And Laptop Makes Five

I don't think I'd ever would have thought I'd have two computer, let alone the fact I will soon have five. Although only two are in home desktops, one resides in the garage and two are laptops which aren't really in any certain location in the home its still odd to have five.

The latest addition comes in the form of an XPS laptop from Dell. I have been quite the loyal Dell customers for well over 10 years. Although technically this will only be the second Dell computer I have purchased in all I have purchased somewhere between 10 and 20 in the past 10 years. Most of the people in my office use Dells because of me and most of my friends use them because of me. Come to think of it, perhaps a little commission is due my way. As a matter of fact I actually got them business today from a family member who bought the same XPS as me!

I had planned to go with a MacBook, then a MacBook Pro but then I realized how much that MacBook Pro was going to cost. After a little research into Dell's laptop line I found a really great deal on an XPS system that is loaded. I like to do a lot of media and odds and ends with my PC's and this one will surely fit well in my media world. And it cost a lot less.

I will be getting my first machine with Vista installed and this will be my first real working with Vista so I am a little excited and a little nervous at the same time. The XPS itself comes pretty well suggested by those who have purchased one and it seems Dell treats the XPS line of customer pretty good. They say its the Ferrari of the line and since I'm never going to actually own a Ferrari this will have to do.

Dell ships pretty quick, although my estimated shipping date is somewhere around the 14th I expect to be using the machine by then. Hopefully I'll be back in a few weeks raving about my new XPS, and probably doing the blogging right from the same machine.

Why I Pay for Xbox Live

Okay so up until recently I may not have been qualified to talk about this but on Sunday I bought a PS3, and while I was going to blog about my thoughts on the system itself I'll reserve that for another time. Instead I thought I'd talk about why I pay a measly $50 a year for Xbox Live.

Let me first say I have not even attempted to play a game online yet, heck I don't even own a game for the PS3 yet, but I have used it online.

Having a new PS3 I wanted to check out a few demos, well its 9:27 p.m. now and I can finally go check out the two demos I have been downloading since 6:00 p.m. THREE AND A HALF HOURS to download two little demos. Sure I am using Wi Fi to do it but that is a LONG time to have to wait for a demo to download. The PSN store is okay to browse but for me its nothing like the Xbox Live Marketplace. Browsing the store with a pointer seems very arcane and not fun at all.

This evening while waiting for my demos to download I jumped onto Xbox Live, downloaded a new Rock Band track, picked up a free episode of an Anime cartoon played some Rock Band while the episode was downloading and ended my Live session in about a half hour.

Now that my demos have completed downloading I have to go install them apparently?

All this and I have no idea if my friend who owns a PS3 is online. But I had 5 friends online before on Xbox Live and I knew exactly what they were doing.

Don't get me wrong I'm enjoying my PS3 for what its worth but for the people that complain about their $50 a year Xbox Live and brag about the free PSN network really don't know what they are talking about. And actually even a Silver Live account gets you free demos etc that certainly don't take all night to complete.

For now I guess I'll play those demos tomorrow, its getting late, and I've got a Blue-ray movie to watch.

Feeling a Bit Purple

Let me just say up front that this is going to get me slammed by anyone who has listened to me talk about what I'm about to talk about. I am starting to feel the pressure towards Blue-Ray. That pressure is pushing even farther towards a PS3. The day I make that purchase I will have to leave the store with a full face mask covered in disguise and claim to anyone who sees it in my home that I swear someone just left it on the front porch.

As its clear now that Blue-Ray is the winner in this hi def war as someone who likes his movies and DVD's it will be clear that I will eventually have to move towards Blue or just simply be left out in the cold. There are actually quite a few movies arriving in the theater this year that I can see will simply look stunning in hi def and of course will not be available on HD-DVD.

Yet my HD-DVD player for as little as we've been friends has treated me well, and will probably stay as my HD-DVD/DVD player for some great time. My HD-DVD collection will most likely stay at but a very small collection of under 20 discs.

