Tag: better

Starlink 北美北部封測

看到 Starlink 的北美北部的封測消息了：「I just officially received an email invite to the Starlink beta.」。

大家最在意的費用部份，設定費 USD$499，月費 USD$99：

It's called the Better Than Nothing Beta.

  • Estimated speeds 50Mbps to 150Mbps
  • Estimated latency 20ms to 40ms
  • Some interruptions in connectivity to be expected
  • $499 for the phased array antenna and router
  • $99 per month subscription

翻了一下 Reddit 上面的討論，目標族群跟之前猜測的差不多，這對於地廣人稀地區的使用者 (像是阿拉斯加的村落) 多了一個替代方案：「Starlink is 600x better than my current ISP BEFORE you consider data cap. My jaw dropped when I saw the official numbers.」。

I live in a rural village in Alaska and pay around $200/mo for service that is running fast if it hits 500kbps with a 40GB data cap.

Half the price for up to 300x faster service? Elon please start launching some polar orbits.

另外從「Mods, could we get a stickied post for confirmed beta invited states?」這邊可以看到目前主要都是北美北部的州拿到邀請，應該是商業策略...

想要取代 JPEG 的 BPG (Better Portable Graphics)

雖然是有點久的消息了，但還是拿出來講：「BPG Image format」。

在「BPG Image Comparison」這頁可以直接看到一些比較，在「BPG/JPEG comparison on the Lena picture」可以看到經典的萊娜圖比較。

很明顯 BPG 比 JPEG 好很多，而又比 WebP 更上一層樓。但是看到這個部份就皺眉了：

Based on a subset of the HEVC open video compression standard.

最後面也有提到 HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) 的專利問題：

Some of the HEVC algorithms may be protected by patents in some countries (read the FFmpeg Patent Mini-FAQ for more information). Most devices already include or will include hardware HEVC support, so we suggest to use it if patents are an issue.

繼續觀望下去 :o