On the plus side, my TV is actually okay, other than the glossiness (oh lord, why must everything be so glossy?), and the shittiness of HDMI connectors.
Unfortunately that might be going away; at the moment you can still buy TV's that don't have internet connectivity or run Windows or whatever the fuck the fancy TV's do, but it looks like the march is towards never-ending feature creep.
I think the most horrible horror that cursed modern TVs is that some of them have a 1 second latency.
You want to "upgrade" to HD gaming, you buy a PS3, a nice big ass TV, and a copy of Street Fighter IV. Then you start to play the game and notice: "hmm, I remember the SNES version to be much more responsive, now it takes almost a second to register my inputs, that's lame for a fighting game".
Then you try your game at your friend's house, and realize the shocking truth: SF IV is fine, the PS3 is fine, it's your fucking HD TV, that displays everything one second late (and delays audio accordingly), because it needs that time to process the image and bring you "the best picture experience".
Then you want to kill everybody. There's no option that you can deactivate in order to suppress that fucking 1000 ms latency that just makes playing games useless.
The TV manufacturers argue that it's the game makers business to work around the delay and bring everything back in time X ms, ignoring the fact that with interactivity you can't know what the user will do one second from now and display it before they do it. We're swimming in pure lunacy.
Then you realize your TV is Sony, the same fucking brand that builds your video game system, and that they're not even able to address this or think about it, because hey, they "don't share patents" and don't interfere between different branches of the company.
To be fair, most new TVs with fancy image processing have an explicit "game mode" that disables all of it and just gives you minimum latency. The problem is just that you don't usually notice if a TV is one of the bad ones until it's too late.
And it's all just because they insisted on putting interlacing into the damn HDTV standard, so now they need to throw crazy DSP mojo at it just to not make it look like crap. Well done, guys.
It's not just interlace; my TV does "dynamic color", "dynamic contrast", "denoising", "digital denoising", and "trumotion" (the 60->120 hz interpolated frames). I suspect the trumotion stuff is a large latency causer.
Of course games these days aren't helping; with their threaded render pipes and post-processing (not to mention just badly written code that doesn't respond to input on the same frame it occurs), a lot of games have 30-100 ms latency even on a perfect monitor.
November 12, 2010 at 3:02 PM
Anonymous said...
You know, I've watched a bunch of blu-ray disks and never had much problem. Slightly long load times, but not too bad.
(The weirdest was the other way -- Pushing Daises (I know you hate it) started up automatically right in with the first episode -- it has no top-level menu at all.)
Also, to be fair, you should compare the worst blu-ray to the worst DVD. My DVD of Lost in Translation has several unskippable previews at the beginning (5-10 minutes, including one for Lost in Translation). The previws can be fast-forwarded, at least. But you have to restart the fast-forwarding for each of the 3-4 previews.
Anyway, Blu-Rays have been mostly fine for me. However, in the last week I've hit two horrible, horrible blu-rays. Both are by Universal, and both in the last year and a half. Both offer a "free movie" somehow and keep popping up ads for it. Both say they're going to the internet to get new previews. (I can't imagine what this means because there's no way they're actually downloading video over the internet, is there? Maybe they've just pre-baked a ton of previews, and are choosing which to show?)
At least one of them shows some live-from-the-net shit in a text box at the top of the main menu.
So, yes, these are absolutely horrific and far worse than the worst DVD. But I've only seen this from these new Universal disks, and the worst DVD was pretty bad.
"my DVD of Lost in Translation has several unskippable previews at the beginning"
I don't think there's such a thing as an unskippable preview on a DVD.
DVD's aren't DRM-protected, so you can play them on any computer, and there are a wide variety of computer DVD playing programs that will take you directly to the top menu.
This is what I was doing prior to trying Blu Rays (using my HTPC), so I'm not accustomed to having to watch previews.
Anyway, the failure to resume thing is actually the biggest problem.
"I don't think there's such a thing as an unskippable preview on a DVD." Maybe not if you play them back using a PC, but with hardware DVD players, there definitely is (seems to be part of the spec, only software players luckily don't give a damn). Worst one I ever saw had 15 minutes of unskippable shit before the top-level menu came up.
Also: Fucking region codes. My PS3 used to be my main movie player, but it's European so it won't play US DVDs. At least there's lots of region-free BluRays, you almost never got that with DVDs.
Disney DVDs are the worst by a mile I think, with at least 10-12 previews before the actual menu. They are somewhat skippable, but you have to skip each and everyone of them.
Talk about treating people like cows...
November 13, 2010 at 1:35 AM
Anonymous said...
"DVD's aren't DRM-protected"
DVD's DRM protection has been broken, which is something different.
But even without DRM you could still have a format where DVD players obeyed the dumb instructions anyway.