So as tax time arrives I may yet think of getting that PS3 (a rumored price drop would greatly help!). The fact of the matter is as I told the wife I could not get the laptop I want and instead get a PS3 and probably another nice purchase for less than half what I would spend on the laptop, which of course would sit nice with her.

So we'll see, my greatest decision now is where to move the Wii as it's occupying the component connection the PS3 would need. Moving it to the toy room would be no great loss as I don't regularly play the Wii. And simply put I would NOT be buying a game system in the PS3 and would certainly have to decide its place in my media world. Having my 360's as my media hub would certainly stay as is as they are simply MUCH better at the job.

Will I turn purple in the months ahead, I'm sure I probably will, but only time will tell. Perhaps no one will know as I may have to disappear once I do, the backlash from my friends is going to kill me!

Should There Be a Next Generation of Consoles?

In the beginning of the game console, console generations used to be defined as 8, 16, 32 bit etc. Nowadays there are probably very few people that could tell you the graphics definitions of an Xbox 360 or a PS3. Yet as close as those past generations used to be in competitiveness it always came down to games. Games defined what system you would get and when games became graphically too sophisticated for that generation we moved onto the next.

However this generation while probably the most confusing has entered into the equation the greatest amount of variables between each of the three competitors. Equations that may make it very hard to transition to a next generation.

This generation has placed a heavy focus on media and interactivity not to mention an even greater focus on purchased downloadable content. People are using these machines now as part of their media hubs, not always and sometimes not at all as dedicated game machines.

Lets go back to the concept of downloadable content first. Every system has some sort of DLC attached to it, and I believe all are attached to that particular system. Sure you can say that for the most part you run into this issue even with purchased media but old Xbox or PS2 games could always be traded in or sold if you were done with them, not the case for DLC. So in the transition to a new system either there needs to be a system in place to transition this media along with you or alot of people will be out of luck and money.

In respect to the PS3 Sony has backed that machine heavily for its "next 10 year lifecycle" and its Blue Ray functionality. If people are buying a Blue Ray player in 5 years they are not going to "upgrade" the player because they are not looking to play new games.

The Xbox 360 has become a major home media hub and has the ability to be continuously updated as Microsoft does twice a year. So as new features get added to the system it essentially refreshes the system. After years of updates would we transition to a new system that may have to go through all these updates again?

The Wii has sold very well, but its sold very well to a casual player and the player who is interested in the Wii Mote control, graphics are not a high selling point for these buyers so is there a need to upgrade to a Wii2? And what would happen to the Wii control, would people still be interested in buying a new system that has the same type of control scheme or would it have worn off by then?

These systems are becoming more and more than game systems, and how much more can graphics really play a part in the need for a next generation? Will the fact that our media collections and Blue Ray DVD's have become attached to our game systems mean we don't need a new one.

Perhaps Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo just need to continue to update there current machines (along the way we will surely see new hardware iterations as well). The Xbox 360 is probably the closest machine to a full functioning media center that has additional features added to it twice a year, the PS3 still seems to have a long way to go until its fully functional with its incremental updates and certainly there is ALOT Nintendo has still not done with the Wii.

If the right online systems and software continue to be introduced and all systems continue to increase their media capabilities through updates could that be all that is needed. Also perhaps without a major jump to a new generation any or all of these systems could finally become cheap enough to really reach the mass market!

Just "Web" Browsing, not anymore.

You probably don't even think about it anymore, web browsing is as commonplace as watching TV, we do it all day long, for everything. Need information, entertainment, nothing to do, get it on the web. What isn't commonplace is those of us who seem to always have the web.

First and foremost I'm a Mozilla Firefox user, on my PC's, Mac and Linux machines. I like Microsoft programs but Firefox just seems to work better for me. But like I said above I have the web everywhere. Not just at home and work, everywhere, I have it with me just about all the time. For starters in my home I even have the web in the garage, haven't really used it much there but it's there on the Linux machine. I guess for that sometime when I need to look up something and I'm just to dirty to come inside.

I don't have a PS3 and have not yet seen the web browsing capabilities of that machine but I do have a PSP but have been very disappointed with its browsing capabilities. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but it can't seem to gather up enough memory to load most of the sites I want to browse and those it does it does at a snails pace. Simply not worth waiting forever when I can just go in the next room. It might be an alternative if I didn't have the web on my PDA but more about that in a minute.

