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shiroikaze

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    Technology you F'ng hate thread

    in Anime or Science Fiction

    Posted

    That's the opposite of the situation in the US. Nowadays, any phone which has even the most minimal, useless, pointless HTML capabilities that no one in their right mind would actually try to compose an email on, much less surf the web with---is considered a "smart" phone and requires an additional data plan, just to be able to use/buy the phone.

    I grit my teeth every time I see this.

    Your home Audio/A/V Hi-Fi System

    in Anime or Science Fiction

    Posted · Edited by shiroikaze

    My NX810 TV finally arrived last week :). It came all the way from Michigan without any damage and the TV is without any apparent defects, woot.

    I'm going to have to echo the sentiments of just about every owner of this model, "This TV is a beauty, both on and off."

    The "monolithic design" is really something to behold, the front of the screen is literally one flat slab of glass--No bezel stepping at all. As for the picture quality, it looked great out of the box. Now, I'm no expert on TV calibrations so I've been mostly relying on other people's settings at the AVS Forums. From there, I adjusted a few things to put the TV to my liking. I know it's not picture-perfect, but it looks good to me as everything looks a bit more "natural" and not overly-bright; my dad on the other hand, prefers the original settings.

    (If anyone here has any advice/suggestion to offer, I'm all ears.)

    The TV has built-in WiFi and it's chock-full of internet-related features. Not to mention, it's ever-updating. You get all sorts of staple premium and free content, I'm damn sure that I won't use all of them, but some are really nice to have. Just the other night, I was watching Steamboy on Crackle.TV, I'm on a 3 Mbit connection and I was pleasantly surprised that the only hiccup I get is when the movies first resumes from ad breaks. Hardly any other hiccups otherwise.

    I love my new TV but If I have to list any negatives...

    • The first thing on the top of my mind are the speakers. Maybe because the speakers are situated at the back of panel, the sound sounds really tinny. But since the TV is hooked up to a receiver, I can live with that.
    • Which brings me to the next point, passing sound through from the TV to the receiver. Currently I have my PS3 hooked up to the TV via HDMI, and from the TV to the receiver via optical. I can get Dolby Digital and LPCM to come out but not DTS :(. I'm not sure if it's correct or not, but I've heard that the NX810 doesn't support DTS. I'll need to read up some more on that.
    • The TV did exhibit some sort of clouding, though I can't really easily reproduce it. I fed an all-black image to the TV from my laptop via HDMI with all picture enhancements off and I can't see any clouding. I think the only time when I actually see clouding is when the TV is set to photo mode... maybe, I'm not sure. I can't see it during movies or games anyway, so it's no big deal.
    • Another thing to note is the bundled TV stand. It's pretty wobbly, but I think that's inherent with almost all TV stands nowadays.
    • Lastly, 3D for TVs as it is in this generation, sucks. It's not perfected. I've tried Gran Turismo 5 in 3D and it was terrible, huge amounts of ghosting/crosstalk. I've tweaked the settings to minimize that ill-effect but the icons and text suffer as a result, and I don't feel like adjusting anymore since it's pretty cumbersome to do. Yes, the 3D effect is really stunning but the ghosting is just TOO distracting and painful to look at. Alice in Wonderland was slightly better as it had alot less ghosting, but it wasn't perfect either. I've noticed that if you're looking at a certain "plane" in the image you'll get the full 3D effect, however, when things start moving towards and past the foreground, it starts to unravel and look like crap. The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 3D preview was probably the best I've seen so far... :rolleyes:

    img2202m.th.jpg img2208eo.th.jpg img2221t.th.jpg img2220f.th.jpg img2214m.th.jpg

    Oh, I ended up not getting that Linnarp TV stand from Ikea, it looked disappointing in person, honestly. The Besta Burs glossy stand caught my brother's eye and we went with that after some deliberation--I think we didn't think it through all the way though. The stand's pretty shallow and we barely had enough room for the receiver, had to drill a hole through the cardboard back to connect the optical cable. Not to mention, we were missing four sets of screws and cushions to which Ikea has not sent all of yet... Seriously, they ship me two envelopes of replacements and yet I'm still missing the cushions.

    The computer and electronics super geek thread

    in Anime or Science Fiction

    Posted · Edited by shiroikaze

    I probably will just unlock the shaders only, will do that tomorrow though :p.

    Going back into the Mini P180 just reminded me of how much of a hard work it is just to manage cables. I really didn't want the SATA cables to stick out like that, but it looks like I need longer ones if I were to route them more neatly. I would like to get rid of that PATA cable too...

    Here's a picture of the innards, the other new addition is the Scythe S-Flex-E fan.

    img2189q.jpg

    Surprisingly, while I can still barely hear the card at idle, it's alot more quieter at full load than I first thought. The fan is on automatic and it never ramps any higher than 35%, which is a little under 2700 RPM. I tried manual control and at 60%, it got terrifyingly loud. I'd hate to hear it at 100%.

    [edit]I just went and unlocked the shaders and raised AMD's powertune control to 20%. No overclocking unfortunately.

    Instead of using the 6970 bios, I ended up using a modified 6950 bios that only unlocked the shaders but not the memory frequencies. I just read today that there were a few rare incidents of video cards getting damaged due to the bios change, no one really pinpointed what the exact problem was but the general consensus was that it was either heat or the memory modules couldn't handle the higher frequencies.

    The person who uploaded the original 6950-->6970 tutorial also released this script (with a help of a contributor): http://www.techpowerup.com/wizzard/Mod_BIOS_HD_6950.zip

    What it does is it took the original 6950 bios, and modified it to unlock the shaders only.

    The computer and electronics super geek thread

    in Anime or Science Fiction

    Posted

    I had enough issues with integrated graphics that I vowed never to buy anything that had them. Nowadays it seems they've finally smartened up and it's much easier to disable them, but I still hate them.

    It's usually less of a 'driver' thing and more of a "going into the BIOS" thing to disable the on-board integrated graphics. The exact setting should in the your PC or motherboard manual, it's a common enough upgrade that they include instructions.

    Thanks for reminding me about that. When the card comes in today, I'll remember to do that :).

    I was just curious about not suffering any setbacks if I don't uninstall the driver since AMD uses the same driver package for just about all their cards. Though I guess I should go for the safe-than-sorry route...

    Maxfactory's Figma Line

    in Anime or Science Fiction

    Posted · Edited by shiroikaze

    Yep, and Double Spoiler. Though I think she first appeared in one of the books...

    Fortunately, GSC was kind enough to include little clear stands for her shoes so she can stand on her own without the figma stand. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of 'em at the moment.

    I wish they painted her laces...

    Vocaloid Hatsune Miku

    in Anime or Science Fiction

    Posted · Edited by shiroikaze

    Kinda kicking myself for not getting her after seeing a review. Then again, she was a bit pricey and I would've had to jump through hula hoops to get her =\.

    Also, didn't realize that it was a collaboration between Good Smile Company and Bandai.

    Simple and beautiful... music video featuring Big Al.

    Indeed, this is a great music video. Big Al was totally a great choice for this song. What I particularly adored as the song continued was the marching of the robots from various games and anime. It was a nice touch to help us get more emotionally attached.

    I wish I could name all the robots in that march... I can only name a good handful. I bet some of you here can.

    Full Metal Panic question

    in Anime or Science Fiction

    Posted · Edited by shiroikaze

    Kyoto Animation also did the third too :).

    About why they switched studios, no one knows, but I don't think it was supposed to be made a big deal of. They just switched, that's it. Publisher probably wanted to experiment with a different studio or KyoAni probably offered a better deal for their work...

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