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I am in the process of purchasing a 24-inch iMac which has a great big screen so I can enjoy watching my DVDs on them. However, someone told me that when you view DVDs that are progressive scans, there will be jumps or jilting in the images when the camera pans. Can some one explain to me why this is the case and what exactly is meant by "prgressive scans." Pardon my tech ignorance.

You've nothing to worry about. Progressively encoded DVDs play great on a Mac. They look wonderful.

It's non-progressively encoded DVDs (ie. *interlaced* discs) that can be a pain, but there's now a feature in one of the Apple DVD Player menus called "De-interlace" which solves this 99% of the time.

Great, thanks, peerpee. Now, off to the Apple Store...

Take a couple of your DVDs down and have a go on it in the store. I'm sure they'll let you have a gander!

I just bought a macbook and must say that the progressive transfer of Seduced and Abandoned DID look jilted and choppy when I played it...

but that was only until I looked under the dvdplayer menu and saw the "deinterlace" option. I turned it on and it worked perfectly, it interlaced transfers look very nice also.

peerpe, I took you advice and took four DVDs with me to see how they look on the 24-inch iMac:

Fritz Lang's M
The New World
Manhattan
Match Point

They all looked magnificent on that huge motherfucking screen. Now, I just got to find me the $4k to pay for it. I should be able to scrounge some funds and get it in the next few weeks.

4000 AUD, I'm assuming...

I almost thought you were going to spend 4000 US on an Imac...

Standard model is A$2,999 but with extra RAM, bigger hard drive and better graphics card etc, it end sup being close to A$4,000.

nice.

I wonder how many people here are mac fans, and how many are PC fans.

This is my first Mac. I was a PC user but have given up. The new 24 inch iMac was the carrot I needed to make the change. Sick and tired of Windows and its fauts with drivers, viruses etc. Apple is more streamlined, easier and customised for all your needs.

Mac's are for people who can't handle the choice of more than one mouse button.

davidhare wrote:Marty what sort of a DVD Drive does it have, and is it upgreadeable to a future HD-DVD or BluRay drive (whichever wins?)

I only ask because there's a new Toshiba laptop (which is Windows of course) which incorporates their HD-DVD player (for around 5K AUD) which is reputedly (unconfirmed) region free and PAL/NTSC friendly.

DVD drive is an 8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±RW, CD-RW)

It does not play HD or Blu-Ray and there currently are no external HD optical drives on the market; and with no HDMI input, it's impossible to connect the iMac to an external home theatre-style player but I will probably buy a HD player for my TV set if and when enough titles become available. I am still unsure about HD/Blu-Ray formats as I think by the time enough titles are released in HD/Blu-Ray format, your broadband connection will be good enough to download HD films anyway.

Since Apple announced its downloadable movies, I would imagine at some stage that the HD movies will be available to download and thereby bypassing the HD/Blu-Ray problem. It looks like Apple is focusing more on downloadable movies and with increased broadband (Telstra Big Pond just announced their Extreme Broadband connections designed specifically for downloading movies and other large files) it makes sense to do so.

The Invunche wrote:Mac's are for people who can't handle the choice of more than one mouse button.

The new mighty mouse for OS X has a 360 degree scroll wheel and 2 pressure sensitive buttons (left and right) and the responsiveness is amazing. so it's not a one button system anymore, and hasnt been for a whille now...

I dont want to turn this into a "macs are so much better because..." but In terms of features and performance, I could counterpoint probably anything you throw at me, simply because Bootcamp (a free mac program, made by apple) allows you to install any windows OS on a partition of your Hard drive and run it natively.

SncDthMnky wrote:I dont want to turn this into a "macs are so much better because..." but In terms of features and performance, I could counterpoint probably anything you throw at me, simply because Bootcamp (a free mac program, made by apple) allows you to install any windows OS on a partition of your Hard drive and run it natively.

Disclaimer: this only applies to Macs released in 2006 with Intel processors. And while BootCamp is free, Windows isn't - and you need a full commercial release of the latest edition of XP: apparently installation discs borrowed from friends with Windows PCs won't work. So it would actually cost me £150 plus to run Windows, which is why I haven't been tempted yet.

