simplicity from chaos: me love yoy long time!

sorry... i'm watching the office right now...

from the iPhone department...

alright, so, previously i went on and on about how wonderful the iphone is, or will be...

my stance is solid. this thing is pretty amazing.

however, i have enjoyed some of the great articles that have popped up already. the one from gizmodo is pretty good, the guy says that he used it to call his mommy. i lol'd a bit.

the best write up that i've seen so far, however, is from the new york times. i enjoyed it because it doesn't seem to pull any punches, and while you can tell that the guy has some issues about this new device of glory, it seems pretty well rounded and fair. from his time with the new iphone, he wrote an interesting FAQ (frequently asked questions), or as i like to call it... NO! it mostly focuses on the fact that this phone cannot be used on any network other than cingular... but it's funny as fuck. (the new york times article is written by david pogue, he has quite a few other articles, many of which are actually pretty good reads. of course, he's writing for a pretty hardcore paper, so i imagine he'd have to be pretty good to get there, lol).

also... in news of sheer hilarity, apple didn't QUITE finalize the 'iphone' name thing before they announced it, now cisco is pissed. read this article or this article... or don't, just trust that they are all sorts of suing apple. of course, iphone is really a bit misleading anyway, this thing is truly less a phone and an all encompassing multimedia device.

good times.

blu-ray vs. hd-dvd... pr0n is teh tiebreaker!

although many of the net slackers these days do not remember (or weren't yet alive for) the great VHS vs. BetaMax battles of yore (and even fewer even know about the u-matic catastrophe much earlier on, DAT is was not...), i will tell you that the battle was vicious, as i understand it. i don't remember it either, however, i've heard plenty. the truth was that betamax was a 'superior' format, and in all truth, it survived for nearly 30 years in japan, where you could still purchase NEW edbeta tapes providing much better resolution than vhs and even dvd... one of things that interested me the most was that sony's (betamax) defeat at the hands of vhs was, while due to many things, partially caused by the porn industries selection of using vhs as their standard of choice. it's not a 'well known' fact, mostly because people don't like to talk about porn if they can help it.

the reasoning was that vhs was a less selective, less expensive and over all 'looser' standard. sony, as you may know, is one of my least favorite companies, and i will not launch into another tirade, but i will leave it at that. they have a lot of things that they do well, but mostly, they are a money mongering, overly closed ended and proprietary company.

now, with the NEW format battle raging, bluray vs. hd-dvd, we have a whole new set of issues.

sony's bluray is, again, a 'better' quality standard. bluray allows for a much higher capacity disc (testing has it up to 33GB per layer, roughly 7 times as much as the current dvd standard, about about twice that of hd-dvd), and has a 'tighter' standard of codecs and laser construction. this means that conent is 'automatically' better... although i don't feel like explaining that, trust me on it. sony's proprietary nature is what keeps this one down, it's more expensive on the manufacturing front, more restrictive and much more closed format.

hd-dvd, however, is much more open. the main proponent of hd-dvd is microsoft (i say this because, 1. it's true, and 2. sony's ps3 vs. xbox360... c'mon! but, yes, it's a toshiba thing). now, i'm not a huge fan of microsoft either, and terms of open operability, they aren't known for 'playing friendly' with everyone else, but with hd-dvd, it's true, which i believe is due to toshiba being at the forefront of the technology. anyway... to the point!

now, it seems that the porn industry has thrown their hat in the ring! and they are siding with... hd-dvd! again, it seems they are shying away from sony! they cite a few reasons, such as it being cheaper and easier to produce. it also seems to have a lot to do with the fact that sony announced they will not ALLOW porn to sully their precious bluray discs! wow.

given the fact that adult movies comprise a ridiculous amount of annual dvd sales... i can't imagine that this is the best financial decision sony could make. i mean, morality is one thing, but you have to know that those execs are just as likely to stick a copy of 'teen age sluts from jupiter' in their dvd player every once in a while like the rest of the world.

and, sony is LOSING the sales race. first, their first players are TWICE the price, ringing in around $1000 for bluray, while the first line of toshiba hd-dvd players broke at $500. also, it seems their $600 PS3 gaming behemoth is not getting bluray players into as many households as they thought, ESPECIALLY in their homeland of japan. although, it's the wii that winning out there... which doesn't use ANY movie standard... hmm. either way, while this isn't the final chapter in the story, i am still voting that hd-dvd is the more likely standard to win. of course, being so close on the heels of the dvd revolution, it's all early adopters now anyway. in terms of sheer percentages very few people actually own hdtvs now, and of those, even fewer have the current hdmi standard meaning they can't watch either now anyway.

