TechTV: Save us from the new Screen Savers
 

Did anyone else watch the premiere of TSS in LA? Boy has The Screen Savers really taken a dive over the last year. First they lost Leo, and Patrick quit recently due to him getting married. What a team of fucking morons they have on air now. Let's smash some cheese into a perfecty good $50 heatsink! This new Alex tool is like Christopher Lowell with a computer. He doesn't show anything that would lead me to believe that he knows anything about computers. He gets handed an "old school" CDROM drive and is like "whats this, a DVD burner?" He said he already got an email saying he sucked. I was never too crazy about Kevin as a co host, but he is ok as a contributor. What does eating a raw egg fresh from the shell have to do with tech? Seeing him gag it back up was almost painful to watch. Sarah had a look on her face like "what the hell is wrong with this kid?" Another thing that really pissed me off is them saying "old school" like fifty fucking times throughout the show. I don't see myself watching this near as much as I used to watch the old show, if I watch it at all. I hope they run reruns of the REAL TSS (Leo, Pat, Morgan, and Megan) really late at night.

i saw it, i didnt like the fact that theyre going the comedy route rather than informative. But that explains the huge audience.

id be lying if i said i liked what ive seen so far, but ill give it a chance.

I cry. :(

This show used to be really something to watch, but ever since they switched to the clueless crew I just can't make myself sit through it.

Even after Leo left and poor Patrick was left by himself with the Wonder Twins (Kevin and Sarah) it wasn't too bad a show especially when they let Robert Heron (Is that right?) out of the box, but I watched it tonight and turned the channel after the first 15 minutes.

I feel like it's an and of an era. I watched the show religiously for a long time. It was funny, and was an excelent source of information. I don't remember Leo ever saying 'old school'. I'm going to give it a few more chances to pick up and start answering questions, instead of turning into a freak show. Martin Sargent does an excelent job at that, and I won't see him replaced by that egg eating moron.
Of course Sarah is breathtaking, so that might help me tune in.

"This new Alex tool is like Christopher Lowell with a computer." HAHAHAH, very nice.

TechTV changed ownership didn't it? Crappy G4TechTV... Yea, they made everything pretty lame now. You're lucky you guys don't get Call For Help anymore, not yet anyways... They've crapped that up too, even with Leo hosting still...

Argh. This is getting incredibly bad. I watched a recent episode of TSS, and Kevin Rose made it plain as fucking day that, in gaming, the processor is MORE important than the video card, and that if you're gonna play D3, you should consider upgrading your processor before video card. WHAT?!

In-motherfucking-credible. I can't believe he would utter such an incredulous statement, reeking of so much wrongness. WHAT A FUCKING DUMBASS! In a game like Doom3, videocard is almost EVERYTHING. This upcoming generation of games is so graphically intensive that your processor should almost become secondary, perhaps even so far as tertiary in importance when compared to the damn video card. I mean, I'd put it like this: 1)Videocard, 2) RAM capabilites/mobo threshold, 3) Processor.

Case in point. Family member of mine gets a free "ass-whipper" Dell from his university (where he works). Obviously, there's a big problem here. "Ass-whipper" and "Dell" have no right to be in the same sentence. This thing is business machine, it belongs in a student lab. It contains the following: 3.2C P4, 1024MB PC2700, Geforce4 MX440. There's the problem. Business machine or not, that video card sucks. He calls me and tells me that when he performed Doom 3's system scan, it picked Low. I said, "no shit sherlock, that card sucked when it came out, what did you think Doom 3 was gonna do to a 64MB video card with not shit going for it?!"

My point: Kevin Rose and the rest of the crew on TSS need to be dropped like a bad habit. Get the guys from Tom's Hardware in there ASAP. Or the guys from Anandtech. Or FUCKING ANYONE WHO KNOWS SHIT ABOUT COMPUTERS AND NOT FUCKING "SCRIPT BUNNIES" WHO DON'T KNOW WHAT MATTERS MOST IN GAMING!!!!

End rant.

I deleted it from my pvr without watching it today. What is so said, techtv used to be our early evening tv. Get home, watch a little call for help with Kate and Leo, then watch screen savers a little later with dinner. It was honest to goodness, fun tv.

What on earth happened, why would you take such a popular, well bonded format, and flip side it. I am one of those people that enjoys watching anything technical. I am that idiot who looks at technology like the sony ibo and thinks, hey cool. Point and case, if theres techno stuff on tv, I watch it. I deleted SS today without a single hesitation because its just lame now.

