And lo on Sat, 08 Mar 2008 20:15:37 -0000, Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull>  
did spake, saying:

>>>>  Sometimes you really do give the impression that you live under a  
>>>> rock.
>>>
>>> Why? Because I don't follow every tiny twist and turn of modern  
>>> technology with bated breath?
>>  Do you read no tech-related news? Any news at all?
>> The end of HD-DVD was fairly big news, and was at least mentioned by  
>> mainstream media.
>
> Generally, no.
>
> The mainstream news seems to only be interested in telling you about all  
> the BAD news. It's damn depressing to watch.

Except for the fun stories at the end with the skateboarding ducks and  
talking dogs.

> Most "technical news" is of the form "company X says they're going to do  
> Y and some analyst things that's a dumb idea". I mean, like I care.

Try http://www.eurogamer.net it's obviously slanted to games, but it does  
deal with the tech behind it too.

> It's annoying really - there are things I *do* care about. But it seems  
> difficult to find any news about them.
>
>>> And while we're on the subject... I gather that all this "HD" stuff is  
>>> only slightly better quality than what's already there. It's not like  
>>> anybody is going to notice a huge increase in picture quality.
>>  The increase in picture quality can be quite noticeable, but only if  
>> you have equipment that can display it properly.
>
> Well, two things:
>
> 1. It has 2x the spatial resolution in both directions. That doesn't  
> sound particularly earth-shattering, even on paper.

625 lines to 1080 lines max, if you want to know the difference trying  
changing your monitor settings from roughly one to the other.

> 2. I saw two displays side-by-side in a shop. The one marked HD was  
> certainly clearer. But it didn't make me go "wow, that's AMAZING!"  
> Actually it just made me go "oh, OK, so it's 10% more crisp. And you  
> want HOW MANY thousand pounds for this one??"

Well as I've mentioned elsewhere (blog-push) I've only seen a few shops  
have an HD set hooked up correctly to an HD player via an HDMI cable, the  
el-cheapo ones are using a standard aerial input and the mid-range ones  
component. Likewise the ones that are set up correctly are normally  
playing a demo video set-up to show all the good bits and hide the bad.

>>> And that makes it hard for me to get excited about it...
>>  A lot of people are of the opinion that selling movies on optical  
>> media is obsolete anyway.

Yeah well Microsoft and Apple can kiss my arse :-P

> What, you mean like how magnetic tape is "obsolete" today? ;-)

Yeah and vinyl.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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