Posts by Iain

Missing: 80GB PS3. Last seen: Sony's website

@Nuno

They're limited to around 8.7Gb, not 4.7Gb; the 360 works with dual-layer DVDs just fine.

But that was always the case - HD-DVD was purely for movie playback, not for game storage. The ineviatable BluRay add-on will just be for films as well.

Gears of War 2 scheduled for November release

@latest fanboy war.

The 360 has plenty of exciting exclusives coming. None of which are by Epic, in my book; Gears was easily the worst game I've ever played on the machine. Sure, the graphics were amazing, but the painfully linear gameplay was dull as ditchwater.

But then I hated Metal Gear Solid as well, so go figure.

What are those exclusives though, Mark? I'm getting a PS3 in the next few months as a BluRay player, but all I see on the games front for me are WipEout HD, Proper GT5 whenever it turns up (I'm never buying another Prologue after Tokyo-Geneva was such a ripoff) and maybe SingStar when I get bored of the many PS2 iterations I already own.

I know about MGS4 (see above) some RPGs (I hate the genre) and the knowledge that sooner or later Team ICO will turn out something pretty that runs at 10fps, but other than that it's just the vague temptation of Little Big Planet, and User Generated Content usually makes me want to break things.

Turn your monitor into an HD TV, says Asus

HDCP mishaps ahoy?

Does this thing naughtily perform HDCP handshaking and then pass it on an encryption-free signal?

Because if you need your monitor to be HDCP-compliant, you might as well just plug your device straight in, surely?

MS showcases Red Ring of Death Xbox 360 at expo

@various

Highlander: Don't be ludicrous. The solution to a game of Russian Roulette going wrong is not "Switch back to playing Rez on the Dreamcast for a week or two while Microsoft put your brain back together". Yes, the failure rate is bad. Yes, I considered it worth the risk when it's the platform currently offering me the most things I want to play, at least until Proper GT5 comes out at some point in the future (I've never found the Prologue releases worth the money).

Chris: Current XBox 360s have one proper HDMI socket on the back, just like the PS3. There is a dongle to give HDMI output for people who have an old model without the port, but that's not the worry of people who don't already have one. Re: Processing power, there is one particular benchmark that gives the PS3 a peak rate of twice the 360, but in reality the difference is much smaller. The 360 also has a faster GPU than the PS3, so overall it's a wash - both machines have bottlenecks in different places. Finally, as mentioned to Highlander, what you actually should be saying is "If you want to play Halo 3 buy a 360, if you want to play GT5, sit on your hands until it comes out; there's bound to be a price cut in the meantime".

Investors cheer Toshiba plan to drop HD DVD

@Highlander

"Downloads are not HD, and will not be HD for the best part of a decade."

Can you tell Apple and Microsoft that, please? Only they keep advertising films on AppleTV and the XBox 360 as HD already. Admittedly, in both cases they're only 720p at the moment, but for now that's all most people's HDTVs are, and I'm sure it will take them less than a decade to step up to 1080p; it's only double the pixel rate.

Luke: I'd have been happier to see HD-DVD win as well, since it's the format I currently own. But even I can see that general consumer uptake will remain low until people aren't forced to buy both in order to get films from all studios.

Meanwhile, bring on the HD-DVD bargains, I say.

Mole claims Toshiba to terminate HD DVD

Re: PS3 price and profit

I'm sure there was an analyst report from a couple of months back suggesting that the manufacturing cost on a PS3 is now around £200; Sony are now roughly breaking even on them in most of the world, and UK Ripoff Markup means a profit here.

Can the HD-DVD firesale start now, please? There are still tonnes of movies on that format I want to buy; easily enough to last me until I pull the trigger on a BluRay player.

Price, not format war fears, holds back Blu-ray, says survey

@Highlander

We keep having this one. A working group was formed by the HD-DVD consortium to plan and implement a Regioning strategy, as part of an attempt to woo Fox into coming onboard (they're the only studio who are rabid regioning fanboys, apparently, although some of the others take advantage of it on Blu since it's there anyway). However, they have not reported back yet with any technical recommendations, and if you seriously believe that they're likely to do so before Toshiba throws in the towel then I'm surprised.

There are plenty of BluRay discs where I'd want to buy the US version for image quality, extras or just plain price and availability. But I don't want to spend £300 on a second player just because sometimes the UK disc is the one to get.

Also, I've got a couple of hundred titles in DVD regions R1 and R2 and a smattering on other regions as well. Being able to relegate my (rather rubbish at upscaling) standard-def player from the living room would be a big relief.

Too much choice causing massive indecision

That's the reason I'm not buying a BluRay player yet. Part of me wants a PS3 for a few games that I can't get for my 360, and the Profile 2.0 reassurance, part of me wants a BDP-S300 for the 5.1 analogue output.

I can't decide which, so for now I'm sticking with my HD-DVD add-on drive. Yes, fanboys, I know the format is losing the retail argument, and I'll eventually run out of films I want to buy, but I'm bound to get one or other once the next price drop happens.

Oz teen elephant pregnancy sparks protests

@Cavan

Yes, they absolutely, literally have. Amusingly (or not, depending on how easily amused you are) human pregnancy testing kits also work on elephants.

Firefox 3 beta is live

@Neil

I absolutely agree that people shouldn't complain about Microsoft releasing properly labelled public betas. Every major application vendor has a beta programme, because internal testing doesn't necessarily use the product in the way that real users in the real world manage to do.

But I thought the big complaint with the Vista SP1 was not its mere existence, but that

(a) it's such a pain to satisfy

(b) (I suppose at least warns you that) installing it is going to leave you with a system that won't take the final beta when that's available

(c) finished with an RTM that wasn't made available to TechNet/MSDN until a whole load of people kicked up a big fuss.

