Hmmcast #162 mp4

Hmmcast #161 mp4

While the official Sony Playstation blog doesn’t name names, they do point to the same NY Times Xbox 360 unreliability article linked and discussed here yesterday.

Here’s the mild, but effective dig:

A lot of noise has been made recently about the reliability issues of one of our competitor’s systems … [PS Vault] put [the PS3] in a freezer at zero degrees for up to 108 hours and they put it in a sauna at 120 degrees for up to 64 hours — all the while running games and Blu-ray Disc movies on it. Did it fail? Nope.

No argument here that the PS3 is more reliable than the Xbox 360. Microsoft may have gotten it to market first, but it seems to have been at a great cost in quality control. Conversely, more Xbox 360s are being sold (and returned for repair). Which is the more envious position?

With the PS3 price drop and more good games on the way, I see a brighter holiday season for the PS3. It’s still going to be #3 (still a chump) this holiday season, but for gamers who already have the Wii and Xbox 360 and also a 1080p capable TV, the PS3 would look good under the tree.

The most telling holiday war for game systems will be in 2008 when all three systems have more established libraries and the PS3 has their HOME network in (non-beta) play.

Midnight Maddeniacs rejoice, it’s grid iron time again.

We pulled into a parking slot at Wal-mart and a guy was already sitting in his car reading his Madden 2008 instruction manual. Didn’t see any Madden 2008 for the Playstation 3 boxes on the shelves yet, but the Xbox 360 was in stock. Only one other person was purchasing at the same time as us shortly after midnight. Also didn’t see the Collector’s Edition on the shelves (behind lock and key?) like last year. I’d read earlier that the frame rate was better for the 360 than the PS3 so our mind was already made up.

No, Madden 2008 is not in 1080p on the Xbox 360. Yes, you can play QB Michael Vick (Atlanta Falcons) who probably is more worried about the despicable dogfighting charges surrounding him and whether he’ll ever play in the NFL again.

One quick observation on the first played game: more in game advertising. Snickers sponsoring the coin toss, post game results sponsored by Sprint and so on. How many more versions before we’re seeing banner rotators updated through the web? Since EA has an exclusive NFL license wouldn’t it be interesting to see what that agreement says about selling ads in game? NFL isn’t exactly NASCAR.

More on the newest Madden game later today.

More and more I’m seeing stories covered on the internet and mainstream media pick up on it later. The staggering amount of Xbox 360 consoles that have gone bad isn’t really news at all any more; it’s a state of Xbox 360 life. Add Matt Ritchel at The New York Times to the list of those late to the party.

Microsoft, which has 57 percent of the market, has declined to say what is causing some of its Xbox 360 to stop working, or how many machines have been affected. It has set aside $1.1 billion for repairs, a figure that suggests to industry analysts that the problem could affect a third of the 11.6 million 360s already in the hands of consumers.

The story is somewhat redeemed by a small amount of discussion around Halo 3 which is the best-selling preorder of all time and asking if hardcore gamers care about the three red rings of death problems?

Sure, we care, but is it going to translate to less sales from us? No. Hardcore gamers buy and play all the systems they can afford. We buy systems like the Atari Jaguar, 3DO, Sega 32X and NEO-GEO where some games cost over $200 each. We wait in line for signature games like Halo 3, Grand Theft Auto and Madden Football to launch. Which means yes we’ll be there at midnight tonight for the launch of Madden 2008. We’ll even weather the elements to bag a new system.

Although I haven’t ever camped overnight for a game system, the hardest of the hardcore gamers most certainly will.

HD-DVD blackouts
Speaking of problems with the Xbox 360, I’m getting some new ones since buying an HD-DVD player: blackouts during movie playback. At one point the TV blacked out completely while watching the DVD of 4400. Though it’s only been a week of owning an HD-DVD drive, I’m completely unimpressed by the DVD upscaling from the add-on HD-DVD drive compared to PS3 upscaling of DVDs.

I was at Microsoft yesterday for a beta playtesting session and got into a conversation about Blu Ray and HD-DVD with another tester (we weren’t testing anything to do with HD-DVD, BTW; we weren’t breaking the NDA), and he asked about which was better. Apparently his cousin had a PS3 and he was impressed too with movie playback on the PS3. Give this nod to Sony. Now all they need are some more games.

