40 replies to this topic

[nathanallan]

If consoles will ever stop making money, THEN they will stop being produced. Just part of the human condition; fanboys will always be out there for whatever console and that's one aspect of the console idea. Technically, it's easy to get a target device to program for, and to improve dedicated hardware. The 2600 has many different console versions and a lot of them have different parts in them, same for any re-released console platform, they play the same games etc.

But tech will go where the money goes. Consoles might not have cutting edge stuff in them but they're very catchy and easy to cater to.

[godslabrat]

akator, on Thu Oct 20, 2011 11:17 AM, said:

Enderle and others have been preaching about integrated TVs for 15 years. They all said WebTV was amazing, and the end of the traditional PC in the home. Now they're preaching about consoles instead of WebTV. Whatever.

Soon, someone will again revive the idea of "Interactive TV programming" and "networked kitchen appliances". It seems some ideas are just too bad to ever truly die, some "tech expert" keeps digging them back up every 3-4 years.

[Video]

Yeah, like how Radio vanished? Or....how Recordable media vanished? (VHS only finally went away when recordable DVD became inexpensive enough to be a viable replacement) Or how TV will go away

One thing that NEEDS to go away is these stupid "tech Analists" who obviously don't know from previous trends and historically documented evidence that older ideas and tech doesn't go away fro the hell of it, untill a viable acceptable replacement comes to, well, replace it.

Look folks, CD isn't going anywhere, not until a truly good update to CD comes out (which means a higher, not lower, resolution audio source comes out in a similar or smaller package, which I imagine will probably look a lot like CD and probably be backwards compatible, honestly, I'm surprised DVD never made the leap to an audio only format...imagine an hour long four gig audio source instead of an hour long halfish gig audio source) Similar thing with DVD, blu ray certnaly hasn't killed it, and honestly outside of strictly resolution it's no upgrade at all, resolution is important to some people...but like the lack of upgrades to CD, I guess good enough is "good enough" for a while yet.

PC's aren't going anywhere. They simply will always be around. Notebooks going anywhere is even more laughabble than desktops going anywhere. Untill desktops stop evolving (or at least slow to the point where keeping the same computer for 20+year shots (AKA, ain't going to happen) ) then we'll keep Desktops and laptops around for the rest of my life at the very least.

TV isn't going anywhere, as much fun as instant downloads and cheaper services and such online are, I still use a TV quiet a bit, and don't see that changing for 20 years at least. Untill you can get the variety of TV for the internet prices (assuming uncle sam doesn't decide to "regulate" the internet so you can't actually download as much as you want to) and untill the internet can match the quality of even DVD, then TV is going to be safe for a good long while.

Radio? Yep, still around, and it always will be...as long as mindless free entertainment and relevant local information is important to people, which I see as never changing. XM is cool (wait, that's still technically radio, right?) but it's useless for local ball games, adverts and the morning swap meet things. It'll be around a good long time.

What else have people predicted the doom and gloom of that is still around? Certainly we'll loose the PS3 and Xbox 360 in the future, but it will be replaced with yet another set top box that plays games. And untill you can get that box built into a TV with the consistant quality and compatibility of what we currently buy as a console, then that is not going to change.

Oh yeah, physical media....not going anywhere. I figure the whole "idea" that we are even transitioning will slow or stop altogether as people realize how inconvenient and impractical downloadable stuff really is (not to mention the fact the [/i]HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS[/i] of people in the US alone that doen't have access to internet at all, much less broadband.) its' going to be around a good long time yet.

[cimerians]

People out there who don't care about owning anything but having the right to play someones game for a limited time by paying high fees will do it. It's happening right now.
(physical device + Internet access + license fee + miscellaneous fees = $$$)

Did I mention "optional" DLC, Codes and add-ons?

Also, more and more as people age and die off and are replaced by babies programmed to think that this is just the way things are will be just right for the corporations who feed us bullshit every single day of our lives.

[godslabrat]

Video, on Mon Oct 24, 2011 9:18 PM, said:

Yeah, like how Radio vanished? Or....how Recordable media vanished? (VHS only finally went away when recordable DVD became inexpensive enough to be a viable replacement) Or how TV will go away

...

I like this post. No, I love this post. As in, I want to marry it and have its baby.

Freaking Eh... I am tired of hearing everyone cry "wolf" when a new technology comes out, declaring that everything that came before it will fade away overnight. It doesn't happen that way. It has NEVER happened that way. Even technologies that have actually been phased out of the mainstream market only did so after a prolonged sayonara. Audio cassettes were in common use well after the year 2000, and are still available for purchase. Floppy disks died... after being around for 3+ decades. Also still available if you shop around. Even VHS, which is probably the cultural benchmark for "replaced technology" was around for the better part of 30 years, and only died as quickly as it did because the market was actively WANTING a better home video solution.

