I can hear the difference, very easily between a 192kbps MP3 and the original CD, while it's subject to my own hearing, I find listening to a CD after listening to an Ipod all day is bliss..
If the downloaded music in question is 'hurting your ears' then maybe (in the UK at least) there's a trade descriptions act problem, should music hurt your ears? Even at 0.99c/ 50p a track? Also, how do you define low quality, an AAC file encoded at 128kbps, is that low quality? Or is Mp3 at 192kbps low quality? How does it compare with casette or vinyl? I had the pleasure of listening to a casette album on a relatively good quality casette deck, and was surprised at how good it sounded, bearing in mind I listen mostly to music encoded with either Mp3 (typically 192kbps) or AAC (usually 128kbps on the few files bought from the itunes music store) via the pc or ipod. I have to add I have no desire to return to the days of casette and unpicking chewed up tape from the car casette drive..
I don't get foreign tv, but I can get tv from Wales and watch programmes in welsh, and the transmitter is more than 40 Miles away, I'm in South Gloucestershire in England..
I can receive RTE 2 FM from ireland on VHF any day of the week, implying that it's not relying on tropospheric ducting or refraction in the atmosphere if that's any help, I'm sure that's more than 100 miles away.
Just to explain:
30 to 300kHz LF Kilometric waves
300 to 3000kHz MF Hectometric waves
3 to 30MHz HF Decametric waves
30 to 300MHz VHF Metric waves
300 to 3 000MHz UHF Decimetric waves
3 to 30GHz SHF Centimetric waves
30 to 300GHz EHF Millimetric waves
Info can also be found on www.itu.int
The trouble is, I appear to have heard it all before and I'm only 31, it's not like there's much in the top 40 that sounds new or original, or even well executed, and I have tastes that are easlily pleased! I like funky house, ambient/IDM/soundscapes, rock and alternative, yet all I hear on the radio are reality tv show contestants singing cover versions, re-united boy bands from ten years ago, and and seemingly endless supply of US hip hop and R&B, If I had children I wouldn't give them money to buy this stuff..
Very recently I bought a CD that not only carried the standard CD audio but also carried the SACD version on another physical layer in the disc. That said, I don't know and store locally that sells a player, and don't know anyone that owns a player.
The problem with telling the difference is, you won't know the difference until you hear it, if you've never owned any equipment that does a good job with the raw audio data, smoothing out quantization errors etc, you just won't know. To be fair, most home audio equipment on the shelves of my local electronics store is sold on looks and functionality, not quality.
Surely the interface between IP and whatever system your local telephone operator is using is down to the geographic location of the device linking the IP call to the land line telephone call, and the interface would have to work with whichever system is in use there, not necessarily POTS, could be PSTN, just because the AUDIO channels are on the internet does not make the idea of linking a source of AUDIO to and from a telephone line a new idea, it could been a duplex ship to shore radio channel for example..
Just for the record, here in the uk, a typical cable connection is around 2Mbps , if you need more then you start paying increased tariffs, iterestingly the upstream is only 256kbps, or 384kbps on the highest 10Mbps tariff.
If you don't have access to cable, quite a lot of people don't, even in urban areas, the cable co around here missed lots of places out, then your only option is ADSL with varying speeds although they typically crawl around 750kbps increasing if you live within a mile of the exchange.
Not popular but aside from SKY+, the cable co's have their own specific boxes that they can supply for an extra monthly charge, or if you're a freeviewer there are loads of different boxes, most notable are the boxes by HUMAX and DIGIFUSSION, combining dual tuners with hard disk storage and provide an EPG that users can use to select the programme they wish to store for future viewing.
TIVO died in the UK, mostly due to it charging upwards of £10 a month (~$20) for use of an epg that had to be downloaded via a telephone line, not great value if you could only receive five analogue channels.
We get two pipes from our cable co (i'm in the UK) one cable for tv and internet, another cable for the telephone. Arguably all the signals get here some of the way via one pipe but it had to be joined together at some point and it get's split up eventually, I think that relies upon multiplexing and demultiplexing, either by frequency division or time division, not a new idea even in the year 2000..
