Recent Comments:
Nintendo shatters dreams, has "no plans" to ship black Wii console in USA {Engadget}
Jul 16th 2009 2:29PM If you haven't bought one yet, it probably has nothing to do with the fact it's white. If it is, then you probably don't really care about owning a Wii, and aren't terribly upset that you can't have a black one. You can still get a black PS3.
Cube H100HD PMP does 1080i in a tiny package {Engadget}
Apr 21st 2009 11:47AM @Diamamet
No. If you have a 1080p TV, it probably does not simply add the 2 frames together to make a single 1080 line frame...if it does, it probably looks bad. This is what deinterlacing is all about. The second set of 540 lines in a 1080i signal does NOT make a composite picture with the first set. It is a completely new image (unless the source is originally 30 or 24 frames). If the 2 images are simply added together, you get the infamous "jaggies". Any deinterlacing "looks" at both the first and second scans of an interlaced signal and attempts to add the 2 scans where static areas of the picture CAN be added but dynamic areas cannot (again, if you want to avoid "jaggies").
The task with deinterlacing is due to the dynamic areas where information must be created or interpreted.
Cube H100HD PMP does 1080i in a tiny package {Engadget}
Apr 21st 2009 11:35AM Come on guys. A TV that does 1080i actually does 1080i. Those would be CRT televisions, which (as far as I'm aware) are the only TVs that currently display an interlaced signal as interlaced (CRT projectors included). The first scan is 540 lines in 1/60th of a second and the second scan is a new set of 540 lines in the next 60th of a second (540 lines of resolution in each 60th of a second). A 720p signal contains 720 lines in each 60th of a second. As for conventional CRT TVs, 480i means 240 scanned lines per 60th of a second. Let's not mix up the difference between an input signal and what a display ACTUALLY displays.
superhobo: An HD-ready TV is one which understands 1080i and 720p input signals from component video, DVI, or HDMI. In other words, a TV capable of displaying 720p, 1080i, or 1080p...but one that does NOT have a digital TV tuner (ATSC). Most computer monitors can be considered "HD-ready". The difference is that an "HDTV" has a digital OTA tuner and an "HD-ready" TV has no such tuner.
Furthermore, "True-HD" doesn't mean anything. Some companies call 1080p "Full HD". But the only TrueHD is Dolby TrueHD...which means nothing for video.
Cable HD compression gets turned up a notch in the Electra 8000 encoder {Engadget HD}
Mar 30th 2009 11:26AM Bright House Networks in Michigan has been doing the 3-1 compression and it looks bad. I complained A LOT but to not avail. I had an engineer on the phone once and he was actively increasing the bandwidth allocation on the channel I was complaining about. It was amazing how much better it looked...at the expense of the other 2 channels being broadcast on the same freq band.
They all need to go to 2-1, and leave it at that.
Dark Knight Blu-ray set to break shipping records, sales records next? {Engadget HD}
Nov 12th 2008 3:41PM I've got a Blu-ray drive in my computer and have been getting Netflix Blu-rays. I have yet to actually buy a disc, but I've said The Dark Knight will be the first one I buy, so sure enough, it will be.
Psystar slaps Apple around, releases Mac clones with Blu-ray / GeForce 9800GT {Engadget}
Oct 28th 2008 5:15PM @rock99rock
You've successfully done this on a Mac? That doesn't work in Windows because of encryption on the discs. Besides the fact that this technically isn't "playback" of the disc itself, but a work-around that locks out other aspects of "playback." Sometimes you end up with the French audio track with no way of switching to the English.
But on that note, I've unsuccessfully attempted .m2ts playback with VLC on Mac OS from a de-encrypted Blu-ray. Maybe my VLC is too old...but I don't think so.
Psystar slaps Apple around, releases Mac clones with Blu-ray / GeForce 9800GT {Engadget}
Oct 28th 2008 4:56PM Yeah, how's it gonna perform the operation of "playback" without any software? Also, the drivers for the video card would have to allow for HDCP. Does this stuff exist yet?
AT&T's U-verse TV notches high ranks in J.D. Power study {Engadget HD}
Oct 2nd 2008 4:58PM Nope. When compared to standard 2:1 HD compression on cable (basically equal to OTA HD bitrates), U-verse looks bad. They take 15-20mb/s MPEG2 and COMPRESS IT to 8mb/s MPEG4. Not only does it look bad, but the facts back it up. I realize you may not need the full 15mb/s when at MPEG4, but the fact that AT&T is transcoding a signal degrades the quality. If they were getting an uncompressed or even "lightly" compressed 30mb/s MPEG4 (Blu-ray quality) signal, fine...but they aren't.
.
. . It looks bad.
Q.E.D.
AT&T's U-verse TV notches high ranks in J.D. Power study {Engadget HD}
Oct 2nd 2008 1:57PM Disagree. I tried it and the HD picture quality was worse than cable. Over-compression = Failure. Stop comressing a signal which is already compressed and bump the bitrate back up. If all you have is analog TV, you'll be fine. But the HD looks horrible on a 56" screen.
AMD debuts dirt cheap ATI Radeon HD 4550, HD 4350 graphics cards {Engadget}
Sep 30th 2008 2:45PM I picked up a 2600xt in April as an HTPC card for around $55-$60. It was basically the cheapest card that did AVC and VC-1 on the card. I'd always gone with nVidia, but I can say this was the perfect card for me. No slack at all playing HD content.
