I wonder if the wii will suffer from the same malady as some 1st generation electronics do.
I think you mean 1st rev of this generation, not 1st generation. This is Nintendo's 5th gen console. Not to mention that the previous 4 generations of consoles all have good reputations for being well-built, even the 1st revs.
The point is that similar "anti-piracy" tactics have been overcome with very simple, low-tech solutions like magic markers and the shift key. Not that those exact solutions are for this problem, but that something similar could apply to this situation.
It just surprises me how entire companies build themselves up on a "protection" scheme that is pathetically easily defeated by someone who knows how. They're just spinning their wheels, while a few customers buy the crappy products and get frustrated by not being able to use them, then the company has to go back to the drawing board and come up with some new standards-noncompliant disc format that starts the whole cycle over again.
No, it won't cost $300 per TV to stream movies to your TV. That's only if you want the convenient controls the iTV (or whatever they'll call it) will give you. You can connect most Macs to your TV now, you just have to control the playback from the Mac, not a nice remote from your couch.
Actually, the iMacs and Mac Minis ship with the remote, too, so if you connect those to your TV, then you can still use a remote. But my point about the $300 iTV box is that anyone can watch a DVD anywhere in their house with relatively cheap $30 DVD players hooked up to each TV. If you have to have a $300 set-top box or even worse, a $600+ computer, at each TV, then that is seriously a pain in the butt. There's very little flexibility for watching iTMS video on TVs. Sure, you can hook up your iPod... if your movie doesn't outlast your battery life, but that's still a $250 cost per TV.
I'm not saying that digital downloads are not useful, or that they are not the way of the future. I have bought TV shows on iTMS (no movies... yet). I'm just saying that for the current prices, the physical DVD purchased at a brick & mortar retial store is a much more compelling medium.
It's not an article for next week, that's all covered in this actual article:
As with most copy protection mechanisms, a way round it is never that far behind. SlySoft have a product called AnyDVD which works in the background to automatically remove the copy protection of a DVD movie as soon as it's inserted into the drive. The other day they released an updated version of AnyDVD which effortlessly bypasses Protect DVD-Video.
So this is already a moot issue, at least for anyone interested in pirating movies. For anyone interested in legitimately watching movies on their PC, however, this is a real obstacle.
What I'd like to know is, there's already this article out about the technology, AnyDVD has already set up their workaround, so are there titles out there on the shelves using this?
Or: Gentlemen, start your magic markers!
Or: Fingers on the shift key!
It's always great to hear about new hacks, designed to keep us from watching our purchased content, likely to keep some legitimate players from being able to play the content, and which will be quickly and simply foiled by some low-tech solution. It's hard to believe companies want to be in this business of "content protection" (but of course they are, because a solid, secure protection system is the holy grail for content providers). Thanks a lot, Hollywood, we love you, too.
So for $14.87 you can get 2 already made discs at Walmart, in a nice storage case, with plenty of extra bonus material, that will play on any (region 1) DVD player...
Don't forget the fact that those region 1 DVD players can be had for $30, instead of having to pay $500 for a computer (or more for a Mac), plus $250 - $350 for the convenience of having an iPod to carry the movies around on, plus $300 for the Apple iTV set-top box to actually be able to watch the movies on your TV. I know that most people have a computer already, and a lot of people already have iPods for music, but really the cost of watching iTunes movies is quite a bit higher than the cost of watching DVDs when you take all of the requred equipment into account.
movies downloaded from the iTMS are of a significantly lower resolution than a DVD
You do know that their video is 640x480 now, don't you? I realize it's not 720x480, but for a standard 4:3 video, it's basically the same thing. I could understand the point if they were still doing 320x240. Of course, just because the resolution is basically the same as broadcast NTSC, doesn't mean the quality is the same. I do realize that the quality of the iTunes downloads is not likely to be as high as a 4:3 DVD. (I haven't had a chance to really get a look at the 640x480 videos from iTMS.) I just think it's weird to see people complaining about the resolution.
Considering the fact that most online movie sellers don't allow you to burn your movie to DVD, and are very limiting on how or whether you can play that movie on other computers, or on TVs, I'd say you've overestimated the value of online movies.
