The Guitar controller feels very cool.  The buttons work nicely, it’s comfortable to use, and is a load of fun.  Lifting the neck high to activate Star mode is cool too.  After an extended session, my left hand does feel like it’s been slammed in a door, but that’s just my lack of co-ords more than any fault of the controller.  After a 10 minute rest, I’m ready to go again!  How well somebody who isn’t into music and had never tried to play guitar in real life would enjoy GH2 is debatable, but as for me, well, I’m majorly into Guitar Hero II!

I just wish my sister didn’t kick my butt at it so much!  Must go practise before she comes over again!!!!!

For anyone who doesn’t know, Microsoft Windows Home Server is a new product Microsoft is launching sometime near the end of the year.  It is essentially a file server for the home, and is built on Windows Server 2003 R2.  Most home users would have no idea how to set up a server, and the default Windows Server 2003 is way too complicated, and way too expensive to justify running at home.  Home Server aims to address these issues of complexity and cost, and open up the wonderful world of client server computing to home users.

When the product is released later on this year, it will be available in two forms.  The first is as an appliance with specifically designed hardware from PC manufacturers such as HP, Dell etc.  The second way is as a more conventional DVD, although whether you’ll be able to walk into your local PC shop and buy Home Server isn’t known to me at this stage. 

Home Server, as mentioned earlier, is a slimmed down version of Windows Server 2003 R2.  A lot of the management and features have been removed and replaced with a very basic configuration utility.  The server itself, whether you bought specific hardware or are running it on a PC you already have, is designed to run completely headless, i.e. there is no keyboard, mouse or screen attached.  All configuration after the initial install will be done remotely via the Home Server Management Console or via the web interface.  It is meant to be put in a cupboard or your attic or somewhere out of the way and just be a central location for all your media files, and any other files you would wish to store.  It is primarily designed for digital media, and comes pre-configured with shares for Videos, Photos and Music.  Each user account you create on the server will also be assigned a folder in which to store any files they may want. 

The real benefit of Windows Home Server for home users is found in the backup and file redundancy features of the product.  Each client PC on your home network gets a small piece of client software installed on it, and this is where the greatness begins.  Each machine on your network now becomes a managed device, something until now, was reserved for business and enterprise users.  Home Server keeps a constant eye on your PC’s health, and alerts you if any machine on your network has a problem such as Anti-Virus software not running, disk space low, whatever.  Also, Home Server automatically does a FULL system backup of your home PCs after you install the client software, and updates this backup every night with any changes that have occurred.  You get a bootable System Recovery CD with the product which can be used to resurrect a dead machine and get it back to the state it was a last backup.  This is a phenomenal step forward for home users in my opinion.  NOBODY I know backs up their home PC religiously, and these machines often contain irreplaceable information such as personal photos.  You can back up all your network machines to the Home Server, but the disk space used is kept to a minimum due to single instance storage.  This means that if you have 2 machines with exactly the same file, such as Windows system files, the Home Server will only keep one copy of this file on disk, but it can be used to recover any machine that needs it.

Another of Home Server’s real strengths is in the area of disk management.  Gone are the days of struggling with C: and D: on your server, and trying to manage space and who puts what where.  Home server uses the NTSF file system, but adds a new share mirroring feature similar to Distributed File System (DFS).  It doesn’t matter to the user where the file is, just so long as it’s available when and where it’s needed.  When you install Home Server, it warns you that it will completely wipe any disk currently connected to the machine, and it then proceeds to set up its new file system.  Once this is done, you can just start copying files to the shares it creates.  The management console shows you a pie chart of the current disk usage, and breaks it up into system, backup, redundant data, media etc so you can see exactly where the disk space has gone.  You can also add disk at any time.  On a normal Windows machine, adding a disk is a nightmare of partitioning and labelling with a drive letter, and then trying to decide what to store on the new disk to use the space effectively.  With Home Server, you can add a disk at any time, either internal or external USB or Firewire, and it will just be assimilated into the space pool.  Your little pie graph will change to indicate that you now have X amount of GB free, and you can proceed to copy more files to your server. If you want to remove a disk for some reason, you simply go to the management console and click remove disk.  It will then copy all the data that is stored on that disk somewhere else, and you can safely unplug it.

You can also specify certain shares you wish to make redundant.  This means that Home Server will always ensure that the files you specify are stored simultaneously on two separate disks, thereby protecting those files from single disk failure.  This is a very important feature, and for anyone who has taken a lot of photos, an absolute necessity.  Redundancy can be specified on a share level, so you can specify that all photos are redundant, but videos and music are not.  One problem I have noticed with this (at beta 2) is that you can’t make the system drive redundant.  This means that should your system drive decide it’s had enough, you lose everything.  Some data may still be stored on other drives, and I believe it’s possible to connect it to another system and recover the data, but I have yet to test that.  If you just rebuild your Home Server on a new drive, and then want to get the data off the older drives, you’ll struggle because Home Server will wipe the disk before it will make it available to be accessed.  I hope they fix this before the final version comes out, because having all the redundancy is kind of pointless if there is still such a glaring single point of failure.

Home Server also comes with a full web based front end.  You can connect to your server from anywhere in the world (provided you set up your router to allow this) and download files from it, upload files to it, check network condition etc.  Really nice if you are away from home and need to access files or photos.  You can also use this method to share photos etc with people who live a long way away by simply creating a user account for them to come in and get whatever they may need.  The web interface is still a little rough around the edges, but this is purely cosmetic and will be sorted out by final release.  Another nice touch is that if you need to download multiple files, you can select them, and when you click download, Home Server will create a ZIP file for you containing all the files you selected, meaning you only have to worry about downloading one file, and you can get some extra compression depending on the file, and save bandwidth.

