It does not function without a satellite TV subscription and is being marketed as a satellite TV receiver/PVR. So yes, if your only interest is in recording off-the-air broadcasts, then it is excessively expensive. But isn't that a bit like complaining that an automobile is excessively expensive if all you want to do with it is listen to the radio?
The big problem they are having is it doesn't switch native resolutions. Every time you change the channel or watch a new show that has been recorded, you have to change the output resolution. How many wives want to hit 10 buttons just to change the channel? Others are saying it isn't recording all of their season pass shows correctly.
Well, you don't have to. The TiVo will convert to any resolution. It's mainly a concern of video purists who want to get the absolute best picture that they can. They'd like an option for the TiVo to keep track of the original resolution and output in that resolution, and are annoyed that they may have to hit a button on their remote 2 or 3 times to get the absolute best picture possible.
The Season Pass issue concerns people who want to record the same show in both HD and SD, who have discovered that once the TiVo has recorded a show in whatever definition, it won't record it again unless you tell it to record duplicates, which will also pick up other rebroadcasts of the same show. This sounds like an oversight on TiVo's part--it probably never occurred to them that anybody would need a separate option to record the same show in multiple definitions. On the other hand, most people probably are not going to want to do this.
Tell me again why I'm supposed to be excited about a device that can, and probably will, be disabled from recording by the TV studios?
I'm not sure how the TV studios will "disable" it. And for them to do so would probably not improve their chances of having their programming carried by DirectTV, the satellite TV provider that is offering the device.
It is always a good idea to pay attention to the topic of a discussion before posting. In this case, the topic is the HDTiVo, a high-definition satellite TV receiver with PVR capability.
The quality difference you see on your TiVo is due to the MPEG encoding done by the TiVo. Because it's got to to real-time encoding and encode at a relatively low bit-rate to save disk space, the encoding isn't going to be that wonderful, and you see the poor results when it's decoded and sent to your TV.
However, this doesn't apply to HDTiVo, which doesn't do any encoding at all. It just saves the already-encoded HD signal to disk.
I assume the streams are locked down six ways from Sunday. And you get to pay and pay with monthly fees. No thanks--if I ever start caring about TV, I'll roll my own.
There is no legal way of "rolling your own" satellite TV to avoid monthly fees.
Exaclty, I don't understand, can some one explain this?
To a computer geek, it is a small hard disk that's nearly as expensive as a larger one. And a computer geek never has enough hard disk space.
To the typical consumer, it is a music player that has more than enough capacity to meet their needs, in a smaller, more convenient size, and cheaper to boot!
Video games depend on low latency between input (at the gamepad) and output (at the CRT and speakers). Video game systems manufactured for sale in the United States after 2006 will include some sort of digital TV output. These digital TV sets introduce a significant latency into the chain. So what will happen?
Some of the fancy processing, such as 3:2 pulldown and deinterlacing, is only applicable to 480i signals. HDTVs generally disable a lot of that stuff with ED/HD signals. All of the current videogame consoles are capable of ED/HD output, so it may not be that severe a problem.
I wish they'de lose that weirdo Airport Extreme slot (since that hardware only has drivers for one OS) and replace it with a PCMCIA slot of some kind. That would make the PowerBook into The Ultimate No-brainer Best Choice for laptop
My old TiBook has a PCMCIA slot, in addition to the internal Airport slot. Do you mean that you want two PCMCIA slots?
Is the reason we don't see used Macs and big price cuts is because there is no difference??
Apple just had a performance bump, which chances the price/value equation, so used prices are going to take a few weeks to settle to a new level. But don't expect a huge drop. Used prices are going to reflect what people are willing to pay. Apples hold their value well because for most purposes, older Macs still give very good value.
It's true that OS X has far superior multi-tasking relative to Windows. When I do a processor intensive task on my Windows boxes, I have to walk away and let it finish. I'm not sure why more people don't bring this issue up. Being able to perform other tasks and have the system and other apps remain responsive while encoding video in the background is huge productivity enhancer.
