When it first launched YouTube video quality was known for it’s low quality, but at the time we didn’t really care, as our dial-up internet was charged by the minute, we wanted our video’s quickly and cheaply.
How day’s we have multi-megabit, paid per month, broadband and as a result we now want our on-line video’s and TV-On-Demand at a much higher quality, and in some better than the quality we get on TV, but even though our broadband came serve us these video’s just as fast as we can watch them, can our Graphics Cards cope with the higher video quality of service’s like YouTube HD?
I have two PC’s that I use for watching on-line video’s, both with separate video cards. One, my basic machine, has a Celeron(R) processor running at 2.66GHz’s, 768MB of Ram and a 128MB nVidia GeForce4 MX 4000 Graphics Card at only 1024 x 768 resolution. The main machine has a Celeron(R) processor running at 3.33GHz, 1.5GB of Ram and has a 1GB nVidia GeForce 9500 GT Graphic Card at 1600 x 1200 resolution.
Now both can play the test video below at full screen in standard def, but the basic machine with it’s 128MB Graphic Card can only refresh the screen around 4 times per second. Where as the main machine, with it’s 1GB ram, can still play the HD version without any drop outs in full screen, as long as the second monitor is not playing anything, at which point both screen slow to 5 or 6 refreshes per second.
So why not test your Graphic Card out with Miranda Lambert’s Live Performance of ‘More Like Her’ at the Country Music Awards? Continue reading »
So is it just me being a little slow, please don’t answer that, but now long as the BBC’s iPlayer been offering some of it’s show in HD to either watch online or download?
So at 1.3GB per hour watching shows in HD via the BBC iPlayer is really going to eat in to some peoples bandwidth caps, but downloading or streaming these shows, as long as you have at least a 2MB broadband connection, isn’t the main issue preventing some people, ie me, from watching these shows. It’s the processing power of the graphics card.
Now I have a 10Mb connection with an old’ish PC powered by a 2.66GHz Intel Celeron processor, 768Mb of Ram and a seperate NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 4000 128MB graphic card, and although the HD version of the shows downloads fine, and they sound great, I’m only getting 1, that’s ONE, frame every 3, THREE, seconds. Now don’t get me wrong, that those ONE frames lookings amazing for something that is being streamed over the internet, but I would really like to see the other 74 odd frames inbetween. (Have a look at the frames at the bottom of this post, I’m not sure if they do the HD service justice or not, try compairing the ‘Previously’ text and the Ladies Hair, click on them to see a large slideshow version.)
Looks like my cheap PC may be getting a new 512MB graphics card soon, or I could just stick to watching show via the iPlayer in standard def, but you know what they say…..
If you stare at the cross on the middle of the blue tinted female, once the image turns to black and white, your be able to see her in colour.
If you think it’s only the last section of the video that has her in black and white then use the play head to jump back to about 2/3rds of the way though the video and check for yourself,
“MIT chemists Daniel Nocera and Matthew Kanan discover a new catalyst that speeds up the splitting of water into oxygen and hydrogen. The discovery may heighten interest in pollution-free fuel cell vehicles, which generate energy by combining hydrogen and oxygen chemically, emitting only water. The catalyst, made from cheap materials and working in ordinary water, may also make it easier to convert sunlight into chemical fuels, storing solar energy in much the way plants do. “
In the mid-nineties, flooring manufacturers became the first modern companies to take advantage of bamboo, Asians have used it in construction for centuries, but manufacturers are also using it to make bikes. Cross country bike designed for use with 80 mm or 100 mm travel forks and is vailable in 26″ or 29″ wheelsizes.
Bamboo Bike Features:
Amazing Vibration Damping – Even better than Carbon fiber!
High performance frame. Weighs from 4 to 6 pounds but has good stiffness.
Crash tolerant. Bamboo is a lot of tougher than most people realize.
10 year warranty
The bike is made from Bamboo that has been smoked and heat treated to prevent splitting. Lugs are made of hemp fiber, for the all-natural look, the bamboo is then coated with a satin polyurethane to seal it up.
I don’t know about many of you in the UK, by I now do what little TV watching I have time for via the online watch on demand services that the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 offer up.
The only problem I am having with this is that both the BBC’s ‘iPlayer’ and Channel 4′s ’4oD’, have both been suffering from major down time over the last couple of weeks.
So what video on demand service are other people in both the UK and word wide using as I really need to find alternate service to use for when these service go down.
Please leave info and links to your favorite Video on Demand service in the comments. Thanks
OK, I’m not really a great photographer, but I do love the technology involved in modem digital camera and long lenses. I just don’t love the price of some of this things. But thanks to Jarle Aasland over on NikonWeb.com I may have found a way to get a 1540mm lense for les than a 300mm lenses, that less than £600. (us$1,149)
The SVP 127’s high-resolution 5″ optics and 1540mm focal length (f/12.1) excel for high-magnification study of the lunar surface and the planets. And it’s got enough aperture to display excellent images of a wide variety of deep-sky gems. The tube assembly is just 14.5″ long, making it wonderfully portable and easy to stow away when not in use.
When TV first started it was all done live, often when one program finished, the next one was not ready, and the gaps had to be filled. So the BBC developed a number if interludes to fill these gaps, this is one of the most famous.
If your in the UK and click though to it soon you can see this in high def on the BBC’s iPlayer
There’s a slightly more modern version after the jump, along with a version of the original with a reworked ending.
Motorcycle Ferrari with touchscreen-control and suspension with variable height developed
industrial designer Amir Glinik from Israel. To fit a motorcycle engine Ferrari
V8 had to «reduce» engine 2 times.
Is the Prius design really a good compromise? Does it do itself justice by trying to accomplish so much in one vehicle?
To get to the root of this, I decided to seek out an expert opinion and contacted MIT professor, Mark Drela. Dr. Drela is a professor of fluid dynamics in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and has been an adviser to MIT’s Vehicle Design Summit regarding vehicle aerodynamics. In a response via email, Dr. Drela had this to say:
“All common cars, including the Prius, are aerodynamic bricks. The lowest drag shape that you can wrap around a passenger cabin resembles the front half of a sailplane fuselage. The Aptera comes pretty close, assuming they designed it properly.â€
