[MPlayer-users] Re: best graphical card for mplayer

[Tuukka Toivonen]

On Thu, 11 Sep 2003, D Richard Felker III wrote:

>> That's not entirely fair. Computer hardware manufacturers provide enough
>Maybe you think it's fair that they get away with advertising their
>products as doing things which they really can't/don't do, by
>emulating missing features with the drivers? IMO the two biggest
>reasons they don't release specs are to cover up lies in the
>advertising and to cover up infringement on (usually bogus) patents.

Exactly! And this is a general phenomenon, not just about video cards.
Another example that I personally know very well:
Logitech makes cameras that it advertises having 640x480 resolution
although the image sensor is really only 356x292 and even that is only if
you count all red, green, and blue sensors together--R and B resolutions
are both only 178x146, G resolution is as much as R and B together.
So they are claiming that it's 640x480 resolution while it really is only
178x146--quite a difference.

The problem is not so much about the companies lying of their products, but
about not providing any manuals which would allow using the gadgets in the
first place.

>Releasing a product without the necessary information to use it (and
>this includes "supported" platforms like windows too, since eventually

Already Logitech cameras work poorly or not at all on some M$ OSes. Not
that I would care a bit.

>Covering up your false claims about what your hardware can do with
>secret emulation in software? That's a scam too. This is a classic
>case of corporate crime, and it needs to be stopped.

Indeed.