(More seriously, I'm concerned about security issues - it's easy to be complacent if you're a Mac user because of the amazing lack of viruses, worms, Trojans etc, and the last thing I'd want is for my entire hard drive, including the Mac OS X partition, to be trashed because of my relative inexperience in this area.)

Incidentally, my desktop mouse has FIVE buttons, though I hardly use most of them. But the MacBook's trackpad is a thing of beauty - and amazingly versatile once you've worked out how to scroll with two fingers.

Hehe, I love messing with Mac fans.

MichaelB wrote: Disclaimer: this only applies to Macs released in 2006 with Intel processors. And while BootCamp is free, Windows isn't - and you need a full commercial release of the latest edition of XP: apparently installation discs borrowed from friends with Windows PCs won't work. So it would actually cost me £150 plus to run Windows, which is why I haven't been tempted yet.

Well, anyone who has a mac already can download the free program and then find out when they try to install it, that they cant due to their computer not being able to use it (a thing of beauty, the mac installer is. only let's you install comatible programs, apple-wise), and anyone buying a Mac simply because I told them that is going to go out and get a new one. Plus, It would cost you £150 plus to run windows on anything, since *ding* that's what it costs. so not a very valid point on either front. on the other hand...

MichaelB wrote: the MacBook's trackpad is a thing of beauty - and amazingly versatile once you've worked out how to scroll with two fingers.

You're dam right it is. two finger scrolling rules. you can set it up to be the clicker too, so the trackpad does everything.

SncDthMnky wrote:I wonder how many people here are mac fans, and how many are PC fans.

Sorry to clutter up Marty's thread!

I don't really know enought of be a fan of either - not very good at technology! I've been around computers all my life though thanks to my parents. From the ZX Spectrum to the Amiga (in 1992) and then our first PC ready for going to university in 1998! I think I'm also one of those people at the tail end of technology, and I think my parents have instilled an ethic of using something until it falls apart before replacing it! I don't mind that however since the upgrade is more noticeable when it does happen.

I've upgraded from my 1998 PC a couple of months ago and have ended up with a huge flat screen, a decent (quiet!) colour printer, a DVD drive finally (trust us to buy our last computer only a month before DVD drives were released!) and have finally ugraded to broadband and XP! What a difference, now that I can finally watch my DVDs and download trailers and films (even captured my first stills last week!). We were going to keep the old printer at the time of the upgrade but it turns out we were so out of date, and all connections have moved to USB ports, that my old printer couldn't connect! So new printer it was (and for the best, I'd add!)

I'm not a die-hard PC fan however so it might be interesting to try a Mac out when I next upgrade another eight years from now!

(You can see that I'm easy to please though and that simple things that most of you have been living with for years are still shiny and new to this anime-style, wide-eyed member!)

I remember my school was still using BBC Micro computers during classes when I left in 1996! Five years later the school was razed to the ground and rebuilt from scratch. I often wonder whether that was meant to be an ironic comment on the quality of the education I got there and my future prospects? :-k

SncDthMnky wrote:Bootcamp (a free mac program, made by apple) allows you to install any windows OS on a partition of your Hard drive and run it natively.

This was actually the real reason I wanted to post as I have a question.

My father works as a fire alarm engineer and he has a laptop provided by his job (a Dell). It runs both Windows 98 and 2000, since he usually needs to connect his laptop up to fire systems installed in particular businesses to check and maintain the software, and of course the older programmes were created on the older Windows OS. He was getting worried that the company he works for is wanting laptops to be upgraded, but there will be no facility for older versions of Windows to run along newer versions (he has his current computer set up so he can choose 98 or 2000 from the opening screen).

This mention of the Mac being able to install other Windows OS makes me wonder if a laptop Mac would be a good option for him? (I'm not sure, but it probably is, possible to install older Windows OS onto a new Windows laptop as well?)

SncDthMnky wrote: Plus, It would cost you £150 plus to run windows on anything, since *ding* that's what it costs. so not a very valid point on either front.

Forgive my ignorance (I've never owned a PC in my life), but doesn't Windows come with them more or less automatically? In much the same way that new Macs have OS X and iLife thrown in?

Mind you, I wouldn't be at all surprised if some retailers started doing package deals on Macs plus Windows - if they haven't already.