Having two DVR's, on from Dish and one from Sony for OTA HDTV, I time shift, as my tv time and theirs will never agree. Skipping commercials is recapturing time. I now record just about anything I'm interested in, watch it on my own schedule, and reliably zap every commmercial.
(being able to freeze scenes from Star Trek : TOS in HD is just a bonus)
Sorry Guys, but that's the way it is-and anyone who says differently is not being truthful.
For my small office, XP is stable, and Word 97 (tried others and they just bloatwared the machines) is OK.
The vast majority of businesses do "open, Save As, Print", with an occasional "Cut" and "paste".
Some use spreadsheets....oooooooo !
With these requirements, my Mac Sys 7 with WriteNow 4.0 was all that was needed...in the 90's. I now do the same things with massively more chip and memory...WTF ?
If you are not in a graphics or massive LAN system, there's no reason to dump any current software. That covers probably 75% of the user base.
Vista and it's yummy DRM filling will come soon. I'm glad I'm not a professional IT guy, cause you are going to get MASSIVE calls at home from friends, family and superiors from work who "just happen to have one question even tho it's night" and that question is going to be...
Why can't I get this thing to copy a DVD or CD "for my kids".
Change your phone # now.
After a year of OTA HDTV (free after buying the stuff), I have a real problem.
Most SD TV sucks (technical quality). The lack of quality is from end to end. Cable company with 20 year old line amps ? Set with poor convergence ? Questionable color palette ? (NTSC =never the same color twice). How about dot crawl...at any part of the system, will infest all parts of the system.
I've three sets...one HDTV, one "best of the last" SD set, and one crappy 20 inch cheapo set. Each is fed by a digital box. Even downconverted to 480i and fed by component in the case of the good SD set, or fed to an RF modulator and sent by channel 3 into the junk set, there is a drastic difference using the digital signal-it gives you a DVD quality picture on the SD set-way better than even a strong analog signal.
Studios and actors are used to using the blur of SD to cover faults. HDTV allows less fudging. After seeing it all digital, you see when the station is using crappy source. Good SD is very good-some of my local news stations have a clean SD feed. Most SD is not.
SD lasted a long time. HDTV won't be as complex as some here wish, but it's TV, not a computer. While the various **AA asswipes are trying to lock it down, they will eventually lose-
When I visit my inlaws, who have two quality SD sets fed by a state of the 70's art analog cable system, I can't watch TV.
While there are teething pains now, HDTV is coming down in price.
Now, about the fact that half of the HD sets don't have an HD signal, where is the "raise an antenna" PSA's ? You don't need to give the cable/sat company $90 per month for this.
The VHS train left my station when we went to HD sets, and the 240 line output was pretty much unwatchable. We still have one hooked up to standard set for the remaining tapes, though.
Using an HD DVR, where you have the pause function, is the way to go. I don't archive, usually and rarely watch the same movie twice, so this is not an issue for me.
I will buy an HD DVR with a HD/Blu DVD burner, though, although our screwed up CE industry won't make one for a while. Along with an inability to agree on a high def format for discs, they are either so afraid or owned by the Studios that they won't allow even minimal time shifting without a controlled PVR, controlled by your cable or sat company.
I have a standalone OTA HD DVR, with no fees or rental agreements....it is, of course, out of production, and there are no others in the pipeline. Oh well, I suppose it is not in the cable co's best interest for you to own your own DVR with a cable card stuffed in the back, rather than renting their gadget forever.
We live in a world where there should be high def players, and high def pvrs on all the Shortcircutworstbuy big box store shelves next to the big screens.
These items don't exist because some big boys don't want them there. Capitalism is not the paradigm for media today....oliglopoly is.
Bottom Line, I am not risking $500-$900 to buy a doorstop with 50-50 odds.
Want to sell HD disk media ? Marry it to an HD DVR, for export of programs. Heck, even make it a "copy once" block.
Oh, I forgot, we are NOT selling HD DVR in the USA......unless you $pend a fortune with your Cable or Sat Monopoly.
You get a call from a non technical friend about how to get rid of that popup that says " Copying this CD is a copyright violation " with a "cancel" button.
The sheeple will only know when they fire up that new Vista box, and try to copy a CD, and see "Operation denied-copyright restriction".
