<IMG SRC=http://visit.geocities.com/counter.gif>Last updated 06/30/2001
06/30/2001
Nothing new to report.
06/16/2001
I just realized that I never posted my 'softDVD' roundup. I had done most of the writeup back in March/April, but simply forgot to post it. Rereading what I wrote has been a lot of laughs. I now have a much better idea just how HARD it is to maintain objectivity. First of all, I established some baseline criteria for a 'grading system' (chuckle.) The 'grading system' is supposed to represent increasing levels of visual quality and decoding acceleration. Instead, it just ends up favoring the ATI boards (for performance), and the ATI boards (for visual quality.) There are some very noticeable differences in image quality among the tested VGA chips, especially under certain viewing circumstances. However, in a standard viewing scenario, the differences are minimal. I could only discern differences because I used the played the same clip over and over again, on the various test cards. And even then, differences were hard to spot.
The one exception was downscaling quality. Boards without bilinear reduction stood out with awful quality. The SiS305, Trident Blade3D, ATI RagePro and RageXL lacked lacked bilinear reduction of any kind.
05/06/2001
Last November, I spent a few weekends designing a digital-logic circuit to emulate a CRT text controller. I finished the design, tested it on an XS40-010XL FPGA board, then put it on the shelf and forgot about it. This past week, I rediscovered the lost project, and focused on polishing it for public release. The last few bugs (like a horizontally misaligned text-screen, incorrect end-of-line wrapping, and incorrect start-of-page address) have finally been squished! Check out my Verilog HDL stuff. (Note, that portion of my wwwpage is only of interest to hardware designers.)
04/22/2001
I'm back! During a weekend in early March, an automated Tripod script removed my homepage. In the time since, I contacted Tripod and they reactivated my homepage. I'm still restoring website files from a backup site, so a few links might not work.
03/22/2001
Tripod has responded! Due to a 'glitch' in one of their automated maintenance scripts, several Tripod pages were inadvertently removed. Tripod is attempting to restore all homepages.
Anyway, I've updated my preliminary PCDVD-test report. Remember, it's just a preliminary report. You can find it in the softdvd section of my links below.
..to older news/rants
I haven't yet restored all my files from my geocities page If you encounter a broken-link or missing-file, try my backup site at http://www.geocities.com/liaor2.
Most of the stuff on my page is pretty old...just warning you
http://www.concentric.net/~psilon - VirtualDub homepage, free linear MPEG/ASF/AVI to AVI editor
http://members.home.net/beyeler - BBMPEG homepage, MPEG1/2 encoder for Win95/98
http://www.inmatrix.com - home of DVDGenie, a nice tweaking utility for software DVD players
http://www.avault.com/pcrl (The PC Release List! Go here for the latest game releases)
http://www.next-generation.com (another on-line gaming magazine)
http://www.fastgraphics.com
Websites of some friends...
http://www.kotek.com/kenhsu - Ken Hsu
http://www.mit.edu/~emin - Emin Martinian
http://www.stanford.edu/~mikeym - Mike Malkin
http://www.ChaoticGood.net - John Tchoe (I bear no responsibility for sustained brain damage)
http://personal.www.umich.edu/~davidmwu - David Wu, friend from back when I was at U-M Ann Arbor
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© 2001 liaor@iname.com