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Buying a new TV
You decided to buy a brand new TV, so now what? What are the things you should look at, what do abbreviations like HDTV, 1080i, etc... mean?
Well, in these days home appliances are slowly mutating from analogue to digital and a lot of new terms and concepts are invented or borrowed from other technical domains and transformed in an attempt to make features more understandable to people that don't have much to do with IT in their lives. Unfortunately often these terms just confuse or trick people and this is why I am writing this guide - 'cause I'm tired to have to explain each time the same stuff.
While until some time ago it was enough to go with the family to a mall, walk in front of the TVs eating a snack and buying the biggest and best looking one with the money you had at your disposal, today a wise decision can be taken only after days of exhaustive technical reserch in magazines and Internet and multiple brainstorming sessions with colleagues and friends - a nightmare for people that are aren't patient. So yes, being patient seems to me the most important requisite for being victoriuos in such a context. Apart from this, I will now try to explain in an understandable way how stuff works and what it means - but please use other sources if you want to get the real exact explanations. So, let's start:
CRT
CRT stands for "Cathode Ray Tube" and it's the main component of the old-style 50 kilograms TVs. This "thing", often called "cannon", shoots somehow electrons to the phosphorescent surface of the TV screen making it light up when hit. By hitting tiny Red and/or Green and/or Blue (RGB) phosphorescent parts of the screen with different intensity, all colors can be shown on the screen, and therefore images.
This method is now being surpassed by LCD and Plasma, but is for modern TVs still valid.
The biggest problem with this system is that after the phosphorescent coating is hit by the electron, the state slowly decades (making it become again black) until it is hit again by one more electron. As the refresh rate of the good old european TV is 50Hz and as each time only half of the screen portion is refreshed (see PAL), you will get on-screen each second 25 images, which is the lowest possible refresh rate for a series of images, so that they can be perceived by the viewer as an animation. Such a low refreshing rate coupled with the fact that between each refresh the image gets back to black, gives to the viewer (if human - probably snails don't notice anything until the refresh rate drops below 4Hz :o)) the impression that the image is "waving" - especially if the image is static (like when you're watching your last holiday's pictures).
To solve this problem the industry switched a couple of years ago to 100Hz televisions. This way the screen is refreshed so fast for our eyes (50 times a second) that the "waving" effect is not preceived.
Therefore, you can still buy such a TV if you have somebody willing to help you bringing it into your flat and just want to watch normal TV. Such a feature, if supported, is stated as "100Hz" in the TV manual and on the box.
Pros: low cost, you-get-what-you-expect, nice colors, robustness
Cons: weight, size (cannot have it super-sized), medium picture detail (especially for still pictures)
Plasma
Remember when you were a kid watching japanese cartoons where people were shooting at each other with plasma rays and you hoped to get soon or later such a thing in your hands? Well, we're almost there.
Plasma-TVs are called like that because of the gas contained in the screen's tiny cells which is ionized by electrodes placed there. I don't understand much about it, but i know that the gas moves towards the electrodes and that it emits photons when they collide. As the screen has as well a phosphore layer, the phosphore lights up when it's hit by the photons. If voltage is kept, the state doesn't decade and therefore we don't have the anymore the "waving problem" we had with CRT televisions.
Additionally, as the impulses are not shot by a cannon but generated locally on the screen by electrodes placed near the cells, such screens are thin and don't weight as much as CRT's ones.
The problem with this system is that in the end, the cells contain gas, and gas really hates to stay for a long time in the same place. Current displays are said to last for about 30'000 to 60'000 hours (best case) - if we imagine a worst-case scenario and say that the life expectation is 15'000 hours, the display could start having problems after 10 years watching TV each day 4 hours long. But probably in 10 years we won't even need TVs to watch TV ;o).
Another indesired effect is the "burn-in". This happens when somewhere on the screen the state of the many cells that compose the screen surface don't change for a long time and afterwards the cell doesn't change its state when required to do so. You can easily reproduce this by leaving such a TV switched on for a week or so displaying all the time the exact same picture - afterwards, when you'll switch to something different you'll still be able to see the "phantom" of the picture you were displaying before. There are ways to recover from such a problem, but you can't be sure that it will work.
The nice things about plasma is that its black is really "black" (not the dark-greyinsh thing typical of LCDs), that the screen picture can be seen well as well when standing on its side (wide view angle) and that the refresh rate is high, making it possible for you to ignore the "refresh rate" parameter when deciding for such a TV type. And last but not least, the contrast is very good.
