http://www.thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=638693

fucking idiot.

9/6/2013 9:21:00 PM

Tell us more about abortions

9/6/2013 9:25:58 PM

Would lewisje know the difference between "then" and "than"?

9/6/2013 9:36:34 PM

probably... since they are homophones.

9/6/2013 9:37:57 PM

icwydt

9/6/2013 9:56:45 PM

^^ HAHAHA

9/6/2013 10:02:29 PM

Take a worn out, low quality vhs, transfer it to dvd

You now have a dvd that looks like you are playing a low quality worn out vhs

The dvd CAN store higher resolution, mor detailed, longer video than a vhs. Just as vhs could store low or high quality, and had longer run time if you selected lower quality, dvd offers the same options, as can blueray.
Tapes could record from 2 hours on a T120, or 4 hours in LP mode, or even 6 hours in SLP mode. You got this extra recording space by reducing quality.

Often you will see a movie re-released on dvd, that is listed as 'remastered'

This means the actual studio master film, not one of the prints used for showing in local theaters, was used to make a very high quality digital copy, which was then recorded onto a DVD or BluRay (NOT 'blue' ray) disk

If you copy a copy, the result can be almsot the same, or much worse quality wise. You can make the copy lighter, or darker, but you cannot make it 'better' than the thing you are copying.

Copying a copy of the original film, especialy one made on vhs is very possible. However, most places doing this on burned consumer grade dvd or blueray will not tell you that it has a limited shelf life.

From http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/initiatives/temp-opmedia-faq.html

Quote :

"5. What is the shelf life of unrecorded CD-R/DVD-R discs? It is best to purchase new CDs/DVDs as they are needed. According to the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA), the unrecorded shelf life of a CD-R/DVD-R disc is conservatively estimated to be between 5 and 10 years. Source: http://www.osta.org/technology/cdqa13.htm 6. How long can I expect my recorded CDs/DVDs to last? CD/DVD experiential life expectancy is 2 to 5 years even though published life expectancies are often cited as 10 years, 25 years, or longer. However, a variety of factors discussed in the sources cited in FAQ 15, below, may result in a much shorter life span for CDs/DVDs. Life expectancies are statistically based; any specific medium may experience a critical failure before its life expectancy is reached. Additionally, the quality of your storage environment may increase or decrease the life expectancy of the media. We recommend testing your media at least every two years to assure your records are still readable."

VHS tapes often have a 8-12 year shelf life and become more and more fuzzy over time as the tape degrades. Most editing places recommend copying them over to digital withing 5 years of the original tape being made.

The best quality you can see would be a good projector with your original film. No matter how it is converted, it will never be 'better' or higher resolution or quality when converted to digital and copied onto a DVD, or BluRay, or even stored on your computer.

It may LAST longer as a digital copy that you can make backups of easily, and it will be easy to copy and show to people.

9/6/2013 10:04:34 PM

the fact that you took the time to type all that^ shit out means that the troll has won

[Edited on September 6, 2013 at 10:07 PM. Reason : df]

9/6/2013 10:06:52 PM

OP is full of

9/7/2013 6:38:44 AM

anything with a metal layer will degrade over time

that's why well-kept records last longer than well-kept CDs

9/9/2013 1:07:47 AM

why did you make another thread for this shit

9/9/2013 1:27:11 AM

to keep chit-chat posts out of tech talk.

9/9/2013 8:41:29 AM

^^The better question would be why he made a thread highlighting the fact that he's a moron but making sure that everyone in Chit Chat knows it instead of just the small amount of people that frequent Tech Talk.

[Edited on September 9, 2013 at 10:02 AM. Reason : Assuming of course, that this isn't a troll thread, which it probably is. ]

9/9/2013 10:01:17 AM

Oh wow. This should be fun. Where to begin...

Quote :

"you're either a shill or a troll because the only other possibility is that for the last 5 or so years I've been streaming media to my TV, I've just had other bad products off the line repeatedly"

Or another possibility could be that I've tried out more than just a video game console and a defective Apple TV before deciding that the only other thing that half-assed worked must be the best thing evar by default.

Quote :

"first i had a ps3 and I had to either make sure video files were formatted correctly or were native in the proper format for it to play"

The PS3 is a video game console first, a blu-ray player second, and a media streaming device a far distant third. You won't get any argument from me that it's a steaming pile of shit.

Quote :

"second i got an apple tv with the sole intention of jailbreaking it so it could run as a media center only to have the wifi drop out continuously or run sluggishly whenever fast forwarding or rewinding."

You obviously had a bad Apple TV, and should have returned it. I've had 2 ATVs for myself, 2 for my parents, and one for my sister, jailbroke them all, and never experienced anything like what you described.

Quote :

"the roku's usb functionality is basic? it plays everything you throw at it! I never have to format even 1080p bluray rips. I can have the idea "I want to watch x..." and 2 seconds later I can be watching it on the Roku and through PS3 and aTV, there was an entire process and/or other hardware involved."

Off the top of my head, here's a list of things wrong with the Roku's USB playback:

*The UI for the file selection is horrible. You can only see, I think, 4 items at a time, and only the first ~20 characters of the file name are displayed. So if you have a folder with Showname.720p.s01e01, Showname.720p.s01e02, etc, it cuts them all off to Showname.720p.s01... and makes it impossible to determine which episode you want to select.

