* Posts by Iain

357 publicly visible posts • joined 29 May 2007

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Sony pulls PlayStation 3 software update

Iain

Re: EA

As Abe says, EA is a big company and different departments are doing different things. I too have heard from a few people that some titles that aren't expected to make a profit on the PS3 have been dropped from that platform. Different consoles have different demographics, and there's also the question of counter-programming - e.g. going PS3-exclusive for a while wasn't much of a problem for Epic's UT3, when the original release date would have meant it would have been competing for 360-owners' money with Halo 3.

Just the other day they announced a whole new brand for EA Sports Wii exclusives, for example; meanwhile your more traditional ones won't be going there.

Iain

Well, it is supposed to add features from the 360...

...they just added one too many.

It's a good job this only affects a few people; I'd rather send my hardware off for a fortnight for an RROD than lose all my savegames forever.

'HD TV gas' 17,000 times worse for planet than CO2, claims boffin

Iain

LCD using less power than CRT

I replaced my old CRT with an LCD a while back. Both 32" 16:9 screens, both made by Sony. The CRT used ~120W, the LCD ~80W. So clearly experiences differ from model to model, and also by screen configuration - I turn the backlight down a fair way on my LCD to get the best image quality.

Scareware runs amok on PlayStation site

Iain

@Monkey

The original SQL syntax was pre-Microsoft. In any case, SQL injection exploits are webserver issues, not the fault of the database server that receives the query. More precisely, it's probably a fault by the author of the site, not the server they are using. You might as well blame Apple when a 360 game has a bug, because they built the devkits.

Iain

In reply to various points...

Chizo - that's fair enough about the games that AC actually owns, I suppose. I don't have a few of the ones I listed myself; there are only so many hours videogaming I can do in a week. And personally, I found Gears of War to be a tedious, repetitive load of rubbish. Most people seem to like it though, just as they like the MGS series (which I just don't get along with at all).

I'd also rather own my HD movies on disc than use an online rental servies, which is why I have a super-cheap HD-DVD player at home, and will eventually pick up a Blu-ray player (probably PS3) in a year or so. Not because I'm some rabid fanboy upset that 'my' format lost, just because it's expensive and the firesales mean I've got the best part of a year's worth of unwatched films to catch up on as it is. My point was merely that, as online rental goes, the 360's is pretty good; the only ways you could really improve it would be by making the big drive cheaper (Sony got it right by letting you replace the drive with a standard one) and somehow persuade Sony Pictures to join the system, but that is hardly likely to happen.

"come come" AC - have you actually played Halo 3 and Haze? The former is far, far better, more's the pity; Free Radical's Timesplitters series was just fine, and I'm sure we can all agree on the excellence of GoldenEye. But Haze was a disaster. Elsewhere, as someone who has put a fair amount of time into both the Forza and GT series, I'd say that Forza 2 was comfortably the best game across both of them. Given that GT4 was better than Forza I don't doubt that the full GT5 will give it a good run if it fulfills expectations, but Prologue was just missing too much.

Time Crisis 4 is excellent. For a good hour or so, then you realise how little game you got for your £60.

UT3 comes out today, not in a few months.

Replacing part of the name of a product with a swearword is the lowest form if wit.

Iain

@Chizo

Yes, the AC is (partly) downloading the HD movies, because the bandwidth needed to watch them is rather greater than what most people have at home. So it does the old "buffering..." trick in the background until it's nearly done. You can get a list from here:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/marketplace/moviestv/

Re: games, do you really need to see the Halo 3, Crackdown, Forza 2, PGR 4, Gears of War, Dead Rising, Ninja Gaiden II, etc, etc list again? There are several valid complaints about the machine, but you're the first person I've seen claim that its lacking in software.

Xbox 360 pricing downed Down Under

Iain

@AC

"Have you not heard of Haze? or the 2,4 firmware?"

Why yes; yes I have. Haze is the game that memorably received 4.5/10 at IGN and a 5 at Edge. The 2.4 firmware is the update that has been pulled from Sony's systems after bricking a number of machines to the point where only a drive format will fix it.

This helps your PS3 Fanboyism how, exactly?