The hardware requirements for Windows Home Server are fairly modest, and can easily be installed on an older PC you may have lying around.  It requires a Pentium 3 processor and 512MB of memory.  It will not install if you have less than 512Mb of RAM.  They also recommend you use your biggest disk you have available as your system drive.  It also requires a wired connection, and will not work if you only have a WIFI card in the system.  This is to ensure good network performance, since file sharing is this machines primary task.  Otherwise, installation is really simple and once it’s up and running, you connect via a PC on your network, install the Management Console, create a user or two, and that’s it.

I hope they price this product well when it comes out.  If it’s too expensive, I don’t think it’ll do well.  People like my father are ideal candidates for this sort of product since he has more than 1 PC at home and never backs anything up, but would be devastated if he lost everything.  However, he won’t pay a small fortune for this, and will have to be seriously convinced of its usefulness before he’ll part with any cash.  Everything is going digital and a central place in the home to store everything safely is a huge step forward for most people.  I’m very excited about this product, and look forward to seeing the final version.  I will be using it extensively over the next few months, and will add any other comments and discoveries to this article.

The story isn’t all bad though.  When Xbox 360 was launched in SA, the distributer made a deal with Microsoft to support imported consoles that were purchased before local launch.  No idea why they did that, but it was jolly decent of them.  Mine has been arranged to be replaced under this deal, which is fantastic, and not the kind of putting the customer first experience we usually get here in Africa.  I commend MI Digital / JNC on this move, and thank Waggy ZA for his part in helping me out.

Some stats about my first year of Xbox 360 and Live from MyGamerCard.net and 360Voice.com:

Number of Games: 62

Total Score: 17269 / 36165

Total Achievements: 519 / 1278

Rep:  5 Stars
GamerScore: 17269
Zone: Recreation

Completed XBLA: 0 / 9
Completed Retail: 6 / 30
GS Completion %: 47.75%
GS % (Non-Demo): 54.71%

Country Rank: 16/868
World Rank: 12240/982215

Most Played: Project Gotham Racing 3

Longest streak: 28 days
Play percentage: 84.5%
Largest achievement gain:10/21/2006 (13)
Largest gamerscore gain:1/16/2007 (550)

The drive unit itself is about the size of a medium sized hardcover book, and follows the Xbox 360’s “exhale” design.  Sitting on top the console, it is the same length as the 360, and looks good.  Included in the box is a power supply (which is disappointing, but the USB interface obviously couldn’t handle the power requirements), a Xbox 360 Media Remote, some manuals etc, a USB 2.0 cable, a disk you must insert in the console BEFORE connecting the drive, and a copy of the King Kong HD-DVD.

Inserting this disk in the console seems to install some software to enable HDDVD playback.  Not sure why they couldn’t do this over Live with a dashboard update, as it seems pretty small, only taking a second or two to complete its process.  One possible reason is that they couldn’t assume all consoles using this peripheral would be connected to Live.  There was an update available over Live, which I got prompted for the first time I used it though.

The drive connects to the rear of the console (or the front, but it looks better in the back), which uses up your USB port back there.  If you happen to have the Xbox 360 Wireless adapter currently running off that port, fret not, as the HD-DVD drive includes 2 USB ports on the rear of the unit, and the necessary clips for attaching your wireless adapter, so you lose nothing.  In fact, you gain a USB port, so you can still connect your Live Vision Camera (review to follow soon) to the rear of the unit, and keep cables out of the way.

My 360 is connected to my Dell 2405FPW 24″ LCD screen via the Microsoft Xbox 360 VGA cable.  This screen has a native resolution of 1920 x 1200, and I have it set not to scale, therefore I have small blck bars at the top and bottom of the screen in order to keep the proper 16:9 aspect ratio.  My console is outputting 1920×1080. 

I eagerly inserted the King Kong HD-DVD disk.  As a quick aside, let me say that I really like the smaller cases HD-DVDs come in.  They do make any DVD racks you may have obsolete, but they are much nice and way smaller.  Anyway, back to King Kong………

I sit here struggling to think of how exactly to portray in mere words how good this movie looks in HDDVD at 1080p.  The jungle scenes are absolutely incredible.  King Kong himself is too good for words.  Every hair on his body seems to be moving individually, and the detail you can see on his face is down right scary.  I sat through the entire three and a bit hours in absolute awe, like I was watching my first ever moving picture.  I was literally, blown away.  The best analogy I can come up with is this:  DVD is like watching moving photograph taken with your average camera phone, and HD-DVD (in 1080p) is like watching a moving photograph taken with a good quality 5 megapixel digital camera.  It is mind-blowing!  The only downside to this kind of spectacular clarity is that there were some scenes you could clearly see had been green-screened.  The focus just looked ever so slightly wrong, something I very much doubt anybody would have seen in the movie theatre or on standard DVD.

After being stunned by King Kong, I quickly threw in Superman Returns.  Superman Returns is a hybrid disk, with one side HD-DVD, and the other side standard DVD, which can be played in any DVD player.  As mentioned in my HD-DVD vs Bluray article, this is one of the major benefits of the HD-DVD format, enabling people to purchase movies like this, and be able to use it as a standard DVD until they upgrade to HD-DVD.  One of the main differences between DVD and HD-DVD is that the movie starts straight away, without going to a menu.  The menu is available with a press of the Menu button, but comes up as an overlay while the movie continues to play.  From this menu, you can pause the movie, so you don’t miss any while you’re fiddling around, change the sound settings, see extras etc.  You can also activate the IME (In-Movie Experience).  This is basically the next generation of director’s commentary.  It brings up little picture in picture windows while the movie is playing to show special extras such as how they did the scene you’re currently watching, actor or director interviews etc.  It’s pretty cool, and not nearly as boring as director commentary!