With Apple's set-top box, that'll change a little bit for their store, since you'll be able to stream movies to your TV, but that's still a huge pain, considering you'll need a $300 box per TV to be able to do that. And considering there's still no other way to get the video to a TV (other than an iPod with the video out), and you still can't burn it to a disc. Amazon's service is even more difficult to work with.
Actually, what I really need is a quicker brain so I won't have to google for the quote, taking valuable time, allowing a dozen other slashdotters to post the same lame joke. Sorry everybody.
first generation gameboys were nigh-unplayable due to shitty backlighting.
Did you own a 1G GameBoy? There was no backlight at all! Even the first color GameBoys didn't have backlights. Backlights in GameBoys are a pretty recent development. But they were able to survive a long time without them, since all of the other portables with backlights and/or color were pretty much total flops (Sega GameGear, Atari Lynx, etc.).
The Wii has never had this sort of problem and it costs less than half as much as the PlayStation 3 does.
Hey, I'm all for the Wii too, but isn't it a little silly to say that an unreleased product that has not been tested by the public has never had any one specific problem? (The hardware at E3, from what I recall was not necessarily the final hardware, nor was it actually packed in the Wii cases... which is a big deal when it comes to overheating issues.) I think we can guess that the Wii won't have those issues since it's not intended to be a super-ultra high-res mega-spec console. But it is in a tiny box, so we won't know until real people actually use it.
Yea, except they had to drop the DualShock technology altogether for legal reasons.
Couldn't they have ponied up for the licensing fees for the rumble? Or possibly developed some type of non-infringing rumble? The whole 6-axis/no rumble thing sounds like a real copout. And even if they really did have to drop the rumble, why did they scurry at the last minute (according to their own admission) to put the motion sensing in? Why wouldn't they have known earlier they wouldn't be able to do the rumble, and plan for it sooner? If they were trying to look new and innovative, why didn't they find another way to do it other than try to emulate the Wiimote?
While they were rushing to pack a feature in to replace a feature they decided they couldn't do, Nintendo was including both features, and then still threw in the little surprise about the speaker, without appearing to be rushed or flustered.
It makes sense when you consider that their own standalone Blu-Ray player (which does not play PS3 games, of course) costs twice as much as the cheap version of the PS3, which plays games and Blu-Ray movies...
What other costs would they have had to cut to put a $1000 Blu-Ray player into a console that would probably otherwise cost $300 - $400?
Also, why not let the game controller control the DVD? (Pardon my ignorance as I have never owned a PS2 or an XBox, so I don't know if those consoles let you use the game controller as a DVD remote.) Since the remote costs extra anyhow, why not let the controller do games and movie controls, and let people by the remote if they really want a normal remote? It already has those weird Triangle and Square icons on the buttons, may as well make those functionally equivalent to Play and Stop, etc.
First off, it has a big screen.
This is huge! One of my gripes and the reason why I never went in for the 5 or 6G with the photos and video stuff is because the screen is so frakkin tiny.
I mean WTF? How could Apple, the kings of quality UI think that was sufficient? I know I'm not the only one, either. Remember the fake iPod mockups we saw online claming to be the 6G iPod, half of them showed a vastly increased screen size. Apple failed to significantly alter the display, ignoring the obvious flaw.
The tiny screen was sufficient... for a music player. No need to have a huge, battery-sucking screen to see the currently playing track information. The 5G (There is no 6G yet, the recent Apple anouncements were for minor revisions to the 5G, a la 5.5G) is an iPod with video capabilities, but as the rumor sites have been spouting for months now, the "True Video iPod" is still coming around the corner. Battery life, I believe was one of the major issues with it, and I'm sure some of the improvements that have gone into that found the way into the 5.5G. There will be a bigger screen, it was in the works long before the Zune nonsense was a rumor.
Wireless!
I can't tell you how annoying I always found it to have to take my iPod out of it's cradle that was jacked into my Home Theatre and have the music stop just so I could add some tracks/playlists to my iPod. With Apple having Airport/Airtunes and bluetooth it just seemed logical to converge that with iPod.
Instead, Apple decided to go the cheap route and not include that sort of functionality. I mean, imagine a wifi or bt enabled iPod... sharing photos and files with other iPod users or those with BT enabled cellphones/handhelds/laptops. You'd think Apple would have seen the value in that.
