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Last few nails…

And now we see the last few nails in the coffin for HD DVD.  I had mentioned a few days ago that the format war was over but the news over the past couple of days is just rubbing salt in the wounds.  Retail leviathan Wal-Mart has announced that it will no longer carry HD DVD following Best Buy’s earlier decision.  And though there were rumors of Toshiba completely dropping HD DVD over the weekend, we still don’t know if those rumors are true.  According to Toshiba today, they are still weighing their options in this increasingly Blu-Ray market.

In my opinion Toshiba should just get out while they can and before the downward spiral catches more unwary consumers in it’s wake.  Everyone knows that most people who buy technology are at least relatively clueless (much to the dismay of us obsessive research techies) and it won’t be long till stores that are still selling the remainder of their stock of HD DVD hardware and movies start looking with customers with the word “SUCKER” stamped on their forehead.  It will happen; it always does.  And those unlucky people who invest in HD DVD at this stage of the game (or later) are going to be very upset when they can’t find any more red cases floating in the sea of blu.

PSP visitors

For some reason, I just think it’s really cool that someone is coming to this site on a Sony PSP hand-held game system.  Probably because I’m a big dork, but I really do think that is cool.  So if you are the person who is reading the crap I write on your PSP, I just want to say “Hi!”  And leave a comment if you can.  Or can you since there’s no keyboard?  Never actually browsed on one before.

Steam & AudioSurf

I remember when Valve first launched Steam with Half-Life 2.  I remember what a cluster fuck that was as well.  Sure things don’t always start off smooth, but the hoops you had to jump through to get the game you bought from the store was absolutely ridiculous.  And that’s not even taking into consideration all the technical glitches that the system had in the face of the release of a major triple-A game title.  Needless to say it only stayed installed on my PC for as long as it took me to finish Half-Life 2 and then it got removed without so much as an inkling of regret.

However, I recently purchased The Orange Box so I could finally get my hands on Team Fortress 2 and Portal.  And since it’s Valve, that meant having Steam loaded back onto my system.  As much as I wanted to play the games, I was not looking forward to having that back on my computer.  Well, it’s installed and it’s actually not so bad now.

I’ve played through and finished Portal.  If you like first-person shooters, original gameplay, warped humor and puzzles then you must play Portal if you haven’t already.  Portal alone was worth the price of admission for me.  Which is a good thing because out of the six games that come in The Orange Box [Half-Life 2, HL2: Episode 1, HL2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal, and the Asia region bonus of Counter-Strike 1.6] I was really only interested in Portal and Team Fortress 2.  I’ve played more than my fair share of Counter-Strike in the past and I’ve already finished HL2.  I may play Episodes 1 & 2 but I’ll probably end up holding out till Episode 3 is getting ready to release so I can just finish them all and complete the story.

But one nice thing about Steam now that its worked out all (?) of its old bugs is that its a nice way of checking out new games.  Currently I’m downloading a demo for a new game called AudioSurf that just released yesterday.  Take a look at the link for game info, but it’s an action game that deals with music and you can use any MP3 or other format of music file to play it.  I’m not sure how that works, but if I like the demo, I may pay the $9.99 USD charge for the whole game and give a proper review of it.  Considering my love of other games that are dependent on or revolve around music [Rez HD, Lumines Live, Guitar Hero 1,2 & 3] its very likely I’ll like this one though.

And remember: The cake is not a lie.  You just aren’t allowed to have any.

Meaningless holiday

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY

Especially to you Hallmark.

I don’t really put much stock in the whole Valentine’s Day commercial hullabaloo.  I buy little gifts for my wife fairly frequently.  We know we love each other (usually).  We eat out fairly often.  We get chocolate on a regular basis.  I just don’t see the point in a specific day having to be a day to show that you can be romantic by spending a fortune on flowers that will die in a week or candies that your significant other will just regret eating later on.

I think it’s fine to use it as an excuse for doing something particularly nice if you want to, but I don’t see why that can’t happen any day of the year.  Or, now brace yourselves for this one, multiple days during the year.  There’s no need to wait till winter (or summer for you Aussies and Kiwis) to get your groove on and stoke the mojo with some nice gift or dinner.