What has actually positively surprised me is the Wii Opera Web Browser. While not fast enough (at least for the distance it is from my Wireless access point) to do much with video (when it was closer it streamed YouTube much better) including sites Mahalo Daily and Webb Alert that I visit it does load most of the other sites I visit fast enough. Yesterday I was able to browse Google Reader, AVS and even check my Hotmail with ease. Since it's also on my HDTV it's nice and big to see. So it's brought browsing from the couch in the living room in as an alternative when the mood strikes me.

Finally for me is that always with me function of having the web both on my phone and my PDA Phone. Of course the PDA is the better option, it isn't on the 3G network so using the cell service can make things a little slow but I tend to browse mobile versions of sites I regularly visit anyway. Connected to Wi Fi its much faster and very usable either way in a pinch. My actual cell phone also can get on the web yet again using mostly those mobile versions of sites.

So the web, its always there and I guess you can say I get tangled up in it from time to time. Of course it helps that in the area of web browsing on the go we have certainly come a long way.

It wasn't that long ago I can remember the Internet and the WWW just arriving, oh how it was simple in its infancy. Yet I don't think back then I could have imagined it being so much a part of my daily life as it is now.

And so it seems perhaps we're not "just browsing" anymore are we.

Ah yes the Web, the World Wide Web. Does anyone even call it that anymore?

The High Costs of a Digital Life.

I remember back when I would watch movies that would depict the future and what it would be like, all the digital services around the home, home automation, information everywhere and I used to think, boy that would be cool but its going to cost a fortune. Then as these things started coming to realization I started to think some more about how cool this stuff is but its never going to be all over because who's going to keep paying for more and more services.

Present day, I for one pay for more and more services!

Keep in mind we're talking digital life services here, most of these things you can most certainly do without. Which means they are already above and beyond those we already pay for, you know things like water, heat, electricity and sewer bills. Those types of services are not even thought of anymore you just simply budget and pay them. So are digital services becoming the same way?

Most people may already include cable or satellite TV into a service we simply pay for or how about cell phones everyone's got one of those these days right? Yet think beyond those to things like pay per view, HBO, text messaging, email and Internet on your phone. All those are becoming just as important. Broadband Internet service is another modern day service that you pretty much must have, but at what speed? How much are we willing to pay and can we do without it?

Between my cable/ Internet bill, my cell phone bill and the home security bill I pay allot for services, but those are the ones I feel are commonplace and I've become numb to the payments. Sure they are the first to go if money ever got tight but for now I'm not sure what we'd do without them. Then there are things like my WOW subscription and Xbox Live and not to mention my Blockbuster account and things start to add up.

Which is why today I started scratching my head as I began to want an Apple TV, high def rentals, sign me up (of course I already have that service with Xbox Live and have never used it).

But the one thing that holds it all together is the fact that I feel I'm not spending money on entertainment and services "just to have them", they all generally get used. That is the most important part to me, the cost = the value.

That and lets face it, we never go out, but is it because we don't want to, or can't afford to!

The cost of a digital life may be high, but if you can afford it and you enjoy it, there is allot to be enjoyed. Just make sure the bills are paid first, you can't enjoy much digital life sitting in a cold room with no electricity!

Being a Dual 360 Household.

Today I became known as a "dual 360 household". By virtue of a friend I obtained a second Xbox 360 which now resides upstairs on an SD TV. At one point awhile back I had purchased a second original Xbox and a copy of the Media Center DVD to use it as a Media Center Extender but for some reason it stopped working and I did without. Then I bought a 360 and since then the media capabilities of the system have grown, and it became apparent. I needed my upstairs media center back.

Quite some time ago there used to be talk of how game consoles would become these entertainment boxes for the living room, it just never seemed like a good idea. Yet that time has come and guess what it is a good idea. Its also the main reason for that second 360, heck it may never even see a game spin in its drive. Actually I shouldn't say that, but maybe at least not until my son is old enough to be able to play games. Right now its going to do a lot of streaming video, audio, pictures and DVD playing.

