PAX Recap Part Two

Karin points out in the comments on Part One that I didn't say she won at Eye of Judgement and in the WoW Trading Card Game. As far as WoW:TCG goes, I'll claim that I hadn't covered it yet, but it's a fair point about Eye. So. Karin won both games. Let it be so recorded. As far as the World of Warcraft:TCG itself . . . I'm not sure there's much interest in me talking about it here. I like it, I was actually surprised about how much I liked it. It captures a lot of the feeling of the computer game, and the game design is pretty modern, adopting the "any card can be a resource" strategy that seems common in recent TCG's. One thing they do that is intriguing is that there are "Quest" cards which are dedicated resources. You prefer those, but in a pinch you can throw a duplicate card, or an expensive card you won't live long enough to cast or whatever. The concert on Saturday night was just freaking unbelievable. Jonathan Coulton opened and his set was quite a lot of fun - I was holding out a slight hope to hear First of May, but y'know we got Skullcrusher Mountain, Baby Got Back, Re: Your Brains, Mandelbrot Set and so forth, so one can hardly complain. It's fair to say I would have been entirely happy to have seen a whole concert Jonathan Coulton (Oh but hey - he's in SF a week from Friday, so I will!), but then they segued straight to MC Frontalot. Front's set was full of goodness, and there was no car to get out of parking. I hope his next album includes the live version of the Penny Arcade theme song because it totally blew my mind. The band managed to set the chorus to the Katamari Damacy theme music, and kept weaving back from the one song to the other. It was quite astonishing. After that it was the Minibosses, but again we bailed out early (sorry Minibosses!) I like the Minibosses fine, but it's the same schtick as the One-Ups, and honestly one rendition of the Super Mario brothers theme per weekend is enough for me. Sunday we had a late breakfast/lunch and then it was time to head back to the airport, so we didn't go to the show on Sunday. I have this feeling that some people would read this and say "so you pretty much flew to Seattle for one day and to see two concerts?" Well yeah, that's basically what we did. There were some ancillary things, like seeing Rock Band and Eye of Judgement. (Oh! There were DS WiFi stations and you could download this demo of a game called Drawn to Life. Karin and I both played it while waiting in line for the Saturday concert. Basically you draw a character which then animates through a 2d sidescrolling platformer. In the one level demo you also are called upon to draw a cloud, which then lets you reach higher platforms you couldn't orginally. It was neat, and I had heard absolutely nothing about it prior to PAX.) I can't believe I almost forgot the Omegathon! At PAX there is this multi-round tournament where 16 randomly-selected attendees play a variety of games. Round 4 opened the Saturday night concert and was supposed to be Karoake Revolution. But it turned out to be Rock Band, so we saw the Penny Arcade people play one track, and then two different bands tackled Radiohead's "Creep". I am SO buying that game.

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WWdN: In Exile

On the advice of commenter MrPeach, I unplugged my television, disconnected and re-connected my HDMI cable, and powered back up.I'm not entirely sure why it worked, but it did, and now I can watch the US Open in HD. All my other channels came back, too, and the offending DRM-esque error message is gone.
WWdN: In Exile Well then. That's good news. I was assuming the problem was that he was using a HDMI cable to a non-HDCP televesion, which is likely to be how I'd hook up the HR20 when I get it. (that's how my current HDTiVo is connected right now. Well, it's slightly more complicated than that, but it's a very close approximation.) Since his tv DOES support HDCP, then it sounds like one of those handshake weirdness that HDCP seems to have. Have I mentioned how much I don't look forward to HDCP? Fucking thing doesn't work right, and it's whole purpose is really just to piss me off. I realized last night that I couldn't hook the PS3 up without another adapter for the audio. I realized this morning that this wasn't true - I could easily run the audio straight through my receiver. In theory running in through the video scaler is good because the video scaler delays audio to match any delays introduced in video processing - hopefully preserving lip-sync. The problem is that the scaler has 2 optical and 2 coaxial audio inputs, so I bought an adapter to convert the PS3's optical output into a coax one. (Right now the HDTiVo uses HDMI for the audio, the SDTiVo is on one optical input, the 360 is on the second, and my DVD player uses a coax input. I suppose once I replace the SDTiVo with the HR20 I could hopefully use HDMI for the audio (barring HDCP fubars like the PS3 has. Grrr.) but this way I'll have some flexibility built in. Hmm. I wonder if I could use HDMI for the PS3 AUDIO, but then run the VIDEO via component? That would be cool, but it's such a weird configuration. I wouldn't be surprised if the PS3 wouldn't support it.

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WWdN: In Exile: DirecTV, why hast thou forsaken me? (Hint: it rhymes with 'DRM')

Sometime between this afternoon and this evening, my DirecTV receiver (HD 20-100 HR20/100) decided that it wouldn't let me see a picture on my television (Hitachi 60V500.) In place of a picture -- on every single channel, whether it was local, over-the-air, HD, or anything else -- I got the error message in this image, which you can click to embiggen.
WWdN: In Exile: DirecTV, why hast thou forsaken me? (Hint: it rhymes with 'DRM') Fantastic. I had to go check my HR-10 250 receiver to see if it was doing this. Good news is that it isn't - different software so I don't have this problem. Bad news is that I just ordered a HR20 today (because it's the only way to get the MPEG-4 channels coming online in September. Normally I'd say "no worries - I can use component", but *Wednesday* my component video switcher lost it's mind and started rebooting constantly. At the moment my PS3 is disconnected (the switcher was only switching between the 360 and the PS3 and then feeding into the video scaler), although I was going to fix the PS3 connection later tonight. But if I need another component input . . . I'm gonna have to replace the switcher eventually. I thought it wouldn't be until I bought a Wii, but maybe I'll have to break down earlier. You know what all this is telling me, don't you? It's telling me I need a new TV - one with HDMI and HDCP support. It's the only rational solution. I've always been a big DirecTV fan and I love me some HDTV, but the DRM pills you have to swallow at the same time are always riding the ragged edge of being dealbreakers.

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