I looked at Superman Returns playing for a minute or two, then ejected the disk to make sure it wasn’t playing the standard DVD side by mistake.  It wasn’t.  I put the disk back in the drive, and skipped to the scene of the airplane / space shuttle accident, where Superman saves people for the first time in the movie.  The picture was good, but not great.  People’s skin looked plastic and a little fake, there was a lot of noise (speckles) on the picture, especially in darker scenes.  Don’t get me wrong, it still looks MUCH better than DVD, but if I hadn’t just finished watching King Kong, I wouldn’t have been nearly as impressed with this whole HD-DVD thing.  I removed Superman, and put in Batman Begins.  Now this looked MUCH better.  There is no noise in the scenes, you can see the pores on peoples faces, making them look a lot less like plastic mannequins, and the sharpness in the scenes of Gotham City is excellent.  This not so super Superman made me do some thinking.  The director of Superman obviously wanted a softer look to all the scenes, and it probably does look great in the movie theatre, but on HD-DVD, it’s disappointing not to be able to see every pore on the actors skin.  Maybe it’s just me, and I am looking at the picture rather than watching the movie, but again I say, after King Kong, it looks rubbish.  As for the noise on the picture, I assume that came in during transfer from film to digital.  Not all transfers are equal, but Superman Returns looks quite bad.  Or, maybe King Kong was just particularly good, which is why it is included with the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive as a showcase?  I don’t know, but I’ve seen what’s possible, so I now expect it everywhere!

I can’t comment on the sound of the movies.  HD-DVD includes Dolby Tru-HD sound, which is essentially a lossless compression algorithm.  This should allow much more detail in the sound track, especially in the bass, highs and little detail sounds you often hear happening behind you.  Unfortunately, only very high-end home theatre decoders support this right now, and only via HDMI, so the Xbox 360, since it doesn’t have HDMI for now, has to down mix the soundtrack to standard Dolby Digital 5.1.  It’s ok, but just ok.  I also had to crank up the volume of my speakers, as the sound output of HD-DVD is quite soft for some reason. 

In conclusion, I would like a new pair of eyes, as I think they’ll soon be the weakest link in my home theatre.  Once decent sized 1080p screens start to cost less than small countries, and Tru-HD decoders are mainstream, the cinema is going to become quite obsolete.  With HD-DVD, I get all the benefits of the movie house, and none of the sticky floors, people taking, blind projectionists who can’t focus the picture, cell phones going off etc etc.  And, I can pause whenever I want.  I LOVE the HD era.

It was awesome!!!  They used a really nice projector (looked like 1080p) and everything was set up very well.  The sound was excellent, and the picture was superb.  Several people who qualified had obviously not played much before, and only got a good laptime on the qualy track by doing tons of laps.  There were some really good players though.  It ended up with myself and another guy in the final, who was definitly the best player there (besides me, but I’m not going to toot my own horn…. toot.).  We had a good close race in the final but I managed to stay ahead of him.

I won another Xbox 360.  I’m really chuffed, because I was very nervous when the whole thing started.  I must congratulate Gerhard (my opponent in the final) for a great race.  Also, thanks to Nu-Metro and Cinevation for coming up with this awesome competition.  I really enjoyed it, and hope there will be more like it in the future.

The fact of the matter is that DRM hurts the honest consumer more than anyone else. Pirates who want to crack something will do it, eventually. Honest consumers who purchase a song from iTunes and are then restricted horribly to only playing it on a certain device, in a certain way, and sometimes only for a certain time just plain sucks. Putting these ridiculous kinds of usage limits on music when I can go and buy the CD and rip it myself DRM free is dumb. I wager that removing DRM entirely will benefit the market, so long as costs are also kept in check. There will always be pirates, just like there will always be thieves, but stop punishing the legitamate users, please!!! All this does is force people like myself, who for example, did purchase a High Definition copy of Terminator 2 only to find I was locked out of it by the draconian limitations placed on the content by the owners, to look for “other” less restrictive means of obtaining content.

Down with DRM. Get rid of it for good!!! It can only be a good thing!!

I have a serious issue with the disk replacement policy, or lack thereof, exhibited at every South African Gaming retailer I’ve seen. The fact that I can’t return a damaged disk and receive a replacement is an outrage . I am more than willing to pay a small handling fee of R50 or so, but making me buy a new copy of a game I bought for more than R500 is ridiculous. The reason for this sad state of affairs may not be the fault of the retailer, but rather the distributor; I don’t know, but something must be done.

I purchased Project Gotham Racing 3 for XBOX 360 a few months ago, and REALLY enjoyed this game. Because I am very careful of scratches etc, I made sure I ALWAYS returned the disk to its case after use. However, this careful practise of clicking the disk into the case over and over again caused a small crack in the disk starting at the centre hub, eventually spreading into the data area of the disk, rendering it unusable. I had to purchase another copy in order to keep playing this game. I know of several people with similar stories. Sometimes, the disk is damaged due to negligence, which is why I am happy to pay a small replacement fee, to ensure people do look after their disks in a reasonable way.

Thinking about this lead me to thinking about DRM (Digital Rights Management), which basically is protection of intellectual property by using various methods of copy and usage protection? The studios (in the case of a movie) or the publishers (in the case of a game) insist that you do not own the digital information contained on a DVD or game disk you purchased, but merely have a license to use it as they see fit. That same argument surely cuts both ways, in that if I purchase a game or a movie on a fragile plastic disk, and the disk breaks or is damaged, my license to use or view the content is still valid. I didn’t pay R500 or more for a stupid little piece of plastic and a small booklet. I paid for the game or movie, or the “license” to view or play it.

I’ll be honest; I haven’t always paid for every game I’ve played in my life. Since I got my Xbox 360, (and what a great system it is!), I have become 100% legit, and will not even consider modding my console to play unoriginal games. I’m definitely not condoning piracy, but my issues mentioned above cause me (and millions like me) to rethink this decision. How does this help the gaming industry at all, if thousands of newly reformed ex-pirates decide paying twice for a game is insane, and simply go back to their old ways?

