Go to Display Properties (right click on Desktop, Propertis), Appearance tab, then hit the Effects button. Under "use the following transition effect for menus and tooltips" select ClearType.
Thanks for the reminder: I had forgotten to turn on ClearType on this new work laptop.
It has nothing to do with a Microsoft agenda. H.264 is an MPEG standard, which means dealing with the MPEG-LA and their licensing. The licensing fees are cheaper for VC-1 than H.264 which makes the entire VC-1 workflow cheaper than H.264. And at high (HD disc) bitrates, VC-1 is "close enough" to H.264.
I work in the hardware industry. I deal with Chinese/Taiwanese "ODMs" all the time. Trust me, nearly everyone uses Foxconn for some product or another. They're huge. Apple would be the odd one out if they didn't use Foxconn somewhere along the line.
I guarantee you that the computer you're using right now to post this was made in a very similar or worse factory. Ever wonder where your motherboard was made? Or your graphics card? Or your hard drive? Monitor? Case? Keyboard?
This is because Intel doesn't make TV tuner chips (yet). If they did, (Intel) tuners would be required, and it would be a more cohesive platform.
As for integrated graphics, I'm not surprised this is the minimum bar: Intel only makes (lousy) integrated graphics chips, so there's no benefit to them to specify a decent discrete graphics chip.
Aero has nothing to do with HDCP/HDMI. The HDCP/HDMI issue is only relevant to watching high-resolution video which has been flagged as premium such as Blu-Ray/HD-DVD video, or video from an OpenCable (OCUR) device.
Seriously people, stop modding the parent post up.
In case you missed it, this is not a paper launch, and this is not a card with only enough volume for reviewers. This is a real launch. You can buy this card now. ATI learned their lesson, and we should acknowledge that. Maybe it can finally start a trend away from paper launches in the industry.
If you're looking at the high-end All-in-Wonder for an HTPC, you're looking in the wrong place. This is their top-end card that's primarily meant for gaming. It's like complaining that your sports car doesn't get 55 miles per gallon.
If you want an HTPC All-in-Wonder, you should be looking at something like the All-in-Wonder 2006. It's passively cooled, and has the same tuner bits as the last few All-in-Wonder cards. It works in MCE too.
As for resolutions, my ATI X700 (gaming PC) and All-in-Wonder 2006 (HTPC) both support 1280x720 (it's a pretty standard resolution). I'm not sure about 960x540, but I bet you could set that as a custom resolution in Catalyst Control Center.
And for what it's worth, ATI has been calling it an "All-in-Wonder" (not "ALL IN WONDER") for a while now, so it's only this review that's "screaming" the product name, not ATI.
This is not a stunt. I work at a company where I'm actively involved in Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD) related development. We need to be getting these discs (actually we needed them months ago) to verify a lot of the work we're doing, and to make sure we're optimizing in the right place. Blu-Ray may still be a ways off, but a lot of the software and hardware development needs well underway now to make that happen.
If you're looking for the best analogue TV quality on MCE, the very best board to buy is an ATI Theater 550 based board, hands down. It sucks that there are no Linux drivers for it, but if you're already using MCE, it works very well, and has a better quality than Hauppauge.
It's not very popular around here,but I would strongly suggest going with Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition 2005. If you've already got the MythTV machine with a hardware MPEG2 encode card, then it's only the cose of the OS + remote. MCE has a really good interface (shocking that it's a Microsoft product), and you don't need to pay a monthly fee for the guide data. I used to run Myth, then Freevo, and tried MCE very hesitantly, but I can't imagine going back now. And no, I'm not some Microsoft fan boy -- it's actually VERY good.
It's actually worse than that. They bill this as a way to store "HD" broadcasts. That means 720p or 1080i/p broadcats. That's great, but if you actually burn these to DVD you're stuck with the maximum DVD resolution of 480p!
Why would anybody buy this for "HD" content when they can't take the HD content off of the device without downscaling it out of HD? Now if this came with a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD burner, it would make sense. Guaranteed they'll have a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD model of this out within 6-8 months.
This wasn't recently "leaked" by Microsoft PR, Slashdot is just running a non-story of old information. This was mentioned several times at WinHEC, and there's even a mention of it in the keynote speech. Yawn. Slow news day for Slashdot.
I'm no Microsoft fan/appologist by any stretch of the imagination, but FWIW Microsoft is finally addressing this in Longhorn. I saw a demo at WinHEC where they showed a non-privileged user in Longhorn get to an "administrator" section by being prompted for the admin password (like Mac OS X/KDE). The Microsoft guys expressed concern over this very issue, and suggested that Microsoft would like to see nearly 100% of home users run as non-admin in Longhorn.
Of course Longhorn's not going to happen until the end of 2006 at best.
Can somebody explain to me what ZeroConf has got over UPnP? There is a lot of industry momentum around UPnP already (most routers ship with it for instance), it's an open standard, and there are open-source implementations of it as well. Is ZeroConf a result of Apple not-invented-here, or does it do something fundamentally different than UPnP?
Slashdot Mirror
Go to Display Properties (right click on Desktop, Propertis), Appearance tab, then hit the Effects button. Under "use the following transition effect for menus and tooltips" select ClearType.
Thanks for the reminder: I had forgotten to turn on ClearType on this new work laptop.
