Um... I agree, except on terminology. Your "Software RAID" is really better called out as a "Filesystem RAID"... an OS is managing this at the file system level, not the device driver level as with your "host RAID". Both are examples of software RAID.
Years ago, I had this computer system without backup. Ordinarily, no big deal, but I had been working at a new startup company, and had our first six months of data on this PC... on a terribly expensive Seagate Barracuda 2.1GB SCSI Multimedia-capable 3.5" drive (this was the mid 90s).
So I set forth to find a backup solution... Travan was all the rage then, particularly on the floppy port, so I bough this TR-3 drive, hooked it up, proceeded to backup and !BANG! The BSOD. Again, with the same results... my PC didn't like the floppy-interface tape at all. So, on back to CompUSA, and I exchanged it for some new, proprietary tape backup, from Sony or someone.... slightly more cash, slighly higher data capacity. Take it home... same thing. Ouch.
So, not quite desparing, I return this unit and shell out the big bucks for a Travan TR-4 drive, for SCSI. Hook that baby up, run backup... and hours later, wow, I'm backup up.
A week later, the terribly expensive Seagate Barracuda 2.1 GB SCSI Multimedia-capable 3.5" drive dies, never to be heard from again. Since then, it may be tapes, it may be CD, DVDs, or BD, external drives, or online, but I have all critical stuff (and even some of the trash) backed up regularly. This also demonstrates that, when you think about doing a backup (if you're not automated), you should do it right then... the universe may well be sending you a message.
Intel's ICH9R is no different than anyone else's software driven "RAID" controller for motherboards... Intel just didn't like seeing some of these small companies making that money, so they came up with their own chip. Ok, these may do a tiny bit more than a very poorly designed SATA controller.. they have per-channel DMA engines and maybe a few other bits that are useful in RAID, but good ideas anyway. But basically, the RAID driver runs on your host CPU... that's the basic definition of "software RAID". In a "hardware RAID", the RAID driver is running on a CPU dedicated to the RAID controller. It's also likely to be buffering blocks, so it doesn't have to do redundant DMAs for writes to mirrors, etc. (which isn't a big deal, since it's just a low bandwidth these days... the big overhead is in dealing with RAID5 checksums, that sort of thing).
A hardware RAID should look just like any other single device, and not require any OS-specific drivers. Intel's will have software RAID drivers in the BIOS, but since most OSs can only boot from BIOS code these days (they can't run 16-bit real-mode drivers in 32-bit protected mode), you need to load up the drivers to allow the RAID to be recognized by your OS.
Not that I have a problem with software RAID for RAID0 or 1... the overhead really is pretty low. Just realize what it is you have there.
Actually, I once had an NTFS partition that took some odd soft damage, but I couldn't get Windows XP to fix it to save its life. I ran a bunch of freeware scanners on it -- everything was still there, but they didn't fix it either (well, one suggested that if I paid $39.95, it might be able to do something for me). Just for grins, I ran a bootable-from-CD version of GPartEd and ran the "repair" function. Damned if that didn't set it straight again.
No idea what the corruption was, but there's always something that can confound the best repair tools (I wrote one of the best disc repair tools for the AmigaOS back in the day, so I actually do have an idea about this from the tool side of things, too). A fresh backup may be your best friend one day.
I AM a hardware guy, so I do get lots of questions about hardware... but yeah, I've run into at least a dozen PC power supply failures over the years, probably more if I actually sat down to calculate. Two in my own house proved to be somewhat destructive (detailed in an earlier post)... one was an HP/Compaq OEM supply, the other an Antec supply that I had chosen myself based on reputation (circa 2003) and requirements. Neither system was unusually overloaded, and, well, I kind of hope that PC makers are using dirt cheap power supplies (my common sense says otherwise... but these guys are pretty serious when it comes to their OEMed gear absolutely meeting spec... a friend of mine had several million dollars worth of hardware rejected by Dell because he changed one resistor value -- a fix, but not vetted by their PA people).
That's a good point... destructive failure of PC PSUs isn't uncommon... in fact, it happened to one of my kids computers a bit over a year ago. PSU failed and took the main board (but not the HDD) with it. This unit was on a small protected UPS, too, so it's unlikely any line voltage set off the PSU -- it just self destructed.
A similar thing happened to me on my own PC about four years ago, and while it didn't kill the main board, it killed one of the drives in a three drive stripeset. I never diagnosed just why, but it turned out to affect only the drive's controller board, and I happened to have a fourth of that drive in use elsewhere. After cloning that fourth drive, I was able to get my RAID0 back up by swapping in the controller board.
That's when I got more serious about redundant storage (internal drives for the current projects, snapshots to an external Drobo, from there to cheap external HDDs for backup, and archival these days on DVD or Blu-Ray).
No matter what you do, you're probably going to lose something... but you can help reduce the risk. And curiously, in most of these lists warning of the dangers of data loss, those at the top of the list are pretty easily remedied just by leaning better behaviors. I guess I've been using personal computers since the 70s, so maybe I learned a few things forgotten by most people today. For one, if you're not using a version management tool (Subversion, etc), you want new versions of a project file on a regular basis, if not every time you save something. I have used several programs (one CAD program, one early DVD authoring tool) that had a habit of occasionally internally corrupting themselves... if you saved that version, you were SOL back to the previous file by a different name (kind of made me pine for the "versions" in VAX/VMS). So to this day, I'm always saving multiple versions of thing. The malware/virus stuff isn't hard to avoid if you're smart about it AND if you're in control of your own network... less hard to avoid if you're on a private network with others who can introduce these things into "safe" places.
While not a traditional RAID, I've been really happy with the Drobo unit I put in last year. This delivers RAID-like behavior with as few as two drives, which don't have to be identical (or even the same size). When you're using two drives, it acts like a RAID1 in terms of storage overhead; as you add more, it tends toward a RAID5 in overhead. One drive can always be removed... if you replace a failing drive with a larger one, the system adjusts (usually takes about a day to reconfigure itself). It can run in "supporting old FS limitations" mode... for example, on my XP machine, it configures itself as dual 2TB partitions... if I add enough storage, a third or four partition will appear (it also supports large partition models, but at least under Windows, that would also require Vista... no thanks).
The normal model runs over USB 2.0 and Firewire 800, so no, not as fast as an eSATA or SAS RAID, but good for ready availability of anything you might need that's NOT the current project.
Software-driven RAID 1 (by which I mean RAID driven by the software in your filesystem, as per Windows/Linux, or the software in you machine BIOS and drivers, as per the motherboard-based RAID, as opposed to the software running on a "hardware RAID card" on a separate processor... ultimately, all RAID is software) generally has a very low overhead.... the extra writes do take time, but given the typical overhead of ATA controllers, at worst, you're doubling that (eg, 2% up to 4% or so), with practically no software load over that of a normal driver. Obviously, going to a "real" RAID 5 or some-such, that wants its own auxilary CPU.
But not is all golden, either. On reads, RAID 0 or 1 can actually increase your seek time, since your effective seek time will be the worst case across all drives in the array. You don't notice that streaming, since you seek less often, but for lots of small reads across many, many files (think 32-channel audio mixer), RAID may simply be a bad idea as a project drive.
Kind of a "duh" here... it's just like sales tax, or the gas guzzler tax. Your car cost more, thanks to the bad mileage, making new versions of that car also more expensive. You don't owe any tax when you sell the car.. it's already paid. But the higher new-car price allows you to have a higher used-car price, covering the remaining part of that bad-car-use tax.
I actually like this idea, in part. For one, the road builders get paid up-front for the damage the vehicle will do to the roadways, so they're fixed in advance (well, sure, that'll never really happen). They could more accurately assess the real damage of a vehicle by type, general use, and expected longevity. This would free us from having to deal with this at the fueling end, and make it easier for never-on-road vehicles to avoid for-road-only taxes. If they wanted additional pollution tax on fuel or whatever, that could be added to the gasoline.
The most obvious downside.. this would increase the value of older, dirtier cars a bit, since that on-car road damage tax would be considered to have been paid, at least right now. In time, it actually would be.
The satellites are there already... folks who don't support Socialized Global Positioning should, of course, refuse to use GPS devices.
The big problem isn't the pre-existing GPS satellites.. these are and will continue to be funded by our insane military budget, one of the rather good things to come out of that boondoggle.
What would concern me is the additional expense of building a national two-way GPS "spy" network, so that we can be regularly monitored in order to deliver our travel data (and eventually, other things they might want to know about your comings and goings)... that will be a large expense, akin to setting up a new cellular telephone company network.