I trust somebody in the gaming industry will read these thoughts and remedy this situation. I know a friend of mine in the USA damaged one of his game disks and EB Games replaced the disk for him at no charge. I don’t know if this is something they do for all their customers or if he was just lucky, but I do know that here in South Africa, he would have gone home a very bleak boy. Surely, as long as I can give them a damaged original disk, case and booklet etc, that is proof enough that I do have a valid claim to a replacement?

Duncan Rae

Xbox Live GamerTag: DuncThePunk

It’s not too bad, I suppose.  Once I got my head around being forced to keep two copies of all my music, and got the album are sorted out, I’m quite happy.  The multiple copies thing is ok, since I don’t put all my music on my iPod, therefore I only need to keep what I actually want to have available in iTunes. 

So anyway, I’m admitting I may have been just a tiny bit wrong with my earlier comments.

I’m really excited for LongHorn server, because this is an awesome tool to show server reliability or uptime to management types who like to see pretty pictures representing system stability.

Design: The design of the actual device is breath-taking.  The UI is brilliant, and it just looks and feels right, nay, better than right!  Downright awesome!

Quality: This is a quality piece of kit.  The feel of the actual device, as well as the quality of the sound are phenominal.

Peripheral Support: Being the No.1 player (excuse the pun!) in any market means massive support with regard to accessories from both first and third party vendors.  Some of the complimentary products to the iPod are excellent.

BUT, (and there’s always a but), iTunes Sucks!!!  Why, oh why can’t it just support WMA and MP3 and sync with Media Player 11 (which as an aside ROCKS the socks off any other media player ever!)??  Why???  If this VERY small little software change was done, it would be the perfect device.  Seriously, it would be absolutely insane how cool this thing would be.  With iTunes, I have to have 2 copies of all my music, firstly in my nicely arranged WMA library for Media Center and Pocket PC, and then another copy in M4A, whatever that is.  Also, after spending hours (seriously!) on getting all my album art correct, iTunes just ignores it.  Then, iTunes tells me that in order to get album art, I need a iTunes Store account, oh, and it isn’t supported in South Africa yet.  What makes me even more upset is that stupid iTunes forces me to install Quicktime.  Yuk!

Another case in point:  Xbox360.  Another brilliant device.  BRILLIANT!!  I absolutly love it, mainly for the games (COD3 baby!!!), but can’t make it the king of my digital media space since it is crippled by not supporting DivX.  Hopefully, one day, MS will fix that, but they also may not.  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Which segways nicely into my next point. The bad of GamerScore. GamerScore can become a futile addiction. A never ending pursuit of that next thousand. If you are involved in a community of players, and have a large friends list, the competition can become quite intense. The advent of Xbox Live Leader boards hasn’t helped matters at all. Suddenly, being just off the first page re-ignites a fire of rage, and you’ll find yourself walking to the mall and going straight to the game store to buy another 1000GS worth of game. This is where is starts to get ugly. Suddenly you’re playing a game you hate, just to get through it for maximum GS. You start to turn down invitations to play games online unless you can get GS out of it. You start to lose all sense of fun and enjoyment as it becomes your all encompassing life goal. You pass 5000, then 10000. Still, you want more. You’re deep in debt; you have no friends left, either real or online. You’re starting to turn grey due to lack of sunlight and adequate nutrition. Then, all of a sudden, it hits you. Gamerscore has taken over your life.

You decide to stop with this futile chase. You’ll never have the highest GS. There will always be someone with more time and money than you.

This is where I find myself now. I have done the chase for a little while, spurred on by a number of fellow Xbox Live players to stay on the first page. I’ve since re-evaluated my stance. A high GamerScore is really not something worth pursuing. Achievements are worth chasing, as the sense of accomplishment and reward can be extremely gratifying, however I no longer compare myself to others based on GamerScore alone. I look deeper, into how they achieved that score. High scores for games like PGR3, MotoGP, Call of Duty 2 etc are worth far more than King Kong, FIFA RTWC etc, which have GS so easy to achieve it’s almost insulting.

So, Gamerscore. It’s good, no doubt, but it can be bad, and even downright ugly. Enjoy it, and let it be something to help you experience games like never before, but it shouldn’t be what your gaming life is about, at least not for me.

Another amazing feature of this software is that you can export and import the layer to another machine, which means the application you installed in this layer can run on another PC even though you didn’t actually install it there. Very cool idea.

Download SVS here.

Citrix are working on a similar application streaming solution which works in much the same way as I have described above, but it keeps these layers on a central file server, and they can then be deployed to various workstations on your netwrk in seconds. Citrix’s solution however, will cost a small fortune.

SA Live users will still be able to access Live, like I do currently, but we won’t have any official support. Doesn’t look like we’ll be able to pay for the Live subscription in Rands either, which sucks!

Sony’s Betamax format was eventually abandoned entirely, as the market decided which format would win.  I have read articles that say there is room in the world for two HD formats, but I’m not so sure.  I dread the day when I walk into my local video store and have to go to the Blu-ray or HD-DVD shelves and make sure I get the correct format.  It will be much worse for my mother or someone not as in-the-know about this technology who will get home with the wrong disc format, and will feel very frustrated.  I think one will emerge as dominant, but which one?

Here in South Africa, there is no issue as yet, since neither format is available, and very few people even have displays capable of true high definition, so we may be spared the initial fighting and eventually only have one format available locally.  I hope we don’t have to wait that long though, since the HD content I have seen so far, is awesome.

I’m not a big Sony fan, but I do admit that they do make good quality products.  I think that years of great success have gone to their heads, and now they think they can dictate standards and push consumers (most who know no better) in directions that aren’t in the consumers’ best interest.  This article ISN’T a Sony bash, so please don’t think it is.  Sony is the chief driving force behind the Blu-Ray format at the moment, but they are not the only ones responsible for it, and it is a great technology.  It has huge promise, but I don’t believe it will work in the film delivery market, which is where they are currently fighting.  Sony (and the rest of the Blu-Ray consortium) has made some strange decisions with regard to Blu-Ray, many of which I cannot fathom.  I will go into more detail on this a bit later.

