In a word, yes.
The data is filtered and processed at multiple stages, that is part of why the system is setup in a tiered architecture.
The actual data that turns into a visual result (graph) is fairly small after all the stages are complete. It is like mining for diamonds where you discard almost everything you pull from the ground and keep only the smallest portion.
After all, if the problem was easy there would be no need for all of this computing to be thrown at it.
I do not see any evidence anecdotally (which is all this reviewer has) that table top gaming is somehow in decline vs Massive Multiplayer Online Games. While the market for MMOG is very large (9 million WoW players and counting) a lot of that is that the audience of WoW and similar games is just much larger than for tabletop games in general since the barrier for consumers to entry is just much lower. Just because MMOG are popular does not mean that table top gaming is becoming less so. My own experience is that tabletop gaming is probably as popular as ever. Of course MMOG are more popular than ever. It is not a zero sum game however as most of the people I play Privateer Press Warmachine with also play MMOG, and SCA, and etc... Certainly around here the miniatures gaming is very strong. Our Privateer Press Warmachine/Hordes tournaments are completely filled and getting more popular all the time. A great game combined with a great community is a killer combination, not to mention Privateer Press is one of the coolest companies out there.
If anything over the long term an increase of MMOG will likely increase tabletop gaming, not decrease it as more people are exposed to the whole pantheon of gaming out there.
- $2000 is way to much to spend on a standalone DVD player. I think we can all agree on that, especially in light of this article
- For many people a $35 DVD player is plenty. People that spent $60, sorry you spent too much if all you got was 480p output, but maybe your player will last longer though, but does it really matter if the player lasts for 18 months vs 3 years if it costs you twice as much.
- For those of us with Plasman/LCD/DLP/etc HDTV displays with HDMI or DVI inputs this article is of great interest to us. Every time we turn on our TV there is upconverting going on. If we are watching a DVD then it is either the TV or the DVD player that de-interlaces and upconverts. If we watch SDTV it is either the TV or the Media PC that upconverts. Unfortunately even more expensive TVs do not do the best upconverting, and can often introduce delay in the video image that effects the audio sync if you use an external audio device, like a reciever. So for those people the fact that plain old $60 NVIDIA video cards (with passive coolers or small fans) can deliver very high quality de-interlacers and upconverting this is very interesting. Espcially to those of us with, or planning to build Media PCs.
That is to say if you don't got the display to make this matter then of course it does not matter, but given the wealth of features in a Media PC this added bonus of superb video output is just one more reason to build one, assuming you have the know how. Being a geek does have its priviliges you know.
They mention that you can get all the same features on the passively cooled lower end models. The coolers is only for the 3D cards that move pixels for BF2. If you are not gaming you can get the much less expensive cards.
Also a few things you, and apparently a lot of people here are not considering, that is not everyone is like you.
For $30-$70 all you get in a DVD player is a 480i or 480p output. That is great if you are running SDTV to an older CRT. However if you are running a HDTV even 480p is painful to watch and letting the HDTV TV do the upconverting is never the best and worse, it can introduce a sync problem between the video and audio that can be hard to eliminate if you use a reciever to manager your audio.
Upconverting does happen when you display SDTV on any HDTV device and image quality is highly dependent on the quality of the upconvert and de-interlace
According to this articule inexpensive video cards for less than $60 give you all the features of the higher end 3D gaming cards and they come with smaller fans or passive coolers. That is really good news for Media PC builders.
If you are going home to plain old SDTV then of this article is not for you. However if you are going home to a high quality HDTV Plasma/LCD/DLP or similar then it should be very much of interest as this does not only mean better DVD viewing and longer life to your DVD collection in the face of HDDVD and BlueRay but also means the SDTV signal on cable can be effectively de-interlaced and upconverted to give you more value for your monthly cable $$.
So of course, if you go out and buy a $400 CRT SDTV then do not build a $300-$500 media PC unless you really like how they do time shifting and other features. However if you spend $2000-$3000 on the display and then go and buy a $30 DVD player, well that is just dumb.
No of course they aren't if a media PC just played DVD players, but it does a whole lot more than that doesn't it?
First of all I assume that you have a 480i TV, or if you are lucky a 480p CRT. If that is all you have for a display of course the $60 is plenty for a DVD player. In fact if all you have is an standard TV then I would say you over paid for that DVD player. Amazon has players with decent features at less than $30.