That's great! It's too bad the Zune isn't using wireless for syncing, or for wireless music shopping. It's only for sharing music between Zunes. Good luck with that one.
It's funny how making a "tallscreen", then advertising that you can turn it sideways is a marketing bullet point. I guess the iPod camp can argue that in its default "tall" (portrait) state, the Zune is even worse than the iPod, since there's all that extra space on the top and bottom if you're watching a widescreen movie.
The pick on Apple launching with videos only from Disney as a sign that Microsoft has more support from the movie industry. But as was discussed earlier today on slashdot [slashdot.org], this may be simply due to Walmart and soon be a problem of the past. Even worse, if Apple made a deal with Walmart, they might try to push the Zune out.
Keep in mind that the Zune store isn't even launching with any videos (music videos/TV/movies) for now. Apple has had music videos for quite a while, TV for a while, and has had movies since 9/12. They've already gotten in good with the TV companies, less so with the movie studios, but that's coming. To say that Zune "may have more programming" is a pretty lame piece of conjecture.
The article lists five reasons why Apple may fear the Zune, and why it won't be as easily smacked down as the dozens of mp3 players before it have been.
The Zune interface is just like a miniature version of the Windows Media Center user interface and is very similar to some elements of Vista.
In September of 1999, I got a computer with a DVD drive. I didn't own a standalone DVD player for a few more years after that, but I was able to buy quite a few DVDs around the $20 (US) mark. I could go to Hollywood Video or Blockbuster and they had a fairly decent DVD library to choose from. I also rented DVDs from my local public library for $1. DVDs were readily available. They were convenient. The PS2 came into a market where DVDs were already popular, and was able to capitalize on that. I doubt that the PS2 did all that much for the success of the DVD format, because DVD was the direction things were going anyway.
Prices aside, all of the other reasons I originally mentioned still stand. There is a competing format, with a less expensive player. There is no compelling reason to start migrating your entire library of movies to either of the new formats, when they offer very little additional functionality, features, or convenience (many would say they're less convenient than DVD), other than HD resolution. Most people either don't have the equipment to take advantage of HD, or the ability to notice a huge enough difference from DVD to justify the cost... so far.
When DVD came out, it solved problems, like how to access parts of a movie you want to, how to provide alternate audio tracks, or provide optional, multi-lingual subtitles. How to provide extra content without having to scan around on the tape to find it. How to overcome the signal quality issues of analog tapes. How to have a smaller medium, with no moving parts. Blu-Ray only solves the problem of fitting HD content onto the disc. It's not revolutionary. It's evolutionary at best, but it may be too early for people to even care about that yet, when there's so much investment in DVD.
If people are going to buy the PS3 for the games, for the latest, greatest, biggest, loudest, highest resolution gaming experience they can get, then that's great. They can pony up the dough and do it. All I'm saying is that the PS3 is not going to be able to take advantage of Blu-Ray movies the same way the PS2 was able to take advantage of DVD movies. I think there will be a slight advantage because of Blu-Ray movies, but that depends very heavily on pricing issues, availability of content, and the public opinion on the need for hi-def movie content, coupled with public opinion about the format war.
Even if HD-DVD never existed, you'd still have to convince a lot of people about the need for Blu-Ray movies. It really isn't the same situation as the DVD transition, because the DVD format is not as mature as the VHS format was back in 1999/2000, and because there's not a drastic enough difference between DVD and Blu-Ray/HD-DVD to inspire people to go out and spend all that money (again).
If Sony really cared about revolutionizing the home media experience, they would provide a hard drive based media server, with tons of (upgradable) hard drive space, downloadable games, downloadable movies, PVR functionality, etc. Games could still be sold on BR discs in addition to downloads, but BR wouldn't have to be their bread and butter. Think of the original concept of the Phantom console, added to a Windows Media Center PC or a Kaleidescape server. Instead of finding an innovative new way to deliver content, special features, convenience and functionality, they chose their familiar losing battle of developing a disc format that runs the risk of being left in the dust. MiniDisc/ATRAC didn't work out in North America because by the time we realized we could find something more convenient than CDs, mp3 and the like had arrived. Blu-Ray might save the PS3, and the PS3 might save Blu-Ray, but it's a circular logic, so it will be a battle to get it started in the right way for them. I'm not saying it won't be succesful, I'm just saying they can't count on the same success they've had in the past to carry them though.
