These are FACTS. Look them up.
The parent post is just wrong.
The PS3 problem was fixed within 3 weeks of it being reports, less i believe.
No. The only thing Sony has fixed to date is the output of games in 720p, not the output of Blueray disks in 720p. Again, if you pay attention to what I said, take a few minutes with Google to verify it, you'll find my post was spot on.
I am amazed at the level of misinformation we find here in our supposedly "technical" readership. Usually issues of fact aren't much for stupid, wrong-headed posts... just when it strays into opinion (like the stupid "conspiracy" cries in one of the replies.) But this... man, you can look this up, it takes about thirty seconds to find the facts I laid out verified in any number of respected forums, not to mention the annoyed posts of many PS3 users in various blogs and so on.
Are any of you people capable of independent thought? Look. Pay attention now: Not all displays downscale from 1080i. Fact. FACT! Read the darned thread; I provided the Google-located references you were too lazy to go after; the problem is all over many respected technical forums. "Conspiracy crap", as if. It's just a technical issue, but it's a real one.
What are you talking about? When have you ever seen a 720p native display refuse 1080i input?
About 2 minutes ago, in my Rec room. Infocus 5000, Firmware 753-0363-10, Brandware 753-0363-02, Bootcode 002-1082-00. That's what I'm talking about. You feed this thing 1080i and you get 1/2 vertical screen of bright green squish.
What does this mean? Well, that your complaint about being unable to watch a Blu-Ray movie on the PS3 due to lack of display support is completely bogus.
No, what it actually means is that you don't know what you're talking about, that there are 720-only capable displays out there, and that you didn't do any research before you shot off your ignorant mouth. For instance, one quick Google search turned up the problem at IGN, avforums, arstechnica, joystiq and many more, both user forums and more technical forums. So lets just drop the "it's not a problem" nonsense right now. It is a problem.
Mods, come on. This guy is wrong, first of all. It wasn't fixed. That's a fact. So this isn't "informative." Secondly, he provides no references - you should have known better. If it had been fixed, that would have been easy. Of course it has not been fixed.
Slashdot Mirror
The general answer is yes. Macrovision is basically a process for ruining the sync signal, and TBC's like to fix exactly that kind of problem. But to be certain, ask the manufacturer of the TBC. Who knows; perhaps they've entered into some unholy pact with the Macrovision people to keep the signal hosed.
Conversions of otherwise pristine signal could indeed introduce an LS bit or so of degradation; however, depending on the precision of the conversion, this may or may not actually be visible. The more high quality bits used in the various A/D and D/A systems the less of a problem this is. But the presumption that the signal is pristine is a bit unlikely. TBC's can do a lot to fix things, from adjusting sync levels and widths to getting the black level back where it belongs to skewing timing and tweaking chroma phase, and the signal that comes from a tape player is usually in need of one or more of these services. So in the end, whatever degradation might be inherent is swamped out by the other benefits. There's a lot to be said for a video signal that is exactly in spec, and tape decks rarely produce such signals. Most any TBC can be taken out of stream with one button press, so if it's actually not helping, you could just switch it out anyway. I've got some pretty nice decks, including some single frame recording decks, and I can tell you that I consider a TBC to be part of the critical path to best results.
TBC's do a lot - you should read this short page, it is very concise and to the point.
The other two questions are not relevant because you were fed misinformation. You do want an SVHS deck, and you do want to use S-Video as the source if humanly possible. Composite video is more of a compromise than S-Video is. Keeping the chroma and luma separate resolve interference issues you have seen many times such as ties with stripes turning colors.
This AC is correct. Use S-Video from a good SVHS deck; that's the best signal source. Also a TBC and a good digitizer - I use a datavideo DAC-100 which has firewire, composite, S-Video in *and* out, converts any to any and does a very good job. It also lets you select 16- or 12-bit audio conversion (for firewire output.)
Since you're not using a Mac, I have no suggestions for software. The Mac itself is so friendly to this process, I've never experienced any problems of any kind.
Even more to the point, the Amiga had this (Superbitmap windows) in 1985. The window was buffered by the OS, so the app didn't have to redraw revealed window fragments. Smooth sailing and more CPU for the user. At the cost of gfx memory, which was a limited resource. Still, it was often the best choice.
Yes. That's why they indoctrinate children with "Santa", using toys as the bait, and the "easter Bunny", using baskets of candy as the bait, prior to the final destruction of the poor child's budding logic capabilities using supernatural stories about baskets of candy / toys you get after you die. It is child abuse at its finest.
Well, if he did, he'd be wrong. There's plenty of religious software out there.
Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but you can run linux on it. Either as linux-only, as multiboot, or hopefully still using multicore shortly, under Parallels, which is by far the coolest way to run another OS on a Mac. I've got a Mac laptop that runs linux, XP and OSX all at the same time. It is beyond convenient, requires no rebooting, just click a window to the front and work away.
There's nothing o sneer at when faced with an easily supported 8-core platform.
The converse of the capacity to suffer is the capacity to enjoy. Life, freedom, companionship, food, sex and so forth. We see this in the most obvious way possible in small animals - even mice, certainly cats and dogs and chimps. I rather think it should be obvious that if you exercise your power to strip the ability to enjoy those things from a living being, ethically speaking, you've stepped out of the role of cohabiter and into that of - at the very least - thief. Though I think that is understating the case. If you commit this kind of thievery among humans, we simply call it murder. No one would quibble about it being painless — it's still murder. The only time murder can be justified is when your life is threatened.
When you ask questions like this, substitute "person" for animal. You'll find the answers a lot faster, because you're going to be a lot more compassionate and honest with yourself. Then you can simply ask yourself why you think an animal deserves less consideration than a person.
You draw the line at the capacity to suffer - in other words, if there is a sensory system and a nerve complex to evaluate the output of that system, and it can be demonstrated that the combination has the capacity to suffer, then you're across the line. If you aren't causing suffering, you are golden, ethically speaking.
You're not allowing for the obvious: My monkey likes to be spanked. As a matter of freedom, it has every right to be spanked, regardless of those who take a dim view of spanking.
Clearly, you've never owned a dog, or thought the relationship through if you have. Humans enter into all manner of social contracts with canines. Food and care and love in exchange for protection, warning, even hunting prowess. It seems to me your argument fails before it ever reaches the level of trying to deal with a chimp; not to mention the fact that we routinely award human rights to those humans so disadvantaged that they cannot even do for you what a dog could. The argument extends to all manner of animals; falcons, cats, and so on. It isn't about a social contract. It never was. It is about recognizing that respect and care for those beings that have the capacity to suffer is the basis for high quality ethics. Singer recognizes this, as do many who have similar views. I can torch your argument another way, too. Take a member of a human society that you have no commonality with. Will you eat them? Use them as testbeds for your drugs? Strip their skin for leather? Even if they routinely do things you find abhorrent, such as have sex with children and kill babies that aren't perfect or wanted? I doubt you would - most people would not. Certainly there is no "social contract" with such people; yet we recognize that there are things that are bad to do to them regardless of the disparity from our own outlooks.
We are animals; they are animals. What should be done is obvious. Rationales for making another animal suffer for your benefit are ethically corrupt. It really is just that simple.
Actually, that's pretty much what most people say. They just use "animal" in place of "people" so they have an illusory barrier to hold off the moral and ethical issues. Unless they're so far down the gaussian they can't understand those issues, but then, of course, they depend upon the rationales of those upstream.
Ah. I see your problem. They are mutually excuse-ive, not mutually exclusive.
Actually, this isn't far off from the truth. Because if you look at democratic voting honestly, it is a system that gives two uninformed individuals the ability to outvote an informed person. Adding a cat's (presumably random) vote to that would give the informed person more power from time to time, and otherwise, it wouldn't affect the outcome - because the fact is, informed people are in the minority at all times. And not just because of the rarity of being out on the intelligent end of the gaussian; you don't have to be all that intelligent to be informed. It's more about complacency and gullibility, IMHO. Whatever it is, though, it sure makes itself felt in no uncertain terms.
There were two issues. One was games at 720p. They fixed that. The other was Blueray at 720p. They did NOT fix that. There are links in the thread. Please follow them for more details.
Verified problem with PS3 Bluray playback which is NOT the same as game playback, and at NO time did I conflate the two. I don't know what your problem is, why the facts are so annoying to you, but no matter how much you pose and posture, you can't change the facts. Read the links - READ them, don't skim them. You are wrong, you've been wrong since your first post, and that's not going to change until you change your position.
That's completely irrelevant. The fact is, it does NOT accept 1080i. You can browse "projector central" until you're blue in your face and it isn't going to change the fact that the projector won't do anything useful with 1080i, period, end of story. Furthermore, this is ONE example out of many, the links I gave you show the technical community's acknowledgment that this problem is one with the PS3; you can't be bothered to look, that's fine, but that just makes you uninformed, not correct.
The links are to the problem with the PS3. Not the Infocus. I'm not claiming that the infocus is the problem. I just said I could duplicate the problem using it. I'm saying that the PS3 has a problem. Don't believe me? Fine. But there are a lot of people out there, some of whom I linked to, who are FAR more trustworthy than you are - and THEY say there is a problem. That makes what you say irrelevant.