A note: if you go to the mall and try to compare the picture quality of a LCD-TV vs. a Plasma one, you will probably see that the LCD one is much brighter than the other one. This is due to the fact that a mall has a light in each corner and that a LCD display doesn't reflect it, while a Plasma one does - you will notice that after buying the LCD tv, bringing it home and watching a movie with dimmed lights, it won't be as bright as in the shop - increasing the brightness will solve the problem but will make the black color become even more greyish.
Therefore I would say that you should buy a Plasma-TV if:
In LCD displays, liquid crystals between two layers of glass are aligned by electrodes. A light source is positioned behind the crystals, so that they let light pass through a filter if they're aligned, while they don't if they aren't.
The evaluation of LCD TVs is more difficult than with Plasma or CRT ones. Pay special attention to the following numbers:
What I described above is for viewing standard TV. However today everybody is speaking about high definition TV, surround, etc... . If you plan to make use of these new features you will have to pay attention to additional stuff - I will first of all explain the concept of resolution and scan and later I will do a very quick tour through more specific standards - I won't be dealing with sound.
Nowadays you see on most of the Plasma and LCD TVs the simbol "HD ready". Most "normal" people think that the TVs that carry that symbol will be perfect for any kind of high definition material - wrong. The High Definition TV standard defines only the minimum input resolution (from the cable, satellite, etc...) that the TV set has to be able to process - but this doesn't necessarily mean that it will as well display it!!!
The real HDTV standard defines four different combinations of resolutions and scans (for the sake of making things easier ;o)):
Many low-budget LCD or Plasma TVs aren't even able to display the 720i standard, but go up only to 1024x768 resolution.
Therefore, when buying a TV to be used with the new high definition material, check that at least the "720i"/"720p" is written somewhere or that the resolution is higher than "1280x720". Many currently use "1366x768".
To be honest, if you're wishing for a "wow!" effect when using your new TV set, ignore the 720i standard. This standard is still interlaced and it offers only a double resolution compared to the old PAL - you'll have to really focus in order to see the difference between a DVD and a 720i movie. 720p is already nicer as the animations should be much more "crisp" than with interlaced screens. TVs that support 1080i/p are still very expensive, but if you're not in a hurry to buy a new one, wait until their prices drop.
Check as well that the TV has at least one HDMI connection available. You'll be able to watch high definition movies only from players or receivers that are connected through this cable/interface.
HD from where?
Nice, you just bought a new TV set that supports resolutions up to 1080p! And now? From where can I get such material?
Well, as of now two standards are fighting for victory: "Blue-ray Disc" lead by Sony (used as well for their brand new Playstation 3) and "HD DVD" lead by Microsoft. Personally I am a fan of the first one as it is supposed to support more data on one disc, but the fight is still going on. As of now the movies that were using one of those standards were partially using the old DVD standard and the quality wasn't as good as expected, so we'll have to wait some more time in order to be able to do a full comparison. There are as well a number of satellite providers that are starting offering HD-material, but unluckily I cannot tell you much about this as satellite has always been for me off-limits.
Have a look at this site if you're interested in having a preview of how HD-video looks like (they all look great - more videos are available if you click on the "ntsc" link at the top).
Summary
Well, in these days home appliances are slowly mutating from analogue to digital and a lot of new terms and concepts are invented or borrowed from other technical domains and transformed in an attempt to make features more understandable to people that don't have much to do with IT in their lives. Unfortunately often these terms just confuse or trick people and this is why I am writing this guide - 'cause I'm tired to have to explain each time the same stuff.
While until some time ago it was enough to go with the family to a mall, walk in front of the TVs eating a snack and buying the biggest and best looking one with the money you had at your disposal, today a wise decision can be taken only after days of exhaustive technical reserch in magazines and Internet and multiple brainstorming sessions with colleagues and friends - a nightmare for people that are aren't patient. So yes, being patient seems to me the most important requisite for being victoriuos in such a context. Apart from this, I will now try to explain in an understandable way how stuff works and what it means - but please use other sources if you want to get the real exact explanations. So, let's start:
CRT? LCD? Plasma? The TV type.
CRT
CRT stands for "Cathode Ray Tube" and it's the main component of the old-style 50 kilograms TVs. This "thing", often called "cannon", shoots somehow electrons to the phosphorescent surface of the TV screen making it light up when hit. By hitting tiny Red and/or Green and/or Blue (RGB) phosphorescent parts of the screen with different intensity, all colors can be shown on the screen, and therefore images.
This method is now being surpassed by LCD and Plasma, but is for modern TVs still valid.
