np NP: Friday, July 1, 2016

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

I'm curious, did they say if they'd be stocking bluray discs?  Compact discs?  Or are they just getting out of physical media altogether?

[Matoyak 51]

7 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

I'm curious, did they say if they'd be stocking bluray discs?  Compact discs?  Or are they just getting out of physical media altogether?

Flash media is what he said they'd be shifting towards. Like SD cards and suchlike.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

21 minutes ago, Matoyak said:

Flash media is what he said they'd be shifting towards. Like SD cards and suchlike.

You know, I don't think I've ever seen a movie or TV series for sale on a flash card.

[ijuin 572]

We don't yet have video players specifically designed for playing movies from flash cards and displaying them on a TV screen--you have to use a tablet/laptop/desktop computer as an intermediary device at present. Once you can buy a device where you can just hook it up to your TV and pop in the data card, with no need to do more than press a couple of buttons on the remote, then we will see SDXC cards supplanting Blu-ray.

[hkmaly 490]

4 hours ago, Matoyak said:

5 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

I'm curious, did they say if they'd be stocking bluray discs?  Compact discs?  Or are they just getting out of physical media altogether?

Flash media is what he said they'd be shifting towards. Like SD cards and suchlike.

... which are even less durable. Wallmart is not a good store for media with long shelf-life, apparently.

4 hours ago, ijuin said:

We don't yet have video players specifically designed for playing movies from flash cards and displaying them on a TV screen--you have to use a tablet/laptop/desktop computer as an intermediary device at present. Once you can buy a device where you can just hook it up to your TV and pop in the data card, with no need to do more than press a couple of buttons on the remote, then we will see SDXC cards supplanting Blu-ray.

1) I have. I mean, it's set-top box, but it does have the functionality to play movies from flash card. And it's extremely cheap one, nothing special. Also, there are TVs with that functionality already integrated (those ARE more costly, though).

2) Technically, not only set-top boxes, but even DVD players are computers - just in nicer box and with few additional inputs and outputs. With audio CDs, it MIGHT sometimes make sense to built fixed-functionality device. Since then, the smaller price for chips manufactured in bigger volumes combined with rising complexity of functionality won over. Your "video player" is general-purpose computer with software on memory chip inside, and it's very likely this software contains operation system originally designed for PCs, just like there is linux inside every android device (well hidden).

3) The actual reason why movies are not distributed on SDXC cards is that everybody has a device capable of copying SDXC card. Movie industry failed to force some "protection" system on them, as they did on Bluray (which caused them appearing on market significantly later)

[ijuin 572]

Yes, players are computer-like, but it's the price and convenience that will make them the preferred way of playing videos. Not only do most decent general-purpose computers cost $300 and up vs. under $100 for a DVD/Blu-ray player at present, but also it takes a bit more technical know-how to route the video output on your computer to your big TV screen as opposed to your computer's default monitor, vs. just popping a disk into a DVD player and pressing a couple of buttons on the remote. I am saying that it will require this degree of convenience and low price for consumers en masse to decide to use flash-based distribution as their preferred format over DVD/Blu-ray.

Oh, and as for linux being inside android devices, etc., literally just about EVERY modern non-Microsoft operating system that isn't a purpose-built embedded system or an ultra-low-resource system is some form of derivative of Unix.

[InfiniteRemnant 141]

4 hours ago, ijuin said:

also it takes a bit more technical know-how to route the video output on your computer to your big TV screen as opposed to your computer's default monitor, vs. just popping a disk into a DVD player and pressing a couple of buttons on the remote.

Had you made that claim a few years ago, it might still be true... today? nope.

If your videocard has an HDMI port, which most do now, switching to a tv is as easy as plugging in a cable; windows will automatically detect the TV and configure it as a 2nd monitor. no more fiddling with adapters or adjusting your videocard. also, most media player software now either defaults to full screen, or has a blatantly obvious full screen button that's never more than a single mouse click away, and will open themselves automatically when appropriate media is inserted into the computer, if auto-play is on (which it is by default).

they started implementing this stuff during XP's run with Windows Media Center, and have since all but idiot-proofed it. Yes, there are ways to accidentally or deliberately disable parts of the automation (not uncommon on business or gaming rigs to improve performance, since those don't need WMC), and can't speak for macs as I refuse to use em (long story that involves multiple Brick'd macs. Can't crash, my ass!), but a default-setup windows machine can do multimedia as easily as any player.