Then, you will see a sudden mass interest in DRM...at which point it will be too late.
speeding tickets are tax more than criminal justice. The concept of a fine is to prevent that sort of behavior, but with speeding tickets, it is viewed as a perfect tax....the payors have no choice, and the assessment is so random that there's no real lobby against this, save the National Motorist's Association. www.motorists.org, but even then, it is an abstract.
Be happy you don't live in NY. Here we have a Driver Responsiblility Assessment, aka driver ripoff tax, and you'd have to pay $300 over and above the Court fine. The State of NY had to do it straight out of DMV, because the Courts were stopping the State's attempts to raise fines. (See why you elect your local Judges ?).
This is old news...in THX 1138, before THX is put into "the white zone", he is tried by computer for his crimes, and of course, convicted. One disc says "prosection", the other "defense".
Anyone who has perused a USA mandatory minimum sentence scheme knows we have this already.
I always hope my tax money, that huge amount sent to the giant black hole, bought at least a bolt on the shuttle, or a tile (good one), or for one of the engineers, or even the guy who cuts the lawn outside Mission Control. I'm always afraid it paid for Karl Rove's expense account, though.
$5 is all you need - RIAA stops at the border
on
iPods at War
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
anyone who has been to ANY third world country, or anyplace where the USA is not the govt, will have noticed that $5 is all you need for any software...Windows XP Pro, Photoshop, or any game you can imagine. $5 is all you need for anything at all. Computer sellers outside the us make the money only on hardware, not software.
So our Troops, stationed in a third world country, with hard currency, have access to this...so what ? I'm an American, but I know that the USA is not the world, and outside our borders, things are different...not better, not worse, just different.
Even tho' they should NOT be there, if any of the poor bastards sent forth by the chickenhawk asshat cabal (mis)"running" our country finds some fun or escape in a bootleg copy of "Buckaroo Bonzai" or a recording of some rock,rap or country, I'm all for it.
There are bits of the USA in Iraq, protected zones. That's because they didn't welcome us with open arms, as we were lied to by Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Really, the RIAA is as laugable as our War on Drugs. Sure, some people get hurt by it, but mostly it is ignored or used as a payoff to the local warlords, who use it to deliever up a local who is out of favor with the ruling junta.
Since I use the Dish net website to find listings, it won't matter. My On screen display is useless for DVR as they only send 3 days down on my satellite. The other satellite has two week listings, which would help, but I enter date time and record channel, not easy-tivo type recording (record all Star Trek).
Dish won't stop the program guides, they are essential to the use of the gadget in real time.
All Echostar users should go to the setup menu now and "disable automatic updates". It's a pity that updates, which used to mean improvements, can now mean less functionality.
Go to your box(es) now, and disable all update check boxes !
Yup, roller skated around the Charles River in the late 80's. Pre dated the cheap rare earth headphones routinely thrown out today. Worked better than you thought it should !
the shuttle is still going because certain surveillance sats only fit in the big shuttle bay. Indeed, Mike Mullane in his excellent book hints at some black ops.
The shuttle may be in the "white world", but a lot of those flights move "black" payloads. That's not a bad thing-but the fact is that this tail wags the shuttle dog, and while it needs updating badly, we are locked into sat replacement on a steady basis-and some of those freight car sized devices can't ride anything else-not that we'd let them.
I have sirius in the car. Often due to work I am in a car for 3-4 hours per day. FM radio in the NYC area is the worst in the US, as all the stations are "flagship" stations for whatever group owns them, and this assures that no new song will EVER be played unless it was broken in another market. This "short list play list" combined with 22 minutes of commercials and another 15 of babble meant that I ended up with no music. I don't have the time to do the ipod rip and burn thing, so paying for the music is reasonable.
Better, is I spend a lot of time with musical styles I'd never otherwise hear on pablum FM
So the sound quality's not perfect...I am listening in a car.
HD content is oversold to Joe Sixpack.
While my 42 inch HD set is clearly a huge improvement, on a small set, HD content is almost pointless. I recently spent a day tuning up two 27 inch HDTV's, and came to the conclusion that HD at that size is a great waste of money. A 27 inch Standard set, fed with a DVD, looks really good. A 27 inch HDTV, fed with a DVD, looks really good. Bonus points if letterboxed, but no improvement if it is not.
DVD begins to look blurry on the 42 inch set, and larger. If your TV is "normal" sized, then Highly Drmed DVD or Blu-my-Wallet aRay will make no sense whatsoever.