In reality, both are perfectly good machines, with much to recommend them. Mark is clearly being his usual silly self by claiming that the ability to watch movies in HD is an essential feature of a games console, but he probably doesn't even own a Wii, so we'll move swiftly on. 'ooFie' is correct that you're much better off with some sort of PC than either for media playback (other than Blu-ray discs) however, due to the multitude of formats in use these days.

Virgin warns 800 punters for file-sharing

Iain

support calls again

"dial 151 from a VM phone - its free!"

Yes. The support person even informed me that I could have called them for free, if only I was using a VM phone instead of my mobile. Which was pretty infuriating, given that I'd just painstakingly explained that the problem I was reporting was that my phone line wasn't working. ARRGH!

Who will be the next Doctor?

Iain

Tennant again

That hand has been significantly lurking around the Tardis all season; it's bound to be the excuse for how he regenerates as himself again.

HD TV in the UK

Iain

Don't mind the AC

Just about every Blu-ray disc is in full 1080p (as is HD-DVD). In fact the few that aren't are 1080i, not 720p. As stated on the boxes.

The previous AC claimed that HD movie downloads for the 360 "won't happen in the UK". Which is rather odd, since they DID happen last year. Not that I've bothered with it, since I have a HD-DVD player, and the vast majority of the 360's HD film selection were also released on the format.

"Mark" asked "why not use the new compression algorithm and create a HD movie that fits on ONE DVD?" - to which the answer is "because while a 720p film would fit if you dial down the bitrate enough, Blu-ray and HD-DVD already used those new compression algorithms and yet decided that 20+Gb for the video alone was necessary to give the best quality at 1080p". Squeezing a whole HD film onto a single DVD is the HD equivalent of VideoCD when it comes to being covered in a swathe of artifacts and mess.

Grand Theft Auto IV Xbox extras delayed

Iain

Re: Anyone notice?

That's someone else pretending to be Mark for a laugh, surely?

"I think that how it works, if the game sucks [...] move on to hyping the next game, and pretend you lever liked it or wanted it anyway..."

Motorstorm, Heavenly Sword, Lair, Haze.

GTA remains very similiar on both consoles, and a perfectly good game wherever you play it. Spending time arguing about filtering quality vs. resolution is quite incredibly childish.

Date set for next major PS3 firmware release

Iain

@Mark, as per usual.

The PS3 has many wonderful things about it. But your pitiful fanboy whining really does exaggerate things too much to retain credibility:

1) "GT5:P makes Forza2 and PGR looks like a joke." Graphically, it's seriously difficult to tell GT5:P and PGR4 apart a lot of the time, unless PGR4 is playing around with its OTT weather effects again, or your screen is big enough to quickly spot GT5:P's native 1080p resolution (not easy, since the antialiasing on PGR4 is better). In terms of handling, GT5:P and Forza 2 are very close; in fact I'd give the edge to Forza unless you're using wheels. And that's possibly more due to Logitech's offering being comfortably better than Microsoft's.

Up until a collision happens, obviously; at that point Forza 2's excellent damage model gets a chance to show how it can affect the handling as a result. Supposedly this is something coming to the 'full' GT5, but then cynical GT veterans can probably remember some of the long list of missing features we've been promised in the past.

Re: Grid, I've not experienced any issues with the 360 one yet. But I've not played it a hell of a lot (still, any play is more than you, I suspect).

Re: "good games", Ninja Gaiden Sigma is really pushing to call an exclusive when it's just XBox Ninja Gaiden with a few bonus bits. Not like the true sequel (which is, oh! 360 exclusive). Still, my friend who has already completed MGS4 twice (perk of being a journo) says it's completely amazing. Not amazing enough to avoid the wrath of hordes of whiny teenagers demaning he be visciously slaughtered for the heresy of not rating it a full 10/10, but still one of the best games he's played this year.

Iain

Achievements

Achievements on their own are OK I suppose, but what makes them actually useful is their integration with the friends system - in these modern days of games that don't really have "scores" any more, they're a handy way to see how you're doing on a game in comparison to your friends.