More than that, I'm amazed at the mypoic idea that these changes "rip people off" who only recently converted to the current format. I can't tell you how many people I've heard piss and moan over BluRay because in their words "I just bought a DVD deck a few years ago!!!" Great, sparky. YOU just joined the 21st century. I, on the other hand, bought my first DVD in the late nineties, and have been enjoying the format for 12+ years now. I got to know it pretty well, and I think I'm in a good position to say there are areas in which it can be improved. So please, don't try to pass yourself off as being "screwed over" because you waited the better part of a decade to jump in anyway-- I bet in 2001, you were one of those people saying "This stuff's too expensive! Imma wait till the prices come down! Only idiots would pay that!!!" I know you were, because you're now the same people telling me BluRay is too expensive. Well, if you jump in early, you get to enjoy what technology has to offer and not feel like you've been gang-raped when things actually move forward.

Hey, look at that-- I can produce long rants on tech topics too. How much is Yahoo Shopping paying their "tech expert writers"?

[Mirage]

Rob Enderle is an idiotic hit whore. He writes misinformed tripe constantly and has been doing it for years. This isn't even remotely the least thought-out thing he's ever said.

[DickNixonArisen]

no, technology does vanish eventually, outside of niche enthusiasts and museums. Guns have almost fully taken over swords; telegraph systems are mostly down. There are cases where later formats fail before earlier ones. Like LP into 8-track into cassette... 8track is nearly dead (still a few labels releasing them, half as a joke), and cassette is dying quickly, but vinyl LP is chugging along. The format has merit, not just cachet. I do believe we will be all-digital relatively soon; but the older you are, the less comfortable you are with it. It's closer than it seems, because the dollar is there hanging in the air; and there IS a technology that has almost died which is very relevant to the situation: Cartridge games. Disc-based games have almost completely destroyed the cartridge, and I would NOT bet that there will be a cartridge-based console ever again unless it was strictly retro and the decision to go cart was based on nostalgia over capacity/function. in that case it would probably be a CD inside of a cart-y case anyway. If Disc-based games can destroy cartridge-games, why can't download-only destroy physical media? I still love to have my physical media objects but kids don't care about having a box. They'd rather just have the game; and I kind of envy that. Especially now that I'm having to move my whole damn collection from one place to another...

[DickNixonArisen]

Laserdisc, HD DVD, Beta; people collect, but they did not just get glommed onto an ever-expanding sea of formats which are never replaced, they just died honest deaths. How much longer do you think record players will be offering 16 and 78 rpm speeds? Fifty years? A hundred? Some day soon, we really will just be paying for data. We might even be selling data straight in, like the electric grid..

[yell0w_lantern]

Didn't the tech guys predict food capsules, flying cars and living on Mars by 2000?

@ Goldslabrat
Blu Ray was a way to introduce new copy protection and sell people all the same crap they already bought for DVD. And why not? It worked well for transition from VHS to DVD. Although for me, the difference in quality from DVD to Blu-Ray is not enough of a motivator.

By the way, is it true that these "Hi-Def" televisions make plain DVDs look worse in quality? If it is then it would seem as if the TV manufacturers and movie industry were colluding to make purchasing new systems unavoidable - something I find underhanded and offensive.

Edited by yell0w_lantern, Wed Oct 26, 2011 1:51 PM.

[Video]

yell0w_lantern, on Wed Oct 26, 2011 1:50 PM, said:

Didn't the tech guys predict food capsules, flying cars and living on Mars by 2000?

@ Goldslabrat
Blu Ray was a way to introduce new copy protection and sell people all the same crap they already bought for DVD. And why not? It worked well for transition from VHS to DVD. Although for me, the difference in quality from DVD to Blu-Ray is not enough of a motivator.

By the way, is it true that these "Hi-Def" televisions make plain DVDs look worse in quality? If it is then it would seem as if the TV manufacturers and movie industry were colluding to make purchasing new systems unavoidable - something I find underhanded and offensive.

No. Well...maybe....if you're still using the same DVD player you bought in the 90's or something. Most any modern DVD player, even the cheap ones, and ALL BD players (that I'm aware of) will actually upconvert DVD to a good HD quality. Great BD is still better (at 1080P) but at 720 or 540, forget it, BD is simply no upgrade at all to DVD. Just get a new player and keep getting DVD's.

That's what I did. And yeah, BD was just a way to sell people's crap again. But then, if that was all, we'd still have VHS, after all, you play one of those very much, you have to buy a new copy anyways. But then agian, that was why DVD was such a hit over VHS, buy once, and if you take any care at all of your stuff, you could have the originals for decades guaranteed, and potentially for the rest of your life.

Edited by Video, Wed Oct 26, 2011 2:08 PM.

[cimerians]

The TV/Video industry is just like video games. They will continue to upgrade, I'll bet a whole lot slower than game systems. 10 year life cycle for systems? Did the 360 come out in 2005 or 2006?

