Directory

Maximum PC - Features

Seven Ways to Stop Piracy WITHOUT DRM

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:35:48 +0000

It’s a fact of life: Pirates be pirating. Last year, UK Interactive Entertainment estimated a 4:1 ratio of pirated games against those that were legally purchased. What do those numbers mean? A lot, when you’re talking about loss revenue. In interview with our own Nathan Grayson, CEO Marek Španel of Bohemia Interactive admitted that for every legitimate player rocking a rocket launcher in ARMA 2, another 100 players with pirated copies of the game are turned away. That’s a whole lot of unrealized realized cash that should have wound up in Bohemia Interactive’s coffers. As most of our readers will be quick to point out, Bohemia Interactive’s not the only company to have their timbers shivered by digital piracy. As a defence against having their intellectual properties swiped, cracked and traded online like so many baseball cards, a lot of companies have turned to Digital Right Management; a move that seldom does more than temporarily slow pirates and enrage paying customers. Fortunately, there’s a growing number of non-DRM related options out there for developers and software vendors to explore that’ll stymy piracy while respect the rights of their paying users.

Bake in Deterrents

Instead of being Insidious, why not be hilarious when it comes to defending your wares from piracy? That’s what Serious Sam 3 developer Croteam did when faced with the problem of how to discourage the piracy of their creation without saddling their legitimate users with the frustrations that can stem from a healthy dose of DRM. Instead of crippling illegally obtained copies of the game, Croteam opted to make Serious Sam 3 a miserable experience for pirates by inserting an indestructible pink scorpion hellbent on destroying them into the mix. No matter where the players runs or tries to hide, the game’s hilariously powerful enforcer tracks them down and kills them, making it impossible to play the first-person shooter in peace.

Provide Higher Levels of Support & Quality Control

Rage, Fallout New Vegas, Skyrim and Battlefield 3 all have one thing in common: They were all a hot, glitchy mess when they were launched. A lot of pirates justify their pillaging of digital goods by saying that they refuse to pay for a product that doesn’t perform as it was intended to. While release schedules and industry pressures will always be a factor that decides upon when a piece of software made available to consumers, software developers would do well to consider adopting Blizzard’s “it’s done when it’s done” mentality and sit on their products until they’re able to vouch for their performance. If that’s not possible, then employing a robust system for error reporting and resolution is a must: After all, no one wants to pay for something that’s broken right out of the box, and if they do, they want to know what can be done to fix it as quickly as possible.

Perks

In an effort to quell the second-hand sale of their software, a growing number of developers have been offering consumers premium downloadable content perks tied to a single-use code. The Catwoman missions in Batman Arkham Asylum and the cross-game weapons and armour offered by Electronic Arts in a number of the games from their catalog over the past few years are great examples of this. We’re betting gamers would like to see more of this sort of thing—with tastier options than a few cosmetic items for our in-game characters. By routinely doling out fresh in game content to paying customers, development houses would be providing consumers with a compelling reason to pay for their wares. It might not stop piracy dead in its tracks, but it’d definitely boost sales.

Standardize International/Regional Releases

There’s plenty of excellent reasons to stagger the release of a new piece of software on an international scale: Doing so keeps servers from melting into pools of unusable silicon, and preserves the sanity of help desk agents, if only for a little while. That said, if a game’s not available in the states, even though the Italians have had it for a week, you know that someone, somewhere is going to be pirating that bad boy. By giving consumers what they want simultaneously on an international level, developers could strike another reason for illegally downloading an application from the the litany of excuses pirates have been employing for years.

Lower the Cost of Digitally Distributed Software

Placing a software product in a physical marketplace is a costly undertaking, matter how you cut it. Product production, art and marketing, shipping—they all cost a goodly sum of dollars that wind up getting factored into the retail cost of a piece of boxed software, thus forcing consumers to decide between buying groceries for the rest of the month or investing in a new application. For some reason—let’s call it crazed avarice—digitally distributed iterations of the same software often costs the same as their boxed up, marked up cousins. Were software developers to dramatically lower the price of their digitally distributed wares, it’d be an uphill slog for pirates to complain about the market value cost of what they’re swiping. Sure, lower prices for digitally distributed wares means a less robust bottom line, but some cash is better than none, and where piracy is concerned, no cash gleaned from the sweat of your programer’s brows is likely exactly what you’ll wind up with.

Make an Effort to Actively Engage Your Community

Friends don’t steal from friends. Friends have your back. Whenever possible, you want your customers to be your friends. It doesn’t pay to get locked into an adversarial relationship with the people responsible for giving you money. Developers would do well to get to know and understand the concerns of their market. Insomuch as it’s possible, uncover the reasons why your market base feels compelled to pirate your products and do your best to address them. Listen to your customer’s frustrations and concerns, and whenever possible, provide them with the help they need and deserve. As the old adage suggests: Respect earns respect. While you might not be able to obliterate the piracy of your products entirely, a modicum of concern for your customers could help to reduce it.

Nuke Them From Orbit (It’s the Only Way to Be Sure)

You’ve tried lowering your prices. You’ve opted to forgo Digital Rights Management measures in favour of introducing downloadable incentives to paying customers and tormenting pirates with a frustrating in-app nemesis. Simultaneously releasing your software across all regions? Been there, done that. Hell, in an attempt to curb pirating, you’ve even gone so far as to drastically reduce the online price of your software. Sadly, none of it has managed to make a dent in your company’s shrinkage you’d been hoping for. At this point, you can keep on keeping on and hope that your non-DRM related anti-piracy measures and hope that they eventually gain traction, or sue the bejeezus out of anything that moves. Sadly, neither solution will be the cure-all you’re looking for. DRM is, well it’s DRM. Hated by the masses and viewed as a challenge by dedicated hackers, it’s only a matter of time until any Digital Rights Management solution is circumvented.

What about lawsuits, you ask hopefully?

As with most legal matters, suing the individuals who pirate your products is more of a marathon than a sprint. Take CD Projekt Red, the development house behind The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings, for example. Since it’s release in 2011, over 4.5 million copies of the PC game were illegally downloaded, putting CD Projekt Red in an ugly fiscal position, to say the least. In response to the rampant piracy they were being subjected to, the Polish development studio tracked down a large number of alleged pirates of the game and demanded they be paid for the the use of the software, or face legal prosecution. Great idea, right? Not so much: In the first few weeks of January, the development house announced that they would be discontinuing their legal crusade against those that would dare to pirate their game, chiefly due to the fact that the only thing that seems to enrage gamers more than DRM is the prospect of a shaky, difficult to support lawsuit based on the art—not science, mind you—of IP tracking.

If there’s a final, definitive solution to online piracy that doesn’t in some way involve Digital Rights Management, it has yet to be found. We can only hop that when such a solution is implemented, it’s one that’s as just to a product’s paying end users as it is to the companies that designed it.

Journey to the Center of the CPU: 15 Gorgeous Closeups of Microprocessors

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:33:09 +0000

Mmm…chips. So darned tasty, such a perfect accompaniment to a frosty glass of beer on a hot summer afternoon. But do any of us really need to see a microscopic view of what goes on inside those yummy spud slabs? Hell no! Most of us are too terrified to even read the list of ingredients.

Computer chips, on the other hand, are ripe for a little up close and personal examination. Particularly the one chip that towers above all others—the big, bad CPU. We know there are millions, and often billions, of transistors packed inside each and every modern-day processor. This in itself is a testament not only to man's obsession with miniaturization but his unstoppable thirst for power. But there's other stuff too—silicon wafers; dielectric insulators; copper electroplating; a high-speed, multi-layered highway of interconnections; and assorted unit-specific bits and pieces.

Wanna see what it all looks like? Check out the gallery below!

Head to Head: Amazon Kindle Fire vs. Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:24:06 +0000

If you can’t beat Apple’s iPad, change the rules of the game. Amazon and Barnes & Noble are taking a bath on sales of the $199 Kindle Fire and the $249 Nook Tablet, respectively, and making up for it with profits on sales of electronic merchandise (e-books, videos, music, and apps). The strategy has succeeded in moving a lot of hardware, with each company on track to sell millions of units (although the ratio of Kindle Fire to Nook Tablet sales is greatly in Amazon’s favor so far). Both tablets feature nearly identical 7-inch, 1024x600 LCDs and rely on Wi-Fi for connectivity. Which should tempt you away from the high-end tablets? Only a bloody-knuckled deathmatch will tell.

Like the Nook, the Kindle Fire experience relies on your burning desire for consuming magazines, books, videos, and more through its compact form factor.

At 14.1 ounces, the wider, longer, thinner Nook Tablet weighs a half-ounce less than the Fire.

Round 1: Design

If a plain black slab with a screen is your cup of tea, then drink in the Kindle Fire. Its headphone output and power button (its lone hardware control) are uncomfortably close to its Micro USB port (used for charging and file transfers) across the bottom of the tablet.

No doubt the prettier option, the Nook Tablet sports a raised silver-gray bezel and coated backplate that, in concert with the hollowed-out corner for the microSD slot, give the Nook a visual flare and render it the grippier tablet. The Nook’s hardware volume controls and menu button also score it points. The Kindle Fire offers two speakers to the Nook’s one; but the difference is negligible, and only the Nook offers a built-in microphone.

Winner: Nook Tablet

Round 2: User Interface

Both tablets break a sweat obliterating the UI confines of the Android 2.3 OS they’re built on. The Kindle Fire’s bookshelf-themed homepage displays your favorite and most recently visited web pages, apps, documents, and more, with menu tabs labeled Books, Music, Video, Apps, Web, and so on. It’s a departure from the stock Android UI, but it’s more user friendly than the Nook Tablet’s storefront-feeling UI, which also insists on using “shelves” to display your various media, apps, and files.

The Nook Tablet, on the other hand, preserves more Android functionality, including customizable home screens that help you bypass its convoluted Library shelves. The Nook Tablet’s browser displays more web-page content per screen; and we like its hard menu button, which calls up a shortcut menu for apps, URLs, settings, and more.

Winner: Nook Tablet

Round 3: Storage

You might think that the Nook Tablet’s 16GB of onboard memory combined with its microSD slot means game over for the 8GB, nonexpandable Kindle Fire. But the Nook Tablet reserves most of its onboard memory for content purchased from Barnes & Noble, leaving you just 1GB for everything else. The playing field levels further when you take into account Amazon’s free cloud storage for all Amazon media purchases, plus the 5GB of free cloud storage the company provides for storing your files.

The Nook Tablet can accommodate a microSD card with up to 32GB of capacity, but no card of any capacity is included in the purchase price. What’s more, you must use a computer to transfer files from a memory card to its internal memory. Such lameness defies description, leaving this round a push.