I recently configured a low-end Dell for my sister. I figured the 2.4 GHz Celeron would easily smoke my old 800 MHz G4 TiBook. And I have no doubt that on a single-application benchmark, it would. But in practice, I was cursing at the thing because it seemed so damned slow. My laptop just feels faster. And that perception seems to be because virtually nothing bogs it down, so I've gotten in the habit of multitasking. Start an application installation or system update, and then check my email while it is in process. Start three applications at the same time and browse the web while they load. Start a graphics program rendering a big tiff, then switch to Word and work on a document. I was expecting to do the same thing on the Dell, but often one application will bog down the entire system. But for the way I've gotten in the habit of working, it feels pokey.
once digitised, could they not be processed to remove those? I don't know much about image processing but I'm sure someone would be able to come up with a filter that would pick up such spots and remove them (based on previous and next clean frames maybe?).
Most people probably would prefer an accurate reproduction of the original film media, like a pristine film print, grains and all, to one that is digitally processed in the manner that you suggest. But I have no doubt that eventually, your TV set will have the power to do this in real time, so if you hate grain, you'll be able to get rid of it.
Fair enough, but as stated, the focus tends to be on younger kids for "advanced" classes at the moment, and even if there is an Einstein somewhere in the US, he or she will not be in a good position to get into the advanced classes - he or she would probably do quite badly in maths and physics early on, like Einstein did (and no, not because he was too bored or the material was too easy for him - if you're too bored and find the material easy, you can generally pull good grades despite being bored),
No, if most of the material is trivial or boring, many kids just tune out, or act up out of boredom and frustration. It is easy to miss the material that is new. Einstein is a fairly typical example; he described himself as being bored in school, and he was cited as being "disruptive."
To be defined as a whiz kid you had to have learned to read and do math earlier. Guess what, earlier does not mean you'll develop into a smarter individual as an adult.
Actually, the vast majority of people I know who are brilliant adults were early learners as children. The ones who didn't do well in school usually had problems because they were bored, often because they were in a school that did not believe in tracking for political reasons. Not every bright child is an early learner, but it is a very strong predictor.
So what about the genius who is in a regular class who may not have picked up on things early but then surpasses everyone in class later on like during highschool?
You give them the opportunity to move ahead when they are ready.
Why should we favor one track over the other? The track system does not track intelligence it tracks development. Child A learned to read earlier than Child B, but Child A may never learn to read as well. Child B may learn math way later than Child A, but Child B may someday be a genius while Child A may simply be a kid who learned stuff early.
This is possible, but rare. Usually it happens when Child B has some kind of learning disability. The important thing is to allow people to move readily between tracks. Given the opportunity, students will self-segregate; nobody wants to be in a class that moves too fast. So if a student asks to move up a track, let him. You just have to make sure that you are listening to what the student really wants, and not what the parent wants
A lot of scientists including Einstien did not learn early, they were late in development.
Often, they were perceived this way because they were bored stiff in "mainstream" classes. When most of the stuff you hear in class is repetition of stuff that is obvious and trivial, it is easy to tune out and miss the stuff that you really need to learn.
The problem with math is that there is a huge amount of boring and error-prone labor involved in doing anything of any complexity, and it all has to be perfect or the answer is wrong. You spend half an hour working on a problem and end up with 2 = 3 because you dropped a sign in the third step. This is discouraging and off-putting. People need to be able to do simple math in their heads or by hand in a pinch, but there is absolutely no value in doing complicated problems by hand. Computers are no more a "crutch" than is pencil and paper.
Computer aided algebra software that handles the book-keeping and keeps track of the terms, graphing software that automatically plots functions, and geometric software that lets students do constructions by clicking and dragging eliminates the most aversive aspects of math, and lets students focus on the concepts.
The "brain damaged" guy is obviously stuck in the album-oriented rock era. But even back then, most albums were heterogeneous collections of songs, written at different times, different frames of mind, and frequently different composers. A lot of albums have no unifying theme other than "spread out the good songs."
fMRI is based on the idea that brain blood flow reflects energy utilization, which reflects neuronal activity. So it is fairly indirect. However, the idea has been well validated with a variety of methods, going back to early studies of radioactive 2-deoxyglucose uptake in animals. Subsequent studies used positron emission scanning to measure energy utilization; however, this method is experimentally difficult, since it typically requires the use of radioisotopes with a very short half-life. fMRI takes advantage of flow related differences in the magnetic resonance signal from the brain. In general, results have been consistent with the older methods, as well as with the results of EEG measurements that try to localize the electrical activity of the brain based on the external signal. However, there are a variety of confounds that have to be controlled for. In particular, the fact that a region is activated under particular circumstances does not necessarily mean that it is doing what you think it is. It is also relatively slow, so it will likely miss fast events.