Not exactly. I would say it's more like 1) ram 2) Proc 3. Video Card

The ram supples data to the processor, then the processor sends data to the video card.
If you have a super fast video card, but a slow processor, the video card will be starved of data, it will be idle much of the time. If you have a super fast processor but low amounts of ram the same situation will occur, the processor will be idle much of the time waiting for data from ram.

I've been watching this every day now since the new season came on. Although he is still a boner, this Alex is getting much better. I think he is still a bit nervous about the whole being on TV thing. He still slips up quite frequently when talking, but then again, so does Kevin, and he's been at it much longer than Alex.

Guess I'm glad I don't get it here on campus then. That really sucks though. It was the show that got me into computers for purposes other than obtaining pornography and free music. If it weren't for them I wouldn't have spent $3000 on building a water cooled, kick arse gaming rig.

I learned so much from Pat, Leo, Megan, Morgan, Kevin, Yoshi, and others who were on in the past. I was really hoping the G4-TechTV merger would involve G4 replacing most of it's programming with TechTV stuff since G4 sux monkey balls. But no, one of the last few things I truly adored in this world has been ruined. I swear, if I ever win the lottery or make some good investments, TechTV will return...

I haven't watched techtv much any more sence g whatever took over.
They don't play anything I like any more and messed up the shows I use to watch.

No, it's definitely videocard first. Forget the data procedure...what matters is performance and tests. Upgrading from a 1.6 GHz P4 to a 3.0 GHz P4 will do you much less good than upgrading from a GeForce 4 MX to a GeForce 6800. Will the system be bottlenecked with such a good videocard and a sub-par processor? Yeah, but it'll perform a hell of a lot better than simply upgrading the processor. As of 3 years ago, the videocard handles nearly all of the calculations in gaming. That's why people with $70 processors and a $500 videocard are playing games at astronomical speeds (me :thumbsup: ).

Having over 512 MB of RAM will increase game performance way more than having a faster processor as well. Adding an extra 256 MB of RAM to 512 will increase the average FPS drastically.

If ya want proof, check out the Doom 3 tests on anandtech.com. Upgrading from a 2.4 C Core P4 to a 3.2 GHz C core = 10% performance boost. Upgrading from a GeForce 4 to a GeForce 6800 = sometimes 200-300% performance boost. I shit you not.

PS: I saw that episode of TSS when they had the "gaming PC knowitall" on there. Seeing Rose and that moron say that your processor is the most important for gaming basically lost any hope I had for the show. I started screaming at the screen. :) I didn't really like the old TSS, but now it's unbearable. Hell, all of G4techTV is unbearable, especially the truckload of feces that G4 brought in.

-Lasereth

The old TechTV was watchable. The Screen Savers was doing fine, Call For Help was finally coming back around, and the rest of the programming was improving.

Then Comcast snatched up TechTV and infused it with their G4 crap. It isn't surprising what happened, just disappointing. G4TechTV could have been a decent network. G4 + TSS, X-Play, and Unscrewed is still G4-filled crap.

I'm not an avid watcher of televison, but when I do watch, it is usually TechTV (I will still call it that no matter what). But I haven't watched recently, so I have a few questions.

What happened to Leo on the ScreenSavers? I know he is gone, and I know he left before Pat did. But why exactly did he leave? Was he fired or did he quit?

Also, what caused Call For Help to go off the air? If Leo did quit, then I guess they got rid of this. I should probably have watched more often. Or did it even go off the air, because Thriolith stated something early that made it seem like it still airs somewhere.

And what happened to Eye Drops? I loved that show.

I guess those are the only questions I have. I do have to say I caught the season premiere of The Screen Savers, and it did seem a little amatuerish. The two hosts would try to be funny (more so of the new guy) and you would be treated with four or five seconds of incoherent laughter and "jokes". Kind of like two giddy girls talking at the same time.

I won't give up on the show though. I will still watch it about the same amount of time I always did, which is about once or twice a week. It will most likely get better. I hated X-Play when it first came out, but they listened to viewer opinons and changed there show around, and now it's really grown on me. I actually couldn't even remember what the name of the show was before X-Play, but I just remembered today that it was Extended Play, right?

Actually, I do have one more question. Wasn't there two hosts for the old Extended Play? Adam and some girl? For some reason I picture a girl with glasses (Not Kat or Cat or whatever) with Adam.

Alright, I am done now.

Morgan Webb makes x play worth it in the end.

200-300%? Come on, from 9800XT to 6800 Ultra is 300% (according to Tom's Hardware.) I'd say Ti4200 to 6800 Ultra is at least a 400%-500% increase! :)

Just for the record I think TSS has went waaay downhill as well.... Shouldn't there be an online petition to get rid of the current foolios on that show?

