JsARCLIGHT

After some reading I know that Macrovision copy protection is not supposed to allow any upscaling past 480p over component and that it is only supposed to work over HDMI or VGA cables. Are you sure that your unit is actually upscaling past 480p? The change from 480i to 480p is enough for most people to see improvement and to be honest the upscaling from 480p to 1080i (or other resolutions) does not really add all that much more to the picture quality.

Positive. My Plasma has this pop-up that shows what resolution it is receiving. Before I changed out to VGA input the most my Xbox would upscale over component was to 480p. Once I switched over to the VGA input it magically now upconverts to 1080i... I changed no settings, all I did was change it's cabling. I have been told it has to do with "permissions" and that the "industry" agreed a while back that nothing will be "allowed" to upconvert past 480p unless it is doing so through an HDMI or other digital connection. I have a Toshiba upconverting DVD player that does the exact same thing. If you hook it up using component cables it will kneecap itself to 480p but if you use it's HDMI out it will upconvert all the way up to 1080i.

Not that I remember. Mine's using VGA as well (I changed over... but all the new TV's I'm looking at don't have a VGA in like my current Plasma so it looks like I'm going to have to replace my Xbox with a new HDMI model soon). When I last played a DVD using the Xbox my Plasma did it's little blip blip thing and said it was showing a 1080i signal. From what I remember I touched nothing in the settings. I rarely use my Xbox to watch DVDs though... it's upscaler is kind of weak IMHO. The one in my PS3 blows it out of the water, hence my PS3 has become my de facto DVD / Blu Ray player.

Well, this is probably going to piss you off but: 1. You can't open the HD DVD tray with the included remote. The button on it only opens the Xbox tray. The way I have found to open the HD DVD tray with the remote is when you are on the main navigation screen (the orange main Xbox 360 screen) you can use the arrow keys to move down to the now "split" drive listing. The top half circle is your Xbox tray and the bottom half circle is your HD DVD drive. If you use the remote's arrow keys you can move down to that icon and select "open" from there. That is the only way I know how to open the HD DVD drive using the remote. 2. In order for either drive to upscale past 480p you need either an Elite/New Console with HDMI or the VGA outs. Neither drive will upscale at all over component.

This TRU that I was at had no "shelf items" for the new systems. All the 360, PSP and PS3 games where behind glass in a big case behind the checkout counter. The rest of the "entertainment zone" area looked half empty and was mostly full of kiddie electronics and DVD players. The glass case that held the games was also actually half empty and most of the games were in the wrong spots. It looked like when they "sold out" (wink wink) of a title they just moved the one next to it into it's slot, making it look like they "never had that other game" to begin with. Unless you practically leaned over the counter and read the small print on the shelf labels you'd never know they even stocked certain games. Add to that the "Buy Two Get One Free" signs were only on the older system's game shelves... those signs were narry to be seen on the glass cased items. In the long run this place reminded me why I don't shop at TRU.

Well that wasn't the case at this store. They pretty much gave me the "we ain't got 'em so pound sand" response. No rainchecks, no nothing. According to them this sale was for "in stock items only" and if it wasn't on the shelf, "they didn't have it". I'm not sure why I even go to that store... they never have anything.

I don't know about you guys but I went to TRU this Saturday and tried to get in on that "Buy Two Get One Free" game sale they had going before it ended. My local TRU was pretty much empty... All they had where crap games. I asked the clerk about the missing titles I wanted and after some discussion between us he pretty much fessed up that that store was not actually "sold out" but that they in truth had some, but they were not putting those games out on the shelves until the "sale" ended. I thought that was kind of underhanded and I went up front and spoke with a manager, who told me the underling was "wrong" and that "all they had right now was on the shelves". It just seemed strange to me that a huge chain store would not have some of the most popular games in stock when all their competitors did. On my way home I stopped at Best Buy and they had all three of the games I wanted in spades... I tend to believe that clerk and not the manager. Also, this is off topic but what is the deal with TRU these days anyway? The whole store looked like it was either on clearance or on sale. Are they going under or just trying to stay afloat?

