What is H.264/X.264 video format?

I am keeping this article very basic as this is intended for film freaks only who just need to know what this new video format does. If you want to know more about H.264 and its technical side skip to wikipedia.

Few years before DivX movies came into popularity because of its near DVD video quality and its amazing low file sizes which can easily be fitted into a CD or two. Actually it seemed like some magic at that time. You could easily backup your DVD movies or hi-resolution home videos in cheap media as you like because of its much reduced file size.

Now guys of VCEG and MPEG together wrote a code called H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10 or even another name AVC (Advanced Video Coding). Also this year saw the birth of a new media BD (Blu-ray Disc) with 25gb for single layer and 50gb for double layer discs and retail movie BDs became available using three formats accordingly: MPEG-2, VC-1 or H.264. Now imagine if you can compress a BD movie with more quality than a DVD + a 6 channel Dolby AC3 soundtrack all into a standard 700mb CD? Yes there comes the new powerful x.264 codec which is an open source variant of H.264. Available for free download its only around 400kb. For now, VLC player supports playback of x.264 encoded movies.. enjoy the pure visual thrill!

Source: wikipedia

Ati goes midrange..HD 2400/2600 Graphics Cards

Its been like a month since AMD released 2900XT (R600), their enthusiast DirectX10 capable card with a lot more upgraded features like Shader Model version 4.0 and improved AA features. AMD bought these cards in different versions (Like Nvidia's GT, GS or ATi's XT, PRO) are basically targeted to casual gamers and price conscious buyers. Expect these cards to come out with an aggressive pricing maybe lower than Nvidia's mid-range cards.

Hothardware.com says there are 3 versions of Radeon 2400 and 6 for 2600 cards like...

Radeon HD 2600 XT with GDDR4 Radeon HD 2600 XT with GDDR3 Radeon HD 2600 Pro with GDDR3

Radeon HD 2400 XT with GDDR3 Radeon HD 2400 Pro with GDDR3

You can see a cool review by hothardware on how these cards fair in a performance duel with Nvidia's 8500GT/8600GT mid-range cards. Anyway's this stiff competition only translates into good news for casual gamers!.

Source: hotharware, engadget

Opera Mini 4.0 Beta out!

Yes! Users of previous opera mini releases will definitely love this - their latest giving version, 4.0 in beta. Released only recently (June19th) the app (codenamed: Dimension) is available for free to download.

The biggest thing is that you can use it even if you don't have a smart phone, means it'll work with any of those Java enabled ones. With all those nifty features almost like in a real desktop web browser there are a lot new additions to this new beta like zooming into page contents, smoother scrolling, content folding which collapses elements like long menus with a (+) sign so you can click it to view the full version if you like. The best in the new additions is when you go to a web address, the site is downloaded to some proxy servers of opera initially and page layout is changed very well and then only transmitted to your mobile so as to fit in and easy to read in your mobile's tiny screen. Moreover this feature helps in faster delivery of web pages because these proxy servers compress the sites to about 1/5th of the original content and so it would result in much increased speed than that of Opera 3. So now on, you wont see scrambled unreadable pages or very long load times. With only 86kb of download size the app is a wonderful add to those internet users on the go.

Also you can have a demo of this tool showing our site in it, click HERE

Source: intomobile, wikipedia