scott escreveu:
>>  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.
> 
> That "only" comes out at around 9 MBit/s, a lot of people nowadays have 
> internet speeds getting on for that.

yeah, but DVDs are old wig.  How about bluray-quality?

It's interesting because the topic started out by ranting about "low" 
resolutions...

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

Post a reply to this message

Fredrik Eriksson escreveu:
> 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.

Only today I've got a 10Mbit connection at home.  I can view most HD 
videos comfortably, meaning little time for buffering the video so I can 
  start playing them as they still keep loading.  Resolution is not Full 
HD at all and compression quality is worse than in bluray.  And play 
cursor may occasionally still reach buffer cursor before it's full.

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

I live in Brazil out of the jungle, but even the jungle and slums are 
wired... :P

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
>>> why not increase the resolution *significantly*?
>>
>> Cost, both for producing the TV and for producing the content.
> 
> Producing the content I can understand. It presumably costs more money 
> to shunt larger volumes of data around...

Yes, inside the TV as well. How much did his laptop cost in 2004? How much 
did his television cost in 2004?

Do the math on memory bandwidth for 1920x1080x60x32bits, for example.

> How is it *cheaper* to design something more complicated?

It's cheaper to manufacture something with lower resolution. Much, much 
cheaper. And in the USA at least, there's only two HD resolutions, not "half 
a dozen".

>> Did you have a 40" computer monitor ten years ago?
> 
> No. But you would think that making a large monitor with a high 
> resolution would be much cheaper than making a small monitor with a high 
> resolution. (That would require a greater dot-pitch.)

*You* might.

(Actually, you're confusing terms here. A large monitor with the same 
resolution as a small monitor will be *far* more expensive.  A large monitor 
with the same pixel count as a small monitor is what you meant.)


> Ah. So that's the true reason...


Wow. You're getting as snarky-cynical as I am! :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

Fredrik Eriksson wrote:
> Then you would ignore the market segment that consists of people that 
> want something better than SD but cannot (or do not want to) pay the 
> full price of 1080p.

Plus, 1080p on a 19" diagonal screen is overkill. You can't see the 
difference anyway.

Heck, it's not obvious to notice the difference between 720p and 1080p on a 
46" screen from a couple feet away.  You actually have to look at it and 
think about it, in contrast to SD vs HD.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> I'm of the opinion that "full price 1080p" shouldn't be that expensive 
> in the first place, and we should all be saving up for 4096p or 
> something. But I guess that's next year's money draw...

What's the advantage. Your *eyes* only have a limited resolution.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> ...in other words, the entire reason for multiple resolutions existing 
> is to extract more money from people.

Alternately, to lower the cost of smaller televisions where 1080p would be 
below the resolving power of your eyes anyway.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

Am 26.04.2010 15:49, schrieb scott:

> I think mine was about 1500 GBP, although I think our IT guy has some
> scam going with the supplier, because his prices always seem to be way
> more than I find them for on other websites ;-)

Chances are your IT guy is buying the stuff complete with some service 
contract. So not only the usual "if it breaks within 24 months we'll fix 
it for free" guarantee, but "if it breaks we'll get a replacement to you 
within 2 business days" or some such.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> I don't mind paying money when I actually get something in return.

You do. You pay less money to get a smaller screen with a lower pixelcount.

> I often wonder why we don't have monitors with 300dpi or 600dpi yet. 
> Then the text on screen would be nearly print-quality.

People in the printing business would laugh at you for that statement. 
300dpi is barely draft quality. 1200dpi is what you show the clients in 
black and white to get their approval before actually printing it.

> (Except that, to this day, changing resolution makes everything come out 
> too small. How many managers have you seen turn down the resolution to 
> make the text bigger?)

Now you know why 19" screens are 720p.

> (Or are you talking about the HD channels? We only receive SD.)

So you're complaining about the fact that there's a 720p and a 1080p HD 
standard (at least in the USA), and you're only getting 512i signals anyway?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

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

You forgot #5:

An HD picture with black bars on the top and bottom to make it SD aspect 
ratio, then broadcast on an HD screen with black bars left and right to make 
it fit.