I like the idea, but I don't expect it to save me any money. It is a safe bet that a la carte pricing will be high enough that it doesn't pay for the average viewer. Most of us will find that we watch enough channels that we get a better deal with the "value package." But it will benefit low-income viewers who can't afford the value package, as well as a minority of viewers with very narrow tastes, like people who only watch CNN or the History Channel.
Not sure how this will work out financially for the cable company. They'll make a little extra money from the first group (who wouldn't be able to afford cable otherwise), but lose on the second (who would buy the package if they had no other way to get their channel). My guess is that in the end it will negatively impact profits (clearly the cable companies think so, or a law wouldn't be required to make them do it), which will probably drive up the price of the package, so most of us will end up paying a bit more than we do now.
Dude, the water doesn't magically swipe heat out of the fire.
What's "magical" about the fact that water absorbs heat when it evaporates? This is very well known in dryer parts of the the world, where evaporative cooling is commonly used.
You mean before we (in the west) could produce more food than we knew what to do with? Look, if the old more benign (if you can use that term) pesticides stop working, we'll resort to using new and improved pesticides (or old an all too known ones), that'll wreak even more havoc than the ones we use now.
A herbicide is different from a pesticide. Even if all of the herbicides stop working, we aren't going to starve; we'll just have to use other methods of reducing weed growth--such as weeding or mulching.
It's still a really stupid trait to introduce into the wild.
What if this gene spreads? We might have to give up using herbicides! What a catastrophe! It will be like the old days before herbicides, when people were trapped in their houses because the grass was too high!!!
Comparisons between genetic engineering and selective breeding are just false. One is manipulating a natural process while the other is inserting foreign DNA into a plant.
Actually, there are numerous natural processes that can insert foreign DNA into an organism. Many viruses do this. The notion that "natural" is somehow safer has no rational or scientific basis. The effect of a gene, whether generated by natural or artificial mutagenesis or by transgenic modification is determined by what proteins it codes for and what those proteins do. The rational approach is to look at the function of genes instead of obsessing about their origin.
You are being pretty naive about the complexities of genetically modifying things like plants. You can't just assume because things are fine when separate and 'natural' (bah, hate that term myself) that they will feature the same properties when combined together in a laboratory (or more likely, some distant field that no one is monitoring).
No, you can't assume it, but the vast majority of the time it turns out to be true. And even when it isn't, it doesn't cause some disastrous consequence, it just doesn't work--the engineered organism dies, or doesn't have the hope-for benefits. As a biologist, I've followed this field since the earliest concerns about genetic modification were raised in the mid 1970's. Since then, we have accumulated an immense amoung of experience in genetic modification, and none of the early fears have borne out. No accidentally-created superdiseases, no genetically modified organisms out-competing wild-type and destroying the ecology. On the other hand, plants and animals created by "traditional" methods of selective breeding and hybridization have been responsible for numerous ecological disasters.
The reason is simple--far from including built-in "safeguards" as you suggest, traditional methods, because they are slow and subject to multiple generations of selection for viability, frequently produce organisms that are capable of escaping from domestication and surviving and wreaking havoc in the wild. Genetic engineering, in which a gene or two is suddenly introduced into an organism, is extremely unlikely to produce organisms that will compete effectively with natural populations.
We use food crops for a number of reasons. All the machinery to plant, cultivate and harvest the crop is already developed and available (saves money). Farmers already know how to grow the crop for maximal yield (again, saves money, no investment in more research). Finally, a lot, but not all crop species don't persist in the environment without our help.
So what you are saying is that people are taking the cheap, easy route, rather than going to the effort and expense of doing it safely. Perhaps it would be worth going to the trouble of learning how to cultivate a novel crop and modifying it so that it will not persist in the environment. Or a non-food crop (e.g. a fiber crop) could be developed for the purpose. Or a food crop could be re-engineered so that it is so different (different seed size, pollination determinants, lack of food value) that it could not cross-pollinate or be confused with food varieties.
Slashdot Mirror
Does it only decode satellite TV? No.
