JB0

Given the format uses identical ranges and encoding, I suspect Japan uses broadcast frequencies that are less susceptible to interference. You can actually see this in effect on US sets. Channels 2-13 are in a totally diffrent band than everything else, and seem to be far stabler. good to see another sports fan on this forum.. You misunderstand me. But to be fair, I'm not quite sure what I meant myself. I think I was saying that movies were my main interest. I might've meant broadcast TV, but as I watch so little of it it doesn't make a lot of sense. I never said that DVD had more resolution, I just said DVD has better video quality. Just being wired gives it a better picture, and getting rid of interlacing helps a lot. But wired NTSC is still NTSC. Broadcast TV, (analog)cable TV, VHS, LaserDisk, DVD, and PS2 all use NTSC signals(at least, in NTSC regions). S-video and component video are still carrying NTSC signals, they just aren't as mixed. S-video carries the chroma and luma waveforms on seperate wires, component video carries both of the chroma waveforms on dedicated wires with the luma waveform on a third. well like i said, i'm just going off of hearsay, i haven't actually seen upconverted footage myself. however, when I watch a 480 NTSC DVD at full screen on my 1024x768 computer monitor it looks good enough for me, and 768 is more than 720HD and not a huge amount less than 1080HD. when i play back DVDs full screen on my 20" Apple monitor on my Powermac at work, it still looks good enough for me, and at 1200 horizontal lines, my Apple monitor has higher resolution than a 1080p HDTV. i think i would need an HDTV larger than 50" to really appreciate the difference and justify the purchase of an HD player even if it was $300, and i'd still need a much larger amount of films than are available for blu-ray or HD-DVD in the foreseeable future. I can see major faults in DVD on a 20" NTSC TV, as well as on my PC monitor(I think the last time I bothered I was running at 1280*960). Upsampling does nothing to replace missing data, it just trys to hide it. The available HD library is growing rapidly, and will likely grow faster once the price falls and it becomes a realistic option to non-AVphiles. By the time it becomes a serious option to most people, library won't be an issue. It's exponentially greater from where I sit. Massively higher resolution, with far better compression(image-quality-wise) on top of it. DVD's biggest fault as a medium for delivering standard-definition video is that it uses rather heavy MPEG compression, even after moving to dual-layer disks. Which, admittedly, was a requirement to fit a full movie on a disk the size of a CD using the technology available in the '90s, and was still a major step up from VHS. While a larger disk would have afforded higher image quality, it wasn't believed to be readily marketable(likely had as much due to retailer shelf space as it did consumer comfort and familiarity). Similarly, a better compression scheme would've required more power than was really feasable for a mass-market product. *shakes head* MPEG compression consists largely of taking a clean source and making a mess out of it(not really blurry, but it's a very destructive compression process). Most attempts at upsampling I've seen consist mainly of resampling the image then blurring it to hide the pixel edges. It's nowhere near the same as a source at the higher resolution, and in some cases it's actually massively inferior to the original image. So I'm anxiously awaiting the day the HD format wars are over and there's ONE format at REASONABLE prices.

Gah, please no! The "non-Anime Friend" episodes of Macross are far better animated than the talking-head cartoons we see today. 418967[/snapback] But what if they hired James Earl Jones to do all the voices?!?!?!

"SHWOOOO!!" BAHAHA!!!!

It can shoot mass out the bottom to counteract the weight, enabling it to fly at speeds that would otherwise stall it. We just don't know how long it can do this. And atmospheric density varies with altitude. Mar's air density at low altitudes(where the fighting in Bye-Bye Mars seemed to take place) is 10x that of the 30000-meter Earth altitude that the VF-1 is OFFICIALLY flyable in at high mach(but ONLY at high mach, unless thrusters are used to augment lift).

I think you're right. Really, I can't fault him for it. Can't expect the guy to keep churning out the same kind of stories over and over again, that'll get boring. People change over time, and as a result their work is going to change too. As for a direct continuation to the original series, it's never going to happen. Fans really need to accept that and move on. 418663[/snapback] People need to get over the fact that Kawamori isn't going to do Macross like Tomino did Gundam. He isn't the kind of guy who is going to pump out sequels every few years. Otherwise he might end up like Tomino, never ever want to see Macross again, and only use it to get money for another project. If we had Macross every few years, we would end up just like the Gundam kids; UC vs AU, My Gundam is more powerful than your Gundam, blah blah blah. 418739[/snapback] But Fighting Street G Macross could be kinda neat... in a disgusting abuse of the license kinda way...

Sheesh... How often are 16 owners of Steel Battalion on at the same time anyways?

