Edshugeo The GodMoor

Less than 26 hours from now. I'm torn between picking up GTA IV at midnight tomorrow (@ the local GameStop) or getting it on the way to work on Tuesday morning. I'm currently leaning towards midnight. I was hoping to finish San Andreas before this game was released, but that ain't gonna happen.

I've barely touched Call Of Duty 4, or Blazing Angels 2, though I have played a li'l bit of Rock Band (w/drums). I was mostly trying to get through GTA: San Andreas (XBox version) on the 360. Got farther than I did on the PC version, in which I got stuck at the mission where I had to intercept a jet with a propeller powered plane, and kill the hit men inside. The XBox version was much easier and I caught up with the plane on all attempts. I just kept forgetting how to activate the landing gear at the end. I'm now up to the point where everything is setup for the casino heist, but I didn't do any of those James Woods airstrip missions, so I gotta do those before the story can move along.

Taxpayers are expecting some gub'mnt cheese within the next coupl'a weeks or so, and for a little while, I actually thought I might blow mine on a PS3. I'm having second thoughts, though. I don't really need it. Would be nice to have for the Blu-Ray, now that it's safe to buy movies, but there aren't any PS3 games I have to have at this point (and I have plenty on the 360 to keep me busy for a while). Their Second Life knock off, Home looks intriguing, but is just another one of Sony's promises right now. I might buy it (just because), but it looks like I won't. Maybe there'll be a price drop soon.

Labels: Anticipay-yay-shun..., fun, Hempstead, PS3, video games, XBox 360, youtube and other video

I was rooting for those guys back when there was a format war, but now it's a little bit late for them. They're sounding somewhat optimistic. Perhaps they've simply come too far to turn back. I dunno. I don't care.

I'm waiting for either the price of full profile (2.0) Blu-Ray players to come down significantly, or a compelling reason to buy a PS3 (I already have an XBox 360).

In the meantime, I get my HD fix from the occasionally pixelated fare on Cablevision's Voom HD network, and also from downloading WMVHD encodes of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD releases. These look fantastic, and I've noticed no pixelation at all, watching Mr. And Mrs. Smith and almost no artifacts during Appleseed Ex-Machina. This quells my fear that the pixelation which occurred during fast motion scenes on the HD cable channels were due to a limitation of my moderately priced 37" screen. I now know that isn't the case, based on those downloads and from renting Ratatouille on XBox Live marketplace.

The WMVHD downloads are obtained from usenet (alt.binaries.movies.wmv, alt.binaries.HDTV), saved on a USB hard-drive formatted as HFS+ using Macdrive 7 (I'm not a Mac user), 'cause the 360 doesn't recognize NTFS despite it coming from the same company (Microsoft), and FAT 32 has a 4GB file size limitation (most of what I've downloaded is 8+GBs). The 360 is compatible with HFS+ which is an Apple file system. Hmm.

The only problem I'm having so far, is I can't copy files of folders to this drive if they have Chinese characters in the names, which is the case for some in my music collection.
03/16/08 - easily rectified by right clicking on the drive, selecting "Mac File Names" and "International".

Labels: Anime, downloads, HDTV, movies, music video, PS3, tv, XBox 360

Now that it's official that HD-DVD is dead and that Blu-Ray is the victor in the war over next gen movie software formats, what's to be done with unsold players and discs?

Price cuts, of course.

I once thought I'd jump at HD-DVD if the price reached a certain low, but those price drops came only after things got progressively worse for them and defeat almost certain. So, I still held off.

Now comes a rumor that the HD-DVD add on for the XBox 360 will be lowered to about fifty bucks. Close to the $40 I thought it was worth, post format war. Before the end, I would'a considered paying $80. (now confirmed - Feb. 26th, 2008)

I reasoned that I could enjoy a bunch of movies for a while (likely to fall in price as well) and then at some point, take advantage of the notion that the 360 add-on can be made to work on a PC, rip the movies, and eventually burn those to Blu-Ray, once such burners and blank discs became affordable. That's a good plan for those who have already built up a sizable collection of HD-DVD discs (maybe not if their PCs are Mac or Linux, I dunno). Not such a good plan for me. I'd end up accumulating crap, I would eventually have to throw away. Eventually meaning in a year or two. Might not be such a bad thing if disc prices end up being close to that of a rental.

For now I'll continue to buy (and download) DVDs, though not as frequently as before, and maybe slowly start to buy a Blu-Ray disc here and there, so that I'll have a few titles once I get my first player (maybe, ...possibly a PS3, not likely before December).

