Jay

I've been to Jefferson Memorial and Rivet City. Haven't gone to GNR yet though. It's a non-linear RPG, after all. And yes, what you posted contains minor spoilers.

Are you always this hypersensitive?

Please label spoilers as such, kthxbye :)

I may be at level 13, but I haven't even done the GNR mission yet. Having too much fun running around to random places.

[ spoiler ]spoiler text[ /spoiler] (without the spaces)

Then highlight to read. When the software update comes, it'll be a little more sophisticated than that, probably a link you click to reveal spoiler text, much like ignored posts.

I think Fallout 3 is GOTY material, easily. And I'm not finding it all that hard really. Once you level up a few times, you can start exploring more, which is the way it should be. The developers make sure to keep you within certain boundaries when you first start by handing your ass to you if you go too far. What fun would it be if you could walk all over the map with zero effort?

Spend some time building your character, fighting enemies close to home, and gathering weapons and ammo. You need to be properly armed and protected before heading too far out into the wastes. I haven't played in about two weeks, but I'm at level 13 or so, and there haven't been many situations where I wondered into something and got killed unless I was stupid and didn't pay attention to my surroundings. You can't just run around; you need to observe carefully.

If you're not too far in the game and don't mind starting over, I highly recommend you emphasize the intelligence, strength, and endurance attributes during the baby builder. Having a high intelligence gives you more skill points to distribute when you level up, endurance helps you survive battles more easily, and strength will allow you to wear heavier armor and gather more items to sell when you're in town. As for skills, I recommend Medicine, Science, and Small Guns as focus points. The higher your Medicine skill, the more you recover when using stimpaks, which is priceless. I go out into the wilds carrying 50+ stimpaks (they don't weigh anything), and each one gives me about 85HP at my current level. I can fight all damn day and still have stimpaks to spare. Science will help you hack the terminals (very tough to get around without that).

And I think the character creation at the beginning is one of the most innovative ways I've seen to create an RPG character. I was thoroughly entertained throughout.

Fallout 3 is all about atmosphere, and if your intention is to blow through the game, you're going to miss so much good stuff. It's definitely an explorer's game, no doubt. Not a game for run-n-gunners. I can't believe the sheer number of locations I've found so far, and I've only covered 30% of the map, if that.

lordjedi said:

Not really.  Your entire iPod is usually synced to iTunes on the computer.  Simply plugging your computers DVI into an available HDMI port on an HDTV is a pretty easy process.  From there, you just press play within iTunes.

If anything, the "Digital Copy" that's available on many newer releases makes setting up a media server way easier than it use to be.  Unfortunately, those files can only be played in either iTunes or Windows Media Player.  Combine any of those setups with an XBox 360 or PS3 for doing streaming and it's very easy to set the whole thing up.

You're ignoring a lot of intermediate steps and giving consumers way too much credit. You're also projecting your technical understanding onto the market again.

There is no comparison to be drawn between the process of connecting a media center to a TV and that of syncing an iPod with iTunes. There is no application that automatically rips a DVD for you upon insertion, stores it in a way that makes it accessible to Windows Media Center, and does all this without significant input from the user or the use of additional software like AnyDVD to break the encryption.

I can't think of one person in my entire family who knows what DVI and HDMI are, let alone that they're compatible.

negative1 said: ...

I think the sales numbers will tell a different story once the price drops on the PS3. Ignoring all the doom and gloom from the wannabe tech morons in major publications, while in third place, Sony still sold a respectable number of consoles over the holidays, and a price drop in the spring should help pick up sales gradually throughout the year.

I also think the huge dividends that Sony will reap thanks to Blu-ray's success will help them on their recovery. 2009 is going to be a good year for Blu-ray.

Octorox said:

I disagree. If say, iTunes, had a DVD ripping feature to get your movies on your ipod I think a lot of people would rather do that than rebuy them from the itunes store.

This is quite a different situation from setting up a media server and connecting it to your TV.

You could remove encryption from all DVDs today and the number of discs being ripped to hard drives by tomorrow would have increased by exactly zero percent.

Anybody who has any interest whatsoever in "backing up" their DVDs or having a media server is already doing it. Not one consumer--not a single one--who doesn't understand that you can rip DVDs would be interested in ripping DVDs if they knew they could. And the same is true for Blu-ray.