(Look no further than web browsers for demonstrations of this principle.)
November 15, 2010 at 8:43 PM
I recently "upgraded" to an HDTV and a PS3 and have been watching some Blu Rays.
WTF. Why didn't you all tell me this is a fucking disaster ?
First of all, the fucking Blu Rays want to connect to the internet. Umm, no you don't. Second, they want to run fucking Java to make their
menus even more fucking annoying than the damn DVD menus.
Okay, friggle frack, I hate it, but I can live with that.
Then I find YOU CAN'T FUCKING RESUME on BD-J discs !? WTF "Resume" is like the most basic feature that you need in a movie player, like I'm
not allowed to fucking stop my movie and then start it again !? I love the "recommended fixes" from even the official Sony page, to just
"skip ahead to where you stopped watching". Are you fucking kidding me? Somebody should be shot for this, it's like the engineers
making a video format
without audio. You add a bunch of menu features and shit and oh, by the way it doesn't play audio anymore. You can't break the basic
fucking functionality when you add features!
Resume Play feature on Blu-ray titles - Blu-ray Forum Recommend me a blu-ray player with resume after power off [Archive] - DVD Talk Forum Hugely disappointed by my Blu-ray player. [Archive] - AnandTech Forums Blu-ray Resume Playback Guide Useful Information Sony Asia Pacific
Okay, so all Blu Ray players have that problem, but the PS3 is actually even worse than most and won't even Resume from normal blu rays unless
you fucking say a hail mary and cover it with garlic and press just the right buttons. And god forbid it do something like remember the
location you stopped watching even after you power it down or remove the disc, like you know every fucking DVD player from 10 years ago does.
(
PS3 missing resume function ).
(aside : that PS3 link is a pretty funny example of people defending their enemies :
"damn just remember the chapter before shutting down."
"quit being lazy and find the chapter where you left off and then press play on that"
"I just leave mine on 24/7 and if I stop a movie, it resumes where I left off until I eject it."
WTF R u serious?
)
And of course every time you do watch a Blu Ray, you get the wonderful fucking joy of sitting through a bunch of mandatory fucking previews and
other nonsense because they "forbid that operation". Yeah yeah you can usually just skip chapters to get to the menu, but you can't go direct to top menu on most discs, and you can't
jump directly to playing.
How to Skip Movie Trailers [Archive] - Audioholics Home Theater Forums Any way to skip previews on blu-ray - AVForums.com Any tips to skip DVDBD trailers, warnings, and ads on PS3 - Home4Film annoying mandatory previews - Blu-ray Forum
As for HDTV, it's mostly good. The fucking Bezel on my LG is glossier than greased shit, which is pretty damn awful. Also HDMI connectors are
the fucking devil, they're like bad old USB connectors, they don't go in far enough and are wobbly. I have problems with the HDMI connector
making good stable contact at the TV and at the PS3 and the computer.
Locking HDMI Cables and Connectors � Reviews and News from Audioholics HDMI Connector - High Def Forum - Your High Definition Community & High Definition Resource anyone else have problems with loose hdmi connection on tv - AVS Forum
Oh, and of course neither the TV nor the PS3 came with cables even though they're like fifty cents OEM price now. That's just fucking cheap ass
annoying shit.
So far the only really huge win is that the Netflix app for the PS3 is way better than the one for the HTPC, and
of course Netflix movies fucking start playing directly without a bunch of shit, and you can resume them. I would
just use Netflix 100% of the time except for the fact that Brownstripe is not reliable, and there's nothing more
annoying than being in the middle of a movie and your net connection decides to flake out (I wish I could fucking
locally cache the whole movie before watching it to ensure full playback).
"11-09-10 - New Technology Fucking Blows"
14 Comments -
Netflix++
Bluray--
November 11, 2010 at 9:34 AM
I did warn you!
http://cbloomrants.blogspot.com/2010/01/01-12-10-hdtv-rfc.html
November 12, 2010 at 6:10 AM
Oh yeah; I blocked it out because it was so horrible.
I just gave away my 27" Trinitron today. I used to be able to just press power and put in a DVD and it would just play. Ah the good old days.
November 12, 2010 at 9:44 AM
On the plus side, my TV is actually okay, other than the glossiness (oh lord, why must everything be so glossy?), and the shittiness of HDMI connectors.
Unfortunately that might be going away; at the moment you can still buy TV's that don't have internet connectivity or run Windows or whatever the fuck the fancy TV's do, but it looks like the march is towards never-ending feature creep.
November 12, 2010 at 9:52 AM
I think the most horrible horror that cursed modern TVs is that some of them have a 1 second latency.