I use a small solar panel to charge a 40aH lead acid battery which I will use in the next 50MHz amateur radio contest, which will potentially save me £10 in fuel which would've been used running the car engine to keep the battery voltage up and there will be less waste and emissions as a result, when I say waste, I mean using fuel to turn an engine that isn't doing any real work, so the waste is generated as heat from the engine as the engine is not 100% efficient.
I made that decision myself after a small list of failures and problems with sony equipment the final one being paying over the odds for a walkman with an AM-FM tuner built in (it was more than ten years ago), I found the radios performance was unacceptably bad for the price I paid and returned it to the store which replaced it with another of the same model, same problems, returned to the same store where I refused to accept another sony in replacement, I chose a panasonic model instead which turned out to be superior in every way except it's price, it was £20 cheaper which I had back by way of store credit which isn't a great refund but I found a way to spend it..
Part of me wants to watch big media companies like sony to dig their own very deep grave and fall into it, while another part of me just wants things to be fair and reasonable, it does seem to me that sony haven't quite got the way people use their equipment and games, theres a booming second hand market here in the UK, it's almost expected from many parents of teenage players that if a game is no longer being played, it should be sold on to fund the purchase of the next new game, this is something a lot of gamers take advantage of, the same goes for the console, I wonder how any anti second hand technology will really affect gamers? Also I wonder how it would affect a legitimate user who has a once functioning but now dead games console through no fault of his/her own, or parents who have two or three children each with his/her own console but sharing a library of games?
I'm beginning to think that it would be a good idea to start selling insurance against loss of access to media that you have paid for fairly, but of course if insurance becomes necessary to protect your copy of super street fighter II turbo or re-imburse you for the loss incurred by some greedy media company, then something is clearly wrong. That also said, who would insure media at a reasonable price with defective protection like anti second hand technology.
The solution is easy, don't buy their products.
This can't be good for the environment either, lots of ill informed users could be experiencing the loss of use of their PC rightly or wrongly and will be left with little or no option but panic, worry and forget about their old computer, throw it into the trash (or sell it on ebay to some unsuspecting shopper) and eventually when they feel up to it, might go and buy another new PC, or a second hand pc, or whatever.
As mentioned before, MS couldn't give a crap about the low end market, people on minimum wages, students, pensioners, the young, they're most likely to suffer from any kind of mass turn off, either for geunine reasons or by mistake.
"Compared to the 200-250 Wii which looks to be fun at parties and can produce graphics that are more than adequate, all the while maintaining an aura of FUN vs just being eye-candy."
From all I've been reading the PS3 looks likely to be a long series of frustrations ready to leap out at you almost from the moment that you plug it in, why would I want or need any more hastle in my life? I'll stick with the PS2 for games, I've never used it as a DVD player however.
I'm currently using an 800x600 display on an ageing PC but then again it's only used for slashdot, e-mail and a bit of shopping now and again. My other machines have 1024x768 displays,one is purely used for playback/capturing of audio and video media (ie it's a personal video recorder), and the other is for games and internet, the sites designed for 800x600 don't bother me in the slightest.
All of my CD's are at my mums house, as is my windows PC. I'm borrowing someone elses PC since I'm not at my mums house and don't fancy downloading DRM protected music that won't work when I get it home.
Well almost, I have a PVR and I use it to record 'the sky at night'and other science based shows shown on the BBC here in the UK, I can't watch everything else that passes for entertainment these days.
Perhaps the 'obvious' technique was waiting for improved hardware before it could be implemented. I'm thinking of hard disk drive write speeds and capacity among other things, otherwise the obvious solution would've required re-sampling video streams and reducing framerate and resolution to achieve such functionality which would also require more processing from the PVR's electronics. Maybe they just wanted to make cheap boxes that did the job cheaply and waited until that was technically possible?
Tivo have been around for some time, if they can't win by being first on the market then there's something wrong with their product or way they're marketing their product.
Slashdot Mirror
"in a few hours you can download a Linux OS that offers just as much if not more then what MS offers"
In a few hours you could download dozens of Linux OS's..
You've created an image in my mind that just won't go away now. I'm enjoying it.
