I built myself a gaming PC about two years ago. I've been an AMD supported for decades, so I went with the best CPU AMD was offering at the time. Two years later, it's still the best CPU AMD offers.

I remember the heyday where AMD actually overtook Intel. Their CPUs were actually better and cheaper. That's no longer the case, but (at least when I built my gaming rig) I was not willing to pay 50%+ more for maybe 10% higher performance, so it was still AMD for me.

The important thing, though, is that we need competition in order to spur innovation. Before AMD started nipping at Intel's heels, it was all about the MHz (and who could get to GHz first). After that, we started seeing CPUs with more cores and better threading and all the good stuff. I hope Ryzen makes Intel very worried - worried enough that they innovate the hell out of their CPUs. I also hope Ryzen makes AMD enough money that they can continue to innovate, and continue to compete with Intel. Because when that happens, it is we the consumers who win.

My TV's too old to have that. And I abhor "smart" functionality. I realise it might be unavoidable but I'm not going to use any of those features.

That said, that /is/ ridiculous.

Dammit, Panasonic. Now I need to get a new TV.

Yes I've been looking for a reason to get a new TV even though there's nothing really wrong with the Panasonic one I have now. And yes I've been looking at a Samsung TV and yes I know the only thing Samsung does better than electronics is corporate corruption, but you know what? Shut up, that's what.

How do you incorporate support for something that doesn't exist yet? That's like complaining that regular DVD players can't play Blu-Ray!

Go ahead and set it up.

I guaranty I'd notice the 5.1 surround sound over plain stereo, though.

And, again, if the medium would have become popular, no doubt it'd have been incorporated into anything that plays optical discs of that form-factor.

Yes, rly. Even according to the link you just sent. That "study" claims people can't tell the difference, not that the difference doesn't exist.

I've been saying my next TV will be a projector for a decade, but it just never happens (price/capabilities never end up matching).

I'd never seen a DVD player that couldn't play DVD-A.

I really hope that's a 100cm TV (:

I've not had much of a "that's not black enough" problem. Maybe because I never watch TV in complete darkness. Nor have I had any audio sync issues that weren't due to a bad video file... but I don't let the TV handle the audio. ...and I need to start researching 4K sets...

I looked into that. Those are insanely rare. And expensive (: I'll just be careful for now. Or look into how to convert DFF files to something useful again (:

> What they should have done instead of SACD is make plain old DVD audio universal, and ALL optical decks capable of reading both CD and DVD.

They did. It was called DVD-A. Worked on any DVD player. Obviously not a CD player, but if that had become popular they'd probably have added that functionality.

> The SACD however probably sounded better due to the very same reason that these new Vinyl releases sounds better than the CD releases; better mastering.

Nope.

I mean, that's part of it, but no. Vinyl just doesn't have the resolution SACD has. Neither do CDs. Most SACDs came with dual layers - they'd play as CDs in a regular CD player, and as SACD in an SACD player, so you could compare. Yeah, the CD layer was usually really, really well-mastered, but the SACD layer? Mind-blowingly clear. I compare it to going from SD to HD, except with audio. This isn't just about mastering. There is literally more detail there.

> But only minimally so,

And you only listen to your records minimally?

You are neglecting to accept that technology does improve.

Yes, vinyl was good at the time. Yes, vinyl meant better quality masters for stuff. But vinyl can't actually reproduce the quality of the masters, and we had no technology at the time that could. Now we do, and we have for decades.

Take Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits. I mentioned to someone that the SACD remaster of it was phenomenal and got a derisive "Ugh, it sounds better on vinyl" because "that's what the artist wanted". That album was produced -- by the artist -- specifically to take advantage of the newly-available CD format.

If you're going to argue that "some CDs are mastered badly" - yes, of course some are. So are some vinyls. That's not a limit of the medium, that's people doing stupid things.