I’m going to start with the technical specs of the actual disc format.  From a purely technical standpoint, I believe Blu-Ray is the better technology for the following reasons:

Capacity:

The capacity of the BD discs will be greater than that of HD-DVD.  BD supports 25GB per layer whereas HD-DVD only supports 15GB per layer.  Blu-Ray still has some technical difficulty getting reliable dual-layer discs, and none have been released yet.  The single layer discs seem to be working well though, although they only have 25GB versus HD-DVD’s 30GB dual layer format which is available now.  I’m sure they’ll sort these issues out soon though.

Speed:

Read speed (and I would assume write speed) of a 1x BD drive is faster than 1x HD-DVD drive.  It is fairly marginal, but with capacities of over 30GB, every extra MB/sec helps.

For the two reasons stated above, I believe BD is an excellent high volume data distribution medium.  Once 50GB per disc is available, and is reliable, there will be no cheaper and easier way to ship such large volumes.

The current controversy is not, however, about data distribution.  It’s about Movie and entertainment distribution.  In this arena, I firmly believe HD-DVD is the better option, by far.  I will explain why below:

Reliability:

Blu-Ray has the data layers of the disc much closer to the outer layer than is the case with HD-DVD.  This makes is very susceptible to scratching and being rendered unusable by careless handling.  Early BD discs were shipped in a cartridge, which nobody likes, but at least they were better protected. Herewith comes up the first of Sony’s unfathomable decisions.  Why oh why, put a Blu-Ray drive in the PS3 and insist that all PS3 games be distributed only on BD discs.  Kids are going to annihilate these fragile discs.  They better have a very good disc replacement policy when PS3 launches.  HD-DVD on the other hand, is about as fragile as a standard DVD today, since it is manufactured in much the same way.  Still not very hardy, but way more resilient than BD.  TDK developed a polymer coating called Durabis, which they claim toughens the discs substantially.  I’m sceptical; we’ll have to see how well this works.

Cost:

Blue-Ray is a completely different technology to current generation DVD.  While I fully support leaving legacy behind to pursue better solutions, I also can’t ignore that new technology is expensive.  HD-DVD is more of an evolution of DVD than a completely new technology.  DVD manufacturing plants can be upgraded to support HD-DVD production, which is relatively cheap, compared to the complete change of process and systems Blu-Ray is going to require.  This cost will have to be recovered somehow, and unfortunately for BD, it will be recovered from the individual disc cost.  Unfathomable decision number two.  Why increase the cost of PS3 games by putting them on much expensive media?  If any game coming out in the next 3 to 4 years needs more than 8GB of storage, then maybe the programmers should go on a “How to avoid Bloatware” course.  The only reason I can see is if they have actual filmed HD cut scenes that last an hour or two.

The other major cost factor is the devices that will read these discs.  In the USA, you can walk into a store and pick up an HD-DVD player for $500.  A similar Blue-ray device will cost $1000.  Whoa!  That is a lot.  Unfathomable question number three.  Why push the price of the PS3 way up by including a component very few people will actually use?  I bet most people buying a PS3 will do so so their children can play games.  Why force them to spend a lot of extra money on such a high end (and unproven) technology.  I personally think this is unfair of Sony.  It should be an optional extra.  Sony has admitted that the PS3 has been delayed due to Blu-ray problems.  Duh.  Drop it and give the Playstation fans a new console that just works and won’t cost the earth!

Backward Compatibility:

HD-DVD players can all read standard DVD’s as well.  As far as I know, Blu-ray isn’t compatible with standard DVD, but this may change as players get better.  However, HD-DVD has one more trump card up its sleeve.  Hybrid Discs.  Hybrid discs are dual sided HD-DVDs that have a standard DVD on one side, and HD-DVD on the other.  This is brilliant!  Now movies can be released and sold and consumers who have yet to take the HD plunge can know that these discs are 100% future proof.  This is brilliant, and a solution I am very impressed with.

MPEG-2 Encoding:

Both BD and HD-DVD players support 3 types of compression.  Uncompressed HD content at 1080p comes in at around 1 Gb/sec, which is a lot.  Advanced compression is obviously needed to fit this onto a 30GB disk.  Microsoft has developed the VC-1 encoding system, which is a brand new and highly advanced compression system which gives awesome quality with very high compression ratios.  HD-DVD content can also be compressed in H.264/AVC or the old familiar MPEG-2. HD-DVD uses VC-1 almost exclusively since it gives the best picture quality by far.  Blu-Ray, although the players must support all three codecs, went ahead and chose to use the 10 year old MPEG-2 codec.  Unfathomable question number four.  Why?  VC-1 is roughly twice (sometimes more) efficient than MPEG-2.

Perception:

Everybody knows about DVD.  It is a household word which nobody is confused about.  “HD-DVD is just like DVD but better right?  Never heard of Blu-ray.”  I predict this will be Joe Public’s standard thought pattern when faced with a format choice.  Things may work out differently, but I suspect the DVD name will hold a lot of weight with consumers.

iHD vs. Java:

This is more a personal dislike of all things Java based on my own experiences.  The interactive components of HD-DVD are based on a set of technologies called iHD.  Blu-Ray uses a Java based system called BD-J, meaning a Java VM is included in each Blu-Ray player.  I’m no fan of Java, but as I said, this is more personal than anything else.

I think the basic answer to all the unfathomable questions I posed above is money.  Sony wants Blu-Ray to succeed badly.  Very badly.  After losing the Betamax battle, maybe they are still a bit bruised.  By including Blu-Ray with the PS3 they are taking a big gamble that could push customers away due to the high price, but at the same time, they are guaranteeing good market penetration, which could be the blow BD needs to win.