Winner: Tie

Round 4: Performance

While both contestants enter the ring armed with 1GHz dual-core CPUs, the Nook Tablet packs 1GB RAM while the Fire has just 512MB. The Nook Tablet’s additional memory resulted in smoother screen refreshes while reading, web browsing, playing games, streaming video, and so on. Netflix video streams looked much better on the Nook Tablet, and it delivered slightly longer battery life: We streamed Netflix videos on it for more than six hours. B&N’s device delivered better touchscreen responsiveness, too; there were far too many times when we had to repeatedly tap the Fire’s screen before it would register.

Amazon’s much-hyped Silk browser put a hurt on the Nook Tablet’s browser in terms of the SunSpider and BrowserMark benchmarks, consistently outperforming the Nook by 25 to 40 percent. In real-world use, however, the Nook Tablet loaded websites as fast or faster than the Fire.

Winner: Nook Tablet

Round 5: Content Ecosystem

Barnes & Noble claims to stock “thousands” of apps in the Nook store. After browsing the entire site, we’d say “hundreds” is more like it. A vast number of popular Android apps are MIA here, and many apps that are free in other marketplaces must be purchased for the Nook Tablet. Unlike the Fire, the Nook Tablet will not sideload apps, either; it refuses to even recognize .apk files. Amazon’s app store, by comparison, is a Shangri-La of software choices. While it could be argued that the Kindle and Nook e-reader systems are roughly equal in both features and inventory, Amazon’s music and video marketplace is far more robust, and Amazon has the aforementioned cloud storage plus superior tools for synching your purchases to multiple devices. And for $79 per year, Amazon Prime serves up thousands of free movies and TV shows, Kindle book borrowing, and free two-day shipping for Amazon orders.

Winner: Tie

And the Winner Is…

The Nook Tablet was ahead on points going into the final round, but the Kindle Fire unleashed a flurry of value-added blows in the form of Amazon’s cloud storage, massive music and video library (available for sale or rent), and decent app store that knocked the Nook into sweet oblivion. Superior hardware empowers the Nook Tablet to beat the Kindle Fire in some areas (particularly video streaming), but Barnes & Noble’s device is just too limited to be a full-featured tablet. Our opinion might change once we can jailbreak it and install a custom ROM, but the Kindle Fire is the better tablet right out of the box.

Ultrabook Ultra-Roundup: 4 Top-Notch Notebooks Reviewed and Compared

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:24:07 +0000

Will this new class of slim, trim, relatively affordable portables be the Next Big Thing?

You’d have to actively be avoiding the tech media over the past several months not to have heard about Ultrabooks. Their coming has garnered a boatload of buzz, fueled in no small part by Intel’s $300 million fund to get hardware and software makers behind the cause.

Ultrabooks are Intel’s answer to the spread of ARM-based tablets—a way to capture the hearts and minds of the masses with an x86-based portable device (of the Intel persuasion, natch). To that end, Ultrabooks are required to meet a few key “desirability” standards. They must be slim, lightweight, have generous battery life, and boot and resume from hibernation in brisk fashion. It’s also understood they should look cool. As Apple products so clearly demonstrate, style sells. And sure enough, Ultrabooks—at least those that have debuted so far—are heartily infused with MacBook Air influence.

So are these new, “cool” devices the next must-have products? Is all the hoopla warranted? We review the first four Ultrabooks to kick off the category. All are 13.3 inch models, but each brings its own brand of hot-newness to the table, with varying degrees of persuasiveness, as you’ll see on the following pages.

Acer Aspire S3

Priced right, but far from perfect

When Ultrabooks were first announced it seemed doubtful that manufacturers could turn out these wannabe MacBook Airs at the sub-$1,000 price Intel was promising. Acer put those doubts to rest with the Aspire S3, which debuted at $900. Given its relative affordability, it’s not surprising that the Aspire S3 makes a few compromises in its Air aspirations.

Measuring .68 inches at its thickest, the ever-so-slightly wedged three-pound chassis is matte silver throughout, save for its black rubber hinge and gray keyboard. An attractive brushed-aluminum lid lends the S3 a solid feel and a classy countenance—at least when the notebook is closed. The inside and underneath are all plastic. Nevertheless, the S3 feels rigid when held by one corner, and we like that it opens almost 180 degrees.

Overall, the S3’s island keyboard is comfortable to type on, although the key press is a bit shallow and many of the oft-used keys around the periphery, such as Enter, Shift, Backspace, etc. are truncated. That’s particularly true of the arrow keys, which also double as volume and screen-brightness controls. Using the S3’s unified clickpad, which supports multitouch functions, didn’t give us any woes.

Closed, the S3 cuts a more impressive figure, with its handsome brushed metal lid on display.

Port selection is spare, a quality of all Ultrabooks, and here consists of a headphone/mic, a media reader, HDMI, and two USB 2.0 ports—the S3 is the only Ultrabook in this roundup not to feature USB 3.0.

Acer tapped the Core i5-2467M for processing duty. While the base clock is just 1.6GHz, it can Turbo up to 2.3GHz, and thus performed better in most benchmarks than the 2.13GHz Core i7-640LM Arrandale CPU in our zero-point ultraportable rig. The S3’s lagging score in Quake III is no doubt the result of its single-channel RAM, which is particularly problematic in older titles. Conversely, its score in Quake 4 demonstrates the advances of Sandy Bridge’s integrated graphics, although the gaming chops of any ultraportable out right now will be pretty limited.

In our video playback test, the S3’s battery lasted five hours; it recharged to full capacity in half that time. Videos themselves looked crisp and color-accurate on the S3’s 1366x768 glossy screen if the screen was tilted just so. Otherwise, color and detail were diminished to varying degrees.

The S3 is unique among these Ultrabooks for featuring a mechanical hard drive, but it’s paired with 20GB of NAND flash for SSD caching, using Intel’s Smart Response Technology (SRT). Thus, your most-often used programs benefit from the SSD’s faster performance. The S3’s boot time of approximately 39 seconds, however, was a good deal slower than that of the SSD competition.

Acer also offers a $1,300 S3 model with a Core i7 and a 240GB SSD. But truth be told, the body is better suited to the lower-cost category, where it must make due with the modest praise of being a decent budget option.

$900, www.acer.com

Acer Aspire S3

Sub-$1K; attractive, sturdy lid; decent performance.

Plastic insides don't match aluminum outside; no USB 3.0; uses HDD; narrow vertical viewing angle.

Specifications

CPU	1.6GHz Intel Core i5-2467M
RAM	4GB DDR3/1333
Chipset	Intel UM67
Display	13.3-inch, LED-backlit, 1366x768
Storage	Hitachi 320GB HDD, 20GB SSD
Connectivity	2 USB 2.0, HDMI, headphone/mic, media reader, webcam
Lap/Carry	3 lbs, 0.3 oz / 3 lbs, 11.5 oz

BENCHMARKS

	Zero Point	Acer Aspire S3
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec)	1,260	1200 (5.0%)
Photoshop CS3 (sec)	183.6	162.5 (13.0%)
Proshow Producer (sec)	1,533	1,497 (2.4%)
MainConcept (sec)	2,530	2,591 (-2.4%)
Quake III (fps)	191.7	168.8 (-11.9%)
Quake 4 (fps)	17	38.5 (126.5%)
Battery Life (min)	240	252 (5.0%)

Our zero-point ultraportable is an HP EliteBook 2540p with a 2.13GHz Intel Core i7-640LM, 4GB of DDR3/1333 RAM, integrated graphics, a 250GB, 5,400rpm hard drive, and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Toshiba Portégé Z835

Lightest load, lowest price, least compelling

Toshiba does Acer $100 better, offering the Z835, a Best Buy exclusive, for $800. Its low price is matched by its light weight. At two pounds, 6.6 ounces, it beats all the others here by a good half-pound. But the Z835 also looks and feels the cheapest of the bunch. Its construction seems less solid—particularly the lid, which has a disconcerting amount of flex.

The Z835’s dark-gray and black color scheme is peppered with chrome accents that look a bit dated. All the keys on the Z835’s island keyboard are normal width, but they are also slightly squat, which takes getting used to, as does the shallow travel of all keyboards of this ilk. The keyboard’s backlighting is a surprising feature at this price—and not one currently found on the more expensive Ultrabook models. A traditional touchpad of decent size with discrete right and left buttons stands out among the other Ultrabooks’ clickpads.

The Z835’s hardware specs are another reflection of its low price. The centerpiece is a 1.4GHz Core i3-2367M, which doesn’t benefit from any Turbo boost whatsoever. This renders the Z835 the slowest in the benchmarks of all four Ultrabooks, and even slower than our elderly zero-point, except in Quake 4, thanks to Sandy Bridge graphics.

Only the Portégé Z835 offers a backlit keyboard—a standard feature of the MacBook Air.

The Z835 also skimps on storage capacity, offering just 128GB. It’s full-SSD, but that’s not saying much. The Toshiba NAND flash coupled with a Toshiba controller mustered just 187MB/s sequential reads in CrystalDiskMark—half the speed and then some of the other two SSDs in this roundup. More pathetic still, the Z835’s sequential write speed of 49.23 is 40 percent slower than that of the HDD in Acer’s S3.

On the brighter side, the Z835 offers the most generous array of ports, with full-size VGA in addition to full-size HDMI, two USB 2.0 ports plus one USB 3.0, and an Ethernet port—a rarity in this roundup.

The Z835’s glossy 1366x768 screen isn’t spectacular, but it reproduced pictures and videos without noticeable flaws and the viewing angle is thankfully wider than that of the Acer S3. In our battery rundown test, the Z835 played a continuously looping video for close to five hours. It took about three hours to completely recharge. It booted to Windows in 24 seconds, which isn’t bad.

Even more so than Acer’s S3, the Z835 deserves credit for offering such a svelte and exceedingly portable form factor for its price. But reaching that price entailed compromises—a few too many, in our opinion, to grant this product more than a mild endorsement.

$800, www.toshiba.com

Toshiba Portégé Z835

Very slim and lightweight for the price; lots of ports.

Too underpowered; sorry SSD speeds; flimsy lid.