There have been tons of online petitions, one to get leo back seemed to work, for at least a little bit. Last episode I watche they did two phone calls for the entire show. I miss the old TSS

No one answered on of my many questions:


What happened to Leo?

I will say G4Techtv is the worst thing to happen to Techtv and G4 is probably the worst thing to happen to man-kind. As far as all this ram, proc, video card crap, why are you doubting a man who's taken computer science (aka kevin). Sure he dropped out but that doesn't mean he didn't take the classes. I myself have a degree in that field and with regard to most gamers in the middle-computing power, middle-cost class an upgrade in processor is usually better than in video card. Why you ask, because doom 3 is a processor and video card intensive game. The minimum requirements of 1.5Ghz processor tell you this right on the box. Sure you need a good video card too but even if you spend $500 on the latest greatest card it can't perform without a processor and bus capable of feeding it. If you have near 3ghz processor then upgrade in video card will do wonders but if you have around a 1.5 ghz processor and buy an expensive ass video card your not going to see the performance you paid for and would have gotten better performance for cheaper with a processor upgrade.

Most CS degrees don't teach you about extremely detailed hardware information. I DO know this information because I read very intricate, in-depth reviews and analyses on the Internet from trustworthy sources every single day. It's a fact that the videocard handles most of the computations within games nowadays. If you're faced with upgrading to a midrange videocard or a midrange processor, it's still best to go with the videocard. The days of a processor upgrade being better than a videocard upgrade are over. If you have a crappy videocard and a crappy processor, it's better to upgrade all of it, but if you have to choose, a videocard will benefit you three times over than a new processor.

Doom 3 can barely be called a processor intensive game. If a $50 processor and a $400 videocard will run Doom 3 VERY well, then the videocard is obviously the main factor. Like I said before, there's a small increase in performance within Doom 3 even from a huge processor upgrade. There is a MASSIVE increase in performance from upgrading to a better videocard. The game is RAM (amount, not speed) and videocard intensive...barely processor intensive (even though you need a somewhat decent processor to play it).

I hate to be an ass, but that's not right. You'll see a much larger performance boost with a 1.5 GHz processor and a top of the line videocard than with a better processor and not top of the line videocard. Like I said before, gaming performance with, say, a GeForce 6800 Ultra and a $50 Athlon XP 2000+ will totally outperform a 3 GHz Pentium 4 with a GeForce 4. There's no getting around the tests!

-Lasereth

I got TechTV just before it merged with G4 and i was totally into it, i watched X-Play, and TSS and some Call for Help, it was awesome, then they merged and they put on some weird stuff like cinematech, WTF IS THAT! sence i didnt have TechTV that long before Leo and Pat left i didnt get to enjoy them as much as you guys, but i liked them better then kevin poseER(poser cuz he isnt a computer guy like pat or leo)



and to the guy who said "foolio" right on, thats awesome

Basically Leo's contract wasn't renewed when comcast took over techtv... you can read more from his blog
http://leo.typepad.com/tlr/techtv/index.html

That should answer that question
:)

I hope I'm remembering this right....

I believe Leo is still doing Call for Help for the sister company of G4TechTv in Canada. I believe they're called G4TechTv as well....

I understand he's a got a brand new set and films in....Toronto?!?

I'm going to have go look that up now.....

1) ram
2) vid card
3) processor

and the old school call for help with i think his name was chris was badass..
leo wasn't to good at it..

at least they still have X-Play and unscrewed

Lasareth: I am not going to get into this argument because I don't know shit about gaming. BUT. You read intricate reviews of stuff online. Kevin Rose plays with this stuff everyday. He has the luxury of swapping out parts in the labs and seeing what happens. He may carry himself like a moron on the show, but he probably has more experience with this stuff than all of us combined.

I have to agree. I know kevin knows his stuff and I know my stuff. I'm not sure what CS people you know Lasareth but CS people learn all things computers. Sure they don't exactly have doom 3 performance building class but the classes they do have they can apply what they learned and what they know to things like doom 3 and other gaming situations. I'm still not sure why you think they put 1.5 ghz min requirement if the game isn't cpu intense. Surely if the video card does most of the work a pentium 3 500Mhz should work great as long as the video card is up to the task. Sadly this isn't true and we can't keep our old 500's as cutting edge gaming systems. I'm just gonna say this about ram, processor, and video card. Games are run from ram if you don't have enough the computer will need to load more data to and from the hard drive at a more constant pace. The processor computes all the mathematics of the games things like ammo amount/usage, movement, map changes, virtually every thing that happens in the game that doesn't concern how pretty it looks on screen (and that is alot of stuff). The video card takes care of the pretty, it takes info from the processor on what to display and turns it into cool looking visuals like smoke from the gun, lighting, shadows, basically everything you see.