The biggest problem with this system is that after the phosphorescent coating is hit by the electron, the state slowly decades (making it become again black) until it is hit again by one more electron. As the refresh rate of the good old european TV is 50Hz and as each time only half of the screen portion is refreshed (see PAL), you will get on-screen each second 25 images, which is the lowest possible refresh rate for a series of images, so that they can be perceived by the viewer as an animation. Such a low refreshing rate coupled with the fact that between each refresh the image gets back to black, gives to the viewer (if human - probably snails don't notice anything until the refresh rate drops below 4Hz :o)) the impression that the image is "waving" - especially if the image is static (like when you're watching your last holiday's pictures).
To solve this problem the industry switched a couple of years ago to 100Hz televisions. This way the screen is refreshed so fast for our eyes (50 times a second) that the "waving" effect is not preceived.
Therefore, you can still buy such a TV if you have somebody willing to help you bringing it into your flat and just want to watch normal TV. Such a feature, if supported, is stated as "100Hz" in the TV manual and on the box.
Pros: low cost, you-get-what-you-expect, nice colors, robustness
Cons: weight, size (cannot have it super-sized), medium picture detail (especially for still pictures)
Plasma
Remember when you were a kid watching japanese cartoons where people were shooting at each other with plasma rays and you hoped to get soon or later such a thing in your hands? Well, we're almost there.
Plasma-TVs are called like that because of the gas contained in the screen's tiny cells which is ionized by electrodes placed there. I don't understand much about it, but i know that the gas moves towards the electrodes and that it emits photons when they collide. As the screen has as well a phosphore layer, the phosphore lights up when it's hit by the photons. If voltage is kept, the state doesn't decade and therefore we don't have the anymore the "waving problem" we had with CRT televisions.
Additionally, as the impulses are not shot by a cannon but generated locally on the screen by electrodes placed near the cells, such screens are thin and don't weight as much as CRT's ones.
The problem with this system is that in the end, the cells contain gas, and gas really hates to stay for a long time in the same place. Current displays are said to last for about 30'000 to 60'000 hours (best case) - if we imagine a worst-case scenario and say that the life expectation is 15'000 hours, the display could start having problems after 10 years watching TV each day 4 hours long. But probably in 10 years we won't even need TVs to watch TV ;o).
Another indesired effect is the "burn-in". This happens when somewhere on the screen the state of the many cells that compose the screen surface don't change for a long time and afterwards the cell doesn't change its state when required to do so. You can easily reproduce this by leaving such a TV switched on for a week or so displaying all the time the exact same picture - afterwards, when you'll switch to something different you'll still be able to see the "phantom" of the picture you were displaying before. There are ways to recover from such a problem, but you can't be sure that it will work.
The nice things about plasma is that its black is really "black" (not the dark-greyinsh thing typical of LCDs), that the screen picture can be seen well as well when standing on its side (wide view angle) and that the refresh rate is high, making it possible for you to ignore the "refresh rate" parameter when deciding for such a TV type. And last but not least, the contrast is very good.
A note: if you go to the mall and try to compare the picture quality of a LCD-TV vs. a Plasma one, you will probably see that the LCD one is much brighter than the other one. This is due to the fact that a mall has a light in each corner and that a LCD display doesn't reflect it, while a Plasma one does - you will notice that after buying the LCD tv, bringing it home and watching a movie with dimmed lights, it won't be as bright as in the shop - increasing the brightness will solve the problem but will make the black color become even more greyish.
Therefore I would say that you should buy a Plasma-TV if:
- you don't have kids trying to knoch on the screen's glass. Such screens are quite sensitive.
- you watch tv in a dark room or in the evening with dimmed lights.
- you want a VERY BIG tv. Small plasma-TVs are normally more expensive compared to LCD ones.
- you want a nice colors, especially black.
In LCD displays, liquid crystals between two layers of glass are aligned by electrodes. A light source is positioned behind the crystals, so that they let light pass through a filter if they're aligned, while they don't if they aren't.
The evaluation of LCD TVs is more difficult than with Plasma or CRT ones. Pay special attention to the following numbers:
- viewing angle: check in the handbook (or of course do a live-test at the mall) that the viewing angle is as big as possible (> 120 degrees) otherwise you'll just see a black screen when standing on the side of the TV set. This number cannot be bigger than 180, otherwise you would be standing behind the TV.
- refresh rate: early LCD screens had a poor refresh rate. The result was that while you were watching an action movie with fast moving animations, you got the feeling that the animation wasn't smooth and that you could see each single frame. Check in the manual that the refresh rate is below ~20 milliseconds (the lowest, the better). Many people don't notice this problem until they pay attention to specific scenes, and believe me, once you notice it you won't ever be able to ignore it anymore. If you can't get to the tech specs, go to the mall, place yourself in front of the TV set, wait until the whole picture moves (camera movement like when it slowly switches from one actor to the other of it follows a small object on screen like following the ball during a soccer game), and don't look at it directly but fix something else near the TV set (look at the picture on the TV with your eye tail) - if the animation is still smooth, then it's fine.