It does not function without a satellite TV subscription and is being marketed as a satellite TV receiver/PVR. So yes, if your only interest is in recording off-the-air broadcasts, then it is excessively expensive. But isn't that a bit like complaining that an automobile is excessively expensive if all you want to do with it is listen to the radio?
The big problem they are having is it doesn't switch native resolutions. Every time you change the channel or watch a new show that has been recorded, you have to change the output resolution. How many wives want to hit 10 buttons just to change the channel? Others are saying it isn't recording all of their season pass shows correctly.
Well, you don't have to. The TiVo will convert to any resolution. It's mainly a concern of video purists who want to get the absolute best picture that they can. They'd like an option for the TiVo to keep track of the original resolution and output in that resolution, and are annoyed that they may have to hit a button on their remote 2 or 3 times to get the absolute best picture possible.
The Season Pass issue concerns people who want to record the same show in both HD and SD, who have discovered that once the TiVo has recorded a show in whatever definition, it won't record it again unless you tell it to record duplicates, which will also pick up other rebroadcasts of the same show. This sounds like an oversight on TiVo's part--it probably never occurred to them that anybody would need a separate option to record the same show in multiple definitions. On the other hand, most people probably are not going to want to do this.
Tell me again why I'm supposed to be excited about a device that can, and probably will, be disabled from recording by the TV studios?
I'm not sure how the TV studios will "disable" it. And for them to do so would probably not improve their chances of having their programming carried by DirectTV, the satellite TV provider that is offering the device.
Where did I mention satellite TV?
It is always a good idea to pay attention to the topic of a discussion before posting. In this case, the topic is the HDTiVo, a high-definition satellite TV receiver with PVR capability.
The quality difference you see on your TiVo is due to the MPEG encoding done by the TiVo. Because it's got to to real-time encoding and encode at a relatively low bit-rate to save disk space, the encoding isn't going to be that wonderful, and you see the poor results when it's decoded and sent to your TV.
However, this doesn't apply to HDTiVo, which doesn't do any encoding at all. It just saves the already-encoded HD signal to disk.
I assume the streams are locked down six ways from Sunday. And you get to pay and pay with monthly fees. No thanks--if I ever start caring about TV, I'll roll my own.
There is no legal way of "rolling your own" satellite TV to avoid monthly fees.
480i? What game system are you playing? I don't know about the PS2, but the Xbox outputs at 480p, and some (very few) games do support 1080i.
You missed the point: because on many games the XBox (and the PS2 and the GameCube) output at 480p or better, they will have less of a delay problem.
Exaclty, I don't understand, can some one explain this?
To a computer geek, it is a small hard disk that's nearly as expensive as a larger one. And a computer geek never has enough hard disk space.
To the typical consumer, it is a music player that has more than enough capacity to meet their needs, in a smaller, more convenient size, and cheaper to boot!
Video games depend on low latency between input (at the gamepad) and output (at the CRT and speakers). Video game systems manufactured for sale in the United States after 2006 will include some sort of digital TV output. These digital TV sets introduce a significant latency into the chain. So what will happen?
Some of the fancy processing, such as 3:2 pulldown and deinterlacing, is only applicable to 480i signals. HDTVs generally disable a lot of that stuff with ED/HD signals. All of the current videogame consoles are capable of ED/HD output, so it may not be that severe a problem.
I wish they'de lose that weirdo Airport Extreme slot (since that hardware only has drivers for one OS) and replace it with a PCMCIA slot of some kind. That would make the PowerBook into The Ultimate No-brainer Best Choice for laptop
My old TiBook has a PCMCIA slot, in addition to the internal Airport slot. Do you mean that you want two PCMCIA slots?
Is the reason we don't see used Macs and big price cuts is because there is no difference??
Apple just had a performance bump, which chances the price/value equation, so used prices are going to take a few weeks to settle to a new level. But don't expect a huge drop. Used prices are going to reflect what people are willing to pay. Apples hold their value well because for most purposes, older Macs still give very good value.
It's true that OS X has far superior multi-tasking relative to Windows. When I do a processor intensive task on my Windows boxes, I have to walk away and let it finish. I'm not sure why more people don't bring this issue up. Being able to perform other tasks and have the system and other apps remain responsive while encoding video in the background is huge productivity enhancer.
