Sounded good until you reached the wrong conclusion. Bob Miller On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 2:15 PM, Manfredi, Albert E <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Kon Wilms wrote: > >> Let's also abandon cars and bring back the horse and >> buggy while we're at it. > > Wrong analogy, but there actually is a very close car-related analogy. > > In the mid 1970s, Michelin introduced a tire with ellyptical > cross-section, called the TRX. The goal was to create high pressure, low > aspect ratio tires, without introducing too much ride harshness. This > was to provide better directional stability and fuel economy. Stresses > were supposed to be better distributed throughout the sidewall. > > Because the cross section was ellyptical, standard wheel rims could not > be used. The surfcaes of the rim that mate to the tire were not > parallel, as they are in normal wheels. So while they were at it, > Michelin introduced a wheel rim with metric dimensions. TRX tires were > specified all-metric. Such as, 220/55-390. > > Great. So in order to benefit from this innovation, everyone would have > to change tires AND rims. > > Instead what happened was that other tire companies managed to change > their sidewall designs in such a way as to offer high pressure, very low > aspect ratios (soon even less than the 65 and 55 ratios of TRX tires), > without having to use a different standard of rim design. > > If you can get away with it, it's usually better to extend the existing > standard. If you can do it, it's far easier to tweak MPEG-2 than to > introduce a new codec, for existing, deployed broadcast applications. > > Bert > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: > > - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at > FreeLists.org > > - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word > unsubscribe in the subject line. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.