I can hear the difference, very easily between a 192kbps MP3 and the original CD, while it's subject to my own hearing, I find listening to a CD after listening to an Ipod all day is bliss..
If the downloaded music in question is 'hurting your ears' then maybe (in the UK at least) there's a trade descriptions act problem, should music hurt your ears? Even at 0.99c/ 50p a track? Also, how do you define low quality, an AAC file encoded at 128kbps, is that low quality? Or is Mp3 at 192kbps low quality? How does it compare with casette or vinyl? I had the pleasure of listening to a casette album on a relatively good quality casette deck, and was surprised at how good it sounded, bearing in mind I listen mostly to music encoded with either Mp3 (typically 192kbps) or AAC (usually 128kbps on the few files bought from the itunes music store) via the pc or ipod. I have to add I have no desire to return to the days of casette and unpicking chewed up tape from the car casette drive..
Like you get when you watch a PAL broadcast on a SECAM tv, something only a few French or people playing with French tv's on holiday probably ever do.
I don't get foreign tv, but I can get tv from Wales and watch programmes in welsh, and the transmitter is more than 40 Miles away, I'm in South Gloucestershire in England.. I can receive RTE 2 FM from ireland on VHF any day of the week, implying that it's not relying on tropospheric ducting or refraction in the atmosphere if that's any help, I'm sure that's more than 100 miles away.
Just to explain: 30 to 300kHz LF Kilometric waves 300 to 3000kHz MF Hectometric waves 3 to 30MHz HF Decametric waves 30 to 300MHz VHF Metric waves 300 to 3 000MHz UHF Decimetric waves 3 to 30GHz SHF Centimetric waves 30 to 300GHz EHF Millimetric waves Info can also be found on www.itu.int
The trouble is, I appear to have heard it all before and I'm only 31, it's not like there's much in the top 40 that sounds new or original, or even well executed, and I have tastes that are easlily pleased! I like funky house, ambient/IDM/soundscapes, rock and alternative, yet all I hear on the radio are reality tv show contestants singing cover versions, re-united boy bands from ten years ago, and and seemingly endless supply of US hip hop and R&B, If I had children I wouldn't give them money to buy this stuff..
Very recently I bought a CD that not only carried the standard CD audio but also carried the SACD version on another physical layer in the disc. That said, I don't know and store locally that sells a player, and don't know anyone that owns a player. The problem with telling the difference is, you won't know the difference until you hear it, if you've never owned any equipment that does a good job with the raw audio data, smoothing out quantization errors etc, you just won't know. To be fair, most home audio equipment on the shelves of my local electronics store is sold on looks and functionality, not quality.
Last visit to Amsterdam/south of France/Venice the was a prefix on all prices in the shops there.
Surely the interface between IP and whatever system your local telephone operator is using is down to the geographic location of the device linking the IP call to the land line telephone call, and the interface would have to work with whichever system is in use there, not necessarily POTS, could be PSTN, just because the AUDIO channels are on the internet does not make the idea of linking a source of AUDIO to and from a telephone line a new idea, it could been a duplex ship to shore radio channel for example..
Just for the record, here in the uk, a typical cable connection is around 2Mbps , if you need more then you start paying increased tariffs, iterestingly the upstream is only 256kbps, or 384kbps on the highest 10Mbps tariff. If you don't have access to cable, quite a lot of people don't, even in urban areas, the cable co around here missed lots of places out, then your only option is ADSL with varying speeds although they typically crawl around 750kbps increasing if you live within a mile of the exchange.
Not popular but aside from SKY+, the cable co's have their own specific boxes that they can supply for an extra monthly charge, or if you're a freeviewer there are loads of different boxes, most notable are the boxes by HUMAX and DIGIFUSSION, combining dual tuners with hard disk storage and provide an EPG that users can use to select the programme they wish to store for future viewing. TIVO died in the UK, mostly due to it charging upwards of £10 a month (~$20) for use of an epg that had to be downloaded via a telephone line, not great value if you could only receive five analogue channels.
A good reason not to upgrade from windows 98, none of my shit worked on windows 98, why would I expect this to work either?