I’ve heard the argument that Valentine’s Day is more important to a girl than her birthday because during her birthday she has family and friends to celebrate with.  On V-Day, she has only her husband/boyfriend/fiancee/sex_buddy/girlfriend/life_partner/wife to share it with.  Well that may be true but only if you make it true.  And only if you force February 14th into a holiday with meaning when it’s not needed.

Of course, that’s just my opinion.  What’s yours?  Shout it out in the comments.

Bummer, Blu-Ray wins

Well, the format war between HD DVD and Blu-Ray DVD for HD format dominance was basically over when Warner Brothers announced that they would stop producing HD DVD versions of their movies as of the summer of 2008.  Considering that Warner Brothers makes up a ton of DVD sales this is pretty much the death blow for HD DVD.

Of course the speculation becomes a moot point now that Netflix has announced that it will only carry Blu-Ray discs as their Hi-Def format of choice.  Might as well side with the winner on this one.  Netflix hasn’t gotten where they are by making stupid decisions.

And then the next day, Best Buy announces that its stores will still carry some HD-DVD but they will be focusing on the sales of Blu-Ray equipment and discs from now on.  Their sales staff will be trained to push the Sony format over HD-DVD as the future of Hi-Def.

So what if Paramount and Dreamworks have sided with HD DVD at this point.  Their sales numbers are nothing compared to Warner Brothers and with Netflix’s dominant user base and Best Buy’s saturation of retail stores globally it’s pretty clear that this format war is over.

Which sucks.

I was really hoping for HD DVD to win this war because it’s much better for the consumers.  HD and Blu-Ray picture and audio quality are basically identical so no big deal there.  Blu-Ray has more top-end capactiy per disc so that’s good except movies and all their special features and soundtracks and languages don’t take up all that much space on either format.  So again no real advantage.

However, there are two features that made HD DVD stand out to me.
One was that since HD DVD is more similar to current generation DVD discs, you had many movies coming out with HD versions of the movie on one side of the disc and the standard defintion version on the other side of the same disc.  Why is this important?  Say you have a beautiful Hi-Def home theater in your home to play your HD DVD in.  Then you want to go to the mall in your SUV or Minivan and take the movie with you.  Well you could do that because you just flip the disc over and the conventional DVD player in your vehicle can read it no problem.  Blu-Ray can’t do that.

The other reason is that while Blu-Ray followed the tried and true and much reviled region coding that standard DVDs started so many years ago, HD DVD movies are completely region-free.  This means that if you want to order a movie from the United Kingdom or Japan, you can and you don’t have to worry about your USA HD DVD player not being able to play them.  Perhaps that’s not a big deal to you, but I guarantee its a huge deal to collectors and people living overseas like me.  Or perhaps you live in Europe and Hi-Def moviescost twice as much as they do in the States. They have the option of ordering from the States and shipping back for half the price and not having to worry about being able to watch their new movie.  Blu-Ray was designed to keep this from happening and I think that is one of the major reasons that Blu-Ray was always going to win the fight.  Aside from profit, there is nothing in the world that the movie companies like more than total control over who can and can’t watch their movies.

So I’m a little upset about this.  It means that it will probably be a long time before I get into the Hi-Def market myself.  Blu-Ray equipment costs more as do the movies in general compared to HD DVD.  And with the death of HD DVD, there will be little incentive for Blu-Ray prices to come down at all.  And there is no way in hell I’m buying a Sony PS3 just to play movies on.  Which considering there’s still not a single must-have game for the PS3 is all it’s good for in my opinion.

Buying an MP3 player

Does anyone out there have any experience with the Sony Walkman MP3 players? Specifically the A8xx series (link to 4GB model)? Muse’s MP3 player (an older Cowon iAudio 1GB unit) bit the dust a while ago and she’s stolen mine. She doesn’t really care for my tiny iRiver s10 2GB unit because, admittedly, the controls are kind of funky and it does take a little patience and compromise to use such a small player. It’s the size of a standard postage stamp.

