Posts by Joerg

Transformers director favours Blu-ray Disc

You are wrong...

@Jason The Saj: You are wrong, instead. DVD can hold a maximum of 8.2GB of data approx. 16GB since when, in you dreams perhaps !?

Exactly, CDs maximum capacity was/is 700MB which means that they are roughly 6 times smaller than DVD-5 and 12 times smaller than DVD-9. This ratio holds with Blu-Ray discs Vs DVDs since a BD-25 is roughly 6 times bigger than a DVD-5 and a BD-50 is roughly 12 times bigger than a DVD-5.

So, what is your point ? DVD weren't needed as well, uh ?

What do people need, DRM downloadable content on Microsoft servers playable only on Microsoft trusted devices which gives no rights to customers other than keep paying and never own a copy of the content ? Do you work for Microsoft, perhaps ?

Cassini team spies moonlets in Saturn's A ring

Those are either alien or secret human spacecraft..

.. there is nothing natural there.

Although Cassini pictures are heavily censored like anything else, it's still possible to see many anomalies that are far from just natural rocks and gases.

Those are just 4 spacecrafts, pretty huge given the relative distance from the camera.

Blu-ray outsells HD DVD 2:1 in US

You don't know what you are talking about, don't be a fanatic, read!

@Wade Burchette: The DVD-Forum is working on the adoption and inclusion of region coding for HD-DVD. They planned it since the beginning but obviously delayed adding and finalizing the specifications in a hope to push the format against Blu-Ray.

Also, telling that HD-DVD has less DRM it's a silly lie. The fact that they made an "hacker" appear in some forum to provide a partial cracking code for AACS (since they could change the keyspace and make it almost useless anyway...) it doesn't mean that AACS it's not a strong DRM protection. They need to push the format on the market, so they gave a temporary backdoor to crack the encryption code and make people do copies. Although the lack of a Transformers unencrypted HD-DVD release on the 'net for so long can only make you wonder who is really distributing copies on the 'net then...

Here are some links:

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http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060526-6927.html

HD DVD to carry unwelcome DVD baggage

By Eric Bangeman | Published: May 26, 2006 - 01:25PM CT

Perhaps capitulating to studio pressure, the DVD Forum has moved to burden the next-generation HD DVD format with region coding similar to that of its predecessor. Called Region Protection Coding, the new specification will function in much the same way as current DVDs do: restricting players from showing content from discs purchased outside of the player's region. The number of regions and the geographies they each will cover are not yet known.

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http://www.n4g.com/industrynews/News-72604.aspx

HD-DVD Forum Inadvertly Reveal Plans to Enforce Region Coding?

frizshizzle - contributor

Published: 17 days 23 hours ago | Rumors | Industry News | Tech

Info Report

4

The lack of region coding on HD DVD has caused studios such as New Line to delay releases months later from their blu-ray counter parts. Till now HD DVD hasn't chose to use region coding but has always been an option.

Though at the DVD Forum Japan Conference 2007 from one of the slides show a region coding technology for HD DVD that is stronger than that of DVD, the discussion of this would suggest region coding may make their way on newer releases.

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Flash memories won't match HDUs for another 15 years probably...

@Anonymous Coward: Don't expect it to happen anytime soon. Seagate just recently announced 300,000GB HDUs available in a 3-4 years time. As soon as they start releasing HDUs with the new technology to boost capacity sky high compared to nowadays... the already currently seriously bad price/size ratio which is against Flash SSD units and in favour of HDUs is only going to get worse. When in either a couple of or 3-4 years there will be 25TB and 50TB HDUs on the market in a $150-$500 price range there will be just no way that Flash memories will have dropped in price so much to allow SSD units to replace HDUs. Look at current prices, they are insane, only some Corporation and the military could afford buying them for some specific uses. Also, flash memory it's still too slow. A couple of HDUs in a RAID-0 config on a pretty cheap PCI-E controller can deliver more than triple the bandwidth than flash SSD units.

HDUs die , they don't last many years....

