i mean "ipad clones" in the same way that i would mean "iphone clones". sure there were smartphones out there, but let's be honest, until the iphone came out, most of them (and i went through many of the "best" available in the US) lacked in both interface and functionality. The iPhone showed what a smartphone SHOULD do and made it desirable by the masses. Have you noticed how a smartphone without a touch screen interface is a non starter these days?
Of course, there are slates out there, but how many have the level of refinement, usability and desirability that the iPad has? They may be better specced, but to the average Joe, details like that will take a back seat to form. Like past smartphones, most slates shout "geek". I would expect iPad clones to branch from the slate designs and now that apple has raised the bar, they will be copying it as much as possible.
Well... As soon as I saw this, I said "must have now" and then I saw "No Flash". Apple is essentially crippling the internet to protect their media position. Sorry Steve, I have an iPhone and I have come to terms with lack of flash on it. However, for a device that's intended to compete with a netbook and be a portable computing platform, this just won't cut it. Give us 6 months and we'll be seeing iPad clones in droves anyway. Devices that won't sacrifice functionality in order to protect their media distribution channel. It's really sad, because I was ready to swap this with my iPhone and get a bare bones cheap phone for calls.
Every time the lack of flash on iphone and now ipad is brought up, the debate revolves largely around video, and to a lesser degree around gaming. Unfortunately, you're missing the bigger picture. It's not the big media sites, it's the little unexpected things, like when I go to a restaurant website to place a takeout order and the whole menu is only available as a flash app. it happens frequently. The flash issue for me is about these little interface apps that, without flash, are unusable; not some big honkin, cpu gobbling media site. Sure, the designers should have a non flash version, but with 98% of internet connected pc's having flash installed, well you can see why they don't bother.
that's interesting because i've seen many sites that use captcha and also have a plain button or link next to it that says "listen to this word". When clicked, the words in the captcha are played for you. So, unless you are blind AND deaf, in which case the internet in it's entirety is "inaccessibile" then you should be able to complete the process. Sounds like compliance to me and I'd doubt Google wouldn't implement this functionality.
In the dallas i live in, I see alerts from TXU (on the DMN website) asking people to conserve electricity and turn things off on 100+ degree days. So, i wouldn't be so sure we could handle it.
crappy movies are still crappy in hi-def. good movies are still good in standard def. after spending thousands on my home theater, it's amazing how little hi-def brings to most MOVIES. 10 minutes in and the WOW factor has usually worn off.
that said, hi-def is a godsend for TV. i rarely bother with the non hi-def channels because the quality is SO much worse, far greater than the difference between BR and DVD.
It's a damn shame more people can't see the milky way, it's really an awesome sight. I went most of my life without seeing it in anything but photos. Took an excursion to the McDonald observatory and my first view of it really took my breath away. You KNOW there are a lot of stars, you KNOW space is big, really big, but it was almost overwhelming to lay back in the grass and see so much of the universe above me. If you've never seen it, you owe it to yourself to get a peek before you die.
"The OS you are looking for is called Windows Mobile. Its been around a pretty long time and does not restrict anything you put on it."
Not always, like many other mobile features, this can and often is also disabled by the carrier. I've had HTC and moto smartphones (winMo) that flat out refuse to install apps OR require the app to have a certificate. At least with the iphone, if it's on the store, it will install and work.
the kind of people willing to "create your own customized firmware" for a winMo phone are the kind equally comfortable jailbreaking an iphone. The average joe is NOT comfortable with either of these and for them the issue of "restriction" is largely a non issue. The kind of apps that require a hacked handset are probably not what they're looking for anyway.
my only real gripe with the apple app model is the cost of entry for devs. I don't have mac and I'm not going to buy one just to write an app. At least on a winMo device, I was able to load up visual studio and write an app. Yes, VS costs money, but you can get cheap copies of VS all over the place. Cheaper than a mac anyway.
some bright lad throws this out every time someone complains about the ass backwards predictive text on the iPhone. On every other phone I've ever owned (moto, nokia, palm, samsung, htc and a couple others) when you type, the suggested words are OPTIONS. In other words, it makes a SUGGESTION but if i don't explicitly pick one of the presented options, my text is entered AS I TYPED IT.