Games are the magic elixir for hardcore gamers. A great game, a 10 on the scale may not completely wash clean the memory of hardware problems, but it helps the healing process. Do we want to see our systems go down? No way. But at least in our household where we have three Xbox 360 (two regular Xbox 360, one Xbox 360 Elite), if one goes down, there are others to take the fallen’s place until a replacement arrives.

Hmmcast #156 mp4

Since Microsoft announced the reduced price and Toshiba made the 5 HD-DVD videos for free offer, we’ve been waiting for the first retail store in our area to offer the deal. On the first of August we visited the local retailers and none of them knew about the deal. A week later and Best Buy had the HD-DVD drives along with paper copies of the mail-in offer from Toshiba.

Looking for a list of 15 HD-DVD movies you can choose from? They are separated by the following five different categories:

Category A
*Apollo 13
Seabiscuit
The Chronicles of Riddick

Category B
Casablanca
Constantine
*Dukes of Hazzard

Category C
Four Brothers
*Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
SKy Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Category D
The Rundown
*Blazing Saddles
US: Rattle and Hum

Category E
*U-571
The Perfect Storm
We Were Soldiers

How to get your 5 HD-DVDs
The movies with *asterisk are our pending choices (we haven’t mailed the offer back in yet, so let us know in the comments if you think we’re missing a better choice). In order to receive the HD-DVD movies you need to fill out your name, address, phone, email and choices along with the original UPC code located on the outside of the HD-DVD player box. The original or a copy of the cash register receipt for the player purchased between 3/107 and 9/30/07. The fine print says to allow 8-10 weeks for shipping (yowsa!). After that you can call 1-800-405-7520.

Toshiba reserves the right to substitute titles.

HD-DVD vs. Blu Ray
Since we now have both, I’ll soon be able to offer a customer opinion on which looks better on our Samsung HDTV at 1080p. Blu-Ray was first reviewed here back on Hmmcast #34, January 4th.

My early opinion? I like how the PS3 upscales the DVD and allows stretching to fit the full screen. The PS3 seems to do a little better job upscaling existing DVDs. Does the Xbox 360 allow you to stretch the DVDs? The manual doesn’t say anything, but a Google search led me to this May 2007 post:

There are 5 display modes: auto, letterbox, fullscreen, stretch, and native. You can access these modes while watching a video by pressing Display on your remote or A on your controller.

I just tried that and the letterbox mode worked the best. The stretch mode didn’t look right, leaving some of the text along the bottom of the screen cut off. Points to the PS3 for what appears to my naked eye anyway as better upscaling.

More review time needed to compare HD-DVD vs. Blu Ray.

We’ve watched more movies in Blu-Ray format than HD-DVD and while both are clearly an improvement over DVD, is it that much better that it warrants all the extra money required? You need a 1080p TV, HDMI cord and PS3 or HD-DVD player. Seems like an individual decision as to whether it’s worth it or not financially but readers on a budget (and who isn’t on a budget?) should be cautioned not to run out and buy into either technology yet.

So why did we do it? We’re still exploring the many wonders of 1080p, trying to see if it’s all it’s cracked up to be. So far I’ve been more impressed with the PS3 and the highest resolution which appears to be what Sony wanted everybody to go out and do: purchase a bunch of expensive hardware. That’s not a very family friendly promotion strategy which sales of their consoles seem to be showing.

The biggest problem with both next generation movie format remains selection.

We can’t get anywhere remotely close to the title selection, especially TV shows, that we can get with DVDs. It’s a catch-22 as more titles won’t be coming until there is enough adoption. I heard something about the complete first season of Heroes being available on HD-DVD but haven’t seen that in any retail store locally yet.

The HD-DVD combo option is somewhat attractive. For a few bucks more you can get both a normal DVD version of the movie and HD-DVD on the same disc. There are relatively few movies that are worth watching repeatedly and thus buying and taking home. We tend to treat these few titles like we’ll just buy as HD-DVD or Blu-Ray instead of spending the money to see them in the theater. Two theater tickets plus gas to/from the theater, popcorn and snacks costs between $40-50. Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are less expensive and you can watch them as many times as you want. You lose the social activity points of the movie theater experience for whatever it’s worth.