When ABC broadcast one of the original Star Wars flicks in 720p, I took the opportunity to do an A/B comparison with the DVD, feeding my ISF calibrated set by component. The verdict was that the 720p picture had much more accurate color and slightly better detail, but even as a video geek, I did not feel the DVD was garbage and I had to run out for some HD recorder.
I too await the next, open format HD recorder.
If you can't talk the consumer into buying a massive screen, then HD content means little. Watching an HD broadcast, like CSI Miami on a big screen rocks, but on a 27 or 32 inch HD set, is not that great a jump over the Standard Ancient System. Since it is not, for the vast majority of users, no sale. Same for a computer screen....no one really wants to sit at the computer chair over the couch to watch a movie.
I've been a ham for the last four years or so. I have the Technician class licence, which most slashdotters could pass with a little study.
The internet does not replace ham radio..the net is infrastructure heavy, and everything must work. Ham radio needs an antenna and power source, which is why ham radio "reappears" after every major disaster.
I have a ham radio in the car, which covers 1.8 mhz up to 470 mhz. Last night on the way home from work, I listened to Radio Austraila, the highway patrol, and truckers on channel 19. This radio (Icom 706) is my secret weapon traffic avoiding device. I chatted with some hams on 2 meters, too !
I've also found myself in the middle of a running road Rally, as a radio op for the Rally organizers, clearing stages for competition. Since this rally is over public roads, they must be closed prior to running-I'm a motorsport nut too, but ham radio literally got me on the course.
Ham radio is a great vector to meet interesting people. Our secret geekdom comes from all over...had a good talk with my oil delivery guy, a fellow hammy.
Eventually, morse code requirements will be dropped in the US, as they have been almost everywhere else in the world, and the technically inclined will be able to avoid the "hazing ritual" that is morse code.
The amount of knowledge ham radio gives, from knowing how radio really works (WiFi is only a small part of radio...very small), to the people you meet, makes it a lot of fun. The cost is up to you...a used transceiver for HF, $400, a basic 2m rig and antenna for the car, new, $350, and it lasts forever.
Ignore the flame wars on eham and QRZ.com, they don't represent real hamming. for a laugh, check out hamsexy.com !
Casey
K2FIX
Remember, it's not all about "which one is better". For Joe 6pack, if it puts out a real HD picture, that's enough, and both will.
The reason this is horrible is because HD comes with HDMI, and HDMI comes with HDCP. The HDCP group has proposed that all HD compatible gear, your TV, your computer, and any other gadget, be subject to the HDCP rules. Among them are loss of all analog inputs by 2013. Once that goes, then you have to use the standards given by the INDUSTRY (content, not hardware)
What if you don't want to play nice with the HDCP folks...you won't have a choice.
RIAA/MPAA will own your TV set...they will control the inputs.
We cannot allow this to happen.
Any temporary allowance of HD signals over component is just a sop to the early adopters....
Buying either HD DVD or Blu Ray is giving your home entertainment equipment to the RIAA, lock stock and barrel.
We need another format, and it has to output over component.
Early adopters are always unpaid and unsupported beta testers.
Any car geek knows that the best time to buy is just before the "new model", as the old one finally has most problems fixed.
Electronics are no different.
Wait until the new HD/BLU players come out, and a "bug" causes random "player revocation" hahahahahahahahaha!
This entire thread explains why "they" are trying to lock down HDTV, and all other video while they are at it. We are not supposed to have options. The interactivity of the internet, be it for commerce, trade or piracy, is a problem to those who made their zillions putting "acts" into the top of the pipeline, running it on the radio and TV they owned, and "us" lined up to buy it, until "they" had squeezed all the money out of "us", and then "they" gave us a new act. This was fine until the net. I'm old enough to have a collection of home tapes, all recorded from vinyl, during the "home taping kills music" propaganda.
While we may have had 5 tape players in row recording, this pales in comparison to today. We had to buy the album "they" put in the pipeline- we could not find new acts without "them".
The net changes this. Indie acts don't have to go to the "man" where they can make a few million dollars gross and still end up owing the record company.
Meanwhile, I don't buy anymore. I have sat radio in the car, which fulfills all my needs for music, without crapchannel playlists and commercials. My kids all think music comes from a computer, and look at a CD as "too big for the music".
In the words of Mel Brooks in "Blazing Saddles" "Gentelmen ! we have to protect our phonybaloney jobs !"