My only hope is that my wife will get used to it enough to use it when I'm not around. I've spent a lot of time prepping all the kids movies to make it easy to pull up a video at any time (and for good measure I've added all her favorites as well).

In any case its a testament to the product and what it can do, the 360 has not always had the most heralded reputation but even after mine did get the dreaded RROR a while back its still probably the only piece of technology that not only am I willing to start using it again, but adding a second as well. Here's hoping for a long period of good use!

A Laptop that fits in a Manila Envelope is Cool!

You've got to hand it to Steve Jobs and Apple, they really know their marketing, and they really know how to make technology cool. Maybe that's part of the reason I'm going to get a MacBook instead of a PC laptop. However I won't be getting a MacBook Air, not because its not cool just because I need a little more Book for my money.

The slim size of the MacBook Air is amazing, anything that can fit in a manila envelope is cool in my book, heck right after the announcement I went over to the filing cabinet and realized I already had a case for one in the event that I did buy one! It's the cost of the MacBook Air thats a bit much for me. At a base price of $1,800 its priced slightly higher than the comparable MacBook I've been pricing and eying up which has twice the hard drive space, a faster processor, an optical drive and the three year warranty for just about the same price.

I like how Apple solved the optical drive issue with two choices, one which going on the fact that you at least have another PC in the house is essentially free, the other is only $100 for a USB optical drive and thats also pretty cool. However despite the fact that the machine has 2GB of ram which is nice, I can't get over the need for more hard drive space.

Overall though its a damn nice piece of hardware and anyone caught with one is going to immediately have the cool label attached to them.

I'm not an iPod user and I don't have an iPhone so the rest of Apple's Keynote didn't mean a whole lot to me, but Apple products do essentially define cool (even if my Zune is SO much better than any iPod) and they do a hell of a job at it. Heck maybe that's why the Nintendo DS and Wii sell so well, maybe people think Apple makes them!

They Knew What They Were Getting Into.

Okay, now that the dust is settling on the Warner/ Blue Ray/ HD-DVD announcement of last week and it seems Blue Ray has won the war, the even bigger announcement is hitting the Internet. Current Blue-ray players may or may not be able to play upcoming Blue-ray movies!

So you just bought that shiny new Blue-ray player now that you know the war is over (well I hope it was a PS3!) but is it profile 1.0? Profile 1.1? Profile 2.0? Because you see they're not upgradable so your kinda stuck.

But fear not soon it seems Blue-ray discs will be easily labeled for you so you know that movies with a "Bonus View" sticker will require Profile 1.1 and movies with a "BD Live" sticker will require Profile 2.0.

WHAT! Are you freaking kidding me! Actually the best response to all of this coming from the Blue-ray Disc Association is that its HD-DVD's fault!!! According to the BDA HD-DVD arrived on the market sooner than Blue-ray was ready for thus forcing Blue-ray into the market unfinished. Of course this must have been why those players were so expensive too right?

But getting back to it early adopters knew what they were getting into so its all good and fine, they all did right? I'm sure everyone who spent upwards of $1,000 on a new Blue-ray player was well aware it was only good for roughly a year or so right?

Well I'm sure there are a few VERY rich people that will be all fine with tossing their old players for new ones but I'm sure there will be more than a few pretty perturbed customers out there. Unless you own a PS3, and lets face it that was Sony's plan all along wasn't it. Maybe that's why there's no really GAMES for the game system.

Call me aggravated, I do own a HD-DVD player and plan to keep it, I don't own a Blue-ray player or PS3 so I'm partial to HD-DVD I guess, but at this point just like I'm more likely to have two 360's and not a PS3 I may just look to add one of the 360 HD-DVD add ons when Amazon starts selling them for $50 before I get a Blue-ray player.

Too bad HD-DVD, you were better for us all, but we'll never know now. Here's to the future of Blue-ray, in all its many configurations!