Gaming seems to be the best practical use of 1080p at the present time, but as noted recently there is a limited number of native 1080p games. Games like Dragon’s Lair are coming out in HD-DVD — already available in Blu Ray for $49.95 — and these are all new transfers from the original film include the original game sounds and no pauses according to the FAQ.

We already have Dragon’s Lair, Dragon’s Lair II and Space Ace in DVD format (the 20th Anniversary edition). Love the original Dragon’s Lair. Think we paid like $20 for all three of them in a 20th Anniversary Special Edition at Best Buy. Will the HD-DVD version of one of the three games be worth over twice the price? Probably not unless you are a diehard fan.

That’s what all this next generation video and high resolution television stuff seems like: made for hardcore fans. Those wanting the highest quality video and gaming experience possible. I’m sold on the gaming part but will need more time to see how important it is with the video. Perhaps sacrilege to nextgen movie fans but Movies in DVD format still look good enough to me.

It’s July and a little early for holiday season predictions, but that isn’t stopping Wagner James Au from declaring this holiday season’s PS3 to be the Xbox 360.

His reasoning is that because the editor of the popular videogame blog Kotaku is on his ninth Xbox 360 due to red rings of death problems. Au closes his Xbox 360 is doomed post with:

when it comes time to buy a console for the holidays, which one do you think gamers will buy? Call me crazy, but I’m guessing it won’t be the one that failed their friend Brian nine separate times.

Wagner James Au should stick to writing about Second Life and away from writing about console videogaming. With Halo 3 and the rumored IPTV connectivity, the Xbox 360 is virtually guaranteed a great holiday season. Halo 3 could be the most anticipated game ever and what moves game systems more than anything else? Games,

So yes, I’m calling you crazy, Wagner James Au. Don’t quit your day job to be a fortune teller.

The Xbox 360 has far and away the best online game system of all three consoles. It’s the arcade of the world, buy some vowels from Vanna already. The Wii is really, really weak for online gaming and their virtual store prices are laughable. The Wii is fun, the most family-friendly system around and the price is right for the system specs, but even Nintendo hasn’t tried to position itself as competition to the PS3 and Xbox 360. They’ve very smartly positioned themselves as a compliment to those systems.

The PS3 even with the $100 price drop is still too overpriced and with not enough games and don’t get me started on the issues with the Playstation Store. They don’t even have support for one of their most popular games — Guitar Hero on the PS3 yet! Things are getting better, yes, but even Sony admitted at E3 that they have much work to do. Once HOME is made available for the masses to try out (still in closed beta as of this writing) we’ll see if they can make a dent in the competition. In the meantime, they better keep focusing on the 118 million households that own the awesome PS2.

The PS3 doesn’t even have the most 1080p games.

Peter Moore leaving Xbox
Au believes that Peter Moore leaving the Xbox division for EA is some kind of major turning point. Peter Moore leaving for EA is a bummer, but no single departing employee is enough to tank the 360. EA’s strongest asset is their exclusive deal with the NFL, not Peter Moore.

Microsoft has been saying for some time now that the Xbox 360 will not be profitable until 2008. While I have plenty of doubts they’ll go from over a billion in the hole to profitability next year, they can say that knowing a few key events (Halo 3, IPTV) will come before their own profitability predictions.

Xbox 360 red rings of death not new
Now the hardware problems … yes, they are maddening and stupid and nothing new. The Xbox 360 has grown its audience despite tons of rings of death problems. We’ve had three of them go bad in our household alone, but the kids choose the 360 over the other systems almost every time. So far (crossing my fingers) the Xbox 360 Elite we bought in late April hasn’t tanked. If it’s as flawed as the other systems we’ve bought and at the reduced playing rate then it has awhile before it goes bad.