You want to "upgrade" to HD gaming, you buy a PS3, a nice big ass TV, and a copy of Street Fighter IV. Then you start to play the game and notice: "hmm, I remember the SNES version to be much more responsive, now it takes almost a second to register my inputs, that's lame for a fighting game".
Then you try your game at your friend's house, and realize the shocking truth: SF IV is fine, the PS3 is fine, it's your fucking HD TV, that displays everything one second late (and delays audio accordingly), because it needs that time to process the image and bring you "the best picture experience".
Then you want to kill everybody. There's no option that you can deactivate in order to suppress that fucking 1000 ms latency that just makes playing games useless.
The TV manufacturers argue that it's the game makers business to work around the delay and bring everything back in time X ms, ignoring the fact that with interactivity you can't know what the user will do one second from now and display it before they do it. We're swimming in pure lunacy.
Then you realize your TV is Sony, the same fucking brand that builds your video game system, and that they're not even able to address this or think about it, because hey, they "don't share patents" and don't interfere between different branches of the company.
Shoot everyone, I say. :)
November 12, 2010 at 11:22 AM
To be fair, most new TVs with fancy image processing have an explicit "game mode" that disables all of it and just gives you minimum latency. The problem is just that you don't usually notice if a TV is one of the bad ones until it's too late.
And it's all just because they insisted on putting interlacing into the damn HDTV standard, so now they need to throw crazy DSP mojo at it just to not make it look like crap. Well done, guys.
November 12, 2010 at 2:38 PM
It's not just interlace; my TV does "dynamic color", "dynamic contrast", "denoising", "digital denoising", and "trumotion" (the 60->120 hz interpolated frames). I suspect the trumotion stuff is a large latency causer.
Of course games these days aren't helping; with their threaded render pipes and post-processing (not to mention just badly written code that doesn't respond to input on the same frame it occurs), a lot of games have 30-100 ms latency even on a perfect monitor.
November 12, 2010 at 3:02 PM
You know, I've watched a bunch of blu-ray disks and never had much problem. Slightly long load times, but not too bad.
(The weirdest was the other way -- Pushing Daises (I know you hate it) started up automatically right in with the first episode -- it has no top-level menu at all.)
Also, to be fair, you should compare the worst blu-ray to the worst DVD. My DVD of Lost in Translation has several unskippable previews at the beginning (5-10 minutes, including one for Lost in Translation). The previws can be fast-forwarded, at least. But you have to restart the fast-forwarding for each of the 3-4 previews.
Anyway, Blu-Rays have been mostly fine for me. However, in the last week I've hit two horrible, horrible blu-rays. Both are by Universal, and both in the last year and a half. Both offer a "free movie" somehow and keep popping up ads for it. Both say they're going to the internet to get new previews. (I can't imagine what this means because there's no way they're actually downloading video over the internet, is there? Maybe they've just pre-baked a ton of previews, and are choosing which to show?)
At least one of them shows some live-from-the-net shit in a text box at the top of the main menu.
So, yes, these are absolutely horrific and far worse than the worst DVD. But I've only seen this from these new Universal disks, and the worst DVD was pretty bad.
November 12, 2010 at 5:38 PM
"my DVD of Lost in Translation has several unskippable previews at the beginning"
I don't think there's such a thing as an unskippable preview on a DVD.
DVD's aren't DRM-protected, so you can play them on any computer, and there are a wide variety of computer DVD playing programs that will take you directly to the top menu.
This is what I was doing prior to trying Blu Rays (using my HTPC), so I'm not accustomed to having to watch previews.
Anyway, the failure to resume thing is actually the biggest problem.
November 12, 2010 at 6:24 PM
BTW LOL and appropriate image :
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c345/forgeforsaken/posts/dvdp.jpg
November 12, 2010 at 7:37 PM
"I don't think there's such a thing as an unskippable preview on a DVD."
Maybe not if you play them back using a PC, but with hardware DVD players, there definitely is (seems to be part of the spec, only software players luckily don't give a damn). Worst one I ever saw had 15 minutes of unskippable shit before the top-level menu came up.
November 12, 2010 at 10:26 PM
Also: Fucking region codes. My PS3 used to be my main movie player, but it's European so it won't play US DVDs. At least there's lots of region-free BluRays, you almost never got that with DVDs.
Die, delivery formats, die already.
November 12, 2010 at 10:47 PM
Disney DVDs are the worst by a mile I think, with at least 10-12 previews before the actual menu. They are somewhat skippable, but you have to skip each and everyone of them.
Talk about treating people like cows...
November 13, 2010 at 1:35 AM
"DVD's aren't DRM-protected"
DVD's DRM protection has been broken, which is something different.
But even without DRM you could still have a format where DVD players obeyed the dumb instructions anyway.
(Look no further than web browsers for demonstrations of this principle.)
November 15, 2010 at 8:43 PM