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It's too big to be a space station...
! !!!
I'm caught in a tractor beam!
AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I wonder if the wii will suffer from the same malady as some 1st generation electronics do.
I think you mean 1st rev of this generation, not 1st generation. This is Nintendo's 5th gen console. Not to mention that the previous 4 generations of consoles all have good reputations for being well-built, even the 1st revs.
The point is that similar "anti-piracy" tactics have been overcome with very simple, low-tech solutions like magic markers and the shift key. Not that those exact solutions are for this problem, but that something similar could apply to this situation.
It just surprises me how entire companies build themselves up on a "protection" scheme that is pathetically easily defeated by someone who knows how. They're just spinning their wheels, while a few customers buy the crappy products and get frustrated by not being able to use them, then the company has to go back to the drawing board and come up with some new standards-noncompliant disc format that starts the whole cycle over again.
No, it won't cost $300 per TV to stream movies to your TV. That's only if you want the convenient controls the iTV (or whatever they'll call it) will give you. You can connect most Macs to your TV now, you just have to control the playback from the Mac, not a nice remote from your couch.
Actually, the iMacs and Mac Minis ship with the remote, too, so if you connect those to your TV, then you can still use a remote. But my point about the $300 iTV box is that anyone can watch a DVD anywhere in their house with relatively cheap $30 DVD players hooked up to each TV. If you have to have a $300 set-top box or even worse, a $600+ computer, at each TV, then that is seriously a pain in the butt. There's very little flexibility for watching iTMS video on TVs. Sure, you can hook up your iPod... if your movie doesn't outlast your battery life, but that's still a $250 cost per TV.
I'm not saying that digital downloads are not useful, or that they are not the way of the future. I have bought TV shows on iTMS (no movies... yet). I'm just saying that for the current prices, the physical DVD purchased at a brick & mortar retial store is a much more compelling medium.
So this is already a moot issue, at least for anyone interested in pirating movies. For anyone interested in legitimately watching movies on their PC, however, this is a real obstacle.
What I'd like to know is, there's already this article out about the technology, AnyDVD has already set up their workaround, so are there titles out there on the shelves using this?
Or: Gentlemen, start your magic markers!
Or: Fingers on the shift key!
It's always great to hear about new hacks, designed to keep us from watching our purchased content, likely to keep some legitimate players from being able to play the content, and which will be quickly and simply foiled by some low-tech solution. It's hard to believe companies want to be in this business of "content protection" (but of course they are, because a solid, secure protection system is the holy grail for content providers). Thanks a lot, Hollywood, we love you, too.
So for $14.87 you can get 2 already made discs at Walmart, in a nice storage case, with plenty of extra bonus material, that will play on any (region 1) DVD player...
Don't forget the fact that those region 1 DVD players can be had for $30, instead of having to pay $500 for a computer (or more for a Mac), plus $250 - $350 for the convenience of having an iPod to carry the movies around on, plus $300 for the Apple iTV set-top box to actually be able to watch the movies on your TV. I know that most people have a computer already, and a lot of people already have iPods for music, but really the cost of watching iTunes movies is quite a bit higher than the cost of watching DVDs when you take all of the requred equipment into account.
movies downloaded from the iTMS are of a significantly lower resolution than a DVD
You do know that their video is 640x480 now, don't you? I realize it's not 720x480, but for a standard 4:3 video, it's basically the same thing. I could understand the point if they were still doing 320x240. Of course, just because the resolution is basically the same as broadcast NTSC, doesn't mean the quality is the same. I do realize that the quality of the iTunes downloads is not likely to be as high as a 4:3 DVD. (I haven't had a chance to really get a look at the 640x480 videos from iTMS.) I just think it's weird to see people complaining about the resolution.
Considering the fact that most online movie sellers don't allow you to burn your movie to DVD, and are very limiting on how or whether you can play that movie on other computers, or on TVs, I'd say you've overestimated the value of online movies.