So I’ve been looking for a new MP3 player for her lately. Something at least 2GB in size that is of an average size and weight (per her request), durable, not too many functions and easy to use. Getting an iPod is completely out of the question because I am not converting my entire music library over to iTunes. Ever. So my criteria are that it has to be able to be plugged in via USB and be seen as a drive so I can drag and drop new music on or off the device without any need for extra software or file conversion.

So I’d narrowed it down to Sandisk, Creative and Sony and the reviews on the newest of the Sony Walkman series are really promising. I looked at a few at the electonics store near my office and out of five, the Sony was the only one that felt like a nice solid metal piece of equipment that wouldn’t crack in a pocket.

However, it’s still a relatively new product and not everyone takes the time to right reviews. So here’s where you come in: If you have a recent or current generation Sony Walkman MP3 player, please leave your thoughts on it in the comments of this post.

There’s nothing in it for you except the fuzzy warm feeling of helping out another person. And I’d really appreciate it.

And on Wednesday…

The computer gods truly are pissed off at me for some reason.  I’m not sure what I’ve done to annoy them but I wish they would get over it.  I’ve had no impure thoughts about Macs.  I’ve felt no sinful urges to install Linux, lately.  I properly drool over the newest video cards and bow to their power.  I’ve even cleaned the user slime off a few keyboards last week.

Whatever it is though, they decided to mess with me at work.  Not sure why I forgot to post about this earlier.  Oh wait I know… my work laptop blew up.  Well OK not really.  But the video card is toast in that laptop.  I get dotted lines through the POST display and Windows XP splash screen and then it garbles and then goes blank.  Normal mode, Safe mode, with an external monitor… no change in results.  The card is fried.

And of course being a notebook (even a 20-something pound notebook Dell XPS M1710) means that the 512MB 7900GT video card is still a part of the mainboard and will probably mean the whole thing gets replaced.  Now luckily, I had enabled Remote Desktop on it a week ago to try accessing it from home so I wouldn’t have to bring it home with me anymore.  And since it is just the video card that is failing, the rest of the PC works fine.  So I was able to Remote into it and transfer all my data off of it to an external drive.  Because if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s never ever leave your data in the hands of a service technician.

And of course since it’s Lunar New Year, they couldn’t come out to fix it.  It was Wednesday when I got transferred to a service center in Mainland China where they pretty much ONLY spoke Mandarin.  After a very long conversation, I was able to get them to have a local engineer call me to setup a time to come fix it.  They finally called me and Monday was the first time they could come.  I figured as much.  So they’ll be here today between 12pm and 4pm to look at my computer and find out what the problem is because I can guarantee that the Chinese guy I spoke with did NOT get the diagnosis right since he didn’t even understand the word “video”.  At the very least I need a whole new mainboard.  At worst they’ll need to swap my PC out for another one.  Neither of which I expect to see in the hands of the tech when he arrives.

Politics and gaming

There are a lot of issues to watch for during the coming months of debates and lies and muck-raking that is the U.S.A. Presidential election process.  However one issue that may seem quite trivial to many of you out there is where each of the candidates stands on video games.  I’ve always thought this was a much bigger issue than it is made out to be, but I could never really express why I felt that properly or figure out a way to analogize it.  Then I read this article today that compared the potential of government intervention in video games to the horrible censorship imposed on comic books enforced by the Senate.  That link above gives the gist of the information but if you want the full story, take a look at the end of the longer article that contributed to the former link.

I used to be an avid comic collector and I always wondered what happened between the sometimes gruesome comic stories of the World War One and Two eras and the 1980’s and 90’s when I was purchasing new comics off the shelf.  When going back through the back issues there were many times I realized that the comics from the 50’s, 60’s and even 70’s were so much tamer and generally distorted compared to new titles I read at the time and the old war and detective comics from before those time periods.