Altho there are actually components in a lot of TVs that will detect this 
and only show you the middle anyway.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> When do you think that day will be?

Not only is it here. It's a commodity.

http://www.netflix.com/NetflixReadyDevices

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

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.

The problem with 1080p videos on youtube is that youtube overcompresses them 
anyway.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

>> I often wonder why we don't have monitors with 300dpi or 600dpi yet. 
>> Then the text on screen would be nearly print-quality.
> 
> People in the printing business would laugh at you for that statement. 
> 300dpi is barely draft quality. 1200dpi is what you show the clients in 
> black and white to get their approval before actually printing it.

You're telling me it's possible to tell the difference betwee 600dpi and 
1200dpi?

> So you're complaining about the fact that there's a 720p and a 1080p HD 
> standard (at least in the USA), and you're only getting 512i signals 
> anyway?

As I say, everybody's shouting about 2x the resolution as if it's some 
big deal or something.

Now, if it was 10x the resolution, that would seem more impressive...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

>> Everybody seems to hate #1, but lots of people apparently see nothing 
>> wrong with #2 or #3. *shudders*
> 
> You forgot #5:
> 
> An HD picture with black bars on the top and bottom to make it SD aspect 
> ratio, then broadcast on an HD screen with black bars left and right to 
> make it fit.
> 
> Altho there are actually components in a lot of TVs that will detect 
> this and only show you the middle anyway.

Yeah. Or you manually flip the controls on the TV, as I constantly do.

(Or rather, did. With the new BD player, it seems to happen 
automatically. God only knows why this didn't happen before...)

The fun part is when you watch "widescreen" stuff, and there's *still* 
black bars at the top and bottom. (I.e., the picture is even wider than 
your TV.) Oh that was *so* worth it...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:20:26 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> As I say, everybody's shouting about 2x the resolution as if it's some
> big deal or something.
> 
> Now, if it was 10x the resolution, that would seem more impressive...

It is actually a big deal when you have a big screen.  Our 16:9 
projection screen measures 106" diagonally, and there is a *huge* 
improvement between SD and HD on it.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Le 26/04/2010 10:19, Invisible nous fit lire :
> http://www.xkcd.com/732/
> 
> This puzzles me too.
> 
> I mean, if you're going to force everybody to buy a new TV, new
> receiver, new type of disk and a new machine to play it, why it increase
> the resolution *significantly*? Why only increase it by a small amount?
> I don't understand that.

They are not increasing resolution, they are reducing it.
One step at a time, they increase the lcd... just to make you buy it
over and over. But from CRT, we lost a lot!

> Hell, when I was at uni ten years ago we had computers exceeding these
> resolutions. With Windows NT 4.0, Service Pack 4. Has technology not
> moved on since then? It's not like there's any technical challenge to
> using a higher resolution, after all...

In 1990, I studied on HP systems, with either VT-100 (80x24+1 line
terminal, amber) or huge (and heavy) glassy screen: more than 2048² on
X11, palette colours (256 entries).(the screen was flat, and weight a lot!)

PC where in 1024x768 or 1280x1024, in 16 colours or 256.
No Web then. Turbo was a 12MHz PC!

Around 2000, CRT for PC was already able to reach 1600x1200. But most
configuration was 1024x768. In 16777216 colours (256^3) or more.
Video card pushed to 10 bits per channels with gamma internal...
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.

Nowadays, all you can found in store at best is a 1920 x 1080.
1920x1200... disappearing.
2560x1600... on order only (and price is 4 digits!).

And it is LCD. No more CRT.

The fact: lcd matrix are ordered "in mass" for TV (HD ! lol), so they
only produce 1080 matrix, and computer screen have to take from that stock.

Post a reply to this message

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).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   Then there are the dead pixels, which plagued LCDs for many, many years
> (only relatively recently LCD vendors have started guaranteeing no dead
> pixels).

Screen burn, anyone?

(Not that modern "screen savers" actually save your screen...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> You're telling me it's possible to tell the difference betwee 600dpi and 
> 1200dpi?

