The right decision.

[D-Block]

Hello,

I am trying to buy an entertainment system that will give me the best experience for gaming and watching movies.
Should I buy....

1. An 55" 1080p SEDTV w/ a 60gb PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii for simple gaming

2. The next line of Mac Pro's ( if they have a 8800GTX graphics card ) w/ 30" Cinema Monitor

3. A $6000 Alienware destop w/ Dell UltraSharp 3007WFP-HC 30" monitor

4. An 47" 1440p LCDTV w/ HDMI 1.3 w/ a PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii for simple gaming

Also, Should I watch blu-ray & hd-dvd movies on a XHD monitor say 2560x1600 with an 8800GTX graphics card supporting 10 bit, SEDTV, or 1440p TV with HDMI 1.3?


Thx

[Blubaru]

Is this the same D-Block from Nasioc?
Would go with number one. With number one you can get a blu-ray player and the hd-dvd add on.
I would wait till Apple came out with a built in Blu-ray if you absolutely have to go with number two.

[mainman]

I would personally go with number 1 or 4.

[Zvi]

My 0.02$.

Originally Posted by D-Block

1. An 55" 1080p SEDTV w/ a 60gb PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii for simple gaming

Sounds good. Though in terms of graphics Wii can't compare to former 2, and after playing in HD you'll definitely find 480p gaming lacking.

Originally Posted by D-Block

2. The next line of Mac Pro's ( if they have a 8800GTX graphics card ) w/ 30" Cinema Monitor

I do have problems with Mac's upgradeability and overall, gaming on macs sux.

Originally Posted by D-Block

3. A $6000 Alienware destop w/ Dell UltraSharp 3007WFP-HC 30" monitor

If you got the nerve and time you can build identical or better system yourself and cheaper

As fro the 30" monitor for your comp. You might wanna rethink it. Waay to big, and even in SLI configuration lots of games will be lacking FPS at its native resolution. And for casual comp. work it's really big and inconvenient. I find dual 24" more practical than single 30". Unless you do very intensive graphics editing I'd advise against 30 incher.

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by D-Block

1. An 55" 1080p SEDTV w/ a 60gb PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii for simple gaming

That's some serious mooolah! The SEDTV alone will set you back at least US$10K. At least! And it'll be at least one year away.

If you're not a millionaire, I wouldn't suggest going for first gen technology like SEDTV.

2. The next line of Mac Pro's ( if they have a 8800GTX graphics card ) w/ 30" Cinema Monitor

If you want to do lots of photo editing or HD video editing. Not much games on the Mac.

3. A $6000 Alienware destop w/ Dell UltraSharp 3007WFP-HC 30" monitor

So long as you have a BD burner on the PC. Direct HDMI connection to a PS3 doesn't show proper 16x9 aspect ratio.

4. An 47" 1440p LCDTV w/ HDMI 1.3 w/ a PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii for simple gaming Sounds reasonable. But I'd go with 60" or 70" SXRD. Better bang for your buck.

Also, Should I watch blu-ray & hd-dvd movies on a XHD monitor say 2560x1600 with an 8800GTX graphics card supporting 10 bit, SEDTV, or 1440p TV with HDMI 1.3?

It'd be interesting if a PC would upconvert a 1080p HD video to fill up a 2560x1600 monitor.

First gen SEDTV for all intents and purposes will be 1080p only.


fuad

[Blu-ray San]

buy a PC not a Mac

[Deciazulado]

excuse me. you can run Windows on a mac


excuse me 30" is not too big. For me personally 4o something for desktop watching of CinemaScope movies (STAR WARS) would start being good Your inchsage might vary.
Also remember, that Monitor size depends on viewing distance. At 9 feet a 1600 x 2560 pixel 150" desktop is a thing of beauty.

But in any case, at this moment, I think the BD playback on computers is in its early iron the kinks phase, last time I checked out our PC playback forum (was a while I admit) I remember seeing people not getting their Dell 30" 1600 x 2560 screen filled or at full resolution. You might wanna dive down there and find out how that is going. A 1600 x 2560 pixel screen (1.60 aspect ratio) or 1440 x 2560 pixel screen (1.78 aspect ratio) has the advantage that if you uprez Scope HDTV (about 810 x 1920 actual image pixels on average) for it, it presents such Scope image as a full 1080p image (1080 x 2560 pixels that is ). The things is, right now, is there such a beast system that's doing it?

