If you're working with different screen sizes, use the UI Dots to save the Poser interface configuration for the different resolutions.

I had similar experiences with my older VCRs lasting longer than later ones. The older ones went 5 years without problems and newer ones became problematic in a year.

There were things I could do on videotape easily that are difficult to do with DVRs--to the point where I've given up trying to do them. The two are different technologies, so there's probably no easy way to fix it. When editing videotapes, if you recorded more than you wanted, you hit Stop, Play, Reverse Search a little, Pause, and record over that extra material so that playback would be continuous without that unwanted stuff. With a DVR, that's not even possible to fix with a standard record-once disk. Even with an RW, hitting Stop means waiting for the disk to finalize. The DVR may or may not have editing features depending on model. If it does, it requires fast-forwarding from the start of the disk title to the desired point of editing, clicking the start of the edit point, playing to the end of the unwanted section, clicking an end point, clicking a Done button and waiting for the disk to finalize again. The workflow changed from less than 30 seconds to a ten minute job.

Digital cable is another example of a new technology not being as efficient in some ways as analog--at least for my usage.  I like to record the different late night talk shows on different channels to watch the next day. With analog, all I have to do is split the signal to each recorder and I can do it easily. Digital cable requires paying $10/month each for digital boxes to receive the signal or pay another $10/month for their DVR with multiple tuners.

Then we have to deal with design decisions that seem to keep getting dumber. Most of the DVRs I have will start playing the last recorded program when I insert a disk I recorded. I don't understand the sensibility of that. It would seem that the default state ought to be the first title on the disk.

Anybody who has dealt with Windows for any length of time has felt the frustration of Microsoft's constant changes in interfaces that often defy logic. Although I can understand the logic behind the Office 2007 ribbon bars, moving a lot of common functions to a squiggle graphic is certainly not as sensible as when they were on the File menu.

Quote - What you're talking about there ain't so much a compatibility problem as a manufacturing tolerance problem.  

It actually is compatibility because the issue occurs between brands. I picked up a second Magnavox DVR (different model, but inexpensive at $70) when the clock stopped working on the first. I can swap disks for recording between the two Magnavox DVRs, but the incompatibilities with the other two DVRs still exists.

DVRs last longer than VCRs because they are directly mechanically driven instead of using rubber belts that stretch and wear out.  VCRs had problems with chewing up tapes as the machines got old or slightly shifting the position of the tape during recording and playback and causing synchronization problems  when played on other machines.  That's the noise that is noticeable on tapes recorded at the 6 hour speed where white dashes start appearing on the top and bottom of the TV and VCR tracking has to be adjusted. My experience with VCRs is that they had a significantly shorter life than what I've seen with DVRs.

The compatibility issues I have with DVRs haven't been age related. They exist with brand new machines. I've changed my workflow to work with the issues, but it would be nice if manufacturerers did more to ensure that everything works together.

Quote - the problem was the Disk not the players.

The disks may be made to the same format, but the way disks are recorded is not the same across different recorders. Frankly, even the disks aren't the same from one manufacturer to another and older disks are not the same as newer disks rated for higher record speeds. Look at negative reviews at Amazon for DVD-R disks to see that some disks aren't universally usable on all recorders. I've found that DVD+RW disks from Magavox become unusable after a few dozen recordings, but haven't had the same problem with Sony disks. Even when using the same recordable DVDs across all recorders, I've found many incompatibilities with the different DVRs I have. Recorders, nearing the end of their lives, don't reliably record disks and may not indicate a problem till somebody tries to play the disk. Don't forget that Europe and the Americas use different TV systems so that even entirely compatible players and disks are not going to work in a country that uses a different broadcast system--be it analog or digital HD.

DVD-R disks, if not finalized, are not likely readable across different DVD players/recorders. DVD+R disks don't always need to be finalized to be playable on different players, but it's still a good idea to finalize the disks. DVD-RW disks, recorded in the default VR mode, are not playable in many DVD players/recorders. I have to remember to format RWs in video mode to avoid that problem. New DVD disks, rated for high record speeds, aren't necessarily playable in older DVD recorders/players. My old laptop cannot record on new DVD-R disks, but can record new DVD+R disks. It can still record the few older DVD-R disks that I have.

I've got a few different DVD recorders and they have different levels of compatibility with each other.  With VHS, I could take a tape, record an hour on it with one VCR, bring it to a different brand VCR and continuing recording on the disk. If I try to do the same thing with a DVR, the second DVR probably won't recognize the disk as even being formatted--let alone see that it has room for more material. Between my Pioneer and Panasonic DVR, the disks can be exchanged and recorded on. The same disk is seen as unformatted in my Magnavox DVR. An edited VR mode DVD-R on my Pioneer (using the built-in editing features on the DVR), even after being finalized, is not playable on anything I've tried other than on the Pioneer. It is not playable on any other DVR, DVD player, or computer that I've tried it on. I haven't even tried to use disks recorded with PC software, but that probably has whole new levels of incompatibility. DVD recording software typically does not close the disk session after recording, so the disk is less compatible than if the session was closed.