We're nerds, dude. We get this stuff. We need this stuff. They don't.

Moth3r said:

Re-install the OS.

And make sure that OS is Linux or OS X.

Sorry, I know it's a dick move to tell Windows users to switch to something else when they ask for help.

I was one of the fortunate ones who never had a virus or trojan (to my knowledge) in all the years I was a Windows user. The only advice I can offer is the same as Moth3r's. Nuke and pave.

Get negative1, Tiptup, and lordjedi all posting and quoting each other in the same topic and my scroll wheel would probably wear out or catch fire.

How did I miss this post? Sorry.

It's a week or two out at least. I'm going through a major rewrite of the data access layer to prep the software for retail release and implementing this one change by itself would be difficult to do.

Darth Mallwalker said:

Those aren't new paragraphs.  They're hard carriage returns which this POS editor misinterprets as paragraphs.

They are new paragraphs.

In written English, new paragraphs begin with indentation or extra spacing above them.
All of our typing would look like this otherwise.
Not very nice to read, is it?
Nope.

The editor creates proper semantic markup with HTML paragraph tags enclosing every new paragraph, which is the way it should be. And because of that, the editor is displaying exactly what your post is going to look like when you post it.

Hold down the Shift key when you press enter/return and you'll get a single new line.

Like.
So.

Why you would want one line after the other, I have no idea.

negative1's posts have crazy spacing because he's hitting return twice for each new paragraph.

Try the latest version of Word. It behaves the same as the editor because new paragraphs are treated differently than new lines; new paragraphs are the default, new lines are an option requiring an additional key press.

And I'm not sure what being a programmer has to do with splitting up your sentences into five-word lines. I'm a programmer, and I write English properly.

I don't think you guys are quite getting this. It's meant to mimic a constant height setup, which is what decent theaters employ when displaying movies at different aspect ratios.

Nothing should be squished or cropped at all. Scope films should take up the entire screen when properly scaled, and if the Blu-ray author has a brain, the subtitles, if not already burned in, should appear within the image. Placing subtitle info within the black bars is a holdover from the laserdisc era that was wrongfully passed on to DVDs and probably a lot of Blu-ray discs.

All other material should be displayed at the proper proportions with sidebars just like they do in the theater with curtains; nothing should be cropped.

Constant height setups are the shit in the front projection world and I hope to have one someday. In the meantime, this is a cool solution. I hope we see more displays like this.

lordjedi said:

Not now it won't.

It wouldn't have died even before it reached your magical threshold, but as long as you're satisfied and ready to adopt, that's good.

I also have no doubt that at some point in the very near future, the encryption on the discs will be completely cracked and all Blu-ray movies will be easily ripped.  Then we'll all have are nice hi-def media boxes at home playing all our Blu-ray titles.

You can do this now with AnyDVD. Updates are required to keep pace with new titles, but I see the update e-mails in my mailbox so often that it seems like there's hardly any delay.

Where are you going to store all these Blu-ray titles anyway? A $250 Blu-ray player is too expensive, but tossing a couple terabyte drives into a media server to store a modest Blu-ray collection (in addition to the costs of the discs themselves) is somehow reasonable?

I used to be in the same camp. I built several crazy HTPCs and had grand designs of a media center with all my DVDs ripped and stored. Then I realized how much easier it was to put in the damn disc and press play. And then I realized that all my tweaking and other nonsense gave me image quality that was about on par with high-end DVD players that cost as much as my HTPC. I can't believe how much I used to obsess over ffdshow settings. Fucking Lanczos vs. bicubic scaling. Jesus Christ.

Geeks tend to geek out and do things for the sake of doing them and not because they really make sense. Only nerds care about this shit. DRM and media server friendliness have had zero effect on Blu-ray's adoption and will have zero effect on its future. 99.999% of consumers just don't care.

Great episode, and a nice bait and switch. They made it seem like one character was obviously a Cylon, and then knocked the audience on their ass with something completely unexpected--and full of wonderful irony. And now we're left wondering just what the deal is with the first character because that mystery remains intact.

The suicide was also a shocker. Didn't see that one coming at all.

Looking forward to the rest of the season now. Just wish they'd get these out on Blu-ray already.

