The big news of the last couple weeks (at least in the consumer electronics realm) has been the final and decisive victory of the Blu-Ray high-definition media format over competitor HD-DVD. It happened much more quickly than anyone anticipated (myself included, having written about it less than two months ago). The beginning of the last chapter in HD-DVD’s life was in the first week of January 2008, when Warner — which had been dual-format — announced they were going to be releasing on Blu-Ray exclusively in the future. At the time, I (and most people) concluded that the format war was pretty much over, since Warner was such a huge studio, and the only remaining question was how long Toshiba would let HD-DVD suffer. I personally gave them 18 months; the format war has dragged on for years already, and I didn’t think big companies would move much faster than that. A lot of other tech bloggers gave HD-DVD about six to eight months, at the short end. As it turns out, it took all of six weeks.
With the majority of studios on the Blu side, HD-DVD was already down for the count as 2008 started, and then it got repeatedly kicked in the face as Wal-Mart, Netflix, and Best Buy all announced that they would discontinue HD-DVD sales/rentals (BlockBuster had already done the same last summer). So although the end was inevitable, the speed with which Toshiba admitted defeat was not — but it was admirable. From a purely business standpoint, it makes a ton of sense, because the longer they held on the more money they would lose. No one ever said, however, that big companies always do things that make sense.
So, the format war is over! Blu-Ray has won, we now know what will replace DVD, and we can all run out and start buying Blu-Ray players without fearing they’ll be obsolete before Christmas, right? Not exactly.
The biggest issue is this: current Blu-Ray players are crap. Unless you buy a Sony PlayStation3, I would stay far away from this generation of players. They are buggy, and many can’t even play normal DVDs very well. One Samsung model I read a review for even puts a black box around your plain DVDs — not black bars on the side, but a black box, essentially cheating you out of about 25% of that HDTV you paid for. Firmware updates are sometimes required for the players to be compatible with the latest Blu-Ray movies (since the spec is still evolving slightly), and even then some of them won’t support the full range of Blu-Ray features due out this year. Without boring you with the details, let me tell you what is a pretty safe assumption: by the end of this year, the Blu-Ray spec will be more or less where it’s going to stay, and there will be better, cheaper players available since hardware companies no longer have to hedge their bets on the Blu-Ray or HD-DVD battle. Wait until this holiday season (or later, of course), and make sure to get one of the newer models. The only acceptable BRD players on the market right now are ones that just came out and are running about $800-$1000…in 10 months, that will drop dramatically.
In the meantime, the wife and I are enjoying HD movie rentals via the Xbox Live Marketplace and the Apple TV. A couple clicks, a few bucks on the credit card, wait a minute or two, and you can start watching a high-definition movie without ever leaving the house. But nothing will ever replace a physical copy of a movie you really love, and for those types of films Blu-Ray is the future. Just don’t jump in quite yet.
Posted by Matthew on February 17, 2008 at
11:33 am
The University of Michigan (or “That place up north”, for those of you also from rival universities) has created the “most intense laser in the universe,” as Engadget put it. The monster laser, named HERCULES (no, it’s not an acronym — they made it all caps because…well, because it could kill you) has 300 terawatts of power. For comparison, the entire U.S. electric grid has a capacity 1 terawatt. Forget those piddling lasers that can burn your skin — they haven’t said anything to that effect about HERCULES, but I’m willing to bet this thing could punch a hole clear through your body in a millisecond, if not just outright vaporize you. As the team from U. Mich. put it: “If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space and focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand, that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of [HERCULES].”
“For one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn’t the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn’t want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.
Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.
And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their bibles.
This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”
This is one of those stories that you don’t hear about until it’s too late. It’s like the beginning of a war movie with ultra-secret black ops plots and complicated domino schemes.
In less than a week, no less than four undersea cables to the UAE (United Arab Emirates) have been severed, severely disrupting Internet access and crippling businesses and some government operations for a number of middle eastern and Asian countries. Just *snip* — cut, after years of perfect operation. Four in a week. And things are reportedly “beginning to get suspicious.”