I've learned that not all recordable DVDs are the same. Not all DVRs are fully compatible with one another. A finalized disk at least has a better chance of being playable than one that isn't finalized. The odds are that a problem with playing a user recorded disk is not with the disk (assuming the disk is made by a reasonably reputable company). There are far too many levels of incompatibilities with hardware to easily blame a disk as being bad.

It's very frustrating that new technologies are less compatible and often less flexible than the ones that they replace.

Quote - *I'm surprised that a US DVD wouldn't work on a Japanese player....

• I'm not, like MagnusGreel says it's about regions.

For region-free disks, such as what Jen made with home movies, aren't Japanese DVD players compatible with American players? The best comment I heard about compatibility came from Microsoft's CEO as he was being interviewed on morning TV for the debut of Windows 7. He said that Microsoft listened to customer complaints about Vista and recognized that customers want new operating systems to be compatible with the hardware and software that they own. The fact that he said this in a fashion that it came as a surprising revelation says volumes about the company. At least Microsoft was smart enough to see that Vista did more to boost Apple computer sales than anything Apple did.

Quote -  Out of curiosity...why in the heck are there different media standards all over the world? 

I'd read that Europe intentionally chose a different TV standard system to give their manufacturers first crack on new sales instead of on imports.

Today, companies seem to make very little effort to develop compatible systems on emerging technologies. Right now, 3D TV sets are just starting to come out and each manufacturer uses a slightly different system and 3D glasses from one format will not work with the others.

I'm surprised that a US DVD wouldn't work on a Japanese player. I was under the impression that both countries had the same system. Was the DVD finalized before shipping it? Disks that haven't been finalized may not play well with all players regardless of country. Depending on the format a DVD is recorded in, it may or may not play on other players. The VR format (the default for many DVD-R recorders) is fairly finicky with older players. I've got different DVD recorders and they all have various problems with disks recorded on the other players.

The thing that often happens is that people move on to other interests.  Once interests in Poser wane, they don't feel like taking the time to set up an account on another site and populating that site with everything they made.

This is something that freebie creators need to keep in mind when they set up their readme files. If they make their readmes less restrictive, their work can be shared amongst users forever. Otherwise, if they lose interest in Poser and let their website die, their creations become dead and unable to be shared to new users for about a century due to copyright laws. Some content creators may prefer having limited distributions on their freebies, but I'm sure that many would like to see them available for free forever.

Quote -
I'm so chuffed with the battery life on mine - turned the screen brightness right down, and I can get almost six hours out of a single charge... WOW :woot:

ASUS still seems to be the king on battery life with models going upwards to 14 hrs. I've got an older one that was rated for 5 hours and only get about 3 1/2 - 4 hours with it. Avoid a lot of the store ASUS models, such as BestBuy, because they have oddball configurations that don't do as well.

Turning off wireless, when not needed, also saves battery life

Attached Link: http://toucan.web.infoseek.co.jp/3DCG/3ds/FlowerModelsE.html

Quote - I much prefer V3 to V4, and it makes me very sad that there's pretty much nothing being made for her any longer.

You've already bought all of the tens of thousands of products that were made for V3? There's no great shortage of items that were created for that figure. The amount of new stuff is shrinking, but finding content (free or paid) is still easy.

Actually, V4 is popular because of V1, V2, and V3. Everybody else's explanations still apply. Victoria's popularity is largely based on the popularity and widespread use of the original Victoria character.

When the first Victoria debuted, it was a much better figure than the P4 female figure. As the Poser program started shifting from its original intent to be a software mannequin to a product used to create artistic renders, there came to be a greater need for more realistic figures. The original Victoria and Michael filled that void. Community support for Poser content shifted from the less realistic figures that came with Poser 4 to the DAZ figures. The companies owning Poser in those early years didn't challenge that new secondary market for selling Poser content and have not been able to get it back now that they want to be in it.

There is currently a momentum behind the DAZ figures that's hard for new figures to break into. It doesn't mean it can never happen, but DAZ has done a good job of not losing that ground. DAZ did learn lessons from the meager support for the first Aiko and Stephanie and now introduce new figures with loads of available content when they first come out.

The main reason V4 is popular is because of the past popularity of the earlier figures. Customers know that the DAZ line of figures will be fully supported by the company and by the community. It's a sure bet that V5 will be the most successful figure when it is introduced. It will have little to do with how much better that new figure is from V4 or other figures.