@eddiewrenn: And only a few can afford buying RAID-5 and RAID-6 capable controllers for their PCs then adding a minimum of 4 HDUs and losing 30% due to the needed redundancy. NAS RAID-5/RAID-6 units are even more expensive.

Blu-Ray 4-layer 200GB have just been announced and expect them to get quite cheap in the next few years to ensure quick adoption.

You are a fanatic, really

@Kevin Peacock: Promoting the Toshiba/Microsoft/DVD-Forum nonsense telling that HD-DVD is better it's telling lies to people, really.

1) HD-DVD does have region coding. They will enable it if they win the format war for sure.

2) HD-DVD format specifications just changed with the 3-layer 51GB added specification, that practically no one will really be able to read although they claim otherwise. Region coding addition also changes format specifications.

3) HD-DVD being cheaper to produce is a false myth. Toshiba is producing at a loss, way more than other manufacturers with the Blu-Ray format. Also, Toshiba is practically alone producing HD-DVD players and drives, Blu-Ray has many manufacturers on its side, not just Sony. If it's so cheap to manufacture then how comes that you can buy Blu-Ray burners at just $400-600 with 25GB disks in the $6.99-$11.99 price range and prices keep falling while there are no HD-DVD burners on the market and media practically doesn't exist either ?

What ? Upscaled DVD like HDTV ? You must be kidding...

@Eric Van Haesendonck: Really. If you can't see the obvious quality increase of a 1080p MPEG-2,VC-1 or better than everything else H.264 encoded video stream over SDTV MPEG-2 DVDs which don't even have a real 16:9 resolution but 16:9 is re-constructed at the decoding stage and the picture encoded in a 4 :3 format... then you either never watched any HDTV stream yet.

The quality difference is huge, anyone can see that. Upscaled DVDs can look good but nowhere near real HDTV sources.

What ? You want lower bitrate video streams then ?

@Tony Barnes: Which Blu-Ray discs did you watch compared to HD-DVD ones? Maybe the early MPEG-2 720p and 1080p releases ? Nowadays practically all new Blu-Ray releases are 50GB discs and use H.264 codec delivering the best quality, and studios still don't take advantage of full available bitrate on BD format. Expect to see Superbit-DVD-like Blu-Ray 50GB re-releases in the next future with H.264 encoded at almost CBR-like settings to maximize the bitrate and increase quality even further.

HD-DVD limited bitrate constraints and available space don't let it store streams at the same quality allowed by Blu-Ray discs.

Upscaled DVDs are not like Blu-Ray discs. Period

@Mark Jones: You are just spreading nonsense, really. Telling people that an upscaled DVD is nothing worse than a Blu-Ray it's telling lies. Do you like a lack of high-frequencies (=details) in movies ? Then go ahead, watch the upscaled DVDs and save a few bucks but don't tell people that there is no difference and they wouldn't notice, maybe you don't or don't want to but the difference in quality is so huge between upscaled SDTV and native HDTV streams that it's not possible to tell otherwise.

HD-DVD is an inferior format, people don't want it

That's the point. Forcing an inferior format on users when there already is a wide estabilished Blu-Ray user base worldwide and its prices keep falling thanks to many more manufacturers producing hardware for it, it's just going nowhere.

Transformers is not selling good on the HD-DVD format at all, despite all the marketing hype Paramount/Toshiba/Microsoft could put behind it. It's not going to sell million copies, unless Bill Gates is going to buy all of them for himself and his employees, maybe...

Spiderman 3 and Spiderman Trilogy on Blu-Ray will sell many million copies and will help boost sales of many more PS3 40GB units.

If Paramount CEO wasn't so blind to get "the gift" from Bill Gates and released Transformers on Blu-Ray as it was originally planned now they would be adding many more million copies sold to the DVD sales figures.

Developer deploys graphics cards to accelerate password cracks

Exactly...

@Ian Michael Gumby: Nvidia and ATI with their SLI, CUDA, GPCPU thing have brought to market nothing new. High-end professional graphic cards with many DSPs working parallel existed even many years ago on IBM and Sun systems AFAIK, and they were really fast although very expensive.

