Re: G3's, G4's, Altivec, DVD's, iBooks, and TiBooks

[Andrew Sharp <andy@netfall.com>]

Henrik Edlund wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 23 Oct 2001, Laurent de Segur wrote:
> 
> LdS> I just got a new iBook 2001 600MHz+COMBO-DVD/CDRW+256MB. It
> LdS> plays DVDs both under macos9 and running debian using the vlc
> LdS> package without any problem at all. The previous one had many
> LdS> troubles even playing simple MP3 due to 66MHz bus speed mostly I
> LdS> believe. The increase in cpu speed is not phenomenal but it can
> LdS> only helps.
> 
> Which is really weird as I played mp3's without any problem on an old P166
> with 33MHz bus. (I don't have any problems in my iBook2-500 either.)
> 
> I can't see any reason why it would not be possible to get DVD playback to
> work either on the "old" iBook2. Isn't is supposed to work under MacOS9?
> And with how badly MacOS9 is designed Linux must be able to top that.

Remember that these computers *come* with MacOS, which you paid for,
and DVDs play fine with that.  As the person who said you can't do
anything else while watching a DVD, my experience with MockOS is
that that is the case no matter what the single task is that you're
doing.  So if DVD playback is really all that important (hint: it's
not) then just set your system up to be dual boot.  Problem solved,
geez can we move on?  Please don't tell me that you want to do other
things while watching your DVDs, that's just silly.  If you're
really doing something else while watching your DVD, well, then the
DVD probably isn't really worth watching in the first place, is it?
~:^) If you have something else to do, then you can watch your DVD
later.  If you don't need or want MacOS, then an X86 laptop would be
a much better bet anyway (over a TiBook, that is, even the TiBook2)
for a lot of other reasons.  A 16x12 screen with a GHz processor
with a combo drive for $1k USD less, where AGP, DMA and even
firewire work pretty well, and SSE is almost actually supported, is
pretty convincing.  'Course your 'top won't look as cool, but I only
think the iBook2 looks cool.  The TiBook to me looks like someone
ran it over with a steamroller, which is fine, but they forgot to
turn in 90 degrees first.

So get your iBook2, make it dual boot, and live happily ever after
while watching that special DVD version of _Das Boot_.

a

PS And whoever said that bit about css in the ATI press release, I
was thinking the same thing.  Huh, the two things have nothing to do
with each other!  The stupidity and wrongheadedness of the whole dvd
encryption/security thing is just stunning.