On 4/26/2010 8:28 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> Maybe the fact that Windows is not good at scaling has meant that
>> making a 150 or 200 dpi monitor that is used from "desktop" viewing
>> distances would be impossible to use due to the tiny physical size of
>> the fonts and other GUI items?
>
> Plausible.
>
>> I was running it for a while on my laptop with a non-standard dpi
>> setting. On the whole Windows and Office was fine, but IIRC my CAD
>> software screwed up, with some buttons being shifted outside of the
>> window so you couldn't get to them!
>
> Haha! And I bet that CAD software was the most expensive thing on the
> whole PC, by a mile... ;-)
>

That's the biggest part of the problem out there, many apps were written 
without regard to a higher DPI setting, and do some wacky things if 
they're used with a higher DPI. I think Windows 7 has some compatibility 
settings somewhere to help alleviate some of these issues. So, high-dpi 
display may be coming soon.
-- 
~Mike

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>> Ooo, here's a random thought: Do you think there will ever be a day 
>> when the Internet becomes fast enough to watch TV-quality video in 
>> realtime?
>>
>> When do you think that day will be?
> 
> About five years ago.

Really?

And where the hell does this happen?

> Are you sure you are not living in the jungle?

Yes, quite sure. (I hate the outdoors, remember?)

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On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:25:35 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> Ooo, here's a random thought: Do you think there will ever be a day  
>>> when the Internet becomes fast enough to watch TV-quality video in  
>>> realtime?
>>>
>>> When do you think that day will be?
>>  About five years ago.
>
> Really?
>
> And where the hell does this happen?

Here.



>> Are you sure you are not living in the jungle?
>
> Yes, quite sure. (I hate the outdoors, remember?)

I thought you enjoyed skiing. Is it just plants that you hate?



-- 
FE

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On 4/26/2010 8:00 AM, Invisible wrote:

>
> 2. A stretched image where everybody has elliptical heads.
>

I don't know how things are in the UK, but over here, everyone generally 
has an elliptical head. ;)

> 3. One of the various "zoom" modes which distorts the image non-linearly
> to supposedly give a better picture than a linear distortion.

Mmm, my father in law had a TV that did this. It was quite literally 
nausea-inducing. I always wound up with a nasty headache after watching 
anything in 4:3 on that TV.

> 4. Cut the top and/or bottom off the picture to make it fit.

Depending on the program, this is acceptable, of course if there's 
titling or a crawl across the bottom of the screen... it's a nuisance.

> Everybody seems to hate #1, but lots of people apparently see nothing
> wrong with #2 or #3. *shudders*

Yeah, I don't get it. The only reason I really want the screen filled is 
so my CRT doesn't burn-in.

-- 
~Mike

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>> About five years ago.
>
> Really?
>
> And where the hell does this happen?

Virgin have a system called On Demand in the UK.  Here in Germany we have 
T-Home.  Obviously you need a fast internet connection (about 6 MBit/s or 
higher IIRC) to receive broadcast quality video.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPTV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_on_Demand

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>>>> When do you think that day will be?
>>>  About five years ago.
>>
>> Really?
>>
>> And where the hell does this happen?
> 
> Here.

Who is it?

It's me.

>>> Are you sure you are not living in the jungle?
>>
>> Yes, quite sure. (I hate the outdoors, remember?)
> 
> I thought you enjoyed skiing. Is it just plants that you hate?

OK, I rephrase: I hate being outside for no particular reason. Like, 
"hey, let's go for a walk outside". (Or rather, "let's wander around at 
random for no purpose when I could be coding stuff".) Apparently some 
people like to look at the view or something...

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Quadrupling the number of pixels doesn't necessarily mean that the 
> *compressed* signal takes more bandwidth.

  It depends on the video contents and the codec.

  If you take, let's say, a 640x480 video and quadruple its size to
1280x960 (using some interpolation filtering), you won't need significantly
more bitrate eg. on MPEG-4 to get the same picture quality. That's because
the larger version doesn't contain any more information than the smaller
one (any additional bitrate you might need comes mostly from other overhead
caused by the larger video size).

  However, if your *original* video is 1280x960, at full detail, then it
will contain significantly more information than the 640x480 version. Most
of this extra information will get mangled if you use the same bitrate as
you did with the smaller video (assuming the bitrate was pretty optimal for
it to begin with). You will need more bitrate to retain that extra
information as much as possible (although not four times as much, of course).

  This is so for MPEG-4. Digi-TV (at least here) uses MPEG-2 (the same as
DVDs use). I don't know how well that handles larger video resolutions
compared to smaller ones.

> Then again, since we replaced our old CRT with a shiny new LCD, suddenly 
> I notice that just about *everything* on TV has DCT artifacts all over 
> it. (I guess the CRT was too blurry to show this.) It's quite annoying.

  Most digital TV broadcasts use significantly lower bitrates than DVDs,
which is why most digital TV broadcasts have significantly more visible
artifacts.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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scott wrote:

> Virgin have a system called On Demand in the UK.  Here in Germany we 
> have T-Home.  Obviously you need a fast internet connection (about 6 
> MBit/s or higher IIRC) to receive broadcast quality video.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPTV
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_on_Demand

Hmm, interesting.

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...)

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Fredrik Eriksson <fe79}--at--{yahoo}--dot--{com> wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:15:28 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >
> > Ooo, here's a random thought: Do you think there will ever be a day when  
> > the Internet becomes fast enough to watch TV-quality video in realtime?
> >
> > When do you think that day will be?

> About five years ago.

  At what quality?

  Certainly if your bandwidth is enough to transfer a full double-layer
DVD (ie. about 8 gigabytes) in 2 hours, then it would be enough to *watch*
that DVD in real-time over the internet. Not many people have such huge
bandwidths, though.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> 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 
(a friend was watching american football streamed over the net in HD 
quality, I had it through my laptop hooked up to the TV - definitely better 
than watching it on normal SDTV).

How about BBC iPlayer, what's the quality like on that? (I can't access it 
outside the UK)

YouTube also streams video at resolutions up to 1080p, you just need a fast 
enough internet connection to watch it in real time as it's downloading. 
IIRC the best digital TV broadcast streams use about 6 mbit/s, so that 
should give you some idea what internet speed you need.

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