The PS3 is a Blu Ray player at it's core and Blu Ray is coded into three regions, of which the US and Japan share R1 now. The UK however is still in R2 so as far as I know the US/JAP R1 Blu Ray movies will not play on UK R2 consoles, I would assume that that crosses over to games as well?

I bought a Wii for my office and we all played it quite a lot when we first had it. Many an hour were wasted bowling. Then I bought RE4 for it and played that quite a bit. Now it just sits there. We have not even turned it on in months. There are just no games out for it right now that "fit" what people want at the office. Plus the "allure" of it has worn off... the gimmick is no longer attractive. About the only thing will be that Resident Evil shooter game that is supposed to come out next month. After that... who knows.

Nintendo keeps buildin' em and people keep buyin' em. Here in Saint Louis the electronics stores have lines outside every Sunday morning with people waiting to buy Wii's. ... meanwhile the PS3's rot on the shelves next to the fugly Halo 3 Xbox 360's. Regular Xbox 360's and Elites are spotty, they sell out but get refilled but those PS3's warm the shelves like a nice knitted blanket here.

Mine. Then again, mine has yet to RROD. People I know are calling my 360 the "Duncan McCloud Edition" because it just won't die, whereas theirs have died 2 to 3 times each.

They have to compete somehow... this coming holiday season may be the crucible for the PS3. With the Wii commanding such a dominant market lead that is almost assuredly going to continue through the holiday season amid current reports that it will once again suffer shortages and the Xbox 360 still maintaining a hearty lead in the installed console base as well as the publicly perceived notion that it has the superior games library, the PS3 kind of has to pull out a lot of the stops. Public perception is everything in these "high falootin'" console wars and at the moment public opinion of the PS3 is "it costs too much" and "it doesn't have any good games". If Sony can close the price gap effectively that will eliminate one of the perceived "failures" of the unit. The next step is rolling out some truly killer apps... I personally feel that this second step is going to occur "too late". Most of the "system savior" titles that people are waiting for will completely miss the huge Christmas shopping season by months, and others are multi platform releases that many people may purchase on other consoles rather than wait. IMHO Sony really needs to get the lead out and blitzkrieg the game market like they used to. This "modern" Sony is almost anemic and playing it's moves in a reactionary fashion... nothing like the "classic" innovative Sony of the late '90s.

I could be wrong (it's been a long time since I played Marathon) but doesn't Marathon 1 begin kind of like Doom did with a hollow back story where the player is some sort of soldier or military policeman sent to the colony ship Marathon? I'm almost positive there was no "waking up out of a space coffin" motif.

It can't add detail where detail isn't, but it sure as heck can make something that already looks good look better... but at the same time it makes something that is marginally bad look incredibly worse. And the double edged sword of HD is that the more of it you see, the more nit-picky you become of everything that isn't HD. I'm noticing things that I probably never would have seen or cared about before, now those little things bug the hell out of me.

Well, considering Sony is the leading proponent of Blu Ray I'd say the odds of seeing an HD DVD add on for the PS3 about the same as seeing a Chevy Camaro engine option for a Ford Mustang. I'd also go one further to say that if HD DVD "wins" the format war that Sony will have such an inflated head that they'd never offer an HD drive for the PS3. Something tells me they'd rather see their console die than "side with the enemy". The same would go for Microsoft. If HD DVD goes tits up tomorrow I don't exactly see them jumping on the Blu Ray bandwagon with a player accessory. In all seriousness though this Christmas you'll see sub $300 standalone HD DVD players at retail. It's pretty much a given at this point. But that is talk for the HD Media thread and not the PS3 thread...

Hey how long does that TRU buy two get one free deal last? Edit: looks like it possibly ends October 20th according to fine print on their website...

