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I’ve been doing a little research on HDTV… 🙂

There are four common formats:

480p = 480 scan lines, 60Hz

480i = 480 interlaced scan lines, 30Hz (regular NTSC TV)

720p = 720 scan lines, 60Hz

1080i = 1080 interlaced scan lines, 30Hz

Most HDTV’s you can buy only natively support the 1080i format, which isn’t good. Better HDTV’s natively can run 480p/i, 720p and/or 1080i. If the TV can natively run 480i that’s good, because then it can display regular NTSC TV and it will look exactly the same as your old TV. If the TV doesn’t support these lower formats it has to “up-sample” the image, and that’s why it looks bad. (Many of us are still in the dark ages and have devices like VCRs and video games that only support NTSC)!

It costs a boat-load to get a device that can combine 480i with a better HD format; the cheapest I’ve found so far is a rear-projection Samsung model at $1400. It only supports 1080i and 480i/p though, so 720p images have to be up-sampled.

DVD format is 480i. I believe most DVDs are 16:9 480i, which means they are 720×480 interlaced. Some DVD players that have HD outputs up-sample the image to 1080i, some output the image as 480p. it depends upon the model. There’s a big debate over which is better, I suppose it depends upon how your TV displays the two formats (up-sampling vs native support).

720p seems like the best format, but there are very few devices that support this natively under $4k. They all seem to be plasmas. Pictures look the smoothest under this format because there’s no interlacing and it’s a high resolution.

720p also seems to be the best because there’s something about the connector format for this resolution that doesn’t support broadcast flag. I don’t understand this part yet, but that appears to be what I’ve read. 720p typically uses a single RGB (DVI) plug, whereas 1080i uses a three plug Y/Cr/Cb system. A lot of people on slashdot are pissed off because they have $6k plasma displays that only support the RGB plug, but Y/Cr/Cb DVD players just dropped in price this year and they all support the broadcast flag (they were manufactured before it went into effect). So if they want a RGB DVD player they have to spend BIG bucks (actually they might not even exist, I’m not sure) or buy a very expensive external converter. Broadcast flag will be pointless, but only for those who can afford the better equipment.

The xbox seems to support all the HD formats above from what I’ve read. I’m not sure, but I believe when the xbox plays a DVD it outputs the signal as 480i. Sampling to any other format would require some big hardware that the xbox doesn’t have in it.

Taking all of the above into consideration, I think we can conclude the FCC really screwed up. If it takes someone like me this long to just partially understand all of the different ways HDTV can work, it’s too complicated. They should have made HDTV just one format and stuck with that. It’s silly that some devices support some formats and others do not.

It’s gonna be chaos when they announce the obsolesence of NTSC broadcasting. Which, btw, I still very much enjoy, and I’ll be very upset if the FCC obsoletes my NTSC WEGA any time soon. I refuse to pay to watch television; subjecting yourself to advertisements shouldn’t cost you anything. Actually, why the hell am I even worried about this? TV sucks! Kill your HDTV. 😉

Is broadcast flag just a big joke?

The FCC announced today that the Digital TV broadcast flag will be in effect by July 2005. I’m reading through the FCC’s “order” announcing the decision, and I can’t help but ask, “wait, is this some kind of big joke?” The order doesn’t specify at all what the broadcast flag actually is; they just list some options that are currently on the table. I also thought the purpose of broadcast flag was to signal all your DTV ready devices to not let you copy the

broadcast, apparently broadcast flag only prevents you from copying the broadcast digitally. The analog hole is still open, so… what’s the point then? Is this some kind of a big joke?

Supporters of a content protection system state that

compelling digital broadcast programming is critical to the DTV transition and that such content

is inherently at a greater risk of widespread redistribution as compared to its analog counterpart

because digital media can be easily copied and distributed with little or no degradation in

quality.

If I wanted to download a DTV broadcast off the Internet, but the only version available was one that sombody recorded using the analog-out on their DTV and a video-cap card, I’d be totally OK with that. Case in point: people today are OK downloading old Seinfeld episodes encoded with an old crappy RealPlayer codec at like 100kbps. If the broadcast flag doesn’t plug the analog hole then whats the point?

In light of our decision to adopt a redistribution control scheme and to avoid any

confusion, we wish to reemphasize that our action herein in no way limits or prevents consumers

from making copies of digital broadcast television content.

If you can pull the digital feed out of your DTV into an “approved” device, what’s to stop anyone from hacking that device to ignore the broadcast flag?

After reading the order, I don’t think the FCC is as evil as the EFF is making them out to be right now… I think they’re very smart people just leading the MPAA on. 😉

We also recognize that with any content protection system, the potential exists

that some individuals may attempt to circumvent the protection technology. We do not believe,

however, that individual acts of circumvention necessarily undermine the value or integrity of an

entire content protection system. The DVD example is instructive in this regard. Although the

CSS copy protection system for DVDs has been “hacked” and circumvention software is

available on the Internet, DVDs remain a viable distribution platform for content owners.46 The

CSS content protection system serves as an adequate “speed bump” for most consumers, allowing

the continued flow of content to the DVD platform. We believe the same rationale applies here.

Heh heh heh… Way to go FCC! You rock!

How has September 11th changed America’s approach to human rights?

America’s anti-terrorist activities have given cover to many foreign governments who want to use “anti-terrorism” to justify their own crackdowns on human rights. Examples abound. In Indonesia, the army has cited America’s use of Guantánamo to propose building an offshore prison camp on Nasi Island to hold suspected terrorists from Aceh. In Australia, Parliament passed laws mandating the forcible transfer of refugees seeking entry to detention facilities in Nauru, where children as young as three years old are being held, so that Australia does not (in the words of its defence minister) become a “pipeline for terrorists”.