I recently configured a low-end Dell for my sister. I figured the 2.4 GHz Celeron would easily smoke my old 800 MHz G4 TiBook. And I have no doubt that on a single-application benchmark, it would. But in practice, I was cursing at the thing because it seemed so damned slow. My laptop just feels faster. And that perception seems to be because virtually nothing bogs it down, so I've gotten in the habit of multitasking. Start an application installation or system update, and then check my email while it is in process. Start three applications at the same time and browse the web while they load. Start a graphics program rendering a big tiff, then switch to Word and work on a document. I was expecting to do the same thing on the Dell, but often one application will bog down the entire system. But for the way I've gotten in the habit of working, it feels pokey.
once digitised, could they not be processed to remove those? I don't know much about image processing but I'm sure someone would be able to come up with a filter that would pick up such spots and remove them (based on previous and next clean frames maybe?).
Most people probably would prefer an accurate reproduction of the original film media, like a pristine film print, grains and all, to one that is digitally processed in the manner that you suggest. But I have no doubt that eventually, your TV set will have the power to do this in real time, so if you hate grain, you'll be able to get rid of it.
Fair enough, but as stated, the focus tends to be on younger kids for "advanced" classes at the moment, and even if there is an Einstein somewhere in the US, he or she will not be in a good position to get into the advanced classes - he or she would probably do quite badly in maths and physics early on, like Einstein did (and no, not because he was too bored or the material was too easy for him - if you're too bored and find the material easy, you can generally pull good grades despite being bored),
No, if most of the material is trivial or boring, many kids just tune out, or act up out of boredom and frustration. It is easy to miss the material that is new. Einstein is a fairly typical example; he described himself as being bored in school, and he was cited as being "disruptive."
To be defined as a whiz kid you had to have learned to read and do math earlier. Guess what, earlier does not mean you'll develop into a smarter individual as an adult.
Actually, the vast majority of people I know who are brilliant adults were early learners as children. The ones who didn't do well in school usually had problems because they were bored, often because they were in a school that did not believe in tracking for political reasons. Not every bright child is an early learner, but it is a very strong predictor.
So what about the genius who is in a regular class who may not have picked up on things early but then surpasses everyone in class later on like during highschool?
You give them the opportunity to move ahead when they are ready.
Why should we favor one track over the other? The track system does not track intelligence it tracks development. Child A learned to read earlier than Child B, but Child A may never learn to read as well. Child B may learn math way later than Child A, but Child B may someday be a genius while Child A may simply be a kid who learned stuff early.
This is possible, but rare. Usually it happens when Child B has some kind of learning disability. The important thing is to allow people to move readily between tracks. Given the opportunity, students will self-segregate; nobody wants to be in a class that moves too fast. So if a student asks to move up a track, let him. You just have to make sure that you are listening to what the student really wants, and not what the parent wants
A lot of scientists including Einstien did not learn early, they were late in development.
Often, they were perceived this way because they were bored stiff in "mainstream" classes. When most of the stuff you hear in class is repetition of stuff that is obvious and trivial, it is easy to tune out and miss the stuff that you really need to learn.
The problem with math is that there is a huge amount of boring and error-prone labor involved in doing anything of any complexity, and it all has to be perfect or the answer is wrong. You spend half an hour working on a problem and end up with 2 = 3 because you dropped a sign in the third step. This is discouraging and off-putting. People need to be able to do simple math in their heads or by hand in a pinch, but there is absolutely no value in doing complicated problems by hand. Computers are no more a "crutch" than is pencil and paper.
Computer aided algebra software that handles the book-keeping and keeps track of the terms, graphing software that automatically plots functions, and geometric software that lets students do constructions by clicking and dragging eliminates the most aversive aspects of math, and lets students focus on the concepts.
The "brain damaged" guy is obviously stuck in the album-oriented rock era. But even back then, most albums were heterogeneous collections of songs, written at different times, different frames of mind, and frequently different composers. A lot of albums have no unifying theme other than "spread out the good songs."
fMRI is based on the idea that brain blood flow reflects energy utilization, which reflects neuronal activity. So it is fairly indirect. However, the idea has been well validated with a variety of methods, going back to early studies of radioactive 2-deoxyglucose uptake in animals. Subsequent studies used positron emission scanning to measure energy utilization; however, this method is experimentally difficult, since it typically requires the use of radioisotopes with a very short half-life. fMRI takes advantage of flow related differences in the magnetic resonance signal from the brain. In general, results have been consistent with the older methods, as well as with the results of EEG measurements that try to localize the electrical activity of the brain based on the external signal. However, there are a variety of confounds that have to be controlled for. In particular, the fact that a region is activated under particular circumstances does not necessarily mean that it is doing what you think it is. It is also relatively slow, so it will likely miss fast events.
