I was responding to legal, commercial file transfer... what are we talking about here? iTunes competing with BitTorrent? Fuck no. I could care less what people are using for illegal downloading... hell, I do it too, but from a business standpoint, there hasn't even been any proof that one market effects the other in any predictable fashion! But for commercial downloads, AAC is 85% of the market right there, and ANYONE who has iTunes is setup for AAC by default, and I'm willing to bet that a large majority of people never even touch their preferences.
Sound Check is just a normalizer, right? It goes through, finds the peak volume, and then amplifies everything up to the point that it's 0, right? Well, Mastering houses, as well as recording studios, normalize everying, anyway! So unless you're consantly listening to stuff put out by VG Remix kiddies or local garage bands who don't know what their doing, Sound Check is pretty worthless anyway. Sure, on a concept album, there might not be a peak in a particular track, do to the whole album being normalized together, but the difference is going to be about 1db-2db tops.
My Advise: turn Sound Check off, it's pretty useless for MOST music listening applications.
That's wonderful, I'll be able to unlink my old ELP, all my Flower Kings epics, Pink Floyd, Fates Warning (APSOG), and all that other great prog. Thank God that Jobs is a big fan of 70s classic rock!
I'm guessing it might be a few days/hours before there's one actually released. But I can't imagine why not... they're not calling these new ones 6th Gen iPods. It's not like their expecting people to drop another $250 for gapless playback, it's more worth it, from a marketting perspective, to them to make everyone happy and just allow updating of older ones, and use the new ones as a way of hooking new iPod users, or ones that are a few generations old.
I'm with you too... but from what it looks like, and from the other things Apple's site is advertising (games), these new iPods are still CONSIDERED 5th generation, they've just got an improved screen, battery life, and come in an 80GB version. Further evidence is that in the "games" section it says "games are only available for 5th generation iPods". So these are simply the B series of the 5th Gen iPod line, in other words, I think those of us with older 5th gen models will be in the clear. I'll have to see if there's a new iPod update when I get home, but FINALLY I'll be able to listen to all my progrock concept albums (which consists of a good 25% of my collection) without breaks! Happy is me!
I agree, completely. "MP3 player" was commonly used to refer to any digital music player. But more and more, the term "your iPod" is being used. NBC switched, in it's advertisements, a few months back from using the meme "Download our newscasts to your MP3 Player" to "Download our newscasts to your iPod", simply because their realizing that the term "iPod" as a universal is becoming more accepted. If I were Apple, I'd be paying them to say that, but they don't even have to, because society is pushing that last little bit for them.
Can you elaborate? Give me some statics, because I'm not seeing much mp3 exchange going on any more, especially since the #1 distrbution method uses DRM AAC format.
Re:I would agree with that last sentiment...
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Are Videogames Art?
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· Score: 1
Lol, that's funny. In a very similar way, I would suggest that FF8 and FF9 are FAR better... and I would suggest that "The Third Man" is, without a doubt, Orsen Wells' best film. It's all aesthetics. All these titles are fairly succure as the pinical of their respective genre... and by genre I don't just mean video games and film, I'm talking Japanese RPG and Wellian film (I know Third Man falls under Neo-Noir, but what the fuck genre is Citizen Cane?). Similarly, Citizen Cane is FAR FAR more wellknown than The Third Man or Touch of Evil.
I know a lot of people who only dig action movies and Kung Foo that would say Citizen Cane is a disgrace, and that various Bruce Lee and early Jackie Chan films are the pinicle of film making. And similarly, that all Final Fantasies are a disgrace and that GranTurismo 3 is the greatest game of all time. These are all legitimate perspectives, btw.
Sorry, but that is irrelivant. The parent question is NOT whether society as a whole considers video games art, it is whether video games SHOULD be considered art. Many many many random layman don't consider John Cage's "Silence" (commonly known as 4'33") as art, but from a philosophical standpoint, it's pretty secure. I'm not saying that the man on the street doesn't matter, but for the question of "whether something is art", simple opinion is irrelivant.
That is bullshit. Simply the audience's involvement in an artistic discourse does NOT exclude it from being art. Interactive art forms have been around for more than a century, and to a greater or lesser degree ALL art is interactive. The artistic community accepted this long ago, there is not even really much debate in it anymore.