Toshiba to field HD DVD-equipped Xbox 360?

The desperation of Toshiba to force HD-DVD on users...

...with all the marketing hype and simply false statistical data and claims. 74% of HDTV disc players in Europe they claimed.. yeah, sure.. then how comes that Blu-Ray discs sell rates account for 80%+ of the market worldwide and well above 60% in Europe as well ?!

They even didn't count the PS3 as a HD-DVD player, they kept promoting the fact that consoles are just for games and now they want Microsoft to put the HD-DVD inside the XBox360 and turn it into a full HD-DVD player with media box like features and even a PVR...?!

Yeah, this really makes sense.. of desperation.

The only hope is that the majority of people won't get fooled into buying an inferior product and an inferior optical disc format by all of this.

The PS3 is the best product, now I can only hope that Sony starts putting some serious audio/video codecs/containers support in upcoming new Firmware 2.x ...

Alien attack? Yes, we're ready for anything

@Anonymous Coward: "educated people" what ? Classical left wing babbling...

.. to look smart and cool and elitist.

The media is owned and controlled by the Democrats in the USA and by the Left Wing in general worldwide. This is a fact that anyone could clearly see every single day.

@John A Blackley: Even more sad is to see Clinton, Obama, Al Gore...

... which are way worse than Giuliani, indeed.

The main difference is that Clinton,Obama and Al Gore have 98-99% of the news and media networks promoting them, while Giuliani being with the Right Wing doesn't allow him to get the same level of propaganda.

Simply because the majority of journalists and entertainment industry people are with the Left Wing

Anyone remembers Reagan comments on aliens ...?!

Well, the Reagan speech at the UN regarding an alien threat is on YouTube as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag44dRO8LEA

Is this just a coincidence, perhaps ? The majority of people surely will think so BUT do you really think that there is nothing hidden and there are no aliens and no threats of that kind ? Do you really think that is just some political way of speaking to get people attention and nothing more than that ?

Well, yeah.. a coincidence, indeed.. sure.. anything else must be just fantasy and exaggeration.. sure, of coure.. yep... not..!

Quantum scientist wins Euro computing prize

I'm telling that the guy is a joke...

..like the majority of politically driven activists in any role.

This is a Left Wing political party which name is Margherita... and just as an example, you can find many more, it shows that Giorgio Parisi is a Left Wing activist for that political movement:

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http://www.margheritaonline.it/notizie/scheda.php?id_notizie=24039

Intervengono:

Arturo Artom (Imprenditore)

Giulio Ballio (Rettore Politecnico Milano)

Nando dalla Chiesa (Sottosegretario Ministero Università e Ricerca)

Ferdinando Latteri (Resp. Settore Università margherita)

Giorgio Parisi (Ordinario Università La Sapienza di Roma)

Mirano Sancin (Dir. Gen. Kilometro rosso)

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It's thanks to this that he got the award, not his skills (if any).

I never used drugs, Left Wing people promote and use drugs mainly.

This Microsoft award it's a joke.. the professor is a joke too...

..he won the money and the award just because he is a Left-Wing activist in Italy, that's the whole point. The award is just politically driven.

Cheap PS3 won't help Blu-ray, claim HD DVD backers

Don't spread false info, please.

@Ray: You keep spreading false technical info like any other HD-DVD/Toshiba/Microsoft supporter fanatic out there.

1) Available space/size does matter in video coding simply because an higher bitrate means higher quality with the same codec, telling otherwise it's telling a lie. Period.

2) Blu-Ray titles are almost all 1080p BD-50GB AVC MPEG-4 H.264 encoded nowadays. And H.264 it's a far superior codec to Microsoft WMV9/VC-1 hacked MPEG-4 ASP thing.

3) Blu-Ray supports just all the codecs supported by HD-DVD. So, what are you talking about ?!

4) BD 100GB 4-layer discs will probably become a standard as soon as the DVD-Forum will have stopped trying to force the inferior HD-DVD format on current and potential customers.