Yeah. You have to look close.  (And, honestly, this was before I hit 40 and 
my eyes started to get old.) But yes, it was pretty clear. I could pick up a 
paper in my brother's advertising office and tell you if it came off the 
Apple laser printer or the "real" laser printer, for example, just by 
looking at the jaggies on an X or something.

The same way that in the same timeframe you could look at a TeX paper and 
tell by the crappy spacing between letters and the poor typography that it 
was using Computer Modern fonts instead of fonts designed by a typographer.

> As I say, everybody's shouting about 2x the resolution as if it's some 
> big deal or something.

1080 is a lot more than 2x the resolution of 480. It's also because it's 
digital now, so the signal is better.

> Now, if it was 10x the resolution, that would seem more impressive...

Certainly. But you wouldn't pay for that, would you?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:20:26 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> 
>> As I say, everybody's shouting about 2x the resolution as if it's some
>> big deal or something.
>>
>> Now, if it was 10x the resolution, that would seem more impressive...
> 
> It is actually a big deal when you have a big screen.  Our 16:9 
> projection screen measures 106" diagonally, and there is a *huge* 
> improvement between SD and HD on it.

Heh. And my brother has his stuff all hooked up to a projector giving him a 
9 foot diagonal picture. Pretty cool to play video game football when the 
players are literally larger than life size.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> 
>>   Then there are the dead pixels, which plagued LCDs for many, many years
>> (only relatively recently LCD vendors have started guaranteeing no dead
>> pixels).
> 
> Screen burn, anyone?
> 
> (Not that modern "screen savers" actually save your screen...)

They prevent screen burn. :-) Either that, or you've never actually seen 
screen burn.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

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.

Post a reply to this message

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.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> You're telling me it's possible to tell the difference betwee 600dpi 
>> and 1200dpi?
> 
> Yeah. You have to look close.  (And, honestly, this was before I hit 40 
> and my eyes started to get old.) But yes, it was pretty clear. I could 
> pick up a paper in my brother's advertising office and tell you if it 
> came off the Apple laser printer or the "real" laser printer, for 
> example, just by looking at the jaggies on an X or something.

Apparently I'm just weird. I can't really tell the difference between 
the old 300dpi LaserJet 6P, the 600dpi LaserJet 4100, and the 1200dpi 
Xerox Phaser.

Oh, unless you mean in greyscale or something. There it makes a 
difference...

> The same way that in the same timeframe you could look at a TeX paper 
> and tell by the crappy spacing between letters and the poor typography 
> that it was using Computer Modern fonts instead of fonts designed by a 
> typographer.

Now, see, to my eyes the Computer Modern fonts look much, much better 
than anything any other system ever produces. (Certainly TeX beats the 
**** out of anything Word produces!)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

>>>   Then there are the dead pixels, which plagued LCDs for many, many 
>>> years
>>> (only relatively recently LCD vendors have started guaranteeing no dead
>>> pixels).
>>
>> Screen burn, anyone?
>>
>> (Not that modern "screen savers" actually save your screen...)
> 
> They prevent screen burn. :-) Either that, or you've never actually seen 
> screen burn.

Go to any arcade. Observe how every CRT in the place has "Insert £1 
Now!" faintly displayed in the center of the screen, regardless of the 
image from the video card...

The idea of a screen saver is that it displays different images so that 
no one particular area of the screen gets unduely stimulated. But lots 
of modern screen savers display static or nearly static images...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Apparently I'm just weird. I can't really tell the difference between 
> the old 300dpi LaserJet 6P, the 600dpi LaserJet 4100, and the 1200dpi 
> Xerox Phaser.

Plain old black-and-white text. It was pretty easy to see. Enough that I was 
impressed with the quality of the 1200dpi laser printer.

> Now, see, to my eyes the Computer Modern fonts look much, much better 
> than anything any other system ever produces. (Certainly TeX beats the 
> **** out of anything Word produces!)

Sure, but that's because Word is doing it on the fly, as you type. Any 
decent typesetting system is going to give you nicer-looking output.

