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Data Graham posted:Sure, that makes a lot more sense architecturally, since the data set doesn't change very much and isn't very big. Ah, gotcha. Yeah I would guess it's lovely coding in the box, since as you mentioned, even a 3G or DSL connection can get Google search results quickly and properly. Although I also don't really know the technical end of internet connections - if my cable box and my modem are both split off the same coax line, can it be assumed they're both getting full access to whatever internet speed I'm getting? Maybe there's an artificially imposed bandwidth bottleneck or something. If I had to guess I'd go with lovely software/code though, since modern Smart TVs suffer from the same thing - the built-in Netflix/Hulu/whatever implementation is usually ultra clunky and slow.
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Aug 16, 2016 18:02
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Germstore posted:well there's good javascript and then there's bad javascript 
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Aug 16, 2016 18:39
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Does anyone remember the set top cable boxes with the red numbers?
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Aug 16, 2016 18:53
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drunk asian neighbor posted:I wanna say it's also something to do with rendering of the game vs broadcasting a signal. I'm not sure why, but the difference between 1080 vs 480 on a TV signal is a very different kind of "it looks shittier" than a 1080 vs 480 comparison of a PC game. i'm pretty sure some tv's gently caress with the input signal with stuff like chroma subsampling or changing the color space or framerate fuckery. like you would think an RGB/hdmi input would just display it but i think it goes through some signal processing before it displays it ~my hdtv~ does that poo poo but i didn't pay for it and its a lovely commercial model
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Aug 16, 2016 18:56
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drunk asian neighbor posted:Ah, gotcha. Yeah I would guess it's lovely coding in the box, since as you mentioned, even a 3G or DSL connection can get Google search results quickly and properly. Although I also don't really know the technical end of internet connections - if my cable box and my modem are both split off the same coax line, can it be assumed they're both getting full access to whatever internet speed I'm getting? Maybe there's an artificially imposed bandwidth bottleneck or something. If I had to guess I'd go with lovely software/code though, since modern Smart TVs suffer from the same thing - the built-in Netflix/Hulu/whatever implementation is usually ultra clunky and slow. gonna guess that when they were designing it they specced it to the minimum acceptable power level they could get away with and then crammed more bells and whistles on top to increase its marketability
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Aug 16, 2016 18:58
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SquadronROE posted:Does anyone remember the set top cable boxes with the red numbers? Yeah, it was a huge box and all that was on it was the red numbers and then channel up and down.
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Aug 16, 2016 18:59
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SquadronROE posted:Does anyone remember the set top cable boxes with the red numbers? Those Jerrold boxes will never die. In 2000 Adelphia cable gave me one that immediately went into a drawer since my TV was cable ready. About two years ago when I finally switched to digital cable I dug it out and handed it over to Time Warner who had long since purchased Adelphia and the rep looked at it with a mix of confusion and wonder. 
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Aug 16, 2016 19:03
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Fancy, I remember the ones that just had channel up/down and maybe fast up/down. And power.
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Aug 16, 2016 19:05
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SquadronROE posted:Fancy, I remember the ones that just had channel up/down and maybe fast up/down. And power. Those were the 1980s ones, just a chunky box with a few buttons on it. EDIT: VVV Yeah, those analog ones had a row selector so you could access multiple channels per button. I got really good at flying through them. Dick Trauma has a new favorite as of 19:34 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 19:23
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I had a cable box with a dial and you set it between numbers to see unscrambled movie channels 
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Aug 16, 2016 19:31
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Efexeye posted:I had a cable box with a dial and you set it between numbers to see unscrambled movie channels  My Babby's First Cablebox was a TOCOM piece of kit that looked born of the 80s, but was somehow in good service in the mid 90s. This was through Continental Cablevision in Los Angeles, and it's how I remember first assuming my SNICK position on the couch, as well as catching Weird Science/Duckman on TNT or TBS, and Legends of the Hidden Temple/Doug on weekdays. Sadly, Cartoon Network was a 12 hour channel, so I never got to watch the good animes, just reruns of DynoMutt and Hong Kong Phooey This was also the Scrambled Porn Channel box.  Continental Cablevision later morphed into MediaONE, once all that telecommunications act/Bill Gates Set-Top-Box broadband poo poo started getting off the ground. So around 98 or 99 they upgraded everything and the boxes became Scientific Atlanta and now had a UI that wasn't terrible, but just about all the fabled Connected Online Information Superhighway features (like buying a PPV straight from your remote without calling anyone) went nowhere until MediaOne became TimeWarnerCable and then got serious Cableboxes. FilthyImp has a new favorite as of 19:54 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 19:50
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We had the old Pioneer cable boxes growing up. I remember when they switched from this one: To this one I thought it was sooo modern because it was black.  Just looking at the remote brings back my entire childhood. 
