Recent Comments:
Best Buy's foray into free 'How To' classes {BloggingStocks}
Mar 16th 2008 6:19PM BestBuy better first educate their own sales staff! Althought I have bought many items from BestBuy, I have always relied on my own internet research than on their sales staff. EVERY SINGLE experience I have had with ANY BESTBUY sales staff were pathetic. They all seem to have very poor and amature leve of knowledge of technology and products they sell, even members of the Geek Squad. BsetBuy maybe just "educating" the consumer lots of false information so their poorly trained sales staff can paddle easier sales!
Pioneer to Stop Making Plasma TVs {Switched.com}
Mar 15th 2008 11:08PM Disagree again.
A more appropriate comment should have been:
"Most people cannot afford TVs larger than 50"."
When you compare cost of plasma as compared to LCD, PLASMA CHEAPER THAN LCD per square inch of screen surface area. However, plasma TVs do not come under 37" and most are 42" and 50". ANY 40" LCD set is MORE expensive than 42" plasma, and ANY 52" LCD is significantly more expensive than 50" plasma sets.
So more people can afford plasma sets if they were made smaller like LCD sets...
Ellen Calls Homophobic Politician {AOL Video Blog}
Mar 15th 2008 10:38AM Bay State:
Also go get an indepth education in science. Many of the "aberration to life" phenomenons such as homosexuality and even canibalism exist in many species. You might as well add masturbation, celibacy (which actually is respectd and promoted by many religeous faiths), unfertilized eggs flushed out by menstral periods, all on the list to "aberration to life, and nothing more." We are not organisms like frogs where every and single time where there is a sexual activity, it is about procreation! Gametes are dispensed NOT for the purpose of being fertilized all the time, so aberrations of life is also a common part of the biological phenomenon.
Your logic is just so junvenile and lack ANY scientific merrit!
Ellen Calls Homophobic Politician {AOL Video Blog}
Mar 15th 2008 10:25AM To J Emily:
"THERE WAS A TIME IN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY THAT MAJORITY RULED."
Did you go to school?? Democracy is about power of people, EVERYONE. Democracy is not about power only to a few, or in that light, power to the majority. Democracy is about equal power to of all people, that everyone, whether rich, poor, aristocrat, working class, gay, straight, majority, or minority, has the same right as the other. Democracy is NOT about "Majority rules", which is inherently dangerous as it can become "Tyranny of the Majority", or as we have seen over and over again in human history: FASCISM. Do we remember the Nazi movement in Germany? Go get an education, particularly in history, will ya?
Pioneer to Stop Making Plasma TVs {Switched.com}
Mar 15th 2008 4:36AM The headline of this article is misleading. It should have been:
"Pioneer to Stop Making Plasma PANELS, BUT Will Continue to Make Plasma TVs."
Pioneer Unveils Super-Thin, High-Contrast Plasma TVs {Switched.com}
Mar 15th 2008 4:27AM CORRECTION from my other post:
"...public presently choose LCD sets over plasma mainly because most consumers do not purchase HDTV sets LAREGER than the 50"/52" size range..."
Majority of consumers still have HDTV sets under 50" size.
If the majority of consumers are buying 58" or 60" sets, then plasma would wipe out LCDs.
Pioneer Unveils Super-Thin, High-Contrast Plasma TVs {Switched.com}
Mar 15th 2008 4:21AM Pioneer has made the announcement that they are no longer manufacturing plasma panels, but will continue to produce plasma TVs. Rumor has it that the present Kuro line was actually part Fujitsu, whose plasma panel manufactoring plants were aquired by Pioneer, and Fujitsu just recently announced that they will pull out the plasma market, coincidentally just 6 months before Pioneer announced thier own plan of ceasing plasma panel production. There will be a Kuro LCD line in addition to newer plasma line, which will possibly use plasma panels from Panasonic, given that the specs meet the standard of Pioneer electronics.
I must disagree with comment from "brian catmull" that plasma "full HD image lacks punch, as compared to LCD." All critical and objective tests have shown that LCD still cannot match the black level and shadow detail of plasma, even with the current spot dimming LED backlighting technology. I own large HDTV sets of both kinds, and I must agree with the critics that LCD only looks brighter and deceivingly sharper (careful look between sets side to side with the same materials shows that is not the case) initially, especially in show rooms and with program material that were shot in bright lighting conditions such as sports broadcasts, TV news, or materials that are composed of solid fields of color, such as animations and graphics. However, any video material of real life images such as films, movies, nature documentaries, LCDs provid far inferior and less natural picture than plasma. Now days, I choose NEVER to watch any Bluray or HD DVD (I have both, one of each) video materials on my large LCD set. Black is just too crushed and lack shadow detail on a LCD, so everthing either look like a sharply contured areas of ink, and variations of dark greys into light greys all have the fuzzy and powdery look.
The only current future flat panel technologies that will replace picture qualities of plasma are SED and OLED displays. As a matter of fact, OLED would consume less power than current LCD sets.
I think the public presently choose LCD sets over plasma mainly because most consumers do not purchase HDTV sets under the 50"/52" size range, and that brighter image tends to attract more attention in showroom floors than acurate videophile picture. If you look at the market share of LCD TVs being sold, it is still under the 52" size catagory, while 50", 58", and 60" are still dominated by plasma sets, EVEN TODAY. LCD sets larger than 52" are only made currently by Toshiba and Sharp, and both are very expensive and provide inferior picture quality than competing plasma sets pf the same size category from at least 7 different plasma HDTV manufacturers (Pioneer, Futjitsu, Samsung, LG, Vizio, Panasonic, Hitachi, they all make plasma sets bigger than 50".)