You can go to journals written in the 90s or so, and see who had their 
papers typeset and who wrote it themselves with TeX just by looking at the 
poor spacing and the fonts with bad balances of black and white and such.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> But lots of modern screen savers display static or nearly static images...

Huh. I never saw a nearly-static screen saver, I guess.


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

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

You know, I'm realizing I've been getting back aches lately. I think part of 
it is my new LCDs are so much flatter than my old CRT they're another foot 
away, and I start leaning forward to see them clearly. :-)


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> But lots of modern screen savers display static or nearly static 
>> images...
> 
> Huh. I never saw a nearly-static screen saver, I guess.

For example, there's that popular one that shows your desktop, but with 
a distorting lense rolling over it. So 80% of the screen isn't changing, 
just the 20% of it under the lense...

Just one small example. I've seen lots of Linux screen savers which 
gradually draw stuff over the period of a minute or so. I guess that's 
not so bad, because *what* they draw is random, so it'll only ever be on 
the screen for a minute or two.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> For example, there's that popular one that shows your desktop, but with 
> a distorting lense rolling over it. So 80% of the screen isn't changing, 
> just the 20% of it under the lense...

Yeah, OK.

Come to think of it, I've seen a number of screen savers that when they 
started I thought "now why in the world if I'm locking my screen would I 
want to show everyone what it says like that?" :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> Come to think of it, I've seen a number of screen savers that when they 
> started I thought "now why in the world if I'm locking my screen would I 
> want to show everyone what it says like that?" :-)

Hmm, yes...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:49:52 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:20:26 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> 
>>> As I say, everybody's shouting about 2x the resolution as if it's some
>>> big deal or something.
>>>
>>> Now, if it was 10x the resolution, that would seem more impressive...
>> 
>> It is actually a big deal when you have a big screen.  Our 16:9
>> projection screen measures 106" diagonally, and there is a *huge*
>> improvement between SD and HD on it.
> 
> Heh. And my brother has his stuff all hooked up to a projector giving
> him a 9 foot diagonal picture. Pretty cool to play video game football
> when the players are literally larger than life size.

With our sound system, it's just like going to the cinema - except we can 
pause to get more popcorn.  And don't have the crying babies that some 
parents bring with because they can't get a sitter.

Oh, and our floor isn't sticky. :-)

On the downside, had to replace the bulb in the projector last weekend.  
Had a spare on hand, but those bulbs are not cheap. :-/

But yeah, our PS3 is connected to it, so I end up playing the occasional 
game on that screen.  It's really nice - even my wife likes it, and she 
initially thought the idea was ridiculous, but she now admits freely that 
it was a good idea. :-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:44:58 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> (Not that modern "screen savers" actually save your screen...)

If they use DPMS, they sure do. ;-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> With our sound system, it's just like going to the cinema 

My brother had movie theatre seats for a while too, until he realized a 
couch was more comfortable anyway.  It was amusing, tho. I think he still 
has them in storage.

> On the downside, had to replace the bulb in the projector last weekend.  
> Had a spare on hand, but those bulbs are not cheap. :-/

That they aren't!

> But yeah, our PS3 is connected to it, so I end up playing the occasional 
> game on that screen.  It's really nice - even my wife likes it, and she 
> initially thought the idea was ridiculous, but she now admits freely that 
> it was a good idea. :-)

Yeah. And a wii is pretty spectacular too when you're not looking at a 
tennis court that's 20" wide.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

clipka escreveu:
> 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.

thank you.  Saved my time. :)

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

Post a reply to this message

On 04/26/10 02:40, scott wrote:
>> Question: Why aren't there any widescreen cinemas yet?
> 
> WTF?

POTD

-- 
Copywight 1991 Elmer Fudd.  All wights wesewved

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:33:14 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> With our sound system, it's just like going to the cinema
> 
> My brother had movie theatre seats for a while too, until he realized a
> couch was more comfortable anyway.  It was amusing, tho. I think he
> still has them in storage.