And how do you figure that a game has no meaning, no purpose, and no goal behind it's perception? Well, for one, "perception" is inherently relative, I think you mean "presentation". And yes it does. In fact, as interactive pieces go, games tend to have a fairly static presentation, leading the audience where the designers feel the work leads them. Many have commented that the Japenese RPG is little more than an interactive movie. From an artistic standpoint, this is probably fairly accurate (I'm a BIG RPG gamer, btw, so this isn't a bad thing). Basically the audience determines the relative speed of progression, which is no different than chosing to read a novel at different speeds, or pause a movie in the middle to take a pee break. The angle of viewing is indeterminate... as is the angle of viewing of a sculpture or painting. The relative involvement in the story is determined by how much the character decides to ingage in dialog with non-playable characters, which is little removed from the audiences decision to ignore or "space out" during certain sections of a film (the question of whether they are "supposed to" or not, is irrelivant, btw). Yet, the aesthetics, the narrative, and all the identity of the game is no less the game designer's than that of a film crew. The RPGs proximity to the cinematic genre makes it an easy case study, yet with a little further explanation, even the simplest of games like Pacman or Chess, can be broken down similarly.
The fundimentals between art and video games are all there, people will always nitpick specifics, but there will always be many artistic examples where share those same characteristics. If you want this in mathmatical proof form, it can be done.
You are SOMEWHAT correct, you hit on one of the aspects of "Silence" (4'33" is not the piece's name) that many people miss: the aesthetic side of what Cage was wanting to express. But at the same time, Cage wasn't dumb, he knew that what he was doing would stir some controversy into the question of "what is art?" and he welcomed it. The piece has many different levels, philosophically, and is not limitted to just it's purely aesthetic sense. Furthermore, as a post-modernist, one of Cage's reasonings is that it didn't matter what the hell the artist thought about his work. He wasn't interested in the audience making judgement calls about what he felt about the particular piece at all. If the audience made the work into a question of "what is art?" then, so be it, I guess that's what it's about. So looking to Cage for support, either way, on what HE felt the work was about is irrelivant to his expectation of the work.
Re:There's no such thing as art
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Are Videogames Art?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Actually, that's incorrect. The piece is NOT named "4 minutes and 33 seconds" as everyone likes to point out, the name of the piece, as Cage titled it, is "Silence". But the naming of the piece, for the program's sake, is to be the intended duration of the particular performance. I've read his performance notes for the piece, 4'33" is never included anywhere in them. It just so happens that the first performance, which was done in 3 movements by a pianist, btw, happened to be 4 minutes and 33 seconds long, and appeared as 4'33" on the program, and many people missed the point. It has been, since, performed in many different durations (all in 3 movements).
Cage loved to explore bounderies. All his music was extremely structured, even if it's result was indeterminate, one of his prerequisites for this piece, and why he requires that the title reflect the duration, is that the length be decided BEFORE hand. He approached the piece as if it was (and it is) a very serious performance work, and didn't want it to be trashed by amatures going for a cheap laugh. One of his definitions of art, even in his most post-modern efforts, is that any work follows conscious bounderies, even if these boundaries is "has no bounderies at all", but in the case of "Silence", one of those bounderies is "must have pre-defined duration".
I believe it to be one of the most "important" (notice I do not say "best") works of the 20th century, as it has spurned more controversy and more debate on the its relivance as a piece of art, than probably any other musical work. Is it an aesthetic work? Interestingly, it is intended to be. In his notes, Cage describes the audience being made to listen to themselves, their conglomerate breathing, their heart-beat, the sounds of airducts in the wings, the work is meant, partially as an aesthetic look into the "sounds of the full concert hall", and is meant to be interpreted as much. There are many different layers of interpretation of the piece, with "silence" refering to a complete vacuum, or an actual quited space.
That said, the deffinitiong of "audience" is not very set in stone. I will challange that any piece of art needs an audience, but I'm not sure if that audience need be conciously attentive. I just finished writing the music for my the local six-o'clock news, it's intended as a diversion, something to accentuate an intro annimation and punctuate the importance of the newscast. Is it art? I don't know, I think is both art and not art at the same time. It has a purpose besides it's pure musical aesthetics, but MANY forms of art have outside reasoning. MOST music is narrative, and tells a story (even a good 50% of classical music), some of it is political, philosophical, or in otherways, intended to try to sway some kind of position out of the audience. How is that different from trying to sway consumers into buying merchandise (I've done music for advertisements as well, btw)? I usually try to only tackle writing music for merchandising that I actually put some stock in. I like doing music for PSAs, because I usually believe that they're a good cause to support. But other times, I just like doing music to a commercial I think it's aesthetically interesting, and artistic in it's own right. I'm in an interesting position where I can decide what spots to write for and what not to.