Prior to getting my first DVD player at the end of 1998 (I think), I made frequent trips to Chinatown and stocked up on VCDs, a movie disc format that never took off here in the U.S., but was very popular in Asia. I was able to watch them on my computer, and knew I would pick a DVD player that would support that format. That allowed me to have a small library (in addition to the first DVDs I purchased) ready. Stephen Chow movies made up a good chunk of that collection. His movies were not as heavily bootlegged (at the time) as a lot of the stuff coming out of Hong Kong in that decade and before, so it was new stuff to me, and a change from Jet Li, Jackie Chan*, Tsui Hark, etc. I almost made Chow's Kung Fu Hustle my first Blu-Ray purchase, but backed out of it. I did order the Dragon Dynasty DVD release of Royal Tramp, which contains both 1&2 (based on Louis Cha's Deer And The Cauldron AKA Duke Of Mount Deer). I haven't seen them since watching those VCDs. Though I recently watched a TV series starring Dickie Cheung and produced by Royal Tramp director/producer Wong Jing.

Of course, with Blu-Ray's backwards compatibility, I already have a 400+ strong library of commercial (which means I bought, not downloaded them) DVDs, many of which look good to great on my 37". There is also decent hi-def content on cable, and downloadable rentals on XBox Live (which I'm not that partial to).

While I've yet to make the PC to 360 connection work, for the purpose of streaming video and movies from the computer to the TV in the living room, I can connect a USB hard drive to the XBox 360 to play that content. Same with the PSP (music and video, not games). I've not downloaded hi-def content from the web, yet. At least not in the formats recognizable to the 360 (wmv, mp4, avi). But that seems like a possibility.

In any case, I think I shall leave HD-DVD to rot.

* I once read a review of City Hunter (the live action HK version) that stated that Jackie Chan was trying to make a Stephen Chow film (it was directed by Wong Jing, who'd made a lot of films with Chow at the time). Seeing how that movie made a mockery of one of my favorite 80s anime (and not in an amusing way), I was a little hesitant to experience Chow's wackiness first hand. Once I made the jump, I was hooked.

Labels: DVD, HDTV, movies, PS3, wu-xia, XBox 360

Not this blog. I've just been lazy chillin'.

DRM for music downloads.

The last major label will throw in the towel on digital rights management and prepare to fight Apple for valuable download revenues.

Sony-BMG are dipping their feet in the waters of the DRM free market by starting to offer some of their music.

About iTunes and their competition, it is said;

Still, no service has yet been able to offer DRM-free music downloads from all four major labels. Amazon could yet become a contender.

If a store becomes a popular place to shop, then of course it makes sense to have your music available there, if you can. However, it isn't necessary for the consumer to have only one website to get all our downloads. It's not like having to travel a few miles to another store. Most of what I buy comes from eMusic, everything else is either "found" or bought on CD, though that's more of a rarity for me nowadays. Though I still think 99 cents is too much for a MP3, I have come close on a couple of occasions to buying music on iTunes (Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon) and Amazon (a compilation from Nine Inch Nails, Still), both of which are priced at about eight bucks. And both DRM-free.

If, as a record company, one doesn't like iTunes, there's no reason why Sony, Warners, or any other big company can't sell DRM-free music on their own sites, as long as they aren't stupid about it (there was that Sony site a while back that only worked on Internet Explorer). Plus they would make whatever change that would normally go to iTunes/whoever.

Also Dead?

HD-DVD

As prices started to come down, I came close to getting an HD-DVD player, but came to my senses. Now it appears that Warner's is supporting Blu-Ray, leaving HD-DVD with about 30% of the Hollywood studios on their side. A while back, I was rooting for HD-VMD, but they were a long shot even before the price drops.

Folks are declaring the format war over, though it might be best to wait and see. Also Blu-Ray player prices are not where they need to be, yet. Especially for full spec players. Many of the players on the market only contain few of the features of the Blu-Ray spec. Typical of Sony in the last few years to release hardware that does a little bit of what it's supposed to do. Some would say, all it really needs to do is play the movies. Sure, if it was a machine costing less than 200 bucks, but right now they're much more expensive than that.

PS3 is still a non-issue for me. I'm not exactly starving for games for my XBox 360, so until Sony's "superior technology" actually does something interesting on the gaming front, I'll have no need for it.

Speaking of the XBox, I rented the movie, Ratatouille from XBox Live last week. I was curious as to what Hi-Def content looked like on the console, especially since the sizes of their movie files (4-6 GB, generally) would fit on a standard dual layer DVD. The resolution of Hi-Def on XBL is 720p vs. 1080i for most hi-def on Cablevision (sports on cable tends to be on 720p, though). The movie looked very good and I noticed no quality difference between this and a movie on Hi-def cable. Except for the lack of pixelation. There was none of it during Ratatouille. On a hi-def channel on cable, there's plenty of it during fast motion action, or during scenes that contain flickering lights. I initially thought this might be a limitation of my relatively cheap Olevia TV, but I doubt that now.