HD and Blu Ray are not out because THEY CAN'T GET THE DRM WORKING. I hope technology makes sure that "they" don't win. The whole DRM thing is to make sure that HDTV is a "top down" system, just like the "good old days" were for record companies.
My kids already know about DRM, and my daugther (9) knows that iTunes are a rental, not a buy.
Still, with millions of buyers out there (me), the first HDTV recorder that has inputs and records will make a fortune. Are you out there, china, india or africa.
In the end, the RIAA will join the Maginot Line in History.
As a lawyer who unfortunately got known as the guy in the office who had a clue about computers, I learned the hard way that you don't upgrade without good cause. Indeed, we went back to word 97 from word 2003 as it was egregious bloatware, and they still hadn't fixed the "automatic paragraph numbering" bugs, which for guys who number many paragraphs is a huge issue.
The best word processor I ever used was WriteNow 4.0, it used 400k of memory in my Apple, and was far and away better than any of the Microcrap that I've used since.
RULE ONE...IF IT WORKS, DO NOT FIX IT.
Of course they want to clamp down. The money is in the content, not the backbone, so they want to limit content to that which they have a financial interest.
This way, it can be slow, expensive, and limited.
One other point : HD DVD, while technically not as good as blu rootkit ray, can use the existing stamping plants and many of the machines that are now used for SD DVD. In the mass market, cheap always beats better, so the content providers who never found a corner not to cut, or artist to screw, are not going to spend money so you can get a better picture. Better to stamp and send two HD DVD discs than one Blu ray disc. The costs of the disc are trivial and the plastic box can hold two as easily as one.
Sony has again missed the boat, Beta and now Blu Ray.
A DVD solves most of the problems of SD TV, except for the interlace and the limited color palate. 99% of the TV watching world has no idea what those things are.
Reality is that unless you have a big HDTV, there's no, zero, none, reason to buy HDTV-DVD I recently tuned up some 27 inch HDTV's and let me tell you, a 480i DVD is just fine. Unless the image is big, the Blu Ray or HD DVD is meaningless.
For the vast majority, for the next 20 years, DVD is good. There is only a small early adopter group who will buy the new format.
I'll wait. So will many others. I have a big HDTV, but until this format war shakes out, no sale. I have the oft discussed HDCP connection, but that's not the point.
Slashdot Mirror
Having two DVR's, on from Dish and one from Sony for OTA HDTV, I time shift, as my tv time and theirs will never agree. Skipping commercials is recapturing time. I now record just about anything I'm interested in, watch it on my own schedule, and reliably zap every commmercial. (being able to freeze scenes from Star Trek : TOS in HD is just a bonus) Sorry Guys, but that's the way it is-and anyone who says differently is not being truthful.
For my small office, XP is stable, and Word 97 (tried others and they just bloatwared the machines) is OK. The vast majority of businesses do "open, Save As, Print", with an occasional "Cut" and "paste". Some use spreadsheets....oooooooo ! With these requirements, my Mac Sys 7 with WriteNow 4.0 was all that was needed...in the 90's. I now do the same things with massively more chip and memory...WTF ? If you are not in a graphics or massive LAN system, there's no reason to dump any current software. That covers probably 75% of the user base. Vista and it's yummy DRM filling will come soon. I'm glad I'm not a professional IT guy, cause you are going to get MASSIVE calls at home from friends, family and superiors from work who "just happen to have one question even tho it's night" and that question is going to be... Why can't I get this thing to copy a DVD or CD "for my kids". Change your phone # now.
After a year of OTA HDTV (free after buying the stuff), I have a real problem. Most SD TV sucks (technical quality). The lack of quality is from end to end. Cable company with 20 year old line amps ? Set with poor convergence ? Questionable color palette ? (NTSC =never the same color twice). How about dot crawl...at any part of the system, will infest all parts of the system. I've three sets...one HDTV, one "best of the last" SD set, and one crappy 20 inch cheapo set. Each is fed by a digital box. Even downconverted to 480i and fed by component in the case of the good SD set, or fed to an RF modulator and sent by channel 3 into the junk set, there is a drastic difference using the digital signal-it gives you a DVD quality picture on the SD set-way better than even a strong analog signal. Studios and actors are used to using the blur of SD to cover faults. HDTV allows less fudging. After seeing it all digital, you see when the station is using crappy source. Good SD is very good-some of my local news stations have a clean SD feed. Most SD is not. SD lasted a long time. HDTV won't be as complex as some here wish, but it's TV, not a computer. While the various **AA asswipes are trying to lock it down, they will eventually lose- When I visit my inlaws, who have two quality SD sets fed by a state of the 70's art analog cable system, I can't watch TV. While there are teething pains now, HDTV is coming down in price. Now, about the fact that half of the HD sets don't have an HD signal, where is the "raise an antenna" PSA's ? You don't need to give the cable/sat company $90 per month for this.
