I guess the Zune HD will support 5.1 channel audio

I was browsing around to answer some questions I had and was reading the Amazon.com’s temporary page for the Zune HD when something in the disclaimer caught my eye:

Specifically shown in the image is that the Zune HD will support 5.1 channel (or surround sound) output, although since this text is immediately beside a completely incorrect reference that the Zune HD will also support 1080p (which it won’t), I took it all with a bit of salt and moved on.

…Until a minute ago when I was playing around with the newly-released Expression Encoder 3 trial (since I was curious about what I’m missing) and found a Zune HD-specific profile that basically tells me all the specs I need to know about what the device will handle:

The profile in question is for the Zune HD AV Dock Playback, which is vastly different from the vanilla Zune HD profile, as it has proper 1280×720 output (versus the screen-specific 480×272) and an immensely higher bitrate of 6.1Mbps/12Mbps (average/peak) compared to 1Mbps/1.5Mbps. And on the audio front we’re going from 128Kbps on the vanilla profile to 384Kbps for the AV Dock profile. The sample rate and bits for both are 48KHz and 24-bit…

So the Zune HD will handle both the video and audio excellently, which is all especially useful to know since I’d probably rather save some money and make a profile for the free (but somewhat reliable) Windows Media Encoder.

Zune HD – Thank goodness for Google’s cached pages

Everybody’s buzzing about the leaked Zune HD artwork that engadget got the scoop on, and are speculating (both directly and indirectly) as to what may be in it, but few are actually pointing out the original source, a now-removed page of a designer who has quite the history of brilliant art. So what’s a guy like me to do when I need to see the proof myself – without the engadget logo? Simple, do a Google search…

As I just mentioned, the page has been pulled, but the images haven’t, as you will see if you look at the cached page. All of the images are displayed on that specific cache, except for the most famous image (strangely, but being image #7 it wasn’t hard to figure out this direct link). Otherwise, here are the original images that I’ve downloaded: (And as a disclaimer: these images are the property of their respected owners and do not apply to my blog’s CC license.)

But really, the cache data (and the direct link to the images) show that they were uploaded in March and were available for quite some time before someone caught on to it…

Oh, and there is mention that the screen is 1.85:1, versus the typical “wide screen” format of 16:9, where people have counted the pixels (I’ve done it myself) to determine the ratio. The differences between the 2 ratios are pretty small to the untrained eye, but trust me: counting pixels on such a small image can yield pretty erratic results, and the likelihood that the artwork has photoshopped the screen image means a decrease in accuracy. Personally, I’d prefer 16:9 over 1.85:1 for the sake of watching HDTV on it. And using the argument that it’d be designed to watch movies (especially ones downloaded from Netflix) with it’s 1.85:1 ratio screen is a bit moot, since modern movies typically use a ratio of 2.35:1. No matter which ratio, some content will always have bars, whether it’s letterboxed or pillerboxed…

Windows 7 is rumored to be delayed, but is it?

04-13-2009 UPDATE: I should articulate that I’ve seen rumors from more reliable sources (e.g. sites that don’t stand to gain anything by producing negative remarks) that there’s a possible release date of May 9th for the RC. While I still believe that an April release is possible, I can understand why MS might hold off until May… and technically, since they’ve never committed to a date, it wouldn’t be delayed if it’s released in May.

The “Windows 7 Team” blog posted an article discussing upgrading to the RC build, which they’re specifically asking testers to upgrade from Vista—which, for those of us who are running the beta full-time, means that we’ll have to reinstall Vista to comply with their wishes. While it can be annoying and time consuming, I have no problem participating in something that I’m sure will make the final product easier for less-technical (and experienced) users… it’s the sort of thing that eventually does come back to make my life a bit easier when I’m doing quasi-tech support.

But what I really wanted to point out is that this post of theirs, regarding upgrading, would seem a bit early to begin discussing the RC build when the latest rumors* have it that the RC build will be released some time in May. Really, isn’t it a bit strange that they’d start taking about upgrading this early in April, when the first round of rumors suggested the RC would be released around April 10th?

Now I’m not suggesting or betting that we’ll see MS announce the RC this week, but I’ve got to believe that such an announcement will be coming before month’s end, primarily because the tech community has a short memory span…

Who knows, maybe I’m completely off my rocker. (And yes, this is my official disclaimer.)

 

* Most of those rumors, from what I can gather, originate from non-PC news sources – the type that would get great pleasure out of seeing anything Microsoft-related get delayed.

What happens when a CAPTCHA fails?

So I was enjoying the double-ticket day at Live Search Club when I ran into a brick wall, so to speak. (To help curb cheating or bots with their games, Live Search Club prompts you with a CAPTCHA after every 4th game – which probably doesn’t help in the end.) The following CAPTCHA caused me to initially chuckle to myself thinking that it was just a random chance that the letters looked like “error”…

Except, that it failed to register my response and displayed the same letters in a different way:

So I decided to record it and produced this video:

This is available in HD, which isn’t really completely true as the window size was around 660 pixels wide – and so it was scaled up to 720p dimensions. Still, it looks much better then the normal quality…

Windows 7 Taskbar = Superbar, for the win!

All I have to say is that I can have 26 running programs and their icons will fill the Taskbar perfectly. I could remove a couple of icons from the Notification area to gain another icon, but I have no need since I usually can’t even fill half of the “Superbar” with running program icons. And this is all with the normal large icons.

The following screenshot tells everything you need to know:

For this silly little demonstration I really had to dig around the start menu to find things to run… hence some of the odd icons. My favorite was the private character editor (the 10th icon from the right) which I had no idea existed!

While some are saying that the start menu is obsolete now (on blogs that make them money*, mind you) the fact is that 80% of icons shown for this test weren’t pinned to the Taskbar, and a few aren’t even applications at all.

And it’s been the same group that have been complaining about the “Superbar” anyway, saying that Microsoft has dumbed-down the OS and should have run the design and UI decisions by them first, as though their elitist blogger status has deemed them worthy of choosing an interface that’ll be used by millions and millions of users. (And I’m sure if they were given the opportunity, they wouldn’t hesitate to capitalize on the situation by blogging extensively about it – and bragging all the way.)

Perhaps Microsoft should drop the start menu and give us an application launcher. But then again, that’s exactly what the start menu already does, so there really isn’t much to complain about after all.

* But to be fair: if I could get paid to blog I might be doing the exact same thing… except I wouldn’t be hiding the counter-point or my true opinion somewhere at the bottom of a lengthy post.

Oh, wait…