Outlook and Windows Live Mail

A few days ago I Twittered that I was going back to Outlook after using Windows Live Mail for most of the last quarter of 2007. Well its been hit and miss after going back in that I've still spent most of my time in Live Mail. The reason is simple, it has a much superior search function. Note: I did turn off the active search tool which brings up topics and links based on words and names in an email, that I didn't care for.

However I really needed to get back to my calendar and contact list in Outlook, I have not yet moved most of my contacts to Live Mail as I am trying to thin the herd of names I've collected over the years no longer applicable today. I had been trying to use the calendar on my PDA as an alternative but that wasn't working out well.

So for now I spend my time going between both programs. It would be great for Microsoft to create an newer offline calendar tool that would sync with my Windows Mobile PDA. The online calendar they currently offer is not something that I am willing to invest in, putting all of my appointments, etc. online is not something I want to do right now.

I have stopped using Outlook at home so having an alternative email program while away from the office is nice, sure there is always the web based version but I like having the desktop client. Overall I guess I just like it, and it really is a good mail program, probably one of the better that I've used. From the looks of it also you can tell that Microsoft sort of wants you to move away from Outlook as newer Live Mail accounts can't seem to be used in Outlook.

But I guess its just as well, plus there are other Live services that are pretty good including Windows Live Gallery for photos which is phenomenal from what I've used thus far and although I don't use Live Writer much for this blog I use it for others and it's also quite nice.

So for now its two programs for me, perhaps in the future that will change as one program becomes increasingly more dominant over the other but for now I'll play with my old toys just as much as my new ones! Enjoy your weekend!

Is That One of Those iPhone Things?

So I'm at a bar/birthday party yesterday evening and I'm talking to someone I know, she knows I have a son so she asks the woman question "so do you have any photos?" My first reaction is no I don't really carry any photos, and as for some unknown reason I reach for my back pockets (like I have some secret photo album stash back there) I realize, no I don't have "a" photo with me I actually have ALL my photos with me.

So I locate my Zune in my pocket and take it out, now I begin to browse to my photos and she realizes I'm using the touch wheel and that's when the question comes, "is that one of those iPhone things?" Now at this point I'm really tempted to go into it but I quickly realize, she's had a few and she really doesn't care anyway so I simply say no and proceed to show off some photos.

Now aside from the fact that I had to hold my breath as I handed her my Zune 80, again in a bar, again after she's had a few and just hope that the slow motion fall to the floor doesn't happen, it was nice to be able to show off some photos, recent ones may I add of my son.

And that's what I wanted from the Zune, those non everyday experiences, and showing off some photos was one of them. That's the beauty of it when technology is there for you. Before the Zune it was always having to choose the photos to put on the device which was never automatic and of course prior to the Zune I used my PSP, which I would never even have had in my pocket in the bar nevermind have taken it out.

So no it wasn't an iPhone thing but to me its so much more than even a Zune, its being able to take those photos and memories everywhere I go, and the opportunity to share them when I get there.

Cruzer Weight Contender

I received a new piece of tech tonight, a SanDisk Cruzer USB Flash Drive. I received this drive as a gift for raising money during the fall. Not expecting to receive it so soon I was nicely surprised it arrived today, at in honor of all the new tech coming out at CES I thought it was a nice touch.

USB flash drives are clearly nothing new and the 2 GB capacity of this one is even on the low end side of flash drive capacity but I've never had a flash drive so this is new to me. I've always wanted one, never really had an all out need for one. For the most part I would use my PDA for transferring files.

But this one has something special worth noting a feature called U3, which basically lets specially coded programs run right off the flash drive on any computer essentially letting you tote around the right program for the job no matter where you go. Want to make sure your spreadsheets going to work on the PC when you get to the other office, well it will because you have the program you used to create it with you. Now lets not get crazy here, we're not toting around Microsoft Office, but after quickly browsing the program selection I was pleased to see Open Office available as well as some other nice programs including Firefox, Skype and Weatherbug.

Okay I'm sure this is not ground breaking but going into it I was clearly expecting to format and use the whole 2 GB for data transfer, although the option is there, I'm going to keep this little drive operating like it was meant to. So far I have removed Skype from my PC, I don't really use Skype, but now I can anywhere I want!