Beginning to get suspicious? I think we’re way past suspicious. Is it just me, or does this seem like one of the unsung ways in which the third world war might start? I see deep sea divers with acetylene torches…
OK, I’m sure I’m overdramatizing. At least I hope I am. But this is clearly serious. Imagine if Internet access in the US went down — credit cards wouldn’t work, banks would be more or less frozen, the stock market couldn’t function, and the government would function even less than it does already, to say nothing of everything you personally depend on the Internet for every day. And imagine that the cause of it wasn’t just a power outage or something, but because four critical cables had been individually cut.
Internet traffic is being rerouted through other cables for the time being, but they’re strained to capacity and apparently not everything is completely operational. It will be interesting to see how this turns out, that’s for sure.
I bought myself a little present tonight: a Nikon D40 digital SLR. When I began my research for a DSLR, I started out gunning for the Olympus E510, but while it was overall quite good and had lots of features it lacked refinement in the image processing department and there’s not nearly as many (affordable) lenses available as a Nikon/Canon. As I was told time and time again, when you buy an SLR you’re not just buying that camera, you’re buying into the brand’s SLR system.
So I started looking at Nikons and Canons, and it came down to the Nikon D40, Nikon D40x, or the Canon Digital Rebel XTi. I knew about the new Nikon D60 (which replaces the D40x), but it didn’t have anything I wanted over the others. So I read and read and read reviews and comparisons and pontifications by professional photographers, and I settled on the 6 megapixel Nikon D40 over my other two finalists (which were both 10MP) because with a lower megapixel rating it’s A) less expensive; B) more sensitive to light because fewer pixels are covering the same size sensor; and C) Megapixels don’t matter unless you’re making prints, and with 6MP I can still make ridiculous sizes like 24″ prints or something.
It was so tempting to go for the ones with more megapixels, but after reading stuff like this from real photographers, lauding the D40 and dispelling the megapixel myth, I realized I needed to get out of the point-and-shoot “more megapixels!” marketing mentality and focus on the other stuff that really matters. That Ken Rockwell guy I just linked to, for example, has dozens of ridiculously expensive cameras and still uses his D40 more than anything — because it shoots with fantastic quality in almost all situations, is lightweight, and it very easy to use. I found that the Nikon D-series in general has some of the best in-camera image processing, comes with a fantastic kit lens to begin with and has very affordable quality consumer-grade lenses (the Canons tend to be more expensive for good lenses, it seems). I’ll be the first to admit I am totally new to SLR photography, but that’s what I based my decisions on. So I feel like I made a smart choice, and even though I was initially wooed by all the features ticked by the Olympus (LCD live view, image stabilization, etc), I’m glad I did my research so I was able to hone in on what’s really important. Saved me some money too.
The D40 is really small for a DSLR and feels great in my hands. Except for the Olympus E410, I think it is *the* smallest DSLR you can get. It just feels great, and there’s so much stuff to learn. Coming from an older-than-dirt Canon Digital Elph 2.1 MP point-and-shoot that tended to take dark, dingy pictures (hey, it was more than 7 years old…it had its day), I can’t wait until I’m some level of competent with my new D40. I believe I’m actually going to enjoy taking photos again!
Here’s a few of my first shots…all indoors and nothing particularly exciting, because it’s dark and raining outside, but I really wanted to try it out. I still have a lot to learn. Click on the photo to advance or hover over the caption area to see the thumbnails. Click the “Link” text for a larger version (in a popup).
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This is one of those stories that you don’t hear about until it’s too late. It’s like the beginning of a war movie with ultra-secret black ops plots and complicated domino schemes.
I bought myself a little present tonight: a Nikon D40 digital SLR. When I began my research for a DSLR, I started out gunning for the Olympus E510, but while it was overall quite good and had lots of features it lacked refinement in the image processing department and there’s not nearly as many (affordable) lenses available as a Nikon/Canon. As I was told time and time again, when you buy an SLR you’re not just buying that camera, you’re buying into the brand’s SLR system.
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