With all this said which system do I think most people will buy this holiday season? The same system people craved last holiday season: the Wii! The Wii is still in short display around here and we’re approaching August. However, Microsoft has a huge trump card: the price of the chips they’re using has been going down and they can drop the Xbox 360 another $100-200 and could do that to land a critical blow to the PS3. Imagine an Xbox 360 Elite for $299-350? That will happen, although it’s doubtful it will be this holiday season as Microsoft doesn’t fear the current incarnation of the PS3.

Which system will sell the least this coming holiday season? The Sony PS3. Again. I like the PS3 and am using it a lot more since we bought a 1080p capable TV last week, but this holiday season’s PS3 is going to be last season’s PS3. If/when Nintendo understands how important online gaming is and allow people to play in Xbox Live style with their vast library of great first party titles, they could seriously threaten to be #1 again.

Microsoft will be the monkey in the middle again this year selling a zillion Halo 3 games and continuing to improve the best online gaming experience out there making it that much harder for Nintendo and Sony to catch up on that front.

Update 9/29/07 9:24am PST: In the 2+ months since publishing these lists, I’ve learned that the game boxes don’t tell the complete truth about native 1080p games, thus prompting me to update and correct certain parts of the original post below in the interest of accuracy. I’ve tried to strike the original text that was wrong rather than replace. I’ve also updated both 1080p lists, and continue to update the lists since this was published, in case you, like I, remain interested in what games are available in native 1080p, and what games are advertised on game boxes “supporting” 1080p. Big difference, read on.

When the Playstation 3 first came out remember the huge Sony emphasis on 1080p games?

Since I didn’t have a 1080p capable television at the time and didn’t plan on buying one before getting the PS3, I didn’t pay that much attention to the scene nor how many titles actually supported the higher resolution (1920×1080).

It’s been some 8 months since the PS3 launched in America and now that we own a TV capable of viewing 1080p games and movies and have an Xbox 360 Elite and PS3 hooked up via HDMI cable, I decided to research what games are available for each system that output up to 1080p resolution natively. On the movie format front, if you check out EproductWars, Blu-Ray is stomping all over HD-DVD in nearly every category, but how does the 1080p games landscape appear?

The coverage from gaming sites on 1080p supported titles is a bit anemic out there, at least through my Google searches (maybe there are better queries?). Add to that, too many game reviews that don’t clearly profile whether or not games are capable of 1080p. And where is a sortable or chronological list of available now 1080p games from heavy hitter gaming sites like 1up.com? I’m not interested in games that are coming out in the future with 1080p support, what games can we go out and buy right now that support 1080p?

Seems like all that emphasis by Sony to stamp 1080p in our brains hasn’t translated very well to the gaming web yet. Perhaps because getting into a 1080p capable TV still costs over $1,000? I’m sure some good gaming resources exist out there for 1080p owners somewhere but my research so far hasn’t borne much fruit. In fact, I found at least one list that showed games that were 1080p that actually aren’t like Resistance Fall of Man which is 720p.

And the winner of the most available native 1080p games goes to … Xbox 360 PS3
As of this writing to my surprise I learned that the Xbox 360 actually has advertises on game boxes more 1080p games (34) available than the PS3 (17). Twice as many as the PS3, wow. Surprising considering that there is a smaller number of Xbox 360 Elite systems sold with HDMI cable output than traditional Xbox 360.

It’s important to note the use of the word “native” in the bolded text above. I realize that back on May 24 of this year with PS3 firmware upgrade 1.8 the PS3 upscales DVDs, PS1 and PS2 games to 1080p:

The capability to upscale DVDs to HD quality is a feature normally only associated with top range DVD players, and its inclusion in the latest firmware upgrade now allows PS3 owners with an existing DVD collection to dramatically enhance the viewing pleasure of their DVD collection when viewed through a compatible HD TV set1. Not only can DVD movies be enhanced to full 1080p HD quality but so too will PlayStation 2 and PlayStation games be upscaled to provide much improved gaming pleasure.

Those aren’t native 1080p games and not what I’m tracking. I’m looking for games that were specifically made to support 1080p resolution. Most games produced in the last few years have targeted 720p.