Is VMD the Next Blu-ray? {Switched.com}
Mar 14th 2008 4:07AM Completely disagree with the following statement from the article:
"All these next-gen disc formats are doomed, since HD-downloading on devices such as Apple TV and Vudu are only going to grow."
Doomed? Let us examine available evidence...
Apple TV has already shown lack luster growth. HD-downloading market is not going to fair well mainly due to the lack of movie/film studio indurty support. The lack of support from the movie industry is what killed the HD DVD camp, despite that HD DVD software and hardware were cheaper to produce as compared to Bluray.
Furthermore, one cannot compare music downloading market with movie downloading industry. Downloading music industry is killing traditional CD sales mainly due to how music service is enjoyed and purchased by the consumer. The majority of the population values convenience, instantaneous service, and portability over quality. This is the same reason past business ventures into higher quality audio formats such as SACD and DVD Audio were all flops, and iPod and all sorts of MP3 devices proliferated. Majority of the consumer wants to buy only the songs they want, and play them anytime and anywhere as often as they want, all because music as a medium is more or less an enjoyable distraction away from a boring task being performed, such as exercising, cleaning, driving, doing the laundry, etc. This is also the reason that higher quality audio devices are now all geared toward home theatre surround sound systems.
Movies and films, on the other hands, is a medium primarily of a dedicated experience enjoyed by the consumers, where portability is not of much relevance when it comes to video quality. In the old CRT TV days, a 32" 4:3 tube TV was already considered "large" and most household owned sets of 25" or smaller. Today, 32" to 50" HDTVs are of common site in stores. There is a reason why the public is buying larger and larger HDTV's, because video quality is important since one cannot fully enjoy movies and films while driving or doing the laundry...
If downloading video services would over take next generation HD video formats in the future, it would have already killed DVD rentals, just like how MP3 downloads killed CD sales... After all, SD video resolution material such as DVD is much easier, faster, and more convenience to achieve sucess with downloading services, because the medium requires so much less bandwidth and storage space than any next generation HiDef video formats. If downloading movie servies have not already caught on and killed DVD rentals, then it would never take off in the future when the competition is Bluray rentals from BlockBuster....
For the Video Hound: Vudu {Switched.com}
Mar 14th 2008 3:27AM Upscaled standard definition (SD) movies to "quai-HD quality" still look "stunning"??? That is a ridiculous statement.
ALL SD movies HAVE TO BE UPSCALED into either approximately 1 megapixel(720p/1080i) or 2 megapixel (1080p) resoultion to be displayed on modern HDTV's. This is because modern HDTV's are fixed pixel display units (unlike CRT scan line display units) and all video signals have to fit the native resolution of the particular dispay screen. Therefore, an SD video source of 480i has to be upscaled ANYWAY, either by the source (DVD, Vudu, SD TV), OR by the display unit (HDTV) itself. ANY video signal one would see on a 720p/1080i HDTV is of approximately 1 megapixel resolution. However, true HD material cannot be compared with "upscaled" and "quasi-HD quality" SD video signal, because the extra native resolution of true HD signal is not "made up" by interpolation of data. That is why SD movie, whether from SD TV, DVD, or Vudu, would still look crappy on an HDTV... Anyone with one of those "upscaling" DVD players and a Blueray player at home can tell you that no matter how well a SD video signal is "upscaled", it still looks awful!
Movie Rentals Hit iTunes (Plus, a New Apple TV) {Switched.com}
Mar 11th 2008 9:10AM I personally do not think download and/or streamed movie formats will ever have the popularity as compared to rental of DVD or HD disc formats. How the consumer listens to music is very different from how movies are watched. Downloadable music services capitalized on convenience and portability. Consumers have shown that they want to be able to buy music in fast and convenient way, and that they can listen to the purchased music later on whenever and where ever they are, over and over again, while exercising, waiting for the plane, doing laundary, etc, even if the audio quality is inferior. Why would one care if music is listened through crappy ear buds? Music is not enjoyed with super high audio quality by most consumers, but rather serves its purpose as an enjoable distraction while another boring task is performed. This has been shown by the failure of high quality audio mediums such as DVD Audio and SACD. The consumer is ready to ditch SACD's, or even CD's, and pay for an inferior sounding iPod or any portable MP3 player. Higher quality audio systems for home use are now all marketed for surround sound applications for movie and film watching. This trend towards home surround sound systems is indicative that when it comes to films and movies, the consumer IS indeed interested in higher quality. Another indication of this trend is that the consumers are begining to buy larger and larger HDTV's. Poor video quality is less apparent on a small screen or on a laptop computer, but terribly exaggerated and unwatchable on a large HD screen. This is the exact opposite from the music industry, where quality is not all that important as compared to convenience and portability. You just cannot fully enjoy watching a movie while you exercise or do laundary. Movies are more enjoyable on a large hi-def screen with surround sound as a dedicated experience. Downloadable hi-def video formats with video and surround sound quality that is comparable to Bluray are currently not available, and inherently too slow. Furthermore, unlike music, not many consumers are interested in watching a movie over and over again, like how we sometimes want to hear certain songs over and over again from an iPod. So the incentive of enduring the slow dowloading a movie for one time dedicated viewing is not all that high. If downloadable movies were the trend, DVDs would have already gone the way of CDs...