Contrast that with my iPhone. You're typing along and it comes up with a suggestion. If i continue typing, the phone REPLACES WHAT I TYPED as if it knows better. I have to stop typing and tap the little X next to the suggestion to cancel it. Just seems very intrusive from a company know for a slick UI.
yeah you can turn off the autocorrect, big whoop. I get a choice between a know it all phone and disabling useful functionality. Hey, Apple, thinking different just to be different isn't always smart.
This is one of my biggest peeves with my iPhone.
Re:Frankly, I was disappointed
on
Reviews: Star Trek
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
"Before I begin... it all made a disappointing kind of sense, as these three guys have never met a contrived and incoherent plot they didn't love." so you don't like Abrams and it sounds like you went in wanting it to suck
"The science is woeful. I know we have to cut movies some slack, Star Trek was noted for being pretty accurate with the real-world science they used, but that's certainly not the case here." WHAT? Granted some gadgets or ideas made their debut in Star Trek and later inspired people to make them a reality, but I don't think much of Star Trek is based on reality. They have always played free and loose with science. If a writer has a scene in mind, they will invent the science that makes that scene possible no matter how far fetched.
"He and the writers have only a passing familiarity with basic stuff like the command structure of a starship."
I'm curious where you got YOUR familiarity with the command structure of a STARSHIP. Starfleet was always a quasi-military organization from the beginning, so a strict adherence to military custom and chain of command should not be expected.
"There's a same-sex romantic relationship between two main characters, that I thought was highly implausible and unbelievable, for two major reasons."
Because homosexuality has been "cured" in the 24th century. are you a republican?
"The portrayal of the Vulcans was pretty inconsistent...another Vulcan elder smiled at one point."
I recall Sarek and several other Vulcans cracking half-smiles and smirks in other episodes and movies.
"Simon Pegg does the best he can as Scotty, but writing that role as comic relief was a terrible mistake."
i almost wonder if you watched the same Start Trek as me. Scotty cracking wise in the face of disaster or while making a miracle happen was also fairly common.
"Only hardcore fans will even notice those changes, so it's like a secret little 'Up yours' to the fans. The fans that he claims he doesn't need. The same fans that kept Star Trek going for the last 40 years."
taking this a little personally here. The sad truth is that a reboot is required after 40 years because the original cast and those who came after have so mangled the entire concept. The other sad truth is if Star Trek had never come back after the cancellation of TOS (no movies, no spinoffs) and Abrams had wanted to make a big movie loosely based on some cool old TV show, the movie would be just as big a hit without the hardcore fans...
I call bullshit. I just installed the IE8 push from windows update this morning. On first launch one of the questions was "do you want to make internet explorer your default browser". I said no. A quick test just now by clicking a link in an email and also opening a local html file shows that FIREFOX is still my default browser.
I find it likely that some moron just clicked through the screens and didn't read them. The default answer to the default browser question is of course "yes". Failure to read the screen is not a sign of a vast conspiracy to take over your internet experience...
"they can have my rocket when they pry it from my cold, dead hands"
"when rockets are outlawed, only outlaws will have rockets"
weak, i know. it's a boring rainy day...
"since, like all rich people, they obviously lied/cheated/murdered the lower classes"
no, not all 'rich' people get that way by blatant exploitation. however, the republican sacred cow of trickle down economics is a bullshit theory that only helps the rich in the long run. it works great as long as that top 5% or so are making money. unfortunately, when things go bad, the OTHER 95% are left holding the bag and at that point the rich are doing well at the expense of the rest.
seriously, is it not better to promote policies that make sure the rest of the population does well? By well i don't mean they are getting rich, just not taking the shaft and living hand to mouth. Look at it this way, if I make $1MM a year and lose 50% I'm still well off, if I make $30K a year and lose 50% I'm in a lot of trouble. It seems more reasonable to let the rich take the hit since they are better able to absorb losses.
And another thing. You need to make $250K/year to 'qualify' for the Obama tax. Now, maybe you make that much and with your cars and your overvalued home and all the rest you think 'i'm not rich'. Well, by the standards of most people in this country you are. It's not everyone else's fault you went into debt up to your eyeballs.
The ironic thing about all this is a lot of people I know that are most up in arms over this tax issue make $20-$50K a year and will likely NEVER make enough to get hurt by this tax. Yet still they protest as if Obama was taking their only child.
so what you're implying is we should just depopulate large areas of the country because of the risk of a natural/weather disaster? while we're at it let's get everyone off the west coast (earthquakes), hawaii (volcanic eruption), the east coast and gulf (hurricanes), the north and north east (blizzards). looks like the entire country is filled with idiots...
at that point we're either mexican or canadian, pick one.
