Lets not buy creative products any more....

i_am_dogboy

First off, apologies if this was previously posted but I did look back a few pages and couldn't find it.

I haven't really formed an opinion on the software patenting thing yet, but misuse of patents like this is just plain old wrong.
Creative patented a shadowing technique that is similar to that in use by the doom3 engine, and threatened to bring them to court, id settled it though. Still for a company who have a big fanbase in gaming you'd expect more.

jesus_thats_gre

i_am_dogboy wrote:

First off, apologies if this was previously posted but I did look back a few pages and couldn't find it.

I haven't really formed an opinion on the software patenting thing yet, but misuse of patents like this is just plain old wrong.
Creative patented a shadowing technique that is similar to that in use by the doom3 engine, and threatened to bring them to court, id settled it though. Still for a company who have a big fanbase in gaming you'd expect more.

Tis not really enough to stop buying a Creative product, especially if its better value or just plain better.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

neXus9

The speakers I got from creative were pretty crap, really hissy. Also the card picks up magnetic distortion from the other cards (tried re-arranging them). Is there any sound cards better than the audigy 2? I was talking to a friend and he said there was plenty out there especially made for sound recording (He mentioned some german make). It would be nice to get an external one, so there would be no magnetic distortion, but they're pretty costly.

ozt9vdujny3srf

Terratec Perhps?

There is also M Audio and a couple of others which i cant recall right now.

Plenty of (sometimes better) alternatives to creative, you just have to look for them. Nice thing about the majority of other soundcard manufacturers is their software, which isnt ridiculously bloated.

Have a look on www.techseekers.net and search for "sound cards. They link to a few good sound card reviews.

This card in particular seems to go down well with the reviewers.

neXus9

Thanks for the links.

jesus_thats_gre

M Audio are meant to be the best for professional audio work but they are meant to be average for games. All in all, Creative are the best for games it seems. Would you not consider an external sound card thing?

neXus9

Yeah, I would like to get an external one. Wasn't impressed by the speakers (they started out good then just deteriated) and the soundcard seemed too vunerable to magnetic distortion, so external it is.

CyberGhost

that's bad but that won't stop me from buying from them, they still make great products!

I love my Audigy2

for speakers I buy from Cambridge Soundworks and recently switched to Klipsch - which are hands down the best speaker company on the market

Stephen

Cambridge Soundworks == Creative by the way.

KdjaCL

Had an Audigy 1 and hated it stupid fukkin driver problems and every game it hated.

Using the built in one CMI chipset and its grand 5.1 etc:

kdjac

CyberGhost

Stephen wrote:

Cambridge Soundworks == Creative by the way.

Creative owns CS but it doesn't mean they build it!

it's like WV owns part of I don't remember what car company but they still don't build them!

jesus_thats_gre

CyberGhost wrote:

Creative owns CS but it doesn't mean they build it!

it's like WV owns part of I don't remember what car company but they still don't build them!

Yeah good argument to follow there.. They are Creative..

Stephen

I think you're referring to VW owning Skoda, and I believe they actually do build them these days.

Redrocket

yeah but sure the VW now looks like the skoda, and they both have the same engines with different covers on the top. one cover has a vw sign the other has a skoda sign.
i think software patents suck. imagine if someone put a patent on the idea of a forum, kinda sucky

CyberGhost

lol Ok then! they are Creative, I admit I love Creative!

and I don't really care about them patenting things, everybody does it!, It's companies that are planning to use their stuff have to worry

Rew

CyberGhost wrote:

lol Ok then! they are Creative, I admit I love Creative!

and I don't really care about them patenting things, everybody does it!, It's companies that are planning to use their stuff have to worry

There is patents and there id taking the piss. The US patent office will patent anything and let it be fought out in court if somebody dosnt agree. Software patents will be a **** load worse.

Im surprised that somebody hasn't patented "Device that plays digital music from digital storage" and sued everyone.

Copyright and Patents are getting way out of hand these days.

CyberGhost

patents = lawyers paradise!

i_am_dogboy

It's not the fact that they patented the shading technique that I think is out of hand, it's that they put it on some developers forum for other people to see then patented it. I mean that's just looking for some easy lawsuits, which is what they did with doom3.

Also I'd like to add, my sound card, graphics card and speakers are all from creative, I don't dislike their hardware, I'm just against what they did, and hoping that other people don't try the same thing.

Rew

i_am_dogboy wrote:

It's not the fact that they patented the shading technique that I think is out of hand, it's that they put it on some developers forum for other people to see then patented it. I mean that's just looking for some easy lawsuits, which is what they did with doom3.

Im pretty sure you cannt patent something after you publish it publicly. If you google you can find loads of examples of bad patents. MS patented double clicking on mobile devices (so phones and PDAs but its not really defined). Another company patented subdomains, another company patented automatic software updates and is sueing MS and Apple

http://www.btgplc.com/news/20072004MicrosoftApple.html

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/10791_1462741_1

Redrocket

im gonna patent the alphabet
so for every word you type whether its a real word or not, you owe me money.
same concept.

Matt Simis

Well, there are two sides to everything. This was brought up by id themselves afaik, some months ago. It was also in forums about a year ago (I remember reading it). The shadow technique was new and revolutionary, its been brought up by Creative in interviews several times prior to this (as in "history of innovation" etc, I saw it recently in Guru3d's "goodbye to Creative" interview).

Feelings on the nature of patents aside, if you are going to work on something, then patent it, presumably you will also want to protect it if need be too? Its hardly surprising.

Frankly, Im looking forward to EAX4 support in Doom3, sure gonna beat the simple sound support id are famous for (eg stereo in in the time of surround in Quake3)..


Matt