With Apple's set-top box, that'll change a little bit for their store, since you'll be able to stream movies to your TV, but that's still a huge pain, considering you'll need a $300 box per TV to be able to do that. And considering there's still no other way to get the video to a TV (other than an iPod with the video out), and you still can't burn it to a disc. Amazon's service is even more difficult to work with.
Actually, what I really need is a quicker brain so I won't have to google for the quote, taking valuable time, allowing a dozen other slashdotters to post the same lame joke. Sorry everybody.
What I really need is a droid that understands the binary language of moisture vaporators.
first generation gameboys were nigh-unplayable due to shitty backlighting.
Did you own a 1G GameBoy? There was no backlight at all! Even the first color GameBoys didn't have backlights. Backlights in GameBoys are a pretty recent development. But they were able to survive a long time without them, since all of the other portables with backlights and/or color were pretty much total flops (Sega GameGear, Atari Lynx, etc.).
With that many units on the shelf they have more then cover the holiday buyig system, and enough left on the shelves for the post holiday market.
Perfect for all those moms and dads returning their kids' overheating PS3's.
Of course, that's the wrong preposition:
All our base are belong to Wii
The Wii has never had this sort of problem and it costs less than half as much as the PlayStation 3 does.
Hey, I'm all for the Wii too, but isn't it a little silly to say that an unreleased product that has not been tested by the public has never had any one specific problem? (The hardware at E3, from what I recall was not necessarily the final hardware, nor was it actually packed in the Wii cases... which is a big deal when it comes to overheating issues.) I think we can guess that the Wii won't have those issues since it's not intended to be a super-ultra high-res mega-spec console. But it is in a tiny box, so we won't know until real people actually use it.
Yea, except they had to drop the DualShock technology altogether for legal reasons.
Couldn't they have ponied up for the licensing fees for the rumble? Or possibly developed some type of non-infringing rumble? The whole 6-axis/no rumble thing sounds like a real copout. And even if they really did have to drop the rumble, why did they scurry at the last minute (according to their own admission) to put the motion sensing in? Why wouldn't they have known earlier they wouldn't be able to do the rumble, and plan for it sooner? If they were trying to look new and innovative, why didn't they find another way to do it other than try to emulate the Wiimote?
While they were rushing to pack a feature in to replace a feature they decided they couldn't do, Nintendo was including both features, and then still threw in the little surprise about the speaker, without appearing to be rushed or flustered.
It makes sense when you consider that their own standalone Blu-Ray player (which does not play PS3 games, of course) costs twice as much as the cheap version of the PS3, which plays games and Blu-Ray movies...
What other costs would they have had to cut to put a $1000 Blu-Ray player into a console that would probably otherwise cost $300 - $400?
Also, why not let the game controller control the DVD? (Pardon my ignorance as I have never owned a PS2 or an XBox, so I don't know if those consoles let you use the game controller as a DVD remote.) Since the remote costs extra anyhow, why not let the controller do games and movie controls, and let people by the remote if they really want a normal remote? It already has those weird Triangle and Square icons on the buttons, may as well make those functionally equivalent to Play and Stop, etc.
Yes, but the downside is that our streets would be full of unemployed record company executives. Think of the poor execs!
I think you mean: Think of the unfortunate people sharing the streets with the execs!
As a current slashdot reader I take offense to this statement; I had a girlfriend, once.
She had sandy blonde hair, pretty good looking face... I'm just kinda T.O.'ed, because she never did send me a full body shot...
My apologies to Kip Dynamite
I read TFA, and noticed one sentence that stood out:
The Zune PC connection software requires Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista, so Macintosh owners can't use it.
It's funny what a difference that one comma can make... maybe it should be removed to show the true intentions behind the Zune.
The tiny screen was sufficient... for a music player. No need to have a huge, battery-sucking screen to see the currently playing track information. The 5G (There is no 6G yet, the recent Apple anouncements were for minor revisions to the 5G, a la 5.5G) is an iPod with video capabilities, but as the rumor sites have been spouting for months now, the "True Video iPod" is still coming around the corner. Battery life, I believe was one of the major issues with it, and I'm sure some of the improvements that have gone into that found the way into the 5.5G. There will be a bigger screen, it was in the works long before the Zune nonsense was a rumor.
