Just a reminder that UFC 67: All or Nothing is Live tonight on Pay Per View. This is the first UFC event to be shown live in HD. Hopefully Time Warner will have the HD feed…
Big news regarding the event, The Ultimate Fighter 4 winner Travis Lutter, who was scheduled to fight Anderson Silva for the Middleweight Title, missed weight. The fight will still happen, but not as a title fight. Lutter missed the 185 lb mark by 1.5 lbs after two attempts to weigh in. After the first attempt, he went back for 2 hours to cut more weight, only to lose 0.5 lbs. It’s pretty sad, really. The guy worked his ass off to win TUF 4 and get a title shot, only to have it completely take away by not making weight. Come on man, you just blew your dream on something stupid.
Anyway, should be a great PPV tonight, with the debuts of Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Mikco Cro Cop, two of the world’s best.
[Update] So apparently, Time Warner is retarded. I just called and was on hold for 25 minutes to ask about the HD feed for the event. The <sarcasm> wonderful </sarcasm> guy I talked to told me, and I quote, “UFC is never going to provide an HD feed. Wherever you got your information is clearly wrong.” My response: “So the giant banner images on ufc.com and interviews with UFC President Dana White promoted the first HD PPV are all clearly wrong?” He stammered a little bit, then said “Yeah they’re wrong. They’re not talking about any PPV events.” This guy is clearly a winner.
I just got back from Gamestop where I picked up my preorder of Lost Planet Collector’s Edition. It came with a nifty little mech guy that’s gonna sit on my desk. More importantly, the back of the game box. It has listed “HDTV 720p/1080i/1080p”. SWEET! The game runs in native 1080p. Hell yes. Can’t wait to go fire this us and enjoy!
Slashdot today is reporting news from the Adult Entertainment Expo that Porn giant Digital Playground has switched it’s stance from BluRay to HD-DVD. Apparantly, Sony won’t product BluRay disks for any of these companies because they don’t want any porn on BluRay. This is the EXACT same thing that happened in the BetaMax vs. VHS format wars, where Sony refused to put any Porn on BetaMax. As much as some people don’t want to admit it, the porn industry pushes the new format acceptance. If they globally choose HD-DVD, the format wars could be over really quick.
Move over Xbox 360. Move over PS2. The PS3 is the fastest console to sell 1 million units. In the period from launch until last week, Sony sold 1 million PS3’s. In the same time frame, the Xbox 360 sold 600k units last year. I’m honestly shocked at that huge number. Maybe that’s why there’s lots of PS3’s available now, because Sony ramped the every living hell out of production and get them to market.
I’m happy that there’s a glimmer of good news here for Sony, in the midst of all the negative press they’ve been getting. If these sales keep up, and they sell more than Microsoft’s touted 10.4 million in the first year, expect BluRay to win the format war over HD-DVD.
From the press release:
SCEA went to great lengths to help meet demand for PS3, including airlifting systems into North America on a weekly basis to ensure a steady stream of units were available to consumers throughout the holiday season,” said Jack Tretton, president and CEO, SCEA. “The fact that we were able to reach the one-million mark faster than our top-selling platform, the PS2, further validates the strength of the PlayStation brand and our belief that consumers are ready to experience true high-definition gaming.” … “Reaching the one million mark for PS3 is the first of many major milestones for us as we head into a new year. Even more impressive, is that we were able to accomplish this feat while successfully managing two other gaming platforms–PS2 and PSP,” said Tretton. “With three PlayStation platforms now available to gamers, 2007 will be about software and delivering innovative, new experiences and award-winning franchises to consumers, both through retail and through our online PLAYSTATION Network.
So Xbox Scene basically confirmed the living hell out of this “rumor”. They have very high resolution pics of the case and motherboard, showing all the changes. The main change to the motherboard is replacing the “Ana” scaler chip with a “Hana” scaler chip. This can only mean that the current scaling in the 360 CANNOT produce a digital output, hence the redesign. Check out the video for yourself. I’m expecting announcements tomorrow at Bill Gates’ CES keynote.