It does very bad things to lift. As I understand it, lift's more or less a direct function of how much air is going over the wing. Hence why the U2 needs huge wings and the Blackbird needs huge speed. There's just not enough air for lift without special solutions. GERWALK should be less affected than fighter. Probably even see a performance boost. It benefits more from reduced drag and gravity. Doesn't hurt a lot from lost lift, unless I'm mistaken. Battroid is pretty much guaranteed a performance gain, because it doesn't rely on lift for ANYTHING. All it has is reduced drag and reduced gravity, which both benefit it(assuming the computer is programmed for environments other than space and Earth). Hmmm... I wonder if the head turret can be left down in fighter mode. It isn't good for aerodynamics, but there's a serious sensor advantage. Does anyone but me feel sorry for that one Defender? His explosion gets recycled so many diffrent times, and all anyone ever says about it is "Look! Orguss Valkyrie!" Good ol' willpower armor. Pr'ly explains why Britai could rip the Valk apart so easily, too. Hikaru was scared pretty effectively at that point. Was bad enough they spaced Britai and he came back, he re-entered with a 1-hit kill on Kakizaki, then launched immediatly into a brawl with Hikaru. Hikaru's hero defense was probably at negative by the time Britai threw him into the wall.

Thank you! That was where I thought it was, at least on the new model. I really had no idea where to look on the old one. So everyone agrees that adding the fuel tanks was a bad idea, if nothing else. Also a pity that both molds look like crap from behind.

Not really tests. They've actually started developing, then jumped to another engine mid-dev. Unreal Tournament was the last they jumped to. From there it's just been a mess of uncontrolled feature creep. Allegedly they've hacked UT up so badly while adding features that it's UT in name only and it's the equal of whatever the current game is, but... we'll see(maybe...). They have cash coming in from other stuff. Max Payne, while certainly not enough to keep a company afloat, is their's to some degree. I thought the sequel flopped because it was only really available to existing Steel Battalion players. It's generally a bad idea to target just a subdivision of the system base, especially as small a subdivision as "Steel Battalion owners."

Fair enough. I THINK I see the intake kibble. Between a lot of bad pictures and the fact that I'm not very familiar with airplanes, I've had a hard time pinning down exactly what part it is. Are the conformal tanks responsible for the rounded forearms too? That was one of the changes that bugged me. That'd improve the original a lot, and I'd probably agree about it being better.

Pretty much. The trailer is just the turtles hoping over rooftops. They land in an alley one at a time, and strike poses. Michealangelo falls in a trash dumpster, to the rest of the team's embarassment. Cops drive by and they dive into a manhole. But the important part is that it's turtles that got mutated, known ninjitsu, and are teenaged.

Depends who you ask. There's essentially only 2 formats worldwide. Many foreign nations use America's NTSC. Others, especially European ones, use PAL. France uses SECAM, which is a derivative of PAL that was changed with the goal of rendering PAL sets incompatible with french broadcasts and forcing manufacturers to make France-specific TVs. SECAM was also used in the USSR's border states, because it prevented soviet sets from watching evil capitalist european television. PAL is marginally better than NTSC in that it has more lines of resolution(576 VS 480). But it has less color depth also. Refresh rate varies with nation. Though PAL is commonly considerd to have a 50Hz refresh and NTSC to have a 60Hz refresh, both formats exist at both refresh rates. That's where I'm interested... Nope. DVD is constrained by the NTSC or PAL format, depending on region. It has no quality gains over the broadcast standard, except for the progressive scan option. The only notable thing is it's wired, so there's a lot less interference. I hate resampling on principle. And I have a strong suspicion that "blurry mess" is many people's idea of "good enough." Either way... the high cost of DVD wasn't worth it when it was at 600 bucks a player. Once prices fell below about 300, people became interested. That was about 2 years after they were introduced in the US. About 4 years after that, retailers were completely dropping VHS. That's the adoption pattern I expect for HD disks. After a while, prices will fall. Then people will become interested(HDTVs having become commonplace in the meantime. Their marketshare is currently growing rapidly). And then it'll take over. The fact that HD players are backwards-compatible with existing DVD libraries should help, though. If you bought a DVD player and had an extensive VHS collection, you had to give up your old movies or keep both players hooked up. Not a problem to me, but a lot of people dislike having multiple boxes hooked to their TV.

Not ALL people were fine with tailfins on the feet. My first thought when I saw the old mold was "What the HELL is all that crap on the sides of his legs?" It didn't blend nicely at all. I agree if they folded down onto something, it'd be a lot better. But they didn't fold up on the old version either. They just hung out into space from his legs instead of his hips.

And that's in docile General Aviation plane. Stalls in military fighters are often unrecoverable and kill pilots on a regular basis. And jet engines can actually stall as well, it's called a compressor stall. The blades in a jet turbine are just wings turned sideways and spinning in a circle, and just like normal wings under the right conditions they can stop producing lift cutting off air flow through the engine and shutting it down. I don't see any reason why the same thing couldn't happen to a Valkyrie's thermonuclear turbines. 418423[/snapback] The VF has internal reaction mass. If it's engine ceases to suck air, it can pump mass into it from the tanks. Doesn't use burning fuel like a conventional jet engine, so loss of air is of no consequence there either. In fact, it probably does that at high speeds anyways. At high mach, jet engines cease working right. And the Valk has no alternative that I know of besides blocking the intakes and using reaction mass.