5) Look around, no one is practically producing HD-DVD burners as of yet, all main manufacturers have been producing and improving Blu-Ray burners and blank media prices keep falling. The format that will win on users, and everyone knows that, it's the one that allows to make full copies at the cheapest price.

The format more stable, what HD-DVD ?! Don't be silly !

@Eric Van Haesendonck: No, really, what are you talking about? The best optical format is the one with more space, it's just that simple.

Otherwise nowadays we will still be using 500MegaByte Hard-Drives because "they were more stable" .. yeah, sure.

The only technology better than Blu-Ray is that of holographic 500GB/1000GB discs that writes on hundreds of layers at the same time. And I hope it will be available for consumers before 2014-2015 when the next UHDV standard should start replacing the current HDTV one.

Toshiba,Microsoft,DVD-Forum are in desperate mode now....

... they don't know what to do at this point to force the adoption of the inferior HD-DVD optical disc format that the majority of users just don't want.

Expect Blu-Ray SATA writers for PCs to drop in price also, 25GB BD discs can already be bought for less than $6.00 a piece from many sellers...

The PS3 40GB even with the lack of PS2 compatibility will surely sell at least 1.5-2.5million units in the next couple months and I bet with an average of 2 or 3 extra BD movies bought with it.

DRM on steroids controls backfires on Blu-ray

Maybe no one noticed but AACS is DRM just like BD+ ...

.. you know ?!

The fact that they "leaked" the crack for AACS just like they did with CSS on DVD previously, it doesn't mean that it's not DRM. Also, AACS has been partially cracked, it will remain cracked as long as the industry wants to, "hackers" will keep appearing here and there with "cracks" if and only if the industry wants to. BD+ could get partially cracked as well in the next few months/years, the fact is.. until they decide to make all the functionality public both DRM systems are not completely crackable by normal people and only those in the know will have the option to decide when,where and how much the systems can be avoided. Remember that both are DRM systems and can be updated if they want to...

Sony's 40GB PS3 for Europe confirmed

And that's a SoC ...

@Anonymous vulture: The EE+GS it's a SoC. It's the same found on latest slim PS2 consoles, it comprises the whole PS2+PS1 functionality.

EE+GS ?! What ?

@Anonymous vulture: The whole PS2+PS1 used on earlier PS3 models is a System-On-a-Chip, which contains just all the hardware needed. Software emulation on later models doesn't rely on anything in hardware. Period.

Lawmaker shows nudie pic to high school seniors

The lawmaker should get fired immediately, period.

And only after he got fired he could have the freedom to watch as much porn as he wants to. A lawmaker, a judge, a politician, an officer, anyone at work that does something like that only deserves to get fired. Period.

Do you porn inside your house, in the bedroom, in the kitchen, whatever you please BUT show respect for the title you got, for the job you do, for other people. Nowadays it seems that everyone wants to be a pornstar, that's the issue here.

Porn is ok as long as it's a private thing, not a public way to make people even more retarded and unable to give the bare minimum respect for both their work, society in general and other people. Period.

RIAA hits paydirt: wins first music-sharing jury trial

Bribes and judges .. just like the Microsoft case...

... and politicians and bribes ... RIAA, MPAA,BSA and Microsoft are killing the industry, are frustrating the population and are the main cause of lame people put in charge of multinational groups. Until those four are not banned and no one stops their power, real thieves "pirates" will keep selling copies on streets with illegal immigrants all over Europe and other countries while common citizens will get their life demolished by some unlawful justice.

Italian website names 40GB PS3 price

Plus Tax what ??

@Mark: What ? Plus tax ? $399 is street price period. What plus tax are you talking about ? Also, additional taxes for products are to be paid only in same states like New York,California... So, what are you talking about,really ?

More Italian shops selling PS3 at 399Euros...

This one is claiming to have the PS3 40GB available for shipping on October 10th for 399Euros :

http://www.cipcipstore.it/php/catalogo.php?art_code=1083

And this one is selling the PS3 60GB at just 399Euros:

http://www.yammo.it/product.php?productid=366

Compatibility issues, what ?