The MPEG-2 question is also easily answered with money.  Since Microsoft own the patents for VC-1, they are getting licensing fees for every disc produced.  Similarly, Sony own over 170 patents on MPEG-2, effectively negating the effect of royalties.  BD will need the extra capacity to ensure competitive picture quality with MPEG-2 over VC-1, although early releases using only a single layer will be worse than the equivalent HD-DVD.

I have not seen HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies on a true 1080p HD screen as yet, so these comments are based on my own research on this topic and personal opinions.  I would be very interested to hear any opinions and comments on this.

I’m not refering to small problems here that only a small percent of users will ever notice. The two worst examples so far are to be found in Call of Duty 2 and MotoGP 06. CoD2 was pretty much unplayable on multiplayer until the patch came out about 4 months after release. It was VERY laggy, there was no game lobby etc, it was aweful. Thankfully, the patch fixed all that, but this was a terrible problem. Maybe Activision thought everyone would be so involved in the single player campaign they wouldn’t notice that multiplayer didn’t work?? I don’t know, but that was just plain shoddy. MotoGP 06, which is also a great game, just locks up the console whenever you try to see your friends lap times. Full lock up. You have to cycle power. How did it get through QA like this? Apparently it only happens if you have more than 25 people on your friends list, but still! Really pathetic. This is made even worse because the actual game is so good.

I might have to start waiting until I see that Service Pack 1 is out for each game before buying it. Sad!

-EDIT- I sent an email very similar to what I wrote above to Major Nelson, and he said he would pass it on to some folks around his office. Hopefully this problem will get better in the future.

-UPDATE- A patch was released for MotoGP 06 which has fixed the Friends Lap Time issue.

-Edit- I wrote to Matt Goyer (who works on the Media Center dev team) about this, and he confirmed that there will be zero support in Vista for old extenders. He didn’t give any reasons, but it was nice of him to reply I suppose.

Read the Engadget Article here.

I know he plans to set up tournaments and ladders etc, so it should be great!!!

All XBOX 360 games use the trueSkill Ranking system. This serves 2 purposes. It tugs at the competitive nature in all of us to get better and better, and thus actually see our ranking increase, and it enables better and fairer match making for multiplayer games. Playing against people much better than you, or much worse isn’t that much fun. No one likes just getting shot up all the time, or only seeing your opponents in a racing game up to the first corner before he leaves you in the dust. If possible, the TrueSkill system will match you up with people close to your own ranking, which should result in some good gaming.

From what I believe, there are 30 levels in the Trueskill system. When you first start playing a game, your level will be 1. Some games show your level in the game’s lobby. Level 30 means you are a machine, and nobody must mess with you. The system that determines your ranking uses 2 numbers to get to it. The first number is your actual ranking, which is 1 when you start. The second number is the systems certainty of your ranking, which is kind of inverted, meaning a high certainty variable means the system is not very certain of you. Let me explain it via an example. You have just loaded PGR3 for the first time. Your Ranking is 1, which is the lowest. The system has no idea how good you are though, since it is your first race, so the certainty variable is high. Lets assume you are Kimi Raikkonen and you win your first race. Because your certainty variable is very high, you will jump many ranks and now you may be a rank 8. You win your next race also, but now the system is a little more certain of you, so you only jump up 5 ranks, to level 13. Your next race, some idiot takes you out early on and you finish 7th. Your ranking will go down quite a few places, since your certainty variable is still high. You may now get to rank 9. As you race more and more, your certainty variable gets smaller and smaller, as the system gets to “know” you. After 100 races, you may be ranked level 20. If you win a race, you won’t rank up very much since the scope for ranking up is smaller because your certainty variable will be much lower. The benefit of this is that a single game won’t effect your ranking very much after you have been playing for a while. A bad loss or a lucky win won’t change things much. If you are consistantly winning against players of a similar rank, you will rank up, but fairly slowly, and likewise if you are consistantly losing.

It’s a good system, and although I wish my rank was higher, I need to consistantly win races to get there. I hope this explains it in a simple way. The people who designed it are hardcore mathematics guys who deal with complex statistics etc, which is a bit beyond me, but at least this should shed some light on the subject for those who are a bit confused as to how it works.

-EDIT- There is a lot more information (which is a lot more technical) now available at the Microsoft Research Trueskill Website.

I do have loads to post, and will be doing it shortly. It’s mostly Xbox 360 related, but darn interesting, well, I think it is. I have done some posting and some reviews on the South African Media Center community site, so go check it out.

As soon as I can pry myself away from Project Gotham 3, Kameo and GRAW, I’ll be posting.

The box it comes in is surprisingly small. Everything is packed really well. Setting everything up was disappointingly easy. I like settings, so having everything just basically work straight out the box was a bit boring, for me anyway. The first time you plug it in, it downloads a dashboard update, and then you’re ready to go. It also came with a 1 month free XBOX Live Gold membership.
I have it hooked up to a 19″ flat screen running at 1280×1024 via the VGA cable. The only game I have right now is Dead or Alive 4, and at 1280×1024 with all the Anti-Aliasing and everything else that cool graphics chip does, it looks eye-poppingly good. Especially the African Safari arena. The blades of grass and the texture detail is fantastic, The game is really hard though, but I’m not really a fighting game man. I can’t wait for PGR3 to arrive!!!! That is going to be cool.

I also loaded up Halo 2, which required the compatibility download before it could be played. This happened very quickly, and the game launched. When trying to sign onto XBOX Live though, it kept telling me I had to get a game update. When I clicked Ok, it would take me back to the dashboard saying that the game did not support my display settings. I tried dropping the resolution, but this made no difference. I looked on some forums, and discovered that the Halo 2 content downloader doesn’t support progressive scan, and this is what causes this error when it is connected to a progressive display. I carted the entire thing downstairs and plugged it into a standard TV, and it worked perfectly. I also had to download all the new Halo 2 Map Packs before I could play online. Once this was done, I happily got my butt kicked over and over again on Live. Very cool. Not the butt kick part but….. you know.

