Activity for September 7

Comment - Toshiba's $249 Blu-ray player vs. $299 PS3: The choice is obvious
(Sep 7, 2009 - 10:42 AM)

"Toshiba's $249 Blu-ray player vs. $299 PS3: The choice is obvious"

Yes it is.

A proper dedicated standalone player, everytime.

The PS3 slim uses 3x the power of a decent standalone (even after the recent reduction & improved energy efficiency) when playing a Blu-ray movie.
It is also a poor DVD player and its upscaling is nothing special either.

The hoops necessary to go through to get the slim to bitstream properly are decidedly user-unfriendly.

The PS3 slim also has issues bitstreaming 7.1 DTS HD MA audio on some discs.

Basically the PS3 is a poor mix, not quite one thing nor the other.
It loads quickly.
That's it big feature.

It will also play games.
However everyone I know with an Xbox & a PS3 uses the Xbox for gaming (1 ended up selling the PS3 because it was used so much less).

If you have an Xbox and want blu-ray buy a decent standalone (Amazon have the Panasonic DMP-BD60 @ $180).
It's much cheaper and far superior at movie playback.

Your Xbox has more games and more games with higher review scores - in short it offers everything and more than a PS3 does except for a handful of exclusive games (hardly worth $300).

(and I'd give odds that this toshiba streets at a lot less than that $249 quoted too)
Comment - Analyst: Blu-ray may never replace DVD in PCs
(Aug 27, 2009 - 6:48 PM)

Uh oh

That should have been a book of 2tb SD cards, d'oh!
Comment - Analyst: Blu-ray may never replace DVD in PCs
(Aug 26, 2009 - 12:57 PM)

Blu-ray players have a tiny piece of the video market and that is unlikely to change by much.
It's a dud, a niche product and it'll stay that way until the next one comes along.

Blu-ray as a recording media on PC is in an even worse position.
Laughably expensive media and burners.
Why would anyone bother?

If big size, reliability and speed are really your priority then nothing beats hard drives (so large & cheap they can be used in raid 5 arrays to protect in the unlikely event of a failure).

The one tech coming whoch interests me is the flash drive/SD card stuff.
2tbs and 300Mbps speeds.
I'd love to throw away all my discs and bulky cases and have a book (or 2, the 2nd for back-up, if prices drop like they have done to date) of 2gb SD cards with all my films and music on them.
That would be a tech I'd be very interested in.
Comment - After Tenenbaum, who will take back the music industry from the RIAA?
(Aug 3, 2009 - 12:22 PM)

The key here is how the jury were ordered to find the guy guilty.

Justice for sale.....to one of the wealthiest industries on the planet.

Comforting, huh?
Comment - EC: Microsoft will consider Windows 7 E 'ballot screen' for other browsers
(Jul 25, 2009 - 7:14 AM)

Dry your tears, they lost, threw a tantrum and have now decided to act more reasonably.

It is not semantics.
They are not offering competitors products.
They are merely going to show a list of products to choose from and from which the customer will then select & go get (I presume you don't need it explaining how this can be done without a 'full' browser being installed?).

Frankly from your Ivory Tower and with that incalculably superior attitude I wonder why you bother being interested with the issues relating to the herd scofflaw at all.