Specifications

CPU	1.4GHz Intel Core i3-2367M
RAM	4GB DDR3/1333
Chipset	Intel HM65
Display	13.3-inch, 1366x768
Storage	Toshiba 128GB SSD
Connectivity	1 USB 3.0, 2 USB 2.0, Ethernet, HDMI, VGA, headphone/mic, media reader, webcam, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi
Lap/Carry	2 lbs, 6.6 oz / 3 lbs, 1.2 oz

BENCHMARKS

	Zero Point	Toshiba Portégé Z835
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec)	1,260	1,620 (-22.2%)
Photoshop CS3 (sec)	183.6	220.5 (-16.7%)
Proshow Producer (sec)	1,533	2,075 (-26.1%)
MainConcept (sec)	2,530	3,660 (-30.9%)
Quake III (fps)	191.7	159.3 (-16.9%)
Quake 4 (fps)	17	38.4 (125.9%)
Battery Life (min)	240	297 (23.8%)

Our zero-point ultraportable is an HP EliteBook 2540p with a 2.13GHz Intel Core i7-640LM, 4GB of DDR3/1333 RAM, integrated graphics, a 250GB, 5,400rpm hard drive, and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Asus Zenbook UX31E

Now we're talking turkey

With the Asus UX31E, all the fuss about Ultrabooks starts to make sense. Its all-metal chassis, cut from a single sheet of aluminum, is undeniably handsome. And while this attractive metal wedge that’s just .71 inches at its thickest brings to mind the fine craftsmanship of a MacBook Air, it’s by no means a knockoff. The UX31E possesses a unique character that’s admirable in its own right. And at $1,050, it’s $250 less than its similarly spec’d Apple counterpart.

Silver inside and out, save for a black bezel around the screen and black backing to the keyboard, the UX31E sports a faintly etched pattern of concentric circles on its lid, while the deck is adorned with a pattern of brushed vertical lines, interrupted only by a spacious clickpad. While clickpads can be persnickety and frustrating to use, we didn’t have any issues with the pad on the UX31E. As for the keyboard, the size and spacing of the keys feels right, and although the key press is shallow, there’s a satisfying click at the end of each depression.

Another welcome feature of the UX31E is its 1600x900 screen resolution, besting the 1366x768 of the other screens in this roundup and the 1440x900 of the 13.3-inch MacBook Air. Like all the others, the UX31E’s screen is glossy; it produces a bright, vivid picture and holds up well off axis.

The two speakers embedded in the chassis are powered by Bang & Olufsen ICEpower tech and put out surprisingly full audio for a device of these dimensions.

Internally, the UX31E also impresses. Its Core i5-2557M proc is clocked at 1.7GHz, with a max Turbo frequency of 2.7GHz. Combine that with a SATA 6Gb/s SSD and you’ve got a machine that posts healthy gains over our zero-point in the benchmarks and some of the fastest scores in this roundup. To put it in perspective, the UX31E had sequential read and write speeds of 463MB/s and 341MB/s, respectively—pretty darn close to the spec’s max bandwidth. Sadly, the SSD is just 128GB.

The UX31E’s battery life surpassed five hours in our tests. It recharged to 50 percent in less than an hour, and reached a full charge in three. Booting to Windows took 23 seconds.

Asus throws in a tasteful, brown padded carrying case for the UX31E, as well as a matching pouch that holds two connector dongles: USB-to-Ethernet and Mini VGA-to-VGA. Yes, Mini VGA is built into the unit (who knew it even existed?), along with Mini HDMI, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, headphone, mic, and a media reader.

All told, the UX31E weighs in at three pounds, 2.1 ounces (or 8.3 ounces, if you add the power supply). If going toe-to-toe with Apple’s Air on both design and specs, while beating its price, is what it takes to achieve product hotness, then Asus has done it.

$1,050, www.asus.com

Asus Zenbook UX31E

Stunning design; strong performance; SATA 6Gb/s SSD.

128GB storage and no way to upgrade it.

Specifications

CPU	1.7GHz Intel Core i5-2557M
RAM	4GB DDR3/1333
Chipset	Intel QS67
Display	13.3-inch, LED backlit@1600x900
Storage	SanDisk U100 128GB SSD
Connectivity	1 USB 2.0, 1 USB 3.0, Mini VGA, Mini HDMI, headphone, mic, webcam, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi
Lap/Carry	3 lbs, 2.1 oz / 3 lbs, 8.3 oz

BENCHMARKS

	Zero Point	Asus Zenbook UX31E
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec)	1,260	1,080 (16.7%)
Photoshop CS3 (sec)	183.6	168.3 (9.1%)
Proshow Producer (sec)	1,533	1,347 (13.8%)
MainConcept (sec)	2,530	2,354 (7.5%)
Quake III (fps)	191.7	217.3 (13.4%)
Quake 4 (fps)	17	46.6 (174.1%)
Battery Life (min)	240	310 (29.2%)

Our zero-point ultraportable is an HP EliteBook 2540p with a 2.13GHz Intel Core i7-640LM, 4GB of DDR3/1333 RAM, integrated graphics, a 250GB, 5,400rpm hard drive, and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Lenovo IdeaPad U300s

Hits all the right notes except price

Lenovo also brings its A-game to the Ultrabook party. And well it should, since it’s asking almost $1,500 for the IdeaPad U300s. That’s premium, business-ultraportable price territory. It’s therefore apropos that the U300s has the most businessy aesthetic, although not at the sake of sleek design. Like the Asus UX31E and the MacBook Air, the U300s is crafted from a single-sheet of aluminum. It eschews the wedge form factor established by Apple and instead uniquely mimics the lines of a hardbound book, with the top and bottom edges protruding slightly all the way around the perimeter, the way a book’s covers protrude past the pages. It makes for a distinct and pleasing silhouette.

Both bottom and top are dark gray—Graphite Gray, to use Lenovo’s parlance (Clementine Orange is also an option)—while the deck and screen bezel are matte silver. The inside is clean and minimalist, consisting of a power button, island keyboard, and large clickpad. The Shift, Enter, Caps, Tab, and Backspace keys are all slightly shortened, but typing on the U300s was a mostly comfortable, trouble-free affair, and the glass-surfaced clickpad is sublime.

We love that the U300s's deck is free of third-party branding, but that tack helps pay the rent.

Ports include one USB 3.0, one USB 2.0, full-size HDMI, and a headphone/mic combo. Lenovo is alone in this pack for excluding a media reader. A small button on the notebook’s left side launches Lenovo’s OneKey Recovery, which walks you through creating a system image that can be launched from the same button should your system fail. The U300s also supports Intel’s Wireless Display technology. So with a WiDi adapter (purchased separately) attached to your TV, you can stream any content from your notebook via Intel’s software.

Enough with the extras, how 'bout the hard stuff? The U300s is powered by a Core i7-2677M, which is clocked just a hair above the Core i5 in the Asus UX31E, at 1.8GHz. The two units traded wins in the benchmarks, although the U300s performed significantly better than the UX31E in Photoshop, for inexplicable reasons. In Quake III, the U300s suffered the fate of all single-channel RAM configs. For storage, Lenovo taps a comparatively spacious 256GB SSD. It’s a SATA 3Gb/s device using a year-old J Micron controller, but it comes close to maximum bandwidth, and subjectively speaking, the U300s feels plenty snappy. It was the quickest to boot to Windows, posting 17 seconds flat.

The U300s’s screen quality is on par with the UX31E’s, albeit at a lower res of 1366x768. Battery life for the two was also similar, exceeding five hours. Lenovo, however, had the speediest recharge, hitting 50 percent in 30 minutes.

So, yes, the U300s offers a good deal of quality for the price. But it’s nonetheless costly, and by contrast, the Asus UX31E is the better Ultrabook value.

$1,495, www.lenovo.com

Lenovo IdeaPad U300s

Attractive design; high quality; Core i7 and 256GB SSD.

Expensive; no media reader; lower-res screen than UX31E.

Specifications

CPU	1.8GHz Intel Core i7-2677M
RAM	4GB DDR3/1333
Chipset	Intel QS67
Display	13.3-inch, 1366x768
Storage	256GB SSD
Connectivity	1 USB 2.0, 1 USB 3.0, HDMI, headphone/mic, webcam, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi
Lap/Carry	2 lbs, 14.7 oz / 3 lbs, 8.4 oz

BENCHMARKS

	Zero Point	Lenovo IdeaPad U300s
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec)	1,260	1,140 (10.5%)
Photoshop CS3 (sec)	183.6	111 (65.4%)
Proshow Producer (sec)	1,533	1,396 (9.8%)
MainConcept (sec)	2,530	2,259 (12.0%)
Quake III (fps)	191.7	185.3 (-3.3%)
Quake 4 (fps)	17	41.9 (146.5%)
Battery Life (min)	240	310 (29.2%)

Our zero-point ultraportable is an HP EliteBook 2540p with a 2.13GHz Intel Core i7-640LM, 4GB of DDR3/1333 RAM, integrated graphics, a 250GB, 5,400rpm hard drive, and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Inside Out: Anatomy of An Ultrabook

On the whole, Ultrabooks aren't the most upgrade-friendly devices. Of the four we reviewed, only the Asus and the Toshiba models seem to grant interior access that doesn't entail potential damage to the machine—and even those devices each require the removal of 12 screws, plus the use of a tiny security bit, in the case of the Toshiba. Here's what Toshiba's Z835 packs under the hood.

USB 3.0: Like most of the Ultrabooks here, the Z835 features USB 3.0. It comes compliments of an NEC controller.
CPU: To save space, the Z835's Core i3-2367 uses a ball-grid array, soldered to the board, rather than a higher-profile socket. That negates a future CPU upgrade.
RAM: The memory configuration is interesting, consisting of a 2GB SO-DIMM that can easily be upgraded, as well as 2GB of memory soldered to the board.
SSD: A standard mSATA drive allows a future swap out—a nice consolation since the 128GB Toshiba drive that comes with the Z835 is small, as well as slow by SSD standards.

The Upshot on Ultrabooks

Where do they stand in the "must-have" product universe?

Now that we’ve seen what Ultrabooks have to offer, we can fairly say the category has promise. Intel’s success with Sandy Bridge, its strong desire to keep the ARM crowd at bay, and its deep pockets have spurred impressive strides in device development—shoot, two months ago, we couldn’t have imagined an ultraportable as capable and attractive as Asus’s UX31E fetching anything less than $1,400. To see a first-gen product of that caliber hovering just above a grand says something.

Are Ultrabooks ready to overtake tablets? Probably not—right now. Granted, even the current crop’s mix of stylishness, generous battery life, fast boots, and real PC performance will give some tablet shoppers pause when weighing the pros and cons of each device class. But the prices of Ultrabooks are still a little high (particularly for the more lustworthy models) to compete with $200-$500 tabbies.

And then there’s that little matter of touch. For the time being, Ultrabooks don’t come with touchscreens—a primary factor in tablets’ appeal. Nor do Ultrabooks hook into an app marketplace. Expect those things to change with the release of Windows 8 in 2012. Win8’s Metro UI will not only look the part of a mobile OS, but also be optimized for touch, and rumor has it the OS will include an integrated app store.

Yes, a touchscreen has the potential to add to an Ultrabook’s cost, but Intel is already working on that. At the Intel Capital Global Summit in November, CEO Paul Otellini made it clear that touch-based Ultrabooks will be a big focus for the company in 2012. Part of that includes getting the cost of touch down. Intel’s $300 million Ultrabook fund will help with that. Ultimately, Otellini wants to see Windows 8 touch-based Ultrabooks starting at $699.