In 1759, Benjamin Franklin wrote: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither.” In the months ahead, I believe, we can both obtain our security and preserve our essential liberty, but only so long as we have courage from our courts, commitment from our citizens, and pressure from our foreign allies. Even after September 11th, America can still stand for human rights, but we can get there only with a little help from our friends.

–Harold Hongju Koh, professor of international law at Yale Law School

20 questions with an AI agent

neato

I was just thinking about what I wrote in the entry below… Maybe I was a little unfair. Maybe you can make a parallel between Pearl Harbor and 9-11.

Was Pearl Harbor an act of terrorism? What defines terrorism? (The Japanese did come up with the kamikaze, but from what I’ve read about Pearl Harbor they never used that strategy until much later into the war). I think the problem at the heart of the post-9-11 debate is what exactly defines terrorism.

Websters defines terrorism rather ambiguously: “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.” That could mean just about anything. This would make the anti-abortion bombers terrorists. This would make many of the groups involved in the WTO riots terrorists. This would probably make any kid that brings a gun to school with his friends a terrorist. Under this definition you could probably read through the history books and redefine almost every single act of war carried out by one group against another an act of terrorism. This definition and whatever the definition that is used by different government agencies is too vague. We need a concrete definition for terrorism.

I’d like to propose a definition for terrorism: An act of war without a declaration of war. Is Pearl Harbor an act of terrorism under this definition? No, because Pearl Harbor was their declaration of war. But then how do you explain the Oklahoma City bombing? Was this terrorism under this definition? Probably no, because there was no body of people to “not declare war.” (Or was there? I’ll leave that one to those who research American militia organizations). Obviously, the Oklahoma City bombing was an act terrorism, so maybe the definition needs to be expanded a little.

What is “war”? Websters defines war as “…open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations.” This is where I believe the key lies to defining terrorism; terrorism is a hostile conflict without states or nations.

I’d like to propose a new definition for terrorism: An act of war carried out by a group that does not represent a particular nation. Now, was the Oklahoma City bombing an act of terrorism? Yes. Was Pearl Harbor an act of terrorism? No. Now, was 9-11 an act of terrorism? Let’s discuss that later. For now, here are some things to think about:

* Osama bin Laden thinks he’s at war with the West, and it’s a war he thinks that will take 50 years to win.

* We don’t know if any particular nation has given Osama bin Laden direct funding or not.

* We do know that Osama bin Laden took millions of dollars from his wealthy oil family in Saudi Arabia. For all we know he could have stolen the money or could have been given it.

* We know that not everyone associated with Al Queda is from the same region of the world, let alone the same country.

Was 9-11 terrorism or an act of war? If it was an act of war, then Bush has every right to draw parallels between 9-11 and Pearl Harbor.

Those damn Japanese terrorists!

From abcnews.com, this was written in reference to Bush’s recent tour of South-East Asia:

In Hawaii, Bush was to tour Pearl Harbor and participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the USS Arizona Memorial. The president will pay tribute to those who fell and draw parallels between the victims of Sept. 11 and the Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor attack.

That’s right, the Japanese attacked Hawaii not as a strategic jump-off point to attack the mainland United States during WWII, but simply to invoke terror into the hearts of Americans and to disrupt our economy. Pearl Harbor was a military base, not a port, correct?

Did I read to much into this sentence? 🙂

Factorions

…an interesting little math tidbit. A factorion is an integer which is equal to the sum of factorials of its digits. There are exactly four such numbers.

145 = 1! + 4! + 5!

heh. 🙂

Graphics processing relies on executing similar instructions repeatedly on a large data set. This parallelism in the data gives rise to the Single-Instruction Multiple-Data (SIMD) paradigm which is used in modern processors. This paper explores several techniques that exploit the parallelism in the SIMD execution functional units and proposes several new SIMD methods. The methods discussed in this paper cover SIMD Addition and SIMD Matrix Multiplication.

PDF

GameSpy collects sales numbers for PS2, GameCube and Xbox all in one place!

Estimated Current Installed Base (Various Sources):

Console        North America  Japan       Europe and others   Total

PlayStation 2  26,420,000     14,170,000  19,400,000         59,990,000

GBA            14,540,000     9,240,000   7,920,000          31,700,000

GBA-SP         830,000        820,000     460,000        2,110,000

GameCube       5,130,000      2,470,000   1,950,000      9,550,000

Xbox           6,200,000      1,000,000   2,200,000       9,400,000

Whoah! MS and Nintendo are getting their butts whooped. Too bad, competition is good… :-/

Ted Koppel is the Man of the Hour. He said this last weekend on Nightline, in regards to the US Patriot Act of 2001:

The men who drafted our constitution, who framed our civil rights and protected our various freedoms under the law would, I suspect, retch at some of the bone headed, self-serving, misinterpretations of their intentions that they so often use these days to undermine the very freedoms they pretend to safeguard. The miracle of American Law is not that it protects popular speech, or the privacy of the powerful, or the homes of the privileged, but rather, that the least among us, those with the fewest defenses thoses suspected of the worst crimes — the most despised in our midst, are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

That remains as revolutionary a concept now as it was in the 1780s. It makes protecting the country against terrorism excruciatingly difficult, but we cannot arbitrarily suspend the rights of one catagory of suspects without endangering all the others.