My point is, I think art is much more expansive than most people like to make out to believe... usually their just superimposing their own aethetic sense on what they think is good and bad. Good and Bad are not part of the defenition of art, as in, there is such a thing as "good art" and "bad art" (from the audience's perspective), but their both art. Kenny G is bad art, mall crap is bad art, IMO of course.
You missed the point, again. iTunes, by default is set to import CDs to AAC (I forget which bit rate). Changing to mp3 requires the user to go into the scary "Advanced > Importing" tab in the preference pane. MANY people, if not most, don't even notice that their ripping to AAC instead of MP3, since they use the "import" button on their CDs instead of choosing the "Convert Selection to [whatever]" option. The point is, to switch to mp3s you have to:
Know that iTunes is NOT innitially setup to rip to MP3
Have a desire to switch from AACs to MP3s
Know how and where to switch the settings over, or have a desire enough to look it up in help
Only a very small segment of the population are going to go "out of their way" (even if it's a fairly small trip) to switch, and most don't even know it. By the time many people do realize that they're encoding AACs, they've been already working out fine for them on the iPod, so they have no real desire to switch. On top of that, when they DO get interested in learning the difference, they have the entire internet, as well as Apple Computer saying, "AACs are better than MP3s" (which they are).
So no, I would be willing to guess that a good 75% of ALL CD imported tunes on digital music players are AACs. The MP3 is dead, most people don't even know it.
No way dood, forget Nintendo's previous few generations for a second... consumer memory is VERY short when deciding on new hardware anyway, especially when you look at the trends of video game console sales from generation to generation. Bottom line is: Wii is CHEAP and COMPLETELY UNIQUE in terms of design. Lackluster GameCube sales aren't going to mean crap this generations, and that's basically all MS has going for them. I have no doubt in my mind, that the holiday release of the Wii is going to be owned by Nintendo, all MS is can do is to hope to ride it out for the time being. I have no clue what the long-term success of the Wii will be, but I'll be VERY suprised if Wiis don't outsell 360s, 3:1. The very fact that the 360 has been out for almost a year, and many people of who will have wanted it will have already done so, and the Wii is just jumping in now, there's no chance in hell MS will outsell Nintendo this next season.
That said, I think 360 sales will spike along with the Wii. With the three 7th gen (is it?) game consoles out the door, the next gen will have OFFICIALLY begun, where-as the past year has been kind of in limbo. Many people will only now hop on board with the next generation, now that they have a real choice to make, and many will go with both a 360 and a Wii, many will go with a Wii, and some new ones will go with a 360, and a very few (500,000 max) will walk out with a PS3. Now that the PS3 will be properly sitting out next to the 360, many people will be ready to make the choice... and MOST of them will choose the 360, many others will jump on board with Wii. I think MS is looking at a very profitable holiday season, but they won't come close to Nintendo's sales.
Only problem is that OGG is a processor hog, and thus, a battery hog. Apple has taken enough flack for being a bit weak on the battery life end of things, so why would they want to risk n00bs accidentally ripping their CDs to OGG and then saying, "hey! my iPod only plays for 4 hours!" I think it's probably for the best that they keep OGG out. I do want gapless playback, though. For all of my concept albums, I've had to make duplicates that are one file, just so I can listen to them straight through without breaks. AAC can play gapless (hell, so can MP3s, with a read buffer), I just wish Apple would support it.
That's actually because most people don't know what a WMA is, not because they don't know what an MP3 is. The weird thing is that most people don't know what an AAC is, yet the most popular portable music player is, by default, an AAC player! AAC is the BEST DRM compatable format available... and no matter how much you screem, DRM is a neccessity to the music industry and is here to stay, so we should be pulling for it in favor of lesser, more brutal formats like the PlaysForSure WMA. I laugh when people call the iPod an mp3 player... as I don't have a single mp3 on mine. Similarly, iTMS doesn't sell a single mp3, and yet people consistantly call it an "mp3 downloading store". MP3 is dead, we should get used to it, and drop it from our lingo.