The aggregate score is just a guide to how many hours of gaming you've done since you bought the machine, really, but for individual games I quite like being able to see if I can beat the same challenges that mates have. So the way Sony implement them is more important than the mere fact that they are doing it at all.

Over half of US HD TV owners blurry on Blu-ray

Iain

Not enough time...

I don't have enough time to watch the obscene pile of HD-DVDs I've accumulated at £5 a shot (nothing like seeing prices come down from £25 to make you get carried away with "bargains") any time soon; buying a Blu-ray player and yet more movies isn't top of my priority list right now.

Hi-tech couch, coffee table pitched at modern sloths

Iain

Ideally...

Ideally there's no need for a telly at all - shove a built-in projector in the spec of that coffee table, and you're much better off.

But it all looks rather expensive, and so sticking last-gen DVD tech in there at all seems a bit pointless.

Canon EOS 400D digital SLR

Iain

I (heart) my 400D

Although it's technically a Digital Rebel XTi, which is what they call them in the US. Anyway, I'm really happy with it, particularly when I started using the longer lens off my old EOS 300 as an extra option.

The bundled software is surprisingly good; I find myself using it instead of pay-for alternatives a lot of the time, because the simple stuff (cropping to particular custom ratios, RAW colour balance tweaking etc.) is far more intuitive than usual.

World's first Blu-ray record pressing

Iain

Well, that's just a touch pointless...

DTS HD-Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD are both lossless compression schemes. Putting them both on a disc along with a PCM version, with all three using the same bit depth and sampling rate is like providing a deluxe version of an application with the executable as both .RAR and .ZIP as well as uncompressed.

What a waste of space.

Apple to launch UK movie downloads

Iain

@Andrew

Microsoft already offer HD movie 'rental' downloads over their XBox Live service, the files coming in around the 5Gb mark. So I don't see why Apple (probably using Akamai just as they do for Quicktime trailers) shouldn't be able to offer the same.

With a shelf-full of unwatched HD-DVDs I've not tried the service myself yet, but it's there.

Heaviest Virgin Media downloaders face new daytime go-slow

Iain

Can't complain too much.

I agreed to their terms and conditions when my M service was 1Mb in the first place. So throttling me back down to that if I grab a gig at 2Mb isn't too painful.

Plus, 1Mb is still enough to do most things on the internet - some ISPs will either throttle you to practically dialup, or just plain kick you off when you hit mysterious thresholds that they don't publish and change from month to month.

Brits pine for old and analogue tech

Iain

Reports of death of CD exaggerated, surely?

CDs aren't going anywhere in a hurry. Sure, sales are a little bit down, but hardly within an order of magnitude of the replacement HD formats that were stillborn.

Can I have my HD-DVD back? No? Oh well.

Wii still king in US

Iain

Really, Liam?

I found the new Pro Wiivo to be far more exciting and "next gen" with its point 'n' shoot controls than the slightly increased rez of the PS3 release. It might feel like a gimmick for the first 30 minutes, but it swiftly allows you to organise really clever runs and passes that just aren't possible on earlier versions.

Iain

@Aron A Aardvark

PS3 US price = $400 UK price = £300

Sony exchange rate $1 = 75p

Wii US price = $250 UK price = £180

Nintendo exchange rate $1 = 72p

360 US price = $350 UK price = £200

Microsoft exchange rate $1 = 57p

Yes, Sony are just ripping off the UK _SO_ much more than Nintendo do...

Having just run those numbers, though, I've got to think competing with the PS3 is hurting MS in Europe.

Wii controller lawsuit costs Nintendo $21m

Iain
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Further proof that Mark is incapable of basic reading comprehension

Only the Nintendo suit has been completed; there is nothing to report in the Microsoft case yet.

But then, giving that Mark considers it to be Xbox fanboyism for there to be a single story on the entire Register site that doesn't desperately scramble to shoehorn a mention of the RROD in, what do you expect. Seek professional help, Mark; it's not funny any more.

Slimmer Xbox 360 en-route?

Iain

1 request for any slimmer PS3

Or indeed they could leave it as thick as it already is. But can we have a version with a flat top, please? I'd love to be able to put it in the middle of my A/V stack; it's being bought as a Blu-ray player, after all, so one that just looks like it belongs there would be appreciated.