"Technically, yes." Remember, you're on slashdot, home of some of the most pedantically nitpicking people on the face of the earth. People that only think in technicalities and perfect scenarios. I love how many perfect, law abiding drivers there are on this site.
Meanwhile, back in the real world...the left turn issue is only a distraction. The point is that cash strapped cities are rigging the system to collect more money. If tomorrow your city sped up the timers on parking meters to collect more parking ticket revenue would you say "oh well you shouldn't have broken the law, and fed the meter more often"?
Whatever arguments some of you people have against this policy are pointless if you read this line:
"such requests should be limited to the add-on website or distribution site and should not appear in the game"
All they're saying is your add-on shouldn't pester the user with donation requests IN GAME. You want to charge? Fine, but don't ask for it in the game world. I agree with this 100%, I'm sick of product placement and ads in games. I get enough of that in every OTHER form of media.
no one forced you to sign anything. you want the phone, you sign. if the contract is so abhorrent to you, then walk away or chose another phone. this is no different than any other U.S. cell carrier. In other countries, it may be more common to switch carriers regularly to save money, i don't know. In the U.S. however, coverage, performance and price are all so similar and so pathetic, that it's not worth the effort. Yeah if I had a generic phone i could switch-aroo each month and maybe save $50 a year. wow.
that sucks. i get upwards of 600 shots on my sony alpha on a single charge shooting at 10mp RAW. I got a couple of extra batteries when i bought it, thinking i'd need them, rarely happens. could you be using a lot of on camera flash? that will eat up batteries in a hurry. Might want to get a flash to mount in the shoe (assuming your model has one, you didn't say what it was). The flash will have it's own batteries, so at least if IT dies you can keep shooting.
"No contracts to buy one would be number one on my list"
I just don't get this contract paranoia that always pops up in iPhone threads. Do you change providers that often? Do you cancel your phone service to have money to pay the electric bill? If so, then it wouldn't seem like cell service would be that important to you.
You may have a beef with AT&T, but for every one of you, you'll find someone with a similar beef with Sprint, TMobile, etc. None of them do more than the bare minimum, so pick your poison. Personally, I've been with AT&T (cingular, et al.) for 8 years. Yes, they do things occasionally that are irritating, but I have to ask if another provider would be any different and unfortunately (judging from people I know that ARE on the other providers) the answer is no, they wouldn't.
I go into the stores, talk the to sales reps and they are just as clueless as AT&T reps. The devices are not a compelling reason to switch either. Pre iPhone, none of the competition offered anything substantially different. Post iPhone, they are still playing catch up to its usability. I spent most of those 8 years getting a new phone every 6-8 months and waiting for what was essentially a small PC that happened to make calls. If i gotta extend my contract 18 months to get it, who cares?
exactly. i just wish i could come up with a trivial and inane idea that would make ME rich. remember the guy with the pet rock? i'd have to say the iphone app store is full of pet rocks. sure, bash the people that use/buy these things, but the developer is laughing all the way to the bank...
with my 65" 1080p DLP, blu-ray, 7.1 surround system i've come to the conclusion that a crappy hi-def movie is still crappy. unfortunately, crap reigns supreme in Hollywood these days. endless mediocre remakes of mediocre movies. The quality of transfer to BR is also extremely hit or miss. yes, some of that is related to the quality of the source, but too many BR movies look like someone recorded a stream from the regular dvd played on an upconverting player...
No, my Roku box isn't the best quality picture sometimes, but if the movie/tv show/concert is enjoyable, I've found the image quality isn't as important to me. My only REAL complaint is the selection is only a fraction of the Netflix catalog.
Slashdot Mirror
i mean "ipad clones" in the same way that i would mean "iphone clones". sure there were smartphones out there, but let's be honest, until the iphone came out, most of them (and i went through many of the "best" available in the US) lacked in both interface and functionality. The iPhone showed what a smartphone SHOULD do and made it desirable by the masses. Have you noticed how a smartphone without a touch screen interface is a non starter these days?
Of course, there are slates out there, but how many have the level of refinement, usability and desirability that the iPad has? They may be better specced, but to the average Joe, details like that will take a back seat to form. Like past smartphones, most slates shout "geek". I would expect iPad clones to branch from the slate designs and now that apple has raised the bar, they will be copying it as much as possible.