- contrast: the higher, the better. Has to be higher than 400:1 if you plan to watch TV in the evening with dimmed lights.
- You cannot afford a Plasma TV.
- You don't want a huge screen.
- You want a thin TV.
I want fancy features!
What I described above is for viewing standard TV. However today everybody is speaking about high definition TV, surround, etc... . If you plan to make use of these new features you will have to pay attention to additional stuff - I will first of all explain the concept of resolution and scan and later I will do a very quick tour through more specific standards - I won't be dealing with sound.
Resolution
The resolution is the amount of dots, so called pixels, that the screen has. The more they are, the more detailed the pictures are displayed. Normally, you don't say that the screen has a resolution of e.g. 1'000'000 pixels (an exception are digital cameras), but people mention the amount of horizontal and vertical dots of the screen. Therefore 1'000'000 pixels could be made by 1000 pixels horizontally and 1000 vertically, which would be marketed as a 1000x1000 resolution. It could be of course as well 10 x 100'000, but such a screen would be about 1 cm wide (10 pixels) and a few meters high (100'000 pixels), which wouldn't be a clever way of watching movies. In the end, the higher the resolution, the more details you will be able to see - here 3 examples:
Interlaced / Progressive scan
So, now that you know what resolution is, we can speak about HDTV.
First of all you have to know that the normal PAL standard that we're using with cable TV since so many years has a resolution of 720x576, which are in total 414'720 pixels - DVDs use the same. Additionally the single images, so called frames, that build up an animation are interlaced, which means that for each single image (frame) of the animation, only the odd or the even lines of the animation are displayed. This doesn't happen with Progressive scan, which displays for each frame the full image. It looks like this:
If you watch a moving scene on normal TV (interlaced), and look at the objects that are moving from one side of the screen to the other, you'll notice that those objects will always be washed out. The advantage of interlaced animations is that they use less space and bandwidth- for each frame you have to save only half of the informations (only the odd or even lines have to be displayed).
HD ready
The resolution is the amount of dots, so called pixels, that the screen has. The more they are, the more detailed the pictures are displayed. Normally, you don't say that the screen has a resolution of e.g. 1'000'000 pixels (an exception are digital cameras), but people mention the amount of horizontal and vertical dots of the screen. Therefore 1'000'000 pixels could be made by 1000 pixels horizontally and 1000 vertically, which would be marketed as a 1000x1000 resolution. It could be of course as well 10 x 100'000, but such a screen would be about 1 cm wide (10 pixels) and a few meters high (100'000 pixels), which wouldn't be a clever way of watching movies. In the end, the higher the resolution, the more details you will be able to see - here 3 examples:
| Example | Resolution |
|---|---|
 | 16x8, therefore 128 pixels |
 | 32x16, therefore 512 pixels |
 | 64x32, therefore 2048 pixels |
Interlaced / Progressive scan
So, now that you know what resolution is, we can speak about HDTV.
First of all you have to know that the normal PAL standard that we're using with cable TV since so many years has a resolution of 720x576, which are in total 414'720 pixels - DVDs use the same. Additionally the single images, so called frames, that build up an animation are interlaced, which means that for each single image (frame) of the animation, only the odd or the even lines of the animation are displayed. This doesn't happen with Progressive scan, which displays for each frame the full image. It looks like this:
| Interlaced | Progressive |
|---|---|
 | |
Nowadays you see on most of the Plasma and LCD TVs the simbol "HD ready". Most "normal" people think that the TVs that carry that symbol will be perfect for any kind of high definition material - wrong. The High Definition TV standard defines only the minimum input resolution (from the cable, satellite, etc...) that the TV set has to be able to process - but this doesn't necessarily mean that it will as well display it!!!
The real HDTV standard defines four different combinations of resolutions and scans (for the sake of making things easier ;o)):
| Standard | Meaning |
|---|---|
| PAL | Good old PAL has 720x576, therefore 414'720 pixels interlaced |
| 720i | 1280x720, therefore 921'600 pixels interlaced |
| 720p | 1280x720, therefore 921'600 pixels progressive |
| 1080i | 1920x1080, therefore 2'073'600 pixels interlaced |
| 1080p | 1920x1080, therefore 2'073'600 pixels progressive |
Therefore, when buying a TV to be used with the new high definition material, check that at least the "720i"/"720p" is written somewhere or that the resolution is higher than "1280x720". Many currently use "1366x768".
