From OLED to Tegra: Five Myths of the Zune HD

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  • Reply 41 of 581
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Andrew Levi Black View Post




    LULZ



    Fanboi-ish indeed...
  • Reply 42 of 581
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Admiralkymia View Post


    ... I realized that Microsoft has no originality. Perhaps the Zune HD is a great device (assuming it's better than their last attempts), but the thing that pisses me off about it, is that once again, Microsoft has to copy what the other guy is doing to get a product to market.



    This is the key point. The new Zune thing is - except for the screen - conceptually a couple years behind the iPod and the iPod Touch. And, we know that, at some point soon, Apple will change the game again (after all, they haven't been standing still, I am sure).
  • Reply 43 of 581
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by djsherly View Post


    I don't get the big deal about specs. If the platform delivers a compelling user experience then that is the selling point, not how many goo goo flops and mega wits it has. Apple's been getting away with hardware inferiority for years using the same technique. Yet today. for some reason, that does not apply to Zune?



    To that end, the OLED news is disappointing - I had an OLED screen on a Moto flip phone a long time ago and it seemed bright enough. I wonder what gives today?







    The link off this paragraph points at a gallery of pictures. It also assumes that all OLEDs are the same. We know that Apple for instance can put inferior LCDs on their screens. They hardly point to the quality of LCD overall. How are we supposed to make a judgment on the blackness of blacks using a photo of the display? One: your looking at the image on your Computer Monitor, which probably doesn't do true black. Two: You have no idea how the photo has been enhanced or calibrated for publishing. Three: You have no idea under what circumstances the photo has been taken.



    Additionally, the fact that OLEDs degrade faster than LCDs is a moot point given the half life of one particular OLED panel is about 17,0000 hours.. The device would have been replaced some time before then. Don't also forget that the interpretation of brightness is a not a linear one.



    I think the assertion made about OLED is making a bit of a stretch. Perhaps it should be four myths.



    I think its pretty clear that this missive has not been based on any real world use or observation on the part of the reviewer.



    While I think that he may have exaggerated just a bit, basically, he's right. OLEDs are the future, but they still have problems. Power consumption is one of them, and it's a real problem.



    So is lifetime. While 17,000 hours looks good on paper, it doesn't mean that it's real. Sony's OLED Tv has seen its OLED screens fail much sooner than expected.



    And brightness is a problem. The problem is that LEDs of all kinds lose lifetime based on heat. LED bulbs have massive aluminum heatsinks to cool them, and their use is proscribed as to angle lamp type etc. The old models with dozens of small LEDs don't have quite as much of a problem, but then, they don't put out much light either.



    OLEDs are even more sensitive to heat. When the brightness is turned up, they get hotter, then their lifetime is reduced.



    So the reason for the black backgrounds and fine type in the interfaces is not only for the purpose of power consumption, it's also for increasing lifetime.



    That's also why they aren't allowed to run brighter than they are. They can actually run brighter, but then they will last for a shorter time, and consume too much power in doing so.



    Also, in order to be seen outdoors a display must be brighter than the light impinging upon it. OLEDs are dimmer than sunlight, and even bright indoor lighting. A lot of LCDs are transreflective, so as Prince says, they reflect some light back at you outside. OLEDs can't do that.



    While you've had some fun talking about "poor" Apple displays, this is different.



    The thing is that it's expected that by this time next year, OLED displays will be at least twice as efficient, have at least 30% longer lifetime, and will run much brighter.



    I imagine that Apple has tested enough displays, and talked to enough manufacturers and researchers to see that it's better to wait one more year. If they don't have an OLED in some of their devices next year, then I'll wonder why, but not now.
  • Reply 44 of 581
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dominiej View Post


    Sorry, I'd pay the $15 per month to have control of music I actually like and keep $10 songs...



    Ha! Hilarious. Dude, knock yourself out.
  • Reply 45 of 581
    Time for a bit of honesty from someone who is an admitted Apple fan.



    There are features on the Zune HD that I lust over. The OLED display will be wonderful. It will have amazing contrast and look good in both brightly and dimly lit rooms. It may not work as well out doors in direct sunlight but to be fair I don't use my iPod or iPhone outside.



    Another Zune feature I really want in my iDevices is a radio. Even a standard FM radio is long overdue. I own a Zune 30 and its radio is the feature that I use the most. It looks like the iPod Nano has a nice implementation.