The Media Center extender is fantastic. It required a 20MB download on your Media Center to enable it, then it works. It is brilliant. Every transition and effect is there. It’s really great. Trying to navigate around with the controller is a bit difficult. I have ordered the 360 remote, and it will arrive soon. I discovered however that my standard Mediacenter remote works with the 360. Everything works except the volume controls. Not sure if this is by design or not.

I have heard all about these overheating rumors, but everything went fine for me. The unit does get warm, and the air coming out the back is quite warm, but nothing too bad. The power brick (which is surprisingly big to behold) didn’t get much above room temperature either during a good 3 hour session.

It comes with some HD videos on the Hard Drive. One is a trailer for a Snow boarding video, and the other is an Adidas advert, which is pretty good.

DVD playback is acceptable rather than fantastic. The DVD picture quality played on my PC on that 19″ screen is a bit better.

The standard visualizations that come with the built in media player are very nice. Streaming music from my PC via Windows Media Connect works very well. The pictures don’t work so well though. All the music’s album art gets picked up as pictures, which is a bit annoying. This might be a configuration issue on my PC though.

Overall, this is a great piece of kit. Just can’t wait for Project Gotham Racing 3!!!!

Finding any good info on The Green Button is almost impossible these days, mainly because the site is so slow, but also because all the good info is buried under piles of dumb posts from people seemingly just trying to get their number of posts up instead of actually contributing anything useful.

Head on over to Chris’ site and leave a comment supporting this initiative. Also leave any bright ideas for the URL.

I read several reviews before I bought them, and everyone said they were great. The one big gripe a lot of people had is that the speaker leads are fixed into the speakers and have RCA plugs on the other end. If you need to extend these cables, or would prefer to buy other speaker leads, you couldn’t. Well, I don’t know if Logitech updated the model or something, but my set has standard speaker leads with clips on both sides, so I could use any leads I wish. Way to go Logitech! Maybe they read some of the reviews? I am just using the leads that come standard, and they seem to work fine.

My good mate, Chris has the Z-680’s, which are the previous generation model, before the Z-5500. He raved about them, and I’ve only ever seem good reviews for them. Logitech themselves claim they have improved a lot on the Z-680 with these, and reviews agree. Not having heard the previous generation myself, I am unable to comment.

The satelites feel solid and well made. They have removable covers too, if you are keen to have a silver face rather than black. Having the covers on or off makes no difference to the sound. The center speaker is exactly the same as the other four, except that it is mounted horizontally on it’s stand. It is also more adjustable than the others. It can be tilted up or down, whereas the other four can’t. It would be nice if they could. The stands are built onto the satelites, and can’t be removed. They rotate around 180 degrees to the back for wall mounting. This is where I had my only issue. Mounting these suckers nicely is really hard, since they need 2 screws each and the speakers kind of intrude on the space you need to get your screwdriver into in order to mount them securely. I managed, but I’m glad it’s over. Wouldn’t want to do it again.

The subwoofer is massive! That is all I can say. You actually have to see this guy to believe it. Sounds incredible though! I think my house will shake and fall down before I manage to strain these speakers at all.

The control center is excellent. It looks sharp, and feels solid. It has a blue on white backlit LCD display detailing the current audio source and any effects in use. The large volume knob looks nice, and feels like it belongs on a high quality and expensive amplifier. All the functions are accessable from the remote control too.

The audio inputs are on the control center. They include a 6ch direct input, which I am using from my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Sound Card. It also has a coax digital in, and an optical digital in. Switching sources is done with the press on one button. There is also headphone and auxilliry input jacks on the control center.

I have tested these speakers now with WMVHD movies, Audio DVD, and standard CDs. I also played Call of Duty 2 on them for a while, and was asked to please turn it down by my wife. Mmmm. This could be problem.

As soon as my Samsung HT system which is currently my main movie watching sound system goes on the blink (which might happen soon ) I’m replacing it with another set of these. They are spectacular.

I think it is a sensible thing that Logitech elected to stick with a 5.1 solution for this speaker system, rather than go 6.1 or 7.1. Although 6.1 DVD’s (DTS-ES etc.) are becoming more commonplace now, the difference isn’t that big, and, unless you have a wall right behind you, where are you supposed to put the thing? By staying with 5.1, Logitech have given us all we need and more, while keeping the costs reasonable (well, maybe not!) and keeping it simple.

I love these things. I love em. I LOVE THEM!

Besides this little (actually big) glitch, the WebCam Fusion is a great little camera, and it works very well with Skype 2.0 and MSN Messenger.

**UPDATE**:

I installed the latest Creative Audigy 2 Drivers (dated Jan 2006) and with eager anticipation, enabled the Fusion mic.  Alas, no surround speakers!  I then logged a call with Logitech who suggested I try disabling AEC.  I did try this before, but I did it again, and now everything is working!!!  Must be the new drivers and this AEC thing.

I do have to use SocksCAP to get BitComet to work with the proxy, but that is no problem at all. Works really well. I am getting sustained download rates of 15kb/s as opposed to the 2-4kb/s I was getting before. Of course, remember torrents ALWAYS depend on the number of Seeds and Peers you have on that particular torrent.

-EDIT- I forgot to mention that this usage DOES still count towards your monthly cap. It just ‘unshapes’ it.

-EDIT 2 – I am now getting a fairly solid 40 – 60kb/s, which is AWESOME!

The page just lists the whole process I went through to get my Car Media Center working 100%. I am planning on making a small video of it in action and a tour of the setup soon.

Using the low latency VPN serive, I log in straight away, and can connect to games usually on the first try, which is great. My ping time is still average (yellow) but the game play is MUCH better.

