IT-Code-News: IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 06/05/2013

Tesla partners with some banks for some in-house financing for Model S buyers
Tesla Motors' CEO, Elon Musk, announced last month a partnership with two major banks that would see consumers enjoy the option of in-house financing when purchasing their Model S electric car.

Musk said that consumers could own the Model S electric car for less than $500 per month at the time, but has since revised these figures. Under the new plan, future owners of the Model S would expect the monthly cost to be around $580, which takes into consideration the projected savings from using electricity versus gas, depreciation and a few other factors. Tesla also notes that the cost for business use could be a low as $315 per month.
The new plan also involves an updated resale value guarantee, which states that the resale value on the Model S would be higher than Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Lexus or Mercedes. Tesla have also extended the amount of time an individual can finance a Model S from 63 months to 72 months, through Wells Fargo and US Bank.

Wreck-It Ralph (2012) Blu-ray Movie Review

Disney have had a hard time these last few years, with some deep soul searching regarding what the company stands for. Under the leadership of Michael Eisner, the company ceased producing traditional animation features in 2004. But following the corporate upheaval which saw Eisner ousted in 2005, Disney vowed a return to traditional animation, along with the acquisition of Pixar animation studio, but since then have only released two traditionally animated features, along with three computer generated features.

Set inside the world of arcade games, Ralph, (John C. Reilly) the adversary of the arcade hit 'Fix It Felix Jr', has become tired of playing the thankless task of the bad guy in the Rampage inspired game and decides to go 'turbo'; that is, jump from the confined world of 'Fix It Felix' to the first person shooter 'Hero's Duty' where he obtains the accolades and medal that he's been longing for.
Unfortunately for Ralph, porting out has unleashed a fearsome Cy-Bug, which has the power to obliterate any virtual reality world it infests. In doing so, Ralph continues to live up to his name, but the consequences of his latest actions may mean the obliteration of every game in the arcade, and the denizens that inhabit them.
Filled with an array of video game characters including Bowser from Nintendo's Super Mario franchise, numerous characters from Street Fighter, Pac Man and Sonic The Hedgehog, Wreck-It Ralph already has an in-built fan base of video game lovers and many have responded well to the film. It's clear that the filmmakers are big fans, too. In many ways Wreck-It Ralph is one giant homage to the games of old, and the juxtaposition between them and modern franchises such as the fake Call of Duty rip-off Hero's Duty. At one point Ralph asks "when did video games become so violent and scary?", a question many who grew up with the blue skies and upbeat tunes of the Sega Mega Drive may also ask.

Video
Wreck It Ralph is presented in the aspect ratio of 1.78:1, encoded with AVC MPEG-4 compression.
Barring only one recent CG animated Blu-ray that didn't fare so well in the video stakes (for those interested, it's Megamind, we've become so accustomed (and perhaps rightly so), to expecting perfection with CG animation that we take for granted that such perfect video origins will automatically result in a perfect 2k encode. However, I'm glad to say that Wreck It Ralph doesn't buck the trend.
With a swathe of color and motion, Ralph was born to succeed on Blu-ray, its character design and layout made to encode efficiently and without a hitch. I suspect that when the time comes, Ralph will even upscale to 4K nicely as well. In a nutshell, I didn't detect and video nasties - the encode is pretty much as good as it gets. If Disney keep their work to the same standard, I'll be out of a job.
Audio
Wreck It Ralph is encoded with the DTS-HD Master Audio codec with 7.1 channels, at 24 bits.
The time when Disney mixed their theatrical features with wimpy and submissive 5.1 mixes is long a thing of the past. Wreck It Ralph features an incredible aggressive audio mix that's up there with some of the best ever dished out for animated fare.
Importantly, there's no issue with audio intelligibility, nor any glitches or dropouts. Disney have gone well and truly out of their way to give Wreck It Ralph a superlative audio mix that holds little back. The surround channels are kept wholly active at all times, along with some deep bass note, which frequently pervade.
The score by Henry Jackman is mixed with contemporary music, including an appropriate contribution by that Skrillex fellow that the kids love so much.

Extras
The 17 minute Bit By Bit: Creating the Worlds of Wreck It Ralph Documentary doesn't have the time to go into huge depth, but serves as breezy look at production, with interview sound bites by director Rich Moore and many of the main players. I would have liked a tad more meat on the bones, along with a deeper discussion to the choices made in utilizing video game characters, but what we have is probably sufficient for many.
The seven minute short film which featured before the theatrical release; Paperman is included in 1080p along with a 5.1 soundtrack. It's a really sweet, but heartfelt short which merges the digital world with traditional animation and represents what I think is the future for Disney animation.
Next, we have four Deleted and alternate Scenes, which would have made the film a few minutes longer. None will be particularly mourned.
Finally, we have four brief fake Video Game Commercials for the video games which feature in the movie. They're a nice touch, which mimic vintage and modern advertising with a knowing smirk.