    I can't say yet whether the Zune's Tegra is any better or worse than the iPhone 3GS or iTouch 3rd gen's hardware but HD out would always be a welcome feature. I am waiting patiently for some real hardware specs. For example, how much RAM does the Zune HD have? The latest apple hardware has 256MB up from 128MB in previous generations.



    The one area I agree 100% with the article is that Apple deserves very high praise for their developer support. The few developers who have had trouble getting their apps approved really takes away from the truly amazing success of the app store for both Apple and its developers. I strongly suspect that Microsoft will be unable and unwilling to offer a similar level of developer support.



    Yes, I am disappointed in the 3rd generation iPod Touch features. I was planning to buy one the day they were released. Now I am waiting for a possible mid-year refresh in hopes of seeing more features. Some I would like are: GPS, 3GS camera, HD/FM radio, OLED, larger battery. I would be happy to pay a bit more and take a thicker case to get these features.
  • Reply 46 of 581
    nasseraenasserae Posts: 3,167member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by karmamule View Post


    Actually you get to keep 10 DRM-free MP3s a month as part of your $15 subscription cost. Most of the songs on my iPhone at this point are from my Zune subscription!



    So, as long as you were going to be buying at least 10 songs per month anyways, then that means you're only paying an extra $5 bucks for access to those millions of songs.



    So after one year if I decided to terminate my subscription for some reason I will end up keeping only 120 songs with Zune Pass and this is better that the 140 songs I get with iTunes or Amazon for the same amount of money paid?!
  • Reply 47 of 581
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by NasserAE View Post


    So after one year if I decided to terminate my subscription for some reason I will end up keeping only 120 songs with Zune Pass and this is better that the 140 songs I get with iTunes or Amazon for the same amount of money paid?!



    Yeah, 'cause in that time period, you got to listen to millions of tracks legitimately that you otherwise may not have had a chance to...



    And here's another point - of those 120-140 songs - how many would you continue to listen to indefinitely? What's the point of buying music you will not care about in a year or more?
  • Reply 48 of 581
    cmf2cmf2 Posts: 1,427member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by NasserAE View Post


    So after one year if I decided to terminate my subscription for some reason I will end up keeping only 120 songs with Zune Pass and this is better that the 140 songs I get with iTunes or Amazon for the same amount of money paid?!



    I don't think you are going to win this argument. Zune pass is a nice option to have. It works really well for some people.
  • Reply 49 of 581
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by anantksundaram View Post


    What's an "itouch"?



    It's annoying, that's what.
  • Reply 50 of 581
    There's nothing more pathetic and ridiculous than a loser of an article like this that does nothing but take shots at the competition. I'm not disagreeing or calling the facts presented into doubt, although it's obvious from a single read that it's excessively biased / fanboi BS.
  • Reply 51 of 581
    Quote:

    And despite the power savings attributed to OLED's backlight-free design, OLEDs still use more power than LCD displays most of the time because the OLED technology consumes power based on how bright the image it is displaying is. Essentially, OLED is the backlight.



    I don't think I am understanding this right. With LCD if you had a solid white background it uses as much power as a solid black background, with OLED this is not the case. How would the OLED use more power?
  • Reply 52 of 581
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jiggawho90 View Post


    nano's video quality is worse than the lowest flip $100 video recorder (i might add 10 times worse)



    Egregiously and demonstrably false:



    Shooting video - iPod nano vs The Rest
  • Reply 53 of 581
    cmf2cmf2 Posts: 1,427member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by CatatonicLemur View Post


    There's nothing more pathetic and ridiculous than a loser of an article like this that does nothing but take shots at the competition. I'm not disagreeing or calling the facts presented into doubt, although it's obvious from a single read that it's excessively biased / fanboi BS.



    It makes a lot of valid points, I wouldn't really say any of it is wrong, but it obviously only presents the negative aspects of each feature while mostly ignoring the positives. I learned a little from it, but it was heavily slanted against the Zune.
  • Reply 54 of 581
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cmf2 View Post


    I don't think you are going to win this argument. Zune pass is a nice option to have. It works really well for some people.



    Exactly cmf2, depending on your music listening habits a subscription service can either be a waste of money, or the wisest money you've ever spent.



    In my case I'm someone who loves listening to a wide variety of music, and prefer exploring new music more than repeatedly listening to old favorites. However Pandora et al are just too limiting, with either restricted skipping, or inability to listen to specific CDs/songs when I want.