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Aug 16, 2016 20:19
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Data Graham posted:Sure, that makes a lot more sense architecturally, since the data set doesn't change very much and isn't very big. IIRC they build those boxes extremely cheap with poo poo processors so that's probably why they can't keep up, not network latency
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Aug 16, 2016 20:35
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I miss old TVs. We had this RCA for over ten years without a single problem. Only reason we got rid of it was because we wanted one with stereo. My mom got a Sony Trinitron like this which felt like the best TV in the whole world when I was 12. Kept it until well after college. Never had a problem.  I also used to go to my dad's and he had a Mitsubishi rear projection television. It was more problematic than my mom's sets but the screen was HUGE back then.  Because of that, when it was time for me to get an HDTV I figured getting a Mitsubishi DLP would be ok. I don't think I ever made a worse electronics purchase in my life. Something major needed to be replaced on it every six months. Good thing I actually bought the extended warranty. I was so happy to be rid of it when I switched to LCD.
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Aug 16, 2016 21:07
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the new comcast X1 cable box is pretty decent. the UI is not as responsive as i had hoped it would be but that seems to be because of lovely programming / the box hardware itself rather than network latency. i don't see how JavaScript could be being used on the X1 box but I could be mistaken. What cable boxes definitely use JS? Cause the JavaScript engine itself is pretty fast and optimized these days but the stuff people write with JS and other web technologies can be just as bad as any software especially with networking in the mix. Like performing a bunch of HTTP transactions every time you add a letter to a search query = bad software design. I didn't know people re-mapped their channels to their personal liking though. That seems like a pretty bad idea. I've had TVs where I could select my favorite stations and then access them in a shortcut menu and that was always enough for me. But I have memorized the local cable stations for decades now and they haven't changed much (except now you have to add 8 in front of the channel to get the HD version or some easy pattern like that).
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Aug 16, 2016 21:14
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My aunt had this exact one and continued using it years after owning a TV with an onboard cable tuner. She also had a very old top loading VCR that worked flawlessly up until she replaced it with a DVD player Edit: it's kind of weird that we're now back to requiring cable boxes. History repeats itself and all that Mak0rz has a new favorite as of 21:21 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 21:18
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Sorry to interrupt Cable Box Chat, but does anyone else remember dittos? When I was in elementary school, xeroxes were still hella expensive, so we got our handouts and worksheets done via spirit duplicators ("dittos"), in purple ink that smudged onto your hands if you weren't careful. http://atomictoasters.com/2012/03/what-ever-became-of-ditto-machines/ http://www.retroland.com/dittos/  
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Aug 16, 2016 22:03
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Can't resist: 
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Aug 16, 2016 23:44
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lol
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Aug 16, 2016 23:46
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I do not miss old TVs. Unless you spent a mint you'd have like a 20 incher. I feel like Audrey from little shop of horrors.
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Aug 16, 2016 23:53
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Or the fun art of plugging in a console before composite cable were a thing. I remember with our N64 having to use an antenna adapter to plug into a friend's VCR and manually tune to find the right signal. The upside we were able to record Goldeneye matches on tape. My grandparents weren't happy when i rocked up on weekend visits and detuned the ancient TV.
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Aug 17, 2016 00:41
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thetzar posted:Sorry to interrupt Cable Box Chat, but does anyone else remember dittos? When I was in elementary school, xeroxes were still hella expensive, so we got our handouts and worksheets done via spirit duplicators ("dittos"), in purple ink that smudged onto your hands if you weren't careful. People tend to confuse Dittos with Mimeographs. My elementary school had a ditto at first with that crappy purple text and the scent of alcohol, but they switched to Mimeograph.
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Aug 17, 2016 00:45
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Y'all talking about ditto machines - what time period was this? I remember them from school in the early-mid nineties but that seems kinda late.
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Aug 17, 2016 01:06
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They ruled the roost when I was in elementary school in the early 80s. I'm pretty sure they'd been around since the 50s, and didn't start disappearing until photocopiers started becoming affordable on a school's budget (early 90s).
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Aug 17, 2016 01:37
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thetzar posted:Sorry to interrupt Cable Box Chat, but does anyone else remember dittos? When I was in elementary school, xeroxes were still hella expensive, so we got our handouts and worksheets done via spirit duplicators ("dittos"), in purple ink that smudged onto your hands if you weren't careful. whoa last time i caught a glimpse of one of those being used the teacher was smoking a butt in the other hand
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Aug 17, 2016 02:12
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I'm pretty sure I remember teachers calling ours "dittos" but I think I once saw an ancient green Mimeograph machine in the office. 1980's. Mimeographs were so old I remember seeing them mentioned in Beverly Cleary books which I think were set in the 1950's.