I think that many people were offended because Nintendo exposed the Zelda series for what it was, an excersize in innocents, along the lines of Mihazaki, classic Disney, or Pixar. Not that there's anything wrong with that, in fact, I rate some Mihazaki and Pixar films as being some of the best films ever made. But for young boys between the ages of 13 and 19, it's a threat to their masculinity and supposed maturity. Later on, you really grow up and realize that there's nothing immature about these things, in fact, it's incredibly immature to feel threatened by them, but alas, many still do. I loved the style of Wind Waker... however,the game itself left something to be desired, especially compared to Majora's Mask or Ocarina of Time, but it was wonderful none-the-less. For some reason, though, I wasn't all that interested in the character design, I really didn't feel like I "connected" quite as much with the WW Link as I did with OoT/MM Link, not quite sure why, though.
Although, when you make a cell-shaded game in a style that goes along with more adolecent-aimed things, like bloody comic books (ie: "XIII"), you suddenly get a bunch of kids yelling "hey cool, that looks like a comic book!"
There are MANY great cell-shaded games out there, though: Dragon Quest XIII, Wild Arms 3, (which pioneered cell-shading), and Tales of Symphonia, just to name a few. The form definitely has its place, for one thing, it's able to completely throw off any notion of "attempting" to look photo-realistic. Tales of Symphonia, for example, is one of the most graphically perfect game. There is no sense of graphics being too simple, it seemed to be everything it attempted to be. Many PS2 games fell short because they were attempting to achieve photo-realism in an era where photo-realism (still) isn't quite there yet.
Oh, THAT's a great idea! Scrap all your seasoned actors, and give the voice-acting rolls over to a bunch of geeks, sounds like a perfect concept to me! Seriously though, that's basically where our music industry is right now. Have some big producers write some hit tunes, and then just hire some wannabe's off the street (*caugh* Brittany Spears *caugh*), and it'll sound "more authentic". Bullshit. People off the street, or people who have no artistic vision or talent are just puppets... and if you want authenticity, let alone GOOD results, you need people who can think for themselves. Now, I agree that using Hollywood stars is kind of a waste for voiceacting, but there are a hell of a lot of out-of-work actors out there, scrambling to get work, some of them VERY GOOD, and many of them with better voices suited for the medium than motion picture actors. I've done my part voice-acting, and it's no walk in the park. Someone with a bit of miked vocal experience along with some dramatic expertises is prefered.
I work as a TV producer, and I use a lot of our staff as voice-over actors. Now, their usually just simple narrations, with little dramatic content, so many times I can turn to less-trained staff, and coach them through their parts, but any time I want even the slightest bit of emotion, we have quite a few actors, so I'll grab one of them, or I'll do it myself, since I have quite a bit of dramatic acting experience as well. I've seen what happens when you give voice-acing "rolls" to people off the street, and they bug out, or aren't able to get into the part.
Also, why scrap cinematics? I LOVE the cinematic aspect of video games, so do a lot of people. There is no such thing as an "interactive movie" genre in our culture yet, so video games is the closest thing we've got. Just because YOU don't like cinematics in games doesn't mean that everyone else doesn't as well. Sure, I feel that some games go overboard, like the Xenosaga series, or Metal Gear Solid 2/3, but other people love that aspect. I love cinematics, myself, although I'd like to see it more combined into the gameplay. Skies of Arcadia is an incredibly cinematic game, though the cut scenes are few and far between.
Eh, the only difference in idea of what Nintendo means to that demographic is that Link played the flute, and Mario had a cap with wings on it and battled head to head with Pikachu. Seriously, Nintendo's "classics" didn't die with the SNES.
Anyway, all these games that we're describing are not even 10 years old (FF7 was released in 1997), we really haven't entered the generation that were young children after the SNES yet, anyway. I'm 25, sure I grew up with "A B Select Start", but a 15 year old grew up with Mario riding a green dragon.
If I remember correctly, SVGA is also YPrPb as well, so basically anytime you're talking about analog transmision of RGB, you're really meaning YPrPb, which, since you can extract the relative Green level from the rest, is basically just symantics.
But thanks for the info on HDMI, now that I think about it, yes, it is encoded audio, of any type.
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"Keep the Government out of the Livingroom!"