Be aware (if I'm not mistaken) for computer Blu-ray playback, no matter what the OS or hardware maker, you need:
A: Blu-ray drive
B: Software that plays Blu-rays
C: Video card with correct output capacity and HDCP
D: Monitor with correct output capacity and HDCP
E: Computer where all that works together well
and
F: Permission from the Arakianmirate Voodoo Society
(Ignore that last part)

[D-Block]

We'll they do have blu-ray players for the mac pro. A company called logitec makes them.

[D-Block]

"4. An 47" 1440p LCDTV w/ HDMI 1.3"

I definitely won't buy a 1440p LCDTV until they have movies available in that format. Does anyone know when HD movies will be available in that format?

[D-Block]

Originally Posted by Blu-ray San

buy a PC not a Mac

If an 8-core Mac Pro cost less than that of a 8-core PC than I'm going with the Mac.

[Zvi]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

excuse me. you can run Windows on a mac

keyword being "can". It's slow and has issues as any emulator.

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

excuse me 30" is not too big. For me personally 4o something for desktop watching of CinemaScope movies (STAR WARS) would start being good Your inchsage might vary.

I was assuming comp is used primarily for compy stuff, i.e. work, email, browsing, gaming. And in that case you wont' be sitting 9 ft away. Much closer. Otherwise you have to put larger resolution and loose screen real estate, which doesn't make much sense.

[jsb_hburg]

Originally Posted by Zvi

keyword being "can". It's slow and has issues as any emulator.

I have not heard of any "slow" complaints from those with an Intel Mac running Windows via Boot Camp. See http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/13/te...3cbdfb&ei=5035

Correction: they run faster than they ever did. Most people comment that an Intel Mac runs Windows faster than any PC they've ever owned. And if the Windows side ever gets bogged down with viruses and spyware, you can flip into Mac OS X and keep right on being productive.

[Petra]

Definitely No.4!!!!

8 inch is not much different, but you got much better quality

[D-Block]

Originally Posted by Petra

Definitely No.4!!!!

8 inch is not much different, but you got much better quality

Yes, but CMO is making the 1440p tv with a contrast ratio of 1200:1, which is no where near that of 100,000:1 for an SEDTV

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by Zvi

keyword being "can". It's slow and has issues as any emulator.

Zvi, Windows can run natively on Intel macs, not in "emulation" :>

Originally Posted by Zvi

I was assuming comp is used primarily for compy stuff, i.e. work, email, browsing, gaming. And in that case you wont' be sitting 9 ft away. Much closer. Otherwise you have to put larger resolution and loose screen real estate, which doesn't make much sense.

I did mean as in compy stuff, too. My compy stuff My ideal computer monitor, sitting at arm's length from me would be at minimum a 20" x 38" (43" diagonal) 2048 x 3840 pixel monitor, (or maybe a 21" x 40" (45" diagonal) 2160 x 4096 pixel one with 8,000:1 contrast ratio or better :-9 )

Originally Posted by D-Block

"4. An 47" 1440p LCDTV w/ HDMI 1.3"

I definitely won't buy a 1440p LCDTV until they have movies available in that format. Does anyone know when HD movies will be available in that format?

Well that's probably gonna be a while then, because I don't think there's gonna be any on HDTV, the closest I can think of is if they started coding the 2.39 wide Scope Blu-ray images at 21:9 so the Scope film filled the whole HDTV 1080 x 1920 raster and the display widened it to 1080 x 2560 (Same principle as today where the display widens the 1.85 Widescreen film DVD images coded at 16:9 that fill the whole SDTV 480 x 720 raster to 480 x 854).

What a 1440p TV would do (I assume you're referring to the 1440 x 2560 ones) is uprez 1080 x 1920 by 1.33x in each direction to 1440 x 2560, therefore giving you a smoother more detailed looking image (if the interpolation and resharpening is done correctly) where the pixel structure is even less. As I mentioned in my post above, Scope movies would benefit the most as they'd go from around 810 x 1920 to 1080 x 2560 ) (Same principle as upconverting 480 x 720 DVD to 720 x 1280 or 1080 x 1920, etc etc.)