A Prius does this automatically... if you're driving downhill for a bit, the engine shuts off, and the car generates electricity (simulates engine drag by running a generator from your kinetic energy).
I would claim, if they kind of energy didn't matter, then that would be appropriate... miles on road, scaled by the very specific kind of car (eg, on a relative scale, how much damage do I do to the road versus a Hummer, a Smart Car, an 18-wheeler, etc), would be quite fair. But given the numerous fairly dire issues concerning fuel use (USA at the mercy of nutbags with oil supplies, peak oil, global warming, etc) this really should be used as a means to promote clean energy. Which it does, today, ever-so-slightly, with the per-gallon tax (that also tends to track road wear as well... heavy vehicles use more fuel, do more damage).
The GPS is because of states.. every state has different vehicle traffic, different fuel taxes, and different buying habits for fuel. States hate to lose what they have, and yet, they're happy to take new stuff. The GPS is the first idea for making things equal.
Take an interstate trucker, driving MA to FL. The guy lives in Massachusetts, but he's probably going to fill up in Jersey or Delaware if he can -- gas in MA, CT, and NY is expensive. He's going to pass through a bunch more states, maybe he'll fill up a few more times. At the end of the trip, a bunch of states with highways got fuel tax money, MA got little or nothing. Go to the "home/mileage" model, and MA gets it all. None of those other guys are going to be happy about that. Put in the GPS, and you're paying by highway mile... states with the cheaper fuel now only get a fraction of what they used to get -- no happiness there, either.
This tends to make me think this is the first weak link in the whole process... you would need many, many states to believe this in their best interest to get it passed, even without considering personal privacy, fuel consumption -- not distance driven -- as a looming national crisis, or other issues.
It matters, because that gasoline tax is part Federal, part local. If you just base it on mileage, some states would complain they're not getting their fair share of the actual revenue. So, I live in Jersey and work in Philly.. that's about 60% Jersey, 40% Pennsylvania on a typical commute. Driving a Prius (500+ mile range), I never buy the more expensive petrol in PA, but I could, and I'm sure many do... there's a heavy South Jersey to PA commute. If it was simply based on mileage, Jersey would get to apply their rate to all of my travel, PA gets nothing.
Of course, given that senario, I rekon most anyone going NJ to PA, PA to NJ, NJ to NY, NY to NJ, etc. is going to buy fuel in Jersey. So they'd be hurt by this in the long run, at least for the locals. But then there's the traffic along the Turnpike, NY to Delaware... they get their toll, but I'm sure they'd love a piece of that road tax, too.
So this would definitely be a big arguing point between the states. Hopefully for that reason alone, it would fail. It's wrong on many other levels. We should want to promote efficiency, promote alternative fuels, etc.
Plus the whole personal privacy thing... once a GPS with a government controlled radio transponder is in my car, it will be technically possible to use this to get me for speeding violations, dial up someone's car and find it ASAP (and, well, we've seen how well the "necessary court order" thing worked in the face of a power-grabbing political machine with phones and ISPs), all the while increasing your insurance based on your speeds, when and where you drive, etc.
But hey, I'll get rich selling little jammer dongles for your USB port (by 2020, all cars will have USB ports to power the stuff that used to pushed into the lighter jack).
Ok, so to re-state the obvious... it's a GPS and a cellular modem... so that's a monthly fee to someone, unless they set aside some government bandwidth, and a huge network of radios, to receive these monthly reports. They would need this, because, if the receivers were short range and small in number, they would shortly be available on maps for your navigation GPS, just like traffic cameras.
But that's not even thinking creatively.. have these guys ever actually used a GPS? Sure, they're pretty good at pulling in those -100dBm GPS signals these days, but that wouldn't be the case when everyone's buying little 1mW 1575.42 MHz/1227.6 MHz jammers to totally block the GPS.
They also seem to know nothing about the Chevy Volt... it's a series plug-in hybrid. After about 40 miles (which is probably more like 30miles with the AC or heat on) the engine kicks in... they will use petrol. And not only that, but as we're trying to move to greener technology, we ought to be increasing taxes on those who aren't following.
This should be done like local property taxes. The tax assessor rates your home price in dollars, but it might as well just be gold-pressed latinum, the numbers are meaningless. It's only the relative value of your property vs. your neighbors. They add up all the value, figure out what they need in tax, and do a little math to calculate the "tax per dollar".
Similarly, they ought to float the gasoline/diesel taxes based on the total consumption vs. the total cash they expect to bring in... at least as long as gasoline remains a significant fuel (and obviously, different taxes may be applied, to electric power, ethanol, H2, whatever, based on Uncle Sam's desire to see that fuel replace dino-juice). That way, over time, those clinging to the past will find it more expensive to do so... which is precisely the effect we should want.
That may be true, but given all the baggage in Vista, XP on my [slower] desktop is still quite a bit snappier than Vista 64 Ultimate on my laptop. Also, this whole idea of "Extras" under Ultimate was abandoned pretty early.. they did nothing to support you there.
So I had many of the same questions... the laptop was involuntary (get Vista, or buy a different laptop).. but what would get me to actually pay to upgrade? Well, the positive features I can name include:
* Actual support... well, it's not Ubuntu, but it's way better than XP... for a 64-bit OS. If you want to use your whole 4GB, or go beyond, you want Vista or W7 in some 64-bit form.
* Vista and beyond claim to support disc partitions beyond 2TB. That would let me see my whole 5TB Drobo as a single drive... assuming I could find a place to store the contents while I reformat.
* W7 claims to support 30-bit and 48-bit color... maybe 36-bit too. That would take advantage of the latest deep color displays, at least via HDMI or DisplayPort. The latest camcorders offer xvYCC colorspace... photo editing has long supported 16-bits per pixel, pretty much every good DSLR works in 12-bit or 14-bit RAW color, etc. Whether I can or can't actually see it, it sure sounds cool. Then again, "Laser TV" sounds so much better than "DLP", but I doubt I'll be upgrading until more of this high color stuff catches on.
* UDF for Blu-Ray drives is built-in, on Vista SP2 or W7... I have a driver in place for that anyway, but it wouldn't suck to have BD support full in the OS.
* I'd love for them to fix their Firewire 800 drivers, which seem to do nothing but BSOD (I'm using 3rd party drivers, which work, so it's not the hardware). That would be a check-mark in the "yes" column.
I guess that's about it... I'm sure others have other things. Microsoft has many problems in this... I'm not usually overwhelmed by bright, shiny objects, yet that's kind of how they sold Vista... wow, you can have a transparent titlebar. Not worth an upgrade. While we all know that MS and the hardware companies want to sell a new Windows every three years or so, I think they'd go much farther if they simply gave most of us a good reason to upgrade. Trying to fool Joe Sixpack seems to be evidence they really can't offer this.
The other thing is price: the upgrades are too expensive. And when MS tries to heavy-hand your upgrade, they're worse still.. you get resentful. Back in the 80s, I was on the Amiga and pretty successfully ignoring the silliness that was Windows 3.1. In years to follow, they pretty much forced Win98SE and then Win2K on me just to get functional Firewire support... that's the point at which I thought, "oh yeah, evil empire"... I mean, should I really have to spend about $200 for a device driver that works?
Matroska (MKV) isn't a video format, it's just an audio video container, like AVI (Microsoft), Quicktime (Apple), or MP4 (MPEG). Only it's an open standard. Good thing, but it's hardly a revolution. You can put an AVC or DiVX or AAC or AC-3 or whatever stream in an MKV wrapper just as you can any of the others.
Most DivX players don't support MKV... DivX in MKV is currently supported by the DivX folks, sure, but it's a recent thing (most DivX files use the AVI wrapper).
The main advantage of MKV is that it's had all of these others to learn from, and it's open to public discussion and modification. You can add new features without compromising older ones, it can handle navigation and other advanced features, including internet links. You can do the same kinds of things in MP4 or Quicktime, at least, but certainly adding new things to these formats requires participation of companies. So the idea is that, like other open source projects, Matroska will grow faster than these older formats.
See here: http://www.matroska.org
One of the first things they did was create a set of DirectShow filters for MKV files. Install these, and many Windows media programs will immediately be able to play and even create MKV files.
There's nothing around that's going to deliver real HD in the space of a single DVD5, or even a DVD9. Sure, you can get about an hour's worth of highly compressed HD on such a DVD, and it'll be better than DVD video.. use VC-1 or AVC, the wrapper (MKV, MP4, AVI, WMV) doesn't really make any difference. I've made a few dozen original videos in HD on DVD. In fact, you can author a Blu-Ray variation called AVCHD (same format used on Blu-Ray and DVD HD camcorders), burn to a red laser DVD, and it'll play, with menus and all, on nearly any Blu-Ray player, including the PS3. That's actually part of the spec.