We get two pipes from our cable co (i'm in the UK) one cable for tv and internet, another cable for the telephone. Arguably all the signals get here some of the way via one pipe but it had to be joined together at some point and it get's split up eventually, I think that relies upon multiplexing and demultiplexing, either by frequency division or time division, not a new idea even in the year 2000..
Don't forget anyone who isn't using windows XP service pack 2, they're not going to be using IE7.
I use a small solar panel to charge a 40aH lead acid battery which I will use in the next 50MHz amateur radio contest, which will potentially save me £10 in fuel which would've been used running the car engine to keep the battery voltage up and there will be less waste and emissions as a result, when I say waste, I mean using fuel to turn an engine that isn't doing any real work, so the waste is generated as heat from the engine as the engine is not 100% efficient.
I made that decision myself after a small list of failures and problems with sony equipment the final one being paying over the odds for a walkman with an AM-FM tuner built in (it was more than ten years ago), I found the radios performance was unacceptably bad for the price I paid and returned it to the store which replaced it with another of the same model, same problems, returned to the same store where I refused to accept another sony in replacement, I chose a panasonic model instead which turned out to be superior in every way except it's price, it was £20 cheaper which I had back by way of store credit which isn't a great refund but I found a way to spend it..
Part of me wants to watch big media companies like sony to dig their own very deep grave and fall into it, while another part of me just wants things to be fair and reasonable, it does seem to me that sony haven't quite got the way people use their equipment and games, theres a booming second hand market here in the UK, it's almost expected from many parents of teenage players that if a game is no longer being played, it should be sold on to fund the purchase of the next new game, this is something a lot of gamers take advantage of, the same goes for the console, I wonder how any anti second hand technology will really affect gamers? Also I wonder how it would affect a legitimate user who has a once functioning but now dead games console through no fault of his/her own, or parents who have two or three children each with his/her own console but sharing a library of games? I'm beginning to think that it would be a good idea to start selling insurance against loss of access to media that you have paid for fairly, but of course if insurance becomes necessary to protect your copy of super street fighter II turbo or re-imburse you for the loss incurred by some greedy media company, then something is clearly wrong. That also said, who would insure media at a reasonable price with defective protection like anti second hand technology. The solution is easy, don't buy their products.
This can't be good for the environment either, lots of ill informed users could be experiencing the loss of use of their PC rightly or wrongly and will be left with little or no option but panic, worry and forget about their old computer, throw it into the trash (or sell it on ebay to some unsuspecting shopper) and eventually when they feel up to it, might go and buy another new PC, or a second hand pc, or whatever. As mentioned before, MS couldn't give a crap about the low end market, people on minimum wages, students, pensioners, the young, they're most likely to suffer from any kind of mass turn off, either for geunine reasons or by mistake.
"Compared to the 200-250 Wii which looks to be fun at parties and can produce graphics that are more than adequate, all the while maintaining an aura of FUN vs just being eye-candy."
From all I've been reading the PS3 looks likely to be a long series of frustrations ready to leap out at you almost from the moment that you plug it in, why would I want or need any more hastle in my life? I'll stick with the PS2 for games, I've never used it as a DVD player however.
I'm currently using an 800x600 display on an ageing PC but then again it's only used for slashdot, e-mail and a bit of shopping now and again. My other machines have 1024x768 displays,one is purely used for playback/capturing of audio and video media (ie it's a personal video recorder), and the other is for games and internet, the sites designed for 800x600 don't bother me in the slightest.
All of my CD's are at my mums house, as is my windows PC. I'm borrowing someone elses PC since I'm not at my mums house and don't fancy downloading DRM protected music that won't work when I get it home.
Well almost, I have a PVR and I use it to record 'the sky at night'and other science based shows shown on the BBC here in the UK, I can't watch everything else that passes for entertainment these days.
Perhaps the 'obvious' technique was waiting for improved hardware before it could be implemented. I'm thinking of hard disk drive write speeds and capacity among other things, otherwise the obvious solution would've required re-sampling video streams and reducing framerate and resolution to achieve such functionality which would also require more processing from the PVR's electronics. Maybe they just wanted to make cheap boxes that did the job cheaply and waited until that was technically possible?
Tivo have been around for some time, if they can't win by being first on the market then there's something wrong with their product or way they're marketing their product.