Pat van Diest » HD http://patvandiest.com Patrick G van Diest on ideas, epiphanies, eurekas, and life Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:20:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 The Simpsons Goes HD http://patvandiest.com/2009/02/the-simpsons-goes-hd/ http://patvandiest.com/2009/02/the-simpsons-goes-hd/#comments Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:24:51 +0000 Patrick G van Diest http://patvandiest.com/?p=77 The Simpson’s intro is getting a makeover while the series crossover from normal cast to HD in Fox channel.

It’s bigger, longer, and reminds me of a stubborn couch that my friend and I struggled to get into a tiny Boston area apartment yesterday using levers, pulleys and the most important moving day tool of all: Gratuitous swearing.

I just wish Indonesian providers would change to HD services as well. *sigh*

]]> http://patvandiest.com/2009/02/the-simpsons-goes-hd/feed/ 0 HD Video Playback Capabilities on Netbooks? http://patvandiest.com/2009/02/hd-video-playback-capabilities-on-netbooks/ http://patvandiest.com/2009/02/hd-video-playback-capabilities-on-netbooks/#comments Sat, 07 Feb 2009 12:35:14 +0000 Patrick G van Diest http://patvandiest.com/?p=66 Netbooks by far was the best thing to come in 2008 in my opinion. Everybody seems want to put their hands on that lucrative products. But how far would computer makers want to present their netbooks? by pushing some overkill features that’s how.

The latest introduction was the Nvidia Ion. A platform for netbooks and ultra mobile personal computer (UMPC) that consist of Nvidia’s GeForce 9400M chipset and Intel Atom Processor. They claimed it would support 1080 HD video playback. 

Days later, Intel says their going to release its Atom N2780 (1.66GHz) that would support 720p HD playback (via hardware based 720p video decoder) 

I thought netbooks are supposed to be a cost-effective, low power consumption platform? I know that companies would put every shiny features on it. But isn’t 720p or 1080p playback in a 10-inch netbooks a bit overkill? I don’t know about you all, but personally for me I’m not comfortable watching those HD videos in a netbook. I prefer watching in a home cinema or something like that (not that I have one, but having a home cinema would be nice :)

And what about battery life? one of my reason on buying a netbook is long lasting battery life, doesn’t HD video playback consume more power? So they should focusing on making a better and smarter technologies for minimizing power consumption on netbooks instead. 

That’s just some of my 2 cents regarding this HD competition on netbooks that come up recently. Comments are welcome.

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