However, don't confused video so compressed with Blu-Ray quality video... it's not. You can fit an hour's worth of AVC 17Mb/s video on either a single layer 3" BD-R or a full sized dual layer DVD-R, and even that's only about half the bitrate supported by Blu-Ray, in 7.5-8.5GB of storage. Try crunching a full HD film, 2x-3x as much playing time, into 1/2 that space, and you're getting into crazy overcompression. A DVD is going to look better on a good display. Not to mention what evils may be done to the sound.
And of course, the only possible reason to do this is piracy.. and by cheapsakes.. even pirates can afford enough booty to buy dual-layer DVDs.
This sort of cycle happens with every new consumer media format, and people say exactly the same things every time. When CD players came out, at $1000 or more, the format was "only for the rich", and even years later, it hadn't been adopted by enough... it was doomed. Of course, the truth was that those early adopters did have enough cash to not only spend $1000 on the player, but to buy many discs. I waited until the CD players fell below $200... some folks waited until they came free in your cornflakes... but the format did launch and take the market.
DVD came out, with players at $1000, and all the video people worried about how evil compressed video would be compared to VHS, how these were only for the rich, etc. The Circuit City "DiVX" thing actually did create a format war, ex-post-facto, at least for a short time, and folks like US spread the word and ensured that DiVX failed. DVD was still too expensive, the discs were expensive, they'd just never be able to oust VHS... until they did. I waited until the players cost about $200... some didn't buy them unitl you could pick one up at a yard sale for $2.00 (that one's installed in the kids' TV room, so they didn't have to drag out their PS2 or the DVD players from their rooms).
SACD and DVD-Audio came out, with $1000 players and a format war from the get-go. People complained about the expense of the formats, how these would only ever be used by high-end audiophile types, etc. They were kind of correct on this one, for several reasons. The format wars certainly split the market. And the market here was inherently limited, since very few people in the USA actually have stereo systems in which CD is the weakest link. So the real expense of getting the most out of SACD or DVD-Audio is dramatically more than the cost of the player. And you can't rip it to your iPod (well, not easily).
Now it's Blu-Ray... it came out with $1000 players, and people said exactly the same things they said with CD and DVD did this... maybe they were too young to know it, but they did. Now they're down to sub $200 players.. I bought mine at the $400 level... I was already committed, being into HD video production, and just needed for the format war to end (I bought a BD-R drive six months before I bought a player for my media room). If they had put BD or something like it out in 1999, it would more than likely have been marginalized like SACD, but HDTV was already well on the way... enough at least that most of the early adopter types already had their HDTVs... or, as in my case, were on their second one. The digital switch-over helps too (and will continue to).. people are getting better quality video, if they watch video at all, like it or not.
Downloading of anything like HD isn't practical yet. Most people don't have the internet connections, and of those who do, none have ISPs who will tolerate a few 30GB downloads per week. The little "HD" video that is being offered online is lower resolution, overly compressed, and lacks the high quality audio of Blu-Ray.. it's not much better than DVD (of course, when your SD video offerings are a bit worse than DVD, the relative difference suggests "HD" is real, but only within the download world).
But the bandwith issues will be solved... the others, we'll see. The big problem with digital video downloads is the same big problem we had until recently with digtial audio downloads. When all of the recording companies demanded DRM, music was essentially proprietary to sites like iTunes matched with the iPod. That meant no price competition -- you were always paying full retail. Compare that to DVD or Blu-Ray shopping... I rarely pay for anything at or even that near the list price. So that $39.95 "Lost: Season 3" BD I bought on Amazon last year might well have cost me $80 as a download... and another $25-$30 worth of hard disc space or BD-Rs to store it. And after all that, what's it going to play on? I can play it on my main HDTV and one of the HD monitors in my computer room? What about a portable player?
People are generally happy with what they're used to, but this will change as they get used to other media.
Funny thing is, it works both ways. I was working in video in the days of early digital, and no one would confuse some of the early digital for video... analog, even VHS was superior. MPEG-1 came out, and it was soundly rejected in the American market (though VideoCD's failure had as much to do with the disc change needed for most films.. same basic factor that killed analog Video Disc).
Then, a funny thing happened on the way to HD... my brain started compensating. As I started watching VCD and satellite MPEG-1, I started hating it less. Sure, I could still see all the macroblocks that pop out due to too much filtering of the DCT, but hey, it wasn't so bad, was it. And over time, I started re-noticing all the evils of analog video.
Nowadays, after 10+ years of HD, I can probably still watch analog NTSC OTA/VHS class video, but not without cringing... this is the same stuff that was "the best" back in 1990. DVD's even questionable... it depends on the quality of the compression and the content... I can't possible imagine watching football (either sort) in SD ever again... it just wouldn't be worth it.
The same thing is starting to happen to the American consumer. HD used to be rare, now it's the default. Even if you don't have an HDTV, you're going to be watching downscaled HD if you watch OTA, which is routinely going to be better than DVD quality (they could make it considerably better, but I doubt anyone's doing intelligent hi-res downscaling, there's just not much point). Watch enough of something better, and you WILL gradually erase that filter in your brain that let you like VHS so much.
The Blu-Ray devices in 2003 were NOT compatible with today's consumer Blu-Ray format. Yes, the disc technology was similar (not identical.. they didn't have the hard coating, so all discs were in carriers). These were both recording technologies... they hadn't worked out BD-ROM yet... that was part of the 2006 format, too. Both the Japansese STB and Sony's XDCAM were MPEG-2 based... there was no support for VC-1 or AVC, much less any of the advanced audio formats. There was also no BDJava code, the STB had a different DRM technology, etc.
So it is very correct to state that Blu-Ray was introduced in 2006, and quite incorrect to say it was introduced in 2003.
There are another class of people with BD drives... videographers. Anyone serious about video today has been moving to HD for 3-5 years or more. The Blu-Ray was the last piece of technology needed to deliver full HD video in a consumer format. I played around with pre-BD alternatives... DiVX, WMV9, WMV/HD disc, etc. (I have a red-laser DVD player from Japan that will play these formats in HD, though it doesn't support AVC)... none of these were very useful for things other than over compressed HD for DVD or web release, and the playing was generally restricted to computers, which is a bad idea, particularly thanks to the rise of cheap LCD monitors (most computer LCD monitors are just miserable for video.. not that most consumers bother to calibrate them in any way, either). At least with Blu-Ray, there's not a proper answer.
Actually, that's a bit confused. A 1080/60i transmission has twice the information of a 720/30p transmission. That should be pretty obvious.
What everyone seems to forget... the ATSC standard doesn't include 720/30p... the broadcast standard is 720/60p. That contains exactly the same amount of information as 1080/60i.
Which actually looks better depends on many things. Certainly, if you're pre-processing your 1080/60i, you are losing information.. blurring is just another name for low-pass filtering. I have made dozens of HD videos in 1080/60i, and never felt the need to blur video, anymore than I did back in the 480/60i days. This sort of thing is never necessary on organic video... the human eye won't see flicker in most cases. If you're dealing in something more computer-like, with lots of high-contrast straight lines (video games, etc) you may want that flicker-reducing filtering.
In a normal TV production or film transfer, this kind of filtering is only part of the mastering process.. a good production would not filter the entire film, but selectively add filtering if it's needed to prevent flicker. This is routine...the same kind of thing that's done on a DVD or Blu-Ray by the compression engineer... adding additional bandwidth OR low-pass filtering to prevent visible DCT blocking.
Motion in 60i will certainly look more natural than motion in 30p, but if you're unlucky, you can actually see the frame to frame tearing, "mice teeth", etc. 60p prevents this, but at the expense of resolution, at least for broadcast standards. More recent analog TV gear has employed 3D comb filtering as a display preprocessor to eliminate this, dynamically. This is also done in many digital TV upscalers, as needed (it may depend on your display setting). Most physcial displays don't deal with interlaced video directly anymore, anyway.. they upconvert 60i to 60p or 120p. Certainly 1080i can deliver 1080 scan lines of vertical resolution.. but if you're chosen material is the usual B&W resolution chart, it's going to flicker... but not on a modern TV.