I like the idea, but I don't expect it to save me any money. It is a safe bet that a la carte pricing will be high enough that it doesn't pay for the average viewer. Most of us will find that we watch enough channels that we get a better deal with the "value package." But it will benefit low-income viewers who can't afford the value package, as well as a minority of viewers with very narrow tastes, like people who only watch CNN or the History Channel.
Not sure how this will work out financially for the cable company. They'll make a little extra money from the first group (who wouldn't be able to afford cable otherwise), but lose on the second (who would buy the package if they had no other way to get their channel). My guess is that in the end it will negatively impact profits (clearly the cable companies think so, or a law wouldn't be required to make them do it), which will probably drive up the price of the package, so most of us will end up paying a bit more than we do now.
Dude, the water doesn't magically swipe heat out of the fire.
What's "magical" about the fact that water absorbs heat when it evaporates? This is very well known in dryer parts of the the world, where evaporative cooling is commonly used.
You mean before we (in the west) could produce more food than we knew what to do with? Look, if the old more benign (if you can use that term) pesticides stop working, we'll resort to using new and improved pesticides (or old an all too known ones), that'll wreak even more havoc than the ones we use now.
A herbicide is different from a pesticide. Even if all of the herbicides stop working, we aren't going to starve; we'll just have to use other methods of reducing weed growth--such as weeding or mulching.
It's still a really stupid trait to introduce into the wild.
What if this gene spreads? We might have to give up using herbicides! What a catastrophe! It will be like the old days before herbicides, when people were trapped in their houses because the grass was too high!!!
Comparisons between genetic engineering and selective breeding are just false. One is manipulating a natural process while the other is inserting foreign DNA into a plant.
Actually, there are numerous natural processes that can insert foreign DNA into an organism. Many viruses do this. The notion that "natural" is somehow safer has no rational or scientific basis. The effect of a gene, whether generated by natural or artificial mutagenesis or by transgenic modification is determined by what proteins it codes for and what those proteins do. The rational approach is to look at the function of genes instead of obsessing about their origin.
You are being pretty naive about the complexities of genetically modifying things like plants. You can't just assume because things are fine when separate and 'natural' (bah, hate that term myself) that they will feature the same properties when combined together in a laboratory (or more likely, some distant field that no one is monitoring).
No, you can't assume it, but the vast majority of the time it turns out to be true. And even when it isn't, it doesn't cause some disastrous consequence, it just doesn't work--the engineered organism dies, or doesn't have the hope-for benefits. As a biologist, I've followed this field since the earliest concerns about genetic modification were raised in the mid 1970's. Since then, we have accumulated an immense amoung of experience in genetic modification, and none of the early fears have borne out. No accidentally-created superdiseases, no genetically modified organisms out-competing wild-type and destroying the ecology. On the other hand, plants and animals created by "traditional" methods of selective breeding and hybridization have been responsible for numerous ecological disasters.
The reason is simple--far from including built-in "safeguards" as you suggest, traditional methods, because they are slow and subject to multiple generations of selection for viability, frequently produce organisms that are capable of escaping from domestication and surviving and wreaking havoc in the wild. Genetic engineering, in which a gene or two is suddenly introduced into an organism, is extremely unlikely to produce organisms that will compete effectively with natural populations.
We use food crops for a number of reasons. All the machinery to plant, cultivate and harvest the crop is already developed and available (saves money). Farmers already know how to grow the crop for maximal yield (again, saves money, no investment in more research). Finally, a lot, but not all crop species don't persist in the environment without our help.
So what you are saying is that people are taking the cheap, easy route, rather than going to the effort and expense of doing it safely. Perhaps it would be worth going to the trouble of learning how to cultivate a novel crop and modifying it so that it will not persist in the environment. Or a non-food crop (e.g. a fiber crop) could be developed for the purpose. Or a food crop could be re-engineered so that it is so different (different seed size, pollination determinants, lack of food value) that it could not cross-pollinate or be confused with food varieties.