Ivy Bridge will also figure prominently in Ultrabooks’ future. Intel’s next CPU will be manufactured on a 22nm tri-gate process, making it more power efficient than Sandy Bridge chips, and it will feature an entirely new graphics core that’s reportedly going to offer 50 percent better performance than Sandy Bridge in 3D games and feature DirectX 11 support, to boot.

All told, there’s potential here for these devices to be tablet killers—if value and functionality mean anything. For now, though, Ultrabooks should at least make portable-PC shoppers happy. All the models we reviewed here represent a big shift in the laptop landscape, from design, to form factor, to price. Yes, Asus’s UX31E offers the most compelling mix of all these factors, but we believe that Ultrabooks as a whole have serious merit as ultraportable general-purpose PCs.

BENCHMARKS

	Acer S3	Toshiba Z835	Asus UX31E	Lenovo U300s
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec)	1,200	1,620	1,080*	1,140
Photoshop CS3 (sec)	162.5	220.5	168.3	111*
Proshow Producer (sec)	1,497	2,075	1,347*	1,396
MainConcept (sec)	2,591	3,660	2,354	2,259*
CrystalDiskMark
Seq. read	85.33	187	462.5*	248
Seq. write	83.95	49.23	341.4*	187.3
Quake III (fps)	168.8	159.3	217.3*	185.3
Quake 4 (fps)	38.5	38.4	46.6*	41.9
Battery Life (min)	252	297	310	312*

WD TV Live Vs. NetGear NeoTV: Streamer Showdown

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:23:40 +0000

One of these things is not like the other

Media streamers like the Western Digital WD TV Live and Netgear NeoTV make just a little less sense than they did a couple of years ago. In those days, they were the perfect alternative to stuffing a home theater PC into your entertainment center. These days, you can get nearly all the same functionality from a new Blu-ray player or a Smart TV.

On the other hand, the latest incarnations of these two products cost less than a new Blu-ray player, and they’re several orders of magnitude cheaper than a new HDTV (or a home theater PC, for that matter). And while they do have some features in common, the NeoTV delivers far fewer features than the WD TV Live and is priced accordingly, so we’re not making a direct head-to-head comparison between the two here.

Western Digital WD TV Live

For a company whose primary business is manufacturing hard drives, Western Digital sure knows a lot about digital media and how to stream it over a network. Each succeeding generation of the company’s WD TV Live product has led the market in terms of features, price, and performance, and this one is no different.

With this incarnation, WD adds several new services (including Hulu Plus and Spotify), a collection of simple online games, an integrated Wi-Fi adapter, and even the ability to decode Dolby TrueHD. Unlike the pricier WD TV Live Hub, which remains in Western Digital’s lineup, this product does not include any local storage. But it is equipped with two USB 2.0 ports, so you can easily connect a portable drive. You can also connect a USB keyboard, which makes initial setup (entering Wi-Fi and network user IDs and passwords, for instance) considerably easier than hunting and pecking using the remote and the onscreen keyboard.

The third-generation WD TV Live is thinner and more capable than previous models, and the remote is significantly better.

Most people will connect the WD TV Live to their entertainment system using the HDMI 1.4 port (you’ll need to provide your own cable), but the device will happily accommodate older equipment with its analog A/V and digital S/PDIF outputs. There’s also an Ethernet port in the back panel, but the integrated 802.11b/g/n wireless client adapter proved plenty fast for streaming video at 720p—an impressive achievement, considering that we tested the box in a room-within-a-room home theater at Maximum PC Lab North. We needed a hardwired connection to stream video at 1080p. Image quality was excellent.

The remote is easily the best that WD has come up with so far, with a molded grip that feels very natural in either hand. We needed to bend our thumb to reach the alpha-numeric keypad on the bottom half the device, but we seldom use those buttons, anyway. We used the home, arrow, mute, and transport (play/pause, stop, fast forward/rewind, and skip forward/back) buttons far more frequently, and those are all within easy reach. The remote also has four shortcut buttons—labeled A, B, C, and D—that can be custom programmed.

Plenty of device support here, with both analog and digital audio and video outputs.

Western Digital offers a strong collection of online movie and music services in addition to the new ones mentioned earlier. You’ll find all the old standbys here, including Netflix, YouTube, and Pandora; but you’ll also get CinemaNow, Blockbuster on Demand, Live365, and several others. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to tap what we consider to be the best online, on-demand movie service of them all: Vudu. Western Digital does deserve praise for its broad media file and container file support, which includes the video standards AVI, MKV, MPEG-1/2/4, h.264, VOB, and M2TS (the container for Blu-ray movies); the audio formats AAC, FLAC, OGG, and MP3 (including 24-bit/48kHz FLAC); and the digital photo formats BMP, JPEG, and PNG. The device supports playlists and subtitles, too.

The WD TV Live is the best full-featured media streamer you can buy today, but we’d like it even more if it included Vudu.

Western Digital WD TV Live
$120 street
www.wdc.com

Netgear NeoTV NTV200

Craving a spot at the commercial online media buffet, but not at all interested in ripping your own media? Netgear has just the right dish. The NeoTV taps your broadband connection to serve up Netflix, Vudu, Pandora, YouTube, Picasa, and plenty of other online services; but it can’t tap media stored on your own network, and it doesn’t have any USB ports to access local storage.

We initially considered this to be a major disappointment: If you own a late-model Blu-ray player or a Smart TV, the NeoTV has very little to offer. But plenty of us haven’t made such investments, and if online entertainment is all you’re looking for, Netgear’s device costs $40 less than Western Digital’s. You’re not getting as many features, but you’re also not being forced to pay for features you won’t utilize.

Anyone considering buying one of Roku's streaming boxes should take a long look at what Netgear has to offer with the NeoTV NTV200.

The NeoTV’s built-in 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi adapter performed just as well as the one inside the WD TV Live—we had no problem streaming Netflix and Vudu movies without wires (although we were once again limited to 720p resolution; we needed to plug in a CAT5 cable to enjoy Vudu movies at 1080p). The only other connectivity features on the box are HDMI and S/PDIF—there’s no support for analog audio or video devices at all.

Netgear provides a very basic remote control with the NeoTV. We have no complaint with the button layout, and we like the clicky, tactile feel it provides much better than the mushy buttons on Western Digital’s controller; but there’s no alpha-numeric keypad for typing search queries (you must use the arrow buttons to navigate an onscreen keyboard), and there’s no mute button. But Netgear redeems itself with a free app that will turn your iPhone or Android phone into a compatible remote. That’s sure to come in handy when the regular remote’s two coin batteries crap out late one evening.

Netgear's app lets you use your smartphone as a remote.

There's also a very good collection of streaming media services on tap. While Western Digital scores a big win with its support for Spotify, Netgear can deliver movies in HD and in surround sound on demand via Vudu. And if you’re a Napster subscriber, you can listen to your tunes on the NeoTV, but not on the WD TV Live. There’s a long list of other less interesting services, including a host of video podcasts (does anyone actually watch those?) and some very basic online games (the same ones that Western Digital offers, including Black Jack Royale, Kaboom, Sudoku, and Texas Hold ‘Em).

Enthusiasts will want more than what the NeoTV delivers, but this is a good product to recommend to friends and family who just want an easy way to stream media from the Internet to their entertainment center.

Netgear NeoTV NTV200
$80
www.netgear.com

Everything You Need To Know About Smart TV

So what do you get if you subscribe? Higher-resolution video, for starters. Hulu content is streamed in “standard definition” (a term Hulu doesn’t define), while Hulu Plus video streams in “high definition” (720p). And while basic Hulu is available only on a computer, Hulu Plus can be streamed to an increasingly wide range of devices. Also, basic Hulu delivers only the five most recent episodes of available TV series, whereas you get entire seasons on Hulu Plus.

Movies generally aren’t one of Hulu’s strengths, but cineastes will revel in the Criterion Collection of films available on Hulu Plus. Criterion is renowned for both the impeccable quality of its film-to-video digital transfers and its supplemental material, including deleted scenes, audio commentaries, and more. This supplemental material isn’t currently available on Hulu Plus, but it’s slated to be included in the future.

Devices with Support Built In

Hulu is available on Windows PCs, but you must be connected to the Internet to watch, and you can’t download and store videos on your machine. Hulu Plus has the same restrictions, but can be streamed to a variety of TVs from Samsung, Sony, and Vizio; various Blu-ray players from Samsung, Sony, and Vizio; TiVo Premiere DVRs; Android smartphones and tablets; networked media players, Roku and Western Digital networked media players; Sony’s Dash and Netbox; Sony's PlayStation 3, Nintendo's Wii, and Microsoft's Xbox 360; iOS devices; and—coming soon—Nintendo's 3DS handheld gaming system.

Pricing

Hulu is free. Hulu Plus costs $7.99 monthly. Videos on both services contain commercial advertising, and you’ll need to register for whichever service you decide to use.

Our Take

We loathe commercials, but they’re a reasonable trade-off for getting triple-A content for free. But having to pay for content and still be forced to watch commercials is something else. Hulu’s free iteration delivers most of what you’ll get on broadcast and subscription TV, so it could well satisfy your needs—provided you don’t mind watching standard-def video on a computer and don’t fall too far behind in a TV series season.

Hulu Plus offers a lot more content, and it’s available on a host of devices that will connect directly to your TV. If you’re looking to cut your ties to a pay TV service, it’s definitely worth $7.99 per month—even with the commercials. Aside from the excellent Criterion Collection, however, Hulu Plus can’t compete with the Netflix movie library.

iTunes Store

What Is It?

Available for both Mac and PC, Apple’s free iTunes application lets you play, organize, and purchase digital music and video. You can also use iTunes to transfer your video purchases to an iPod, iPad, or iPhone, or stream that content to all these devices, as well as to the Apple TV media player. Whereas iTunes music downloads can only be purchased, movies, and TV show episodes can be either purchased or rented.

What's Available?

Apple’s media store offers a comprehensive collection of Hollywood movies, plus TV shows from the major broadcast and cable networks, including Showtime and HBO. Many of the films include what Apple calls iTunes Extras: deleted scenes, making-of documentaries, music videos, and so on. Just be aware that iTunes Extras are viewable only on a computer or via Apple TV.

Most movies and TV episodes are available in either standard or HD (480p and 720p, respectively). Unlike most of the other services discussed here, you can download both rented and purchased content to your computer or Apple device. You must watch rented movies and TV shows within 30 days of downloading. Additionally, you must finish watching a rented movie within 24 hours of clicking the Play button. You have 48 hours to finish watching rented TV shows.

Devices with Support Built In

A TV connected to an Apple TV media player; most iPod models (HD content will require an iPod Touch); iOS devices (HD content will require iPhone 4); Mac or Windows PC (via the iTunes software).