The VHS train left my station when we went to HD sets, and the 240 line output was pretty much unwatchable. We still have one hooked up to standard set for the remaining tapes, though. Using an HD DVR, where you have the pause function, is the way to go. I don't archive, usually and rarely watch the same movie twice, so this is not an issue for me. I will buy an HD DVR with a HD/Blu DVD burner, though, although our screwed up CE industry won't make one for a while. Along with an inability to agree on a high def format for discs, they are either so afraid or owned by the Studios that they won't allow even minimal time shifting without a controlled PVR, controlled by your cable or sat company. I have a standalone OTA HD DVR, with no fees or rental agreements....it is, of course, out of production, and there are no others in the pipeline. Oh well, I suppose it is not in the cable co's best interest for you to own your own DVR with a cable card stuffed in the back, rather than renting their gadget forever. We live in a world where there should be high def players, and high def pvrs on all the Shortcircutworstbuy big box store shelves next to the big screens. These items don't exist because some big boys don't want them there. Capitalism is not the paradigm for media today....oliglopoly is.
Bottom Line, I am not risking $500-$900 to buy a doorstop with 50-50 odds. Want to sell HD disk media ? Marry it to an HD DVR, for export of programs. Heck, even make it a "copy once" block. Oh, I forgot, we are NOT selling HD DVR in the USA......unless you $pend a fortune with your Cable or Sat Monopoly.
You get a call from a non technical friend about how to get rid of that popup that says " Copying this CD is a copyright violation " with a "cancel" button.
Of Course, by then it will be too late.
The sheeple will only know when they fire up that new Vista box, and try to copy a CD, and see "Operation denied-copyright restriction". Then, you will see a sudden mass interest in DRM...at which point it will be too late.
speeding tickets are tax more than criminal justice. The concept of a fine is to prevent that sort of behavior, but with speeding tickets, it is viewed as a perfect tax....the payors have no choice, and the assessment is so random that there's no real lobby against this, save the National Motorist's Association. www.motorists.org, but even then, it is an abstract. Be happy you don't live in NY. Here we have a Driver Responsiblility Assessment, aka driver ripoff tax, and you'd have to pay $300 over and above the Court fine. The State of NY had to do it straight out of DMV, because the Courts were stopping the State's attempts to raise fines. (See why you elect your local Judges ?).
This is old news...in THX 1138, before THX is put into "the white zone", he is tried by computer for his crimes, and of course, convicted. One disc says "prosection", the other "defense". Anyone who has perused a USA mandatory minimum sentence scheme knows we have this already.
I always hope my tax money, that huge amount sent to the giant black hole, bought at least a bolt on the shuttle, or a tile (good one), or for one of the engineers, or even the guy who cuts the lawn outside Mission Control. I'm always afraid it paid for Karl Rove's expense account, though.
anyone who has been to ANY third world country, or anyplace where the USA is not the govt, will have noticed that $5 is all you need for any software...Windows XP Pro, Photoshop, or any game you can imagine. $5 is all you need for anything at all. Computer sellers outside the us make the money only on hardware, not software. So our Troops, stationed in a third world country, with hard currency, have access to this...so what ? I'm an American, but I know that the USA is not the world, and outside our borders, things are different...not better, not worse, just different. Even tho' they should NOT be there, if any of the poor bastards sent forth by the chickenhawk asshat cabal (mis)"running" our country finds some fun or escape in a bootleg copy of "Buckaroo Bonzai" or a recording of some rock,rap or country, I'm all for it. There are bits of the USA in Iraq, protected zones. That's because they didn't welcome us with open arms, as we were lied to by Cheney and Rumsfeld. Really, the RIAA is as laugable as our War on Drugs. Sure, some people get hurt by it, but mostly it is ignored or used as a payoff to the local warlords, who use it to deliever up a local who is out of favor with the ruling junta.
