Hell, I’ve seen DVDs that were mastered from a VHS source with flagging and other stuff I haven’t seen in years. And, no, it wasn’t a VHS to DVD rip of grandma’s 80th birthday or anything, it was a commercial DVD bought at a store (albeit for a couple bucks).
Yup, there were CRT HD sets around back in the day. A friend of mine had one (and watched stretched SD material on it :smack: ).
There were ‘i’ 1080 flat panels displays for a while, but as you say this wasn’t really a function of the panel but of the signal, as those sets had component video connections, and component video doesn’t have enough bandwidth to carry progressive 1080. IIRC at some point TVs with DVI/HDMI + HDCP came around so that 1080p material could be sent to and displayed on flat TVs, which is when ‘i’ 1080 flat TVs became ‘p’ 1080 flat TVs, at least in a marketing sense, even though they’d been progressive the whole time.
That’s the kind of thing I suspect is going on; it’s much the same as what we see on cable/satellite TV- just because the station is HD, it doesn’t mean the content is automatically HD. For example, something like “Ghostbusters” is probably just DVD resolution reformatted into HD, not remastered from the original film into HD.
All that being said, my usual rule is to:
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Not re-buy stuff I already have on DVD.
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If I’m planning to buy something on disc, then I look closely at what I’m getting. If it’s made past about 2007 or so, I’ll usually spring for DVD, but if it’s something from before that, I usually won’t spend any extra money to get Blu-Ray, unless it’s explicitly called out as remastered.
Maybe it’s just me, but I believe that anyone who illegally downloads a movie NEVER had any plans on paying to see said movie. They might have rented it, but I highly doubt it. In my opinion, Blu-ray would be in the exact same place even if illegal downloading was impossible.
Maybe later, indirectly on cable/satellite, but yeah, I agree with you. People who are willing to pay are deciding what the best option is, not illegally downloading it and then paying for it.
Possibly, or not. If there was no pirating option, maybe teener-twenties would find something else to do with their time, or they’d find a way to watch some portion of those movies paid.
I am highly suspicious of your statement because it tends to lead to “…therefore the greedy movie/music/publishing company isn’t really losing any money, anyway.” (Not saying you intend it, but it’s the bedrock argument of pirates who don’t think they’re really stealing.)
For the record, I don’t pirate anything and I think people who do pirate are jerks who are committing a crime. As a website owner, I feel much the same way about people who think it’s fair to use AdBlock.
But people who pirate aren’t even attempting to figure out a way to compensate the creators. There are dozens of ways to do that that don’t involve paying full price for a movie ticket. Some of them, like watching it on TV or borrowing the disc from the library, are essentially free.
So yeah, I’m a pretty firm believer in the theory of “…therefore the greedy movie/music/publishing company isn’t really losing any money, anyway.”
Then you should put your site behind a paywall instead of expecting income from being an e-pimp. Really. If your site has commercial value, people will pay; that you have to try and shake it out of them - that you think the visit is worth the shaking - might just be contradictory data.
Just like you’re not losing anything when we drop by, ad-blocked. We weren’t going to click on any of your ads anyway.
:smack: Le sigh.
What am I shaking out of people if I have a small ad on the side of the article they’re reading? They’re free to click on it, they’re free not to click on it. All I ask is that they don’t purposely block it. And it doesn’t matter if you click or not. I get paid if an ad is shown, but by disabling the ad, I get nothing.
Thankfully, most people don’t use AdBlock, so it’s not a problem.
Are you actually being serious? So you think Google would still be in its position if it put everything behind a pay wall? Why wouldn’t every big site do this then instead of being at the mercy of the ad market?
Hmm, you’re pretty fortunate then. Destructoid posted a few months ago that half their users were using Adblock and it was basically killing them.
Article here: http://www.destructoid.com/half-of-destructoid-s-readers-block-our-ads-now-what--247904.phtml
As far as adblocking, I’d consider turning off that extension on a site where I could be guaranteed the ads wouldn’t have sound, hyperkinetic graphics that are not only distracting and a waste of my processing power but can be motion-sickness-inducing, or malware.
That’s pretty much the reason I got ad blocking on my computer. There’s one website I’ve frequented for years, but over those years it’s become positively bloated with ads showing up everywhere, including in the middle of the articles. They even have popups and popunders. It’s just everywhere. So now I have ad blocking.
Those are the ones to be mad at: the ones that go so far overboard that people just reflexively go for ad blocking.
I saw the same article and ran that AdBlock tracker program on my own site. I was as surprised as you were.
I suspect JB is not Google. You?
I pit-too the notion that any nameless individual can run a site worth any payment whatsoever, unless it has such a strong draw it can run in paid access mode only.
As running a website is the next thing to costless these days - maybe $100 a year for registration and quality hosting? - anyone who has to shake down the passersby for operating costs perhaps needs to be in another line of hobby. I run ten right now, including two for community groups, out of pocket change.
I ask again, please share your definition of “shake down.” How is a small advertisement next to an article a “shake down”?
How is someone jingling a cup at you as you walk by NOT one?
Most of your opinions seem to boil down to “everyone does it, therefore it’s okay.” The conflict between you and I is that I don’t think mass acceptance of a practice (especially largely passive acceptance) constitutes an ethical basis for following it.
Yes, we swim in a sea of advertising. That doesn’t make more of it okay, especially when it’s just random third-party shilling because someone will throw a few click-dollars your way for letting them bug your visitors.
What cup? Do you go through magazines and tear out all the ads before you read it? How is a web ad different?
You don’t have to click it, but it’s my opinion that purposely blocking it is a jerk move.
Speaking for myself, the biggest difference is that I have to pay for the damn things; frequently much more than I pay for the page content I want. No DSL or fiber or cable where I live (geographically, that’s true of most of the U.S., so you Aussies and Kiwis out there aren’t alone).
Darn tootin’ I use Adblock and NoScript and do anything else I can to keep things under control.
Geographically, maybe. But 90% of those who own a computer have it hooked up to DSL, Cable, or Fiber.
http://gigaom.com/2012/09/04/90-of-us-households-with-computers-have-broadband/
I routinely shake out all the blow-ins and tear out the tear-outs before I start reading, yes. If some form of ad-block existed for magazines, I’d use it. (That includes paying more for magazines I actually want to read, and blunting the influence ad pages have on editoral, which is often considerable and corrosive.)
Because the medium is malleable and it can be blocked. You know WHY it can be blocked? Because it’s being drawn from a third-party location, usually a commercial ad hosting system known to the adblocking list. Right there is the key to the problem: you aren’t running ads as any kind of service to your visitor; they aren’t your ads (which would be impossible to block as part of the site content); you aren’t even selecting the ads to be shown. You’re just pimping out your margins without a thought of anything but a few dollars in click revenue.
And “jerk move” is the very beginning of my epithets for people who basically prostitute their site to carry third-party ads. I guess we’re even.