I was responding to legal, commercial file transfer... what are we talking about here? iTunes competing with BitTorrent? Fuck no. I could care less what people are using for illegal downloading... hell, I do it too, but from a business standpoint, there hasn't even been any proof that one market effects the other in any predictable fashion! But for commercial downloads, AAC is 85% of the market right there, and ANYONE who has iTunes is setup for AAC by default, and I'm willing to bet that a large majority of people never even touch their preferences.
Sound Check is just a normalizer, right? It goes through, finds the peak volume, and then amplifies everything up to the point that it's 0, right? Well, Mastering houses, as well as recording studios, normalize everying, anyway! So unless you're consantly listening to stuff put out by VG Remix kiddies or local garage bands who don't know what their doing, Sound Check is pretty worthless anyway. Sure, on a concept album, there might not be a peak in a particular track, do to the whole album being normalized together, but the difference is going to be about 1db-2db tops.
My Advise: turn Sound Check off, it's pretty useless for MOST music listening applications.
That's wonderful, I'll be able to unlink my old ELP, all my Flower Kings epics, Pink Floyd, Fates Warning (APSOG), and all that other great prog. Thank God that Jobs is a big fan of 70s classic rock!
I'm guessing it might be a few days/hours before there's one actually released. But I can't imagine why not... they're not calling these new ones 6th Gen iPods. It's not like their expecting people to drop another $250 for gapless playback, it's more worth it, from a marketting perspective, to them to make everyone happy and just allow updating of older ones, and use the new ones as a way of hooking new iPod users, or ones that are a few generations old.
I just wish that he'd ended that list with:
"Apple is in your pants...
...pocket"
instead.
Well, since some of my favorite bands are things like Yes, Dream Theater, and King Crimson...
...I might be able to hold one or two.
I'm with you too... but from what it looks like, and from the other things Apple's site is advertising (games), these new iPods are still CONSIDERED 5th generation, they've just got an improved screen, battery life, and come in an 80GB version. Further evidence is that in the "games" section it says "games are only available for 5th generation iPods". So these are simply the B series of the 5th Gen iPod line, in other words, I think those of us with older 5th gen models will be in the clear. I'll have to see if there's a new iPod update when I get home, but FINALLY I'll be able to listen to all my progrock concept albums (which consists of a good 25% of my collection) without breaks! Happy is me!
Yeah, it most definitely was a girl, and when she openned her mouth in awe, I wanted to put it in.
I agree, completely. "MP3 player" was commonly used to refer to any digital music player. But more and more, the term "your iPod" is being used. NBC switched, in it's advertisements, a few months back from using the meme "Download our newscasts to your MP3 Player" to "Download our newscasts to your iPod", simply because their realizing that the term "iPod" as a universal is becoming more accepted. If I were Apple, I'd be paying them to say that, but they don't even have to, because society is pushing that last little bit for them.
Can you elaborate? Give me some statics, because I'm not seeing much mp3 exchange going on any more, especially since the #1 distrbution method uses DRM AAC format.
Lol, that's funny. In a very similar way, I would suggest that FF8 and FF9 are FAR better... and I would suggest that "The Third Man" is, without a doubt, Orsen Wells' best film. It's all aesthetics. All these titles are fairly succure as the pinical of their respective genre... and by genre I don't just mean video games and film, I'm talking Japanese RPG and Wellian film (I know Third Man falls under Neo-Noir, but what the fuck genre is Citizen Cane?). Similarly, Citizen Cane is FAR FAR more wellknown than The Third Man or Touch of Evil.
I know a lot of people who only dig action movies and Kung Foo that would say Citizen Cane is a disgrace, and that various Bruce Lee and early Jackie Chan films are the pinicle of film making. And similarly, that all Final Fantasies are a disgrace and that GranTurismo 3 is the greatest game of all time. These are all legitimate perspectives, btw.
Sorry, but that is irrelivant. The parent question is NOT whether society as a whole considers video games art, it is whether video games SHOULD be considered art. Many many many random layman don't consider John Cage's "Silence" (commonly known as 4'33") as art, but from a philosophical standpoint, it's pretty secure. I'm not saying that the man on the street doesn't matter, but for the question of "whether something is art", simple opinion is irrelivant.