@Backwards comp: PS3 backwards compatibility is going to be software only even on previous models that had the EmotionEngine PS2/PS1 chip onboard, which practically is a PS2+PS1 on a single chip.

By using software emulation Cell the fact of the EE chip on a PS3 it's a moot point, it's not used at all.

European prices are just insane, period.

@Mark: The EU is a burocrats paradise, indeed but this doesn't mean that multinationals increasing their products prices on purpose is a good thing to do.

You should consider the real production cost and not the final end-user cost. In UK the situation gets even worse than in other European countries since they always convert $1=£1... go figure.. The $399 PS3 40GB should be priced €299 to be fair.. but since no other manufacturer is doing that, obviously Sony won't be the first to do it..

ARM to bash 'non-issue' Intel with multi-core chip

You don't have a clue...really...

@call me scruffy: And I mean it. If you think that general purpose CPU software performance will make DSPs obsolete then you are completely wrong. Intel has designed its upcoming new architecture with the CSI/Quickpath bus to allow for 3rd party DSP/multicore-DSP co-processors/accellerators to be installed on motherboards.

The whole Larrabee high-end Intel GPU project is based on micro-x86 cores that work in a way similar to IBM/Sony Cell SPEs...

And if you think that specialized DSP products from Texas Instruments, Analog Devices and other manufacturers are going to get obsolete and a general purpose ARM o x86 CPU will do better, then you are wrong.

Thinking that x86 will never compete with ARM is pretty naive...

@Alistair: .. do you really think that Intel sold its own ARM XScale division to waste money ? The team behind Centrino surely knows what it's doing, so far they proved to be real professionals delivering top-notch products in a shorter time than ever before. So unless they do some major mistake I bet their upcoming ultra-low-voltage CPUs will be a tough competition for ARM manufacturers.

Centrino technology has a very good chance...

..of getting way better than ARM and competing products.

It really seems that no one among competitors management has noticed but Intel it's not the same it was during the P4 Prescott (and failed Tejas) power hungry core era. Since the team behind Centrino got full Intel resources and focus inside the Corporation, everything changed. x86 Intel products are the best ones on the market and 2008 seems to be full of improved products able to deliver way higher performance with way less Watts.

So I really think that Intel might have done a smart thing selling its XScale ARM division and starting from scratch with a new ultra low power set of x86 products. We will see if the team behind Centrino technology has been able to design a better architecture than what XScale was already capable of.

Iraq fiasco creeps into NSA surveillance controversy

What a shame all you '68/noglobal brainwashed people are, really !

I read comments here with people telling that vandalizing a SUV shouldn't be considered a criminal act, that's not terrorism .. noo.. uh? It's not a terrorist act if someone gets you car, smashes it with an hammer or light some fire on it and that explodes, maybe with you and other people inside.. noo.. that's a cool thing to do, uh ?

You people all blaming the Right Wing for this and that. I blame them for being too soft with those like you and too many Left Wing supporters promoting vandalism and other criminal acts like the infamous noglobal stuff destroying cities downtown worldwide. If that's not terrorism then what is terrorism ?

Sony to break out of Cell?

Microsoft spies inside Sony management....

...are trying to kill Sony off by having the Cell business and production plants sold off to Toshiba. This is a pretty basic, kindergarten level strategy move, yet it seems that they will succeed with it if no Sony manager will have the power to oppose this insane decision.

Cell has been produced by IBM,Sony,Toshiba yes, but Sony owns the main rights to the technology and selling them to Toshiba it's committing suicide, the whole Sony business will get demolished by Microsoft and Toshiba at that point.

TV makers go ape for 100Hz LCDs

Re:100Hz CRTs

@Paul: the jerky picture you are getting on your old Sony Wega was simply due to the fact that the motion compensation algorithms had to be kept pretty basic and at a quite low precision in order to be run on cheap DSP, offloading chipsets and usually MIPS based CPUs (or all of them put in a single package like the nowadays quite used Mediatek chipsets found on DVD/DiVX players for example) simply due to production costs. Better the algorithms used, higher the precision engaged=a more power processor/DSP had to be used and at the time those 100Hz CRTs were developed 16bit DSPs were still pretty common and just being replaced by 32bit ones.