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Australian Blu-ray Importing: May 2013 Buying Guide
The high Aussie dollar which has been at parity with the U.S. dollar for over two years now - with no end in sight, coupled with impressive cost cutting from international e-tailers continues to make a compelling case for overseas buying.
However, nothing is more compelling than Blu-ray titles that haven't made their way to our shores. So, let's take a look at the latest instalment of the series.
As always, these discs are safe to import for Australian Region B Blu-ray players.

Die Hard: Special Edition

Studio: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Purchase: Amazon.co.uk
Region: A, B, C
Tying in with this year's release of the maligned fifth entry in the Die Hard franchise is a two disc re-release of the original 1988 film, which adds an entirely new disc of extra features, headlines by the fabulous 90 minute documentary Decoding Die Hard. The only other way to obtain this disc is by purchasing all the films again in the U.S. release quadrilogy boxset (which is region coded), Aussie fans can simply re-purchasing the original, and arguably the best, film from the U.K.
I'm not the biggest Die Hard fan in the world, but I can attest to the quality of Decoding Die Hard which rounds up dozens of figures, including stars, directors, writers and producers from the film series, with honest and forthright commentary.

Never Say Never Again

Studio: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Purchase: Amazon.co.uk
Region: A, B, C
Clued in James Bond fans who picked up last year's mammoth Bond 50 Blu-ray boxset might have noticed the conspicuous absence of two films, the 1967 Casino Royale TV movie starring David Niven and the 1983 Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again. Neither films are considered official Bond canon by rights holder EON productions, but the latter is at least notable due to Sean Connery returning to his star making role as James Bond for a final time after a 12 year absence.
The U.K. import sadly (or fortuitously depending on your outlook) censors a few seconds of footage of a fake horse falling upside down into a lake and surviving. Despite this, it's probably better than not being able to see the film at all.
It's not a great entry into the Bond lore, but for the bargain basement price that Amazon is asking, coupled with audio commentary by Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner, means it's probably not a bad investment for fans.

Brother Bear: 2 Movie Collection

Studio: Warner Brothers Home Entertainment
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Purchase: Amazon.com
Region: A, B, C
Fans of classic Disney animation have had a rough ride of late, with some films such as Aladdin being released many months earlier in some countries, if at all, and others such as Tarzan being completely absent.
2003's Brother Bear is one of the last traditionally animated features to come out of the studio and although few will attest to its classic quality, it's still a decent enough film of which Disney fans will no doubt want to have in their collection.
Joined by its direct to video sequel, imaginatively titled Brother Bear 2 and some kid friendly extra features, the disc will at least keep the spawn quite for a few hours.

Driving Miss Daisy

Studio: Warner Brothers Home Entertainment
Country of Origin: United States
Purchase: Amazon.com
Region: A, B, C
With Angela Lansbury and James Earl Jones currently in Australia to bring the Driving Miss Daisy stage show to life, surely there would have been no better time to release the 1989 film, directed by Australian Bruce Beresford and which scored a best picture Oscar in 1989, to Blu-ray disc. Sadly, this opportunity has fallen by the way side, but fans can pick up the U.S. release of the heartwarming classic, which comes in a classy digi-book pack.
Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman imbue their characters with real soul, as their friendship is explored over multiple decades, through periods of racial segregation and socially ingrained prejudices. With a pleasing digital restoration, Warner has also included some great extra features, including documentaries, featurettes and directors audio commentary.
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Teratrend TS231U Dual Bay USB 3.0 / eSATA Enclosure Review

SilverStone may not be as well known for their storage devices as they are for their chassis and power supplies, but as the storage market begins to explode, they are aiming to change this with their Teratrend professional storage brand. Teratrend was brought life just a few years ago and since then, have released a number of two and four bay enclosures. Enclosures that take the pain of setting up a complicated NAS appliance away, and replace it with something that is straight forward and easy to use.
The TowerStor TS231U is a dual bay external enclosure featuring USB 3.0 and eSATA connectivity. This simple yet elegant enclosure supports up to 4TB hard drives in RAID 0, 1 and JBOD. All of this is controlled with the flick of a switch, giving end-users more time to do the things they love, rather than waiting for an array to sync up on an expensive NAS.
Compatibility of the TS231U follows the industry standard Windows XP, Vista, 7 scheme along with Mac OS X and Linux Kernel 2.6.3+.