You’d think with all the push to buy these big, fancy LCD and plasma televisions that there would be a lot more than 50 games that actually support 1080p resolution natively released, wouldn’t you? Or do you think that’s a good number at this time? It does appear that more and more new game titles support 1080p, so the developers are ramping up. Chances are very good if you buy a movie to game title, it supports 1080p like The Transformers, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

Also, I found it interesting that some cross platform titles are 1080p on one system but not on the other like Icon (advertises 1080p on Xbox 360, but not on PS3). This happens more often with the Xbox 360 than the PS3, so one shouldn’t assume that because one title on the Xbox 360 is 1080p the same title on the PS3 will be or vice versa.

It would be interesting to see a comparison of the number of PS3 sold to Xbox 360 Elite as I’m guessing there are more PS3 sold than Xbox 360 Elite. Is anybody reading aware of a published comparison (link) somewhere? While it is possible to receive 1080p output through a component cable using a limited number of LCD/Plasma TVs, most non-Xbox 360 Elite owners aren’t getting 1080p through component cable. This is something else I learned in my research. I wasn’t aware you could get 1080p in another way besides using an HDMI cable. Also learned that you can only watch Blu-ray at 1080p through an HDMI cable, not using component cables, which is something Sony chose to enforce through their Blu-Ray specs.

The following lists of 1080p games should give other new 1080p capable TV owners the ability to print the list and go to the store straight to the game titles of interest. Or, if you have a mobile device capable of surfing the web, just bookmark the pages below and recall whenever you need them.

The 1080p lists
You can view each 1080p games list at the following pages which will continue to be updated as more games are verified:

Xbox 360 1080p games (update 9/29/07 to include separate list for game box advertised 1080p)
PS3 1080p games

Corrections, additions and updates
I’m certain these compiled lists are incomplete, so please help by suggesting games for Xbox 360 / PS3 that support 1080p in the comments below that you have personally verified are 1080p compatible. Also if you have a correction for something listed that’s not 1080p that is listed as supported, please leave that comment below.

In every case on the 1080p game lists I’ve personally confirmed 1080p support either by the print on the back of the game box or buying/renting/playing the game at 1080p myself. Please only suggest games for the lists that are available in stores now as these lists are intended to be useful to others wanting to be able to shop/rent/play confirmed 1080p titles.

I’m also considering taking screenshots of some of these games to go with the lists and/or categorizing them further (genre, rating, review, etc). It really depends on the interest level from others how far these lists are taken in the future.

After spending some more one on one time with a new 1080p TV, I’m impressed with how much better the picture is than 1080i. Didn’t think it could be that big a difference and boy was I wrong.

This coming weekend Best Buy is running a Reward Zone member promotion for 10-12% off TVs and other goodies. I’ve had my eye on several different 1080p LCDs since buying a PS3 but the price has always been too high for the ones that looked the best. I’ve been tracking this 42″ Westinghouse from $1,800+ down to $1,100 but the picture quality doesn’t seem to compare to other 1080p LCD TVs that were in the $2,000-4,000+ range (formerly in the $3,000-6,000+ range).

Never say never, but I can’t see us spending over $2,000 on a television. In all but one case of television purchases over the year in our family, we’ve spent less than $750. I haven’t seen a 1080p HDTV for under $750 but there might be some really low-end model out there somewhere. As the prices continue to fall within a year we should see 1080p HDTVs for around $750 or less — our household TV buying hotzone.

But I couldn’t wait another year.

Last night we purchased the Samsung 40″ 1080p Flat-Panel LCD HDTV Model: LN-T4066F (see Best Buy online listing here) which regularly sells for $2,299 and was on sale for $1,999. The manager approved the promotional 10% discount a few days early and thus we came home with this black beauty early for $500 off the regular price ($1,799). Nice. This makes the list as the second most expensive TV we’ve ever purchased. Our 61″ Panasonic projection TV which we bought at Sears over 10 years ago — and has since gone to TV heaven — cost just under $2,000.

We also purchased the four year extended warranty ($250) for the TV and a 900 watt UPS tower with surge protector ($179). The total bill with tax ran just under $2,500. None of this went on credit since we’re still in the midst of our no credit cards experiment.

