Comments on: Why open standards are more important than open source

By: memson

memson — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:19:00 +0000

Oh, and to define “no sound”, we get just static, which many modern TV’s translate to “no sound” and filter out.

By: memson

memson — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 08:17:00 +0000

It’s probably PAL-I, the UK PAL standard. The usual European PAL (M?) standard (which Germany uses, for example) doesn not work in the UK - found this out trying to get a TV tuner card to work once. Unless you select PAL-I in the UK, you get no sound and the picture is unstable. Sounds not unlike what Thom is experiencing. He could always send it to me in the UK for me to confirm this

The probalem with PAL was that too many countries used differing TV standards in the first place! Also, TV standards were tied to silly things like refresh rates synced by the speed your electricity was clocked at. So in the US, you use 60Hz as the frequency of your AC current, but in Europe we use 50Hz. In Brasil, they use PAL, but clocked at 60Hz.

One other thought - Thom, are you 100% sure you are in PAL mode? NTSC will play happily sync at 60Hz on my UK TV, but we lose the colour signal because it is synced differently. I get sound and picture, just no colour. Maybe you’re seeing the PAL compatible carrier for the B&W signal, but have no sound because the European PAL’s sound standard isn’t the same as the UK one?

By: mikesum32

mikesum32 — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 10:56:00 +0000

DVD region coding is total bullshit. Artificial limitations on technology rarely work, just look at any DRM. CSS cracked via DeCSS, cd protection bypassed with the “shift key” blu-ray, hd-dvd cracked, Mac OS X runs on a pc, Itunes DRM broken more than once, X-Box hacked to run linux, my dvd drive flashed to be region free.

They just need to give up already with movie and music drm. Anyone who wants to pirate a movie will download it or buy it for a lower price from Chinatown or copy it themselves from a rental. Anyone who wants free music will download it, get it from a friend, or record it off of the radio. Paying customers still pay.

DVD region codes just stop technologically foolish people from buying foreign films, or people in the USA sending movies to their friends in Europe, and doesn’t touch local piracy or manufactured bootlegs.

I buy my music used and save a bunch of money. I’m not paying 20 dollars for a new cd, I remember when they were around 12. I know this great pawn shop where they are 1 dollar.

I had a black and white problem with an S-Video cable and a cable box hooked to my All-in-Wonder Radeon. I ended up using a single rca cable, I think. It’s been a while. Maybe Thom could call Dell ?

Dell TVs: Technically capable of displaying 25 fps*

*No sound or color

By: Eugenia

Eugenia — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 10:14:00 +0000

>But they are open standards.

Yes, but they are useless if no one is following them. If all the world had the same frequencies for 3G, GSM, analog and digital TV etc, things would have been much better for the average consumer. Personally, I am very unhappy about DVD region coding too, which is pretty stupid IMO.

>Sending a North American tv to Europe is just asking for trouble.

When DELL says that it has a “PAL and NTSC tuner” with no other clarification, I expect it to work in both continents.

By: mikesum32

mikesum32 — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 10:06:00 +0000

But they are open standards. That’s the catch, which open standard(s) do you want to support ? Maybe Dell needs to upgrade the product description, clarify things, or fix the tuner and firmware. Sending a North American tv to Europe is just asking for trouble.

Good luck with the firmware fix.

Dell TVs: Technically capable of displaying 25 fps.

By: Thom Holwerda

Thom Holwerda — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 05:01:00 +0000

I’m still so pissed off about this.

By: Chris Craig

Chris Craig — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 04:32:00 +0000

It seems to me you don’t want “open” standards, but “common” standards.
The reason why there are so many different standards is the same reason why there are so many different types of plug points, transmissions, programming libraries, etc.

By: Oliver Herold

Oliver Herold — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 02:15:00 +0000

>Many GPL junkies attacked him for that beliefs, but over and over again I, the consumer, I pay the price of products not following standards rather than ever needing the source code of any driver or firmware.

Both of it is important. You can certainly live with an open standard in a mono-culture (like Windows, MacOS), but you cannot live in freedom (no GPL freedom, real freedom) with just open standards. You would certainly tell me about your TV and so on - but we aren’t in the 80s anymore. Every multimedia device has a firmware nowadays, can be attached to a computer and so on - so the attitude “open standards are more important” is some sort of no-brainer imo. The mere customer has advantages in both areas. Btw. the mere customer isn’t a moron.
I don’t need to see the source-code, but I do know why it’s important for security, quality and interoperability. The mere faith in something like closed-source, isn’t something to cope with in reality.
So open standards is just one side of the coin.