I'd been using HDMI on my Xbox and component cables on the HD cable box/DVR. The tv has only one HDMI input. Today (Jan 5th '08) I switched the HDMI cable to the set top box and watched a little bit of Yuen Wo Ping's Tiger Cage 2 (which was on the DVR) and noticed an improvement on motion scenes. Just a tiny bit of pixelation in one scene and they (the pixels) were much smaller. It was a worn film print, so I wasn't able to notice any picture improvement, and more time will be needed to see if HDMI really has reduced the pixelation issue. Jury seems to be out as to which is clearly better, but it seems to depend on the equipment. I may have to get an HDMI switch, but I'll wait till I get a Hi-Def player of some sort. Now to see if the XBox 360 suffers from component cables...

I won't be downloading much in the way of movies from XBL, though. 480 points, translates into about six dollars and change, plus tax. I didn't time the 5 Gb download, but it took a while.
Downloading to hard drives is great for rentals, but bad for owned content (and the only good use of DRM). If they bring it down to 3 bucks, I'll do a lot more of it.

Standard DVD still wins. Until a decent Blu-ray player (not the half ass shit that's out there) hits at 300 bucks and below.

Labels: kung fu, movies, music business, PS3, technology, XBox 360

A very nice teaser trailer for a game more than a year until release, if I understand correctly.
Watch it here or download it to keep, here.
I never knew there was a Streetfighter III. I thought they'd just add more variations to Streetfighter II forever. Looks like Capcom is moving on. There are plenty of fans who'd like to see the series remain in 2D. I'm not one of them, though.

The demos for fighting games on the 360, leave me unimpressed, so far. The upcoming Virtua Fighter 5 -eh. Dead Or Alive 4 (I think it's 4) - not bad. Def Jam: Icon - actually has a cool look and feel to it, but isn't Asian martial arts based (or some fanciful substitute) and I don't really like the idea of rappers beating the crap out of each other. This could just as easily be Bumfights: The Videogame. Again these impressions come from playing the demos once apiece. I'll have to wait and see if something decent like Tekken ever shows up this console (Loved Dark Resurection on the PSP).

Also missing from the XBox 360 is a lightgun game, like Time Crisis which is coming to the PS3 (it had been rumored for the 360 as well, but we'll see). I loved me some Time Crisis, man. Also, Die Hard Trilogy for the original Playstation, had a shooting segment. I loved me some Die Hard Trilogy, man.

Labels: PS3, video games, XBox 360

I bought the 360 Elite last week after spending a week debating the PS3 vs. the 360. Prior to that point I went from no interest in a next gen system to "Ooh! The PS3 will be out next year" to "It's gonna cost what?" to "No Fuckin' way am I spending that on a game system" to "It would probably look nice on my 37 inch flatscreen TV." My interest gradually escalated from there and I started to brake down after purchasing three used games for the PS2 and not being overly impressed by the graphics.

I was gonna get a PS3, but I mentioned that to a coupl'a friends, and was advised to avoid it and go for the 360. Their opinions were based on hearsay (about the PS3) and the fact that they owned 360s, so I dismissed them at first. But I was motivated to explore the issue a li'l bit.

There were a number of things that I was concerned about already. Price wasn't one of them at this point, though it had been a major issue in the past. If I wanted to go cheap, I'd have gone with the 360 core system. Not interested in the Wii, though I'm sure it's fine for what it is.

Sony's dicking around with the PSP didn't help (or perhaps it did). The PSP is a great hand held multimedia device. There's nothing like it out there. If you just want games, there's the DS and all the previous incarnations of the Game Boy by Nintendo. If you just want music and/or movies, theres the various iPods and other personal media players. But for all of the above and also wireless internet there's only the PSP which is capable of even more thanks to the efforts of the homebrew community.

The PSP was my first taste of Sony's "sleeping giant" marketing tactic of presenting a device with great potential, but only unlocking it's capabilities a piece at a time via firmware upgrades (usually after a homebrew developer had unlocked it first). Some of these things were fixes to issues that might not have been well thought out at first, like the placement and naming of videos. Other things were obviously being held back, like full resolution video, which was available on UMD video discs, but not supported on the memory stick until a much later firmware. Officially, that is.

When Sony finally provided the one feature homebrewers could not get right, the ability to play PS1 games on our favorite portable, they chose not to allow their limited selection of games to be purchased and downloaded by anyone who did not have a PS3. Apparently this was expected to motivate purchases of the new system, instead of angering their existing customers who already owned internet capable devices (the PSP and likely a computer). Instead, homebrew came to the rescue and modified the software that allowed the playability of PS1 games as well as provide a way for users to convert their existing game library to the PSP. No PS3 needed. No need to buy the old games again. I even bought a used title off Amazon.com for less than the supposed price of a download (not including the PS3 price). Fuck you, Sony, for even thinking of pulling a stunt like that.