That is bullshit. Simply the audience's involvement in an artistic discourse does NOT exclude it from being art. Interactive art forms have been around for more than a century, and to a greater or lesser degree ALL art is interactive. The artistic community accepted this long ago, there is not even really much debate in it anymore.
And how do you figure that a game has no meaning, no purpose, and no goal behind it's perception? Well, for one, "perception" is inherently relative, I think you mean "presentation". And yes it does. In fact, as interactive pieces go, games tend to have a fairly static presentation, leading the audience where the designers feel the work leads them. Many have commented that the Japenese RPG is little more than an interactive movie. From an artistic standpoint, this is probably fairly accurate (I'm a BIG RPG gamer, btw, so this isn't a bad thing). Basically the audience determines the relative speed of progression, which is no different than chosing to read a novel at different speeds, or pause a movie in the middle to take a pee break. The angle of viewing is indeterminate... as is the angle of viewing of a sculpture or painting. The relative involvement in the story is determined by how much the character decides to ingage in dialog with non-playable characters, which is little removed from the audiences decision to ignore or "space out" during certain sections of a film (the question of whether they are "supposed to" or not, is irrelivant, btw). Yet, the aesthetics, the narrative, and all the identity of the game is no less the game designer's than that of a film crew. The RPGs proximity to the cinematic genre makes it an easy case study, yet with a little further explanation, even the simplest of games like Pacman or Chess, can be broken down similarly.
The fundimentals between art and video games are all there, people will always nitpick specifics, but there will always be many artistic examples where share those same characteristics. If you want this in mathmatical proof form, it can be done.
You are SOMEWHAT correct, you hit on one of the aspects of "Silence" (4'33" is not the piece's name) that many people miss: the aesthetic side of what Cage was wanting to express. But at the same time, Cage wasn't dumb, he knew that what he was doing would stir some controversy into the question of "what is art?" and he welcomed it. The piece has many different levels, philosophically, and is not limitted to just it's purely aesthetic sense. Furthermore, as a post-modernist, one of Cage's reasonings is that it didn't matter what the hell the artist thought about his work. He wasn't interested in the audience making judgement calls about what he felt about the particular piece at all. If the audience made the work into a question of "what is art?" then, so be it, I guess that's what it's about. So looking to Cage for support, either way, on what HE felt the work was about is irrelivant to his expectation of the work.
Actually, that's incorrect. The piece is NOT named "4 minutes and 33 seconds" as everyone likes to point out, the name of the piece, as Cage titled it, is "Silence". But the naming of the piece, for the program's sake, is to be the intended duration of the particular performance. I've read his performance notes for the piece, 4'33" is never included anywhere in them. It just so happens that the first performance, which was done in 3 movements by a pianist, btw, happened to be 4 minutes and 33 seconds long, and appeared as 4'33" on the program, and many people missed the point. It has been, since, performed in many different durations (all in 3 movements).
Cage loved to explore bounderies. All his music was extremely structured, even if it's result was indeterminate, one of his prerequisites for this piece, and why he requires that the title reflect the duration, is that the length be decided BEFORE hand. He approached the piece as if it was (and it is) a very serious performance work, and didn't want it to be trashed by amatures going for a cheap laugh. One of his definitions of art, even in his most post-modern efforts, is that any work follows conscious bounderies, even if these boundaries is "has no bounderies at all", but in the case of "Silence", one of those bounderies is "must have pre-defined duration".
I believe it to be one of the most "important" (notice I do not say "best") works of the 20th century, as it has spurned more controversy and more debate on the its relivance as a piece of art, than probably any other musical work. Is it an aesthetic work? Interestingly, it is intended to be. In his notes, Cage describes the audience being made to listen to themselves, their conglomerate breathing, their heart-beat, the sounds of airducts in the wings, the work is meant, partially as an aesthetic look into the "sounds of the full concert hall", and is meant to be interpreted as much. There are many different layers of interpretation of the piece, with "silence" refering to a complete vacuum, or an actual quited space.
