> Hmm, interesting. Where I live, most people have between 2 Mbit/sec and 8 
> Mbit/sec.

Which is plenty.

Check out the freeview bitrates:

http://dtt.me.uk/

If the average bitrate of a BBC channel is 3.2 Mbit/s (higher than most 
other channels) using MPEG2, then I'm pretty sure watching the same signal 
compressed with MPEG4 at 2 Mbit/s is going to look virtually identical.

Post a reply to this message

>> 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.

My mother believes she can sing. Even though she's actually about a 
fifth to a third flat. The result sounds truly *horrible*! You'd think 
she could hear the difference, but no...

She also claims to be unable to tell the difference between major and 
minor chords, which is impressive given the vast, world-alering 
difference between the two.

Post a reply to this message

And lo On Tue, 27 Apr 2010 23:29:15 +0200, andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom>  
did spake thusly:

> On 27-4-2010 14:07, Phil Cook v2 wrote:
>> And lo On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:01:41 +0200, andrel  
>> <byt### [at] gmailcom> did spake thusly:
>>> 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.
>>
> Is that also wildly variable between people? (I wouldn't know, because I  
> am only one person)

Supposedly 'in-built' but it would be interesting to run those perception  
tests on the same group of people if only to dismiss it as a factor.

-- 
Phil Cook

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

Post a reply to this message

On 4/27/2010 11:15 AM, Darren New wrote:

>
> Seriously, I don't have ethernet *everywhere*. I couldn't do
> surround-sound speakers over ethernet. Wireless maybe, but not ethernet.
>
> I told them to put an ethernet wire from the closet to each phone jack.
> I should have said from the closet to each cable TV box as well.
>

How times change. I remember back when I had my house built (Shame I'm 
not in that house anymore, but its all for the better) I requested a 
phone jack near the entertainment center (I did have the living room 
wired for 5.1 surround.

Now with internet-ready consoles and blue-ray players it makes perfect 
sense to have ethernet wired to the entertainment center as well. I 
wanted to wire the house for ethernet, but the builder didn't supply it, 
and wouldn't allow it. But that was no big deal. I think the next house 
I wind up in will likely be an existing home rather than a new build 
since most of the new homes are now too far out of the way for us, so it 
could be interesting to wire some extended services into an existing home.

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

Mike Raiford wrote:

> I wanted to wire the house for ethernet, but the builder didn't supply it, 
> and wouldn't allow it.

My dad wired it himself. ;-)

(As in, he literally chiselled out chunks of wall and then plastered it 
over again.)

And then we replaced the Ethernet router with a wireless one. Um... OK.

Post a reply to this message

On 4/27/2010 12:59 PM, nemesis wrote:
> Darren New escreveu:
>> nemesis wrote:
>>> BTW, don't you guys find it funny that ADSL is "dial-up" too?
>>
>> Not really. It's built into the line card, so you're not actually
>> dialing anything. You're just using the same wires you would be
>> dialing on.
>
> really? I used to connect without a line filter in my other telephone
> across the room and, thus, if you happened to pick up the nearby phone
> while it was connecting, you would listen to a bit of that "folkloric"
> well-known old-modem dialing-up tune.
>

probably hearing some artifacts from the out-of-band signaling the ADSL 
modem is doing. Which is why you need the filter ;) I remember back when 
I had ADSL forgetting a filter on a phone jack, and picking up that 
phone. It was more like I had a bad connection than anything, though.

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

On 4/27/2010 10:18 AM, Invisible wrote:
> scott wrote:
>
>> Of course there is the SlingBox too:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingbox
>
> Again, that's all very nice. But unless you have insane levels of
> bandwidth available, it's not going to work.
>
> There's nothing theoretically difficult about sending video data over
> the Internet. The problem is the bandwidth.


Meh, I had a 1Mbit DSL connection for a long time, and my wife could be 
watching Youtube videos of kids playing with cats, and I could watch a 
netflix film at very decent quality w/o interruption for buffering. Of 
course now, with my cable internet bandwidth is no longer an issue... ;)

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

On 4/27/2010 8:15 PM, Neeum Zawan wrote:
> On 04/27/10 07:57, Mike Raiford wrote:
>> Whats not to follow? They stream movies directly from the internet
>> (albeit at SD resolutions ..)
>
> 	Depends on how you define SD - I've seen movies through it that are
> definitely beyond DVD quality.
>

I think the resolution actually tops out somewhere around 720x480. Their 
STB only supports the SD mode, though it may be progressive scan, or it 
could be that you have a high enough bandwidth connection that you're 
getting less compression.

What I have seen does indeed rival DVD in terms of picture quality, though.

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

On 4/27/2010 11:23 AM, nemesis wrote:

>
> LOL
>
> seems like Andrew still got some 30 years ahead to fully get to grips
> with the real world...
>

Why doesn't my Atari 2600 do HD?

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

On 4/27/2010 4:12 PM, John VanSickle wrote:

> Government regulators, for whom being safe is generally more important
> than being right, had a major role in the determination of the standard.
> The standard had to allow for broadcast within a strictly-defined
> frequency band, and this limit was chosen based on technology that is
> now ready for deployment to your local museum, because these decisions
> were made years ago.
>
> If I am remembering things correctly, there was even some insistence
> that the signal be displayable by sets designed for the old broadcast
> standard. If that sounds thinking-impaired, well, that's the FCC for you.

kind of like how NTSC color was kludged on top of the existing black and 
white broadcast signal in the name of backwards compatibility?

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message