Well... As soon as I saw this, I said "must have now" and then I saw "No Flash". Apple is essentially crippling the internet to protect their media position. Sorry Steve, I have an iPhone and I have come to terms with lack of flash on it. However, for a device that's intended to compete with a netbook and be a portable computing platform, this just won't cut it. Give us 6 months and we'll be seeing iPad clones in droves anyway. Devices that won't sacrifice functionality in order to protect their media distribution channel. It's really sad, because I was ready to swap this with my iPhone and get a bare bones cheap phone for calls. Every time the lack of flash on iphone and now ipad is brought up, the debate revolves largely around video, and to a lesser degree around gaming. Unfortunately, you're missing the bigger picture. It's not the big media sites, it's the little unexpected things, like when I go to a restaurant website to place a takeout order and the whole menu is only available as a flash app. it happens frequently. The flash issue for me is about these little interface apps that, without flash, are unusable; not some big honkin, cpu gobbling media site. Sure, the designers should have a non flash version, but with 98% of internet connected pc's having flash installed, well you can see why they don't bother.
if means less remakes of second rate movies i'm all for it.
this app sounds interesting. too bad I'm not going to pay $3.99 just to see if it is. If ever there was an app that needed a demo...
that's interesting because i've seen many sites that use captcha and also have a plain button or link next to it that says "listen to this word". When clicked, the words in the captcha are played for you. So, unless you are blind AND deaf, in which case the internet in it's entirety is "inaccessibile" then you should be able to complete the process. Sounds like compliance to me and I'd doubt Google wouldn't implement this functionality.
Watched flight 2 first, the thing looks like a little model until you see the guy run up with a fire extinguisher at the end. Nice work.
In the dallas i live in, I see alerts from TXU (on the DMN website) asking people to conserve electricity and turn things off on 100+ degree days. So, i wouldn't be so sure we could handle it.
crappy movies are still crappy in hi-def. good movies are still good in standard def. after spending thousands on my home theater, it's amazing how little hi-def brings to most MOVIES. 10 minutes in and the WOW factor has usually worn off.
that said, hi-def is a godsend for TV. i rarely bother with the non hi-def channels because the quality is SO much worse, far greater than the difference between BR and DVD.
It's a damn shame more people can't see the milky way, it's really an awesome sight. I went most of my life without seeing it in anything but photos. Took an excursion to the McDonald observatory and my first view of it really took my breath away. You KNOW there are a lot of stars, you KNOW space is big, really big, but it was almost overwhelming to lay back in the grass and see so much of the universe above me. If you've never seen it, you owe it to yourself to get a peek before you die.
"The OS you are looking for is called Windows Mobile. Its been around a pretty long time and does not restrict anything you put on it."
Not always, like many other mobile features, this can and often is also disabled by the carrier. I've had HTC and moto smartphones (winMo) that flat out refuse to install apps OR require the app to have a certificate. At least with the iphone, if it's on the store, it will install and work.
the kind of people willing to "create your own customized firmware" for a winMo phone are the kind equally comfortable jailbreaking an iphone. The average joe is NOT comfortable with either of these and for them the issue of "restriction" is largely a non issue. The kind of apps that require a hacked handset are probably not what they're looking for anyway.
my only real gripe with the apple app model is the cost of entry for devs. I don't have mac and I'm not going to buy one just to write an app. At least on a winMo device, I was able to load up visual studio and write an app. Yes, VS costs money, but you can get cheap copies of VS all over the place. Cheaper than a mac anyway.
"Autocorrection can be disabled, you know. "
some bright lad throws this out every time someone complains about the ass backwards predictive text on the iPhone. On every other phone I've ever owned (moto, nokia, palm, samsung, htc and a couple others) when you type, the suggested words are OPTIONS. In other words, it makes a SUGGESTION but if i don't explicitly pick one of the presented options, my text is entered AS I TYPED IT.
Contrast that with my iPhone. You're typing along and it comes up with a suggestion. If i continue typing, the phone REPLACES WHAT I TYPED as if it knows better. I have to stop typing and tap the little X next to the suggestion to cancel it. Just seems very intrusive from a company know for a slick UI.
yeah you can turn off the autocorrect, big whoop. I get a choice between a know it all phone and disabling useful functionality. Hey, Apple, thinking different just to be different isn't always smart.