    Yes there are some true favorites I listen to alot, but those are covered for the most part by my 10 songs a month. I found that once I had access to that huge selection of music that I could listen to in exactly order that I wanted, both on- and off-line, that I then spent much less time listening to these old favorites and much more time browsing and exploring.



    For someone with similar listening habits I'd strongly recommend trying out a subscription service. On the other hand, if you have a smaller set of favored artists/songs who you listen to more exclusively, and are happy supplementing that with services like Pandora, LastFM, etc., then it may not be as compelling.
  • Reply 55 of 581
    I'm just asking. Honestly...



    Why do people want this Zune device so bad? Apple's iTouch offers so much more value that I can't for the life of me see why someone is so against it. The iTunes store, 70,000+ apps, its a great iPod, plenty of memory up to 64 GB, its super thin, has bluetooth and a higher resolution screen. Do people just hate Apple that much? Seriously?
  • Reply 56 of 581
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dominiej View Post


    Did you miss the part about getting to listen to millions of tracks of your choice? Can you do that on iTunes?



    It's interesting that despite that, subscriptions are a failure, while Apple's model has propelled it into the largest music seller in the world. Yes, not just the US, but now the world.



    Meanwhile, the Zune has sold less than 2 million units in two years. Sales were actually down 43% in the last quarter, and they're discontinuing all their players for the HD.



    So most people say about the listening to millions of songs?big deal!
  • Reply 57 of 581
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Amorya View Post


    Erm? same screen, same graphics card, same sharing of system RAM for VRAM. (Without the phone stuff running, the touch has more free memory for apps, which means more can be used for VRAM, so it might even have better graphics than iphone.)



    Oddly enough, my wife has an iPod touch purchased only a month or so before the new ones were available. I have an iPhone 3G. Her device seems to offer faster loading times and smoother graphics in all the game titles we've compared. I'm actually jealous of it.
  • Reply 58 of 581
    ronboronbo Posts: 669member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    Curiously, Apple has been painted by some pundits as being "developer-hostile" over a handful of application approval disputes that have occurred over the past year, despite maintaing a solid, profitable mobile platform that works across all iPhone and iPod touch models ever built. Imagine if Apple just kept churning out new models of iPhone, each running firmware incompatible with its existing hardware and developer's third party apps.



    That's kind of what Apple DID with the early iPod games. Game X worked on iPod generation Y and not the others. Didn't seem to catch on very well.
  • Reply 59 of 581
    cmf2cmf2 Posts: 1,427member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bobertoq View Post


    I don't think I am understanding this right. Wouldn't this mean that what you see on an LCD is brighter than the backlight? Even if you had a solid white background it uses as much power as a solid black background, with OLED this is not the case.



    Think incandescent vs florescent light bulbs. Incandescent takes more power to reach the same brightness as florescent. Similarly, OLED takes more power to produce the same brightness as a traditional LCD. However OLED basically has the ability to selectively dim or turn off the darker portions of the screen (not really how it works, but it makes the simplest explanation). This allows OLED to have better battery performance if the screen is dark, but if the screen is brighter, it will fall behind LCD due to the increased power required to turn each pixel up to a similar brightness level.
  • Reply 60 of 581
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by agion1 View Post


    What we have here is a blanket statement about MS and games that fails to note the success of Xbox. To say MS is doing poorly in game is silly. To say they even pulled the plug on developers is a bit rash nd probably not accurate. The XNA developers club is still in action for Xbox and, it would stand to reason for the new Zune. Will the code need tweaking? Perhaps. I do not know and neither does the author. Most likely, it will be no big deal. Disclaimer: I've created the graphics for a game that was developed for the Zune under XNA and ported (with relative ease) to the Xbox.



    Question: Do you think that the game company that created the Xbox, the same company that is merging the Zune experience with its gaming platform...the same company that has given developers the tools to create games for both platforms is going to sit by and watch Apple take market share? No way. By the way, did you catch the video clip of the device running what some claim was a port of Forza 3? If not, take a look:



    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok612YNA_Sc



    My guess with the games: Full "3D" games with Xbox Live intergration. Wait for it. It's coming.



    agion1



    Don't confuse the Zune with the XBox. We don't know what, if anything, will come of this. If it does, then you can tell us how great it all is. Right now there is nothing.



    The XBox is only a success because MS had been willing to lose over a billion dollars a year selling it. No other company would have done that.
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