There are two main factors concerning quality of 100Hz implementations, the quality of the algorithms being used per se and the quality of the implementation put in the firmware running on the CPU/DSP/chipsets found on internal tv sets motherboards used to process and display the signals. More complex results need faster and more expensive hardware and that's the point. That's even the simple reason why some TFT displays have excellent picture and 100Hz feature works perfectly while others are just not up to the task.

Of course it would help if manufacturers like Sony started putting firmware updates freely on their websites for download and delivered bug fixes to the public since modern Plasma and TFT could be easily flashed thru an USB port if they have one or even thru the same HDMI if they were designed to achieve that.... it's just a question of why manufacturers don't deliver as they should and prefer having frustrated customers that have to deal with programming bugs found on their expensive Tv displays....

Higher precision matters

@24fps: You are right, motion estimation/motion compensation and needed interpolation algorithms working in time and space faster than realtime are usually used and loaded on very fast DSPs (single or even multiple) to do the job properly and with the needed accuracy.

The "static texture" effect you are referring to could be caused by bad or buggy algorithms in the firmware of many displays being sold by various manufacturers, or due to not enough DSP power to achieve realtime results at the highest precision which can cause spatial/temporal artifacts, the so called aliasing effect. Or it could be a badly windowed set of filters either in the time or space domain (obtaining an high precision windowing for filters it's an hard task to achieve, even harder if computational raw power is limited due to production costs,which means if cheaper DPSs get used).

Sony nonsense marketing politics and 100Hz feature...

Now, I can't afford buying a new X3000 or X3500 Sony Bravia 1080p display and so I will end up buying a Sony W3000 1080p one probably either 40" or 46".

How comes that Sony put 100Hz on the V3000 720p display and not on the more expensive W3000 ? To get 100Hz on a new 1080p Sony LCD display I'd need to spend a lot of bucks for a X3000 or X3500 model which I just can't afford--they are too expensive.

Instead of the pure marketing hype 24Hz/24fps support they should have included 100Hz in the W3000 model as well, which is way better than the 24Hz progressive marketing hype stuff.

24Hz/24fps is just marketing hype because no one in a theatre is watching movies at just 24Hz nowadays, professional projectors at least double framerate to 48Hz progressive and always with motion compensation algorithms engaged (3:2 pulldown and such is a thing of the past, modern implementations use motion compensation algorithms to recalculate proper motion vectors in the time domain, you know...)

BBC confirms Doctor Who series five

They should have got Kylie Minogue for the whole season instead...

..not just for the XMas special episode. If the new season features Kylie Minogue as a cast regular it would have been a smash hit.

Researchers: AMD less power-hungry than Intel

Negating reality and facts...

..because a fact is that Intel Core (Centrino derived) architectures and revisions are the best ones on the market and Intel R&D has more efficient and powerful CPUs in the works for the next few years. Another fact is that AMD delivered poorly and keeps being unable to achieve the expected results disappointing both investors and customers, there has been quite a shift of AMD customers back to Intel in the last 18 months or so since the first Core CPUs started replacing the inefficient power-hungry P4 Prescott core derived CPUs.

Reality is that Intel is going to sell even more CPUs than ever before unless they would do some major mistakes while AMD only hope to regain market share is Intel making mistakes, which is far from what an efficient business should work and act...

Windows Genuine Advantage cries wolf (again)

The WGA stuff it's against customers and should not exist

WGA as well as any DRM-type control over customers should not exist. It's a real shame that a giant monopoly like Microsoft has been allowed to not only get away with this but that many more retail and shareware software business have been allowed to follow trend and turn into a net of spies. Microsoft is doing that type of things that only secret agencies should be allowed to and it goes even further in a Nazi-type way, which is even more a shame.

Until there will be no judges nor politicians brave enough to say a clear and loud NO to Bill Gates and his staff thing will keep getting worse for everyone, which includes both normal people customers and business/Microsoft competitors of any size.