Since I use the Dish net website to find listings, it won't matter. My On screen display is useless for DVR as they only send 3 days down on my satellite. The other satellite has two week listings, which would help, but I enter date time and record channel, not easy-tivo type recording (record all Star Trek).
Dish won't stop the program guides, they are essential to the use of the gadget in real time.
All Echostar users should go to the setup menu now and "disable automatic updates". It's a pity that updates, which used to mean improvements, can now mean less functionality. Go to your box(es) now, and disable all update check boxes !
Yup, roller skated around the Charles River in the late 80's. Pre dated the cheap rare earth headphones routinely thrown out today. Worked better than you thought it should !
the shuttle is still going because certain surveillance sats only fit in the big shuttle bay. Indeed, Mike Mullane in his excellent book hints at some black ops. The shuttle may be in the "white world", but a lot of those flights move "black" payloads. That's not a bad thing-but the fact is that this tail wags the shuttle dog, and while it needs updating badly, we are locked into sat replacement on a steady basis-and some of those freight car sized devices can't ride anything else-not that we'd let them.
I have sirius in the car. Often due to work I am in a car for 3-4 hours per day. FM radio in the NYC area is the worst in the US, as all the stations are "flagship" stations for whatever group owns them, and this assures that no new song will EVER be played unless it was broken in another market. This "short list play list" combined with 22 minutes of commercials and another 15 of babble meant that I ended up with no music. I don't have the time to do the ipod rip and burn thing, so paying for the music is reasonable. Better, is I spend a lot of time with musical styles I'd never otherwise hear on pablum FM So the sound quality's not perfect...I am listening in a car.
HD content is oversold to Joe Sixpack. While my 42 inch HD set is clearly a huge improvement, on a small set, HD content is almost pointless. I recently spent a day tuning up two 27 inch HDTV's, and came to the conclusion that HD at that size is a great waste of money. A 27 inch Standard set, fed with a DVD, looks really good. A 27 inch HDTV, fed with a DVD, looks really good. Bonus points if letterboxed, but no improvement if it is not. DVD begins to look blurry on the 42 inch set, and larger. If your TV is "normal" sized, then Highly Drmed DVD or Blu-my-Wallet aRay will make no sense whatsoever. When ABC broadcast one of the original Star Wars flicks in 720p, I took the opportunity to do an A/B comparison with the DVD, feeding my ISF calibrated set by component. The verdict was that the 720p picture had much more accurate color and slightly better detail, but even as a video geek, I did not feel the DVD was garbage and I had to run out for some HD recorder. I too await the next, open format HD recorder. If you can't talk the consumer into buying a massive screen, then HD content means little. Watching an HD broadcast, like CSI Miami on a big screen rocks, but on a 27 or 32 inch HD set, is not that great a jump over the Standard Ancient System. Since it is not, for the vast majority of users, no sale. Same for a computer screen....no one really wants to sit at the computer chair over the couch to watch a movie.
I've been a ham for the last four years or so. I have the Technician class licence, which most slashdotters could pass with a little study. The internet does not replace ham radio..the net is infrastructure heavy, and everything must work. Ham radio needs an antenna and power source, which is why ham radio "reappears" after every major disaster. I have a ham radio in the car, which covers 1.8 mhz up to 470 mhz. Last night on the way home from work, I listened to Radio Austraila, the highway patrol, and truckers on channel 19. This radio (Icom 706) is my secret weapon traffic avoiding device. I chatted with some hams on 2 meters, too ! I've also found myself in the middle of a running road Rally, as a radio op for the Rally organizers, clearing stages for competition. Since this rally is over public roads, they must be closed prior to running-I'm a motorsport nut too, but ham radio literally got me on the course. Ham radio is a great vector to meet interesting people. Our secret geekdom comes from all over...had a good talk with my oil delivery guy, a fellow hammy. Eventually, morse code requirements will be dropped in the US, as they have been almost everywhere else in the world, and the technically inclined will be able to avoid the "hazing ritual" that is morse code. The amount of knowledge ham radio gives, from knowing how radio really works (WiFi is only a small part of radio...very small), to the people you meet, makes it a lot of fun. The cost is up to you...a used transceiver for HF, $400, a basic 2m rig and antenna for the car, new, $350, and it lasts forever. Ignore the flame wars on eham and QRZ.com, they don't represent real hamming. for a laugh, check out hamsexy.com ! Casey K2FIX
Remember, it's not all about "which one is better". For Joe 6pack, if it puts out a real HD picture, that's enough, and both will. The reason this is horrible is because HD comes with HDMI, and HDMI comes with HDCP. The HDCP group has proposed that all HD compatible gear, your TV, your computer, and any other gadget, be subject to the HDCP rules. Among them are loss of all analog inputs by 2013. Once that goes, then you have to use the standards given by the INDUSTRY (content, not hardware) What if you don't want to play nice with the HDCP folks...you won't have a choice. RIAA/MPAA will own your TV set...they will control the inputs. We cannot allow this to happen. Any temporary allowance of HD signals over component is just a sop to the early adopters.... Buying either HD DVD or Blu Ray is giving your home entertainment equipment to the RIAA, lock stock and barrel. We need another format, and it has to output over component.
