JsARCLIGHT

Can Vin Diesel play a Scott though?

Those players are probably long gone at most main Walmarts right now. From what I have heard the whole $100 player thing originated at Best Buy but they sold out in a microsecond but other retailers who have stock have matched the price. I just wonder what these early price wars are going to parlay into for the holiday season? If this $100 player sticks around, heck even at $200 and sticks around it will most likely begin to change the face of the HD market slightly. I'm not saying that HD DVD will suddenly regain all this ground and pass up Blu Ray, but it certainly seems like this holiday season is already in HD DVD's favor. From the look of things Sony's big PS3 push is going to focus on it's Blu Ray capabilities more this time around so I would assume the BD folks have some sort of counter attack in mind... I just wish I knew what it was already.

I thought that you COULD save them to the SD card but you could not play them, you could only play them if you returned them to system memory(?).

They cut corners everywhere to save money and maximize profits. What starts as a wonderful, innovative design can become a complete glop of crap when the bean counters and front shop budget minders get involved and start changing specs and farming it all out to the lowest bidder to be made.

This discussion has me wanting to pull down that little guy and sell him now. The only thing stopping me is that it has our company's credit card info on it for the store plus my and other people's user names on it. Is there a way to erase all that stuff, like a "format", that will return the console to day 1 out of the box nothing on it status? In the same breath, we have a few virtual console games on it, can we put those on an SD card, then format the system and still be able to access those games off the SD card when the system is back up after being formatted? Or does the system format, if it is possible, erase the ability to play those purchased virtual console games?

I work for myself, I own the company. I bought the Wii because it seemed like a fun thing to have in the office for down time and to improve employee morale. Everyone here was falling all over each other to bowl when I first brought it in, even the non gamers and the girls... now people just ignore it. I think that is the most telling problem with the Wii... it's all gimmick with no "staying power" for the casual fan, who this console seems to be aimed at. I myself downloaded a few games to it and bought RE4 for it and found it to be interesting but it just doesn't have the "must play" stuff for it like my 360. I consider this Wii to be just like my PS3 now... no good games so it just sits there... except my PS3 has the benefit of being a Blu Ray player.

Our office Wii has just sat there for months. No one has even bothered to turn it on since the summer. I've been thinking of selling it and getting a PS3 for the office... mostly for the Blu Ray player, just like I did for home. Anyone want a Wii with two remotes/nunchucks and RE4?

I am by no means a Cutie Honey fan or hater, but those videos are a new level of retarded that my mind is not used to viewing. It's almost as if it's a cruel parody by someone trying to make fun of Japanese live action sci fi shows.

That's probably because the PS3 was a good design to begin with... all Sony has to do is use newer, smaller chips and bing it runs quieter and cooler. MS is still fighting it's original terrible design.

Join the crowd. I got my 5 free Blu Rays in about 4 weeks but I have yet to see my 5 free HD DVDs. Around the 8 week mark I called the 1-800 number just to confirm they had received my request. The nice woman on the phone said yes, I was in the system but that "it's only been 8 weeks" and that "the deal says allow 8 to 12 weeks". Well, the 12 week point came and went last week and I called again. Now they say I'm "pending"... when I asked what that meant they said it would probably be another two to three weeks. I just found it strange how Buena Vista had their crap together and got me my free Blu Rays in near record time but Microsoft pretty much has their head up their ass. Then again the previous Toshiba offer that this Microsoft offer parallels was reportedly taking months to cycle. I read stories of people who waited 6 months to get their free HD DVDs from the Toshiba offer.

It's a Toshiba HD-A2. A while back it was one of their flagship players. As far as I have seen the HD-A2's have a fairly good service history.

The crazy bastards went and did it. Walmart rolls out sub $200 HD DVD player Makes me wonder what the Blu Ray camp has up their sleeves for this Christmas season?

Still... you go down from $80 to what, $60? $50? That is still waaaaaaay overpriced on US shores for just one movie with pretty much zero extras. And DA brings up a good point in the "more for your money" category. Look at the BD/HD release of Blade Runner that is supposed to drop in about a month... That Ultimate edition is $80, but for that $80 you get several edits of the film on multiple discs, tons of extras, an MF'ing briefcase full of extra gimmicks and more stuff that you'd think they'd include in one movie. IMHO that = totally worth the $80. If these Bandai movies did that then my personal opinion would change. But as it stands their releases have been on par with everyone else's single disc, single case, slim bonus featured $25 releases. And as others have stated these discs are JDM release, not US market release... which as I said earlier possibly accounts for their price. The Japanese have 10 gauge a-holes thanks to the pricing of their media. I fully bet that now that BD shares their region with the US that many Japanese will start importing their movies rather than buying domestic. Heck, why pay $80 for a domestic released title when you can wait for the US release and buy it for $25 plus shipping?