Let's not forget that the community buys into the new Victoria and other DAZ figures. People, that could just as easily use V3 in their images, use V4. They repurchase all the clothing, textures, and poses, that they already have with V3. We live in a society that loves change solely for the sake of change. There isn't always a practical reason for those changes.

Attached Link: http://www.kirbymuseum.org/?q=gallery&g2_itemId=14828

The one area where 3D art can speed up comics is in providing models for repetitive hardware that doesn't change shape. Most traditional comic book artists gravitate to the medium because they love drawing the human form in dynamic poses. They don't like drawing background elements as much and that's where 3D models can be a tremendous time saver. The artist won't have to draw every widget on a tank or spaceship because those details are built into the model. It's very easy having that tank or spaceship model in dozens of panels because it's very easy to compose the model into the scene.

Posing figures takes a lot of time and practice to look good. Pose packs help, but there's still the time searching for a good pose and tweaking the pose for the specific action being performed. Even finding a wanted pose takes a lot of time. I used to dream of being a comics artist and got fairly good at figure drawing, but not quite good enough to believe that it could be a profession. I haven't found Poser as being a timesaver for drawing. I prefer it to get a nice finished semi-realistic result. Poser figures are too literal and the kind of exaggeration that can be drawn into a figure is much more dramatic than the figure constraints in a pose. The kind of figure exaggerations, emphasizing perspective and dynamics, can look right in a drawing, but may not be physically achievable with a preconstructed model in any reasonable fashion.

The fastest artist in the 60's (and maybe of all time) was Jack Kirby (link above to sample pages of his work) who drew 3-4 pages a day. Jack regularly drew, on a monthly basis, Fantastic Four, Thor, Captain America, and occasionally a few other comics all at the same time. I don't imagine that Jack's style of art is very popular today because it was a lot more cartoonish, but he was the king of comic artists duing the 60s and 70s. Having been drawing comics since almost the dawn of comics, Jack created most of the comic dynamics that artists still refer to today.

I don't think anybody can crank out the kind of dynamic pages, that Jack Kirby could pencil, using Poser.

Attached Link: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000192.htm

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1958904&user_id=61047&page=2&member&np

Quote - You still have the basic problem of getting information into your eyes and out of your fingertips.

Only if it's not hooked up to a monitor. How big that monitor will be will depend on whether its at home or how big a portable monitor a person wants to drag around on the road.

Quote - The CPU itself can fit inside a cell phone, but where do you put the big heat sink and big fan?

I'm seriously hoping that chips will get more energy efficient. Goodness knows humanity is sucking up fossil fuels in centuries that took nature millions of years to create. The first netbooks had a 2-3 hour operating time on battery. Today, a slightly faster chip uses much less energy and the netbook can get upwards to 14 hours runtime on battery. Netbooks don't need fans anymore because they don't run hot. Years ago, high end Pentiums ran with two chips. I'd imagine that the phone CPU will be underpowered and hooking it up to the desktop dock will couple it with a more powerful chip in the dock where both chips would operate together as an overall faster computer. Give it a few more decades and maybe that won't even be necessary.

I didn't realize that Windows 7 was such a hog. I won't be upgrading my computer for another 5-6 years, so I've been marginally paying attention to the new operating system. I cannot imagine why an operating system would be 15 gb. Is that the top of the line version with every possible bell and whistle? A cut-rate version of Win 7 already comes with netbooks.

Quote - And the software requirements of 10 years in the future will still require those fast machines just as they always have

That depends. The bulk of software used by most people, outside of games, doesn't tax even low end computers. Browsers, word processors, office suites, and even a high end program like Photoshop work fine on a netbook. Games and 3D rendering programs will need more power. That work will be offloaded to the desktop dock CPU/graphics cards. That would mean that the phone CPU won't be able to do everything that it can do on the desktop. We make compromises today with the laptops and netbooks we take on travel today. Skip a few more decades into the future and maybe the chip in the phone will be able to do what 99.9% of the population does. If that happens, the market may only have those devices and anybody that wants a powerful standalone desktop or laptop will be stuck paying big bucks for a workstation. Sam says he wants to stick with a CRT. I just did a quick search on Amazon and there aren't any new CRTs for sale. Either he's going to have to buy a used one, keep repairing what he has, or get assimilated in the consumer market and buy the monitors that are available. I haven't looked to see if anybody is making new CRTs, but I'd imagine that they would be very expensive.

We're all speculating based on our experiences with PCs. In the end, we'll have to wait and see what the future brings. If this happens and there is no compromise to the computing experience we want, we'll jump on board. If not, it'll be a passing fad. Based on the number of things phones have been doing in the last few years, it seems very possible that they'll be the most flexible and important electronics devices we own in the upcoming years.