To be honest, if you're wishing for a "wow!" effect when using your new TV set, ignore the 720i standard. This standard is still interlaced and it offers only a double resolution compared to the old PAL - you'll have to really focus in order to see the difference between a DVD and a 720i movie. 720p is already nicer as the animations should be much more "crisp" than with interlaced screens. TVs that support 1080i/p are still very expensive, but if you're not in a hurry to buy a new one, wait until their prices drop.
Check as well that the TV has at least one HDMI connection available. You'll be able to watch high definition movies only from players or receivers that are connected through this cable/interface.
HD from where?
Nice, you just bought a new TV set that supports resolutions up to 1080p! And now? From where can I get such material?
Well, as of now two standards are fighting for victory: "Blue-ray Disc" lead by Sony (used as well for their brand new Playstation 3) and "HD DVD" lead by Microsoft. Personally I am a fan of the first one as it is supposed to support more data on one disc, but the fight is still going on. As of now the movies that were using one of those standards were partially using the old DVD standard and the quality wasn't as good as expected, so we'll have to wait some more time in order to be able to do a full comparison. There are as well a number of satellite providers that are starting offering HD-material, but unluckily I cannot tell you much about this as satellite has always been for me off-limits.
Have a look at this site if you're interested in having a preview of how HD-video looks like (they all look great - more videos are available if you click on the "ntsc" link at the top).
Summary
- If you own an old CRT television and want to switch to something more modern without spending too much, buy a small LCD television. Pay special attention to the refresh rate (<20 ms), the viewing angle (>120 degrees), the contrast (> 400:1) and the colors that are displayed.
- If you want to get a very nice TV for HD movies, go for a Plasma screen with at least 83 cm diagonal. This stuff is quite sensitive, so buy check for a brand with which you had already you some positive experiences - if their Quality Assurance department did a good job with something else, chances are that the quality of the TV is as well good. You don't need to worry about the colors but check that the viewing angle is big, that the resolution is at least the one of 720p (1366x768 is ok) and that you have a HDMI connection. If you choose an LCD one, think as well about the colors and especially about the refresh rate!
- You just won the lottery? Well, nothing stops you - go for 1080p plasma.
XBox 360, PS3 or Wii?
You would like to play games without having first to check if your PC is strong enough to support it, you're scared that installing games will mess up your system or you don't want your kid to format by mistake your harddisk? You definitely need a console. Consoles are (or at least should be) strong enough to have kids hammering on it without suffering too much, don't need (or need very rarely) software updates and games are designed to run as they are meant to as the hardware is always the same (in a PC there is almost an infinite number of combinations of different CPU, GPU, soundcard, joysticks, etc...). And which one should you buy? Well, right now the offer is huge: Playstation 3, the unpronounceable Wii ("wee"? Wee what?), XBox 360 (must be degrees - degrees...of fun?), Playstation Portable, Playstation 2, XBox, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo DS, and perhaps something more. So, what shall I buy?
Well, I'm not interested in portable devices so I won't speak about Nintendo DS, Playstation Portable and so on. And "old" technologies are boring (still a VERY good choice if you want to save a LOT of money!). So, what's left are XBox360, PS3, and Wii - they all present a different approach which I would define as traditional, futuristic and artistic. I will try not to forget the scope that these boxes of transistors have: make the user as happy as possbile with the smallest possible effort - that's probably in the end the scope of our whole life, isn't it?? :o) Ok, probably there is a direct relationship between effort/happiness as often the more effort there is the more happy you are, but this is probably not the right place to speak about this. So, let's go on:
XBox 360
The Xbox 360 was the first one of the three to be launched. The owner is Microsoft. Technically speaking it has
...we see that theoretically the new console should have 5-10 times more power than the old one. Is it really like this? Well, the games I saw were very nice with detailed and fast graphics (see "Gears of war"), but personally I think that its potential hasn't been fully exploited yet and I say this thinking that my personal PC does almost as well having less resources for games that weren't explicitly written for its hardware.
What I can say for this console is that you know what you get.
But hey, what about High Definition? Well, if you're a lucky owner of a HD TV, the console is able to output its games in HD. In order to watch movies in HD you'll have to buy an additional external HD-DVD player which should cost between 100 and 200$.
The problem is that every review I read stated that the fans of the console are pretty loud not nice to have a bzzzzz in the background while watching movies!
Playstation 3
The launch of the Playstation 3 has been a mess. First planned to be released in the whole world before the end of 2006, it ended up being released in November 2006 in the USA and Asia, while the european release was postponed to March 2007 apparently due to manufacturing problems with its blue-ray drive. I really didn't expect this from Sony.
Anyway here are its technical specs:
First of all the GPU perhaps doesn't run faster than other GPUs, but it is for sure able to process more data at once more precisely. This enhances realism as colors are more real and resolution can be higher.