In any case I now have a USB Flash Drive to attach to my key chain and use for transferring those pesky files of mine. Sure I've got SkyDrive to do that for me now, but I can't attach my SkyDrive to my keychain now can I!

CES thoughts so far.

The Consumer Electronics Show is in full force out in Las Vegas this week and for those of us who can't be there in person check out www.engadget.com for what I've found thus far to be the best home browsing of the CES experience.

So what have I found out so far? Well besides the big Warner announcement for me it seems its all about thinner and BIGGER TV's, like Panasonic's 150-inch plasma display! Don't even tell me you don't want one of these puppies which are due in stores 2009.

Outside of the TV department Media Extender devices seem to finally be getting some love, hopefully we'll see them sooner rather than later. The PSP is suddenly SONY's biggest piece of hardware and a 16GB memory stick is due in stores around March, but the $300 price tag for the memory only seems steep for me. Surprisingly to me both Apple and SONY have announced plans to begin adding DVD and Blue Ray portable rips for iPods and the PSP respectively. Both are limited in studio partnership right now but this is a step in the right direction for both formats. Lastly I've spotted a photo frame with Wi-Fi capabilities, which is something I've been looking forward to.

Since like me you're probably stuck at home do yourself a favor and check out Engagets coverage, its the closest thing we've got to being on the show floor!

When is the Anti-Virus the real Virus?!

Consider this a bonus post, but Virus has been all over my world since early Saturday morning. While everyone in the house is slowly recovering from a nasty virus thats going around I decided tonight to transfer my paid McAfee subscription to the free one that is offered to Comcast customers. Wow, what a pain that was!

You see once McAfee is on your computer it doesn't like to leave, and since I needed to uninstall McAfee to install McAfee (yeah I don't understand it either) I had to dig in. Once I went into Add/Remove programs and uninstalled the program I was shocked to say the least when I returned to Windows to see that most of the program was still there. Apparently McAfee has been on my PC long enough to leave "Legacy Programs" which needed to be uninstalled first. Legacy Programs? Well they're certainly not listed in Add/ Remove programs. Thankfully a quick Internet search led me to the McAfee Legacy removal tool, keep in mind the one feeling like a tool at this point is me.

The irony of all this is that again, I'm digging out this program only to quickly install it once its all out? In the end I did get it out, and then back in and the install did go pretty well.

I've had pretty good luck with McAfee, it came preinstalled on the computer and I've kept the subscription up to date, and its nice that Comcast give "complimentary" subscriptions to its customers, especially when there are other freer programs it could have offered. But in the end McAfee doesn't quite make it easy to do much of anything, even canceling my subscription was a chore (they canceled it, then charged me for it, then asked me what I wanted to do to resolve the issue, no really that happened).

So remember be cautious, McAfee will get rid of those pesky viruses and keep you protected, just don't ask it to remove itself!

Its Time to Rip on Sony!

I'll be the first person to say that when the Playstation first arrived it was the second coming of the video game system. Then something happened to Sony. They went from a company that knew EVERYTHING a gamer wanted to, well, SEGA. They created a difficult architecture with the PS2 but yet it thrived and SONY has thrived in the gaming market most prominently on name. It was a year or so back when a high ranking SONY executive spotlighted Microsoft's multi SKU issue with the 360 and the fact that some 360's had hard drives and other's didn't that was a major problem for the average consumer. That person had said that with SONY, everyone gets the same experience. Well unless that experience is confusion, he was wrong.

I'm pretty knowledgeable about tech and gaming systems and I can honestly tell you the differences between Microsoft's 360 SKU's but quiz me on SONY's and you'll stump me in a minute. They have changed the price and feature list on the PS3 so many times already I don't even think THEY know the difference anymore. They did it with the PS2 as well and most recently they did it with the PSP. But there's a big difference between SONY and Microsoft. Okay with Microsoft you may need to add a hard drive or a larger hard drive but you can add it, with a knock on Microsoft not all system's can add the HDMI port. But with SONY when hardware changes so do features.