Obviously, the best of both worlds is 1080/60p, but that's not part of either the ATSC or Blu-Ray standard... that's another doubling of the information needed. Of course, as with DVD before it, Blu-Ray supports 24p "NTSCfilm" resolution, which matches the 24fps rates of most film. Not recommended for football, but you'll see the different versus 1080i or 720p in areas of high motion.
HDTVs have only been on sale for half a decade or so, while standard def TVs have been sold by the millions and last a LONG time. I bought a twelve inch Panasonic portable in 1968, I still had it and it still worked a quarter of a century later. My current TV is five years old, and I don't expect to replace it until it burns out. This is how most people do it.
You're a little confused about HDTV... I'm on my second unit, which I bought nearly three years ago. That replaced the unit I bought in 2001 or thereabouts. And that was after drooling over friends' HDTVs for a few years. The first regular OTA public broadcasts began in 1996... that's 13 years ago by my calendar.
And no, people usually don't wait for TVs to "burn out"... they eventually realize that 12" TV they bought in college just isn't doing it for them anymore, put that one in the kitchen, or sell it at a yard sale, and go out and buy something better. Lather, rinse, repeat. Most TVs made these days simply aren't going to "burn out"... the expected life on the average LCD backlight is over 50,000 hours... that's three hours of TV a day for 45 years. The units with LEDs, coming out now, will last indefinitely.
Think about it.. if most people waited for their TVs to die, there would just about zero TV sales. We may only barely even seeing the surge in TV buying expected due to the digital switchover.. we'll see. Even in a depressed economy, Blu-Ray players and software are selling like crazy so far this year, while DVD sales are down, 15-18%.
Entry-level Blu-Ray players are routinely available below $200
I paid thirty for my DVD player. "Expensive" is relative.
Of course it is. But if you're only spending $40 on your DVD player, you're not very concerned about video quality... sure, it's probably a fine match to your TV. But on that kind of budget, you're not the target audience for Blu-Ray or even much of a DVD buyer, in all likelihood. So these things are not for you. But not being a consumer of much old technology, you're probably not in a great position to judge what people who are buying will actually buy.
The pace of Blu-Ray player stand-alone sales, in units, is more than twice that of DVD at the same point in DVD's history, again, not counting PS3s. That's the significant fact of those figures... and they're not related to how well DVD players have sold recently, they can stand on their own. I didn't even remotely suggest Blu-Ray players would outsell DVD players this year... that's also not even necessary. If a company is making more money on Blu-Ray hardware than DVD hardware, they're happy about Blu-Ray, regardless of the number of units. Most large CE companies are struggling to make any profit on DVD hardware... which explains why over 85% of it is made in China -- too low profit for anywhere else. Once again, don't think you can measure success in total numbers... if Sony or Pioneer are making money more money on Blu-Ray this year, they're definitely keeping the hardware around for next year, and developing that market.. which means taking away even more DVD unit sales next year. With DVD, a company like Sony is only losing market share... there's nothing they can ever do to gain it, versus the generic Chinese units folks buy at Wal-Mart and Best Buy for $30.
It's also a big mistake to assume every DVD player sale is a Blu-Ray not sold... people buy $20-$40 DVD players for kids, they buy car of portable units, etc. That doesn't mean they're not buying Blu-Ray players... in fact, the more DVD players you own, the more likely you are to own a Blu-Ray player. In my house, we have two devices that will play Blu-Ray and about 203that will play DVDs (a quick sum of Blu-Ray players, DVD players, DVD-ROM and DVD-R drives, game consoles, etc).
And it's going to explode this Christmas... sure, you can buy a $20 DVD player, but since every Blu-Ray player is a DVD player too, Blu-Ray players in the $100-$200 range will fly off the shelves. That's the same point at which DVD started building real critical mass. People don't hook up $20 DVD players to their $2000 HDTVs... and this year, the Blu-Ray players are moving into the same price range occupied by upscaling DVD players these last few years, which is going to push them down into the discount range. It won't be all that long before the only DVD players are those in the $20-$50 range.
And keep in mind here, no one in the business cares about volume -- they care about profits. Many companies (such are Best Buy) are already taking in more profits on Blu-Ray than on DVD... that's right now, no projections needed. It's even possible that Blu-Ray will prove more profitable across the industry this year, versus the heavily discounted DVD... and it's a certainty in 2010. The Consumer Electronics Association projects US sales of Blu-Ray will hit $1.3 billion this year overtaking DVD which it forecasts at $1.2 billion (EE Times). So sure, that's not world-wide, but that's with "only" 12% or so of homes having Blu-Ray players (also counting PS3). And that's sales... profits on BDs vs. DVDs have run 5x higher. Unless they start cuttting prices dramatically, DVD's going to look like the problem this year, at least in the USA.
You're the one getting dazzled by numbers... $22 billion in sales says nothing about whether that's a success or a failure. If it cost you $23 billion to deliver those sales, obviously, you fail. DVD profits have been falling steadily for the last few years.. they're down 15%-18% this year so far. No, you can't blame the recession... theatrical profits are up 15% during the same time period.
I love it... interpreted C64 BASIC running on interpreted 65xx code on interpreted Java on a real MSM7210A (ARM1136EJ-S main CPU with ARM9 and Qualcom proprietary DSP coprocessors) clocked at 528MHz... and that can't beat a 1.02MHz 6510? Hello? Ok... make the 65xx interpreter a JIT for Java byte code... probably illegal, but a cool hack if you can get it. Of course, anyone thinking about emulators knows very well it's not the 6510 that's the problem, it's emulating the VIC-II, the CIA registers, the SID, etc. But this did run on a 7.16MHz 68000 some time ago... one would hope even the interpreted Java goes faster than that.
It's also completely unnecessary, and in fact, a real problem, if you make the C64 go too fast. Back in those days, timing in programs was sometimes delivered by way of timer or video blanking interrupts... and sometimes (particularly in BASIC) the result of an empty loop. Back in my BASIC days (the late 70s), that's pretty much how it was done. After all, no one else is using the machine. Of course, if you want your emulator to behave, you pretty much have to deal with this NOT dragging the whole phone down.
I have a C64 emulator on my old Palm Treo 700p... it stopped being a useful phone some time back, but it still does the C64 thing. Nothing like an open operating system... I know better than Jobs what useless tripe belongs on my device, thank-you-veddy-much.
Naa... written permission doesn't help, either, with Apple... it's always going to be the case of their being the bigger hammer.
I developed some hardware based on the PowerPC platform back in '96-'97. While attending a Be Developer conference, a few of us met with Apple. We were shown Motorola StarMax machines runing MacOS 7.6, we were given all kinds of details on the inner working of the MacOS and what was needed at the HW level to be "Mac Compatible" rather than just "Mac Clone", etc. We were strongly urged to develop our HW in a compatible way, paperwork and agreements were signed, etc. Eight months later, Jobs was back and they put the kebash on the whole thing.
This is simply Real Life when you're working in the Apple Universe. And precisely why the best and brightest put their stuff elsewhere.. people develop iPhone apps because they smell money. Sometimes greed bites you in the ass.
It's a shame, too, but then again, someone needs to do an Apple to Apple. For years, they've made all kinds of money doing a sometimes fairly minimalistic attempt at not-sucking, while everyone around them sucked. That's continued in the phone world... Palm fell of the edge of the tech world five years ago, Verizon works hard to lobotomize every phone they get their hands on, WinCE... I mean Windows Mobile, has continued to lull users to sleep, Symbian... I guess it's out there, but I haven't heard much news in the last two or three years. RIM was just for business critters.
But oddly, that's all changing this year. Apple's gone more closed than ever in the era of openness... they're sucking, more than usual. The new iPhone 3GS was same old, same old... yawn.
Palm's back in some curious-looking form, if Sprint's foolishness doesn't manage to kill them, and they can manage to not suck in ways Apple does suck, they might stand a chance. Hey, if you live in Baltimore, you can even get 4G networking on the new Pre... good luck getting 3G anywhere else, but hey, I'm sure I'll
Android's really compelling, being that at present, it's sucking less than nearly anything else, even though it's still kind of new and unsupported... but hey, that one, I might even bother coding for. The only big suck part there is T-Mobile... they sorta-kinda come in down the end of my driveway, but who wants to walk 1/4 mile just to make a call from home. I guess I could put in a nanocell... or fix the antenna on my roof left from a failed Verizon experiment a few years back. But it's also the idea that practically everyone's about to put out a new Android phone/device Real Soon Now. Motorola's reportedly got 150 people doing Android.
So, really, let Apple continue to suck... they so very desparately crave the competition, and they will hopefully get it.
