From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,6a7cfec93e22adfc X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-03-04 20:57:08 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: ada to C++ translation Date: 4 Mar 2002 20:57:07 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <5ee5b646.0203042057.71adad15@posting.google.com> References: <3c81060d$1@giga.realtime.net> <5ee5b646.0203021621.ce5a579@posting.google.com> <3c838b53@giga.realtime.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.14 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1015304228 31863 127.0.0.1 (5 Mar 2002 04:57:08 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 5 Mar 2002 04:57:08 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:20799 Date: 2002-03-05T04:57:08+00:00 List-Id: "Chad R. Meiners" wrote in message news:... > Please search Google groups in comp.lang.ada for Dr. > Dewar's argument why the Beta vs. VHS analogy is not well > formed. To save people the trouble, the summary is as follows. VHS dominated Beta because it was technically superior. In what respect? In respect to the playing time you could get on a tape. Yes, the image was not as good, but the market place spoke loud and clear, playing time was more important than image quality, and Sony failed to understand this. You still see this today in the DVD market. Many DVD's are over compressed, but people prefer to have hours and hours of junk extras to having just the movie at the highest quality. The few "superbit" DVD's that are available show the difference in quality quite clearly (compare for example the Superbit transfer of Air Force One to the standard transfer). Many DVD's have significantly poorer quality than the corresponding laser disks, at least partly because of digital artifacts from excessive compression, but the market place likes the long playing times. (my own taste is to prefer laser disks still in many cases to the corresponding DVD's, though there are exceptions, and perhaps my observations are not really level playing field, since I have an HLD-X9 laser player :-) How's that for getting off the topic completely? [well *someone* thought once again that beta vs VHS was a relevant analogy, sigh] Anyone interested in home theater is welcome to visit me in NYC to see my setup here :-)