Messages

316

General Discussion / Web Games

« on: November 18, 2007, 07:25:44 am »

Post what web games you know and enjoy 

I'll kick the ball rolling with a rather festive and enjoyable one I like:

http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/bells.htm

My highscore is just over 133 million if anyone wants a target to reach

317

Bugs & Feature Requests / Re: Suggestion: Remember Search

« on: November 17, 2007, 08:29:52 pm »

Thanks for the suggestion, feel free to make a new thread about such things, I'm sure Chip will look over every new suggestion 

318

P2P - Filesharing / Re: Demonoid Gone!

« on: November 14, 2007, 12:23:59 am »

i did at one point.. hmm.. it might be on the same server as the bit_che chatroom.. you can try jumping on that server in mIRC and then using /list to see if demonoid pops up. ill give it a shot next time i reboot into WinXP

Yup it is and topic of the IRC channel is:

"Site is down, tracker is intermittent (sometimes up, sometimes down), No Current ETA is known. That is all we know...DON'T ASK"

319

General Discussion / Re: Downloading

« on: November 13, 2007, 03:38:40 pm »

Also to add to what Quantum said, the difference between 1080i and 1080p is practically negligable on PCs.

From my understanding, computers can only truly output progressive material. My CRT TV can only display 720p or 1080i, but if I download a "1080p" movie, it still shows up fine on my TV. The resolution is all that matters.

The only catch is that when my TV is set to 1920x1080, the refresh rate is 30Hz. Since it's interlaced, the TV  can only handle half the normal refresh rate. When I set the TV to 720, it runs at full 60Hz. For PC games, that might be a big deal. However for movies, most movies run at 24 FPS anyways, so running at 30Hz is fine.

:/, I'd disagree with resolution being the only thing that matters. Simply put, per frame 1080i only put out 540 lines of information, where as 720p obviously outputs 720 lines, so certainly during fast moving sequences 720p holds an advantage, but for slow moving stuff 1080i does actually output more information per frame so can be higher quality. As for computers outputting, yes they output progressively, but unless you set your program to deinterlace the file (which can some times make it look better depending on the type of show and the deinterlacing algorithm) it will still just output interlaced as a subset of a progressive manner (i.e every line will be updated, but only every other line will be updated with 'new' information).

This is at the moment somewhat a moot point, as almost all 1080p and 720p T.V shows that are encoded are taken from 1080i source, the source will be the best quality but will often be 3 - 4GBs for 45min shows, so upto you if you have the hard drive space. But is fairly important when you downscale or re-encode Blu-Ray or HD DVD sources.

As for refresh rates, the ideal refresh rate is 120 Hz, this fits nicely as 24 x 5, 30 x 4 and 60 x 2 (old PAL stuff be damned). When you're playing a film in 30 or 60Hz there is a certain amount of pulldown, which can lead to a slight jerkiness during scenes. I much prefer the way PAL deals which this, as it is 50Hz, is simply doubles every frame to get 24 to 48fps then increases the speed of the movie and sound by 4% to get to 50fps. Audio quality takes the very slightest loss as everything is pitched 4% higher, but very very few people can tell the difference.

320

General Discussion / Re: Downloading

« on: November 12, 2007, 01:11:19 am »

I've edited your post a little, I hope you don't mind. I want to first mention we don't condone in anyway copyright infringement.

Downloading speed is determined by a number of variables. The first thing you want to do is make sure the ports in your router or firewall are open that the P2P client uses, there will be many guides on how to do this on the P2P clients website. Also, and most importantly, the number of seeds and how fast they can upload. You often find on private torrent sites, because it's in the benefit of the seeders to seed, you can much faster downloading speeds for files that you want.

As for the quality of the video file, it is determined again by a number of variables, the key ones being: bit rate, codec and resolution.

The typical American resolution size is 640 by 480 for a 4:3 file and 720 x 480 for a 16:9 file (T.V widescreen). PAL television on the other hand, always works at the resolution of 720 x 576 and is stretched to the appropriate aspect ratio. These are the resolutions you find typical files in.

Bitrate determines the quality for a particular codec, the higher the bitrate, usually the higher the quality. However the type of codec is more important than the bitrate if there's only a spall difference, in order of popular codecs here is the quality from bottom to top:

mpeg2 < divx < xvid < vc-1 < h264

vc-1 is also known as wmv-hd, it's part of the wmv profile, but significantly better quality than the old wmv codecs. So for example, a 350mb 45min h264 file, if encoded properly, will look tonnes better than a 350mb 45min mpeg2 file.

When practically finding stuff, the mainly level of qualitys are often determined by resolution. So a standard file will be 350mb xvid 45 mins, you then get high resolution files often tacked with HR on the end, these are scaled down HD files, they're slightly higher quality and slightly higher resolution at 650 - 700mb xvid 45 mins. Then you get high definition files, the first lot is 720p, which is a resolution of 1280 x 720, these files are almost always encoded in h264 and you need a new CPU to play them (AMD64 line ore Core2 line are all very likely to play them with the right Codec, CoreAVC is the best CPU saving device for h264 files). A typical 720p file is either 1.1GB or 1.44GB for 45 mins. 1080p and 1080i aren't quite as popular yet, but you can get hold of them and they are a resolution of 1920 x 1080.