Of course I could be wrong and BDA spring us a surprise xtension for 1440 x 2560 or 2160 x 3840 (or 4096) on BD-100/200. Those resolutions will probably end up soon as a Professional BD Format for the business anyway.

[blitz6speed]

Considering Toshiba just announced that there will be no CED TV at CES this year, i think they're QUITE a bit away from production! And i wouldnt go with a 1440 panel anyway, i'd always want 1:1 pixel mapped and for this gen of video, its 1080p. So for a while, i strongly beleive that 1080p will be the set standard. Its why everyone in the projector world is waiting for 1080p projectors to come down in price, even tho there isnt an insane difference from 720p to 1080p, everyone wants 1:1 pixel mapping. It truely is a marvelous thing.

[D-Block]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

Zvi, Windows can run natively on Intel macs, not in "emulation" :>




I did mean as in compy stuff, too. My compy stuff My ideal computer monitor, sitting at arm's length from me would be at minimum a 20" x 38" (43" diagonal) 2048 x 3840 pixel monitor, (or maybe a 21" x 40" (45" diagonal) 2160 x 4096 pixel one with 8,000:1 contrast ratio or better :-9 )



Well that's probably gonna be a while then, because I don't think there's gonna be any on HDTV, the closest I can think of is if they started coding the 2.39 wide Scope Blu-ray images at 21:9 so the Scope film filled the whole HDTV 1080 x 1920 raster and the display widened it to 1080 x 2560 (Same principle as today where the display widens the 1.85 Widescreen film DVD images coded at 16:9 that fill the whole SDTV 480 x 720 raster to 480 x 854).

What a 1440p TV would do (I assume you're referring to the 1440 x 2560 ones) is uprez 1080 x 1920 by 1.33x in each direction to 1440 x 2560, therefore giving you a smoother more detailed looking image (if the interpolation and resharpening is done correctly) where the pixel structure is even less. As I mentioned in my post above, Scope movies would benefit the most as they'd go from around 810 x 1920 to 1080 x 2560 ) (Same principle as upconverting 480 x 720 DVD to 720 x 1280 or 1080 x 1920, etc etc.)

Of course I could be wrong and BDA spring us a surprise xtension for 1440 x 2560 or 2160 x 3840 (or 4096) on BD-100/200. Those resolutions will probably end up soon as a Professional BD Format for the business anyway.

Thanks for the advice. I'll wait until '07 or '08 to see if any 1440p panels will have 14-bit or 16-bit processing.The contrast ratio of 1200:1 contrast is to low for me. If any company makes a 1440p panel, with 15:000:1 dynamic contrast, 14-bit, anywhere below 6 ms response time, and HDMI 1.3.... Than Im definitely buying It, forget bout' SED

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by blitz6speed

Considering Toshiba just announced that there will be no CED TV at CES this year, i think they're QUITE a bit away from production! And i wouldnt go with a 1440 panel anyway, i'd always want 1:1 pixel mapped and for this gen of video, its 1080p. So for a while, i strongly beleive that 1080p will be the set standard. Its why everyone in the projector world is waiting for 1080p projectors to come down in price, even tho there isnt an insane difference from 720p to 1080p, everyone wants 1:1 pixel mapping. It truely is a marvelous thing.

Thanks for the Toshiba news, first place I saw this

Yes I agree a 1:1 1080p image is truly a marvelous thing (or as I've called it before: A Full Powah 1080p is a Thing of Beauty )

But allow me to differ about uprezing images. While it's true 1:1 pixel ratio is the best if you don't need to enlarge the image, or if you're changing the size just a bit (like 5% overscan or going from 1080 to 1024, etc, because that acts like a low pass filter and blurs the image), or even if the resizing-up is not done optimally.