It is still not perfect, but is a great start to decent international gaming from South Africa. I got a newsletter from them today saying they are working on increasing the service to Europe somewhat. You only get 500MB of traffic which must be used over 60 days. There are other packages available, but this was about the best for me. I played AoE3 yesterday for about 2 hours, and I had used about 5MB of traffic, so it should last a while.

I predict this annoying trend of Digital Rights Management, in which the makers of the content decide how and when and where you play the disk you bought for a lot of money is going to get worse and worse. I posted previously about my annoyance and boycot of Sony due to their practice of CD protecting. Turns out they used a rootkit to do this, and are being sued for violation of privacy. Good! To make matters worse, there is a virus out that makes use of this piece of un-removable software. Way to go Sony! They have recalled the CD’s and appologised for this indescretion. I think they have also released a special removal tool. Or maybe that was Mark Russinovich. Not sure.

I will continue to fight the power of corporations who are determined to force me into their stupid rules.

EDIT:  I have had a lot of queries abou the proxy that works for this.  The first one I found has since stopped working, but I found the following one which works at the moment:

65.100.114.147 : 8080

I use it along with AnyDVD and it enables me to rent movies from the video store and watch them at my leasure, because in South Africa, we have to take movies back the next day, which is stupid, and unheard of anymore in most other countries. I am not condoning piracy, and once I watch them, I delete them (which can also easily be done in the MyMovies interface via remote).

Anyway, all you do is insert the DVD, and along with the usual “Play DVD” option which pops up in MCE, is a “Copy to Disk” option. It does a internet lookup to find the name, actors, genre etc, and puts the movie in the MyMovies database, which works a lot like the MCE Music interface with album art etc. It then copies the VOB and IFO files to a folder, either on your MCE box or a network share.

Playing the movie is even easier. Just select it by the picture (like album art) and press play. It uses the MCE DVD player interface, in full quality with surround sound. Awesome. A highly recommended download!

Get it at www.mymovies.name.

I was using a Creative SoundBlaster Live! 24bit External on one of my home PC’s. This card rocks because it sounds awesome and doesn’t need any additional power other than what it gets via the USB port. I moved this into my car, and it is now ROCK SOLID! I had no new power requirements, and because it was connected via a USB cable instead of being screwed into a PCI slot, small vibrations and even big jolts have ZERO impact.

I bought a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS to replace it on my PC, and I am most happy with that card too.

Copy the Extender program’s XBE to your PC, and open it in a hex editor. Search for ‘8B5728508B4730508B472C518B4F0452′ and change it to ‘508B4730508B472C518B4F04906A0090′.

This works for the standard version and rollup 1.

Awesome! Thanks BlueCopter! You’re a genius!

Fortunatly, with the new “Silver” Xbox live, if you have ADSL you should still be able to play online, as it’s free and hopefully you won’t need a foreign credit card to get access. You won’t be able to play on the weekends or enter tournaments though.

I put the blame (maybe unfairly, but I don’t care!) squarely on Telkom. I’m sure if bandwidth was cheaper, the market for this would be bigger, and it would be a viable option for MS, but not at the moment.

I’m now running UnleashX, XBox Media Center (23–07–2005) and can now play NTSC or PAL games on a stock standard (well, hardware anyway) XBox. 

To complete this awfully simple task, and free your XBox from all these terrible constraints placed on it by Microsoft, simply download the Softmod Installer 2.0 from XBox Tribe or any other web site you choose.  The Softmod installer includes exploits for Splinter Cell (NTSC and PAL), Mech Assault and 007 Agent under fire.  You need to have the originals of these games to get this working.  I am fortunate enough to have Splinter Call and Mech Assault.  Please bear in mind that the Classics range of games NO NOT WORK.  You need the older version.

It is a lot easier to complete this task if you already have a modded XBox or can borrow one from somebody.  You need to upload these Save Games onto a modded XBox using XBox Saves Manager, or just extract them and FTP them onto E:\Udata.  Take a XBox memory card and plug it into a controller connected to the modded XBox.  Load M$Dash and go to Memory.  From here you can copy Save Games onto your memory card.  Copy the relevant save game (depending on what exploit you’re using) from the XBox to the Memory Card.  The Splinter Cell exploit is 2 files, a Linux Installer, and a Splinter Cell Save game.  The Linux Installer is 485 blocks, so you’ll need your memory card to be virtually empty to have enough space.

You should make sure you have the latest M$Dash (5960) before doing this.  Run a newish game, and select XBox Live and it should update the dash for you, or go to XBox Live, and select Account Recovery, as this seems to also update your Dashboard.  Just quit when it asks you for account details.

Now plug the memory card into the new XBox.  Use M$Dash’s memory manager to copy the saves from the memory card to the Hard Drive.  Now load the game.  Go to load save game, and you should see a Linux save game.  Load this save, and voila, the game crashes and a nice Dashboard Installer pops up. 

If you want to play on XBox Live with this XBox ever again, you will need to make a backup of your original C partition.  The Softmod Installer 2.0 gives you the option of doing this.  It creates a Backup Folder on E:.  I suggest you copy this onto a PC and or write it to a CD to keep it safe. 

Now install UnleashX or EvoX (your choice) and you’re done.  Reboot your XBox after this and your new Dash should load up. 

To undo the softmod, simply boot up your XBox with the Drive open, and the SoftMod Installer menu will come up.  Select Restore C Backup and you’re back, good as new.

allAfrica.com: South Africa: SA is Still On the Sidelines of Triple Play

I suppose their reasoning for taking so long is that there are a limited number of HDTV capable receivers in South African homes right now.  Maybe, if import duties weren’t so ridiculous, they’d be cheaper, and more people would have them??  Anyway, enough ranting for now.  South Africa is the best country in the world, by far, but we have some issues, but who doesn’t?

See the article here: allAfrica.com: South Africa: New Hi-Tech Decoder Hits Market