I thought it was because the crap hanging off the legs looked worse than the crap hanging off the hips, personally.

i'll give ya that, but they royaly screwed up what could've been the best starfox game since starfox 64 :/ i still haven't finished it i'm so dissappointed in it :/ not even past the 3rd mission i think, and i even had more fun playing Starfox adventures... is that even possible?! but meh, rareware did a good job of the game, so i guess it is. I loved Assault, personally. Aside from the lack of branching. But then, I went straight from StarFox to StarFox Assault, so... Rare wasn't paying the bills anymore. They'd gotten in the habit of delaying games repeatedly, and were becoming as bad as 3D Realms of Duke Nukem Forever infamy. Look at Perfect Dark Zero for an example. That was supposed to be an N64 game. Then a 'Cube game. Then an XBox 1 game. MS FORCED them to push it out the door for the 360 launch. Kameo had exactly the same multi-delay dev cycle. Neither game was really ready for retail, after a half-decade in development. Heh. ... I'd buy it too is the sad part. And on-topic... Bandai's actually shown a lot of interest in the 360. They've released several games for it already. Of course, if the 360 doesn't start showing some movement in Japan, it'll probably amount to as much support as the XBox 1 got from them.

their engines won't stall. 418371[/snapback] Aviation stalling is a diffrent issue than automotive stalling, and has nothing to do with engines. If they quit getting enough airflow over the wings, they cease to get enough lift to stay airborne, gravity makes itself known, and they start falling like the large lumps of metal that they are.

Oh, hellz no! I enjoyed the Evil Dead trilogy; in fact, Evil Dead 2 is one of my all-time favorite comedies. But there's absolutely, positively no way I would ever watch this train-wreck. Whoever decided this should be done needs to be publicly flogged. Now that, on the other hand, I would go and see! 418244[/snapback] Flogging: It's good clean fun for the whole family!

Or shoot the damn Cat's Eye repeatedly in a futile protest of escort missions.

Especially if they stuck katanas into the hip holsters... NINJA!

WHOOHOO!!!! I was one of the people figuring it'd be hard to screw up as long as it was 2 hours of giant robots kicking giant robot asses(and if there's one thing Bay does right, it's explosions), but having Prime played by Prime is certainly a good nostalgia move. And lets face it, the movie's driven as much by nostalgia as anything else.

MacrossWorld: Unofficial Pimps of Jessica Biel.

true, but a lower setting would take longer to overload than a higher, though give less protection. 418077[/snapback] That's a shaky assumption. Remember, the shield overload is because it's absorbed more energy than it can contain. I'd expect a low-power shield to overload EASIER since it has weaker confinement forces to start with. On the upside, it doesn't damage everyone around you as badly when it DOES blow, since it's holding less energy to release. On the downside, City 7 is instantaneoulsy stripped of all atmosphere when it blows, regardless of strength. I've also got serious doubts that the barrier system allows variable permeability, regardless of power level.

Really? Where is that stated? I always thought they used OTEC composite ceramics, which would provide the same protection as thicker materials with substantially less weight. They mentioned "Hyper Carbon Steel" in the series, which one could assume is an OTEC alloy. 418032[/snapback] It's pretty obvious from the animation that the Valk is rather lightly armored. No matter what, you have to work around the fact that a large zentradi can rip one apart bare-handed with minimal injury. That means that flesh and blood is stronger than Valk construction, unless the zentradi are actually well-disguised androids. Compendium says nothing about Valkyrie armor. It DOES mention the rudders are made "with honeycomb construction." That's indicative of low-mass design goals, which aligns with the VF's primary purpose as an aerospace fighter. Low mass is far more desirable in planes and space fighters than heavy armor. Also notable is that the destroids are far more massive than VF-1s, despite having far fewer parts to consume mass(no transformation mechanism, no jetpack, no reaction mass tanks, no "spare" parts left over from fighter mode). I'd bet good money that most of the mass diffrence is extra armor. All the Valk really has going for it is the note in the VF-0 entry that technology similar to the VF-0's SWAG "energy converting armor" that triples durability in battroid mode is used on future variable fighters. It's generally assumed this includes the VF-1. If we assume that Hikaru's energy armor generator was damaged in the fight with Bretai(not unlikely given his battroid got impaled on a large quantity of metallic spikes), then the possibility exists that a VF-1 battroid is considerably more durable. And wasn't hypercarbon steel mentioned in relation to the SDF-1's construction, not the Valk's? I don't think I should have to point out that we build aircraft carriers diffrently than we do fighter planes.

Go ninja go ninja go!