That said, the deffinitiong of "audience" is not very set in stone. I will challange that any piece of art needs an audience, but I'm not sure if that audience need be conciously attentive. I just finished writing the music for my the local six-o'clock news, it's intended as a diversion, something to accentuate an intro annimation and punctuate the importance of the newscast. Is it art? I don't know, I think is both art and not art at the same time. It has a purpose besides it's pure musical aesthetics, but MANY forms of art have outside reasoning. MOST music is narrative, and tells a story (even a good 50% of classical music), some of it is political, philosophical, or in otherways, intended to try to sway some kind of position out of the audience. How is that different from trying to sway consumers into buying merchandise (I've done music for advertisements as well, btw)? I usually try to only tackle writing music for merchandising that I actually put some stock in. I like doing music for PSAs, because I usually believe that they're a good cause to support. But other times, I just like doing music to a commercial I think it's aesthetically interesting, and artistic in it's own right. I'm in an interesting position where I can decide what spots to write for and what not to.
My point is, I think art is much more expansive than most people like to make out to believe... usually their just superimposing their own aethetic sense on what they think is good and bad. Good and Bad are not part of the defenition of art, as in, there is such a thing as "good art" and "bad art" (from the audience's perspective), but their both art. Kenny G is bad art, mall crap is bad art, IMO of course.
You missed the point, again. iTunes, by default is set to import CDs to AAC (I forget which bit rate). Changing to mp3 requires the user to go into the scary "Advanced > Importing" tab in the preference pane. MANY people, if not most, don't even notice that their ripping to AAC instead of MP3, since they use the "import" button on their CDs instead of choosing the "Convert Selection to [whatever]" option. The point is, to switch to mp3s you have to:
Only a very small segment of the population are going to go "out of their way" (even if it's a fairly small trip) to switch, and most don't even know it. By the time many people do realize that they're encoding AACs, they've been already working out fine for them on the iPod, so they have no real desire to switch. On top of that, when they DO get interested in learning the difference, they have the entire internet, as well as Apple Computer saying, "AACs are better than MP3s" (which they are).
So no, I would be willing to guess that a good 75% of ALL CD imported tunes on digital music players are AACs. The MP3 is dead, most people don't even know it.
No way dood, forget Nintendo's previous few generations for a second... consumer memory is VERY short when deciding on new hardware anyway, especially when you look at the trends of video game console sales from generation to generation. Bottom line is: Wii is CHEAP and COMPLETELY UNIQUE in terms of design. Lackluster GameCube sales aren't going to mean crap this generations, and that's basically all MS has going for them. I have no doubt in my mind, that the holiday release of the Wii is going to be owned by Nintendo, all MS is can do is to hope to ride it out for the time being. I have no clue what the long-term success of the Wii will be, but I'll be VERY suprised if Wiis don't outsell 360s, 3:1. The very fact that the 360 has been out for almost a year, and many people of who will have wanted it will have already done so, and the Wii is just jumping in now, there's no chance in hell MS will outsell Nintendo this next season.
That said, I think 360 sales will spike along with the Wii. With the three 7th gen (is it?) game consoles out the door, the next gen will have OFFICIALLY begun, where-as the past year has been kind of in limbo. Many people will only now hop on board with the next generation, now that they have a real choice to make, and many will go with both a 360 and a Wii, many will go with a Wii, and some new ones will go with a 360, and a very few (500,000 max) will walk out with a PS3. Now that the PS3 will be properly sitting out next to the 360, many people will be ready to make the choice... and MOST of them will choose the 360, many others will jump on board with Wii. I think MS is looking at a very profitable holiday season, but they won't come close to Nintendo's sales.
Only problem is that OGG is a processor hog, and thus, a battery hog. Apple has taken enough flack for being a bit weak on the battery life end of things, so why would they want to risk n00bs accidentally ripping their CDs to OGG and then saying, "hey! my iPod only plays for 4 hours!" I think it's probably for the best that they keep OGG out. I do want gapless playback, though. For all of my concept albums, I've had to make duplicates that are one file, just so I can listen to them straight through without breaks. AAC can play gapless (hell, so can MP3s, with a read buffer), I just wish Apple would support it.
That's actually because most people don't know what a WMA is, not because they don't know what an MP3 is. The weird thing is that most people don't know what an AAC is, yet the most popular portable music player is, by default, an AAC player! AAC is the BEST DRM compatable format available... and no matter how much you screem, DRM is a neccessity to the music industry and is here to stay, so we should be pulling for it in favor of lesser, more brutal formats like the PlaysForSure WMA. I laugh when people call the iPod an mp3 player... as I don't have a single mp3 on mine. Similarly, iTMS doesn't sell a single mp3, and yet people consistantly call it an "mp3 downloading store". MP3 is dead, we should get used to it, and drop it from our lingo.