That's great! It's too bad the Zune isn't using wireless for syncing, or for wireless music shopping. It's only for sharing music between Zunes. Good luck with that one.
It's funny how making a "tallscreen", then advertising that you can turn it sideways is a marketing bullet point. I guess the iPod camp can argue that in its default "tall" (portrait) state, the Zune is even worse than the iPod, since there's all that extra space on the top and bottom if you're watching a widescreen movie.
Keep in mind that the Zune store isn't even launching with any videos (music videos/TV/movies) for now. Apple has had music videos for quite a while, TV for a while, and has had movies since 9/12. They've already gotten in good with the TV companies, less so with the movie studios, but that's coming. To say that Zune "may have more programming" is a pretty lame piece of conjecture.
The article lists five reasons why Apple may fear the Zune, and why it won't be as easily smacked down as the dozens of mp3 players before it have been.
The Zune interface is just like a miniature version of the Windows Media Center user interface and is very similar to some elements of Vista.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
*wipes tear from eye*
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Good one!
In September of 1999, I got a computer with a DVD drive. I didn't own a standalone DVD player for a few more years after that, but I was able to buy quite a few DVDs around the $20 (US) mark. I could go to Hollywood Video or Blockbuster and they had a fairly decent DVD library to choose from. I also rented DVDs from my local public library for $1. DVDs were readily available. They were convenient. The PS2 came into a market where DVDs were already popular, and was able to capitalize on that. I doubt that the PS2 did all that much for the success of the DVD format, because DVD was the direction things were going anyway.
Prices aside, all of the other reasons I originally mentioned still stand. There is a competing format, with a less expensive player. There is no compelling reason to start migrating your entire library of movies to either of the new formats, when they offer very little additional functionality, features, or convenience (many would say they're less convenient than DVD), other than HD resolution. Most people either don't have the equipment to take advantage of HD, or the ability to notice a huge enough difference from DVD to justify the cost... so far.
When DVD came out, it solved problems, like how to access parts of a movie you want to, how to provide alternate audio tracks, or provide optional, multi-lingual subtitles. How to provide extra content without having to scan around on the tape to find it. How to overcome the signal quality issues of analog tapes. How to have a smaller medium, with no moving parts. Blu-Ray only solves the problem of fitting HD content onto the disc. It's not revolutionary. It's evolutionary at best, but it may be too early for people to even care about that yet, when there's so much investment in DVD.
If people are going to buy the PS3 for the games, for the latest, greatest, biggest, loudest, highest resolution gaming experience they can get, then that's great. They can pony up the dough and do it. All I'm saying is that the PS3 is not going to be able to take advantage of Blu-Ray movies the same way the PS2 was able to take advantage of DVD movies. I think there will be a slight advantage because of Blu-Ray movies, but that depends very heavily on pricing issues, availability of content, and the public opinion on the need for hi-def movie content, coupled with public opinion about the format war.
Even if HD-DVD never existed, you'd still have to convince a lot of people about the need for Blu-Ray movies. It really isn't the same situation as the DVD transition, because the DVD format is not as mature as the VHS format was back in 1999/2000, and because there's not a drastic enough difference between DVD and Blu-Ray/HD-DVD to inspire people to go out and spend all that money (again).
If Sony really cared about revolutionizing the home media experience, they would provide a hard drive based media server, with tons of (upgradable) hard drive space, downloadable games, downloadable movies, PVR functionality, etc. Games could still be sold on BR discs in addition to downloads, but BR wouldn't have to be their bread and butter. Think of the original concept of the Phantom console, added to a Windows Media Center PC or a Kaleidescape server. Instead of finding an innovative new way to deliver content, special features, convenience and functionality, they chose their familiar losing battle of developing a disc format that runs the risk of being left in the dust. MiniDisc/ATRAC didn't work out in North America because by the time we realized we could find something more convenient than CDs, mp3 and the like had arrived. Blu-Ray might save the PS3, and the PS3 might save Blu-Ray, but it's a circular logic, so it will be a battle to get it started in the right way for them. I'm not saying it won't be succesful, I'm just saying they can't count on the same success they've had in the past to carry them though.