Somebody most likely entered your username into the password reset form. The forum software doesn't send e-mails spontaneously like that.

Your account should be safe, but let's keep an eye on things to be sure.

What e-mail did you receive initially? Can you paste the contents here (not your login credentials of course)?

The password reset form lets you enter a username or e-mail address to begin a password reset. There's nothing stopping another user from entering your username, which will then send an e-mail to you. It's completely harmless because that won't reveal anything to a third party, but somebody could be probing for security holes.

Edit: Was it this e-mail?

To continue with your request for a new originaltrilogy.com forum password, please click the following link. Clicking this link will reset your forum password and send the new password to this e-mail address.

(link to password reset)

lordjedi said:

If you had asked the same thing back in 1996 about downloading music, I would've totally agreed with you.  Why would any recording studio distribute singles at 99 cents each instead of the full album for $15?  It just doesn't make sense.  Fast forward 10 years and that's exactly what happened.

The $9.99 film wouldn't come with any extras beyond the cover art.  I suppose they could include a commentary track, but you wouldn't get any behind the scenes videos.  That'd be perfectly acceptable to me, but it would have to have nearly the same portability as current DVDs and it would be nice to be able to buy the behind the scenes stuff at maybe an additional $5.  Bandwidth costs a lot less than shipping, printing, and packing, so they'd make a ton more money.  And they wouldn't have to use any content providers other than themselves if they didn't want to.  I'm more than willing to buy direct from Universal, WB, Fox, etc, etc for that price.

I didn't say studios wouldn't get their prices down to $9.99 eventually. I said they'd make more profit from Blu-ray if HD downloads are at $9.99. Digital distribution does cost less, but I don't think the costs of physical production and distribution are so high that HD downloads at $9.99 become a more profitable venture than Blu-ray discs at $19.99.

How much do studios make from music downloads versus physical media?

And ask NBC Universal how pulling out of iTunes and providing their own content worked out for them. They greatly underestimated the difficulty of developing a reliable, well-designed marketplace that's appealing to consumers. The NBC Universal catalog is significant, yet it still wasn't enough to draw users away from iTunes. If all providers pulled out, the average consumer would have no idea where to get their favorite movies without Googling it, which is a shitty experience, which will hurt sales and adoption.

Tiptup said:

It does have problems with DRM and some poor quality hardware for the price (as lordjedi alluded to above).

The hardware's price and quality are right where they should be at this point in the format's lifespan. If they weren't, the hardware wouldn't be selling as well as it is.

I mean hell, the economy is in the shitter, Blu-ray is actually doing better than DVD was when it launched--which is downright amazing--and lordjedi will still tell you that the hardware is too expensive and the format's future is hazy.

What miracles will need to occur to convince the naysayers that everything is just fine?

Read. History...repeating.

For Blu-ray to lose against any competition, that competition will need to be either better or cheaper. I don't think better is really possible or necessary at this point given the limits of current consumer technology and visual perception. That leaves cheaper.

For cheaper to happen, studios will have to accept much less than Blu-ray retail prices for HD downloads. Much, much less. If my earlier prediction holds true, HD downloads will have to hit $9.99 for a feature film for a reasonable number of consumers to buy into it and abandon physical media.

Which is more profitable for a studio: distributing films digitally to content providers and selling them for $9.99 each, or distributing physical media to retailers and selling films for $19.99 and above? I'd be willing to bet that studios will end up making more profit sticking with physical media, and that's why they're in no hurry to kill the shiny disc.

lordjedi said:

... 

I've been through these consumer electronics debates with people who think they understand the industry and consumer spending patterns. They think they get it, but instead of actually understanding the industry, they're usually just projecting their own wishes and desires onto the general public.

I debated audio enthusiasts who thought DVD-A and SACD were the future of home audio. I understood that only enthusiasts who cared about the jump in quality and were willing to spend the money on an appropriate audio setup would buy into either format, relegating it to niche status. So, they were wrong.

I debated digital download proponents who said iTunes would take over music sales quickly. I understood that people still like owning physical media, lots of people are very attached to their CD libraries, and it would take years for music downloads to become the standard. As successful as iTunes is, it's still next to nothing compared to CD sales. So, they were wrong also.