I think that many people were offended because Nintendo exposed the Zelda series for what it was, an excersize in innocents, along the lines of Mihazaki, classic Disney, or Pixar. Not that there's anything wrong with that, in fact, I rate some Mihazaki and Pixar films as being some of the best films ever made. But for young boys between the ages of 13 and 19, it's a threat to their masculinity and supposed maturity. Later on, you really grow up and realize that there's nothing immature about these things, in fact, it's incredibly immature to feel threatened by them, but alas, many still do. I loved the style of Wind Waker... however ,the game itself left something to be desired, especially compared to Majora's Mask or Ocarina of Time, but it was wonderful none-the-less. For some reason, though, I wasn't all that interested in the character design, I really didn't feel like I "connected" quite as much with the WW Link as I did with OoT/MM Link, not quite sure why, though.
Although, when you make a cell-shaded game in a style that goes along with more adolecent-aimed things, like bloody comic books (ie: "XIII"), you suddenly get a bunch of kids yelling "hey cool, that looks like a comic book!"
There are MANY great cell-shaded games out there, though: Dragon Quest XIII, Wild Arms 3, (which pioneered cell-shading), and Tales of Symphonia, just to name a few. The form definitely has its place, for one thing, it's able to completely throw off any notion of "attempting" to look photo-realistic. Tales of Symphonia, for example, is one of the most graphically perfect game. There is no sense of graphics being too simple, it seemed to be everything it attempted to be. Many PS2 games fell short because they were attempting to achieve photo-realism in an era where photo-realism (still) isn't quite there yet.
God forbid he ever play a Xenosaga or Metal Gear Solid game!
Oh, THAT's a great idea! Scrap all your seasoned actors, and give the voice-acting rolls over to a bunch of geeks, sounds like a perfect concept to me! Seriously though, that's basically where our music industry is right now. Have some big producers write some hit tunes, and then just hire some wannabe's off the street (*caugh* Brittany Spears *caugh*), and it'll sound "more authentic". Bullshit. People off the street, or people who have no artistic vision or talent are just puppets... and if you want authenticity, let alone GOOD results, you need people who can think for themselves. Now, I agree that using Hollywood stars is kind of a waste for voiceacting, but there are a hell of a lot of out-of-work actors out there, scrambling to get work, some of them VERY GOOD, and many of them with better voices suited for the medium than motion picture actors. I've done my part voice-acting, and it's no walk in the park. Someone with a bit of miked vocal experience along with some dramatic expertises is prefered.
I work as a TV producer, and I use a lot of our staff as voice-over actors. Now, their usually just simple narrations, with little dramatic content, so many times I can turn to less-trained staff, and coach them through their parts, but any time I want even the slightest bit of emotion, we have quite a few actors, so I'll grab one of them, or I'll do it myself, since I have quite a bit of dramatic acting experience as well. I've seen what happens when you give voice-acing "rolls" to people off the street, and they bug out, or aren't able to get into the part.
Also, why scrap cinematics? I LOVE the cinematic aspect of video games, so do a lot of people. There is no such thing as an "interactive movie" genre in our culture yet, so video games is the closest thing we've got. Just because YOU don't like cinematics in games doesn't mean that everyone else doesn't as well. Sure, I feel that some games go overboard, like the Xenosaga series, or Metal Gear Solid 2/3, but other people love that aspect. I love cinematics, myself, although I'd like to see it more combined into the gameplay. Skies of Arcadia is an incredibly cinematic game, though the cut scenes are few and far between.
Eh, the only difference in idea of what Nintendo means to that demographic is that Link played the flute, and Mario had a cap with wings on it and battled head to head with Pikachu. Seriously, Nintendo's "classics" didn't die with the SNES.
Anyway, all these games that we're describing are not even 10 years old (FF7 was released in 1997), we really haven't entered the generation that were young children after the SNES yet, anyway. I'm 25, sure I grew up with "A B Select Start", but a 15 year old grew up with Mario riding a green dragon.
If I remember correctly, SVGA is also YPrPb as well, so basically anytime you're talking about analog transmision of RGB, you're really meaning YPrPb, which, since you can extract the relative Green level from the rest, is basically just symantics.
But thanks for the info on HDMI, now that I think about it, yes, it is encoded audio, of any type.