PS3 Lifeboat

So now that my 360 is dead (again), I suppose it is a good time to discuss the PS3. I in fact have had a PS3 for about a month. I bought it for a couple of reasons, neither of which are PS3 games: I wanted a Blu-Ray player, and I wanted to get a PS3 while it still had the Emotion Engine chip on-board (and thus far better PS2 backwards compatability).

First and foremost, I wanted a Blu-Ray player. Back before the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war got underway my prediction was for Blu-Ray to win based on PS3 sales. Last year for a while that prediction looked false because HD-DVD got a several month head start and the first Blu-Ray player (and titles) were buggy and produced crap images. So Blu-Ray got a terrible start and HD-DVD took an early lead. But over the first part of 2007 Blu-Ray got decent players on the market, higher-resolution titles, erased that sales lead, got a huge advantage in terms of studio support, and got more key exclusive titles. Take a look at this analysis from The Digital Bits, dated 2/15/07.

Let's look at these simple facts: Of the 12 major and mini-major Hollywood studios (Fox, Disney, MGM, Sony, Lionsgate, Paramount, New Line, HBO, Warner Bros, Universal, DreamWorks and The Weinstein Company) 9 support Blu-ray, 5 of them exclusively. Only 6 support HD-DVD, just 2 of them exclusively (one studio, DreamWorks, remains uncommitted). Not counting computer hardware or budget brands, Blu-ray Disc has 9 major set-top hardware manufacturers behind it (Sony, Pioneer, Samsung, Philips, Panasonic, LG, Mitsubishi, Thomson, Sharp), while HD-DVD boasts just two (Toshiba and now LG). HD-DVD is an add-on to Microsoft's Xbox 360, while Blu-ray is built into EVERY Sony PlayStation 3. Nielsen VideoScan is reporting that in software sales, Blu-ray has virtually erased the sales lead enjoyed by HD-DVD since the formats were launched, and is now outselling HD-DVD by a 2 to 1 (and growing) margin.

My Two Cents - Archived Posts (3/2/07 - 2/5/07)

Of course, once I had one I did pick up a couple of games - I bought MotorStorm out of the gate, and after trying the demo I picked up Ridge Racer. I also bought flOw and Lemmings from the online store, and I currently have Resistance: Fall of Man from Gamefly. My verdict so far: I still wouldn't buy a PS3 for the games, even if your 360 dies ;-)

As for Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD . . . meh. Blu-Ray is a nice format and I'd rate the picture quality of the two formats pretty evenly. The thing I like most about it now is that I'm agnostic. The majority of my discs come from Netflix and Netflix will ship me either format. So I can watch Casino Royale on Blu-Ray, then turn around and watch Clerks II in HD-DVD and not really care. I bought a couple of titles on each format, but I don't see myself building up a big library in either format - and I probably wouldn't build up a library if there were only one format. Turns out the way I watch movies means most of them I don't need to own.

There was one shady bit I didn't like at all. I bought my PS3 at Best Buy. In the physical store mind you, with a plain old credit card (and I don't have whatever stupid Best Buy loyalty card thing they have going.) The next day I got an email from Best Buy about new things I can buy for my new PS3. Follow that for a moment. They've connected my credit card number to my email address and didn't ask for permission. It took me a minute to even figure out how they did that - a couple of years ago I used the web interface to buy something for in-store pickup and that required both my email address and credit card. Apparently now they scan any purchases to see if it matches that record. Well! I unsubscribed from Best Buy's email list right then, and I'm sorely tempted to stop using that credit card at Best Buy. I don't like this sort of data mining - it makes it terribly clear that Best Buy is profiling me. What's the privacy policy on this data? Will they give it to the government if they ask? Or Sony? It's entirely not kosher.

So anyway, I guess I'm going to be playing a lot more Motorstorm and Resistance over the next couple of weeks (sigh). And watching Blu-Ray instead of HD-DVD . . . .

technorati tags:PS3, Blu-Ray, BestBuy, marketing

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God I hate Microsoft!

So, Xbox 360 #2 has died. I just spent 23 minutes on the phone with customer support. Long time readers may remember when the first one was declared dead and the new one arrived. I thought this was going to be under warranty - since 360 warranties have been extended to one year, and I've had this particular serial number less than a year. But no! It turns out my one year warranty is from my original purchase - so my second 360 only had 9 months of warranty. It costs $140 to get the "red ring of death" repaired on a machine out of warranty. Bastards!I was pretty happy with the service I got last time - the unit came back quickly and that was a somewhat dodgy case (since I couldn't consistently reproduce the freezes - this now is that the console has stopped booting altogether.) This whole "We sent you a "new" (read refurbished) box, but didn't give it a full warranty for it." - that's just bullshit.

technorati tags:Xbox360, CustomerService, Warranty

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Planet Earth Sharkwatch: Episode "Shallow Seas"

This is not a good episode for selachophobes. There are a few drive-by pictures of sharks, but be wary when the get to the part about the big-ass manta ray. There's a quick reference to some minor shark, but then they cut to a great white eating up on some seals. It's a relatively quick set, but there's a few "look at all the teeth!" shots. You have been warned.

technorati tags:PlanetEarth, sharks, selachophobia

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More on Backups

So a while back I talked about my backup plans and software. But that was before I got the backup drive for Tiny God. It turns out that Acronis won't back up the Boot Camp drive. I'm not quite sure why - there's something about how the drive is partitioned. And furthermore, once I had the external drive formatted Parallels wouldn't boot would the drive attached, it complained about my "non-standard" configuration.

So I poked around some. First off, there's this thread over at Parallels about how to run Boot Camp with multiple partitions. So fixing the "no boot" problem is easy - change the line that reads:

Disk 0:0 image = Boot Camp

to

Disk 0:0 image = Boot Camp;disk0s3

(obviously your string will vary)

But the removable drive is not visible in XP (through Parallels). So to fix that you add:

Disk 1:0 enabled = 1

Disk 1:0 = 1

Disk 1:0 media = 1

Disk 1:0 connected = 1

Disk 1:0 image = Boot Camp;disk2s2

Disk 1:0 cylinders = 0

and remove the two lines that read:

Disk 1:0 enabled = 0


Disk 1:0 = 0

This works - Parallels will run and both drives are mounted and look like "internal IDE" drives to Acronis. So Acronis will back up the C drive.

There may be issues - the backup is running now but it claims it's going to take 11 hours. Also I suspect Parallels isn't going to run if the drive is powered off. The second one is probably solvable - I can probably make two different Parallels files. But if the performance is sucky I'll have to revisit. I'd much prefer to back up in the native XP install anyway. We'll have to see

technorati tags:backups, software, Acronis, BootCamp, Parallels

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Need More Funny Cat Photos?

Of course you do.

Lately I added the RSS feed from I Can Has Cheezburger?, which is a site for those photos of cats with misspelled captions. A lot of them are dumb, but there's usually one or two every day that makes me chuckle. I recommend "Wait I will helps you tyep!" and "i can has walkthrough?"

technorati tags:cats, ICanHasCheezburger, humor, photos

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