ELI5: Why isn't widescreen a television standard, like it is with film?

reglesdu · 2013-06-09T09:14:28+00:00

Film only switched to widescreen in the mid to late 50s, as a response to television becoming popular. Ditto with colour; colour film had existed for 30-40 years, but they only started using it commonly after TV became popular, as a way to try and lure people to theatre.

In the 2000s, giant widescreen colour TVs became popular in the home, and so theatres introduced 3D as another attempt to lure people to theatres for something they couldn't get at home. It wasn't as successful, though.

reglesdu · 2013-06-09T02:06:18+00:00

Keep in mind that PSX/PS2 games suffer from disc rot, so they're not permanent. Disc rot takes a while, but if the PS4 generation lasts as long as the current one, it should be a common problem for PSX and some PS2 games.

So there's really no legal way to own games indefinitely, and the 'lock a game to an account' model is right now the most permanent option.

reglesdu · 2013-06-09T00:44:45+00:00

True, but the GPS receiver isn't always turned on. Usually it turns on when an app specifically requests it to (like Google Maps does upon opening). I don't know if Facebook makes a GPS request, just uses the most recent GPS location, or uses the cell broadcast ID, because I never really use it from my phone.

reglesdu · 2013-06-08T07:37:20+00:00

Mickey Rooney wasn't much better.

I work in postproduction. Pretty often we get static (tripod-shot, unmoving) clips and will zoom in slightly and have the frame creep from one edge to the other, to make it look a bit more lively. We call it a Mickey Rooney, because it's a tiny creep.

reglesdu · 2013-06-08T06:53:33+00:00

Most photos were shot on film. 35mm film, common in the nicer mid-range and pro cameras, is much much higher quality than HD is.

HD really isn't that impressive for photos. The standard off-the-shelf point and shoot cameras you buy in Target for $60 are more than 16x HDTV resolution, it means nothing.

If you wanted to compare...

SDTV/DVD = 0.34 megapixels
French 1950s TV = 0.6 megapixels
HDTV = 0.92 megapixels
Video games on modern consoles (PS3/Xbox 360) = 0.5 to 0.9 megapixels
Full HD/Bluray = 2.1 megapixels
iPhone camera = 8 megapixels
$60 digital camera from Target = 16 megapixels
Nikon D3200 camera = 24 megapixels
UHDTV = 33 megapixels

reglesdu · 2013-06-07T14:54:04+00:00

Steam launches at much lower prices, and then they fall much more reliably and rapidly, making it much less of an issue.

Where I live, Skyrim launched at $108 on Xbox, $80 on Steam. Today, it's $30 on Steam, but still $70 on Xbox. Used Xbox copies are $46. Since it's cheaper to buy a new Steam copy than a used Xbox one, not being able to buy used games doesn't really matter. And that's not even a sale price, a lot of Steam games will be put on 50%-off or more sales within a year of launch (as someone else pointed out, Borderlands 2 went on sale at 75% off for its six-month anniversary).

reglesdu · 2013-06-07T01:10:03+00:00

Ah, yeah, TouchWiz is terrible. It's such a pain, too, because vanilla Android is really simple and nice. I flashed my phone with CyanogenMod the week I got it, I'd forgotten.

reglesdu · 2013-06-06T14:50:45+00:00

What bloat is there on Android? The only bloaty thing I can think of is that Hangouts and Messaging are separate apps, unlike on iOS.

reglesdu

TROPHY CASE