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| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19637 |  GX-Alan (78) Feb 19, 2008 - 03:24 am
| I called it in my articles.
1) The Paramount Deal was going to accelerate the end of the high-def war rather than prolong it because it was going to up the ante where it'd be impossible to sustain the low-level war.
2) Blu-ray would ultimately win no matter how cheap HD DVD players got because in the minds of Hollywood, Blu-ray offers better security both directly and indirectly. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19395 | GX-Alan (78) Feb 04, 2008 - 05:55 am
| Well, we don't know the price yet... :)
I think the market for this is as follows: Your uncle/friend/boss wants a really high end computer and it turns out that he happens to use some sort of multimedia/photo app that's multicore aware.
You can
a) build him an overclocked system and then upgrade his system a few years later and give him full technical support
b) tell him to buy a Skulltrail system from HP/Dell/etc knowing that he'll get a great system and now you won't have to be the tech support guy.
The other market (and this is why our workstation articles have always done well) is in corporations where the company will buy a home computer for you (for telecommuting) but require you to justify why you need a particular spec.
Skulltrail is the ultimate gaming workstation. If you just play games, there's no need for it. What Skulltrail lets you achieve is a workstation that is ALSO capable of keeping up with the fastest gaming machines too. It can do double duty. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=18803 | GX-Alan (78) Dec 18, 2007 - 06:43 pm
| Well, my score is based upon the fun factor of the game. In terms of long-term replayability, GT5 is exceptional. When you think about games that last only 8 or 10 hours, there's a certain amount of value. Then there are games with "infinite replay" value that end up being sort of repetitive and boring, where after a while, you stop caring.
GT5 is really that much fun.
The "you need a steering wheel" issue isn't as big of deal. It's like needing a guitar for Guitar Hero. If you're a Guitar Hero fan, you don't need to buy a new Guitar for the latest sequel. The same is true for the Gran Turismo series. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=18112 | GX-Alan (78) Nov 19, 2007 - 09:13 pm
| That's the thing though. People discount these Polks because 99% of Polk speakers are mid-fi/low-fi stuff. The LSi9's are completely different. It's like saying a Lamborghini Gallardo isn't that great because it's from VW.
Take a listen to them, I found that I had to go to Dynaudio Contours or Sonus Faber Cremona Auditors to get a sound that was "arguably" better. The Revel M22's are very clean, but don't have the full-range performance of the LSi 9.
The JVC receiver was really engineered as a Japanese statement receiver. It's almost on par with the Denon AVR-4802R -- and it's a lot cheaper! Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=18112 | GX-Alan (78) Nov 02, 2007 - 01:50 am
| People confuse the idea of "everyone" can hear the difference versus "some people" can hear the difference. It's like perfect pitch and music. Some people can hear one note on a piano and identify it, others cannot.
The million dollar challenge has been taken up. We'll wait for those results. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=17953 | GX-Alan (78) Oct 25, 2007 - 08:28 pm
| Sure, **you** have your 480p broadcast that you get as a direct feed, but over an analog NTSC broadcast and analog TV, you're probably only getting ~340 horizontal pixels.
I don't discount the issue of web compression, but the web version of Heroes is better than the 4:3 analog broadcast sent over analog NTSC to an older analog TV (as opposed to SD 480i sent over digital satellite/cable). Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=17952 | GX-Alan (78) Oct 25, 2007 - 08:08 pm
| It's definitely more than just an incremental upgrade in physics. The drift physics of Enthusia is still more realistic, but under "traditional" driving, GT5 is up there. The hardest part is that I'm not sure how confident I can be commenting on the physics of the game without actually haven driven the cars. With Enthusia and the older GT games, it was possible to compare the game to the real-life experience.
The graphics update is amazing though. With a projector, you can get the cockpit hands to match in size to your own, allowing a fully immersive experience. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=17953 | GX-Alan (78) Oct 21, 2007 - 10:07 am
| Don't worry. We brought the capture setup out for GT5 and decided to show the Heroes comparison too because Best Buy is giving away the $100 box set with the Xbox360 HD DVD drive starting today.
