DVD: around 400k pixels
720: around 920k pixels
1080i: just over 1M pixels
1080p: over 2M pixels
This piece of crap is 1080i, just over 1M pixels.
The low price is to get rid of the excess inventory. Wal-Mart basically tells manufacturers that if product doesnt move the manufacturer pays to have it moved, ie., subsidizes the sale.
Sorry my friend, that 2Million HD-DVD player story was a rumor started by a chinese company and was promptly shot-down by Wal-Mart.
The $98 dollar price (losses refunded by Microsoft via Toshiba) is to get rid of old inventory for a discontinued product that no one wants. If there's one thing Wal-Mart hates, it's wasting space with a crappy product. Wal-Mart is the most efficient retailer on the planet and this deal with Microsoft (via Toshiba) basically attacks 2 problems:
...
Walmart isn't making any money on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray hardware. They will choose whoever has better content and a larger installed base.
This is a temporary sale funded by Microsoft/Toshiba to get rid of old inventory. This is basically a discontinued player that no one wanted to pay full price for. Hence the excess inventory. If you cant sell it, give it away!
Toshiba is refunding Walmart the $100 difference (like a rebate). Plus even at $200 Toshiba is already losing a massive amount of money on the hardware. HD-DVD players cost just as much to manufacture as Blu-Ray drives.
No other manufacturer is willing to touch the damn thing. There's no money in it for manufacturers. This is basically a desperate Microsoft funded attempt to try to match the installed base of Blu-Ray.
They are literally giving it away. Hilar...
The only way to make a fair comparison is to take the best of what each console offers in similar types of games.
The best 360 graphics are still Gears of War. It hasnt got any better. Bioshock has it's good moments (shiny plastic skin aside) but the environments are very limited. All the other big budget games have been graphically disappointing such as Halo3, Forza2, PGR4, etc...
PS3 has Resistance, which had plenty of dull moments but had some incredible sig...
Shiny is not HDR. When people look like shiny plastic it's because the shaders used to create the lighting are too simple. Xbox360 hardware is great for this kind of thing. However, Xbox fanboys (including the reviewer who talked about "xbox360 sheen") seem to think this is some kind of advanced graphical feature. It's actually the opposite.
It's hilarious sitting here watching Xbox360 fanboys drool over shiny plastic characters with shiny plastic hair that is a...
GT5 Prologue Demo blows away a game that's been in development for years and is fully optimized for the Xbox360.
Forza has a good amount of geometry (mostly environments, cars are poor) but has pathetic lighting. Even teamxbox admitted that the graphics are poor saying "Flat as a board comes to mind". That should tell you something.
It demonstrates how the Xbox360 can either do lots of geometry or good lighting but not both. That's how unified sh...
WB won't go red only. WB makes it very clear that they will stay with Blu-Ray. You simply cannot argue against a 5-6 Million installed base. The issue is if they will stay dual-format.
They know Toshiba/Microsoft is willing to pay (Microsoft has been paying off game developers for years, the Paramount deal was massive, and it would not be surprising if WB has taken payments before) and WB it seems quite apparent that WB is looking to get bribed to stay dual-format. They kn...
Everybody knows that Blu-Ray has been kicking HD-DVD's butt for a long time. The entire hard-ware industry (companies that matter in the consumer electronics space) has been behind Blu-Ray. Its not a question of if, but when.
If WB had already decided to go Blu-Ray exclusive they would go ahead and announce it. But they have something to gain by waiting on announcing the move. Hinting at things is what companies do when they are playing games or in the middle of negotiations...
HD-DVD is supported by:
Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, Microsoft, RCA, Kenwood, Intel, Venturer Electronics and Memory-Tech Corporation.
Blu-Ray is supported by:
Apple Inc., Dell, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic (Matsushita Electric), Pioneer Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp Corporation, Sony Corporation, Sun Microsystems, TDK Corporation, Thomson, Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney ...
Pushing new formats is a bad thing? So PS2 should have had a cartridge instead of DVD? How stupid.
Time is ripe for a new format that supports 2k resolution and uncompressed audio. 42" 1080P TVs are now at the $1000 mark, which means 1080P is going to be huge this holiday season. The timing is perfect for the PS3.
The only people complaining about the PS3 including a blu-ray player are Xbox360 owners who got stuck with the outdated DVD drive (even Xbox3...
Seems I hit a nerve. Truth hurts doesnt it?
GT5 Prologue demo pixel rate: 83 Million/sec
Forza2 pixel rate: 55.3M sec
Not even close.
Add the fact that GT5P is drawing twice as many cars with much higher quality shaders ... well, you do the math.
I'm a little puzzled by the Xbox360 fanboys who've come out of the woodwork to support someone who doesnt even understand modern graphics technology (poor idiot thinks RSX and Xenos have pixel pipelines!) and an unreliable piece of ...
1) Which developers (people who actually write code) have bashed the PS3?
2) Never heard of viral marketing? It's used to spread FUD in everything from presidential politics to the game console wars. All big companies use it. Microsoft is simply the best at it. The whole "Major Nelson" thing was a masterstroke in marketing genius. Those very convincing looking graphs and tech talk was just enough to confuse millions of consumers. Brilliant. Typical Microsoft di...
If you folks want to understand how crazy this guy is just read his line about how the PS3 games can only run good shaders if the resolution is low.
Here's a simple demonstration of how he has it all backwards:
GT5 Prologue demo (an in the process of being optimized PS3 game)
vs
PGR4 (an optimized XBox360 game)
The GT5 Prologue Demo (the demo of a demo as it's been called) has:
Twice as many cars/frame with
Twice as many...
Sleepbox, the only people who ever said the CELL is not good for gaming is Microsoft employee Major Nelson.
Other's like Carmack complain only complain that it is more expensive to develop for. He also was hired by Microsoft to give help design their Xbox strategy so that may explain why he complains so much about the PS2 and PS3 instead of making killer games like Ratchet and Clank: TOD which are 720P, 60fps and simply not possible on even the fastest PC CPUs.
...
Death, you wrote:
"As far as consoles bringing innovation through hardware, what console doesn't rely on a CPU, media storage, and a controller? Everything from the Atari 2600 to now is using the same basic formula, the only diffferance is the technology being used. What seperates the consoles now is more or less services and software."
Actually the difference in the technology being used is quite significant. By your argument, why should people buy a...
Death, you wrote:
"There is no doubt that the Cell is cool, but it's not as complex as you think. Each of the 8 SPE's are a little more powerful than a single processor PC. They don't exactly function like a single processor chip though so this is theoretical power. What ties the SPE's together is the 64 bit Power PC chip or PPE."
With any CPU, the ratings are only theoretical. The difference between the CELL and any other CPU in game consoles or PCs is that t...
Analysts always have something stupid to say. Never take them seriously. I have good friends who are analysts. They are all idiots. Nice people. Just nice people who happen to be stupid.
Sorry you bought into the 1080i excuse bandwagon.
It's true that the actual HD-DVD disc contains 1080P with 1080 lines per frame but the sad reality is that when display at the highest resolution it can (1080i) the cut-price HD-A2 can only process 540 lines per frame. Thats all that's sent to the TV ... 540 lines.
Maybe you need glasses, but most people can tell the difference between 540 lines and 1080 lines. Basically 1080i is interlaced while 1080P is progre...