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Aug 17, 2016 03:07
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I remember the term "ditto" being used by teachers, but I can't recall ever seeing paper like that - I guess the term outlasted the technology
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Aug 17, 2016 03:17
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My teachers always called it "running off". "I've got to go run off some copies of today's assignment"
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Aug 17, 2016 03:18
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Oh gently caress - I just remembered in Kindergarten we could volunteer to take all the chalk-erasers down to this giant-rear end vacuum machine that would suck the excess chalk from them
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Aug 17, 2016 03:24
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Computer viking posted:Because the DVD standard is little more than the menu system and "play this MPEG file"; there's no way they could have told the player to do that. It's actually a part of the DVD spec. You can encode pan & scan vectors into an anamorphic MPEG file at encode time. I don't know if anyone actually used this functionality though, or if it was even commonly implemented in DVD players.
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Aug 17, 2016 03:30
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tater_salad posted:Okay so all this vcr chat a few pages ago and not one person talked about vcr+. It was called G-Code here in Australia, and you could get remotes for your VCR that had a barcode scanner built in to read them out of the newspaper.
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Aug 17, 2016 03:31
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EugeneJ posted:I remember the term "ditto" being used by teachers, but I can't recall ever seeing paper like that - I guess the term outlasted the technology We called them Gestetner machines at my school, but I've no idea of that is actually the same device or not. Definitely the awesome-smelling purple copies that the kids would get a good whiff of if they were fresh off the presses.
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Aug 17, 2016 03:34
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DrBouvenstein posted:A few pages late to video game rental chat, but even worse than getting a photocopied manual missing pages was just getting this little white-and-blue sticker on the inside cover of the plastic clamshell: hell i remember sometimes actually getting lucky and getting the real manual included, and some previous renter had flipped to the back of the manual with all those random "NOTES" pages no one ever used and actually bothered to hand write down all the cheat codes for the benefit of future renters of the game. poo poo was pretty legit at the time.
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Aug 17, 2016 03:38
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EugeneJ posted:Oh gently caress - I just remembered in Kindergarten we could volunteer to take all the chalk-erasers down to this giant-rear end vacuum machine that would suck the excess chalk from them We volunteered to take them outside and just beat them together.
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Aug 17, 2016 03:56
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Efexeye posted:I had a cable box with a dial and you set it between numbers to see unscrambled movie channels We had this sucker:  You could sometimes hit two buttons at once and occasionally get some "blocked" stuff. Snowy tits were the best thing. Kids these days have it so easy.
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Aug 17, 2016 03:58
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CubanMissile posted:I miss old TVs. We had this RCA for over ten years without a single problem. my dad still has the trinitron that he had when i was born. they're solid both literally and figuratively he also still has the rear projection tv he bought like 15 years ago. he never once had it aligned so it looks like blurry RGB rear end even in hd now he just steals flatscreens from work and they're all hooked up to the same lovely stolen cable
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Aug 17, 2016 04:02
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Last Chance posted:IIRC they build those boxes extremely cheap with poo poo processors so that's probably why they can't keep up, not network latency Man even Android phones and Xbones with 20 core processors and dedicated GPUs have basic UI elements that jerk in and out of place slower than my loving Windows 98 machine and I just don't get it
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Aug 17, 2016 04:03
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The Black Cauldron: F3 was used for both 'take' and 'jump', which led to some awkward moments when the time came to collect the cauldron. The cyber-zombie at the beginning of SQ4 gave me nightmares. My grandmother has always been better at Doom than I am. I used to beat off to low-res black and white masturbation instructional vids for girls on my Handspring. Except it was really all in green, because I was doing it secretly in the dark, and the backlight was the same kind as on a digital watch.
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Aug 17, 2016 04:09
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Buca di Bepis posted:Man even Android phones and Xbones with 20 core processors and dedicated GPUs have basic UI elements that slowly jerk in and out of place slower than my loving Windows 98 machine and I just don't get it windows 95 didnt even have animations. or a frame buffer i dont think, poo poo just got drawn on the screen. pls dont hyperbole that far its all down to software tbh. you can get poo poo smooth but smooth and quick? lol. smooth is easier and still sells also phone processors say multi-core but they are not multi threaded. and you only use half of em at a given time. ARM lol
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Aug 17, 2016 04:09
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I don't give a gently caress about frame buffers, all I know is that I can open and close a start menu on a Cyrix 233 a hundred times with a QuickTime playing in the background before the achievement menu on a launch Xbone slowly shudders into place or the selection on a Comcast TV guide menu crawls down to the next item
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Aug 17, 2016 04:15
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