And what about the CPU? Well this CPU is a brand new approach compared to others. Instead of having classical cores like the one used for the Xbox 360, it has just a single core but assisted by 6 SPE units which are somehow simple processors specialized in computing single-precision floating-point functions. Articles describe that in this case the CPU core acts as a controller for the 6 SPE units.
By thinking about household and trying to make a simple comparison between how the processor of the Xbox 360 and the one of the PSP3 work I can say the following:
'Xbox 360:' like having 3 cooks (3 cores) in the kitchen each of them being able to do two tasks at once. The first one fries a piece of meat while drinking some milk, the second one cleans the pavement while checking what's in the fridge and the third one prepares the dining room while counting how many spoons are left. They're all good at what they're doing and they can all do any of the six jobs almost at the same time.
'PS3:' like having 1 cook (1 core) in the kitchen who acts as supervisor for 6 workers (6 SPE). What the cook does is to just prepare the work that has to be done (cleaning, frying, etc... ), distrubute it to the workers, coordinate them and when they're done collect the result (fried meat, clean dishes, etc...) and the whole thing starts over again. What's bad about this solution is that the workers might not be very good in some disciplines as the cook is, but that they can do some other tasks very well (better than the cook). Here the performance that is achieved depends on how well the cook assigns the tasks, which in turn means that it depends on how well the programmer writes the game, so that the CPU can distribute it to the SPEs as well as possible.
I therefore expect games written for the PS3 to look in the end much better than the ones that run on the Xbox 360 or on other machines. And because games for PS3 have to be written in a radical new way, I expect first of all some problems with the first ones that will appear (programmers must first do some experiments and get used to it) and a serious incompatibility between games written for PS3 and the ones written for other consoles or computers.
But ok, in the end, how does it look like now? Well, the games that are out now look nice (e.g. NBA 2K7) but I really think there is much more that can be done. As the console isn't out yet here in Europe, I'll just wait and see... .
High Definition? Well, it's there and the blue-ray player that is integrated in the console is already able to play movies in FullHD (1080p) (reviews state that there is no problem here with noisy fans of player). Unluckily I cannot find yet any real FullHD movies for blue-ray media.
Wii
The hardware of this console won't make you excited: has a 0.7Ghz CPU manufactured by IBM, ~90MB RAM used by CPU and/or GPU, no DVD/blue-ray/Harddisk. Probably my autoradio is more powerful. So, don't expect fancy-looking games.
My first question when I heard what I just wrote was: did Nintendo get insane when they decided to build this piece of hardware or does it hide something more? Yes, the controller!
The controller continuously transmits to the console its position and movement and the game reacts accordingly. This means that finally you'll be able to really go digging, fishing, jumping, throwing stuff in your living room. Here is a piece of the review of Madden NFL 07 of Gamespot:
In most cases, the movements you make to perform an action in the game are completely intuitive. To snap the ball, you flip the Wii Remote upward with a quick snap. To pass, you simply press the button of the desired receiver, and flip the remote forward in a passing motion. When you're carrying the ball, the Nunchuk acts as your body, while the remote acts as your arms. What this means is that by tilting the Nunchuk from side to side, you'll juke in the appropriate direction, and by tilting the remote from side to side, you'll perform a right or left stiff arm. Basic tackles are handled by simply running into other players, but you can level them with big hits by holding down the Z button and pushing both the remote and the Nunchuk forward. Kicks are handled by simply swinging the remote upward after pressing the A button to start a kick. These are just the basics, mind you.
There are tons of motion-control moves to be found here, including moves for lead blocking, catching, swiping at the ball, and pulling off various presnap offensive and defensive moves. It's a complex system, but many of the moves are so easy to use that it becomes second nature after a couple of games. For instance, even though it might seem counterintuitive to use the D pad for receiver assignments, it's just as easy as it ever was with the normal button assignments in other versions of Madden. The running moves are fantastic and feel completely natural. The timing's a bit tricky in the early goings, but once you get a feel for it, it works like a dream. Even better, the game actually brings up icons to signify when you're doing something right or wrong with the running controls. If you're too late for a stiff arm, it tells you. It also occasionally pulls off a "smart" move for you when it thinks it feels a tilt but you haven't necessarily moved the controller over far enough to pull it off right.
This is something new that could really make fun.
Most probably there are just a few games that exploit the potential of the motion-detection of the controller, but I'm sure that new ones will be released soon. A funny thing: apparently Nintendo got a lot of broken controllers back and they're replacing them with stronger ones because of kids throwing them around :o)
High Definition? Forget it. DVD player? You probably already have one.