Here’s some additional details and pictures which with compressing for web and my subpar photography don’t really do justice to the actual Samsung LCD TV.

There is a special “game mode” that enhances the TV for videogaming. I have the PS3 and Xbox 360 Elite both hooked up via 1080p. In the case of the Xbox 360, it automatically detected 1080p on boot, but with the PS3 I needed to go into settings and make the adjustment manually.

I noticed right away that the Xbox 360 blade menu at 1080p doesn’t look as good as the Sony PS3 menu. Something about the blade is cloudier looking and I like how whatever game you have highlighed in the games menu automatically changes the background. The Xbox Live content still far surpasses the mostly empty locker of the Playstation Store, but Sony is working on it. Every Thursday you can pretty much count on something new showing up in the Playstation store and I’m guessing, though I didn’t add it up, that for under $200 you can buy everything in the Playstation Store, including the PS1 games.

Compare the Playstation Store text readability at 1080i resolution on our older Samsung TV from a past post:

To this:

Some other picture quality things I’ve noticed thus far include:

- some of our DVDs have noticeable artifacts being played at 1080p.
- the detail on the actor’s faces in the Blu-Ray Mission Impossible is stunning. You can see cracks in the actor’s faces that I never noticed seeing before. Better than seeing it in the theater

The owner’s manual offered in both English and Spanish is a stout 87 pages and I’m still working my way through it. Worth noting are the USB ports that allow use of a function called Wiselink which allows easily inserting any USB storage device with photos and mp3 to play through the TV. Since the PS3 and Xbox 360 can both do that, it’s kind of redundant.

There is a good selection of inputs including: 3 HDMI ports, 1 PC, 2 S-VIDEO, 2 Component, 1 DVI (shared with HDMI port 1), 2 antennae (air and cable). As mentioned above, room to hook up both PS3 and Xbox 360 Elite via HDMI as well as a PC, DVD and older game systems. Below is a picture of the free demo Grand Turismo HD concept v1.2 sporting those realistic looking mountains.

Nope, still no cable, satellite or even over the air channels
Seems almost criminal not having cable, satellite or even over the air reception with the new LCD TV. This now runs up the television total in our home to six total television sets with a 50/50 split between HDTV and non-HDTV:

(1) HDTV 1080p - Samsung - 3 HDMI inputs. Location: Mom & Dad bedroom
(2) HDTV 1080i / 720p - with 2 HDMI inputs.
HDTV 1080i / 720p - only composite inputs. Location (both): Family room
(3) Other non-HDTV - Location: Kids bedroom, one in family room (yes, there are three TVs in the family room)

I’m thinking it will still take another few years to become 100% HDTV in our home. The non-HDTVs will be replaced as necessary with HDTVs.

With this new purchase our family’s streak of being without television is approaching 400 days and could be in jeopardy as NFL preseason starts in less than a month. Then again, it might just be used as a really nice game monitor and to play DVDs and Blu-Ray movies.

I’m curious how many readers have 1080p televisions? For those who don’t, are you waiting for the prices to come down like we have for awhile? For those with one or more 1080p TVs, are you able to go back to buying non-1080p sets now? As I type this, I’m realizing our last three TV purchases have all been progressively better HDTV sets. There was only $100 difference in the two other HDTV sets, but this one is well over three times the cost which is unusual using our historic buying patterns.

Most Xbox 360 gamers have probably already heard about Microsoft posting a billion dollar loss to cover an extension of the Xbox three red rings of death from one year to three years, but I thought it would be handy to post a link to the actual warranty page well, just. In. Case.

While writing this I just realized that the extended warranty we bought through Best Buy for our Xbox 360 Elite ($79.99) was negated by Microsoft’s move — or was it? Does that mean Best Buy will extend the factory warranty from three years to five? Doubtful, but it got my mind whirring.

As noted in prior posts, we’ve replaced three Xbox 360 in our home. Two of the oldest system and one of the newer system with all three within the first year going bad. The Xbox 360 Elite which was purchased in April 2007 hasn’t had any problems to date although my sons keep reminding me that I don’t play it nearly as much as they play theirs.