This is one of my biggest peeves with my iPhone.
"Before I begin... it all made a disappointing kind of sense, as these three guys have never met a contrived and incoherent plot they didn't love."
so you don't like Abrams and it sounds like you went in wanting it to suck
"The science is woeful. I know we have to cut movies some slack, Star Trek was noted for being pretty accurate with the real-world science they used, but that's certainly not the case here."
WHAT? Granted some gadgets or ideas made their debut in Star Trek and later inspired people to make them a reality, but I don't think much of Star Trek is based on reality. They have always played free and loose with science. If a writer has a scene in mind, they will invent the science that makes that scene possible no matter how far fetched.
"He and the writers have only a passing familiarity with basic stuff like the command structure of a starship."
I'm curious where you got YOUR familiarity with the command structure of a STARSHIP. Starfleet was always a quasi-military organization from the beginning, so a strict adherence to military custom and chain of command should not be expected.
"There's a same-sex romantic relationship between two main characters, that I thought was highly implausible and unbelievable, for two major reasons."
Because homosexuality has been "cured" in the 24th century. are you a republican?
"The portrayal of the Vulcans was pretty inconsistent...another Vulcan elder smiled at one point."
I recall Sarek and several other Vulcans cracking half-smiles and smirks in other episodes and movies.
"Simon Pegg does the best he can as Scotty, but writing that role as comic relief was a terrible mistake."
i almost wonder if you watched the same Start Trek as me. Scotty cracking wise in the face of disaster or while making a miracle happen was also fairly common.
"Only hardcore fans will even notice those changes, so it's like a secret little 'Up yours' to the fans. The fans that he claims he doesn't need. The same fans that kept Star Trek going for the last 40 years."
taking this a little personally here. The sad truth is that a reboot is required after 40 years because the original cast and those who came after have so mangled the entire concept. The other sad truth is if Star Trek had never come back after the cancellation of TOS (no movies, no spinoffs) and Abrams had wanted to make a big movie loosely based on some cool old TV show, the movie would be just as big a hit without the hardcore fans...
don't let the quarks hit you in the ass on your way out the door Austria.
and isn't pulling out considered a poor method of birth control anyway?
I call bullshit. I just installed the IE8 push from windows update this morning. On first launch one of the questions was "do you want to make internet explorer your default browser". I said no. A quick test just now by clicking a link in an email and also opening a local html file shows that FIREFOX is still my default browser.
I find it likely that some moron just clicked through the screens and didn't read them. The default answer to the default browser question is of course "yes". Failure to read the screen is not a sign of a vast conspiracy to take over your internet experience...
"they can have my rocket when they pry it from my cold, dead hands"
"when rockets are outlawed, only outlaws will have rockets"
weak, i know. it's a boring rainy day...
"since, like all rich people, they obviously lied/cheated/murdered the lower classes"
no, not all 'rich' people get that way by blatant exploitation. however, the republican sacred cow of trickle down economics is a bullshit theory that only helps the rich in the long run. it works great as long as that top 5% or so are making money. unfortunately, when things go bad, the OTHER 95% are left holding the bag and at that point the rich are doing well at the expense of the rest.
seriously, is it not better to promote policies that make sure the rest of the population does well? By well i don't mean they are getting rich, just not taking the shaft and living hand to mouth. Look at it this way, if I make $1MM a year and lose 50% I'm still well off, if I make $30K a year and lose 50% I'm in a lot of trouble. It seems more reasonable to let the rich take the hit since they are better able to absorb losses.
And another thing. You need to make $250K/year to 'qualify' for the Obama tax. Now, maybe you make that much and with your cars and your overvalued home and all the rest you think 'i'm not rich'. Well, by the standards of most people in this country you are. It's not everyone else's fault you went into debt up to your eyeballs.
The ironic thing about all this is a lot of people I know that are most up in arms over this tax issue make $20-$50K a year and will likely NEVER make enough to get hurt by this tax. Yet still they protest as if Obama was taking their only child.
"if you're dumb enough to live in tornado alley"
so what you're implying is we should just depopulate large areas of the country because of the risk of a natural/weather disaster? while we're at it let's get everyone off the west coast (earthquakes), hawaii (volcanic eruption), the east coast and gulf (hurricanes), the north and north east (blizzards). looks like the entire country is filled with idiots...
at that point we're either mexican or canadian, pick one.