But resizing to a larger size has it's advantages if done with the correct filter and re-sharpening is applied judiciously at the optimum frequencies. Otherwise there would be no point in Photoshop's bicubic or all those expensive resizing filters (sync, fractal, etc) used in the graphic industries or the video/photographic world. The eye has about a good 2000p resolution discrimination capability (that's why 70mm is better than 35mm) and actually can go to 4500p at 1.5x picture heights viewing distance (but 4500p would give you little improvement in visual quality over 2000p). Resizing a 1000 pixel image or a 800 pixel image, to 2000 pixels, while not giving you true 2000p quality, gives you near 2000p smoothness (gets rid of the pixel structure) and edge sharpness (that's were the judicious re-sharpening comes in). Just see how much better a correctly uprezed 720p version of a DVD looks compared to a straight 480 pixel version at the same image size (You'd need 2 different resolution LCDs with the same screen size, or to uprez the DVD 480 image to 720 using Photoshops nearest neighbor interpolator which doesn't use an advanced filter and just multiplies the pixels by 1.5). If 1:1 was always best, we'd watch DVDs at 480 only.

Everybody is waiting for 1080 1:1 projectors because 1080 1:1 is more than TWICE the resolution of 720. (1080 x 1920 = 2,073,600 pixels, 720 x 1280 = 921,600 pixels. 2,073,600/921,600 = 2.25x)

That means you can have a 1080 1:1 image be projected at more than twice the size (area) than a 720 1:1 image and still retain the same sharpness/quality as the smaller image. For example if you like a 720p DLP image at 60", you'll like a 1080p DLP image at 100"

A 2160p DLP image would be 200"

A correctly uprezed 1080 to 2160 won't be as good, but would be better than a 100". Like lets say 150".
That's one reason why people used to uprezed to 720 DVDs, when seeing a downrezed to 720 1080 image go: "well I don't see that much difference". The 720 DVD image has the smoothness and edge sharpness near a true 720 image (but of course the resolution, the detail is still at a 480 level, even tho it's now easier to see than on the straight 480 image because the pixel structure has been removed. The video noise/compression artifacts also remain at the 480 level). While a downrezed from 1080 to 720 image looks similar in resolution, sharpness, and smoothness of a 720 image. (Another reason, is that they might be watching their displays at a distance where the DVDs looked fine, so unless they enlarge their screen or sit closer, they aren't perceiving all they could.)

A 2K scan of a Super-35 2.39 movie is about 820 x 1960, and when burned onto an anamorphic 35mm internegative the vertical is uprezed to 1640 (because of the anamorphic 2x squeeze) before burning, giving the equivalent to an uprezed output of 1160p square pixels (1160 x 2772). A 1440p 16:9 (1440 x 2560) projector showing an uprezed Scope movie from 1080p would be the equivalent to that.

A 1080 x 1920 direct view 1:1 LCD will look as good, too (after all, it bypasses the degradation of the lens so it'll be tack sharp) but maybe you could perceive the pixel structure for Scope movies at some viewing distances/screen sizes.

A 1440 x 2560 (or larger) display has the potential of looking as good at a greater size, but still smooth.

[Blue]

Note please. No more Mac vs PC or I will hijack the thread and start Democrats vs Republican, or to really confuse you Labour vs Liberal (Aussie equivalent). We could always have a good old Christian vs the rest arguement. Politics and religion don't belong on this forum. I'm unsure if PC vs Mac debate is religious or political, but no matter which, it's extremely divisive and emotive. The Blu Ray group have adopted both, in fact gone one better and implemented Sun for their control. Yes I feel pity for people that don't agree with my ideas of computing - I'm just not saying which group. I know you all feel the same about the issue.

[Zvi]

JSB, I wouldn't use nytimes as a reference for any computer related decisions

Originally Posted by jsb_hburg

I have not heard of any "slow" complaints from those with an Intel Mac running Windows via Boot Camp. See http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/13/te...3cbdfb&ei=5035

I am very septical of the numbers and some statements in that article, considering this results.

Deciazulado - UR right, bootcamp isn't an emulator, boots either one of the systems. But you're limited with XP. Parallelis which is virtual PC is an emulator, but allows simultaneous multiple OS-s. Still, both are ebetter than older apple win emulator.
That is if you gotta have a mac.

As for 30 incher, well I guess it's a matter of taste. I tried to work(I'm in software development) on it and it was rather inconvenient compared to dual 24".