Random Thoughts Thread

[marurun]

I have an Orbi and have had no such issues. Don’t give up on it.

[RCBH928]

I have an Orbi and have had no such issues. Don’t give up on it.

Out of topic, I heard many people say Orbi was very stable for them and had 0 issues. Not sure why I had problems, maybe later firmwares were not as stable as the earlier ones. I fixed it by installing a custom tweaked firmware made by a guy called "Voxel" on the internet, now its 100% rock stable 100% pleased.

[RCBH928]

I am frustrated shopping for DVDs and Blurays on Amazon, they don't seem to list which region they are in. I am not sure if its not listed it means region free or it just assumes all US DVD+BD are 1/A regions. Some of them mention they are NTSC so not sure if they cancel out PAL.

[isiolia]

I am frustrated shopping for DVDs and Blurays on Amazon, they don't seem to list which region they are in. I am not sure if its not listed it means region free or it just assumes all US DVD+BD are 1/A regions. Some of them mention they are NTSC so not sure if they cancel out PAL.

If you're shopping Amazon.com then yes, that's the US site, and unless noted you are almost certainly looking at US retail discs. Typically you only see import discs (relatively speaking) if the DVD/Blu-ray if there was either never a US release, or if the US one is out of print and thus expensive, and it's usually noted or obvious. For instance, you can pay $100 for the US Blu-ray/DVD double pack for the Fantasia movies - out of print AFAIK - or $15 for the EU Blu-ray discs, which despite the note Amazon has, are region free.
I think the only times I've gotten import discs when it wasn't super clear were things like Alien Anthology or the Lord of the Rings Blu-rays, which Amazon had for substantially less than most other places at the time. They ended up being (region free) EU and I think Canadian releases, respectively, which only really changed the packaging slightly.

[RCBH928]

Well...this sucks. I remember they used to mention the region in the details part. The Amazon UK have some bluray/dvd region in the titles or in the details but not all of them. For example John Carpenter's Vampires (Collector's Edition) is on the US Amazon but not UK, it doesn't mention anything about region except NTSC. I thought we are way past NTSC and PAL and all TVs work the same now in the HD era, its just locked by software. Even then many TVs and players can output both.

My current workaround is to check on bluray.com. Its really hard to understand corporate logic when they release a paid product and limit its region and playability and make it hard to find that information, meanwhile you can get it free off the net working on all devices worldwide in 30min or so. I am still glad I can get physical copies though, for some titles I would like to own a physical copy but as history has proven to us while the physical copy can be yours the player will go extinct like VHS and LaserDiscs before it.

[isiolia]

I thought we are way past NTSC and PAL and all TVs work the same now in the HD era, its just locked by software. Even then many TVs and players can output both.

Largely so, but it's also not that uncommon for a Blu-ray to include a DVD copy where that designation is relevant. There are also differences with 1080i content and other potential formats on Blu-ray, though like you mentioned, flat panels are all sort of the same anyway.

[Forlorn Drifter]

I wonder if it would be possible to make something like Retroarch AI Service, except real time and not needing to connect to the internet. The translations are generally terrible, but generally better than nothing, especially considering how much there is on PS1/2 that will likely never get a translation patch that I want to play.

[RCBH928]

I never appreciated the importance of fonts until I saw the first wave of iOS games(and still some). Text in games seemed like a plugged in word documents, making it look something close to proof of concept. I still don't know why fonts were this terrible on iOS.

[marurun]

I never appreciated the importance of fonts until I saw the first wave of iOS games(and still some). Text in games seemed like a plugged in word documents, making it look something close to proof of concept. I still don't know why fonts were this terrible on iOS.

Don't blame iOS. Blame devs. They're just playing things SUPER safe. iOS runs on devices with a wide range of screen resolutions, and so text needs to be visible on even relatively small screens. Many developers handle this by using a really bland line font. There are far better ways. Android has the same issue for a lot of its apps.

[RCBH928]

I never appreciated the importance of fonts until I saw the first wave of iOS games(and still some). Text in games seemed like a plugged in word documents, making it look something close to proof of concept. I still don't know why fonts were this terrible on iOS.

Don't blame iOS. Blame devs. They're just playing things SUPER safe. iOS runs on devices with a wide range of screen resolutions, and so text needs to be visible on even relatively small screens. Many developers handle this by using a really bland line font. There are far better ways. Android has the same issue for a lot of its apps.

ahhh...so that is the reason? I thought iOS didn't have built in support for fonts in games or something. But how does this makes sense when a lot of websites use many different fonts, and websites are viewed from anything as small as a wrist watch all the way to 4K TV.