Well, it's been my experience that using my PS3 to upconvert my older DVDs has been a mixed bag. There are some DVDs that look better when upconverted like my Indiana Jones box set... but on the flip side of the coin others look much, much worse. Most of the ones that look worse do so because they are bad transfers to begin with. I'll give some examples of the biggest offenders in my collection. The Black Hole on DVD When played back on a normal DVD player on a normal 480i television the movie looks decent. Dated, but decent. You can barely see the wires on the actors and props but the overall "fuzziness" of the picture hides the true poor picture and SFX quality. When played back in my PS3 upconverted to 1080 and displayed on my plasma the movie looks downright awful. Picture grain everywhere, dust specks all over the footage, the prop wires stand out like marker lines and you can actually see the break points and matte objects used on the special effects. In other words the upconversion of the Black Hole's terrible DVD print turns it from a passable DVD into an abysmal one. The movie looks downright terrible when upconverted and the fault lies entirely on the poor print the DVD uses. A speck of dirt on the print at 480i can go by unnoticed, but when an upconverter makes that 2 pixel dirt speck into a 10 pixel dirt speck it sticks out like a sore thumb. Night of the Living Dead on DVD Another prime case of a DVD that when played back on a regular DVD player and television is "passable". The print even looks old and poor on a normal TV. When upconverted... damn. The picture is abysmal. Grain, grain, grain. Dirt, dirt, dirt. Wavering hues and poor edge definition. As usual, all things you would never really "notice" on a normal DVD/TV playback made a million times worse by upconversion. The only upside of this DVD that I own is that you can watch it "colorized" with additional "color" commentary by Mike Nelson of MST3K. It makes the bad picture tolerable. However the upconversion makes the colorization look even worse as you can now see that it is nothing more than single hues laid over the original black and white print. The lack of gradient in surfaces stands out even worse than it would on a regular TV IMHO. Tron 20th anniversary edition DVD This DVD looks pretty darn good on a regular TV/DVD but it still has a level of "grain" that you can see. That was a result of the post processing of the glow effects. When played back upconverted it looks completely horrid. The swimming grain in the glow scenes is almost distracting and the blurry, messy edges are made worse in the upconversion. The movie basically goes from looking fairly sharp to looking like it was filmed through a defocused lens. The "real world" scenes are passable but the computer world actor plates and other items that are not computer generated or matte paintings, are painful. This is another case of the "old school" special effects looking darn good in low resolution but look totally balls when upconverted. And honorable mention: Miami Vice Season 1 on DVD This DVD set when upconverted suffers from the same "dirt, specks and poor master" issues the other DVDs above suffer from but the strange thing is that the picture quality varies from poor to good. That is because Miami Vice, like many other '80s TV shows, used a lot of older, lower quality stock footage in some of it's scenes. This stock footage was grainy, speck filled and downright nasty. You can tell how nasty it is in 480i on a regular TV but when played back upconverted it looks like pure turd. But then the scene will change and most of the bad artifacts will minimize, so it's kind of a mixed bag. All in all I feel the prime "danger" with upconverting your old DVDs is that the picture stands just as good a chance to look worse than it does to look better due to issues with the print being magnified. This mostly has to do with many DVDs having prints that took advantage of the low resolution to hide problems or poor cleaning, which are made worse when the upconverter doubles or triples the size of that dirt speck or matte line. The DVDs I've mentioned are the ones in my personal collection that seem to suffer the most from upconversion, but it is almost entirely due to the quality of their material. As I've said, I own many other DVDs that look great when upconverted. The Indy set, My three star wars discs, etc. BUT it should be noted that those are heavily laundered and restored prints. So I guess the rule of thumb should be the older the DVD movie and the less it was "cleaned" or "restored" when mastered then the greater the chance that the picture will not improve and possibly deteriorate when upconverted.

WHOOPS! Product described on package may not be actual product received! Paramount's "Jack Ryan" "Special" Edition HD DVD set not so special... I wonder how they spin this one?

