RAMChYLD Wrote:+1. Also, remove region coding. Region coding is stupid and counterintuitive (what? You don't want my money just because I'm not American? Idiots).
I hacked my old DVD/VCR (Peppa) to be region free, while my cheap Chinese DVD player was region free out of the box. It would be better if we didn't need to hack our DVD players or find a region-free player to play all DVDs. DVDs and BluRays and games should be region free from the get go...
...which was the case for the Nintendo Game Boy through at least the DSi, when they began to region code the game cards. Region coding is mandatory for the Nintendo 3DS.
cpd2009 Wrote:RAMChYLD Wrote:+1. Also, remove region coding. Region coding is stupid and counterintuitive (what? You don't want my money just because I'm not American? Idiots).
I hacked my old DVD/VCR (Peppa) to be region free, while my cheap Chinese DVD player was region free out of the box. It would be better if we didn't need to hack our DVD players or find a region-free player to play all DVDs. DVDs and BluRays and games should be region free from the get go...
...which was the case for the Nintendo Game Boy through at least the DSi, when they began to region code the game cards. Region coding is mandatory for the Nintendo 3DS.
Well, things aren't that bad for you. I'm sick of being locked out of Hulu, locked out of Netflix, locked out of Amazon Unbox, locked out of Nintendo Video (meaning no Nintendo Direct for me. eShop is usable... if lie about my location and pay through my nose for gift cards) and worst of all, locked out of the Arthur and Daniel Tiger videos on the Leapfrog AppCenter. It's not fair!
The person who invented IP region blocking should be tried for crimes against humanity...
RAMChYLD Wrote:Well, things aren't that bad for you. I'm sick of being locked out of Hulu, locked out of Netflix, locked out of Amazon Unbox, locked out of Nintendo Video (meaning no Nintendo Direct for me. eShop is usable... if lie about my location and pay through my nose for gift cards) and worst of all, locked out of the Arthur and Daniel Tiger videos on the Leapfrog AppCenter. It's not fair!
So far, I haven't seen any Nintendo Direct videos on Nintendo Video. It's mostly been random animated things like a "Shaun the Sheep" short or "Dinosaur Office"
which looks awesome in 3D but I digress. In fact, as I type this, one Nintendo Direct video called "The Wonderful 101 Direct" is viewable in the Nintendo eShop. I can't search for videos in the eShop so I'm not sure if all Nintendo Direct videos are posted there.
Nintendo Direct videos are also posted to Nintendo's official YouTube channel, but I'm not sure if Nintendo tells YouTube to block those to Malaysia viewers as well.
GAH! It's getting worse! The very thought of region locking now f***s up all abilities of rational thoughts and sends me into A FIT OF RAGE!
![[Image: DSCF5354_zpsdc0e92ab.jpg]](http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii11/cpd2008/DSCF5354_zpsdc0e92ab.jpg)
Upgrading from a cheap $99 tablet to a proper Android tablet... the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0! Per my previously planned (and failed) Black Friday purchase, this Samsung shall be named "Hazel'.
I discovered some glaring issues with my old tablet. The first was the clock. For some reason, the clock was slow. Slow enough that if you left the tablet in sleep mode or powered off for more than a day, the clock ends up being several hours behind. I had to keep using WiFi to reset the clock to the proper time, which would end up being lost about a day later.
The second issue was more serious. The battery meter lost it's accuracy. The meter can say you have about 25% left. but then the battery runs down and the BIOS turns the tablet off without warning. The BIOS has it's own battery charge meter, which apparently isn't shared with the Android OS.
Got it for a pretty great price at ShopKo, as part of their Back to School sales.
Great. Now I have not enough sleep because I couldn't sleep last night from the depression over stupid region locking.
Turns out name-brand tablets really blow the low-end RockChip/Allwinner tablets out of the water. Hazel is incredibly fast, especially when loading apps and browsing the web. As it turns out, Angry Birds is becoming so bloated with new features that the app struggles to load on my old tablet. Ad-laden AB Seasons had poor performance on my old tablet, but runs very well with Hazel. I still wish there was an ad-free AB Seasons you could purchase... which there isn't.
I was also mulling replacing Lilly with one of those nice All-in-One computers, but I'm not sure if said all-in-one PC's will have a line-in audio jack. Lilly has one (actually a combination Mic/Line-In port) that I use to transcode audiocassettes or video game soundtracks with GarageBand. And GarageBand's recording quality is stellar... much better than what Audacity puts out.
I could get an iMac... but those are too expensive for me at the moment.
Well, I decided to try the Windows 8.1 Preview.... on Lilly with Boot Camp.
I'm doing this to see how well Windows performs in comparison to OSX. Even though Lilly has 8gb of RAM and lots of free disk space, OSX still tends to get rather slow at times. I wonder if the 5800rpm Hard Disk is to blame for these performance issues?
In any case, if Windows 8.1 performs better than OSX, then I may convert Lilly to a full time Windows desktop with occasional OSX use for things like GarageBand or my game collection.
Those OSX performance issues were part of the reason why I was mulling getting a fancy All-in-One desktop and retiring Lilly. My mom got a nice HP All-in-one a few months ago and it's rather sweet.
cpd2009 Wrote:Turns out name-brand tablets really blow the low-end RockChip/Allwinner tablets out of the water. Hazel is incredibly fast, especially when loading apps and browsing the web. As it turns out, Angry Birds is becoming so bloated with new features that the app struggles to load on my old tablet. Ad-laden AB Seasons had poor performance on my old tablet, but runs very well with Hazel. I still wish there was an ad-free AB Seasons you could purchase... which there isn't.
I was also mulling replacing Lilly with one of those nice All-in-One computers, but I'm not sure if said all-in-one PC's will have a line-in audio jack. Lilly has one (actually a combination Mic/Line-In port) that I use to transcode audiocassettes or video game soundtracks with GarageBand. And GarageBand's recording quality is stellar... much better than what Audacity puts out.
I could get an iMac... but those are too expensive for me at the moment.
Pretty much so, since AW/Rockchip-powered devices mostly caters to a low-end/entry level market, i.e. those in developing markets like the Philippines, India, etc.