mikeszekely

Imagine that, an article about Blu-ray "dominating" on a website dedicated to Blu-ray. So there are more PS3s out there than stand-alone HD-DVD players... there's also more 360 HD-DVD players out there than stand-alone Blu-ray players. And yeah, Blu-ray discs are outselling HD-DVDs 2-1, but if you want to use that argument, plain-vanilla DVDs are winning the format war, because they're still outselling Blu-ray and HD-DVD combined by, what, 10-1? 100-1? By the end of April (don't feel like digging around for more recent numbers) combined Blu-ray sales since the launch of the format were up over 1.2 million, HD-DVD sales just under a million, and Happy Feet alone sold 4 million regular DVDs... in a week. Both sides are going to spin things as positively as they can, but I wouldn't read into any of it too much. Even Sony boss Sir Howard Stringer called the format war a stalemate. And according to Forrester Research, the deadlock's likely to continue until 2009 or later. The bottom line is that we're all early adopters, and it's not going to be us who decides this one. It's going to be up to the Joe Walmarts who are waiting for $15 new releases, sub-$100 players, and $10 discount bins. In that sense, it's still anyone's ball game. Both camps, apparently, have good news, though. The Diffusion Group's idea that people buy tech in waves is pretty interesting, and it sort of ties into that whole early adopters vs. Joe Walmart thing. Now, me personally, I don't really care. I've got a PS3 and an Xbox 360 HD-DVD. I own discs in both formats. I'm eying an LG Blu-ray/HD-DVD combo drive for a home theater PC I'm building. I just want my movies in high-def; I'll buy them in whatever format turns up first at the used movie store by my house. As combo players come down in price, probably a lot of people will be using that method of picking a format. But I've noticed, Gaijin, that you've been really gung-ho for Blu-ray all the way back to when Sony and Toshiba were still talking about the possibility of a hybrid disc. Any particular reason?

I'm not concerned with preorders. Honestly, I liked the Classics line for what it was, updated re-imaginings of classic characters. It never bothered me that they weren't 100% G1 accurate. I mean, I'll admit that the Japanese paints are slightly better than what we got, but I was never unhappy with what we got, save Megatron. So, I guess I'd consider getting Japanese Megatron. Oh, and Thundercracker. Maybe they'll get a Thundercracker that's not butt-raping expensive.

TFormers has some sketches up of some previously unseen characters from the new TF Animated. No idea about the first three, but #4 looks like Swoop, and I'd bet #5 and #6 are Ultra Magnus.

Rear projection TVs have their advantages, too. Plasmas and LCDs deteriorate gradually over time, AFAIK. While projection TVs do as well, replacing the bulb makes them like new again. And, until recently, projection TVs did much better blacks. The main allure of LCD and plasma sets was their trendy thinness. Only recent advances have leveled the playing field in terms of picture quality.

Try here. GG is "good game", and "ftw" is for the win. According to that site, tt means "tease."

Pentium something something? I played it on a 486. First PC we ever had.

Who said anything about homophobia? It's incest that worries me.

One can only hope. And if they do, I really hope they bring the Saturn versions of Megaman 8 and SotN, as they were both two of my favorite PlayStation games, and I was sorry I never owned a Saturn so I could have had those games with the extra content.

I was pretty excited for the new Duke Nukem. You know, back when I was looking forward to the Dreamcast launch. With the glut of FPS games on the market today, I find I don't really care about one that I first heard about when I was still in high school.

AFAIK, you don't have to be in range of your wi-fi, just in range of some wi-fi. Put the game in, leave the PS3 on, play SotN at Panera. Or something like that.

Unless you happen to like Rock Band's Strat better, which I do. Yeah, the Kramer is better than the ol' SG, but both of them feel like those little little toy guitars. The Strat feels more like a guitar to me.

That one's a little similar to the one I have, and I love mine.

OK, I've decided build a home theater PC. I can build a middle of the road one with an HDCP compliant motherboard that supports audio and video out over HDMI for maybe $300, so connecting it to my existing home theater equipment will be a snap. As the prices come down, I can replace the Conroe-L chip I want to use with Core 2 Duo and swap the DVD-ROM for a Blu-ray/HD-DVD combo drive. Plus, I plan on using a big hard drive, so I can store my iTunes library on it. I'll definitely use it for multi-media files, and if DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray playback turn out OK, I'll probably use it for at least DVD and HD-DVD (I'll dump my 360 HD-DVD add-on). Probably stick with the PS3 for Blu-ray, since it's there. Anyway, does anyone know of any good media center software? I usually use Front Row on my Mac, but since it uses the Mac default software (iTunes and Quicktime) it sometimes has playback issues. I've never used Windows Media Center, as I only have XP Home and an Enterprise copy of Vista, but I'm assuming that it'll have the same problems. What would really be good is a media center front end for VLC.

Bottom line, then, is that my DVD player, Xbox 360, and PS3 all play a lot of the Divx/Xvid files that I want, but none of them play them all. What's more, while there's some mpeg and Windows Media video support, there are plenty of other codecs/containers that aren't. Even though most of the video I have is Divx, why take chances? I'm going to build a HTPC.

Amazingly enough, I used to watch that. Ah, the good old days of the 80's, when cartoons didn't even pretend they weren't half-hour commercials...

I put some fansubbed anime in, they didn't work for me. The DivX encoded stuff showed up and played fine, but the Xvid encoded stuff showed up as "Unsupported Data."

The Mighty Orbots were awesome! I loved that show. But so my brother and I wouldn't fight, my mom had us alternate who got to pick on Saturday mornings: I got o'clocks, and he got the thirties (or vice versa). There was some show I liked better than the Orbots like right before or it, and my brother hated it, so I wound up picking it and when the Orbots were on he picked Muppet Babies. EDIT: DUDE! DINOSAUCERS! I completely forgot about that show, but it kicked ass! Man... I know most of the shows I liked as a kid suck today, but I wish they'd come out on DVD anyway. At least in some sort of 80's collections with maybe one or two episodes a piece.

No Xvid, though.

I liked X. Except for the Newtype dolphins.

That makes me a sad panda.

I figured as much, but he still looked lame in the cartoon, and the toy was three shades of clunky. I won't complain if we get a Classics Galvatron, but since I don't like his alt mode in any case, and I do like Guido Guidi's art, I'd honestly prefer a non-transforming Galvatron that trades his alt mode for a better looking bot mode.

Considering that they were thinking about a Pagani Zonda, I don't consider most of my list to out there. And the current crop of Mustangs are ricers, American ricers. American muscle cars haven't been muscle cars since the 70's.

Galvatron's G1 toy wasn't just kind of a crappy barrel-shaped thing, but his alt-mode was always lame, even in animation. What we really need is a Revoltech Galvatron based on Guido Guidi's art.

Burly and intimidating? Not since the 70's. Modern Mustangs are just lame and/or raped my childhood. Cars I'd rather see as KITT than a Mustang (technically all of them except the Mini Cooper and the PT Cruiser, but specifically): (assume all models are 08s.) Audi R8 Chevy Corvette Dodge Challenger Ferrari F430 Mercedes-Benz SLR Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X Nissan GT-R

Why's the freebie always a Scarface plane? I liked Ace Combat 2, but they're giving us pretty boring free paints and charging out the cornshoot for the cool paints. Like David said, I'd pay more money for new planes, but new paints? Especially since half the paints we can see by replaying old Ace Combat games. Still... it would be kind of nice to see the Mobius emblem on my tail in HD...