"Technically, yes."
Remember, you're on slashdot, home of some of the most pedantically nitpicking people on the face of the earth. People that only think in technicalities and perfect scenarios. I love how many perfect, law abiding drivers there are on this site.
Meanwhile, back in the real world...the left turn issue is only a distraction. The point is that cash strapped cities are rigging the system to collect more money. If tomorrow your city sped up the timers on parking meters to collect more parking ticket revenue would you say "oh well you shouldn't have broken the law, and fed the meter more often"?
Whatever arguments some of you people have against this policy are pointless if you read this line:
"such requests should be limited to the add-on website or distribution site and should not appear in the game"
All they're saying is your add-on shouldn't pester the user with donation requests IN GAME. You want to charge? Fine, but don't ask for it in the game world. I agree with this 100%, I'm sick of product placement and ads in games. I get enough of that in every OTHER form of media.
no one forced you to sign anything. you want the phone, you sign. if the contract is so abhorrent to you, then walk away or chose another phone. this is no different than any other U.S. cell carrier. In other countries, it may be more common to switch carriers regularly to save money, i don't know. In the U.S. however, coverage, performance and price are all so similar and so pathetic, that it's not worth the effort. Yeah if I had a generic phone i could switch-aroo each month and maybe save $50 a year. wow.
that sucks. i get upwards of 600 shots on my sony alpha on a single charge shooting at 10mp RAW. I got a couple of extra batteries when i bought it, thinking i'd need them, rarely happens.
could you be using a lot of on camera flash? that will eat up batteries in a hurry. Might want to get a flash to mount in the shoe (assuming your model has one, you didn't say what it was). The flash will have it's own batteries, so at least if IT dies you can keep shooting.
"No contracts to buy one would be number one on my list"
I just don't get this contract paranoia that always pops up in iPhone threads. Do you change providers that often? Do you cancel your phone service to have money to pay the electric bill? If so, then it wouldn't seem like cell service would be that important to you.
You may have a beef with AT&T, but for every one of you, you'll find someone with a similar beef with Sprint, TMobile, etc. None of them do more than the bare minimum, so pick your poison. Personally, I've been with AT&T (cingular, et al.) for 8 years. Yes, they do things occasionally that are irritating, but I have to ask if another provider would be any different and unfortunately (judging from people I know that ARE on the other providers) the answer is no, they wouldn't.
I go into the stores, talk the to sales reps and they are just as clueless as AT&T reps. The devices are not a compelling reason to switch either. Pre iPhone, none of the competition offered anything substantially different. Post iPhone, they are still playing catch up to its usability. I spent most of those 8 years getting a new phone every 6-8 months and waiting for what was essentially a small PC that happened to make calls. If i gotta extend my contract 18 months to get it, who cares?
"I was watching some stuff on the U-2 a few days ago"
here are some recent articles on the U2. Journalist gets a flight and writes a series of them...good reading.
Future of U2:
http://www.flyingmag.com/turbine/1377/dragon-hawks-the-u-2s-future.html
Training/Prep For U2 Flight:
http://www.flyingmag.com/piloting/1378/so-you-want-to-fly-a-u-2.html
U2 Flight Report:
http://www.flyingmag.com/turbine/1379/dragon-hearts.html
How to score a U2 Flight:
http://www.flyingmag.com/flyinglessons/1376/from-dream-to-reality-a-girl-a-plane-and-a-space-suit.html
exactly. i just wish i could come up with a trivial and inane idea that would make ME rich. remember the guy with the pet rock? i'd have to say the iphone app store is full of pet rocks. sure, bash the people that use/buy these things, but the developer is laughing all the way to the bank...
with my 65" 1080p DLP, blu-ray, 7.1 surround system i've come to the conclusion that a crappy hi-def movie is still crappy. unfortunately, crap reigns supreme in Hollywood these days. endless mediocre remakes of mediocre movies. The quality of transfer to BR is also extremely hit or miss. yes, some of that is related to the quality of the source, but too many BR movies look like someone recorded a stream from the regular dvd played on an upconverting player...
No, my Roku box isn't the best quality picture sometimes, but if the movie/tv show/concert is enjoyable, I've found the image quality isn't as important to me. My only REAL complaint is the selection is only a fraction of the Netflix catalog.