What I didn’t know about was the Comics Code Authority and it’s government authority over comic book content.  Sure those times passed but they took decades to do so.  If the same thing happens to video games what’s to stop it from encompassing all media: movies, music, books, magazines, television, newspapers, web sites, blogs.  Do a little research on this on your own and see what conclusions you come up with.  And the next time you hear someone saying that the government needs to step in and keep games like Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt out of the hands of not only children but everyone and anyone… think about this before you agree or disagree.  It’s time people started to remember that it’s OK to have their own opinions based on their own thoughts, feelings and research.  Don’t take my word for it.  Find out for yourself.

Here are a few more articles to start you off:
Presidential Hopefuls: Tech Friendly Candidates
Anti-Game Candidates Fare Poorly in Iowa Caucuses

Heading to Malaysia

It looks like I’ll be in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at the end of February.  Only for two nights though.  I have about one days worth of work in our office there and that’s it.  I have to go do a site check of what they currently have and what they will need this year to join the corporate network.  Right now they operate remotely and it’s quite inconvenient for them and us.

Hopefully I’ll get lucky though and some of the people in the office will be willing to take me to have some nice Malaysian food.  We shall see.  I won’t have much time for sight-seeing, but I’ll take a few shots to at least prove I was there.

Computer woes

I still don’t really know what exploded in my computer last month.  And it still basically works.  Basically that is until I tried to use my new Ideazon Merc Stealth keyboard.  That’s when a simple 10 second keyboard swap turned into an hour long troubleshooting session followed by a nap and then a few more tries.

I’m typing this on the new keyboard and if you look at the link, check out the key layout and you’ll understand if you run across any weird typos….

I’ve decided that whatever popped inside my PC must have been on the motherboard and probably something to do with the old PS/2 style keyboard plug I’ve been using with my old black IBM keyboard.  Why?  Because when I crawled under my table and simply unplugged the old workhorse a very strange buzzing sound started coming from the inside of the case.  I got off the floor and looked at the screen and the monitor was going into power saving mode.  Since it was locked up hard, I powered it off by the switch and went ahead and plugged the new Merc in.

That’s when I remembered that every time I reboot my PC and there’s a new USB device plugged in, I have to go into the BIOS to reset the boot order or it tries to boot to something (anything) but the boot drive.  Why?  Hell if I know.  It started doing that about 2+ years ago.  So since this new keyboard is not only USB but also has a USB hub built into it, I knew I’d need to futz with the BIOS again.  Oddly enough the keyboard allowed me to press DEL to enter the BIOS but wouldn’t work at all after that.   After multiple attempts I realized that this fancy new deck is not going to work with this old motherboard’s BIOS.

I actually had to plug in the old keyboard to fix the BIOS and then I powered down and unplugged the old one and plugged in the new again.  Now that the BIOS is fixed it boots up.  Well not exactly.  The Windows XP splash screen is up for a while and then the PC reboots.  The on the POST screen, it hangs with a message saying that my overclocking has failed and that I need to press F1 or F2 to go into Setup or to piss off respectively.  The funny thing is that I’ve never overclocked this bitch.   Uh….

So I check the BIOS one more time just to be sure and let it reboot again.  Splash screen…  restart.  WTF?  Splash screen… restart.  You’ve got to be fucking kidding me right?  This is a damn keyboard swap we’re talking about here.  So I ripped out the new keyboard and re-connected the old IBM and blammo it boots up no problem.  Ooooo-Kay.  So since XP is up and running at this point I decide to plug in the new keyboard with the old one still plugged in.  OK there it is, Windows sees it and it loads the drivers.  Hell yeah!  I test it out and no problem.  I unplug the old keyboard…  buzzing sound and monitor going into sleep mode.  I immediately plug it back in and the computer reboots.

So… as it stands right now I am using the new keyboard.  It’s new and the key layout is really screwing with me but I’ll get used to it.  What I’m not sure I’ll get used to is the fact that I still have the old IBM PS/2 style deck connected and on a stack of books on a shelf so the cats won’t be tempted to help me type from the passenger seat. This old box just will not run without that PS/2 plug in there.  I think we’ve narrowed the problem down a bit don’t you?

Yeah…  I have two keyboards hooked up.  Most people go for two monitors or two video cards.  But not me.  I am fucking hardcore.