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Um... I agree, except on terminology. Your "Software RAID" is really better called out as a "Filesystem RAID"... an OS is managing this at the file system level, not the device driver level as with your "host RAID". Both are examples of software RAID.
Years ago, I had this computer system without backup. Ordinarily, no big deal, but I had been working at a new startup company, and had our first six months of data on this PC... on a terribly expensive Seagate Barracuda 2.1GB SCSI Multimedia-capable 3.5" drive (this was the mid 90s).
So I set forth to find a backup solution... Travan was all the rage then, particularly on the floppy port, so I bough this TR-3 drive, hooked it up, proceeded to backup and !BANG! The BSOD. Again, with the same results... my PC didn't like the floppy-interface tape at all. So, on back to CompUSA, and I exchanged it for some new, proprietary tape backup, from Sony or someone.... slightly more cash, slighly higher data capacity. Take it home... same thing. Ouch.
So, not quite desparing, I return this unit and shell out the big bucks for a Travan TR-4 drive, for SCSI. Hook that baby up, run backup... and hours later, wow, I'm backup up.
A week later, the terribly expensive Seagate Barracuda 2.1 GB SCSI Multimedia-capable 3.5" drive dies, never to be heard from again. Since then, it may be tapes, it may be CD, DVDs, or BD, external drives, or online, but I have all critical stuff (and even some of the trash) backed up regularly. This also demonstrates that, when you think about doing a backup (if you're not automated), you should do it right then... the universe may well be sending you a message.
Intel's ICH9R is no different than anyone else's software driven "RAID" controller for motherboards... Intel just didn't like seeing some of these small companies making that money, so they came up with their own chip. Ok, these may do a tiny bit more than a very poorly designed SATA controller.. they have per-channel DMA engines and maybe a few other bits that are useful in RAID, but good ideas anyway. But basically, the RAID driver runs on your host CPU... that's the basic definition of "software RAID". In a "hardware RAID", the RAID driver is running on a CPU dedicated to the RAID controller. It's also likely to be buffering blocks, so it doesn't have to do redundant DMAs for writes to mirrors, etc. (which isn't a big deal, since it's just a low bandwidth these days... the big overhead is in dealing with RAID5 checksums, that sort of thing).
A hardware RAID should look just like any other single device, and not require any OS-specific drivers. Intel's will have software RAID drivers in the BIOS, but since most OSs can only boot from BIOS code these days (they can't run 16-bit real-mode drivers in 32-bit protected mode), you need to load up the drivers to allow the RAID to be recognized by your OS.
Not that I have a problem with software RAID for RAID0 or 1... the overhead really is pretty low. Just realize what it is you have there.
Actually, I once had an NTFS partition that took some odd soft damage, but I couldn't get Windows XP to fix it to save its life. I ran a bunch of freeware scanners on it -- everything was still there, but they didn't fix it either (well, one suggested that if I paid $39.95, it might be able to do something for me). Just for grins, I ran a bootable-from-CD version of GPartEd and ran the "repair" function. Damned if that didn't set it straight again.
No idea what the corruption was, but there's always something that can confound the best repair tools (I wrote one of the best disc repair tools for the AmigaOS back in the day, so I actually do have an idea about this from the tool side of things, too). A fresh backup may be your best friend one day.
I AM a hardware guy, so I do get lots of questions about hardware... but yeah, I've run into at least a dozen PC power supply failures over the years, probably more if I actually sat down to calculate. Two in my own house proved to be somewhat destructive (detailed in an earlier post)... one was an HP/Compaq OEM supply, the other an Antec supply that I had chosen myself based on reputation (circa 2003) and requirements. Neither system was unusually overloaded, and, well, I kind of hope that PC makers are using dirt cheap power supplies (my common sense says otherwise... but these guys are pretty serious when it comes to their OEMed gear absolutely meeting spec... a friend of mine had several million dollars worth of hardware rejected by Dell because he changed one resistor value -- a fix, but not vetted by their PA people).
That's a good point... destructive failure of PC PSUs isn't uncommon... in fact, it happened to one of my kids computers a bit over a year ago. PSU failed and took the main board (but not the HDD) with it. This unit was on a small protected UPS, too, so it's unlikely any line voltage set off the PSU -- it just self destructed.
A similar thing happened to me on my own PC about four years ago, and while it didn't kill the main board, it killed one of the drives in a three drive stripeset. I never diagnosed just why, but it turned out to affect only the drive's controller board, and I happened to have a fourth of that drive in use elsewhere. After cloning that fourth drive, I was able to get my RAID0 back up by swapping in the controller board.
That's when I got more serious about redundant storage (internal drives for the current projects, snapshots to an external Drobo, from there to cheap external HDDs for backup, and archival these days on DVD or Blu-Ray).
No matter what you do, you're probably going to lose something... but you can help reduce the risk. And curiously, in most of these lists warning of the dangers of data loss, those at the top of the list are pretty easily remedied just by leaning better behaviors. I guess I've been using personal computers since the 70s, so maybe I learned a few things forgotten by most people today. For one, if you're not using a version management tool (Subversion, etc), you want new versions of a project file on a regular basis, if not every time you save something. I have used several programs (one CAD program, one early DVD authoring tool) that had a habit of occasionally internally corrupting themselves... if you saved that version, you were SOL back to the previous file by a different name (kind of made me pine for the "versions" in VAX/VMS). So to this day, I'm always saving multiple versions of thing. The malware/virus stuff isn't hard to avoid if you're smart about it AND if you're in control of your own network... less hard to avoid if you're on a private network with others who can introduce these things into "safe" places.
While not a traditional RAID, I've been really happy with the Drobo unit I put in last year. This delivers RAID-like behavior with as few as two drives, which don't have to be identical (or even the same size). When you're using two drives, it acts like a RAID1 in terms of storage overhead; as you add more, it tends toward a RAID5 in overhead. One drive can always be removed... if you replace a failing drive with a larger one, the system adjusts (usually takes about a day to reconfigure itself). It can run in "supporting old FS limitations" mode... for example, on my XP machine, it configures itself as dual 2TB partitions... if I add enough storage, a third or four partition will appear (it also supports large partition models, but at least under Windows, that would also require Vista... no thanks).
The normal model runs over USB 2.0 and Firewire 800, so no, not as fast as an eSATA or SAS RAID, but good for ready availability of anything you might need that's NOT the current project.
Software-driven RAID 1 (by which I mean RAID driven by the software in your filesystem, as per Windows/Linux, or the software in you machine BIOS and drivers, as per the motherboard-based RAID, as opposed to the software running on a "hardware RAID card" on a separate processor... ultimately, all RAID is software) generally has a very low overhead.... the extra writes do take time, but given the typical overhead of ATA controllers, at worst, you're doubling that (eg, 2% up to 4% or so), with practically no software load over that of a normal driver. Obviously, going to a "real" RAID 5 or some-such, that wants its own auxilary CPU.
But not is all golden, either. On reads, RAID 0 or 1 can actually increase your seek time, since your effective seek time will be the worst case across all drives in the array. You don't notice that streaming, since you seek less often, but for lots of small reads across many, many files (think 32-channel audio mixer), RAID may simply be a bad idea as a project drive.
Kind of a "duh" here... it's just like sales tax, or the gas guzzler tax. Your car cost more, thanks to the bad mileage, making new versions of that car also more expensive. You don't owe any tax when you sell the car.. it's already paid. But the higher new-car price allows you to have a higher used-car price, covering the remaining part of that bad-car-use tax.
I actually like this idea, in part. For one, the road builders get paid up-front for the damage the vehicle will do to the roadways, so they're fixed in advance (well, sure, that'll never really happen). They could more accurately assess the real damage of a vehicle by type, general use, and expected longevity. This would free us from having to deal with this at the fueling end, and make it easier for never-on-road vehicles to avoid for-road-only taxes. If they wanted additional pollution tax on fuel or whatever, that could be added to the gasoline.
The most obvious downside.. this would increase the value of older, dirtier cars a bit, since that on-car road damage tax would be considered to have been paid, at least right now. In time, it actually would be.
The satellites are there already... folks who don't support Socialized Global Positioning should, of course, refuse to use GPS devices.
The big problem isn't the pre-existing GPS satellites.. these are and will continue to be funded by our insane military budget, one of the rather good things to come out of that boondoggle.
What would concern me is the additional expense of building a national two-way GPS "spy" network, so that we can be regularly monitored in order to deliver our travel data (and eventually, other things they might want to know about your comings and goings)... that will be a large expense, akin to setting up a new cellular telephone company network.
