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The Beauty of Blu-Ray

If you were paying close attention to my blog a week ago, buried in my del.ico.us links were 2 links to Blu-ray news, including one on the state of Blu-Ray.

This was all research with the intention of buying a Blu-Ray player, which I ended up doing a week ago Sunday. I was lucky enough to find a second generation Samsung player, the BD-P1200. Why a second generation player, and not one of the third generation players that are profile 1.2 and just hitting retail shelves? It’s all about the Silicon Optix HQV video processor included, the only Blu-Ray player to include one. Where the HQV shines is on upscaling normal DVDs and is one of the best video processors ever made. Due to trying to reduce costs, Samsung did not include it on the BD-P1200’s successor, the BD-P1400. (Read more on the HQV video processor at the CNET BD-P1200 review under DVD performance.)

The quality of Blu-Ray discs is amazing. I expected to be good, on par with high-def TV, but it’s amazing. I’m lucky enough to own a 1080p TV, and I can’t get over the video quality of the movies I’ve watched so far. I bought a handful of movies with the player, and so far I’ve had the opportunity to watch both Fantastic Four movies, and Live Free or Die Hard.

I bought my Samsung player a week ago Sunday, at night, and promptly left for L.A. the next morning for work, returning late Thursday night. I then had plans all of last weekend, and was home only a few days before coming home to Milwaukee this weekend for Thanksgiving, so I haven’t had much time to enjoy it yet.

I still have to watch a normal DVD and see how good the HQV video processor is. I made sure the first thing I did was update the firmware – plugging in via ethernet I wasn’t able to grab an IP, but burning the firmware to a CD-R and popping it in was easy enough. I’m not concerned about being limited to a 1.1 BD profile – the only thing 1.2 allows is picture-in-picture for things such as director commentary. Until players come out in a couple of years at BD profile 2.0, this player will do just fine, and by then the cost will have come down and I’ll want to replace my other DVD players in the house.

I’m also not concerned about the pitched battle between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. A few months ago I was 100% sure Blu-Ray was going to win, but now it’s looking like a stalemate and both formats will be around for at least a few years. HD-DVD only has 2 studios in their camp, and one of those they had to pay $150 million for to be exclusive for the next year. Blu-Ray has all the other studios, and all the hardware manufacturers, except Toshiba, so I’m betting Sony will have it’s first format win in a long time.

If I hadn’t come in to some extra money, I don’t know if I would have bought one, but am I glad I did. The picture quality is beautiful and I can’t believe the difference between Blu-Ray and DVD.

Lawyers, Guns & Money

Unreal Tournament 3 was released Monday. But the Linux client demo never appeared, and the Linux retail server and client haven’t appeared yet either.

The UT3 mailing list has also been quiet recently, but last night Icculus sent a tweet out and the news hit the mailing list soon after: UT3’s Linux bits are hung up in legal. Somewhere along the way Epic licensed some middleware that can’t be included in the Linux version. Hopefully we’ll get some more news soon.

In related news, no Gears of War for Linux, only Mac. Something about the publisher who is based in Redmond squashing that idea. Damn them.

Rock Band

I more than enjoy the Guitar Hero franchise, having got my PS2 out of the closet a year and a half ago after buying all the Guitar Hero games, including this last one on the 360 for the first time.

Tomorrow marks the release of Rock Band, and Ars Technica takes a look at it and approves.

I’m pretty excited to get it, even with the high price point, as a few of us have been known to get together and rock out to Guitar Hero. Now we just need to find a 4th… And I can play with Alex, who I am sure will get a kick out of banging the drums. I’m happy the Guitar Hero guitar works with Rock Band, but very disappointed the Rock Band guitar doesn’t work with Guitar Hero as I don’t want to buy another guitar, but really want to unlock the co-op songs in GHIII. Hopefully they will patch the 360 version so the Rock Band guitar will work with GHIII sometime in the future.

Thankfully, I have the room in my basement for the setup, although if I do pick it up, I won’t be able to play it until next week since we’re going home for the holiday.

Foresight Linux 2.0 Alpha Screenshots

Phoronix has a blurb up showing off Foresight 2 (I won’t call it a story, with the exception of the opening sentence, it’s cut and paste from the release announcement).

It’s nice to see us get some press, and more importantly, there are 15 screenshots for you to peruse.

Foresight 2 (Alpha 1) Released!

The Foresight team released the first alpha of Foresight 2 last night.

I had installed a couple of test versions over the last week or two on my test machine, but now we believe Foresight 2 is ready for wider testing. Note I say testing – this isn’t necessarily ready to be your everyday desktop, unless you’re very, very daring.

I’m very daring.

**

The good:**

  • The installer is fast. 7 minutes or less to install on 3 different machines.
  • Main Desktop: Core 2 Duo (E6300), 2 gigs RAM, Nvidia 7950FGTOC
  • Test desktop: P4 3.0, 2 gigs RAM, ATI 800XT

  • Laptop: Toshiba A135-S4467, Centrino Duo, 1 gig RAM, Intel video, wireless and sound

  • x86 and our first x86_64 release

  • Compiz Fusion is installed by default, but you need to run fusion-icon manually at startup, or add it to your session. This includes Emerald as well.
  • Avant-Window-Navigator is installed in a default installation – just need to remove your bottom panel and run it from Applications -> Accessories. Very cool!
  • Package Kit is the default GUI for installing updates and packages
  • If you liked Foresight 1.x, you’ll like Foresight 2.0. Your favorite apps including Banshee, F-Spot, Brasero and more. Codecs like Divx and MP3 working out of the box.

**What needs to be worked on:

**

  • The Intel video card drivers don’t work with Compiz Fusion on my laptop. It loads the window manager, but depending on the program, I either can’t see it’s contents (You don’t see any text inside X-Chat) or you can’t see the text you type, such as in the GNOME Terminal. Switching to Metacity, you’ll see the text you typed you couldn’t in Compiz.
  • Why is sound muted after a default install? 1.x was like that too.
  • The Nvidia drivers aren’t available in the repo. Stop by #foresight and ask for them, and either doniphon or myself can email them to you.
  • Off kernel drivers aren’t included yet, such as the IPW3945 Intel wireless driver for notebooks. (I have a 25 foot ethernet cable going to behind my TV as I type this on my laptop).
  • GIMP is not included in the default install. Using PackageKit or a simple conary update gimp will add it, but there’s no menu icon for it yet. (Yes, I filed a bug report).
  • No sound on my laptop (Intel HDA sound card). I had sound in 1.3 with the 2.6.19 kernel, but the 2.6.22 kernel with 1.4 and 2.0 I don’t have sound.
  • No flash on x86_64 installed by default (haven’t tried to install it yet)
  • Lots of packages need to be re-packaged from 1.4 to 2.0. (Now is a great time to come join the community!)

Please, please, please file bug reports on issues you run into with Foresight 2.0. While it’s quite usable, I wouldn’t recommend it for everyday use, yet. Expect things to break and lots of updates to become available.

I copied my xorg.conf file from my old install, and have Twinview working perfectly, here is your obligatory screenshot of 3560×1200:

fl2-alpha1

A big congratulations to all my fellow developers, volunteers and contributors to getting this first alpha out.

And remember: Use Foresight. Because your desktop should be cool.