*Speaking of the UI, it's just ugly. There's no customization, there's no view options, and there's certainly nothing even close to fancy features like scraping metadata and show/movie information off the internet and displaying dvd covers/movie posters for saved files. Like I said, it's just very basic.

*It doesn't mark the content that you've watched in any way.

*It doesn't allow you to delete files from the USB stick when you're done watching them.

*There's no resume feature when playing back a movie you've watched a portion of.

*There's no way to see the file when you're fast forwarding. Seriously, every media device made since the dawn of time lets you see things going in fast forward or rewind, but the Roku just throws up a black screen, and a timeline at the bottom. That wouldn't be so horrible if you know that you want to fast forward to 22 minutes in a movie, but if you just want to scan something quickly to look for a particular scene, it's impossible.

*There's also no way to jump large amounts of time. If you're watching a movie that's 2 hours and 30 minutes, and you even bothered to remember that you stopped it at 1 hour 45 minutes, there's still no way to get to that spot again unless you fast forward 3x to that point, which takes a good 30 seconds or more. There's no reason why they couldn't make one of the buttons jump forward 10 minutes at a time.

*Nitpicky, but I get annoyed that over half the buttons on the Roku remote will stop playback of a file. Seriously, hitting a direction on the d-pad stops the video for some reason. If you have a small child that likes to play with remotes, or you accidentally lay the remote on the couch and sit on it, it's FAR too easy to accidentally stop a movie from playing. Combined with the previous 3 items, this gets annoying far too often.

*If by "everything you throw at it" you mean "only H.264 mp4s or mkvs" then you might be right. Everything else is a crap shoot. Up until not too long ago, the most popular file format for sharing movies was divx/xvid avis. The Roku simply won't play those. One of the shows I watch is still only uploaded to the internet in divx format, so I have to convert it if I want to watch it on the Roku. And hey, lets just completely forget that WMV, MOV, MPG, FLV, or ASF files exist, right?

*It only does passthrough of AC3 audio. Which means unless your TV can handle decoding AC3(most don't), or you're hooked up to a receiver/soundbar, you won't get any sound coming from those blu-ray rips of yours. Which might be fine if you DO have a receiver that does AC3/DTS, but if you want to take your Roku over to a friends house and all he has is a normal TV, you're going to be having silent movie night.

So yes. I'd consider that basic. If I'm being nice. You can get one particular format of movies you've got stored on a USB drive to show up on your TV most of the time, and that's about it. Sometimes they even have audio too, so I suppose that's a bonus. Pretty much the definition of the word basic though.

Quote :

"Maybe YOU have no idea what you're talking about and you're thinking of previous experiences with earlier rokus but the new Roku 3 is simply the greatest wave of relief I've experienced in my media center setup in years."

That confirms my suspicions then. You've tried to get a game console to do something it wasn't designed to do, had bad luck with an Apple TV when you tried to get it to do what it wasn't supposed to do, and then you've stumbled onto a Roku and it looks like a shining diamond in comparison.

Me? My first media streamer was a modded original xbox running XBMC. It wouldn't play HD content (not that there was much to be had back then anyway) but the UI was excellent. Once you've experienced that, just about everything else is going to be a letdown in comparison.

Then about 5 years ago I replaced it with a Popcorn Hour A-110 NMT. It really will play absolutely everything imaginable that you throw at it from USB or a SMB share on the network. As far as local media playback is concerned, it is definitively better than the Roku is in every way imaginable, and if mine hadn't been struck by lightning 2 years back, I would still be using it to this day as my primary Media Center device. It has none of the drawbacks of the Roku I listed above even though it is now 5+ years old. It doesn't do any sort of Netflix or Youtube or really hardly any internet streaming, but that's simply not what it was designed for. I think newer versions of the PCH have added such features.

Also about 5 years back I bought a WD TV HD for my bedroom. It's very basic as well, but again, at 5 years old it plays back files from USB better than the Roku could ever dream of today. It also doesn't have any of the negatives I listed above, with the exception of not doing metadata/movie posters. I bought a new WD TV last year for $59 that is completely redesigned, and does to the movie poster/show info thing as well. It also has an HDMI port as well as standard RCA cable output, meaning when I took it on the family vacation this summer I was able to hook it up to the old TV in the rental house we stayed in and have Netflix for the kids as well as movies for the adults on a USB stick. There's two separate reasons why that wouldn't have worked with a Roku 3.

My point is, there are tons of other devices out there, many for far less money, that do so much more than the Roku. It all depends on what you want to do with it, and what features are important to you. The Roku has name recognition and ease of use going for it, and that's just about it. Everything else about it, if you took the time to actually educate yourself on the topic, is really subpar.

9/9/2013 10:07:49 AM

Thanks. More people needed to see that amazing piece of artwork.

[Edited on September 9, 2013 at 11:04 AM. Reason : Seriously, if that becomes the next outside sales meme, I'd be honored as fuck. ]

9/9/2013 11:03:20 AM

HEY SEE ANY GOOD VHS LATELY?

6/20/2014 12:24:48 PM

i only watch laser discs

6/20/2014 12:35:49 PM

Betamax = best

6/20/2014 1:34:56 PM