i could go on and on. but... i won't. yer probably all glossy eyed anyway...

i'm almost done on this subject.

but, in related news... 2160p!

well, ces is a great time of year for announcements in technology. it seems westinghouse (you know, the brand that best buy blows out the door... they make fridges too...) has developed what they call 'quad hdtv'. damn is all i've got to say.

some background.

long long ago, in a galaxy far far away... they invented tv. it was originally broadcast from one room to another. similar to edison's first telephone conversation. originally, they decided to send 480 lines of information. why 480 lines? just cause, they knew what could be 'transmitted' at the time (ok, it was actually something like 500 some lines.. which is still the case, but that's getting REALLY technical, the bottom line is what you SEE, right?). this was long before wifi you know, 802.11n draft standard ftw. anyway, they did it.. but only half the picture went through. much head scratching occurred and they knew something had to be changed.

well now, someone thought, "Hey, interlace it!". bam. 480i was born... the i standing for interlaced. that means that you have 480 lines, but you remove HALF of them, and intersperse at equal intervals, blank lines. that means you have 240 lines of picture and 240 lines of blank. this is what people watched, in black and white.

many many years later someone said... umm... color?

thus it became, and it was good, and for many more decades, this was the only innovation we saw. 640x480 interlaced color moving pictures.

now, it came to be that people wanted more. you see, film is much higher 'resolution', and people wanted that, as much of that as possible. someone said, well, there's 480 lines here, lets open that up. ta-da, 480p! progressive. progressive means NO LINES! it means, there are 480 lines, starting at the bottom and being displaying PROGRESSIVELY up until there's a full picture. this happens 30 times a second and it makes moving pictures to our eyes.

oh the neat!

but that wasn't enough, no sir. you see, people wanted things EVEN CLEARER!

so, it happened that they invented the HD standard, and oh how good it is!

it was split two ways. 720p and 1080i. i'll remind you that p = progressive and i = interlaced. both look great and both appear similarly. i prefer the 720p, myself, wich you will find on FIXED PIXEL displays, using matrices to make pictures. this is anything but a tube type tv, i.e. LCD / Plasma / DLP and most other acronyms. rear project and standard tubes are generally 1080i, and it all has to do with the 'grill' that is used and the way they fire phosphors... blah, whatever.

now, a few years goes by and people say, screw it, we want 1080p! yes. the p is gooder!

they are trickling out, and while you can't find much in the way of true content that is 1080p outside of video games, it will come, all in due time.

now, going back to that first transmission where they found out they could send enough content at first. the same is true now, there's no way to STORE enough content to make 1080p worthwhile. it just takes up too much damn space, even on bluray / hd-dvd discs... there's some economics and such involved too... but it takes a lot of compression and a lot of storage and we're just not there yet.

so, these high pixel displays are reserved for 'real time' content like video games and live satellite feeds and things of that nature.

enter westinghouse and their display. it's a show of what CAN be done, and likely is meant to show what's coming around the bend. time. time will tell all, but i expect that within the next ten years we will have 2160p capable ps5's and xbox720s.

wow... that was a rambling discourse of pointlessness. enjoy the knowledge and use it well.

as a sidenote, in terms of sheer resolution... 720p displays are typically 1366x768 (WXGA+)... we love it as consumers, but we're going the other way as well. the ipod videos, zunes, and iriver / archos etc. personal video players are running 320x240. wrap your head around that one... ;)

from the ricockulousness files...

paypal won't release the funds from a memorial fund of a dead soldier to the people that set it up because paypal chose to mark it as belonging to a 'non-profit' when it was set up. they are a for profit organization. now the money is being held in limbo for 180 days, for some reason i don't quite understand. read the story here... maybe give paypal a call and ask them why they are retarded.

real heroes!

an unsigned band, koopa, is poised to hit the top 40 charts without ever pressing a cd, according to this bbc article. there's new rules being placed to make it so that downloadable songs are counted toward the uk's top 40 charts even if they don't have a cd, and are unsigned! wow.

that's just great.

it's called black sheep

it will be the greatest movie ever. cult following seen waiting in the wings. watch the trailer here.

bahahhahahahahha

mpaa = teh dumb

as promised...

i finally got some birthday pics posted, so, check them out... moira at chuck e. cheese's.