I was playing Tony Hawk Project 8 around this time last year and one of the guys playing had a really, really deep voice... Like scary deep. And he kept yelling at people who "got in his way", he kept cussing his chosen skater that he was using and every now and then when he'd land a trick you'd hear him yell and make some kind of tongue wagging Gene Simmons-ish sort of noise. It was simultaneously embarrassing and scary. That was actually the straw that broke the camel's back for me. That was the last time I ever played online with the Xbox. I stopped playing, removed my headset, put it in my home theater parts bin in the basement and have never got it back out. I really wanted to get into the online gaming with this deck. It sounds bad to say it but every time I tried to play online I always seemed to get paired with the freaks, foul mouths and infantile jackasses. I will fully admit that I myself am a goofball when playing online games. I'm not a griefer, cusser or any sort of jerk but I do fully admit that I myself have a very Dennis Leary-ish mouth on me and I start cracking wise about everything, including myself... but the people I got paired up with, hoooooooo boy they made me look like Mother Theresa. I'd love to start playing online against people I know but I never seem to "be around" for any online games. Maybe I can find a way to change that.

I guess it's kind of fortuitous in the end. I've had like four or so people on my "friends" list for nearly a year and have never played a single online game with any of them. Every time I tried to play in the past I always wound up playing against foul mouthed kids, racists, the criminally insane and one time I think I actually played a game against satan himself. I was planning to re-up at some point when I got Ace Combat so I could at some point be part of the MW squadron.

I just did it and it worked fine. What I did was log into Xbox Live (as a silver), go to the marketplace, select "account management", then select "memberships" and I just picked a one month $7.99 deal. It thought about it then had me log off and log back on. It now says I'm "Gold" and even has the little yellow header that used to be silver. As a "Test" I have my friend's Halo 3 disc (for you folks who read my hate for Halo 3 on AP this is not what it looks like... he left it here and it was the only "online" game I have to test with) and I booted it up and went to the multiplayer section and it automatically dumped me into some sort of "training" mission against three or four other people. I promptly got whacked in the head and quit. BUT my old username of JsARCLIGHT was still good and it showed up on the screen clear as day... I did not have to change anything or use an alternate. My "gold" account had been in lapse for months and months, my best estimate was it fell out of use around march of this year. Sooooo... no offense but I call BS on the "no gold for you" thing. And if anyone does not have me listed I guess I'm back on gold. Edit: If I had to guess I'd say that if your gold account goes cold and someone else comes in they can take your name because you are not "using it". My usual monkier "JsARCLIGHT" is so obtuse that I'm the only human on earth that uses it. Anytime you see a JsARCLIGHT... it's me. IMHO that is what probably happened. You probably had a "more common" username and someone snaked your name while your account was in limbo. Use it or lose it as they say...

And you are right to blame the audio mix, it's mixed for higher scope equipment. That is the double edged sword of this high flight home movie boom... they have to make these tapes / DVDs / HD media (well, not so much the last one) to fill the "most common denominator" while at the same time giving the "enthusiast" enough punch for their home theater gotterdammerung. And in the waining years of DVD it has become quite obvious that the pendulum was swinging towards the home theater crowd rather than the "I have a mono TV with a built in funai DVD player" set.

I was watching the new Flash Gordon because it came on after the new Doctor Who. All I can say is as good as the new Doctor Who is, the new Flash Gordon is the same... just in the other direction. It's not "terrible" bad, but it sure is low budget. Every single creative decision in the show just feels like someone was black-lining the script with a magic marker while saying "too expensive, too expensive, too expensive, make this alien a human, too expensive, too expensive, have this scene take place in Flash's house, too expensive, too expensive and too expensive".

Tell you what, I'll test this "No gold for you" thing tonight when I get home. I had a gold account months and months ago but never played online so I let it lapse. Its been silver for a loooong time. I'll go on when I get home and see if it will let me re-connect using my old gold tag.

Just a heads up to those who care the HD DVD release of Transformers does not have high res audio, it has been kneecapped to Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1. No PCM, no TrueHD. The reason given was that "there are so many extras on the HD DVD that they didn't have space for the lossless audio tracks". Pfft, whatever. Half the time these new HD media releases get shafted on the bonus features and now they are taking out the things that make HD media better than DVD just to include the bonus features. Sad.