The weekend articles are usually just for time sensitive things and/or just-for-fun stuff. I'll have a Skulltrail article ready for tomorrow. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=17886 | GX-Alan (78) Oct 18, 2007 - 04:25 pm
| It also depends on how big your screen is. Most movie theaters at equivalent to 720p, with digital cinema theaters being equivalent to 1080p. By every measure, DVDs cannot be as good as the theaters. Blu-ray and HD DVD can.
The big difference (and this is coming up in a new article) is viewing distance. If you sit far enough from anything, you'll stop seeing the differences. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=17886 | GX-Alan (78) Oct 17, 2007 - 02:42 pm
| | The projector is important looking at motion artifacts/temporal noise, etc. It goes primarily into the subjective comments. The screenshots can only show you the quality of indidivual frames (which often look *worse* than how they look in motion) Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=17824 | GX-Alan (78) Oct 11, 2007 - 09:12 pm
| I don't know who owns the Aston Martin, but I assume that it's Jen-Hsun Huang. I saw a previous generation AM the last time I was there (a few year ago).
Willow: Almost ;)
Conan: Yeah, they had Starbucks coffee and It's It ice cream...
RippedBuff: Yeah, they have the noodle bar as a permanent part of the cafeteria and routinely have Indian food as well. It is a diverse mix of people though, in terms of ethnicity but also gender and age! Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=17421 | GX-Alan (78) Sep 20, 2007 - 10:26 am
| | The PS3 does do 1080i deinterlacing from the XMB interface though. If Sony can get Cell processing as efficient and high-quality as possible, then they can start using them in their XBR televisions in place of their current video processors, giving them both better image quality and economies of scale. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=17421 | GX-Alan (78) Sep 17, 2007 - 04:47 pm
| The other issue is that we already waited about a month. I could continue waiting, but that would mean keeping the information on the NVIDIA/ATI/PS3/HQV solutions secret. I felt that it made more sense to bite the bullet and publish the data that we have rather than wait for Microsoft.
The other issue is that I did not want to let one company hold up the rest of the article in case their product was substandard. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=17421 | GX-Alan (78) Sep 17, 2007 - 01:48 am
| From Page 2:
Although we had planned to include the Toshiba HD-XA2 (HQV ReonVX processor and HD DVD player) and the Microsoft Xbox 360-HDMI with the HD DVD upgrade in this comparison, neither company was able to provide us with a sample in time for participation. We hope to revisit Toshiba’s HD DVD players and the Xbox360 in a future article. By that time, we hope to include a comparison between several dual-format players. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=17116 | GX-Alan (78) Aug 27, 2007 - 06:31 pm
| We are dependent on Hollywood for content, they are dependent on consumers to buy that content. There is an inherent balance. I can't bash DRM 100% because I don't have the ability to make my own movies that are Hollywood quality. Hollywood can't make DRM too draconian or else no one is going to buy it. For whatever reason, no one ever complains about Xbox360 or PS3 copy protection.
The bigger picture is the future war. There are people who believe that both HD DVD and Blu-ray will die. These people believe that movies will be distributed electronically without physical media in the future, i.e. Xbox Live, Cable-on-Demand, etc. using a subscription-type model.
The problem is that moving toward that future is going to bring even more restrictive DRM. Fact is, HD DVD and Blu-ray represent the "best picture" quality we can possibly have at home.
Based upon living room sizes and the typical viewing group (and therefore viewing distances), going beyond 1080p won't add much more to the experience. As corny as it sounds, HD DVD and Blu-ray are as close to perfection as you need -- it essentially matches or exceeds the best possible picture quality in the real theater.
Without DRM, neither HD DVD or Blu-ray could exist and what would really happen is that we'd lose the ability to have a physical movie format. In other words, Blu-ray/HD DVD + DRM is the lesser of two evils when compared to online distribution of movies. Therefore, anything that improves the chance of having a physical movie format for the next 25 years is a good thing. Flag this | Edit this post |
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