Still, I was somewhat convinced that the PS3 was the most powerful game machine, out there. It was expected to be miles ahead of what the XBox 360 was capable of. I was unconvinced, however, that it's power was being fully demonstrated. Games made for both the 360 and the PS3 were turning out better on the 360 (according to many reports). This being due to developers being more familiar with the XBox platform. Sony defenders point out that Microsoft had a years head start on the PS3 and that their strongest games are just being released now. When the PS3 reaches a similar point in it's development we will see it deliver the goods and maybe it'll surpass the 360.

If I was gonna wait another year to get a game machine, that would be fine and dandy. Placing my bets now on a system that might be great eventually? Um, ... no. Buying a machine that does what it's supposed to do very well, right now? That makes more sense.

HD DVD vs. Blu Ray? A non issue for me. I'll wait for a winner in that contest or I'll wait for a cheap HD disc recorder (it'll happen eventually), download whatever HD content I want from each competing format and convert them to the one I have.

XBox Live vs. PS3's online service - PS3 online is free, but kinda sloppy from what I understand. Sony has some interesting ideas, but they're just promises right now.
XBox Live seems to garner better reviews. So far I like it as far as downloading demos are concerned. Haven't tried online gaming yet, but I will.

PSP to PS3 connectivity seemed like a good idea at first, but makes no sense in it's current application, downloading media to the PS3 and then send it over to the PSP. The PSP can access the internet already. Thank you. If it could be used as a location free player to play PS3 games (and other media) on the PSP via wi-fi wherever you were, that would be a killer app. I don't know what the technical limitations are that keep such a thing from happening. I only hope that it is issues like that that keep it from happening, and not Sony dicking around again. Sony's Location Free player is a device that allows television to stream via wi-fi to an owners PSP wherever he happens to be.
Oct. 18th, 2007 - According to the November issue (#175) of Game Informer magazine (pg 24 - Portable Puppetmaster), Sony plans to allow this very feature sometime in 2008. It'll probably be 2009 until it's up and running. Once it is and a good number of PS3 games are playable on the PSP, I'm gettin' one. Though if Microsoft were to announce a handheld gaming device capable of the same thing via the 360, I might hold off.

The renting movies to the XBox hard drive thing is kinda interesting, but needs to be cheaper. I won't be doing that. I've got decent HD cable service, a DVR and I can't complain about the prices of DVDs. I still prefer to own hard copies of media (less true for music with non-DRM mp3s) and the less DRM the better. Rentals (pay per view) don't need to be as expensive as they are.

Sony vs. Microsoft: which is more evil? Microsoft, probably. Certainly more hated in the PC world. That they've managed to create a product that their customers are mostly happy with is a huge achievement! I mean, a lot of us are Windows users, who won't go near a Mac, but that doesn't mean that Windows doesn't piss us off for a variety of reasons. 360 users really like their machine regardless of how evil Microsoft is with PC software. I've always viewed Sony as a maker of decent electronics. My first DVD player was a Sony. Back then the hardware did the talking. Now when Sony talks, they sound a little like Microsoft, but not the Microsoft in the gaming business.

The games - the 360's got 'em and those that are also on the PS3 are not quite as good (hearsay), though that may change. If Grand Theft Auto IV had been a Sony exclusive, that might've been enough to sway me back to the PS3. I love GTA. The extra content being developed for the 360 wasn't really a determining factor for me though it definitely doesn't hurt. The PS3 will no doubt get great games that can't be found on the 360, but they don't really have them now, and that's a major disadvantage for buyers who aren't waiting. I'll be trying Halo for the first time next week. Haven't tried the first two games and don't feel I need to.

My first games...
Bioshock is a creepy first person story based thriller that takes place in a would be paradise that's gone horribly wrong. I'm enjoying it so far though I haven't played it much, yet.
Burnout Revenge is a race and crash game I bought for simple fun. I played Burnout Legends on the PSP and loved it. I was unaware of the Burnout games before then. Revenge is much more awesome than I expected.
Quake 4 I haven't played yet. Bought it used for twenty bucks.

Also tried a few demos, both on XBox Live and also from the magazine, XBM, which obviously isn't necessary since they are downloadable. Demos don't need hard copies. Sony canceled their official Playstation magazine (the US version) for the same reason.

Hardware failures. Sony wins on that account. Microsoft is handling the issue in a number of ways, but this shouldn't have been an issue to begin with. Still all the pluses outweigh this negative.

The future? Maybe the PS3 will turn out to be hot shit, after all. If this happens by next winter, maybe I'll get one in addition to my 360, PS2 and my PSP (which is still a brilliant console). I don't expect Sony to give up, no matter how bad the numbers get. They stuck with Betamax until after DVDs dominated. Right now, the PS2 is outselling the PS3, so there's still life in that system as well. There are a few games I want to finish on it before I put it out to pasture.

Labels: HDTV, PS3, PSP, technology, video games, XBox 360