>> (And hell, half the equipment and content that says "HD" on it isn't 
>> even full resolution anyway... Why allow half a dozen resolutions when 
>> it would have been far simpler for the designers and less misleading 
>> for the public if they allow only one resolution?)
> 
> Because, say, games at full HD may have to cut geometry or frame rate 
> here and there to fit comfortably?

What do TV resolutions have to do with computers? You connect a computer 
to a monitor, not a TV.

>> PS. I am similarly baffled by the current fashion for "widescreen" 
>> TVs. Given that 99.998% of all video content ever created is in 4:3 
>> aspect, what the hell is the advantage of buying a TV with a 16:9 
>> aspect?? I don't understand.
> 
> Yeah, why sell color TVs in a time when 99.98% video content ever 
> created is B&W?  This is one of your "obviously impossible" kinda 
> comments, ain't it?

What, you think just because everybody is being forced to buy widescreen 
TVs, people are going to start filming in widescreen?

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > Because, say, games at full HD may have to cut geometry or frame rate
> > here and there to fit comfortably?
>
> What do TV resolutions have to do with computers? You connect a computer
> to a monitor, not a TV.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_console

> What, you think just because everybody is being forced to buy widescreen
> TVs, people are going to start filming in widescreen?

Everyone's been filming in widescreen for almost 10 years, at least in Europe
and the US.

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:25:12 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> > Question: Why aren't there any widescreen cinemas yet?

> I missed this the first time around, don't know about in MK, but over 
> here, ALL of the cinemas are widescreen.

  Are there any cinemas in existence that aren't? (Discounting perhaps
some home-made cinemas in some poor countries showing pirated movies from
VHS...)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Am 26.04.2010 21:33, schrieb Warp:
> > Le_Forgeron<jgr### [at] freefr>  wrote:
> >> Then came out LCD... from laptop to desktop and TV, they killed the CRT.
> >> The colours drop to less numbers, but this is now an hidden information.
> >
> >    Not to talk about contrast...
> >
> >    Also, CRTs could be looked at from about any direction and it would
> > always look exactly as good. Only in the last few years LCDs are
> > *approaching* that (many still have problems when viewed from above
> > or below).
> >
> >    Then there are the dead pixels, which plagued LCDs for many, many years
> > (only relatively recently LCD vendors have started guaranteeing no dead
> > pixels).

> Stick to CRTs if you like - I do prefer to have room enough on my desk 
> for /two/ displays with 24" @16:9 and 19" @4:3 size (effective image 
> diagonal, not nominal tube size), both presenting their image perfectly 
> flat and undistorted, with perfectly sharp pixels, no analog signal 
> distortion or beam focus problems, no "pumping" effect with brightness 
> changes, no moiree effects with the X11 login screen, less dust 
> accumulating on the display, less eye strain from flicker - and no risk 
> of my desk collapsing under the displays' sheer weight.

> It's all a question of priorities. Yours may vary.

  You missed the point completely, and misunderstood what I was talking about
really badly.

  The subject was not about "what's better, CRT or LCD?" No, the subject was
about "every time a new technology comes up, it always seems like a huge
step backwards, until it catches up".

  I was simply listing reasons why LCD was a step backwards compared to CRT,
until it catches up.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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And lo On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:01:41 +0200, andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom>  
did spake thusly:

> On 26-4-2010 14:49, Warp wrote:
>> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>>>> Question: Why aren't there any widescreen cinemas yet?
>>>> At risk of entirely misunderstanding the question, all cinemas have  
>>>> shown all
>>>> films in 16:9 or wider for almost a hundred years.
>>
>>> Really?
>>
>>> Huh, well, you learn something every day. The picture always looked  
>>> fairly square to me...
>>    I'm beginning to suspect that this is not Andrew, and instead some  
>> troll
>> is posting using his nickname.
>>    If even TV is not square (it's 4:3), how in the world could you ever
>> think that movies are square? I don't get it.
>>    The narrowest aspect ratio used in movies for the past 20+ years has
>> usually been 1.85:1. The most common aspect ratios for big movies today
>> is 2.25:1 and even 2.35:1 (that's well over twice as wide as tall).
>>
> a few days ago I heard a talk that might provide an explanation. Someone  
> set up an experiment with 180 degrees view and figured out how wide they  
> perceived it. You get a camel distribution with one hump at 180 and  
> another, larger! one at 90. Experiment was reproducable per person.
>
> Hard to believe but apparently true. Something fishy in our brain. Jan  
> Koenderink, who was giving the talk, is trying to figure out why.

Perhaps something similar to line perception where we overestimate acute  
angles and underestimate obtuse ones.

-- 
Phil Cook

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

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And lo On Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:24:29 +0200, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>  
did spake thusly:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> If we were going to be here longer, I'd have even run the wires for the  
>> speakers in the walls. :-)
>
> That works even if you sell the house, mind. :-)  I had ethernet put in  
> the walls before the put the drywall up, but I definitely should have  
> had the speaker wires run too.

Ethernet speakers?

-- 
Phil Cook

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

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And lo On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:54:42 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake thusly:

> scott wrote:
>>> I know the BT Vision system is supposed to allow you to download video  
>>> content to watch later, but I'm not aware of any system which can  
>>> manage it in realtime. (Certainly not just using a normal PC...)
>>  Many TV company websites let you watch TV live via your PC at varying  
>> levels of quality.  I have certainly seen a few that exceed digital SD  
>> broadcast TV.
>
> Seriously??
>
>> How about BBC iPlayer, what's the quality like on that? (I can't access  
>> it outside the UK)
>
> Pitiful. Utterly pitiful.
>
> I mean, forgetting the minor detail that it's plain unusuable at certain  
> times of day, the picture quality is abysmal. (The sound isn't bad  
> though.)

I use it via a wireless link on my PS3 and I agree that at certain times  
it's quite choppy. Quality is worse than normal broadcast, but it's hardly  
abysmal. For those outside the UK it's comparable to the 4OD channel at  
youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/channel4 where the maximum seems to be  
480p

-- 
Phil Cook

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

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> abysmal. For those outside the UK it's comparable to the 4OD channel at 
> youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/channel4 where the maximum seems to be 
> 480p

That seems comparable to normal digital SDTV.

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de news: op.vbtop7c1mn4jds@phils...
>
> Ethernet speakers?
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EtherSound
But not a cheap solution

Marc

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> scott wrote:
> > Anyway, there are also compression algorithms that are a lot more 
> > efficient than the one used on DVDs. So in theory you could get DVD 
> > quality with a lot less than 9 MBit/s if you use a better compression 
> > algorithm.

> Indeed. A 10:1 improvement in compression is easily attainable without 
> noticable loss compared to DVD compression anyway.

  10 times smaller than MPEG-2 with the same visual quality? Now that,
I think, would be quite hard.

  Maybe if the MPEG-2 had been created with a crappy software (thus
requiring plenty of bitrate) and then you used really aggressive H.264
encoding settings (something like requiring 24 hours of encoding time
for each hour of video or such), perhaps. But under normal circumstances
10:1 feels a bit excessive.

  Could you take a 1.5-hour 4GB DVD-quality MPEG-2 and make a 400MB H.264
from it with the same resolution and without visible loss of quality?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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