It has nothing to do with a Microsoft agenda. H.264 is an MPEG standard, which means dealing with the MPEG-LA and their licensing. The licensing fees are cheaper for VC-1 than H.264 which makes the entire VC-1 workflow cheaper than H.264. And at high (HD disc) bitrates, VC-1 is "close enough" to H.264.
My Very Easy Method Just Set Up Nine ...
That would entirely defeat the purpose of having the playlists and controls through the faceplate of the stereo.
Linux.
Gee, that was easy!
A knoweledgable person could install this on friend/relative's computer you realize.
I work in the hardware industry. I deal with Chinese/Taiwanese "ODMs" all the time. Trust me, nearly everyone uses Foxconn for some product or another. They're huge. Apple would be the odd one out if they didn't use Foxconn somewhere along the line.
I guarantee you that the computer you're using right now to post this was made in a very similar or worse factory. Ever wonder where your motherboard was made? Or your graphics card? Or your hard drive? Monitor? Case? Keyboard?
This is because Intel doesn't make TV tuner chips (yet). If they did, (Intel) tuners would be required, and it would be a more cohesive platform.
As for integrated graphics, I'm not surprised this is the minimum bar: Intel only makes (lousy) integrated graphics chips, so there's no benefit to them to specify a decent discrete graphics chip.
Aero has nothing to do with HDCP/HDMI. The HDCP/HDMI issue is only relevant to watching high-resolution video which has been flagged as premium such as Blu-Ray/HD-DVD video, or video from an OpenCable (OCUR) device.
Seriously people, stop modding the parent post up.
In case you missed it, this is not a paper launch, and this is not a card with only enough volume for reviewers. This is a real launch. You can buy this card now. ATI learned their lesson, and we should acknowledge that. Maybe it can finally start a trend away from paper launches in the industry.
If you're looking at the high-end All-in-Wonder for an HTPC, you're looking in the wrong place. This is their top-end card that's primarily meant for gaming. It's like complaining that your sports car doesn't get 55 miles per gallon.
If you want an HTPC All-in-Wonder, you should be looking at something like the All-in-Wonder 2006. It's passively cooled, and has the same tuner bits as the last few All-in-Wonder cards. It works in MCE too.
As for resolutions, my ATI X700 (gaming PC) and All-in-Wonder 2006 (HTPC) both support 1280x720 (it's a pretty standard resolution). I'm not sure about 960x540, but I bet you could set that as a custom resolution in Catalyst Control Center.
And for what it's worth, ATI has been calling it an "All-in-Wonder" (not "ALL IN WONDER") for a while now, so it's only this review that's "screaming" the product name, not ATI.
This is not a stunt. I work at a company where I'm actively involved in Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD) related development. We need to be getting these discs (actually we needed them months ago) to verify a lot of the work we're doing, and to make sure we're optimizing in the right place. Blu-Ray may still be a ways off, but a lot of the software and hardware development needs well underway now to make that happen.
If you're looking for the best analogue TV quality on MCE, the very best board to buy is an ATI Theater 550 based board, hands down. It sucks that there are no Linux drivers for it, but if you're already using MCE, it works very well, and has a better quality than Hauppauge.
It's not very popular around here,but I would strongly suggest going with Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition 2005. If you've already got the MythTV machine with a hardware MPEG2 encode card, then it's only the cose of the OS + remote. MCE has a really good interface (shocking that it's a Microsoft product), and you don't need to pay a monthly fee for the guide data. I used to run Myth, then Freevo, and tried MCE very hesitantly, but I can't imagine going back now. And no, I'm not some Microsoft fan boy -- it's actually VERY good.
Your TV will have HDCP too, so how is that a solution?
It's actually worse than that. They bill this as a way to store "HD" broadcasts. That means 720p or 1080i/p broadcats. That's great, but if you actually burn these to DVD you're stuck with the maximum DVD resolution of 480p!
Why would anybody buy this for "HD" content when they can't take the HD content off of the device without downscaling it out of HD? Now if this came with a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD burner, it would make sense. Guaranteed they'll have a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD model of this out within 6-8 months.
You mean the project with a website that hasn't been updated in months? Gaim-vv is basically dead.
Right. Internal docs. That's a big difference between docs for external consumption, and supporting those docs.
This wasn't recently "leaked" by Microsoft PR, Slashdot is just running a non-story of old information. This was mentioned several times at WinHEC, and there's even a mention of it in the keynote speech. Yawn. Slow news day for Slashdot.
Sounds like CGMSA that is already on some analog content. It has 00=copy never, 01=copy once, 11=copy freely.
I'm no Microsoft fan/appologist by any stretch of the imagination, but FWIW Microsoft is finally addressing this in Longhorn. I saw a demo at WinHEC where they showed a non-privileged user in Longhorn get to an "administrator" section by being prompted for the admin password (like Mac OS X/KDE). The Microsoft guys expressed concern over this very issue, and suggested that Microsoft would like to see nearly 100% of home users run as non-admin in Longhorn.
Of course Longhorn's not going to happen until the end of 2006 at best.
If you're not going to use Linux, go MCE2005. It's amazing, and definitely passes the "wife factor."
Can somebody explain to me what ZeroConf has got over UPnP? There is a lot of industry momentum around UPnP already (most routers ship with it for instance), it's an open standard, and there are open-source implementations of it as well. Is ZeroConf a result of Apple not-invented-here, or does it do something fundamentally different than UPnP?
I'm no expert, but I would assume that it's probably too unpredictable, and too humid
Remember also that the commercials are taken out of the online version. That's not the same thing as what was broadcast for "free."