Conclusion
First of all, the differencies of the price are huge. While you have to hand out 380.- CHF (about 300$) for the Wii (1 game included costs about 80.- CHF) you'll have to save at least 430.- for an Xbox 360 (without games - 1 costs about 90.-) up to 800.- for a PS3 (without games). And now let's do a direct comparison:
You see that in the end I give them all the same rating . How did I come to these conclusions?
Well first of all I expected the Wii to be less expensive - in the end apart from the controller it doesn't offer anything new. Three stars of fun because of the controller and its original games.
XBox 360 has nice graphics and its price is just on the edge of becoming too expensive.
PS3 is definitely the most expensive console ever built in history, but I don't expect it to have super-original titles (with the exception perhaps of few ones like Guitar Hero for PS2).
Which one should you buy? Mmmhh...we're again in the gray zone.
XBox 360
The Xbox 360 was the first one of the three to be launched. The owner is Microsoft. Technically speaking it has
- a central CPU manufactured by IBM called Xenon clocked at 3.2Ghz which contains 3 cores, each of them able to run two threads at once (processors like Intel's Pentium 4 or IBM's PowerPC 5 adopt the same technology others too) which makes possible to run a total of 6 (3 cores x 2 threads per core) threads at once (a thread is an almost independent sub-piece of a program. A text editor could start running in the background a thread for printing, another one for checking the spelling, another one for showing on the screen what the user is typing and so on. They all run at the same time).
- graphics handled by ATI's Xenos GPU apparently clocked at 500Mhz and able to paint 500 million triangles a second (the ATI X850 I have in my PC is about the same perhaps 10% better).
- 512 MB of RAM shared by the CPU and GPU.
- a DVD drive
- (perhaps a 20GB harddisk depending on the version you buy)
| XBox | XBox 360 | |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 0.7Ghz 1 core | 3.2Ghz 3 Cores |
| GPU | ~40m tri/s | 500m tri/s |
| RAM | 64MB shared | 512MB shared |
What I can say for this console is that you know what you get.
But hey, what about High Definition? Well, if you're a lucky owner of a HD TV, the console is able to output its games in HD. In order to watch movies in HD you'll have to buy an additional external HD-DVD player which should cost between 100 and 200$.
The problem is that every review I read stated that the fans of the console are pretty loud not nice to have a bzzzzz in the background while watching movies!
Playstation 3
The launch of the Playstation 3 has been a mess. First planned to be released in the whole world before the end of 2006, it ended up being released in November 2006 in the USA and Asia, while the european release was postponed to March 2007 apparently due to manufacturing problems with its blue-ray drive. I really didn't expect this from Sony.
Anyway here are its technical specs:
- CPU clocked at 3.2 Ghz with one core able to run two threads at once and 6 SPE (Synergistic Processor Element)
- Don't know much about its GPU apart from the fact that it is manufactured by nVidia (named RSX), has proprietary 256MB GDDR3-VRAM and is able to access as well the main memory through a fast connection apparently able to tranfer about 35GB per second. InHeise's article Sony states that its GPU runs twice as fast as the one used for the Xbox 360.
- Apart from the 256MB ram used only by the GPU, there are additional 256MB RAM that can be shared by the CPU and GPU.
- A blue-ray drive
- A harddisk (20 or 60 GB in Europe only the bigger 60GB model will be available)
First of all the GPU perhaps doesn't run faster than other GPUs, but it is for sure able to process more data at once more precisely. This enhances realism as colors are more real and resolution can be higher.
And what about the CPU? Well this CPU is a brand new approach compared to others. Instead of having classical cores like the one used for the Xbox 360, it has just a single core but assisted by 6 SPE units which are somehow simple processors specialized in computing single-precision floating-point functions. Articles describe that in this case the CPU core acts as a controller for the 6 SPE units.
By thinking about household and trying to make a simple comparison between how the processor of the Xbox 360 and the one of the PSP3 work I can say the following:
'Xbox 360:' like having 3 cooks (3 cores) in the kitchen each of them being able to do two tasks at once. The first one fries a piece of meat while drinking some milk, the second one cleans the pavement while checking what's in the fridge and the third one prepares the dining room while counting how many spoons are left. They're all good at what they're doing and they can all do any of the six jobs almost at the same time.
'PS3:' like having 1 cook (1 core) in the kitchen who acts as supervisor for 6 workers (6 SPE). What the cook does is to just prepare the work that has to be done (cleaning, frying, etc... ), distrubute it to the workers, coordinate them and when they're done collect the result (fried meat, clean dishes, etc...) and the whole thing starts over again. What's bad about this solution is that the workers might not be very good in some disciplines as the cook is, but that they can do some other tasks very well (better than the cook). Here the performance that is achieved depends on how well the cook assigns the tasks, which in turn means that it depends on how well the programmer writes the game, so that the CPU can distribute it to the SPEs as well as possible.