However if you have a 720p 42-60in Plasma/LCD/DLP or a 1080p 60in+ then you will probably not be happy with that $60 DVD player. You will either want to get an upconverting DVD player that can display at least 720p with a decent output or build a Media PC. Oppo makes a decent upconverting player that competes with much more expensive players for less than $200 and even has a nice remote. You can build a media PC that also does the upconverting and de-interlacing for you and does it for DVDs and recorded TV programs making even regular old standard TV better for probably $300 or so. Given that the vast majority of Cable is still standard TV upconverting and de-interlacing can help make it look a lot better. In essence you get more for your cable subscription then you would otherwise. So the price of the media PC has to be factored into the overall improvement in image quality you can get.
So to recap the features of a Media PC over a DVD player $30-$2000.
- Store TV on hard disks for later time shifted viewing, commercial skipping and other nice features
- User upgradeable storage
- Remote file server support so you can store the disks in another room (MythTV)
- Upconvert and de-interlace DVD content for display on HDTV quality screens and do so better than dedicated players with inexpensive NVIDIA or ATI cards
- Upconvert and de-interlace regular SDTV and recorded content
- Provide PC like features like instant weather, web browsing, weeks of TV schedules, MP3 player with visualizer output to the TV, etc...
- Wireless serving of files to other devices
A Media PC is a very cost effective solution to provide a whole host of services to you TV viewing. If you are also in a position to have the knowhow to deploy a complex MythTV setup even better. Labor is cost of course but being a geek, and better yet a linux geek does have its advantages...
The stock fans on video cards are no more impressive than the stock fans that come with CPUs from AMD and Intel. If you want quiet then you get an after market fan like those from Zalman. Not only are they a lot quieter they are often a lot better at cooling. I retrofitted several machines at work and at home with the Zalman VF900-Cu LED and fan noise was nearly eliminated while at the same time overall the GPU temps drop. The stock fan at home on my ATI X850 XTPE could not keep my GPU from overheating and I would occasionally hear a beep as it clocked itself down because of temperature. With the Zalman even though ambient temperatures in my computer room have exceeded what they had been in the past I have not heard one beep from my card. It was the best upgrade I have purchased this year.
That and the zalman fan is a lot smaller than most stock GPU coolers which is also a plus for sometimes cramped Media PC cases. Which reminds me, I have a Media PC setup to start building. A recent upgrade from a CRT to a Plasma is requiring a rebuild to accomodate the higher resolution of the display device.
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In a word, yes. The data is filtered and processed at multiple stages, that is part of why the system is setup in a tiered architecture. The actual data that turns into a visual result (graph) is fairly small after all the stages are complete. It is like mining for diamonds where you discard almost everything you pull from the ground and keep only the smallest portion. After all, if the problem was easy there would be no need for all of this computing to be thrown at it.
I do not see any evidence anecdotally (which is all this reviewer has) that table top gaming is somehow in decline vs Massive Multiplayer Online Games. While the market for MMOG is very large (9 million WoW players and counting) a lot of that is that the audience of WoW and similar games is just much larger than for tabletop games in general since the barrier for consumers to entry is just much lower. Just because MMOG are popular does not mean that table top gaming is becoming less so. My own experience is that tabletop gaming is probably as popular as ever. Of course MMOG are more popular than ever. It is not a zero sum game however as most of the people I play Privateer Press Warmachine with also play MMOG, and SCA, and etc... Certainly around here the miniatures gaming is very strong. Our Privateer Press Warmachine/Hordes tournaments are completely filled and getting more popular all the time. A great game combined with a great community is a killer combination, not to mention Privateer Press is one of the coolest companies out there. If anything over the long term an increase of MMOG will likely increase tabletop gaming, not decrease it as more people are exposed to the whole pantheon of gaming out there.
Here is what I am reading.
- $2000 is way to much to spend on a standalone DVD player. I think we can all agree on that, especially in light of this article
- For many people a $35 DVD player is plenty. People that spent $60, sorry you spent too much if all you got was 480p output, but maybe your player will last longer though, but does it really matter if the player lasts for 18 months vs 3 years if it costs you twice as much.
- For those of us with Plasman/LCD/DLP/etc HDTV displays with HDMI or DVI inputs this article is of great interest to us. Every time we turn on our TV there is upconverting going on. If we are watching a DVD then it is either the TV or the DVD player that de-interlaces and upconverts. If we watch SDTV it is either the TV or the Media PC that upconverts. Unfortunately even more expensive TVs do not do the best upconverting, and can often introduce delay in the video image that effects the audio sync if you use an external audio device, like a reciever. So for those people the fact that plain old $60 NVIDIA video cards (with passive coolers or small fans) can deliver very high quality de-interlacers and upconverting this is very interesting. Espcially to those of us with, or planning to build Media PCs.