When the PS2 went from a full on system to the PS2 slim there was no room for the PS2 hard drive add on anymore. I'm not even going to get into the PS3 in this blog because right now its the PSP I'm ticked about. I bought one and have relatively done not a whole lot with it but SONY was adding features to it (ungodly slowly but they do) but recently the major new features are you guessed it, only coming to the PSP SLIM.

Hey I get the idea of selling more hardware, and if you're an iPod owner your the king of knowing that, but these are game systems and aside from making the insides cheaper and slimming the thing down to lessen costs don't leave your customers out in the cold. A hand held system should not have to be rebought for a new feature, sure if you WANT the new updated looking one go buy it, but "old" PSP owners are already left out of the SKYPE add on, the VIDEO OUT addition and surely the new GPS feature will soon be announced as PSP Slim only.

This is good only in a sense as every time I get close to thinking about getting a PS3 SONY gives me a reason to hate them a little longer, putting off that purchase just a bit more and hopefully getting to that next feature addition or price drop.

As for now, well my PSP sits in front of the computer monitor in its cradle quietly hoping to be used again some day (most of its uses were taken over by my Zune 80)and well I posted a photo of where my PS2 "slim" is these days, yes its pretty much only a DVD player, yes its in the bedroom and yes those are flowers on top of it. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Bleak Future for HD-DVD?

Warner Brothers announced today that they are going Blue Ray only after May of 2008 and like a shot heard round the world Blue Ray fans pumped their fists and jumped for joy. As it seems more and more studios are moving towards Blue Ray, personally I thought just Disney and Pixar alone on the Blue Ray front was enough. Personally I own an HD-DVD player and not a Blue Ray player. Why did I get my HD-DVD player? Well Amazon had one of their really great deals and out of the twelve HD-DVD's I currently own approximately eight of them came free with that purchase. Of the other four, one is the Planet Earth set and another is a HD-DVD/DVD combo so all in all I'm not going to lose too much if HD-DVD went belly up tomorrow. I do however have over 500 DVD's, I'm not proud of that but like many people its an addiction!

So what does this mean for most people, probably nothing. The bottom line is that if you don't have a PS3 you probably don't have Blue Ray and even if you do you still may think Blue Ray (and HD-DVD for that matter) are a little bit more expensive than DVD's. I'll admit I am much more likely to rent HD-DVD than buy right now and watching DVD's still does not bother me at all. The studio's may want you to believe it but the difference between DVD and HD-DVD is NOT as big as VHS to DVD.

I'm not a fool, I pretty much knew buying the HD-DVD Player that I was buying into the side most likely to loose out, but I got a good price and some good movies. Maybe in the future I'll get a Blue Ray player or a PS3 but right now I don't feel that need to go all out High Definition DVD.

Perhaps the Warner announcement is good if in fact it does signal the end of a useless format war. But I've said it before and it warrants being said again. When the war is officially over, will anyone even care?

It also warrants being said that although I once frowned upon a time when movies would be distributed digitally and stored digitally its something that I have been exposed to recently and if I could trade my entire physical DVD collection for an identical collection stored on my PC, well that offer may be too good to pass up.

In the end you just have to enjoy what you have, if its DVD I say stay that way, if you've got Blue Ray, well today made you that much happier, but if you have HD-DVD its also not the end of the world. Just scratch off the HD part and tell people its just a DVD player!

Xbox Live, Nintendo DS and the PSP

Today I wanted to touch on three news/ rumor articles that came across digg. First and foremost those of you with Xbox Live service know that the holidays were quite sketchy. The service was up, down and flaky when it working. If you follow Major Nelsons Twitter the only thing worse than Xbox Live being down was Major reporting on it! Which of course was a good thing, I knew what the problem was and that someone was working on it, someone (actually lots of people) that would probably rather be home with their friends and family rather than trying to get the service back up and running. As an Xbox Live founding member I don't even need five fingers to count the amount of times Live has been down or really frustrating. Which leads me to the people that think Microsoft owes them something for the week or two there was a problem. The service costs $50 a year, not that I wouldn't appreciate a free game or some points but get over it, Microsoft doesn't owe us anything. This stuff happens and the fact that they were fixing it on site is why you pay your $50 a year.