[Vorlonagent 442]

I have a 2-monitor setup for my desktop and my primary screen is a actually a TV

Reason: slightly cheaper and I don't play the sort of games that require a monitor's reaction time.

[Don Edwards 548]

13 hours ago, ijuin said:

We don't yet have video players specifically designed for playing movies from flash cards and displaying them on a TV screen--you have to use a tablet/laptop/desktop computer as an intermediary device at present. Once you can buy a device where you can just hook it up to your TV and pop in the data card, with no need to do more than press a couple of buttons on the remote, then we will see SDXC cards supplanting Blu-ray.

Our DirecTV box and our BluRay player will play movies off a USB thumb drive.

And I have an SD-to-USB adapter. (Also does microSD.)

The DirecTV box has an Ethernet jack to connect to a media server or the internet... but our home network is strictly wifi. The BluRay player does wifi.

[hkmaly 490]

8 hours ago, ijuin said:

Oh, and as for linux being inside android devices, etc., literally just about EVERY modern non-Microsoft operating system that isn't a purpose-built embedded system or an ultra-low-resource system is some form of derivative of Unix.

Yes. Android contains linux, while Mac OS and iOS contains BSD. And even Windows are using TCP-IP stack from BSD, and who knows how many other bits.

 

[Vorlonagent 442]

I thought MacOS and iOS were overlaid on top of Apple-licensed and developed versions of UNIX...

[hkmaly 490]

7 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

I thought MacOS and iOS were overlaid on top of Apple-licensed and developed versions of UNIX...

Well ... it's actually more complicated. The kernel, XNU, have Mach as the base, but uses FreeBSD (since 10.5, previously 4.3BSD) code to provide POSIX interface, processes, networking, virtual file system code and lot of other stuff. It's significantly modified but still similar enough for code sharing. The low-level user space code also uses parts of BSD. BSD was selected instead of linux precisely because BSD licence allows this kind of things - using linux would force GPL on the whole project, probably.

Note that BSD was base for NeXTSTEP, Ultrix, SunOS and several other Unixes as well, so it may actually be hard to build non-BSD version of UNIX without reinventing the wheel ... remember that in 1980s, there was only TWO versions of Unix: BSD and System V. Afterwards, they started merging.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

17 hours ago, Matoyak said:

Not being sarcastic, but is it? I had to purchase some DVDs for a school project last fall and the manager of the electronics department at my local Walmart told me they won't be stocking DVDs starting Spring 2017.

...

Oh well, there's always Amazon and Newegg ...

[Matoyak 51]

On 7/12/2016 at 1:45 AM, CritterKeeper said:

You know, I don't think I've ever seen a movie or TV series for sale on a flash card.

Well, I wasn't saying they weren't going to be selling DVD movies or games or what have you, though it really wouldn't surprise me to see them phase those out as well relatively quickly in favor of Bluray. I was talking blank, storage DVDs, the kind you burn things onto.

[Vorlonagent 442]

20 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Well ... it's actually more complicated. The kernel, XNU, have Mach as the base, but uses FreeBSD (since 10.5, previously 4.3BSD) code to provide POSIX interface, processes, networking, virtual file system code and lot of other stuff. It's significantly modified but still similar enough for code sharing. The low-level user space code also uses parts of BSD. BSD was selected instead of linux precisely because BSD licence allows this kind of things - using linux would force GPL on the whole project, probably.

Note that BSD was base for NeXTSTEP, Ultrix, SunOS and several other Unixes as well, so it may actually be hard to build non-BSD version of UNIX without reinventing the wheel ... remember that in 1980s, there was only TWO versions of Unix: BSD and System V. Afterwards, they started merging.

Thanks!  That's a crap-ton more than I ever knew...