Pricing

To rent newly released movies, you’re typically looking at $3.99 for standard-def, and $4.99 for HD. To buy that same content, you’ll usually pay $14.99 and $19.99, respectively. Most TV shows sell for $1.99 for standard-def and $2.99 for HD.

Our Take

If Apple had its way, you’d only be able to watch iTunes content on Apple products. The company’s almost there now, supporting Windows only because of its huge, dominating installed base. Fortunately, you'll find other video-on-demand services delivering the same content on a wide variety of platforms, including the PC, Android, and iOS. We see very little reason to patronize iTunes these days for anything other than music (and we can recommend plenty of alternatives on that score, too).

Netflix

What Is It?

Netflix started out renting DVDs by mail, but now emphasizes its subscription-based video-streaming service over renting physical discs. As a Netflix subscriber, you can stream as many movies and TV episodes as you like, but you can't download the videos to any device.

What's Available?

You'll find Hollywood movies, TV episodes from broadcast and cable networks (including Showtime but not HBO), and original movies and TV series carried on the Starz cable network. Netflix boasts a high-quality back catalog of streaming content, but it takes a long time for new movies to become available for streaming, and TV episodes generally don't become available until after their seasons have been released on disc. Videos are streamed at the highest resolution your Internet connection can deliver, up to a maximum of 720p.

Devices with Support Built In

Various HDTVs from LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, and Vizio; various Blu-ray disc players from LG, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, and others; TiVo DVRs; most media players, including the Apple TV, Boxee Box, Google TV, Roku, and WD TV Live; PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, and Xbox 360; iOS devices (via an app); Mac or Windows PCs (via web browser).

Pricing

A Netflix “Watch Instantly” account costs a minimum of $7.99 per month. This baseline plan doesn’t include any physical disc rentals, but it also places no limit on the number of videos you can stream. Of course, Netflix continues to offer plans that include physical disc rentals, and each throws in unlimited streaming as a value-added service.

Our Take

Netflix' $7.99 streaming-only plan is a great deal if you don't mind very long waits for newer movies and TV episodes to make their way onto the service. In an effort to appease Hollywood, which apparently fears that Netflix will dominate the post-theater retail movie business in the same way that Apple has come to dominate the music distribution market, Netflix cut deals with most of the studios to not rent new movies on disc until they've been available at retail for 28 days. New movies and current television episodes take much, much longer to make their way to Netflix' streaming service. Meanwhile, pay-per-view services such as Vudu offer new movies online the very same day they're released on disc. Regardless, we still recommend Netflix' streaming-only subscriptions for movies, but we think Hulu Plus delivers a far better experience for TV junkies.

Yahoo Connected TV

What Is It?

Yahoo Connected TV is an umbrella term for Yahoo’s smart TV initiative. It’s similar to Google TV in that it’s a platform that seeks to integrate the TV-viewing experience with the Internet, but Yahoo’s effort is smaller and more targeted. Indeed, while Google TV attempts to aggregate content from virtually every venue where video is available, Yahoo Connected TV is more of a framework for third-party widgets that leverage live TV and various VOD sources, and bring popular online social media services to your TV.

What's Available?

Widgets from Amazon Instant Video and Blockbuster On Demand enable you to rent and stream movies and TV episodes. Other widgets deliver video content available only on the web, such as Internet TV shows from Revision3. You can also hook into Facebook and Twitter, share digital photos using Flickr, and buy and sell goods on eBay. You’ll also find widgets for weather reports, casual games, and stock tickers.

Devices with Support Built In

As we went to press, the only devices to support Yahoo Connected TV were a handful of TV models from LG, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, and Vizio. D-Link has demoed a set-top box that you can plug into any TV, but the product wasn’t shipping at press time.

Pricing

Incremental costs are probably folded into the prices of TVs that support Yahoo Connected TV, but there is no direct cost to the consumer. That said, some of the content widgets cost money and are sold through an app store, but these are entirely optional. And, of course, if you use pay-as-you-go services such as Amazon Instant Video, you’ll have to pony up for those, as well.

Our Take

The technology behind Yahoo Connected TV isn’t nearly as disruptive as the tech behind Google TV, and maybe that's why it seems to be enjoying a bit more early success. We’d rather play games on our computers or tablets than on our TVs, but there are plenty of other worthwhile widgets in the service’s universe. For example, it’s much more fun to share Flickr photos on a big TV screen than to huddle around a PC—and this is another reason why we think an HDTV’s visual quality is so important.

MLB.TV

What Is It?

This service, owned by Major League Baseball, points to the future of smart TV sports coverage. Leveraging a sport with lots of teams, a very long season, and an obsession with stats, MLB.TV is a baseball fanatic's interactive dream.

What's Available?

You can watch any regular-season game that’s available in your market in 720p resolution. Games, however, are subject to local-market blackout restrictions. If your game is blacked out, you can’t view it until 90 minutes after the final pitch.

You get in-game highlights, stats, and alternate audio options (you can choose between the home or away team’s audio feed, for instance). A widget tracks the pitcher’s performance in a video overlay, and you can replay any player’s at-bat on demand. A fantasy league tracker alerts you when players you’ve drafted are on-deck, so you can switch to their at-bats via a picture-in-picture.

A premium package adds the ability to watch either the home or away team’s video feed. This package also includes a multi-game mode that lets you watch up to four in-market games simultaneously (using either picture-in-picture or split-screen).

Devices with Support Built In

Various HDTVs from LG and Samsung; various Blu-ray players from LG and Samsung; Roku networked media players; Boxee devices (including the D-Link Boxee Box); Apple TV; Sony PlayStation 3; and Android and iOS devices. Note: Not every feature is available on every device.

Pricing

MLB.TV costs $19.99 monthly or $99.99 yearly. MLB.TV Premium is $24.99 or $119.99, respectively. One subscription can be activated on multiple devices, but you’ll need to purchase and install Major League Baseball’s At Bat 11 app ($14.99 per device) to use the service with mobile devices.

Our Take

Major League Baseball understands what its fans want, and it knows how to leverage the smart TV concept to bring them a great interactive experience—either on the TV or on a second, supplemental screen. Only hardcore fans will be willing to pay the steep entry fees, but there are plenty of those out there.

Google TV

What Is It?

Google TV is an open hardware and software platform designed to combine the power of the Internet with compelling video content—from Hollywood movies and TV shows, to YouTube clips and other viral fare, to personal content on your local network. Think of it as an electronic program guide that lists not only the content that's available on TV right now and in the coming weeks, but also what's available for streaming over the Internet. On top of that, using a picture-in-picture window or video overlay, Google TV can present real-time information about whatever you happen to be watching: player stats if you're watching a game, actor profiles if you're watching a movie, and so on.

What's Available?

Google’s smart TV technology can deliver any content located on your home network, anything on live TV, anything recorded on your Dish Network set-top box, and virtually any content available on the Internet—just as long as the content owner doesn’t object. Right now, however, all the major television networks vigorously object and are blocking Google TV from presenting their online content. And because the networks own a chunk of Hulu, Google TV can’t deliver that, either.

Devices with Support Built In

Sony's Internet TV, Sony's Internet TV Blu-ray player, Dish Network's set-top box, and Logitech's Revue set-top box.

Pricing

Google TV is only available integrated into another product. It’s not sold as an app, so you can’t run it on a PC. While there are no subscription fees, Dish Network will tack a $4 "DVR integration" fee onto your monthly bill if you connect the service to its set-top box.

Our Take

Google set out to change the way we watch TV, combining the power of Internet search with TV content. But the initiative crashed head-on into entrenched interests that fear Google will interrupt their advertising revenue streams. It's too soon to say if the latest version of Google TV will make the service any more worth having, but we do know you still can't get Hulu or other online content owned by the major broadcast and pay-TV networks with it.

NBA League Pass

What Is It?

NBA League Pass Broadband and NBA League Pass Mobile allow you to stream regular-season NBA games to your PC or mobile device. In addition to being able to watch games that might not be broadcast in your area, you also get real-time stats and other features. This service is co-owned by the NBA and Turner Sports Interactive, and games are subject to the same blackout restrictions that you’ll encounter with normal TV broadcasts.

What's Available?

The Broadband package lets you watch as many as 40 regular-season games per week, including up to three games at the same time. Games available in high-def are streamed in an unspecified level of HD to your device, with live stats overlaid on top of the video. A DVR function allows you to produce your own instant replays, and you have access to a full season's worth of archives (on-demand replays are available 48 hours after they've been played). The Mobile package allows you to watch up to 40 games per week on your iOS or Android device.

Devices with Support Built In

This service is available on a Mac or Windows PC, Roku devices, as well as iPod, iPhone, and Android devices (via apps). There is also limited support for Apple TV.

Pricing

An NBA League Pass Broadband subscription is included in the purchase of an NBA League Pass TV subscription (prices vary per cable or satellite provider). If you’re not paying for the TV channel, however, you can opt for a Broadband “Choice” subscription (which allows you to follow up to seven teams) for $24.99 per season. To follow all 30 NBA teams, you’ll need to pay $49.95 per season for the “Premium” subscription. NBA League Pass Mobile subscriptions cost $16.99 per season.

Our Take

The NBA is off to a good start, but pro basketball could take a few lessons from Major League Baseball: The full version of NBA League Pass should be available as a widget in connected TVs and set-top boxes (only NBA Game Time Lite is available on those devices today). Regardless, both the NBA and MLB are way ahead of the NFL, which doesn’t offer interactive squat.

Smart TV Hardware Essentials

Here's everything you'll need to indulge your interest in Smart TV. Surprise! It's not really all that much.

Broadband Internet Access: Dial-up access isn’t going to cut it. City and suburb dwellers should look into cable modems and DSL. Folks living in rural areas where those services aren't available should check into wireless solutions, such as WiMax. Satellite service is another alternative, although it’s relatively slow and can be very expensive.

A Display: You don’t necessarily need a TV to get smart TV; you can just as easily use the display connected to your desktop or notebook computer. TVs, on the other hand, typically offer bigger screens, and you can connect your existing unit to whichever smart TV hardware you’re using to pull content from the Internet. Newer TVs make all this easier, thanks to their built-in apps and Ethernet support.

A Networked Media Player: If you don’t have a TV with built-in smart TV apps, you’ll need something from this category, which includes devices such as Western Digital's WD TV Live, Netgear's Neo TV, D-Link's Boxee Box, or one of the Roku devices. Most Blu-ray players and home-theater-in-a-box systems include smart TV apps, too. The best solution, of course, is to buy a PC that can be incorporated into your home entertainment system.