I therefore expect games written for the PS3 to look in the end much better than the ones that run on the Xbox 360 or on other machines. And because games for PS3 have to be written in a radical new way, I expect first of all some problems with the first ones that will appear (programmers must first do some experiments and get used to it) and a serious incompatibility between games written for PS3 and the ones written for other consoles or computers.
But ok, in the end, how does it look like now? Well, the games that are out now look nice (e.g. NBA 2K7) but I really think there is much more that can be done. As the console isn't out yet here in Europe, I'll just wait and see... .
High Definition? Well, it's there and the blue-ray player that is integrated in the console is already able to play movies in FullHD (1080p) (reviews state that there is no problem here with noisy fans of player). Unluckily I cannot find yet any real FullHD movies for blue-ray media.
Wii
The hardware of this console won't make you excited: has a 0.7Ghz CPU manufactured by IBM, ~90MB RAM used by CPU and/or GPU, no DVD/blue-ray/Harddisk. Probably my autoradio is more powerful. So, don't expect fancy-looking games.
My first question when I heard what I just wrote was: did Nintendo get insane when they decided to build this piece of hardware or does it hide something more? Yes, the controller!
The controller continuously transmits to the console its position and movement and the game reacts accordingly. This means that finally you'll be able to really go digging, fishing, jumping, throwing stuff in your living room. Here is a piece of the review of Madden NFL 07 of Gamespot:
In most cases, the movements you make to perform an action in the game are completely intuitive. To snap the ball, you flip the Wii Remote upward with a quick snap. To pass, you simply press the button of the desired receiver, and flip the remote forward in a passing motion. When you're carrying the ball, the Nunchuk acts as your body, while the remote acts as your arms. What this means is that by tilting the Nunchuk from side to side, you'll juke in the appropriate direction, and by tilting the remote from side to side, you'll perform a right or left stiff arm. Basic tackles are handled by simply running into other players, but you can level them with big hits by holding down the Z button and pushing both the remote and the Nunchuk forward. Kicks are handled by simply swinging the remote upward after pressing the A button to start a kick. These are just the basics, mind you.
There are tons of motion-control moves to be found here, including moves for lead blocking, catching, swiping at the ball, and pulling off various presnap offensive and defensive moves. It's a complex system, but many of the moves are so easy to use that it becomes second nature after a couple of games. For instance, even though it might seem counterintuitive to use the D pad for receiver assignments, it's just as easy as it ever was with the normal button assignments in other versions of Madden. The running moves are fantastic and feel completely natural. The timing's a bit tricky in the early goings, but once you get a feel for it, it works like a dream. Even better, the game actually brings up icons to signify when you're doing something right or wrong with the running controls. If you're too late for a stiff arm, it tells you. It also occasionally pulls off a "smart" move for you when it thinks it feels a tilt but you haven't necessarily moved the controller over far enough to pull it off right.
This is something new that could really make fun.
Most probably there are just a few games that exploit the potential of the motion-detection of the controller, but I'm sure that new ones will be released soon. A funny thing: apparently Nintendo got a lot of broken controllers back and they're replacing them with stronger ones because of kids throwing them around :o)
High Definition? Forget it. DVD player? You probably already have one.
Conclusion
First of all, the differencies of the price are huge. While you have to hand out 380.- CHF (about 300$) for the Wii (1 game included costs about 80.- CHF) you'll have to save at least 430.- for an Xbox 360 (without games - 1 costs about 90.-) up to 800.- for a PS3 (without games). And now let's do a direct comparison:
| Console | Price | Graphics | Fun | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wii | ++ | + | +++ | ++ |
| XBox 360 | ++ | ++ | ++ | ++ |
| PS3 | + | +++ | ++ | ++ |
You see that in the end I give them all the same rating . How did I come to these conclusions?
Well first of all I expected the Wii to be less expensive - in the end apart from the controller it doesn't offer anything new. Three stars of fun because of the controller and its original games.
XBox 360 has nice graphics and its price is just on the edge of becoming too expensive.
PS3 is definitely the most expensive console ever built in history, but I don't expect it to have super-original titles (with the exception perhaps of few ones like Guitar Hero for PS2).
Which one should you buy? Mmmhh...we're again in the gray zone.
- If you want something for your kids or something unusual without spending too much go for Wii.
- You have some more money, you're more interested in classic titles and want to have fancy graphics? Go for XBox 360 (think about the noise). XBox demonstrates with Viva Piņata that they're able to do something original when they want to.
- You're patient, you plan to buy a FullHD TV for non-plus-ultra graphics and have 1000 bucks that are hanging around? PS3 is what you need.