A Prius does this automatically... if you're driving downhill for a bit, the engine shuts off, and the car generates electricity (simulates engine drag by running a generator from your kinetic energy).
I would claim, if they kind of energy didn't matter, then that would be appropriate... miles on road, scaled by the very specific kind of car (eg, on a relative scale, how much damage do I do to the road versus a Hummer, a Smart Car, an 18-wheeler, etc), would be quite fair. But given the numerous fairly dire issues concerning fuel use (USA at the mercy of nutbags with oil supplies, peak oil, global warming, etc) this really should be used as a means to promote clean energy. Which it does, today, ever-so-slightly, with the per-gallon tax (that also tends to track road wear as well... heavy vehicles use more fuel, do more damage).
The GPS is because of states.. every state has different vehicle traffic, different fuel taxes, and different buying habits for fuel. States hate to lose what they have, and yet, they're happy to take new stuff. The GPS is the first idea for making things equal.
Take an interstate trucker, driving MA to FL. The guy lives in Massachusetts, but he's probably going to fill up in Jersey or Delaware if he can -- gas in MA, CT, and NY is expensive. He's going to pass through a bunch more states, maybe he'll fill up a few more times. At the end of the trip, a bunch of states with highways got fuel tax money, MA got little or nothing. Go to the "home/mileage" model, and MA gets it all. None of those other guys are going to be happy about that. Put in the GPS, and you're paying by highway mile... states with the cheaper fuel now only get a fraction of what they used to get -- no happiness there, either.
This tends to make me think this is the first weak link in the whole process... you would need many, many states to believe this in their best interest to get it passed, even without considering personal privacy, fuel consumption -- not distance driven -- as a looming national crisis, or other issues.
It matters, because that gasoline tax is part Federal, part local. If you just base it on mileage, some states would complain they're not getting their fair share of the actual revenue. So, I live in Jersey and work in Philly.. that's about 60% Jersey, 40% Pennsylvania on a typical commute. Driving a Prius (500+ mile range), I never buy the more expensive petrol in PA, but I could, and I'm sure many do... there's a heavy South Jersey to PA commute. If it was simply based on mileage, Jersey would get to apply their rate to all of my travel, PA gets nothing.
Of course, given that senario, I rekon most anyone going NJ to PA, PA to NJ, NJ to NY, NY to NJ, etc. is going to buy fuel in Jersey. So they'd be hurt by this in the long run, at least for the locals. But then there's the traffic along the Turnpike, NY to Delaware... they get their toll, but I'm sure they'd love a piece of that road tax, too.
So this would definitely be a big arguing point between the states. Hopefully for that reason alone, it would fail. It's wrong on many other levels. We should want to promote efficiency, promote alternative fuels, etc.
Plus the whole personal privacy thing... once a GPS with a government controlled radio transponder is in my car, it will be technically possible to use this to get me for speeding violations, dial up someone's car and find it ASAP (and, well, we've seen how well the "necessary court order" thing worked in the face of a power-grabbing political machine with phones and ISPs), all the while increasing your insurance based on your speeds, when and where you drive, etc.
But hey, I'll get rich selling little jammer dongles for your USB port (by 2020, all cars will have USB ports to power the stuff that used to pushed into the lighter jack).
Ok, so to re-state the obvious... it's a GPS and a cellular modem... so that's a monthly fee to someone, unless they set aside some government bandwidth, and a huge network of radios, to receive these monthly reports. They would need this, because, if the receivers were short range and small in number, they would shortly be available on maps for your navigation GPS, just like traffic cameras.
But that's not even thinking creatively.. have these guys ever actually used a GPS? Sure, they're pretty good at pulling in those -100dBm GPS signals these days, but that wouldn't be the case when everyone's buying little 1mW 1575.42 MHz/1227.6 MHz jammers to totally block the GPS.
They also seem to know nothing about the Chevy Volt... it's a series plug-in hybrid. After about 40 miles (which is probably more like 30miles with the AC or heat on) the engine kicks in... they will use petrol. And not only that, but as we're trying to move to greener technology, we ought to be increasing taxes on those who aren't following.
This should be done like local property taxes. The tax assessor rates your home price in dollars, but it might as well just be gold-pressed latinum, the numbers are meaningless. It's only the relative value of your property vs. your neighbors. They add up all the value, figure out what they need in tax, and do a little math to calculate the "tax per dollar".
Similarly, they ought to float the gasoline/diesel taxes based on the total consumption vs. the total cash they expect to bring in... at least as long as gasoline remains a significant fuel (and obviously, different taxes may be applied, to electric power, ethanol, H2, whatever, based on Uncle Sam's desire to see that fuel replace dino-juice). That way, over time, those clinging to the past will find it more expensive to do so... which is precisely the effect we should want.
That may be true, but given all the baggage in Vista, XP on my [slower] desktop is still quite a bit snappier than Vista 64 Ultimate on my laptop. Also, this whole idea of "Extras" under Ultimate was abandoned pretty early.. they did nothing to support you there.
So I had many of the same questions... the laptop was involuntary (get Vista, or buy a different laptop).. but what would get me to actually pay to upgrade? Well, the positive features I can name include:
* Actual support... well, it's not Ubuntu, but it's way better than XP... for a 64-bit OS. If you want to use your whole 4GB, or go beyond, you want Vista or W7 in some 64-bit form.
* Vista and beyond claim to support disc partitions beyond 2TB. That would let me see my whole 5TB Drobo as a single drive... assuming I could find a place to store the contents while I reformat.
* W7 claims to support 30-bit and 48-bit color... maybe 36-bit too. That would take advantage of the latest deep color displays, at least via HDMI or DisplayPort. The latest camcorders offer xvYCC colorspace... photo editing has long supported 16-bits per pixel, pretty much every good DSLR works in 12-bit or 14-bit RAW color, etc. Whether I can or can't actually see it, it sure sounds cool. Then again, "Laser TV" sounds so much better than "DLP", but I doubt I'll be upgrading until more of this high color stuff catches on.
* UDF for Blu-Ray drives is built-in, on Vista SP2 or W7... I have a driver in place for that anyway, but it wouldn't suck to have BD support full in the OS.
* I'd love for them to fix their Firewire 800 drivers, which seem to do nothing but BSOD (I'm using 3rd party drivers, which work, so it's not the hardware). That would be a check-mark in the "yes" column.
I guess that's about it... I'm sure others have other things. Microsoft has many problems in this... I'm not usually overwhelmed by bright, shiny objects, yet that's kind of how they sold Vista... wow, you can have a transparent titlebar. Not worth an upgrade. While we all know that MS and the hardware companies want to sell a new Windows every three years or so, I think they'd go much farther if they simply gave most of us a good reason to upgrade. Trying to fool Joe Sixpack seems to be evidence they really can't offer this.
The other thing is price: the upgrades are too expensive. And when MS tries to heavy-hand your upgrade, they're worse still.. you get resentful. Back in the 80s, I was on the Amiga and pretty successfully ignoring the silliness that was Windows 3.1. In years to follow, they pretty much forced Win98SE and then Win2K on me just to get functional Firewire support... that's the point at which I thought, "oh yeah, evil empire"... I mean, should I really have to spend about $200 for a device driver that works?
Matroska (MKV) isn't a video format, it's just an audio video container, like AVI (Microsoft), Quicktime (Apple), or MP4 (MPEG). Only it's an open standard. Good thing, but it's hardly a revolution. You can put an AVC or DiVX or AAC or AC-3 or whatever stream in an MKV wrapper just as you can any of the others.
Most DivX players don't support MKV... DivX in MKV is currently supported by the DivX folks, sure, but it's a recent thing (most DivX files use the AVI wrapper).
The main advantage of MKV is that it's had all of these others to learn from, and it's open to public discussion and modification. You can add new features without compromising older ones, it can handle navigation and other advanced features, including internet links. You can do the same kinds of things in MP4 or Quicktime, at least, but certainly adding new things to these formats requires participation of companies. So the idea is that, like other open source projects, Matroska will grow faster than these older formats.
See here: http://www.matroska.org
One of the first things they did was create a set of DirectShow filters for MKV files. Install these, and many Windows media programs will immediately be able to play and even create MKV files.
There's nothing around that's going to deliver real HD in the space of a single DVD5, or even a DVD9. Sure, you can get about an hour's worth of highly compressed HD on such a DVD, and it'll be better than DVD video.. use VC-1 or AVC, the wrapper (MKV, MP4, AVI, WMV) doesn't really make any difference. I've made a few dozen original videos in HD on DVD. In fact, you can author a Blu-Ray variation called AVCHD (same format used on Blu-Ray and DVD HD camcorders), burn to a red laser DVD, and it'll play, with menus and all, on nearly any Blu-Ray player, including the PS3. That's actually part of the spec.
