HD Online Player (oz Season 1 720p Or 1080i)
Harriet Wehrenberg
"With its broad appeal and large array of features highlighting car culture, we are excited to bring Gran Turismo 4 to market," said Susan Nourai, director, product and online marketing, Sony Computer Entertainment America. "Following up on an initial million unit plus launch in Japan, we have high expectations that Gran Turismo 4 will once again raise the bar for the racing videogame category here in North America."
Players compete against each other or the artificial intelligence with select cars on select courses. Various gameplay modes are available that include "Single Race," "Time Trial," and multi-player for up to two players (single console) or six players via LAN-based gameplay. More cars and course are available in the GT Arcade Mode when they are unlocked in the Gran Turismo Mode.
Via the GT World, players start from the bottom and race to earn money, unlock cars and courses, buy and sell cars and upgrade parts while competing in more than 200 various championship races. Upon entering the GT World, players have the option to visit the following Gran Turismo resort facilities:
Players take the role of a race team manager and provide direction to their driver (A.I.) to compete in races while viewed and directed through the classic "broadcast-style" replay screen, on-board camera and race monitor screen. In B-spec mode, the player will have the opportunity to adjust various car settings for proper race setup, choose the difficulty level, which is also known as the "Pace Command," followed with direction on when to overtake competition and take pit stops where a variety of car settings can be adjusted to further progress in the race -- from tires to the volume of fuel for refueling.
Divided in two formats: 1) "Photo Drive" -- players have the opportunity to photograph their car during the race where they can take advantage of zoom, depth of field and motion blur. 2) "Photo Travel" -- Players can take their favorite car and travel around the globe to conduct photo sessions in exotic locations through a variety of angles. Once the photo is taken in the game, the player can save it to their memory card (8MB) (for PlayStation2) or a USB key and have the option to share with friends or print out a color copy via a USB printer. Up to 50 photos can be taken at one time.
In Gran Turismo 4, automobiles available for the player represent historically significant vehicles to popular cars of today and tomorrow. All vehicles are fully customizable from racing tires to gear ratio. New driver assist functions: In addition to anti-lock brakes, traction control systems and active stability control, Gran Turismo 4 includes active steering as well, further enhancing the safety features. In reflecting the latest car tuning trends, Gran Turismo 4 has the availability of superchargers and NOS. More than 50 courses are available in Gran Turismo 4 that encompass dirt/snow courses, world circuits, original circuits (tracks from previous Gran Turismo titles) and city courses covering both real-life and fantasy-based locales. Some courses can be played in reverse mode. Some courses include Nurburgring Nordschleife, New York City, the Grand Canyon, Tsukuba Circuit, and more.
NBC will multicast an H.264 1080p signal for each feed from Vancouver to NBC's New York facilities. The multicast will then continue to Las Vegas via iStreamPlanet's private OC12, where it will be decoded to HD-SDI and then re-encoded into 720p Silverlight streams in real time, via a hardware/software solution co-developed with Inlet Technologies.
"Inlet is proud to help NBC deliver the highest quality live streams of Vancouver Winter Olympics coverage," said John Bishop, Inlet's senior vice president of strategy and business development. "Combined with IIS Live Smooth Streaming, our 720p stream encoding will help NBC improve viewer retention and the time fans spend enjoying Olympic Winter Games coverage online."
Another team member, Vertigo, announced that it has been chosen to provide the HD live streaming and on-demand video player for the Olympics. While the company put out a press release headlined with a "first ever" title ("Vertigo to Provide First-Ever High-Definition Microsoft Silverlight Online Video Player for NBC Universal's Coverage of the Olympic Winter Games") it later clarified that the "first ever" only applied to the Olympics, as other HD Silverlight players already exist.
"The use of a Silverlight 720p HD Video Player is a 'first ever' experience for the Olympic Games," a company spokesperson said. "NBC Universal is using the custom player developed by Vertigo to deliver this playback experience."
When asked whether some viewers with very high bandwidth, such as U-verse or FiOS, might be able to view some showcase content in 1080p (or even 1080i), Vertigo listed a constraint of the 720p Silverlight delivery that makes bandwidth requirements high enough to discourage 1080p viewing.
"The Olympic content is encoded to target 720p," a company spokesperson said. "If the internet bandwidth and video rendering capability on your computer is high, you will experience 720p high-definition video playback of the sample content when in Full Screen mode."
What exactly does Vertigo mean by high bandwidth?
"If your actual bandwidth is below 5Mbps, or your playback device is video-challenged, then you will experience the adaptive nature of Smooth Streaming," the spokesperson said.
Discussions with other industry experts indicates that 5Mbps is probably 2-3Mbps higher than the industry average, so it is uncertain whether the limitation is in the Silverlight HD delivery, or merely an arbitrary number chosen by Vertigo, who controls the heuristics of the player.
Closer to the Olympics, I'll update readers on the status of preparations, as well as make updates to the team roster if any additional members emerge.
[Editor's note: This article has been updated since its original posting date. The original quoted a press release that incorrectly stated that iStream Planet would be receiving the content via satellite, and also that Inlet would be doing encoding in Vancouver.]
This holiday season, the rise of 3-D televisions has made it a buyer's market for plain old HD. To be sure, it's as easy as ever to get lost in a confusing tangle of technologies and acronyms. So let's simplify things. The first question involves just three letters: LED or not LED?
LED-backlit LCD screens are the premium display technology this year. They cost at least 10 percent more than the standard fluorescent-lit LCDs, but the best ones can't be beat. "The color balance is just so much better," says Randall Hand, editor of VizWorld.com.
Shoppers often begin and end their search with screen size, but pixel density and refresh rate are at least as important. Even on a low budget, it's probably worth paying for a full 1080p screen, which refreshes 1080 horizontal lines of pixels once per cycle. The 1080i sets have the same number of lines but take two clock cycles to refresh the entire screen. Here, Hand says, the price differential is so small that 1080i sets are getting rather difficult to find. "The hardware difference is minimal. Both have 1080 horizontal lines on the screen; it's just the internal guts that differ."
When Scott Steinberg of Seattle-based tech consulting firm TechSavvy Global bought his HDTV, he decided against a 50-inch model with so-so specs and instead bought a comparably priced 42-inch TV that had a higher refresh rate and better picture quality.
"The reality is, once you get used to the set, you're not going to say, 'God, I miss those 8 inches,' " he says. "If the picture quality across the board is better, who cares if it's 42 or 50 inches?"
Although there's no substitute for seeing the television on the showroom floor, Steinberg says, extra points go to the savvy shopper who goes home afterward, researches the alternatives, and buys the chosen set on the retailer's Web site. (When searching the Web by the name of the desired set and retailer, it pays to include the phrase "coupon code"; you might be able to knock another 10 to 20 percent off the retail price.)
"If you purchase a PlayStation 3 for $300, for example," he says, "You're getting a Blu-ray player that also has a massive library of content with the ability to stream music, movies and photos, and download games."
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