Connected TVs & Set-Top Boxes

Did you find one of the video-on-demand or interactive TV services on the preceding pages to your liking? Now it’s time to delve deeper into the hardware that might support the particular iteration of smart TV that suits your fancy. Here are our choices, ranked from least appealing to most compelling. See the next page for our top recommendation: a home theater PC.

If you don't want to invest in a full-blown home-theater PC, we think D-Link's oddly shaped Boxee Box is the next best alternative.

HDTV

You might think the best way to get smart TV is to buy, well, a smart TV. Think again! Don't toss your current TV if the only thing it's lacking is smart TV features—we'll show you plenty of cheaper—and in some cases, better—alternatives. If, on the other hand, you've been longing to upgrade to a bigger screen, or if you want to move up from LCD to plasma, or to a model that supports 3D, smart TV features will most likely be included. Don't fret about which services are included, though; concentrate on image quality, instead.

Logitech Revue (Google TV)

If you really want the Google TV experience, Logitech is blowing out its Revue inventory—we've seen it selling online for as little as $100 (it hit the market at $299). Logitech CEO Guerrino De Luca recently told analysts that the decision to support Google TV, which he described as a "beta product," cost the company $100 million in operating profit. De Luca says the company has no immediate plans to produce a Revue 2. Ouch.

Apple TV

Even hardcore Apple fans were disappointed with the Apple TV set-top box when it was first introduced. The device was capable of streaming content from only four online services—Netflix, YouTube, MobileMe, and Flickr—but has since added support for MLB.TV and NBA League Pass Broadband. We suspect Apple's real aspirations for Apple TV are focused on making the box a conduit for watching movies and TV episodes rented or purchased from iTunes. Apple TV sells for $99, but you'll find plenty of better products for the same price or less.

Videogame Consoles

Microsoft's Xbox 360, Nintendo's Wii, and Sony's PlayStation 3 gaming consoles all have Internet connectivity, and all are capable of delivering various smart TV elements, including Netflix. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 tend to be more smart TV-oriented than the Wii, and the Xbox 360 is even stronger, because it can use your PC as a bridge to connect to online services. You can also play games on these devices, of course, but isn't that what you bought your PC for?

Blu-ray Disc Players

As with new HDTVs, just about any new Blu-ray disc player on the market will include a variety of smart TV features. We love Blu-ray as much for its high-definition audio as its HD video, but we think a home-theater PC makes the best Blu-ray player. Still, most people don't have the budget to put one of those in every room. Netflix support is common, but Vudu support is better if you're interested in renting the latest movies in HD. Prices start at less than $100, but features such as integrated Wi-Fi, multiple HDMI outputs, and SACD and DVD-Audio support will rapidly inflate the MSRP.

Roku

Roku manufactured the very first Netflix streaming box, but the company has expanded significantly since then and now offers four models ranging in price from $50 to $100. Even the least expensive model, the LT, includes an integrated Wi-Fi adapter, 720p video resolution, and more than 350 content channels. A lot of that content is crap, however, and only the top-end product will stream your own content (albeit only from a USB storage device).

Netgear Neo TV NTV200

We like Netgear's streamer just a little bit more than Roku's lineup, almost exclusively because it supports Vudu. It can't stream content you own, but it does have an integrated Wi-Fi adapter and it does deliver video resolution up to 1080p. And it only costs $80.

Western Digital WD TV Live

Western Digital practically owns the networked media-streamer market, thanks to its exceptional WD TV Live product. It supports nearly every important online media service (with the notable exception of Vudu), it will stream all your own content from any network or USB source at video resolutions up to 1080p, it supports every important media codec and container format, it has an integrated Wi-Fi adapter, and it costs just $130.

D-Link Boxee Box

If you're looking for just a little more than what the WD TV Live can do (Vudu support, the ability to send web videos to the Boxee Box from a web browser, and—coming soon—an optional USB TV tuner), then you should take a hard look at D-Link's Boxee Box. It's priced higher than the Roku, Netgear, and Western Digital products ($180), but the price bump is fully justified by its extensive feature list.

Home Theater PCs

Looking for the ultimate smart TV experience? Pick up a home-theater PC. You can subscribe to any online service your heart desires, stream your own content, and lots more. In fact, these machines can do almost anything a desktop PC can do. Here's a quick look at five classes of HTPC.

All-In-One PC

An all-in-one PC is a great solution if you're looking for an entertainment system for your kitchen, bedroom, den, or even your garage. This class of machine integrates an entire desktop computer, display, and speakers inside a chassis that's only slightly thicker than the typical monitor.

These machines come with everything you need, including an integrated Wi-Fi adapter, a wireless mouse and keyboard, and a TV tuner. Add an aftermarket USB CableCARD product, such as Ceton's InfiniTV4, and you can watch and record digital cable TV programming—including premium channels such as HBO.

Prices vary according to the size of the display, but models boasting large monitors typically also deliver faster CPUs, larger hard drives, and more features overall. Many higher-end models, such as HP's TouchSmart 610, include an HDMI input, so you can use the display with a game console, set-top box, or other video source. Machines in this price range also typically include an integrated Blu-ray drive, which is useful for watching rented Blu-ray movies (we recommend ripping purchased movies and storing them on a central server).

The obvious downside to buying an all-in-one machine is that it will be almost impossible to upgrade it down the road.

Velcro PC

We coined this term to describe a personal computer that's small enough to be attached to the back of a display using that famously sticky fabric (you can read our review of Zotac's ZBox Nano AD10 Plus). Such machines often do not include an optical drive, but they can stream just about any video from a network server or from any of the online media services we've mentioned.

Zotac's ZBox Nano AD10 Plus can be mounted to the back of any VESA-compatible monitor.

A Velcro PC is like a networked media player (e.g., a Roku or WD TV Live) on steroids. Like that class of device, you can connect a Velcro PC to any size display you like—just make sure it delivers video resolution of at least 1920x1080 pixels. Unlike most networked media players, a Velcro PC includes integrated storage, and it will run a full operating system (ranging from almost any Linux distro to any flavor of Windows). And since it's a bona fide PC, online media services such as Hulu can't block it.

Mini HTPC

This class of computer is a step up from a Velcro PC in that it comes with an integrated Blu-ray drive. You might think of it as an all-minus-one, because the only thing you need to add is an HDTV (and amplified speakers if you don't want to rely on the tiny speakers inside the TV). Acer builds our favorite machine in this category: The super-thin Revo RL100-UR20P comes with a Blu-ray drive and a slick, backlit wireless keyboard/trackpad that's easy to use, even in a darkened room.

DIY HTPC

When you know exactly what you want in a computer, there's no better way to get it than to build it yourself. One easy solution is to start with a bare-bones kit, such as the AsRock Vision 3D. This machine includes a Blu-ray drive, an Intel Core i3-370M CPU, and a discrete Nvidia GPU that's sufficiently robust for many newer games. Add Nvidia's 3D Vision kit and hook up a 3D monitor, HDTV, or video projector (our favorite display solution), and you can play games and watch movies in 3D.

If you want to build an all-out home-theater PC that's capable of playing not only Blu-ray movies, but also today's most ambitious games, you can do that, too. We built just such a beast in our December issue, using an Asus Maximum IV Gene-Z motherboard, Intel's Core i5-2500K CPU, and Nvidia's GeForce GTX 560 Ti. Don't have that issue? Just point your browser here.

Boutique HTPC

Want a top-shelf rig for your entertainment center, but don't have time to build your own? That's where boutique PC builders enter the picture. These vendors will start you off with a basic configuration and then let you customize it to fit your precise needs.

The CineMagix HTPC, from boutique builder Velocity Micro.

Take Velocity Micro's CineMagix Grand Theater Entertainment System, for example. This $1,550 rig includes a full-size ATX motherboard with an Intel Core i5-2300 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 memory, an AMD Radeon HD 5450 videocard, and a digital HDTV tuner. Since these machines are built to order, you can substitute and add components as you see fit.

The Game Boy: Headcrabs, Deathclaws, and Bears – Oh My

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:24:11 +0000

Gordon Freeman is a coward. Or at least, he is when I play him. It's those damn poison headcrabs. As soon as they start hissing – shrouded in darkness, probably fresh off the assembly line from some Nightmare Factory – I turn into an orange-and-black blur and beeline for the nearest corner to cry in. When Alyx is around, I push her into the poison headcrab's Terror Lair and hide until she makes the bad things that can kill me in two hits go away. Meanwhile, in real life, I lean away from the screen until my spine feels like it's recently been on the receiving end of a Mortal Kombat Fatality. If you haven't gotten the picture yet, I really, really don't like poison headcrabs.

I love, however, that they exist. Half-Life 2's enemies in general are some of the most memorable I've ever encountered. In fact, I haven't experienced such a visceral reaction to any game enemy since.

And that's a problem.

Iconic enemies can define a whole level – or even an entire game. The headcrab's a perfect example. Sure, it may (head) crib a few attack strategies from Alien's facehugger, but excellent art/audiovisual design and level placement elevated it far beyond a mere face-munching me-too. Among gamers, the cuddly-as-it-is-horrifying jumping bean from hell is basically a cultural phenomenon.

Meanwhile, what's our hyper-advanced modern gaming scene bringing to the figurative dog show? Well, let's see: We've got the generic terrorist from Modern Warfare 3, the generic terrorist from Battlefield 3, the generic steroid-addled thug from Arkham City, generic zombies from everything, and inferior headcrab rip-offs from Gears of War, Halo, Resistance, etc. Remember that one guy from that one level of Homefront? Hey, me neither!

So, what's the deal? Why have enemies suddenly taken a tumble in the whitewashing machine? And – more importantly – what aren't they doing that older-school baddies nailed so perfectly? Well, there are a few factors to consider. First off, there's the matter of mentality. Many of the enemies in today's big-name games are basically cannon fodder – and nothing more. They pop up, you wallop them with your whack-a-mole hammer (or multi-barreled rocket shotgun that also fires reminders that the Smurfs movie exists, as it were), and then you move on.

Games like Half-Life 2 and BioShock, meanwhile, are so memorable because of the multifaceted manner in which they present their most frightening foes. For instance, Half-Life 2 initially flings you crowbar-first into a world ruled by the Combine. I mean, if you ask me what my first memory of the basic Combine soldier is, it's not even a difficult question. And no, the answer isn't “shooting one in the face.” Instead, it's a simple line: “Pick it up.” And when I refused to drop that tiny tin can in the garbage out of sheer, I'm-Gordon-goddam-Freeman defiance, he smacked me in the face. That moment – and not when I was facing down a small army of gun-toting space oddities – was when I understood how bad things had gotten in Gordon's absence.

It's the little moments that count biggest. Similarly, there was also Lamarr the friendly headcrab and controllable Ant Lions to offset the sheer otherworldly terror of Ravenholm's special brand of headcrab zombies or retch-worthy clusters of ceiling-dwelling barnacles. They showed other sides to Half-Life 2's enemies. Somewhat paradoxically, I felt an attachment to the very things I was blasting.

