It looks like The Inquirer has caught NVidia with their collective pants down over materials used in the production of some of their graphics chips. The short version is that high lead content solder used to bond the chips to the board were failing at high temperatures due to cracking. NVidia knew about this problem and rather than recall all the affected parts, they continued to sell them alongside good new parts which made their way into laptops from many of the major vendors including Apple’s new Macbook Pro. The problem is that while they were shipping both parts, they were telling everyone that only the corrected parts were being shipped. The Inquirer went so far as to have a lab disect a retail MBP and saw it’s motherboard up into slices that could be analyzed with an electron microscope and a mass spectrometer. The evidence they found proved NVidia was lying to their customers.
Author Archives: Clay
Sony – still hijacking your machine, now with SecuROM
You’d think after the huge fiasco over Sony’s use of First 4 Internet’s XCP product several years ago, sony would have changed course a bit. Instead Sony decided to bring their DRM efforts in house and out popped SecuROM. Again, they use the same rootkit tactics to secretly install their software. This makes SecuROM difficult to detect and even more difficult to remove. Sony was sued, and settled in the previous case(s). There are several suits pending against EA Games for use of the SecuROM DRM software. I’m thinking it’s only a matter of time before Sony gets served. When will they learn?
ZD’s Robin Harris proclaims death of BD already?
Blu-ray is dead – heckuva job, Sony! | Storage Bits | ZDNet.com
Robin, what gives? Ok, it’s been 8 months since the format war ended, but jeez did you really expect the price to match those of DVDs already? Seriously? Eight months ago, BD players were $500. Now you can get them for $270/$300 on average, cheaper if you look around. Yes, BDs cost more now, but so did DVDs when they came out. I bought my first DVD player, a Toshiba when prices hit the $250 mark. That was close to 10 years ago. (wow, has it really been that long?) DVDs weren’t exactly cheap back then either. It will take time, but the prices will eventually come down. And about it not being worth it, puh-leeze! Even if you’re not an AV snob, the picture is amazing. Something a DVD (upconverted or not) certainly isn’t. Don’t get me wrong. DVDs are still great, but they’re from a different era. 480i is still going to look dull and blurry no matter what you do to it when compared with even 720p. Robin makes some good points about the high price of production, but get real; this isn’t going to last forever. A year from now, BDs will be a lot more mainstream. DVDs are already on their way to the bargain bin and once the switch to DTV happens next year I think you’ll see a lot more people looking seriously at HD sets and media players. I just have to add one last thing, HD content streaming in the U.S. is going nowhere. As long as providers keep holding people back with their bandwidth caps and limited connectivity options, internet-based HD streaming won’t become a true alternative to disc.