However, don't confused video so compressed with Blu-Ray quality video... it's not. You can fit an hour's worth of AVC 17Mb/s video on either a single layer 3" BD-R or a full sized dual layer DVD-R, and even that's only about half the bitrate supported by Blu-Ray, in 7.5-8.5GB of storage. Try crunching a full HD film, 2x-3x as much playing time, into 1/2 that space, and you're getting into crazy overcompression. A DVD is going to look better on a good display. Not to mention what evils may be done to the sound.
And of course, the only possible reason to do this is piracy.. and by cheapsakes.. even pirates can afford enough booty to buy dual-layer DVDs.
This sort of cycle happens with every new consumer media format, and people say exactly the same things every time. When CD players came out, at $1000 or more, the format was "only for the rich", and even years later, it hadn't been adopted by enough... it was doomed. Of course, the truth was that those early adopters did have enough cash to not only spend $1000 on the player, but to buy many discs. I waited until the CD players fell below $200... some folks waited until they came free in your cornflakes... but the format did launch and take the market.
DVD came out, with players at $1000, and all the video people worried about how evil compressed video would be compared to VHS, how these were only for the rich, etc. The Circuit City "DiVX" thing actually did create a format war, ex-post-facto, at least for a short time, and folks like US spread the word and ensured that DiVX failed. DVD was still too expensive, the discs were expensive, they'd just never be able to oust VHS... until they did. I waited until the players cost about $200... some didn't buy them unitl you could pick one up at a yard sale for $2.00 (that one's installed in the kids' TV room, so they didn't have to drag out their PS2 or the DVD players from their rooms).
SACD and DVD-Audio came out, with $1000 players and a format war from the get-go. People complained about the expense of the formats, how these would only ever be used by high-end audiophile types, etc. They were kind of correct on this one, for several reasons. The format wars certainly split the market. And the market here was inherently limited, since very few people in the USA actually have stereo systems in which CD is the weakest link. So the real expense of getting the most out of SACD or DVD-Audio is dramatically more than the cost of the player. And you can't rip it to your iPod (well, not easily).
Now it's Blu-Ray... it came out with $1000 players, and people said exactly the same things they said with CD and DVD did this... maybe they were too young to know it, but they did. Now they're down to sub $200 players.. I bought mine at the $400 level... I was already committed, being into HD video production, and just needed for the format war to end (I bought a BD-R drive six months before I bought a player for my media room). If they had put BD or something like it out in 1999, it would more than likely have been marginalized like SACD, but HDTV was already well on the way... enough at least that most of the early adopter types already had their HDTVs... or, as in my case, were on their second one. The digital switch-over helps too (and will continue to).. people are getting better quality video, if they watch video at all, like it or not.
Downloading of anything like HD isn't practical yet. Most people don't have the internet connections, and of those who do, none have ISPs who will tolerate a few 30GB downloads per week. The little "HD" video that is being offered online is lower resolution, overly compressed, and lacks the high quality audio of Blu-Ray.. it's not much better than DVD (of course, when your SD video offerings are a bit worse than DVD, the relative difference suggests "HD" is real, but only within the download world).
But the bandwith issues will be solved... the others, we'll see. The big problem with digital video downloads is the same big problem we had until recently with digtial audio downloads. When all of the recording companies demanded DRM, music was essentially proprietary to sites like iTunes matched with the iPod. That meant no price competition -- you were always paying full retail. Compare that to DVD or Blu-Ray shopping... I rarely pay for anything at or even that near the list price. So that $39.95 "Lost: Season 3" BD I bought on Amazon last year might well have cost me $80 as a download... and another $25-$30 worth of hard disc space or BD-Rs to store it. And after all that, what's it going to play on? I can play it on my main HDTV and one of the HD monitors in my computer room? What about a portable player?
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People are generally happy with what they're used to, but this will change as they get used to other media.
Funny thing is, it works both ways. I was working in video in the days of early digital, and no one would confuse some of the early digital for video... analog, even VHS was superior. MPEG-1 came out, and it was soundly rejected in the American market (though VideoCD's failure had as much to do with the disc change needed for most films.. same basic factor that killed analog Video Disc).
Then, a funny thing happened on the way to HD... my brain started compensating. As I started watching VCD and satellite MPEG-1, I started hating it less. Sure, I could still see all the macroblocks that pop out due to too much filtering of the DCT, but hey, it wasn't so bad, was it. And over time, I started re-noticing all the evils of analog video.
Nowadays, after 10+ years of HD, I can probably still watch analog NTSC OTA/VHS class video, but not without cringing... this is the same stuff that was "the best" back in 1990. DVD's even questionable... it depends on the quality of the compression and the content... I can't possible imagine watching football (either sort) in SD ever again... it just wouldn't be worth it.
The same thing is starting to happen to the American consumer. HD used to be rare, now it's the default. Even if you don't have an HDTV, you're going to be watching downscaled HD if you watch OTA, which is routinely going to be better than DVD quality (they could make it considerably better, but I doubt anyone's doing intelligent hi-res downscaling, there's just not much point). Watch enough of something better, and you WILL gradually erase that filter in your brain that let you like VHS so much.
The Blu-Ray devices in 2003 were NOT compatible with today's consumer Blu-Ray format. Yes, the disc technology was similar (not identical.. they didn't have the hard coating, so all discs were in carriers). These were both recording technologies... they hadn't worked out BD-ROM yet... that was part of the 2006 format, too. Both the Japansese STB and Sony's XDCAM were MPEG-2 based... there was no support for VC-1 or AVC, much less any of the advanced audio formats. There was also no BDJava code, the STB had a different DRM technology, etc.
So it is very correct to state that Blu-Ray was introduced in 2006, and quite incorrect to say it was introduced in 2003.
There are another class of people with BD drives... videographers. Anyone serious about video today has been moving to HD for 3-5 years or more. The Blu-Ray was the last piece of technology needed to deliver full HD video in a consumer format. I played around with pre-BD alternatives... DiVX, WMV9, WMV/HD disc, etc. (I have a red-laser DVD player from Japan that will play these formats in HD, though it doesn't support AVC)... none of these were very useful for things other than over compressed HD for DVD or web release, and the playing was generally restricted to computers, which is a bad idea, particularly thanks to the rise of cheap LCD monitors (most computer LCD monitors are just miserable for video.. not that most consumers bother to calibrate them in any way, either). At least with Blu-Ray, there's not a proper answer.
Actually, that's a bit confused. A 1080/60i transmission has twice the information of a 720/30p transmission. That should be pretty obvious.
What everyone seems to forget... the ATSC standard doesn't include 720/30p... the broadcast standard is 720/60p. That contains exactly the same amount of information as 1080/60i.
Which actually looks better depends on many things. Certainly, if you're pre-processing your 1080/60i, you are losing information .. blurring is just another name for low-pass filtering. I have made dozens of HD videos in 1080/60i, and never felt the need to blur video, anymore than I did back in the 480/60i days. This sort of thing is never necessary on organic video... the human eye won't see flicker in most cases. If you're dealing in something more computer-like, with lots of high-contrast straight lines (video games, etc) you may want that flicker-reducing filtering.
In a normal TV production or film transfer, this kind of filtering is only part of the mastering process.. a good production would not filter the entire film, but selectively add filtering if it's needed to prevent flicker. This is routine...the same kind of thing that's done on a DVD or Blu-Ray by the compression engineer... adding additional bandwidth OR low-pass filtering to prevent visible DCT blocking.
Motion in 60i will certainly look more natural than motion in 30p, but if you're unlucky, you can actually see the frame to frame tearing, "mice teeth", etc. 60p prevents this, but at the expense of resolution, at least for broadcast standards. More recent analog TV gear has employed 3D comb filtering as a display preprocessor to eliminate this, dynamically. This is also done in many digital TV upscalers, as needed (it may depend on your display setting). Most physcial displays don't deal with interlaced video directly anymore, anyway.. they upconvert 60i to 60p or 120p. Certainly 1080i can deliver 1080 scan lines of vertical resolution.. but if you're chosen material is the usual B&W resolution chart, it's going to flicker... but not on a modern TV.
Obviously, the best of both worlds is 1080/60p, but that's not part of either the ATSC or Blu-Ray standard... that's another doubling of the information needed. Of course, as with DVD before it, Blu-Ray supports 24p "NTSCfilm" resolution, which matches the 24fps rates of most film. Not recommended for football, but you'll see the different versus 1080i or 720p in areas of high motion.
