Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 7th Aug 2011 22:46 UTC
And yes, another item, right away. I'm on the hunt for a mini-ITX motherboard for use in a living room HTPC, and considering there's so much choice out there, I'm a little confused. Then I realised I have you people to help me out, and, well, one thing led to another.
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RE[5]: "Best" is in the eye of the beholder
by chithanh on Tue 9th Aug 2011 12:08
in reply to "RE[4]: "Best" is in the eye of the beholder"
Member since:2006-06-18
"The Llano is underpowered for 1080i using advanced deinterlacers and other video post-processing.
I looked up the Anandtech article on AMD A8-3850 for HTPC (http://www.anandtech.com/print/4479) and it does mention problems with 1080p. So I must have been thinking of something else... though now I'm curious whether that can be fixed in software. "
The suitability of Llano for HTPC is extensively discussed in this AVS Forum thread: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1333378
The Anandtech article's 1080p60 issues are because of one single post-processing feature (dynamic contrast) in combination with Anandtech's use of DDR3-1333 and discussed starting from page 11.
tl;dr -> posts 343 and 353 summarize the situation.
Edited 2011-08-09 12:10 UTC
RE[6]: "Best" is in the eye of the beholder
by ilovebeer on Tue 9th Aug 2011 15:56
in reply to "RE[5]: "Best" is in the eye of the beholder"
Member since:2011-08-08
The suitability of Llano for HTPC is extensively discussed in this AVS Forum thread: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1333378
The Anandtech article's 1080p60 issues are because of one single post-processing feature (dynamic contrast) in combination with Anandtech's use of DDR3-1333 and discussed starting from page 11.
tl;dr -> posts 343 and 353 summarize the situation.
The Anandtech article's 1080p60 issues are because of one single post-processing feature (dynamic contrast) in combination with Anandtech's use of DDR3-1333 and discussed starting from page 11.
tl;dr -> posts 343 and 353 summarize the situation.
First, the people who are rambling about the Llano being a faster cpu then an Atom is completely absurd. Aside of the obvious problems with those types of statements, when you're talking about an htpc using a hardware decoder, the cpu is sitting IDLE most of the time. The fact you're using a hardware decoder practically removes the cpu from the equation.
So, now you look at the GPU... The speed of the memory, the shaders, the deinterlacers, bla bla bla.. Is the Llano capable of being used in an htpc environment? Yes, of course. Will it provide competition for Nvidia's already proven high end deinterlacers? Absolutely not.
There's no question there are areas where Llano falls short in the htpc arena. That doesn't mean it's a bad choice -- it isn't. It's just not the best. People, wrongly, cling to 1080p performance as the measuring stick.. The real test is how it handles 1080i with post-processing. Anyone that doesn't understand that has a lot to learn about this subject.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 22:06 UTC
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:45 UTC
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."More News »
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2008-10-22
I looked up the Anandtech article on AMD A8-3850 for HTPC (http://www.anandtech.com/print/4479) and it does mention problems with 1080p. So I must have been thinking of something else... though now I'm curious whether that can be fixed in software.
The FM1 socket boards from Gigabyte do: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/list.aspx?s=42&jid=10&p=2&v=27
That's usually the best way to buy complete bare bones systems as well.
There's been some confusion on the thread about this. If Thom's looking to replace his motherboard, why not just by a media extender? That's certainly possible but it sounds like he wants to keep as much of his existing hardware as possible. If he's got DDR3 RAM at compatible speeds then that will help toward that goal... (which seems unlikely given the age of the system mentioned in his post)
re SATA port multipliers, I've heard a lot about this on the OpenIndiana mailing list but haven't encountered it yet myself. I had just written it off as someone trying to build a storage system with cheap desktop hardware that wasn't designed with that goal in mind.
-Gary
Edited 2011-08-09 00:41 UTC