That is to say if you don't got the display to make this matter then of course it does not matter, but given the wealth of features in a Media PC this added bonus of superb video output is just one more reason to build one, assuming you have the know how. Being a geek does have its priviliges you know.
They mention that you can get all the same features on the passively cooled lower end models. The coolers is only for the 3D cards that move pixels for BF2. If you are not gaming you can get the much less expensive cards.
Also a few things you, and apparently a lot of people here are not considering, that is not everyone is like you.
For $30-$70 all you get in a DVD player is a 480i or 480p output. That is great if you are running SDTV to an older CRT. However if you are running a HDTV even 480p is painful to watch and letting the HDTV TV do the upconverting is never the best and worse, it can introduce a sync problem between the video and audio that can be hard to eliminate if you use a reciever to manager your audio.
Upconverting does happen when you display SDTV on any HDTV device and image quality is highly dependent on the quality of the upconvert and de-interlace
According to this articule inexpensive video cards for less than $60 give you all the features of the higher end 3D gaming cards and they come with smaller fans or passive coolers. That is really good news for Media PC builders.
If you are going home to plain old SDTV then of this article is not for you. However if you are going home to a high quality HDTV Plasma/LCD/DLP or similar then it should be very much of interest as this does not only mean better DVD viewing and longer life to your DVD collection in the face of HDDVD and BlueRay but also means the SDTV signal on cable can be effectively de-interlaced and upconverted to give you more value for your monthly cable $$.
So of course, if you go out and buy a $400 CRT SDTV then do not build a $300-$500 media PC unless you really like how they do time shifting and other features. However if you spend $2000-$3000 on the display and then go and buy a $30 DVD player, well that is just dumb.
No of course they aren't if a media PC just played DVD players, but it does a whole lot more than that doesn't it?
First of all I assume that you have a 480i TV, or if you are lucky a 480p CRT. If that is all you have for a display of course the $60 is plenty for a DVD player. In fact if all you have is an standard TV then I would say you over paid for that DVD player. Amazon has players with decent features at less than $30.
However if you have a 720p 42-60in Plasma/LCD/DLP or a 1080p 60in+ then you will probably not be happy with that $60 DVD player. You will either want to get an upconverting DVD player that can display at least 720p with a decent output or build a Media PC. Oppo makes a decent upconverting player that competes with much more expensive players for less than $200 and even has a nice remote. You can build a media PC that also does the upconverting and de-interlacing for you and does it for DVDs and recorded TV programs making even regular old standard TV better for probably $300 or so. Given that the vast majority of Cable is still standard TV upconverting and de-interlacing can help make it look a lot better. In essence you get more for your cable subscription then you would otherwise. So the price of the media PC has to be factored into the overall improvement in image quality you can get.
So to recap the features of a Media PC over a DVD player $30-$2000.
- Store TV on hard disks for later time shifted viewing, commercial skipping and other nice features
- User upgradeable storage
- Remote file server support so you can store the disks in another room (MythTV)
- Upconvert and de-interlace DVD content for display on HDTV quality screens and do so better than dedicated players with inexpensive NVIDIA or ATI cards
- Upconvert and de-interlace regular SDTV and recorded content
- Provide PC like features like instant weather, web browsing, weeks of TV schedules, MP3 player with visualizer output to the TV, etc...
- Wireless serving of files to other devices
A Media PC is a very cost effective solution to provide a whole host of services to you TV viewing. If you are also in a position to have the knowhow to deploy a complex MythTV setup even better. Labor is cost of course but being a geek, and better yet a linux geek does have its advantages...
The stock fans on video cards are no more impressive than the stock fans that come with CPUs from AMD and Intel. If you want quiet then you get an after market fan like those from Zalman. Not only are they a lot quieter they are often a lot better at cooling. I retrofitted several machines at work and at home with the Zalman VF900-Cu LED and fan noise was nearly eliminated while at the same time overall the GPU temps drop. The stock fan at home on my ATI X850 XTPE could not keep my GPU from overheating and I would occasionally hear a beep as it clocked itself down because of temperature. With the Zalman even though ambient temperatures in my computer room have exceeded what they had been in the past I have not heard one beep from my card. It was the best upgrade I have purchased this year. That and the zalman fan is a lot smaller than most stock GPU coolers which is also a plus for sometimes cramped Media PC cases. Which reminds me, I have a Media PC setup to start building. A recent upgrade from a CRT to a Plasma is requiring a rebuild to accomodate the higher resolution of the display device.