Video after the jump
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Engadget got their hands on a nice pic of the new version of the Xbox 360, code-named “Zephyr” which should be coming “soon” according to their insider. Check the pic below for what proves to be the biggest feature: a dedicated HDMI port. I guess this puts to rest all the rumors that the AV port could actually ouput an HDMI signal. Also reported to be included is a 120GB hard drive, which should ease the pain of running out of space all the time, which I’ve even done a time or two, and I haven’t even downloaded any movies or TV shows yet.
My big question is what is Microsoft going to do for everyone that already has a 360 that has been bitching about no digital video output? Are they going to say “Oh well” and make everyone buy a new one? How much is this upgraded box going to cost anyway. I know I would LOVE to have HDMI output on my 360 for the HD-DVD movies at 1080p and full HDMI uncompressed audio, but I don’t see myself spending another $400 on it. Microsoft better be offering some sort of major discount to current 360 owners, or even better, a trade-up program. Send them your old 360, pay a small fee, get a new HDMI 360.
UPDATE (from jmel): Xbox-scene now has footage and more details on this nice little present to 360 gamers that have listened to the xbox team play down hdmi since the consoles launch a year ago.
Pic after the jump
Hit the jump for more »
So I downloaded Gran Turismo HD on Christmas Day from the PlayStation Store. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much. One track, 10 cars, time trial and drift trial modes only. I fired it up for the first time and my fiance said, and I quote, “Holy fucking shit. There’s no way that’s a video game.” She hit it dead on. My impression was the same. WOW. This is the best looking driving game I’ve EVER seen. At 1080p with a slick framerate, the game looks fantastic. The lighting on the cars and car models are insane. The backgrounds on the course are the best I’ve ever seen. It puts Project Gotham 3 to shame.
The car handling is just as expected with an Gran Turismo game. Each car handles uniquely, and I can confirm that the Acura RSX Type S in the game handles very close to the real thing. You start out with the shitty car that can’t do more than 45mph, but as you beat the times in Time Trial mode, you unlock new cars up until you get the coveted Ferrari. By starting with a slow, shitty car, those new to the game get a feel for the realistic style of driving. It’s almost like a mini license test mode.
The drift mode is interesting, although I’m not a fan of it with this series. It’s always been about realistic racing, and I think adding drifting to the game brings the ghetto to it, which isn’t needed. That’s not what the series has ever been about.
I’m hoping they release some more tracks, hopefully free. I’m satisfied with the number of cars for a glorified demo. An extra track or two would be nice, but we’ll see.
The only gripe I have, which I’ve heard from other people, is that you can’t really customize your car like in the full game. It’s a demo, I know, but at least allow people to customize the parts on the car fully. I’d love to re-work the gear ratios and downforce on some of the cars to get tighter turns and better acceleration.
As a free demo, I give this a 9.5 out of 10. Can’t wait for the full game, but I’m expecting late 2008 or early 2009 for that. Poliphony Digital always takes forever to make their games.
So I decided to hook up my Xbox 360 with VGA cables to my new Samsung 1080p HDTV, since the only way to get 1080p from HD-DVD with the console is to use VGA. Yeah, absolutely retarded, I know. Can you say HDMI cable? Anyway, I am among the close to 100% of VGA users who are experiencing issues. You either get washed out colors, extremely soft picture, or both. I’m experiencing the ridiculously soft picture quality. You can tell right away with the text in the dashboard looking muddy. Another huge problem I have is that the picture doesn’t seem to truely be 1920×1080. When you first turn it on, the image doesn’t fill the screen at all. There’s a 1-2″ black border around the whole screen. I was able to zoom the picture with the TV menus, but it still is not the same picture as the component video cables. You can tell it’s not zoomed in as far.
I’ve read a couple places where Microsoft outputs in a non-standard way over VGA, which is why people are having issues with VGA. Seriously, why the bloody fuck can’t Microsoft just put out an HDMI cable? This would solve just about every issue people with 1080p sets are having right now. My guess, which I would wager a good deal of money on at this point, is that the hardware just isn’t there to output digital video. Unless they update the hardware, there’s no chance of getting HDMI output on the 360. And I know for damn sure I’m not buying another one. If they could do it, they would have released one already to combat the only thing the PS3 has going for them.
[Update] I know a lot of people have no problems with the VGA connection on a computer monitor. I was referring to TVs here.
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