I haven't gotten around to buying it yet but is AC6 possibly a case of what I call the "modern video game blahze" in which the one player game is cobbled together hastily and is overall "meh" but the multiplayer is where all the time and effort was spent?

I myself don't have any line art but even someone not familiar with the design can look at the rider figure and see how whacked out it's neck proportions are, how strange it's shoulder conditions are, how disproportionate it's torso and pelvis are and how huge it's legs are. But it's all done in compromise to make the "armor" mode "work". In the anime the human rider as well as the bike underwent a galaxy of reproportioning, scaling and shifting between "bike" and "armor" modes and it's very hard to translate that into a solid toy well. I myself have always just wanted highly detailed fixed mode toys of the ride armors in both forms. I've always felt these toys could be done real justice if left as single mode items. After all, most collectors will just leave them in one mode anyway and the hardcore collectors will buy two so they can display it in both modes... why not just do an endrun and make two different super high detail toys? That way you don't have all these goofy proportional and "needed to transform" conditions.

The problem most likely lies in the newly aligned regions. Lumping Japan and the US in the same region is like making the Los Angeles housing market compete with the Wichita Kansas housing marking. IMHO we are seeing Bandai price their Blu Ray releases for the Japanese market, because it now shares a region with the US they probably are only releasing one movie for both markets. The Japanese are most likely OK with the price because they are used to being totally raped for their media but that kind of price completely doesn't fly in the US and will most likely only further harm the fledgling "anime on HD media" market here.

The "two white triangles" are in the design, they are side armor pieces when in suit mode and side guards behind the engine in bike mode. The problem with the Megahouse design is not in it's adherence to the line art, but in it's proportional deviation. They are making several compromises between the two modes in an attempt to maximize poseability, which is creating a sort of amorphodite final result. The general design of the ride armor contains so much "anime magic" that presenting it in a functional, transforming toy form that not only functions well in both modes but also looks spot on to the line art is near impossible. All in all I'll probably buy these but leave them in armor mode... those riders without their armor just look way too screwed up to me.

From what I have heard the PS3 version of Oblivion is improved over the Xbox 360 edition with cleaner graphics. If I had not already played the thing for months on PC I would have bought it for my PS3 as well.

I'm waiting to read a review of the new FMJ Blu Ray before buying. I already got burned once, not gonna happen again. IMHO I better see 4 stars or better on picture quality or I'm going to gouge out their eyes and skullf#ck them.

There is a special adapter block that allows you to use the Optical audio port with the HDMI on the new Xboxes. The inability to use it comes from the bulkiness of the standard cable plug which cannot be plugged in when an HDMI cable is installed, but with the adapter it works just fine. I have a friend who has one of the new HDMI Xboxes and with the cable adapter his works perfectly.

If they are downloaded to your hard drive and your Xbox dies, what prevents you from simply pulling off your hard drive and putting it onto your new Xbox? Admittedly I've never had mine die but from what I understand you don't lose anything... it's all on your hard drive and you can pop that thing on and off like a big memory card.

It's been a loooooooong time but if I remember right the Lord was a more traditional looking fighter with a single nosecone. IIRC the Vic was white and blue and the Lord was a sort of tan and red. Whenever I played the upright arcade game Life Force I always played the player 2 side (the "Roadbritish", the engrish bastardization of the Lord British) because I liked the looks of that fighter better than the Vic. Many years later I played it again at a friend's house on his old NES. He still had the manual and once again IIRC the black and white US manual had two drawings inside, one of the Vic Viper and another of the Lord British, and they where two completely different designs. Edit: I just found this image online. It's from a newer generation of Gradius game than good old Life Force but it shows the fighters and the Vic and the Lord are indeed totally different.

The HD DVD drive should be a different story. It should play back at the highest resolution you have set over component cables so long as the manufacturer did not use the "ICT Protocol", which is the HD DVD equivalent of the "nothing above 480p over component cables" rule. IMHO it would behoove folks to upgrade to HDMI or a like digital cabling over component... if for no other reason than it just doesn't support much these days.

So is there a companion Lord British?

It's the actual player. The player itself is what sets the output rate. By my understanding of the technology, the player "knows" what kind of output you are using and it "knows" that it can only output certain resolution upscaled when those certain outputs are active. Try as I might before buying my VGA cable my Xbox 360 would not upconvert past 480p. The second that VGA cable went on and the settings were set for it, wham... 1080i upconversion output.