No I most certainly am not. My claims are (1) the PS3 will not output 720p when playing back Blueray. This is a known fact, and I have provided many links to verify it. (2) That this is a problem for people with sets that do not accept 1080i AND that there are such sets, and again, the clamor of complaints from people all over the net, as well as the technical sites agreeing, should serve to knock some sense into your stubborn head that this claim has little to do with me and a great deal to do with the current state of affairs. (3) I have a projector in my rec room that, for WHATEVER blinking reason, ALSO will not accept above 720p, and that I can verify this with the flick of a menu option, and DID SO in order to make sure I hadn't misconstrued my own situation, EVEN THOUGH my situation isn't what is at issue here, because my PS3 is on a full native 1080p projector system. Were I to connect the PS3 to it, it would not play back blueray EXCEPT at 480p, WHICH IS WHAT I SAID IN THE FIRST POST! My projectors are not the point here; the lack of 720p playback and its inconvenience to numerous Sony customers is the issue, and I provided the links to verify that. Now go do some research for goodness sake before your foot gets so far in your mouth they have to do a colostomy to allow you to tie your shoelaces!
I swear, the product of the IQ's in the responses in this thread must be near zero... look. I use a Sony 1080p system with my PS3. I am not having any trouble. OTHER people are having trouble. I can DUPLICATE their problem easily by feeding my infocus 5000 1080i, but that's not a problem for me. OK? Got that thru your thick little head? Now, FOLLOW THE LINKS TO THE TECHNICAL FORUMS and you can VERIFY the problem with the PS3. The PS3, NOT the TV SETS. It is WELL FUCKING KNOWN. If you can't be bothered to do that, I can't be bothered to talk to you. You're a complete waste of everyone's time, posting misinformation, not verifying issues, posing as if you knew things you don't. Now piss off. I've had enough of a bunch of wanna-bes pretending to technical knowledge they don't have. I made a perfectly factual post and you IDIOTS are giving me crap without taking ANY effort to verify your positions, or mine. I really don't know why I bother. And the slashdot mods aren't any fucking better, modding WRONG posts "informative" and down-modding posts that are 100% factual.
Follow the PROVIDED links to the PROBLEM with the PS3, NOT the projector. You are SO lazy and incompetent.
Maynard - What the heck is wrong with you - I HAVE a 5000, and it does NOT take 1080i and produce anything useful. PERIOD. This has NOTHING to do with 1080p, other than as a footnote that it doesn't accept that, either. Aside from that, elsewhere in the thread, I have provided MULTIPLE REFERENCES to RESPECTED FORUMS that detail the problem, and WHY it is a problem on MANY types of displays, that VERIFIES that many sets won't take 1080i as an input. Do you spend all your time denying reality? These are FACTS. Look them up.
No. The only thing Sony has fixed to date is the output of games in 720p, not the output of Blueray disks in 720p. Again, if you pay attention to what I said, take a few minutes with Google to verify it, you'll find my post was spot on.
I am amazed at the level of misinformation we find here in our supposedly "technical" readership. Usually issues of fact aren't much for stupid, wrong-headed posts... just when it strays into opinion (like the stupid "conspiracy" cries in one of the replies.) But this... man, you can look this up, it takes about thirty seconds to find the facts I laid out verified in any number of respected forums, not to mention the annoyed posts of many PS3 users in various blogs and so on.
Are any of you people capable of independent thought? Look. Pay attention now: Not all displays downscale from 1080i. Fact. FACT! Read the darned thread; I provided the Google-located references you were too lazy to go after; the problem is all over many respected technical forums. "Conspiracy crap", as if. It's just a technical issue, but it's a real one.
About 2 minutes ago, in my Rec room. Infocus 5000, Firmware 753-0363-10, Brandware 753-0363-02, Bootcode 002-1082-00. That's what I'm talking about. You feed this thing 1080i and you get 1/2 vertical screen of bright green squish.
No, what it actually means is that you don't know what you're talking about, that there are 720-only capable displays out there, and that you didn't do any research before you shot off your ignorant mouth. For instance, one quick Google search turned up the problem at IGN, avforums, arstechnica, joystiq and many more, both user forums and more technical forums. So lets just drop the "it's not a problem" nonsense right now. It is a problem.
Mods, come on. This guy is wrong, first of all. It wasn't fixed. That's a fact. So this isn't "informative." Secondly, he provides no references - you should have known better. If it had been fixed, that would have been easy. Of course it has not been fixed.