Grand Theft Auto IV sales drop fails to shake title's pole position

Iain

Numbers time...

631,000 sales on day 1.

926,000 for the whole first week.

A 77% drop presumably equates to real sales of 213,000 (rounding to the nearest thousand like the the others obviously have been).

But once you take out the pre-orders and stampede of day one, they only sold 295,000 in the rest of that first week. That's not a bad drop-off at all, then. It's still not that simple to find stock on shelves; it was sold out on 360 everywhere I went last weekend.

Not that I can justify buying it, having just got a Wii and WiiFit instead, but I'd like to play it at some point.

Grand Theft Auto IV misses week one million sales mark

Iain

@Stuart Butterworth

Yes, a 40" 1080p LCD is quite expensive. But, when the 360 outputs to VGA and most decent large-format PC monitors will take a HDCP input through DVI or HDMI, and so support both HD consoles, monitor price is a pointless quibble.

Iain

Limited by stock

Both GTA4 (for both formats, but particularly 360) and Wii Fit were a nightmare to find in stock last week. I managed to get the latter (along with a Wii to play it on), but no GTA yet. Although the Wii stuff I got was so good I'm not in a rush anyway.

The really interesting figures will be those in a few months time, once everyone who wanted one at launch has been able to find it, and the word of mouth buzz has sorted itself out as well.

Microsoft orders 65nm Xbox 360 graphics chip

Iain

@Buff

Just because the PS3 launched at an eye-watering £425 doesn't increase the size of the bargain it becomes once the price reaches what it launched in the rest of the world at. If you want a Blu-ray player I do believe the PS3 is good value for money, but the fact it wasn't initially is neither here nor there.

I've got a hell of a lot of game DLC myself, and the standard 20Gb hard drive still has tonnes of space. The Elite model is purely for people who REALLY hate white consoles or download films.

What a surprise to see first post go to the regular shill who regards Microsoft's mere existence as a theat to his manhood.

Sony launches 'Freeview HD'-ready LCD TV line

Iain

1366 x 768 resolution?

Is that just because you don't have the stats for the 40" and above yet? The current 40" V-series (KDL-40V3000 to be nerdy) and larger are full 1920x1080 panels; they don't seem to be doing sub-40" V-series at the moment on the official site.

Sony details PS3 DVR pricing, launch date

Iain

Why so many disappointed it's taking so long?

Until HD broadcasts arrive, this thing is woefully overpriced. So no matter when they launch it, you don't really need one until next year.

Freesat launches in UK

Iain

Does this change anything for ex-Sky subscribers?

I never got around to paying the £15 for the "Freesat from Sky" card when I cancelled my subscription to move to NTL (yes, I know. Still, the broadband is ok.) The old box has been giving me BBC channels which has been handy for the odd emergency recording when I don't trust or can't use iPlayer. Does this mean I won't need the card to start getting ITV and Ch.4 on there as well, or do I need to spend get either the £15 card or an £80 box still?

GTA IV PS3 fights off resolution woes in the UK

Iain

@Liam

Yeah, I kind of worded that badly. What I was trying to get at is most 40"+ LCD screens are a full 1920x1080, but the smaller Plasma displays are lower resolution; typically 1360x768 or even 1024x768 in the case of the popular Panasonics. There are full 1080p plasmas out there, but they're pretty painfully expensive.

Iain

@Tony Chandler

GTA4 allows you to control all the options with colour saturation, brightness and other effects that the game uses for different effects. The PS3 defaults are (for some reason I don't understand) different to the 360 ones, but you can play with either version to make it look like the other.

@whoever it was that said that Sony LCDs are rubbish, but that Samsung were a better option, they're clearly being wrong. The two brands share panel manufacture, so the only difference is that the electronics that Sony bolt onto them are far superior, with better control over scaling effects and backlight levels.

Plasmas are fine and dandy, once you get up to 50" and lay down the several thousand it costs to get a decent 1920x1080 panel. At those sizes you've got to really look to find an LCD at any price, but for the smaller sizes LCD normally sells at you won't get as sharp an image because the resolution just isn't there.