321

Bugs & Feature Requests / Re: Advertisers lol

« on: November 09, 2007, 12:26:59 pm »

I'm sure that will Chip will be very appreciative 

322

General Discussion / Re: Firefox 2 Beta 2

« on: November 09, 2007, 12:25:28 pm »

yea i got it.

like it so far lol

Got what?

Firefox 3 Beta 1 isn't out yet, just several respins, which is why I haven't made a thread about it yet.

323

General Discussion / Re: Firefox 2 Beta 2

« on: November 05, 2007, 11:09:25 pm »

2009 was mainly to fit the regressions that 2008 made (it's the part of Firefox's new marketing drive, they've lost the dots when talking about it on promotional website, more sleek apparently), I think they were mainly caused by making it compatible for the new mac.

Anyway Firefox 3 Beta 1 is almost ready, yesterday it had only 1 blocker left and was expected to be fixed by the end of the day, as soon as it comes out officially I'll make a post about it and explain significant changes and changes still to come.

324

Bugs & Feature Requests / Re: REQUEST - FLAC Filter

« on: November 05, 2007, 12:29:15 am »

yeah your reccomendation helps, but it results in a fairly lenghthy list and thus eliminates Bit Che's time saving.  Was hoping there might be some sort of code that would help.

Thanks for your help anyway.

B

Sorry, it's just pretty difficult to do what you ask. Bit Che unfortunately is limited in a number of ways, not least of which is how easy it is to parse information out of multiple sites and display coherently.

325

Bugs & Feature Requests / Re: REQUEST - FLAC Filter

« on: November 04, 2007, 05:18:25 am »

have tried your suggestion, but putting flac in the search box doesnt bring the same results - i also get back nnnnnnn flac       ooooooooooo flac and on and on.

It's not supposed to bring back the same results, just ones with flac in. If you include descriptive searches then it should search the description of the torrent as well, where it should be mentioned that it's a flac file.

326

Bugs & Feature Requests / Re: REQUEST - FLAC Filter

« on: November 03, 2007, 11:44:01 pm »

The difficulty is not all torrent sites record file type and some torrents have multiple file types.

Let's say you're searching for some music: "mmmmm", I think the easiest think to do would to be type:

mmmmm flac

And then tick the box "include description searches". See what sort of results you get, it may work without the ticked box, but flac would need to be in the title of the torrent.

327

Computers - Technology / Re: 8800GT - The only graphics card that matters

« on: November 02, 2007, 04:25:58 am »

I'm confused as to why the 8800GT is priced lower than the 8800GTS and is supposed to be lower on the lineup, but yet it performs better?

I also heard that it performs better than the 8800GTX on some tests. It doesn't make any sense and I think it was a silly release. They should have given it more memory and used it as the 8850 Ultra if it's doing so well..

It's not memory that's hindering its performance, it's number of stream processors active.

It runs on 65nm transistors as apposed to 90nm ones, so it's cooler and uses less power. The 8800GTS (320MB and 640MB) runs on 1 year old tech, the 8800GT uses a lot of perfomancing enhancing things that cost less to make.

Essentially the 8800GT costs so little because it costs so little to make and the mid-range cards are where the money is. If they'd made it the 8850 Ultra, it would only be bought by the top graphics card consumers, not made nvidia much money, and they can't lower the price of the 8800GTS or GTX very much, because it costs them more to make.

They're releasing a new 8800GTS, which will be built on the G92 (what the 8800GT is), the new 8800GTS will feature a full set of 128 stream processors and all the other limits removed that the current 8800GT has, it will also come in 512MB and 1024MB sizes.

Bad naming convention, but there we go.

328

General Discussion / Re: Password protected torrents.

« on: November 01, 2007, 11:09:56 pm »

They're often crap, either leading to spam or viruses.

329

P2P - Filesharing / Re: oink gone !! :(

« on: November 01, 2007, 01:25:01 pm »

Weird how they think people pay subscriptions to join the site.

I'm pretty sure he just made money through donations.

Yeah, I wish journalists would actually do their damn research rather than just reporting to people what the Police stated to them. Should be interesting how it's ruled on, I hope they actually get a judge who has some technical knowledge rather than one who doesn't know what a website is (it has happened).

330

Computers - Technology / 8800GT - The only graphics card that matters

« on: October 31, 2007, 02:39:25 am »

On Monday (29th October) nvidia launched the launched the 8800GT, price positioned in between the 8600GTS and the 8800GTS it should retail for $200 - $250, but nvidia expects price to quickly drop so that even the 512MB version (256MB is the other version) should retail for $200. It outperforms the 8800GTS and the 8800GTS (640MB) making much of nvidias 8xxx linup obsolete and almost all of AMDs 2xxx lineup obsolete.

Development around the G92 processor revolved around reducing the thermal and power draw on the GeForce 8800 GTX (G80) processor.  G80 was manufactured on TSMC's 90nm process node while the G92 is manufactured on TSMC's 65nm node.  This shrink allows a single 8800 GT to operate on a 105 Watt draw, almost 80 Watts less than the 8800 GTX during heavy operation.

http://www.dailytech.com/NVIDIA+Debuts+Considerably+Cooler+GeForce+8800+GT/article9424.htm

AMD will respond with the ATi HD 3800, launching along side their new Phenom line of processors in a few weeks.