We thought about doing that, but we'll only be in this house for about 
another year, then we're moving again (after the kid graduates college 
and moves out, this house is too big for just two of us); we decided that 
here in Utah, a house with a room that's easily converted to another 
bedroom would be more valuable, so all we have to do is patch the holes 
from the mounts for the screen and the projector - no problem. :-)

If we were going to be here longer, I'd have even run the wires for the 
speakers in the walls. :-)

>> On the downside, had to replace the bulb in the projector last weekend.
>> Had a spare on hand, but those bulbs are not cheap. :-/
> 
> That they aren't!

Got about 16 months of use out of the original one.  Noisy when they 
blow, too - like a firecracker going off.  I'd had one do that to me in a 
class I was teaching once, and still wasn't fully prepared for it when it 
went.

Looks like I can get my bulbs sub-$300, though, which isn't bad; the 
replacement I got was valued at $450 by Mitsubishi.

>> But yeah, our PS3 is connected to it, so I end up playing the
>> occasional game on that screen.  It's really nice - even my wife likes
>> it, and she initially thought the idea was ridiculous, but she now
>> admits freely that it was a good idea. :-)
> 
> Yeah. And a wii is pretty spectacular too when you're not looking at a
> tennis court that's 20" wide.

Yeah, last year our team did a "development week" (for the course 
developers), and one of the recreational activities was a wii connected 
to one of the screens in one of the big classrooms - I don't recall for 
sure, but I *think* those screens are 20' diagonal.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

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.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> bedroom would be more valuable, so all we have to do is patch the holes 
> from the mounts for the screen and the projector - no problem. :-)

Oh, these were just bolted to planks, basically. Totally movable. Not really 
the actual movie theatre experience, I'll grant.

We did have a row of airplane seats for a while, after the Frnklin Institute 
science museum closed their 747 exhibit and basically threw away the plane. 
Did you know insurance companies value a row of 747 seats at about $700, or 
at least did when we had the house fire back in 1985?

> 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.

> Looks like I can get my bulbs sub-$300, 

I think my brother pays $800 or so for his. They're extra super bright or 
some nonsense. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

>> I'm of the opinion that "full price 1080p" shouldn't be that expensive in 
>> the first place, and we should all be saving up for 4096p or something. 
>> But I guess that's next year's money draw...
>
> What's the advantage. Your *eyes* only have a limited resolution.

I think they need to increase the frame rate to 120 Hz or something first 
before making the resolution higher.  24 Hz is ridiculous.

Post a reply to this message

> You're telling me it's possible to tell the difference betwee 600dpi and 
> 1200dpi?

You can't really compare directly.  A lot of printing methods use a 
half-tone pattern to show various shades of colour, an LCD needs only 1 dot 
to show that colour.

Post a reply to this message

>  Digital TV could have benefited from using MPEG-4 instead of MPEG-2, but
> it didn't. It's a bummer.

It's ok, it's changing.  All HDTV channels are compressed with MPEG-4 (in 
the UK and Germany at least) so I suspect eventually the MPEG-2 compressed 
channels will be gone.

Post a reply to this message

>  Not to talk about contrast...

Depends on the ambient light levels whether LCD or CRT offers better 
contrast.  Certainly in office environments (that are usually well it) LCD 
has higher contrast.  In dark rooms CRT is better, but the gap is 
continually closing.

>  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).

Indeed, it's down to the LC mode used and obviously cost.  Cheap laptop/PC 
monitors are not designed to be viewing from any angle other than 
perpendicular, but a good TV will look the same from all angles (including 
up/down) - it has been that way for many years.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> I've yet to see anything on YouTube which even approaches TV quality.
> 
> You did find a video that supports HD resolutions, and switch YouTube to 
> use that resolution, and watch full-screen?  Search "1080p demo" to 
> easily find some.

The ones with an HD option look bettER, but still not particularly good. 
At least, the ones I've seen.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> When do you think that day will be?
> 
> Not only is it here. It's a commodity.
> 
> http://www.netflix.com/NetflixReadyDevices

I don't follow.

Post a reply to this message

>> (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?

Post a reply to this message

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.

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message