Next up is the Nintendo DS and the news that full DS games may soon be downloadable through the Wii, this is welcomed news and I would hope that Nintendo would start allowing more Virtual Console games to be played on the go as well. I would also hope that Nintendo will offer some sort of hard drive/storage device that can plug into either the Gameboy slot or the DS game slot so that persistent storage is available on the DS, noone wants to have to keep one game loaded and never turn the DS off to play it.

Finally is the news of an upcoming update to the PSP that will allow Skype calls to be placed using the PSP. I'm not one to diss on a new PSP feature but lets face it, we all have cell phones that can get coverage just about anywhere, do we really need to find a Wi Fi hotspot buy some sort of new headset and use our PSP's to make calls using Skype? And you know you wont be able to play games or anything else while making those calls. It's nice to see SONY adding new features in baby increments to their systems but things like more downloadable games for the PSP, divx and wmv support and even media streaming from your PC to the PSP would be much better at this point.

That's just my two cents, looking forward to CES to see what the real stories will be. Until next time, enjoy your digital day.

Taking a Digital Break

So following up on yesterday's post on my new year's resolutions is my call it anti digital life post! Okay so its not really anti digital life but one thing that I need to do is take a break once in awhile. That would seem odd because if you take a break you have less to talk about right? But I realized I can be enraptured with the computer, the video games and the TV allot more than I should be sometimes. So this year in order to be a better friend, father and husband to real people I've made it a promise to take digital breaks. While it may sound funny it was last night when I actually sat down to read (not using a Kindle by the way) that I realized that I need to do this for my own sanity. Its not that I don't play with my kid or spend time with my wife, but often times I run back and forth to the computer as well. I guess it's a simple idea, but from time to time we forget and this is my time to remember. I spend all day on the computer at work and its the first thing I go to when I get home and the last thing I do before I go to bed. This year I'd like to change that, and I think I will, even if it does cause me to curl up on the floor in the fetal position and rock back and forth I promise to not Twitter it.

Happy New Year Digital Life Resolutions!

Happy New Year everyone! I thought I'd make my first post of 2008 about what I plan to do tech wise for the year 2008, my tech resolutions if you will.  So without further ado, here we go.

First and foremost I will get a laptop this year, and 99% says it will be an iBook, and another 99% says I'm going to put either XP or Vista on it as well.  Getting an iBook will give me the best of both worlds. Now I just need to do a little research and run it through finance.

I spoke in my last blog about a garage theater I was planning on creating.  For the most part that's been scrapped.  But what I'd like to do is add a bit to my Linux music server.  What the plan is there is to add an inexpensive receiver, DVD changer and a set of speakers for inside the garage and outside the garage.  The idea is to add music for outside in the backyard and make it easier to add a projector for some impromptu summer movie sessions if they happen.

Hopefully soon I'll receive my 2nd 360 (more on that when I get it) and become a 2 360 household. My friend had his here for new years and I got a taste of what it will be like, its nice.

I need a new digital camera, well I don't need one but I have a need to upgrade the one I have.  I've been doing some research, I may be making it more complicated that it needs to be, but I don't want to go too cheap and I also don't want to go too expensive.  I want to stay away from using AA batteries as well.  But this year I would like to get a new one.

This year I see a larger transition away from buying allot of video games, allot of full priced video games, probably end up buying more Live Arcade games though, and this year I'm going to go back and finish a bunch of the ones I've already bought before I go on another purchasing rampage!  This of course doesn't have anything to do with playing games!

Finally and this is my biggest stretch.  I've just been exposed to GPS and its pretty cool, I've been looking at some of these and if the right one comes by with the right price I'd like to add one of these babies to my gadget collection!

So there it is, I'm trying to keep it realistic while adding worthwhile technology to the home.  I guess that means its time to get the finances in order so all this tech doesn't give me a real life blue screen of death!  And who knows maybe new years resolution 2009 will be to get my wife to start using some of it!