There will be a cost. Companies like NVIDIA and ATI may slow their development pace since they can't monetize as well any future advancements. Who is willing to shell out $300 to run MW2 at 90fps vs. 50fps...? Are we done generating real time photo-realistic images? Does this look like a screenshot from an action movie yet? I for one don't think so.
We need the next Crisis. That game that will bring to a halt all but the top 1% of existing PCs on maximum settings. The industry needs it. I need it. You need it too - you just don't know it.
Your comment betrays ignorance I am afraid. More precisely, it is a great example why "research by Wikipedia" does not work when it is not backed by an actual intimate understanding of the subject matter.
Specifically your ill informed comparison with "Romania", that backward, not "actually civilized" banana republic that you use as a boogie man only reveals your ignorance. Yes, Romania is a relatively poor country, the GDP per capita is about $12k/year (compare to $46k/year in the US) as per wikipedia.
However, the level of health services available is not immediately obviously worse than in the US, once adjusted for the purchasing power of the median citizen, and especially the less affluent. People there can have high quality cancer treatments and heart surgery that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in the USand possibly bankrupt them and their families - all paid for by the public health plans. Expensive drugs are often covered. Extended hospital stays - of the orders of weeks or even months - are also very often covered. I have had friends from Europe who had surgery in the US and were shocked to be kicked out of the hospital hours after the doctor sowed the last stitch. That would be unheard of even in a backward place like Romania.
You are guilty of oversimplification. I wish not to make the same error, only with a different sign. I will be the first to remark that, not price adjusted, the quality of Romanian health care is often not great especially for non life threatening diseases. The bureaucracy is often suffocating. Petty bribes are common. I wish not advocate for a "single payer" health care system.
However, people who live in glass houses most definitely should wield their stones carefully.
1) Pull aggro
2) Clickfest
3) Pro$it
I am so confused. Why is a huge leap in comprehension required to go from a typical computer monitor with a diagonal increases of 17-24'' to a standard TV with a diagonal of 35-50'' or more? It is the same LCD based technology. It is not a different type of tool. It does not require a separate cultural upbringing or years of additional technical training to understand the other once you understand one.
Your college age movie watching experience on a tiny laptop in a cramped dorm room neatly maps onto a more leisurely experience staring at your obscenely large TV from the comfort of your living room couch. You don't like staring at a big black box underneath your precious media center? Fine, then get an HTPC form factor computer, and hide it behind the TV itself. You don't want a keyboard? Then get a bluetooth remote control. All this should be straight forward. You don't need a box with a prominent 'CPO stamp of approval' (Cable Provider Oligopoly) and ridiculous price and limitations. Essentially all you need is a $10 HDMI cable to connect your computer to your TV. How atrophied is the American consumer's capacity to reason and think independently...?
Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and think what nobody else has thought.