You can buy that expensive video card to enhance the pretty but it's still going to be slowed down by the processor (a Radeon 9800 Pro or better will perform like shit when it's paired with a 400Mhz or slower processor). All that said if you have a system that plays doom 3 but is near the minimum requirements it's better to upgrade the processor for about a $100 and max out the video cards ability then to upgrade the video card for $200 or more and have it slowed down by the already maxed out processor. I'm not saying that you wouldn't upgrade the video card but it's not cost efficient to upgrade the video card first if you already playing doom 3 on a min requirement or slightly better machine.

That can't be used as an argument. If you saw my room, you'd think NewEgg outsources to me for their orders. I have hundreds of computer parts in my room that I DO swap out and test. I do this shit all the time. I have 5 test computers in my room that I try various tests on. I have tons of friends who have different PC components that I pester to do tests as well. I have access to all of the new PC gaming equipment, and I do test it frequently. That, combined with reading the reviews online, gives me a massive gaming PC knowledge base. Mr. Rose might know more about CS than me (I'm sure of it) but I highly doubt he's as PC gaming savvy. If he's that damn smart about gaming computers, he wouldn't get on national TV and say the Radeon 9600 Pro is the best videocard of all time. He wouldn't call Athlon XP an AMD XP. He wouldn't say that PC2100 RAM is fine with a Barton core Athlon XP. He may know a lot about it, but he sure makes an ass out of himself on TV by making completely false statements. If he starts bringing out the real info, let him, but so far he's proved to be someone *interested* in PC gaming equipment, not a knowledgeable person about it.

-Lasereth

You guys are completely misunderstanding me. I know Doom 3 won't run on a 500 MHz PC. That's a ton of crap. My point is that it will run better on a lower-CPU machine (say, a 1.5 GHz P4) with a really good videocard then a higher-CPU machine (say, a 3.0 GHz P4) and lower-end videocard. Videocard matters more in gaming...it's fact. You guys are bringing up 400-500 MHz processors. That's irrevelant...I didn't mention them, and you guys know as well as I do that Doom 3 isn't gonna run on a 500 MHz PC.

-Lasereth

Are we still talking about TechTV here? lol

Continue with the squabbling.

Man, Its sad to see techtv degenerate like this...of course, I kinda started to hate TSS as soon as it techtv took over zdtv. Back in the day when it was Leo and Kate..now that had a real authentic "underground computing" value to it, with actually intersting questions from computer literate people...yea..that was the good old days (does anyone else even remember when Kate Botello hosted..back when it was ZDTV)

The debate here is over a host of TechTV and information posed on the station. I think it's relevant! :thumbsup:

-Lasereth

Do you mean when "underground computing" meant that they were shooting in what was basically a basement? ;)
If so then yes those were the good old days.

I like watching TSS, but I never really felt like I learned anything from them...they always struck me as a couple of guys completely talking out of their asses.

But occasionally, I'd hear about a new freeware program I might not have discovered on my own, which was pretty helpful.
My favorite part, though, is seeing their guests...computer modders or forum moderators I recognize from my Internet travels.

I haven't seen the LA version yet, but I'm afraid-very afraid.

Lasereth: I understand where your coming from and it's all good but I do wanna clear up something, when you say doom 3 will run better do you mean the graphics will look better or do you mean the game will actually run faster. If your talking about graphics then your right but if your saying the game is run by the video card or run faster by it then your the opposite of right. Regardless of what game or what system you have I will stand by this fact: Graphics cards need to be paired with their matching processor for optimal performance. If your high-end video card isn't paired with a high-end processor the video card's performance suffers, and vice-versa. Not that this will always be an issue but if you really wanna milk your dollars worth on your brand new $500+ video card you better have a brand new or nearly so fast ass processor. That's all I wanna say about video cards, processors and gaming.

As far as kevin recommending someone upgrade their processor instead of video card for doom 3. In his defense he's no idiot or gaming newbie, most likely the person with the question didn't have at least a 2.0 Ghz processor but there video card was enough to play doom 3 with decent frame rates with even maybe medium quality. The person probably wanted to max out the quality and yes a video card would do that but for the money it would cost the person could improve their whole system by upgrading the processor and maybe other things. Sure it won't get them the maxed out quality but doom 3 and all other games and programs would run faster and better instead of everything running the same and doom just looking prettier.