Its unavoidable.

This is the best explanation I found on the web to clear up any and all discussions about DVD's and Blu-Rays and what it means to have a crappy TV and a good TV that can handle high resolutions:


"High-definition video or HD video refers to any video system of higher resolution than standard-definition (SD) video, and most commonly involves display resolutions of 1,280×720 pixels (720p) or 1,920×1,080 pixels (1080i/1080p)."

DVD Resolution

Stored on a DVD is an MPEG digital bit stream representing the video. Older DVD players would output only 480i images from a DVD, because most older analog TV sets would only work with a 480i input. However, even inexpensive new DVD players now have internal circuits that will output the DVD's video in either 480i or 480 progressively scanned lines, known as "480p." This is called Enhanced Definition, and gives a smoother more film-like look, with no visible scanning lines. Any fixed-pixel display will display this standard, so when you see a display described as having a native resolution of "800 x 600" pixels, you know that it has enough resolution to extract virtually full clarity from a DVD player that outputs a 480p, progressively scanned image. That resolution is not high enough to display full HDTV, but it's nearly enough to capture every line of a wide-screen DVD, which calls for 852 x 480 resolution. Put another way, the resolution would measure 852 pixels across each of 480 horizontal lines scanned sequentially from top to bottom. Typically this is the resolution of the least expensive plasma and LCD thin-panel displays, as well as inexpensive DLP projectors that use the 800 x 600 DLP chips.

DVD Quality is not HDTV

In practice, most of these displays will look quite detailed with DVD playback and even HDTV signals that are "scaled" or down-converted to fit the display's 852 x 480 native resolution. However, such a display or projector will not let you view true High Definition signals in their original resolution.

HDTV Resolutions

To take full advantage of HDTV's ability to render spectacular clarity and detail, you must find an LCD, plasma, or DLP device that has a native resolution of either 1,280 x 720 pixels (720 lines progressively scanned with a widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio) or "1080i" (1920 x 1080), which represents a 16:9 widescreen image with 1920 pixels across each of 1080 interlaced scan lines. These are the only two High Definition formats defined by the HDTV standard. All network broadcasters use one or the other for their HD programs. For instance, ABC and Fox broadcast in 720p, while CBS, NBC, and PBS use 1080i. Likewise, cable and satellite networks will use one or the other: HBO, HDNet, DiscoveryHD, and Showtime use 1080i, whereas ESPN uses 720p. Broadcasters choose one or the other for different reasons. Progressive scanning (720p) produces a smoother, more film-like look, but a 1080i image actually contains greater detail. Though it has fewer lines, the native progressive scan format (720p) eliminates motion artifacts that originate in interlacing. For subject matter that contains a lot of rapid motion--Monday Night Football, basketball or hockey games, for example--720p will produce a clearer, more stable picture than 1080i. Alternatively, for subject matter that has very little motion, 1080i is capable of rendering more picture detail. And because 720p has the highest data bandwidth and horizontal scan rate, it usually means that 720p programming is converted or "scaled" to 1080i for transmission (it occupies less digital "space" than 720p).

http://www.ecoustics...les/118003.html
http://en.wikipedia....efinition_video

[Hatta]

Video, on Mon Oct 24, 2011 9:18 PM, said:

"tech Analists"

Oh, so THAT's where they got this idea!

[jhd]

DickNixonArisen, on Wed Oct 26, 2011 8:02 AM, said:

there IS a technology that has almost died which is very relevant to the situation: Cartridge games. Disc-based games have almost completely destroyed the cartridge, and I would NOT bet that there will be a cartridge-based console ever again unless it was strictly retro and the decision to go cart was based on nostalgia over capacity/function.

I expect that (game) cartridges will continue to survive, albeit as another niche product for a specific market segment -- much like LPs. While not especially relevant to most of us, most (if not all) of the the child-friendly "edutainment" systems (e.g. Leapster, V-Tech) are cartridge-based. Given the audience, this makes since because disk-based media would be far too fragile. In terms of the mainstream market, I certainly agree that cartridges are dead.

[Video]

Well, cartridges will stick around for handheld stuff for a while yet. I know, technically the format is different for the DS and 3DS, but it's still a cartridge as far as I"m concerned.

[godslabrat]

I think the UMD proved that disc media isn't ideal for portable systems. So, it seems that cartridges might indeed have more life there. I'm really wondering how the "app store" model will work for Nintendo and Sony, since both companies had major mishaps in the previous generation.

[DickNixonArisen]

Yeah, the download only games out, specifically for Nintendo platforms, are pretty iffy right now for sure, but I am not about to count them out. It's more of Nintendo's perennial inability to comprehend the existence of "The Internet".

And for kids games, yeah, that makes sense. Disc won't work; download is semi-workable but not ideal.