I debated HD-DVD supporters who were convinced it was the format that would come out on top. I understood that Sony's main failure in the VHS/Betamax wars was their unwillingness to license the technology to other manufacturers. Toshiba, while willing to let others build HD-DVD decks, failed to line up the necessary manufacturing and brand support for HD-DVD to succeed. It was Toshiba and NEC (which has zero brand equity as a consumer electronics manufacturer in North America) versus practically every major consumer electronics giant in the world in support of Blu-ray. Many of those same companies have a lot of pull with the studios. No need to go into the results. So, once again, they were wrong.

Now I spend a lot of time debating people who say Blu-ray will fail because HD on demand and HD downloads are going to kill it. These people will be proven wrong also because they don't get the market and don't understand the glacial speeds at which it moves.

The first step to making accurate predictions is to understand that your wants and needs are yours and yours alone. For example, those "expensive" Blu-ray players that you refuse to pay for? They're selling just fine. That's because there are millions of people who aren't as sensitive to price and Profile as you are.

I've never purchased a song via iTunes, and until they offer uncompressed audio, I never will. Yet they still sell millions of songs because there are plenty of people who enjoy the convenience of the iTunes service. Not enough to kill the CD market, but enough for Apple and music companies to make a lot of money. And I get that, even though it's not my thing.

HD on demand breaks down into freebies, pay channels, rentals, and purchases. I'll address each.

I'm not sure how current freebies work, but I'm guessing that cable/satellite/etc. providers work out deals with studios to have a certain selection of their catalogs available at any given time. The list is regularly rotated, but the limited selection usually consists of older movies or more recent films that are well out of their prime rental and sales windows. Unless providers work out some big deals and spend some big money, which they won't do because they're incredibly cheap, the freebie selection will remain utter shite, making it worth nothing in terms of swaying consumers.

Next up are pay channels. Because I subscribe to Showtime, Encore, and Starz, I get a small selection of their current movies available via on demand. The choices are more current and better than the freebies, but hell, I'm paying for them, so they should be. Good for the occasional night where I have nothing else to watch, but nothing to write home about either. I also get HBO, but for some reason they offer no content via on demand with Comcast.

Then there are rentals. Comcast charges $5.99 to rent an HD movie via on demand. These are obviously newer films that have just hit the home video market; pretty much the same selection I'd see at Blockbuster. The rental price is similar, but the 24-hour window is ridiculous. If I rent a Blu-ray from Hollywood Video, I get to keep it for a week. If I rent an HD movie from Comcast and I start playing it, I have 24 hours to finish it before it goes away. This policy is horseshit and I'm quite sure that it, along with the price, is preventing a lot of people from making use of the service.

Finally, there are HD on demand purchases from services like Vudu. The samples I've seen online demonstrate what seems to be fairly high quality 1080p video and they claim to offer lossless audio for some movies. I'll ignore the fact that you have to buy the Vudu box because traditional providers like Comcast and Verizon will probably offer the same service at some point in the future.

The biggest problem I see with HD on demand sales is the price of the media itself. iTunes' success is due in part to the excellent pricing structure and flexibility. 99¢ for a song is just the right price to get consumers to buy, the media is portable, and they just announced that all songs available via iTunes will be DRM-free by March. On the contrary, it costs $19.99 to buy the SD version of Iron Man or Dark Knight on Vudu. That's SD! I can buy the DVD version for less or the Blu-ray version for slightly more. Movie studios are spoiled and don't like to be told how to set their prices, so they'll remain high until there's enough pressure from providers to lower them and that won't arrive any time soon.

My prediction: HD on demand, whether we're referring to rentals or sales, will stagnate until prices fall more in line with iTunes. $9.99 at the most to buy an HD movie and $1.99 to rent with a more flexible delivery window. Apple had to battle the studios quite a bit to maintain their pricing model, and they could only do that because iTunes was so popular. Cable/satellite/etc. providers will bend to the studios and let them charge whatever they want, which is why they will fail. And regardless of all this, Blu-ray will succeed as a viable, profitable, popular media format.

adywan said:

I wonder how much sales of Blu-Ray players would escalate if a certian Saga got a blu-ray release?