HDTVs have only been on sale for half a decade or so, while standard def TVs have been sold by the millions and last a LONG time. I bought a twelve inch Panasonic portable in 1968, I still had it and it still worked a quarter of a century later. My current TV is five years old, and I don't expect to replace it until it burns out. This is how most people do it.
You're a little confused about HDTV... I'm on my second unit, which I bought nearly three years ago. That replaced the unit I bought in 2001 or thereabouts. And that was after drooling over friends' HDTVs for a few years. The first regular OTA public broadcasts began in 1996... that's 13 years ago by my calendar.
And no, people usually don't wait for TVs to "burn out"... they eventually realize that 12" TV they bought in college just isn't doing it for them anymore, put that one in the kitchen, or sell it at a yard sale, and go out and buy something better. Lather, rinse, repeat. Most TVs made these days simply aren't going to "burn out"... the expected life on the average LCD backlight is over 50,000 hours... that's three hours of TV a day for 45 years. The units with LEDs, coming out now, will last indefinitely.
Think about it.. if most people waited for their TVs to die, there would just about zero TV sales. We may only barely even seeing the surge in TV buying expected due to the digital switchover .. we'll see. Even in a depressed economy, Blu-Ray players and software are selling like crazy so far this year, while DVD sales are down, 15-18%.
Entry-level Blu-Ray players are routinely available below $200
I paid thirty for my DVD player. "Expensive" is relative.
Of course it is. But if you're only spending $40 on your DVD player, you're not very concerned about video quality... sure, it's probably a fine match to your TV. But on that kind of budget, you're not the target audience for Blu-Ray or even much of a DVD buyer, in all likelihood. So these things are not for you. But not being a consumer of much old technology, you're probably not in a great position to judge what people who are buying will actually buy.
Whoops... that should read "23 that will play DVDs"... I don't have 203 DVD player, no-siree...
The pace of Blu-Ray player stand-alone sales, in units, is more than twice that of DVD at the same point in DVD's history, again, not counting PS3s. That's the significant fact of those figures... and they're not related to how well DVD players have sold recently, they can stand on their own. I didn't even remotely suggest Blu-Ray players would outsell DVD players this year... that's also not even necessary. If a company is making more money on Blu-Ray hardware than DVD hardware, they're happy about Blu-Ray, regardless of the number of units. Most large CE companies are struggling to make any profit on DVD hardware... which explains why over 85% of it is made in China -- too low profit for anywhere else. Once again, don't think you can measure success in total numbers... if Sony or Pioneer are making money more money on Blu-Ray this year, they're definitely keeping the hardware around for next year, and developing that market.. which means taking away even more DVD unit sales next year. With DVD, a company like Sony is only losing market share... there's nothing they can ever do to gain it, versus the generic Chinese units folks buy at Wal-Mart and Best Buy for $30.
It's also a big mistake to assume every DVD player sale is a Blu-Ray not sold... people buy $20-$40 DVD players for kids, they buy car of portable units, etc. That doesn't mean they're not buying Blu-Ray players... in fact, the more DVD players you own, the more likely you are to own a Blu-Ray player. In my house, we have two devices that will play Blu-Ray and about 203that will play DVDs (a quick sum of Blu-Ray players, DVD players, DVD-ROM and DVD-R drives, game consoles, etc).
And it's going to explode this Christmas... sure, you can buy a $20 DVD player, but since every Blu-Ray player is a DVD player too, Blu-Ray players in the $100-$200 range will fly off the shelves. That's the same point at which DVD started building real critical mass. People don't hook up $20 DVD players to their $2000 HDTVs... and this year, the Blu-Ray players are moving into the same price range occupied by upscaling DVD players these last few years, which is going to push them down into the discount range. It won't be all that long before the only DVD players are those in the $20-$50 range.
And keep in mind here, no one in the business cares about volume -- they care about profits. Many companies (such are Best Buy) are already taking in more profits on Blu-Ray than on DVD... that's right now, no projections needed. It's even possible that Blu-Ray will prove more profitable across the industry this year, versus the heavily discounted DVD... and it's a certainty in 2010. The Consumer Electronics Association projects US sales of Blu-Ray will hit $1.3 billion this year overtaking DVD which it forecasts at $1.2 billion (EE Times). So sure, that's not world-wide, but that's with "only" 12% or so of homes having Blu-Ray players (also counting PS3). And that's sales... profits on BDs vs. DVDs have run 5x higher. Unless they start cuttting prices dramatically, DVD's going to look like the problem this year, at least in the USA.
You're the one getting dazzled by numbers... $22 billion in sales says nothing about whether that's a success or a failure. If it cost you $23 billion to deliver those sales, obviously, you fail. DVD profits have been falling steadily for the last few years.. they're down 15%-18% this year so far. No, you can't blame the recession... theatrical profits are up 15% during the same time period.
I love it... interpreted C64 BASIC running on interpreted 65xx code on interpreted Java on a real MSM7210A (ARM1136EJ-S main CPU with ARM9 and Qualcom proprietary DSP coprocessors) clocked at 528MHz... and that can't beat a 1.02MHz 6510? Hello? Ok... make the 65xx interpreter a JIT for Java byte code... probably illegal, but a cool hack if you can get it. Of course, anyone thinking about emulators knows very well it's not the 6510 that's the problem, it's emulating the VIC-II, the CIA registers, the SID, etc. But this did run on a 7.16MHz 68000 some time ago... one would hope even the interpreted Java goes faster than that.
It's also completely unnecessary, and in fact, a real problem, if you make the C64 go too fast. Back in those days, timing in programs was sometimes delivered by way of timer or video blanking interrupts... and sometimes (particularly in BASIC) the result of an empty loop. Back in my BASIC days (the late 70s), that's pretty much how it was done. After all, no one else is using the machine. Of course, if you want your emulator to behave, you pretty much have to deal with this NOT dragging the whole phone down.
I have a C64 emulator on my old Palm Treo 700p... it stopped being a useful phone some time back, but it still does the C64 thing. Nothing like an open operating system... I know better than Jobs what useless tripe belongs on my device, thank-you-veddy-much.
Naa... written permission doesn't help, either, with Apple... it's always going to be the case of their being the bigger hammer.
I developed some hardware based on the PowerPC platform back in '96-'97. While attending a Be Developer conference, a few of us met with Apple. We were shown Motorola StarMax machines runing MacOS 7.6, we were given all kinds of details on the inner working of the MacOS and what was needed at the HW level to be "Mac Compatible" rather than just "Mac Clone", etc. We were strongly urged to develop our HW in a compatible way, paperwork and agreements were signed, etc. Eight months later, Jobs was back and they put the kebash on the whole thing.
This is simply Real Life when you're working in the Apple Universe. And precisely why the best and brightest put their stuff elsewhere.. people develop iPhone apps because they smell money. Sometimes greed bites you in the ass.
It's a shame, too, but then again, someone needs to do an Apple to Apple. For years, they've made all kinds of money doing a sometimes fairly minimalistic attempt at not-sucking, while everyone around them sucked. That's continued in the phone world... Palm fell of the edge of the tech world five years ago, Verizon works hard to lobotomize every phone they get their hands on, WinCE... I mean Windows Mobile, has continued to lull users to sleep, Symbian... I guess it's out there, but I haven't heard much news in the last two or three years. RIM was just for business critters.
But oddly, that's all changing this year. Apple's gone more closed than ever in the era of openness... they're sucking, more than usual. The new iPhone 3GS was same old, same old... yawn.
Palm's back in some curious-looking form, if Sprint's foolishness doesn't manage to kill them, and they can manage to not suck in ways Apple does suck, they might stand a chance. Hey, if you live in Baltimore, you can even get 4G networking on the new Pre... good luck getting 3G anywhere else, but hey, I'm sure I'll
Android's really compelling, being that at present, it's sucking less than nearly anything else, even though it's still kind of new and unsupported... but hey, that one, I might even bother coding for. The only big suck part there is T-Mobile... they sorta-kinda come in down the end of my driveway, but who wants to walk 1/4 mile just to make a call from home. I guess I could put in a nanocell... or fix the antenna on my roof left from a failed Verizon experiment a few years back. But it's also the idea that practically everyone's about to put out a new Android phone/device Real Soon Now. Motorola's reportedly got 150 people doing Android.
So, really, let Apple continue to suck... they so very desparately crave the competition, and they will hopefully get it.