Recent Comments:
Sony streaming Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs free to new customers, expensively to existing ones {Engadget}
Nov 9th 2009 8:02AM These studios are guilty of idiotic pride in their work. That is their great sin. A movie ticket is nowhere near worth $10.50 at a theater, nor is an already ran movie worth more than a few bucks on demand.
The hubris of these people. If anything, the price of content should be falling... Quality of movies certainly has been falling. If the want to stem the tide of piracy, how about treating the consumer not like either a criminal or a sap?
Netflix instant streaming demoed on PlayStation 3 (updated with more video!) {Engadget}
Nov 6th 2009 3:21PM Not all streams come in in 480p. If you pick a stream available in HD, it will be in 720p widescreen. For example, I tried an episode of Heroes, and it streamed down in excellent quality.
Finally, I imagine that a lot of the limitations here are limitations of the BD-Live environment and would eventually be fixed by a native XMB application. Case in point, if you do DLNA media streaming to the PS3 today, no matter the content size, be it VGA, 720p, 1080i or 1080p, the XMB's video player will scale the video correctly up to 1080p or whatever your screen resolution is.
First footage of Netflix on PS3 {Joystiq}
Nov 6th 2009 1:28PM On the Netflix streaming service, only a portion of the available movies and shows are available in HD. One I found was Heroes Season 1.
Give it a try. It looks like any show or movie that supports it will be labeled with "HD" in the description page.
First footage of Netflix on PS3 {Joystiq}
Nov 6th 2009 1:27PM I have tried the Netflix streaming disc, and I can confirm that it DOES support HD streaming.
I tried an episode of Heroes Season 1, and it comes through in 720p.
REPORT: Toyota plans to trim trucks, focus on hybrids, improve quality {Autoblog Green}
Nov 3rd 2009 1:55PM People who want to be as green as possible will likely switch to a BEV of some kind, but i think you are wrong if you think that the Prius will simply stop selling overnight.
Did the Corolla, the Camry, or the Yaris stop selling overnight when Toyota released the Prius?
After being on the road in the US for 9 years, not just green-as-you-can-be early adopters are buying the Prius and other HSD vehicles. They are becoming mainstream, and hybrid sales are coming from normal car buyers more than the cutting edge green buyers.
Put it this way... the Prius will be priced at $21K, which is far more palatable to mainstream drivers than the initial wave of BEVs and plugins like the Volt.
Toyota plans to trim trucks, focus on hybrids, improve quality {Autoblog}
Nov 2nd 2009 5:38PM http://www.autoblog.com/2009/10/06/toyko-2009-preview-toyota-ft-86-concept-brings-back-the-hachiro/
There you go.
250GB PS3 spotted in Best Buy backroom, making trouble {Engadget}
Nov 1st 2009 1:11PM It depends on the game. A well crafted game like Valkyria Chronicles has an optional install. The game behaves the same if you do it or not, but is just faster if you opt in for a 4GB install. Sadly, not all games do this, and most will force you to install a big chunk the first time it starts up.
Posawatz: Volt range-extended mileage to be "better than any conventional car." But what about hybrids? {Autoblog Green}
Oct 25th 2009 5:42AM One more thing to add to my playing Devil's Advocate.
"They'd probably rather have a simple 4 cylinder engine than some weird 3 cylinder engine newly engineered specifically for the Volt, with turbos that need extra maintenance etc. etc. a lot of extra money and maintenance for something people rarely use."
Could you not make the case that having any kind of engine, even a very common 4 cylinder engine, is extra money and maintenance for something people rarely use?
Will the Volt's ICE not require scheduled maintenance, like any other ICE in any other car? Would the oil not need to be changed, even if the engine is hardly ever used? Will Chevy still recommend an oil change every 5000 miles, even if you diligiently charged the battery every night and never required the "range extender" to even turn on once?
Posawatz: Volt range-extended mileage to be "better than any conventional car." But what about hybrids? {Autoblog Green}
Oct 25th 2009 5:35AM I'll preface this by saying that the next statement that I'm about to make is being made mostly as playing Devil's Advocate... mostly...
If it is true that 95% of volt owners will almost never use the charge-sustaining mode, then why make it such an integral part of the system?
This means that for 95% of volt owners, they will be hauling around hundreds of pounds of engine, emissions control system, exhaust, fuel tank and fuel... All of that takes of precious space and adds a huge amount of weight to the car, and costs money to manufacture. With that extra space and money, and with the reduction in mass, what would a version of the Volt without the "range extender" be able to achieve in terms of range and performance?
Again, I'm playnig devil's advocate... I know the answer. All of it is there to alleviate range anxiety and to take care of the maximal worst case... but lets be clear. If the vast majority of Volt owners are not going to use the range extending capability often, then we are sacrificing efficiency for peace of mind and the "maximal."
Posawatz: Volt range-extended mileage to be "better than any conventional car." But what about hybrids? {Autoblog Green}
Oct 25th 2009 5:22AM @matt :
I get that you're buying into GM's marketing language that refuses to label the Volt as a hybrid in order to separate it from the growing pack of "just a regular car" hybrids out there today... but riddle me this.
Will GM recommend running the Volt with a fully empty gas tank? Or will they recommend that you keep at least some emergency fuel in the tank in case the engine needs to run?
Will the Volt need to run the gas engine in order to expedite system heatup and cabin climate control especially in the winter?
This may be a matter of semantics, but in my book Volt is a plug-in series hybrid, even if it has a mode where the engine is not active while the car is being driven by battery power. Not a pure electric car. A pure electric car would not have to haul around hundreds of pounds of engine, catalytic converter, exhaust system, and fuel tank and fuel. An example of a "true" pure electric vehicle would be the Tesla Roadster.
The Prius and the Volt are both hybrids. You're incorrect that the Prius is a conventional vehicle with an electric boost. You are perhaps describing early versions of the Honda IMA hybrid system, but the Prius is completely capable of propelling itself from stop on electric power without the engine being spun up.
In fact, there will be a plug-in version of the Prius that has a bigger battery, but the same planetary gear based full hybrid system as the current Prius. Would you consider this a "true" electric car too, even though the drivetrain would be more or less unchanged from today's non plugin Prius?