The TS231U arrived in an elegant blue box with a photo of the enclosure to the right. The branding on the box pronounces the Teratrend name very proudly, but they also haven't let you forget this is still a SilverStone product. Features listed across the packaging include USB 3.0, built-in power supply along with tool-free drive bay and of course its RAID functionality.

Opening up the packaging we were pleased to see that the TS231U had a full complement of cables to connect the enclosure to the PC. They also included a well written user manual in several languages.

Looking at the front of the enclosure you can see that there was no cutting corners here. While also adding a bit of durability, the brushed aluminium front panel also adds elegance to the enclosure, giving it the professional appeal.

Opening the front panel up you will find the RAID switch and power button located at the bottom of the enclosure. While this is a great feature and one of the best implementations I have seen personally, I still find the switch to be recessed a bit too much. So, unless you're going for the world record for longest finger nails, you will need a small screw driver to move the switch into the position you want.

Moving on to the back of the enclosure we find that everything is laid out in a professional manner. None of the ports block each other and are all easily accessible. From left to right you will find the eSATA port while the USB 3.0 and power follow close behind. Up top Teratrend has included a very pleasing 70mm fan, which is a big upgrade on these small enclosures.

Opening up the enclosure we found everything inside neat and tidy as well. The power supply has its own corner of the chassis, while the main PCB tucks away safely into its own space.

Digging in closer I found the enclosure used the highly popular JMB352 SATA II to USB2.0/eSATA bridge controller. So what then controls the USB 3.0?

Tucked away in the corner I found yet another bridge chip, the JMS539. The JMS539 functions as the SATA II to USB 3.0 controller, but only supports the BOT (Bulk Only Transport) specification, instead of the more efficient UASP.

Benchmarking external enclosure consists of two pieces of software that you will find readily available on the internet. The first of which is ATTO Disk Benchmark, the industry standard when it comes to marketing performance.
The second is DiskBench, a real-world file benchmark that uses the drives file system to read and write data. In this test we copy a 10GB directory consisting of audio, video, documents and pictures to the enclosure. Each enclosure is connected via USB 3.0 to our native ports on the Z77 chipset. The drives used in testing are a pair of Western Digital Red 1TB hard drives, and for testing the enclosures maximum speed, a pair of Corsair Neutron 256GB SSDs.

In a non-RAID situation the TS231U was rather impressive, in fact we nearly maxed out our WD Red drives at 127MB/s read and 126MB/s write.

RAID 0 was notable as well, but I would have liked to see just a bit more performance here. We did however manage 215MB/s read and 212MB/s write.

Setting up our drives in RAID 1, we actually gained a small bit of performance over the single drive configuration. At 133MB/s read and 128MB/s write I'm a bit absorbed with the performance as it also comes with data redundancy.

To see what this enclosure was truly capable of we tossed our Corsair Neutron's in and had a go with RAID 0. As you can see looking over the results, the enclosure was nearly touching 250MB/s in both read and write. While this doesn't necessarily stress the USB 3.0 bus, it does offer a major performance increase over USB 2.0.

In our real world testing we found the TS231U to be a solid enclosure. Albeit not the fastest we have seen, but still very respectable. Shaded in the dark blue above, the RAID 0 copy test showed the unit transferred 10GB of data, and keep in mind this is everyday user data, at 170MB/s. The enclosure followed this up closely with RAID 1 and single drive both showing around 110MB/s.
The Teratrend by SilverStone TS231U is a solid enclosure that carries all the elegance a true professional would want. The brushed aluminium face compliments the build quality, while the size of the enclosure invites it into your office. The tool-less drive bays are yet another compliment to the enclosure making installation and swapping drives as pain free as possible.
Performance of the enclosure was solid as well. In our testing we found the TS231U putting the hammer to our WD Red drives, pushing out 170MB/s in RAID0. While all this performance is wonderful, this is perhaps the only place where I have found a corner that was cut. While the JMicron JMS539 is great controller, offers tons of compatibility, it simply doesn't support the latest transfer specification that is UASP.
On to pricing, where we found the TS231U at quite a few online retailers for $129.99. Looking around at other enclosures near and around this range it's rather simple to come to the conclusion that the Teratrend TS231U is one to put on the shortlist.

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Available Tags:Blu-ray , USB 3.0 , USB ,

Sunday, May 5, 2013

IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 06/05/2013

Die Hard: Special Edition

Never Say Never Again

Brother Bear: 2 Movie Collection

Driving Miss Daisy

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