Blu-ray-for-Xbox 360 rumours restoked

Iain

Oh for crying out loud.

IF Microsoft announce a new XBox with built-in Blu-ray, then it will be used for film playback only, not games.

I now leave you to Mark's usual pitiful attempts at trolling.

HD media future may be Blu, but it's not rosy

Iain

@John

"The strongest argument against adoption is that unless the new movie you are wanting to watch was filmed with HD cameras or is a 100% CGI, its all pointless. You won't realize an increadible picture on 720p or 1080p if the source material is low grade. Like it was said above, older movies will look no better, and in some cases, may even look worse due to upconverting."

HAHAHAHAHA.

Let me introduce you to this wonderful piece of technology. It's called "film". There's more detail in a 35mm piece of film than there is in a 1920x1080 digital shot. Go watch the HD-DVD of Casablanca and come back when you realise how incredibly wrong you are.

Why have Radiohead broken copyright activists' hearts?

Iain

Only Spackers Use Xtard

I still think the Radiohead album was excellent. But then, I merely used the download as a more legal way to let the physical release fall off the internet in advance of being properly available, just as I did with the previous few 'head albums. And, indeed, the NIN one where I exploited the CC license to legally make it fall off the back of a Usenet feed until the CD was out there.

So Orlowski is absolutely correct about this, even if I disagree with his use of language and taste in music.

LG GGW-H20L Blu-ray HD DVD combo drive

Iain
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Word of warning

In a move of quite monumental stupidity, the version of PowerDVD 7 you get with the drive can only play back in stereo, not full 5.1 or 7.1. And you can't buy the full version either, as the website only wants to sell you PowerDVD 8 - which they've saved a few pennies on by ripping out the HD-DVD playback and making it Blu-ray only.

Which kinds of ruins the whole fecking point of buying a dual-format drive in the first place.

Grand Theft Auto IV leaked online

Iain

@Mark

Are you lying, or just illiterate?

The PS3 release is not "so much better". It has slightly better popup when traversing areas of the map that 360 owners have not been to yet, and the AA is, to some eyes but not others, a tiny bit smoother. In addition, the initial load time is a bit better, though nowhere near as bad as it used to be on the PS2 releases, and finally some people prefer the default colour saturation setting on the PS3 release. Others prefer the 360's look, and still further people are clever enough to RTFM before using the options to set it how they would like.

I'm going to go out on a limb, and guess that you've not actually seen the two formats running the game at all, but are merely repeating what other Sony fanboys have written elsewhere.

I repeat: There is a very slight technical edge to the PS3 release (and yes, that comes after several months of dedicated help from senior Sony technicians on-site to get the game up to the speed of the 360 version), which is tiny compared to the differences in personal preference for which controller you like the most, and which one will have the more friends you can play the multiplayer stuff with.

Iain

@the first AC

Well, at least we can see why they were anonymous. That's a quite stupendous load of nosense. The 360 and PS3 versions are near-identical, with only really minor framerate differences (and they're 'differences' - while the PS3 drops frames less often than the 360, it does so in places where the 360 remains smooth) and very occasional popup on the 360 when going somewhere that hasn't been cached yet.

Rockstar will continue to release 360 games while it makes them profit. Meanwhile, I note that of the 3 Rockstar titles available on that platform, only GTA4 is on the PS3. So you might want to check your kitchenware albedo.

BBC defends iPlayer against Murdoch Jr's 'anti-competitive' claims

Iain

James Murdoch is upset.

Therefore, someone must be doing something right.

Sony to bring GTA IV PS3 bundle to Blighty

Iain

@Sam

As far as I'm aware, there's no 'optional' hard drive install on the 360 version of GTA4, no. It will, however, quietly use the cache partition to improve load partitions on any 360 with a drive, just like plenty of other games (Oblivion being one particular example where the loading times are noticeably worse for owners without HDD).

It doesn't do as much cacheing as the PS3 does, but it's enough to make the game run just as smoothly, and there's no sitting around thumb-twiddling the first time you try to play it, nor being down on space until you manually clear the data, since it happens automatically when you try to play a new game - there are three partitions, and when you play a fourth game it clears the cache of the first to make room.

