I just came back to add that, encoding 2-pass to the same bitrate that theirs results at, I have a very hard time telling the difference. I look forward to your comparison sets.
Justin from Zencoder here... I've been doing a bit of similar testing and seeing similar results. So they're obviously controlling the settings per frame (or per segment) during the encode, meaning the values in that encoder line are not very useful in analyzing what they're doing.
I'm definitely seeing a loss in quality on the "mini" encodes relative to the source -- mostly in loss of grain, and fine details (in hair, etc).
However, if they're analyzing the motion within the video and using perceptual algorithms to determine what the focal points are, etc. then it's totally fair to throw away details in sections that are peripheral, and likewise getting rid of grain in a blurred-out portion of the screen that's panning makes sense if your eye wouldn't perceive that anyway. This seems to be a much more aggressive version of x264's "psy" optimizations, essentially.
So the resulting video might look very similar in quality to someone watching the movie, but not to someone analyzing the frames and details. There's a hard line to draw on how that's marketed -- it's not actually "without losing quality", but it might be "without looking worse"?
I agree. Intrusive LCD panels at the table, removal from human interaction, horrid restaurant-chosen hierarchies of categories to wade through, etc...
With menus, everybody gets one and can peruse as they see fit, rather than a little shared computer. With a waiter/waitress you can talk through special options or dealing with split bills and anything like that.
And don't get me started on social and tracking -- I can't think of anything that would more quickly destroy my interest in a restaurant than having to log in with twitter or facebook. (And believe me, if the restaurant posted/tweeted on my friend's behalf, they would lose my business.)
The cases may be different crimes, and in different areas, but it's just illustrative of how out of balance the justice system is. When the victim is high-profile, the enforcement is swift and overbearing. When the victim is unknown or powerless, the enforcement is often nonexistent.
Seizing personal computers, cameras, cell phones, servers, and paperwork, for a case where the property has already been returned, might be legal but is also a completely inappropriate response. There's already a very clear case here, and lives are not in danger. It doesn't matter if he's a journalist or not, this is just not the level of action that should have been taken. We should be able to expect fairly consistent responses to legal situations, based on the severity of the crime and the impact, rather than based on the identity of the victim or the media attention focused on the case.