BioShock, meanwhile, designed an entire ecology around Big Daddies, making them far more than diving-suit-clad foils for the business end of your shotgun. Over the course of the game, you discovered their origins, purposes, and – eventually – became one yourself. (Admittedly, however, it wasn't until BioShock 2 that the franchise really perfected that concept.) Sure, having a giant drill for a hand definitely gave the Big Daddy an upper hand... drill... thing in the memorability category, but a gradual trickle of information turned Big Daddy from a giant target into a crucial part of Rapture's existence.

There's also the matter of smart, measured build up and the air of mystique it creates. Wasteland denizens in Fallout 3, for example, whispered of Deathclaws in frightened tones long before I ever met one face-to-face. And when I finally saw one loping toward me, gangly limbs flying like vital-organ-seeking missiles? I turned tail and fled for dear life while attempting to write out my last will and testament. Lamentably, I didn't exactly make it far.

Indie horror hit Amnesia, however, really steals the show in that category. It's so terrifying not because boogie men pop out and shout “boo!” around every corner, but for the exact opposite reason: they don't. Instead, there's a constant sickening dread lurking in the darkness. Slight sights, unsettling sounds, perfectly placed shadows. Together, they create a mystique that other survival horror games simply can't match. And your character, of course, is hopelessly helpless, rendering the classic “fight or flight” multiple choice test fairly easy. The answer is D) Wet Yourself.

There's another factor, though, that I think has played a major role in the shift away from interesting, well-designed enemies: graphical fidelity. Madness, you say? Well, consider this: The more realistic graphics are, the easier it is to design enemies that look and move like people. However, as humans, we naturally fear difference. My poison headcrab phobia? I bet it wouldn't be nearly as bad if I wasn't also violently afraid of spiders. Point is, we're pre-programmed to fear things that are unlike us, because nature's creepy crawlies have a tendency to, you know, murder us with poison.

Earlier games, though, were perfectly positioned to take advantage of that. A lack of detail became creepy, inhuman abstraction. Awkward animations became herky-jerky, unnatural movements. Enemies like Legend of Zelda's life-sapping Re-Deads and dungeon-crawling (literally) Wallmasters were – on some level – a product of necessity. Technology was limited, so developers had to be creative.

Ever played SkiFree? Yes, that SkiFree. Same idea. The yeti didn't trigger minor heart attacks just because it signaled insta-death. Its rapid, oddly terrifying movements gave Child-Me many a pixelated nightmare because it ambled ever forward in a manner that was downright wrong. Happily, Minecraft's enemies – Creepers, especially – carry that torch today to some extent today, but they're the exception, not the rule.

By and large, it's all hyper-realistic terrorists this, hyper-realistic zombies that. Oh, and there's the occasional hyper-realistic giant spider in there – just to make me feel frightened in spite of myself. I want more than that, though. Give me a love-hate, life-death relationship for the ages – not another shooting gallery. Press start. Find me a new challenger.

Solid State Shakeup: Intel 520 vs Patriot Pyro SE vs OCZ Octane

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:35:39 +0000

Let’s play a little game. We have three solid state drives—one each from Patriot, OCZ, and Intel. Two of them are powered by the ubiquitous SandForce SF-2281 controller, and the other marks the consumer debut of a new 6Gb/s SATA controller. Guess which drive has the new controller?

If you guessed the Intel drive, time for a spit-take. It’s the OCZ drive that’s got the new controller, and the Intel drive which is SandForce-powered. What in the name of the MLC gods is going on?

Patriot Pyro SE 240GB

Can the Pyro SE’s speeds match its fiery nomenclature?

Back in October 2011, we reviewed the 120GB Patriot Wildfire, the company’s first SF-2281-based SSD. With 32nm Toshiba asynchronous NAND, the Wildfire was a solid, if unremarkable, drive—awesome compared to nearly every other drive, but not quite up to the standard set by Corsair’s Force GT, OCZ’s Vertex 3, or OWC’s Mercury Extreme Pro. With the Pyro SE, Patriot hopes to change that.

The Force GT, Vertex 3, and Mercury Extreme Pro have one thing in common that the Wildfire lacked: 25nm synchronous NAND. Now a Patriot drive has the same stuff. The 240GB Patriot Pyro SE uses 16 128Gb modules of Micron 25nm synchronous NAND. Can the smaller process and synchronous NAND help the Pyro SE keep pace with the best SF-2281 SSDs on the market?

For such a speedy drive, the Pyro SE’s exterior is pretty pedestrian.

Yes. The better NAND pushes the Pyro SE past its stablemate and into the rarified air at the top of the SandForce-powered heap. With sequential read and write speeds at 482MB/s and 300MB/s, respectively, as measure by CrystalDiskMark, the Pyro SE is about as fast as the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro, and its 4KB random write speed, at over 91,000 IOPS, is the fastest we’ve ever seen from a 6Gb/s SATA drive. The synchronous NAND makes the most impact on sequential write speeds, offering a 40–50MB/s boost over the asynchronous NAND in the Wildfire.

As with all top-tier SandForce SF-2281-powered drives, the Pyro SE is optimized for small random write cycles; in sequential tests, Samsung’s 830 Series SSD holds the crown.

The Pyro SE is priced competitively with other drives that use the same NAND and controller, like the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro, and it performs competitively, too. If you’re looking for a top-tier SSD with a SandForce controller and speedy 25nm synchronous NAND, the sparkly gray Pyro SE is just as good as the sparkly blue OWC drive. So get whichever one matches your rig better.

$450, www.patriotmemory.com

Patriot Pyro SE 240GB

Performance identical to top-tier SandForce drives..

Sequential speeds can’t match Samsung 830.

Intel 520 Series 240GB

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em

For every season, there is a spin. Intel’s first consumer SSDs, the X-25M series, didn’t have the fastest performance, but they gained a reputation for reliability. We had high hopes for Intel’s 320 Series SSDs, which turned out to be really great 3Gb/s SATA drives, at a time when everyone else was shipping 6Gb/s drives. When Intel did ship a 6Gb/s SATA drive, the 510 Series, it used a Marvell controller, not an Intel one. Well, Intel’s finally released its second 6Gb/s consumer SSD series, and it’s powered by… SandForce?

Yep. The 520 Series may ship in Intel’s familiar 7mm aluminum chassis with a 2mm black spacer, but inside it’s running the same SandForce SF-2281 as everyone else. It does use 25nm Intel synchronous NAND and Intel-validated firmware, which Intel says make it better, faster, and more reliable than plain-Jane SF-2281-based drives.

Same as it ever was: Intel’s drive enclosure. Very different: the controller inside.

We’ll have to wait and see if the reliability claim is accurate, but the “better and faster” is, well, kinda true. The 520 Series is certainly faster than SF-2281 drives that use asynchronous NAND. Compared to other drives with 25nm synchronous NAND, like Patriot’s Pyro SE above, the differences are smaller. The 520’s CrystalDiskMark sustained read speed of 470MB/s, for example, is 12MB/s slower than the Pyro SE, and in Iometer the 520 gets 4,000 fewer IOPS on our random write test. Real-world scores in PCMark 7 and Premiere Pro are virtually identical to the Pyro SE, while the Intel drive lags behind in PCMark Vantage, an older test.

Intel reassures us it hasn’t given up on its own controllers, and Intel’s upcoming 20nm IFMT tech should offer big improvements in NAND density and performance in the second half of the year. So we have that to look forward to.

The 520 series may not be very special, but at least it’s up to current-gen standards, and it replaces the kinda crappy Marvell-powered 510 series. On the other hand, $510 for a 240GB drive is a lot, considering the Patriot Pyro SE is $50 cheaper and just as good. Intel’s betting its reputation for reliability still means something to SSD buyers. We think it does, but does it mean they’ll pony up an extra fifty bucks?

$510, www.intel.com

Intel 520 Series 240GB

Fast SF-2281 controller and 25nm NAND; Intel reliability

$50 more expensive than near-identical drives from Patriot, OCZ

OCZ Octane

The first fruits of OCZ’s acquisition of Indilinx

Remember Indilinx? The company’s Barefoot SSD controller was the first really good solid-state controller. It was one of the first controllers to offer TRIM support, as well as sustained read and write speeds near 200MB/s, and it ruled the roost until SandForce’s SF-1200 controller leapt ahead of Barefoot’s capabilities. The company’s next-gen controller was delayed, and in March 2011 OCZ bought the company. It’s been nearly a year, but OCZ finally has a consumer drive with the new Indilinx Everest controller. Was it worth the wait?

The 512GB Octane drive OCZ sent us contains 16 256Gb 25nm Intel synchronous NAND modules, two 2Gb Micron DDR3 SDRAM cache modules (512MB total), and of course the Indilinx Everest controller, all in standard 2.5-inch SSD form factor. In CrystalDiskMark, it averaged 445MB/s sustained reads (35–40MB/s slower than the SandForce drives we’ve tested) and 315MB/s sustained writes (15MB/s faster). Its single-queue-depth 4KB random writes were competitive at around 5,600 IOPS, but at QD32, it only put out 22,000 IOPS—Samsung’s 830 Series does 35,000 and the Patriot Pyro SE does over 90,000. The Octane’s maximum response time in Iometer, at 429ms, is a bit worrying, too—its competitors have max response times of around 40ms. The Octane’s video encoding performance was within seconds of the other drives, and its PCMark Vantage and PCMark 7 scores, though lower than the rest, weren’t too shabby.

We’re not 100 percent sure OCZ knows what “infused” means.

So where does that put the Octane among today’s 6Gb/s SATA SSDs? It’s better than drives with the Marvell 9174 controller, like Plextor’s M2 and Crucial’s M4, and even some SandForce-powered SSDs with cheaper asynchronous NAND. But aside from a slight write-speed advantage, the OCZ Octane falls behind SandForce drives with synchronous NAND in most benchmarks, and its random write speeds at depth are much, much lower.

The biggest problem with the OCZ Octane is Samsung’s 830 Series, which is available in the same capacities (aside from the Octane’s unmatched 1TB model), is faster in every single benchmark, and is cheaper than the Octane—by $100, at the 512GB capacity. The Octane has more-than-reasonable performance and we like the fact that it has the new Indilinx controller, but given its price and the existence of cheaper, better alternatives, it’s not the best bang for your buck.