Si - your numbers are correct, if (a) you actually want all those things, (b) can't get them cheap in a bundle, and (c) don't want me to find the most expensive HDMI cable I can find to make your PS3 output HD to the TV. Whether or not people need the extras is up to them; I've had my 360 for at least 18 months without buying a controller charger or wireless adaptor, for instance.

Iain

@AC

Surely "as far from a demo as you can possibly get" would be a game with something even approaching the size of the previous one? GT5 Prologue is not the full GT5 game. That's why it says "Prologue" in the title. Not that this is an incredibly bad thing; a great many people got bored of GTs 3 and 4 before even playing as much gameplay as exists in the Prologue anyway. A great many people get bored of most games before completing them; just look at gamerscore averages on the sites that track them.

If the 360 version of GTA4 was in any significant way inferior to the PS3 version, Rockstar PR would not be using that one to show it off to journalists. That Keef at Guardian Gamesblog didn't even get a sniff of the PS3 release yesterday (see his impressions over there) certainly indicates that they are confident that the 360 shows off the game well. Therefore it's not really worth spending extra to get a PS3 and the game unless the machine appeals for other reasons, and only a potential purchaser can know that.

Carphone Warehouse cleared out of 8GB iPhones

Iain

Ignore what bait?

iPhone justification in three easy steps:

1) Purchase 8Gb iPhone for £169

2) Unlock it at home, without signing up to a contract - the contract isn't signed in the store when you pick it up.

3) Even if you don't care about the phone bits, appreciate that an 8Gb iPod Touch is £199 at the Apple Store.

Plate armour to protect PS3

Iain

If it manages to stop him being a one-note Sony shill...

...you can borrow my hammer, AC.

This all strikes me as completely pointless, but then pointless case bling exists for every console, so some idiot must be buying it.

Sony delays PS3 virtual world Home - again

Iain

COD4 @1080p

When forced into 1080p mode, Call Of Duty 4 on the PS3 runs at a resolution of 600x1080. There's a reason that leaving 720p as an option makes the game choose that - it's the way the game is designed to be played on both PS3 and 360; the game does not run at a higher res on Sony's console.

The PS3's internal scaler can only scale horizontally, not vertically like the 360's. The mode exists to satisfy owners of screens that won't take 720p signals, not just so PS3 owners can make up in smug what they lack in critical thinking skills.

Price cut fails to push Xbox 360 past PS3 in UK

Iain

@Anonymous Coward

Yes, because you've seen GTA4 running outside of Rockstar North's offices yourself, haven't you? It only went to the duplicator the other day; all "reviews" published so far were based on unfinished code played for an afternoon with a PR person hovering over the shoulder.

So I recommend you stop accusing others of BS.

Re: MGS4, I really think PS3 owners need to calm down a little about it. the last one sold 3.1 million copies to a PS2 audience over over 60 million. How many of those 3 million people are going to want number 4, and how many haven't bought a PS3 already?

Sony shaves OLED panel to 0.3mm

Iain

New PSP? Walkman?

3.5" is more like the size of screen on a handheld console or mp4 player. Couple it with the right electronics, and that's where we're more likely to see these, clearly.

Hauppauge pitches PC TV tuner at Freesat punters

Iain

Do we need to buy Freesat?

There's a (subscription expired) Sky TV box precariously balanced on top of my PC already. Does anyone know if I'd need to buy anything other than just this box to start getting Satellite TV goodness onto my hard drive? If it'll just work, then I think I might get one for the BBC HD stuff.

Guitar Hero III goes mobile

Iain

3 buttons?

Even the easy modes on Guitar Hero 3 involve 4 buttons now. How are they going to port hard/expert stuff over?

Or are they just trying to allow for how terrible mobile phone keypads are?

Mind you, Harmonix's Frequency was hard enough with three buttons.

PS3 firmware adds HD audio

Iain

@TimM

Actually, the DTS-HDMA is being decoded to PCM inside the PS3, just as with Dolby TrueHD. The PS3 has an early hardware implementation of HDMI 1.3, and doesn't have the ability to pass bitstream data for the HD audio formats, so it's not an unnecessary overhead at all.

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