Early adopters are always unpaid and unsupported beta testers. Any car geek knows that the best time to buy is just before the "new model", as the old one finally has most problems fixed. Electronics are no different. Wait until the new HD/BLU players come out, and a "bug" causes random "player revocation" hahahahahahahahaha!
This entire thread explains why "they" are trying to lock down HDTV, and all other video while they are at it. We are not supposed to have options. The interactivity of the internet, be it for commerce, trade or piracy, is a problem to those who made their zillions putting "acts" into the top of the pipeline, running it on the radio and TV they owned, and "us" lined up to buy it, until "they" had squeezed all the money out of "us", and then "they" gave us a new act. This was fine until the net. I'm old enough to have a collection of home tapes, all recorded from vinyl, during the "home taping kills music" propaganda. While we may have had 5 tape players in row recording, this pales in comparison to today. We had to buy the album "they" put in the pipeline- we could not find new acts without "them". The net changes this. Indie acts don't have to go to the "man" where they can make a few million dollars gross and still end up owing the record company. Meanwhile, I don't buy anymore. I have sat radio in the car, which fulfills all my needs for music, without crapchannel playlists and commercials. My kids all think music comes from a computer, and look at a CD as "too big for the music". In the words of Mel Brooks in "Blazing Saddles" "Gentelmen ! we have to protect our phonybaloney jobs !" HD and Blu Ray are not out because THEY CAN'T GET THE DRM WORKING. I hope technology makes sure that "they" don't win. The whole DRM thing is to make sure that HDTV is a "top down" system, just like the "good old days" were for record companies. My kids already know about DRM, and my daugther (9) knows that iTunes are a rental, not a buy. Still, with millions of buyers out there (me), the first HDTV recorder that has inputs and records will make a fortune. Are you out there, china, india or africa. In the end, the RIAA will join the Maginot Line in History.
As a lawyer who unfortunately got known as the guy in the office who had a clue about computers, I learned the hard way that you don't upgrade without good cause. Indeed, we went back to word 97 from word 2003 as it was egregious bloatware, and they still hadn't fixed the "automatic paragraph numbering" bugs, which for guys who number many paragraphs is a huge issue. The best word processor I ever used was WriteNow 4.0, it used 400k of memory in my Apple, and was far and away better than any of the Microcrap that I've used since. RULE ONE...IF IT WORKS, DO NOT FIX IT.
Of course they want to clamp down. The money is in the content, not the backbone, so they want to limit content to that which they have a financial interest. This way, it can be slow, expensive, and limited.
One other point : HD DVD, while technically not as good as blu rootkit ray, can use the existing stamping plants and many of the machines that are now used for SD DVD. In the mass market, cheap always beats better, so the content providers who never found a corner not to cut, or artist to screw, are not going to spend money so you can get a better picture. Better to stamp and send two HD DVD discs than one Blu ray disc. The costs of the disc are trivial and the plastic box can hold two as easily as one.
Sony has again missed the boat, Beta and now Blu Ray. A DVD solves most of the problems of SD TV, except for the interlace and the limited color palate. 99% of the TV watching world has no idea what those things are. Reality is that unless you have a big HDTV, there's no, zero, none, reason to buy HDTV-DVD I recently tuned up some 27 inch HDTV's and let me tell you, a 480i DVD is just fine. Unless the image is big, the Blu Ray or HD DVD is meaningless. For the vast majority, for the next 20 years, DVD is good. There is only a small early adopter group who will buy the new format. I'll wait. So will many others. I have a big HDTV, but until this format war shakes out, no sale. I have the oft discussed HDCP connection, but that's not the point.