NVIDIA Ion Blu-ray Investigation: Not a problem?

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• the goat - Tuesday, March 10, 2009 - link

  There is no reason to pull the article. If you later find there is more information to add then do just that, add on tot he article later. Right now your actions make it look like nvidia has influence on the objectivity of anandtech.

• exterminal - Tuesday, March 10, 2009 - link

  Actually, I expect that pulling the article has more to do with embarrassment on the part of AT than pressure from nVidia.
  
  Having managed to read the article and comments before they were pulled, I can summarize it as "single core ION platform did not have enough horsepower to play retail (encrypted) Blu-ray movies off of a USB connected Blu-ray drive". Comments were that it's possible that the problem is the overhead of the USB that pushed the playback over the edge, rather than the decryption.
  
  IMHO, the wording of the original article appeared to have a strong bias to find the ION platform lacking, and ignored the relative inefficiencies of USB drives. This would make it very embarrassing to AT if the ION actually proved capable. It's also likely that the article would have gained a life of it's own, and be used as evidence of an epic failure, even though the test was not valid to start with.

• the goat - Tuesday, March 10, 2009 - link

  Sounds like a valid test to me. The USB bus is a part of the system. So clearly it will affect the system performance.
  
  There is no reason why the article could not be expanded to also include results of the same setup but with an SATA blu-ray drive.

• Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, March 11, 2009 - link

  It actually had nothing to do with the overhead of USB. It boiled down to an PowerDVD audio decoding inefficiency, or at least that's what it seems like.
  
  The platform isn't shipping yet so poor performance with an older version of PowerDVD doesn't really matter. Either way I'll have the system back in my hands soon and a complete article up asap.
  
  Hopefully by then I'll be done with all of this SSD mess as well :)
  
  -A

• someonesomewhere - Tuesday, March 10, 2009 - link

  "the wording of the original article appeared to have a strong bias to find the ION platform lacking, and ignored the relative inefficiencies of USB drives."
  
  Wrong. Read the sentence again.
  
  "off a USB connected Blu-ray drive."

• Exar3342 - Tuesday, March 10, 2009 - link

  Not likely. The Ion will be launched and we will probably never hear about this review again. Shame on Anandtech for removing this article without SPECIFIC proof on why it was an epic fail at BD playback. I could handle that Anand received a bum sample to review, or if the software was flawed. Simply removing it reeks of "damage control" from Nvidia.

• someonesomewhere - Tuesday, March 10, 2009 - link

  Either case (bum sample or software bug) do not merit pulling the article. Instead, a follow-up with results from the corrected platform would be in order.

• Exar3342 - Tuesday, March 10, 2009 - link

  Not likely. The Ion will be launched and we will probably never hear about this review again. Shame on Anandtech for removing this article without SPECIFIC

• Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, March 10, 2009 - link

  I won't publish NVIDIA's findings, only my own. The thinking is that there was an issue with the version of PowerDVD I was using which has since been corrected. I won't say for sure until I re-run the tests myself but I have reason to believe that NV is correct in this case. I simply didn't want the story to spread like wildfire if there was any chance that my findings were incorrect. I've always been in this for the truth, not the sensation :)
  
  Thanks for your understanding and now, once again, it's back to SSDs :)
  
  Take care,
  Anand

• pmonti80 - Wednesday, March 11, 2009 - link

  You should have said that from the start, so as to avoid suspicion against you and suspicion against Nvidia.