Month: August 2022

Enlarge (credit: Scharon Harding/Getty Images)

Let's say you're buying a new PC monitor, TV, or laptop and want an idea of how clear fast movement would appear on it. What information would you consider? Specs like response time and refresh rate provide an idea of display speed. But if you think about it, a measurement of time isn't a particularly straightforward answer to the question of, "How much motion blur will I see?" In response, the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), which makes other display standards, including DisplayPort and Adaptive-Sync, today announced a new specification program that puts a label on displays quantifying their expected motion blur performance.

The Clear Motion Ratio Compliance Test Specification (ClearMR) is a standard and logo program for consumer displays, including PC monitors, TVs, laptops, tablets, and all-in-ones (several products are already certified). It introduces a series of tiers with a numerical value that's supposed to indicate to consumers the display's ratio of clear pixels to blurry ones during fast-paced movement. For example, ClearMR 7000, which has a "Clear Motion Ratio" range of 6,500 to 7,500, means the display would have a clear-to-blurry ratio of 65–75:1 or 65–75 times more clear pixels than blurry ones.

In an interview with Ars Technica, Dale Stolitzka, senior principal researcher at Samsung Display’s America R&D Lab and lead contributor to ClearMR, said that VESA settled on ClearMR 3000 as the lowest tier befitting laptops with screens in the 90–120 Hz range. Displays that are 60 Hz would typically not qualify for ClearMR certification.

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

Tomorrow, Apple will start providing repair manuals, parts, and tools for US customers to repair their own M1-based MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops. M2-based Macs will not be supported at that time, but Apple said the program will extend to more Mac models "later this year."

Apple launched its Self Service Repair Store in April with repair manuals and the option to order tools and parts for the iPhone 12 series, iPhone 13 lineup, and latest iPhone SE.

As of tomorrow, the store will offer the same services to M1 MacBook Air and Pro owners, including the same parts made available to Apple Stores and authorized repair providers, according to Apple's announcement.

Enlarge / Catching air after glitch-colliding with a boulder is probably the Saints Row reboot's most fun quality. That's... not a good sign. (credit: Volition)

The Saints Row series emerged in the Xbox 360 era as a cheeky, irreverent response to the likes of Grand Theft Auto. By its fourth game, however, the open-world series' cars, heists, sex-toys-as-weapons gimmick, and explosive gunfights had seemingly run out of new directions to go.

Previews suggested that this week's new series reboot, simply titled Saints Row, might wipe the slate clean to provide a fresh perspective on the crime-spree genre. Instead, this game simply wipes the slate clean—and leaves it that way.

Saints Row (2022) is the rare open-world game that makes an average Ubisoft open-world game of the past five years seem refreshing by comparison. Describing this game as a regression to the Xbox 360 era would be an insult to the late 2000s' best open-world adventures. It can't touch the adventurous exploration, satisfying mechanics, and supercharged bombast of 2007's Crackdown, while its hole-filled plot and cookie-cutter characters aren't fun to laugh at, let alone with.