Well I'm enjoying your work in the meantime :)

lordjedi said:

That article is nothing more than a pro Blu-ray gush piece.  The news coming out of CES is that if Blu-ray doesn't take off this year, HD downloads are going to end up killing it or at least making it a niche market.  He tries to address that in his article, but he obviously doesn't know what he's talking about.  Verizon is pushing HD content through FiOS...today.  Time Warner has HD on demand...today.  LG just released an HDTV that can stream HD video from Netflix (just plug an ethernet cable right into the TV).  The only companies that are having problems pushing HD content are satellite (DirecTV and Dish).  They don't have the capacity yet to deliver all the channels that are currently available in HD, but they are improving.

I really hope Blu-ray does take off, but I don't see it happening.

There's no such "news" coming out of CES about Blu-ray needing a decisive win this year. Big difference between news coming out of CES and opinion pieces in non-tech savvy publications like WSJ and CNN Money.

I've been hearing about media downloads for years. Even with iTunes' great success, it's still a fraction of a fraction of the total music market. Viable HD on demand as a replacement for physical media is years away. Years.

Have you seen the selection cable companies offer via HD on demand? It sucks, and thanks to low bitrate MPEG-2 and what are frequently older HD masters, it's artifact-ridden and a total blockfest during any type of fast motion, not to mention that stations like HBO and Starz crop 2.35:1 films to 16:9 to fill the screens of morons who prefer that shit. HD on demand is nowhere near being a Blu-ray killer.

The format is doing fine. It may not achieve the penetration of DVD well into its life due to the eventual arrival of viable HD on demand (Vudu perhaps?), but I don't think that's a valid measure of its success or failure, especially in today's market where HD on demand is a complete joke.

Blu-ray doing better in its first two years than DVD did:

http://www.dvdfile.com/article/blu-ray-disc-exceeds-expectations-13104

How long has it been in service? Did they charge you for it or were you able to get them to fix it at no cost?

I'm still working my way through Fallout 3. What a fantastic game. I don't see how anyone who walked through it in a week could have possibly enjoyed everything it has to offer. It's the kind of game that makes me want to explore every nook and cranny on the map (and explode heads while I'm doing it).

Sold my Wii on craigslist yesterday to a guy who was buying it for his family. He e-mailed me later on and said they were having a lot of fun with it, so that's cool. I enjoyed counting the cash more than I ever enjoyed the console, so it worked out for everyone involved.

I think my head just caved in.

The things you think you know dwarf your actual understanding on this point.

lordjedi said:

Jay: I really don't care how much different you think a hardware vs software player is.  Beyond the necessary chips to decode the Blu-ray content, the differences aren't major.  DVD players have hardware mpeg2 decoders.  PC DVD drives don't because the software does the decoding.  It's pretty much the same thing with Blu-ray.

I know I said I wasn't coming back, but your stubbornness on this point and your inability to accept and process new information borders on autistic.

BD computer drives are completely different from standalone decks because your PC is there to do the rest of the work. Your PC provides the software decoder application (and all the licensing fees that entails), the hardware to run it on (CPU, RAM, video card with DVI or HDMI), a power supply, and a fancy GUI.

These are all things that must be built into a standalone deck, and that's not including other hardware like the IR receiver for the remote, the remote itself, etc. We're not talking about a DVD player here either because the processing power required for smooth 1080p playback/fast forward/rewind is much higher than 480p.

This is why Toshiba sold the first HD-DVD players at a huge loss; they basically crammed a PC into a standalone form factor.

Have improved engineering and parts consolidation led to lower manufacturing costs? Yes. Have costs gotten low enough to provide a decent profit margin when selling a deck at $200? I highly doubt it.

You may not have been trying to assert that standalone decks should be cheap because BD drives are cheap, but you were trying to tie discounts on BD drives into discounts on standalones; one has nothing to do with the other. You might as well compare holiday discounts on toasters and microwaves because they both heat up food.

lordjedi said:

...

I'm not going to respond to all that point-by-point because, frankly, it's tiresome, and only Tiptup and yourself have that kind of endurance. I'll just respond by saying that pretty much everything you said is wrong, especially the part about the differences between a standalone deck and BD computer drive being minimal. Take them apart, break them down piece by piece, understand the engineering and testing that goes into each part, then get back to me.

The only difference is hardware decoding vs. software? You really have no clue what you're talking about on this.

I'm bowing out of this topic now.