$900, www.ocztechnology.com

OCZ Octane 512GB

New controller, plenty of cache; decent speeds; strong writes

Low random IOPS; not the best value

Benchmarks

	Patriot Pyro SE	Intel 520 Series	OCZ Octane	Samsung 830 Series SSD
Capacity	240GB	240GB	512GB	256GB
CrystalDiskMark
Sustained Read (MB/s)	482	470.6	445.4	506.4*
Sustained Write (MB/s)	300.3	299	315.5	398.5*
AS SSD
Seq. Read (MB/s)	506.7*	502.6	432.2	502.6
Seq. Write (MB/s)	295.2	288.3	285.9	164.1
4KB Read (IOPS)	4,986	5,655*	5,546	5,513
4KB Write (IOPS)	14,179*	14,123	10,417	12,800
ATTO
64KB File Read (MB/s)	443.24*	422.81	408.57	405.85
64KB File Write (MB/s)	515.05*	255.12	446.47	515.05*
IOMETER
4KB Random Write	91,171.26*	87,713.73	22,073.97	35,329.48
Max Access Time (ms)	41	39	429	31*
Premiere Pro Encode Write (sec)	424	423	425	420*
PCMark Vantage x64 HDD	61,686	49,622	57,030	62,168*
PCMark 11 x64 SST	5,305	5,312	4,945	5,257

Asterisk (*) denotes highest score. Our current test bed is a 3.1GHz Core i3-2100 processor on an Asus P8 P67 Pro (B3 chipset) running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. All tests used onboard 6Gb/s SATA ports with latest Intel drivers.

Future Tense: 3DTV Redux

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:15:39 +0000

I saw my first 3D movie in 1953. It was House Of Wax, starring Vincent Price, Phyllis Kirk, Carolyn Jones, and featured a pretty scary newcomer named Charles Bronson. It was directed by Andre de Toth, who ironically only had one good eye.

To this day, it remains one of my favorite 3D movies, and I wish Warner Bros. would get off their butts and release it on 3D Blu-Ray, perhaps a double set with Phantom Of The Rue Morgue, starring Karl Malden. I’d also like Universal to release a box set of The Creature From The Black Lagoon, Revenge Of The Creature, The Creature Walks Among Us (not in 3D) and It Came From Outer Space.

There are a lot of other classic films made in 3D that deserve to be released on Blu-Ray: Kiss Me Kate, Dial M For Murder (directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Grace Kelly and Ray Milland), Money From Home (Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis), The French Line (Jane Russell), Miss Sadie Thompson (Rita Hayworth, Jose Ferrer), and more.

Most of the negatives still survive and a set of good Blu-Ray transfers would find a home on the shelves of many 3D enthusiasts. A lot of the 3D films made in the fifties were pretty miserable, nothing more than hasty exploitation efforts, but there are still some that have earned a place in history as an important artifact of the time. I’d include Cat Women Of The Moon and Robot Monster on that list—particularly Robot Monster which is arguably one of the worst movies ever made, but its 3D was some of the best. Go figure.

Over a year ago, I wrote in this space that 3D TV is inevitable in the home theater market. I still feel that way, and I’ll explain why—

But first let me acknowledge the inevitable complaints that are going to show up in the comment thread. “I can’t see 3D” “It’s a gimmick” “It’s just another way for the big corporations to loot my wallet” “It’s a fad” “I don’t like it” “It’s too expensive” “It doesn’t work well” “It gives me a headache” “I don’t like the goofy glasses” and “I don’t want to be bothered.” “The technology isn’t perfect yet.” These complaints show up in every comment thread about 3D TV and they will probably show up here as well.

I’m not dismissing the complaints. They are real for the people who are complaining. Nevertheless, many people do like 3D TV and despite many justifiable objections and concerns, 3D TV is inevitable.

First of all, any TV with a refresh rate of 120hz is 3D capable. You might not buy a TV for its 3D capability, but all the high-end sets now have refresh rates of 120hz or 240hz. Some manufacturers are even flirting with 480hz. Plasma sets have 600hz refresh rates. It costs little for the manufacturer to add an emitter and advertise the set as 3D ready. You might not want a 3D set, but when you buy your next big screen TV, the top of the line models will all be 3D capable, and that feature is steadily working its way down the product line, with more and more sets having that capability every year.

There are two kinds of 3D TVs, passive and active. Passive sets use circular polarized glasses, the same kind you’d use for a Real-3D presentation. But such sets interleave the scan lines, so odd-numbered scan lines go to one eye and even-numbered scan lines go to the other. On a 1080P set, you’re only getting 540 scan lines to each eye, half the hi-def resolution. Some people can see the scan lines, others sit far enough back and don’t notice them.

More common are sets that use active-shutter glasses. These glasses are a little heavier and need to be recharged every 70 hours. The TV alternates left and right eye images and the glasses are synchronized by an RF or infra-red emitter, so each eye sees the correct eye image at 60 frames per second.

There is some light loss in both systems, but not significant, and you can always pump up the brightness. Polarized sets are less prone to ghosting or double-images. Active shutter sets have greater resolution.

A justifiable concern for any 3D fan is that source material remains limited and some of it just isn’t worth the effort. And some of the travelogues have artifacts where the depth effect gets confused if there is fast sideways motion. I suspect it has something to do with the way the image is encoded and delivered. I also expect that this will eventually be resolved as the technology continues to improve.

Most 3D Blu-Ray movies look good on a home screen, several have been spectacular. DirecTV has five 3D channels. They repeat a lot of the material, but they’re also increasing the variety every month. DirecTV has also been showing 3D movies on a pay-per-view channel. So if you’re a 3D enthusiast, you do have an increasing menu of films to watch, with more being released every month.

If you’re going to get a new set—3D or not—get the biggest screen you can afford, especially if you want a theatrical experience. The bigger your screen, the more dramatic the effect—especially for 3D. 1080p 3D projectors are also becoming affordable and would allow you to fill a whole wall. So far, these are all active-shutter. (There are companies that will set up two projectors in sync so you can use polarized glasses too.)

Right now, 3D TV is mostly in the homes of early adopters and enthusiasts. Given the state of the economy, it’s likely to remain that way for another year or two, maybe even longer. But that gives manufacturers an opportunity to continue improving the technology and studios to expand the number of available films in release. The big studios have recognized that having a 3D release of a film can add as much as 40% to the box office gross. A 3D film is kind of like going on a dark ride at an amusement park, it has an “event” quality. So most of the major pictures planned the summer season and the holiday season will have a 3D release.

Remember, the studios, the theaters, and the TV manufacturers have invested billions into 3D technology. The box office numbers justify continuing that investment for the theaters. It’s going to take a lot longer for the home market to catch up because the operative equation is always the availability of content and the availability of hardware on which to view the content, but as more and more event films have 3D releases on Blu-Ray, as more and more Blu-Ray players and sets arrive in homes, 3D capability will continue to spread.

As long as 3D requires “the goofy glasses” it will exist in its own kind of specialty niche—the same way laserdiscs existed in the eighties. The laserdisc never became mainstream, but it had a strong enough customer base to justify a large library of releases. 3D TV that requires glasses will never replace HDTV as we have it today. But having a set with 3D capability will make it more likely that you will watch “event television” and selected movies in 3D.

Titanic and Star Wars are being re-released in 3D. The next Star Trek movie is (allegedly) planned for 3D. Those audiences will turn out and they will very likely buy the 3D discs for their home libraries as well. Someday the Super Bowl or the Rose Parade will be broadcast in 3D and you can bet a lot of people will pull out their 3D glasses for that. Perhaps hit shows like Glee or Big Bang Theory or Hawaii Five-O will someday shoot special episodes in 3D and fans of those shows will turn on their 3D channels just for that.

After nearly eight years of success in the theaters and with a growing number of 3D films released every year, and many more scheduled, I think it’s fair to say that 3D has found its audience and become a mainstream format in its own right. I expect that the same audience that loves 3D movies will also embrace 3D for the home-theater experience. It’s just going to take a while.

What do you think?

AMD's New Direction For 2012: Heterogenous Computing, Trinity, and Hondo

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:35:26 +0000

AMD emphasizes Trinity and introduces new “Hondo” ultra low power chip

Despite major layoffs last year, AMD is stepping forward with an impressive portfolio of initiatives and products for the next few years. Perhaps the most exciting initiative is the company’s Heterogeneous System Architecture plan.

For an in-depth look at AMD's new roadmap, see the gallery at the bottom of this page

HSA will eventually erase the line between the CPU and GPU and remove such painful tasks for programmers as juggling data between the CPU and GPU. That will happen by first allowing the GPU to access the CPU’s main memory. Eventually the CPU and GPU will use the same address space for memory too, making it easier still. That’s is the key promise behind HSA though—making it easier for programmers to access the parallel capabilities of a GPU. Another interesting aspect of HSA will be the ability to add third-party intellectual property or accelerators on an APU with HSA. AMD will try to garner industry support for HSA by making it an open standard and is inviting is competitors to adopt it as well.

Fusion a hit

AMD said its Brazos and Llano APUs were smash hits with 20 million Brazos chips and 10 million Llano chips shipping last year. The company says Brazos has been its most successful mobile processor to date. As such, the company has high expectations for its Brazos 2.0 and Trinity chips.

Brazos 2.0 will bring native USB 3.0 and improved performance-per-watt. E-series Brazos will come in at 18 TDP, C-series at 9 TDP and a new ultra low power chip called “Hondo” consuming 4.5 watts.

Trinity will use the company’s new Piledriver cores and is expected to increase performance 25 percent over an equivalent Llano processor with a new graphics core offering a 50 percent performance increase. AMD says Trinity will offer twice the performance-per-watt and promises “all day” use with more than 12 hours of battery life. It is a mobile versions of the Trinity that AMD is pushing for its Ultrathin initative – an alternative to Intel’s Ultrabooks. AMD says Trinity will allow notebook makers to push out quad-core APUs with 50 percent better graphics and better battery life than even Intel’s upcoming Ivy Bridge processor in a notebook just 18mm thick. To do that, AMD is now introducing a ball grid array or BGA version, instead of the traditional socket and pin design.

If you’ve wondered what AMD was doing pushing an alterantive to Intel and Apple’s Thunderbolt, the company made it clear with a demonstration of Lightning bolt. A Trinity-equipped notebook will let you plug in multiple monitors using a single DisplayPort 1.2 interface and play a Blu-ray movie across the integrated USB 3.0 interface.

Next year, AMD will introduce its “Sea Islands” GPU lineup. Fusion APU’s will see “Kaveri” on the performance segment with new Steamroller cores. We’ll also see low power “Kabini” using a new Jaguar core and a sequel to Hondo codenamed “TemasH’ will also be introduced. All will be based on a 28nm process. All of APU’s except Temash will feature HSA as well.

Notably absent was any announcements over the traditional meat-and-potatoes performance desktop processors. Officials mostly ignored AM3+ chips but did casually add that performance desktops will be fulfilled by Opteron. That means performance AMD fans will likely see the Opteron’s Piledriver, Steamroller and Excavator cores over time but it’s clear where AMD is putting its focus these days: APUs.