I haven’t watched TSS since Pat left, and I don’t like what happened. The shows on that channel are horrendous. Have anyone seen the show Cheat? The worst show ever. "From our online poll, this week’s favorite cheat is GOD mode!!!" Crappy half hour.

Same with the show where the two guys argue about reviews.
"I think this game rocked.
I'm going to have to disagree with you."

At least X-Play is still running ... right? (I haven’t watched in a while)

So long, TechTV
 

The show really started to go downhill over a year ago, when Megan Morrone and Morgan Webb left.

The last TSS show I watched was was in San Francisco at the studio, two days before the finale taping. Being a Bay Area native, I had gone to see TSS live at the studios at least a dozen times over the past several years.

Pat and Leo held the show up, no doubt about it. They had charisma and talent, and were knowledgable people. Kevin knows what he's talking about, but overdoes it quite often....

IMO, the first thing they did that made it go severely downhill was the switch of sets. The 'new' set that they moved out of in SF sucked compared to the basement set they had back in the good old days. That basement theme had so much more appeal.

I think that comcrap are a bunch of hogs. They really made a mistake by buying out TechTV. Even though TechTV wasn't very profitable before it was bought up, comcast has lost a sea of viewers who got fed up with the whole deal.

I'm glad that Leo is doing something for the network. Other than his guest appearances on bigger TV networks and his weekend radio show, I think he's destined to be something larger. Just look at him. He's always struck me as the celebrity type. You know when he got to be that way when, despite my frequent visits to the show and lengthy conversations with him, didn't usually recognize me the next time I went. Kevin, however, along with patrick and yoshi, did a little bit better.

As for the people aspect of it all, I take satisfaction in knowing that some of the best names from former TechTV aren't going to make the move to a dirty and polluted LA.

~Andrew

First of all you guys are making the wrong types of comparisons when deciding which component is most important. I think that you have to start with the minimum requirements of the game and do a bench mark test. Then, use the slowest recommended processor with the highest available video card. Record benchmarks. Then do the opposite. Use the fastest processor available with the slowest recommended video card. Record benchmarks.

Compare the results of the three tests and voila, you have your answer. Since you say you have access to all different kinds of hardware maybe this is something you can do? This is the only real way to get a definitive answer, otherwise, we can throw examples back and forth but never know for certain.

Back to the original topic...I do admit they did suck the first day, but I think that they have gotten better. Sure maybe their advice is still inaccurate at times but I never really watched it to learn how to use a computer. If you think about it they constantly keep answering the same questions, needless to say if you pay attention eventually you will learn most of the answers. The reason I like to watch is because they do cover a lot ot tech news and new software. Also, Kevin and Yoshi's mods are also very interesting. If I need serious computing answers I turn to the net for answers (places such as this), so basically I watch for the entertainment value.

I think Leo was the perfect host, he was willing to be funny, but not at the expense of giving misinformation. Pat was the ultimate straight man, always giving just the facts. Together they were very good, whenever Leo started to get out of control Pat would always reign him in. By the way the funniest TSS moment had to be when Leo said Dildo by mistake and everybody on the set cracked up laughing.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that if these two new guys can manage to give me some tech news and good reviews I'll be a happy viewer. Speaking of which my biggest critique of the show so far occured today in the mp3 player roundup. The only real competitors to the ipod are the Rio Karma and the iRiver units but they didn't even mention them. I mean the basically said that the Dell and Creative players were basically the same, so why include both? And if their excuse for not including the Rio and the iRiver is that they didn't have any on hand they should have still discussed those units anyway. The only player that even came close to matching the ipod was the Sony net thingy, but it is immediately ruled out because it doesn't even play mp3 files.

I think the commedy is getting better, and Kevin and Alex are working better as a team but they just need more time to gel and get to know each other. Give them a chance guys they'll get better (hopefully).

"By the way the funniest TSS moment had to be when Leo said Dildo by mistake and everybody on the set cracked up laughing."

There was an experience I had when I was watching the show live... This was back before they had a studio audience (basement set). I was there for the "All Kilt Day" where every cast member wore a kilt courtesy of http://www.utilikilts.com/. Throughout the show, they were discussing on whether or not a real Scottish person wore underwear under the kilts. Nobody got a clear answer out of Leo on whether or not he was.... During one of the commercial breaks, leo decided to spin around in his kilt, not knowing that it would fly up. Fortunately, he caught himself just in time. That was one of the funniest things I've ever seen happen on the set.