(d) took so long in coming, when pretty major problems (like the file copy performance) have been trailed as ready to fix in it for months on end, and users have just had to live with until then.

Having said all that, my box remains un-SP1ed until the rumours about the RTM triggering iTunes problems go away.

Netflix falls in behind Blu-ray

Netflix has other problems

This is partly a case of the whole 'BluRay winning' argument, but also the anecdotal data I hear from all my Netflix-subscribing US friends is that HD-DVD just isn't that durable in a rental situation, and the number of scratched discs they get is significantly higher than either SD DVD or BluRay.

Constantly having to replace discs for that would be pissing Netflix off no end.

UK men would stay out of bed for 50in plasma telly

What's wrong with three quarters of you?

Does 75% of the population REALLY have a choccy habit more expensive than a new plasma telly every 6 months, then?

Methinks there is something wrong with this survey.

Big Blue talks up 45nm PlayStation 3 processor possibilities

re: changing clockspeed.

Don't put it past Sony. They doubled the memory capacity of the slim and light PSP over the fat and heavy one, which is why the official skype firmware doesn't run on the older model.

B&O reveals self-calibrating robo TV

@Bronek

A quick Google puts a pair of their bottom-of-the-range custom earphones (UE 5 Pros) at a touch over £500. B&O Earphones are around £90.

Yes, your professional monitors cost more money. There's ALWAYS a way to get better quality if you can afford it. That doesn't make the B&Os a joke in their own right, any more than their home audio range is just because a decent Meridian pre/pro setup is even better.

re: B&O using others components

The B&O plasmas are (at least were, last time I looked) Panasonic panels, but they have their own, higher quality, electronics hanging off the back. So while the improvement over the Panny model is incremental, it's pretty clear if you look, particularly with standard-def sources.

Their hifi equipment is excellent, and if you're spending that kind of money on something that looks flash, kicks that horrible Bose stuff all around the park for sound and build quality.

Beeb iPlayer gets Firefox-friendly

No iPlayer for me, thanks.

I don't want to let kontiki within a mile of my Vista box. Not that I believe it works on Vista anyway.

Besides, "other sources" allow me to stream the HD file to my 360 rather than forcing me to watch it in the PC room on an ancient box that doesn't have the firepower for HD anyway.

Parent power pulls Woolworth's 'Lolita' kiddies' bed

Actually, Maude,

I suspect it's certain individuals "thinking of children" that's the problem. Or at least the way in which they're thinking of them...

PS3 capacity boost claims are claptrap, says Sony UK

Maybe it won't play PS3 games?

Since every other new PS3 comes with yet another feature stripped out, I wonder what will be next to go? PS3 game support, leaving it just a BluRay player with a built-in web browser and media streaming code?

Monster-capacity PS3 in the pipeline?

@Steve Barnes, re: PS3 sans HDD

If Sony sold a cheaper PS3 without a HDD in, but still forced us to put one in there to do anything that would be fine by me. Then the people that just want a 20Gb data store for holding firmware updates, save games and a couple of disc caches for PS3 titles or whatever could do so, and those that want a massive 250Gb store of every divx file they own can have it their way.

When I bought a PS2 I had to pay extra for a memory card, and those don't do much without one. The thing is, as much as Sony's scattergun attempts to find a PS3 that matches what most people want have brought about more different models than I can care to count right now, any individual market has only had one or two to pick from at any time. Right now, it's damned hard to find anything other than the cut-down 40Gb model in the UK, for instance.

Woolworths stores to stop selling HD DVD

Woollies stocked HD formats?

When did that start, then? I've not seen any in our local one. Mind you, my local Tesco and Sainsburys don't do HD discs, either.

Sony shrinks Blu-ray laser

re: Scott

This is just a laser element, it's not a decoding chip. So it's got nothing to do with Profile 2.0, Profile 3.0 or whatever; it just makes shoving a Blue laser in a laptop drive easier, and building any sort of drive cheaper in the long run. What happens to the data once it's off the disc is down to other stuff.

On another note, all films play on Profile 1.0 just fine anyway; it's just the snazzy bonus features are less snazzy there. So if you don't care about extras you're fine.

MPAA admits movie piracy study is 29% full of @$#%

Re: "a quid an album"

Sure you can make money off a quid an album. That's all the artist is left with once the shops, marketing, distribution and record companies have had their share anyway. As long as you take Radiohead's trick of piling on an explict 44p or whatever it was for credit card charges, you're fine.

Also, PLEASE don't call people "retards", Andrew, even with your oh so amusing pun on 'free'. Some of your arguments are perfectly valid, but whenever you resort to that level of abuse it doesn't matter; you might as well have saved yourself the bother and written

"la la la, you're a big Mongo"

instead. I understand it's not a terribly offensive word in the US, but this is still a UK site and it's the equivalent of "spastic".

Sony denies $299 PS3 talk

@Neil, Highlander re: import

All TVs with the "HD Ready" logo must accept 720p and 1080i signals at the US 60Hz standard, so you don't need to worry about that at all. All UK BluRay discs are 60Hz anyway, so it's just as well.

Also, while you're importing films from Amazon.com, be sure to take advantage of the fact that they're on a near-permanent BOGOF sale, and so dirt cheap even after import duties.

Console company denies upcoming announcement

Yes, we all know how much that means. Didn't the European branch of Nintendo deny the existence of the DS Lite mere hours before head office unveiled it to the press?

Certainly, both Microsoft and Sony have issued similar pricecut denials weeks before announcing them before.

Personally, I can wait - I can't justify a new PS3 before April-May time anyway, so as long as the cut comes before then I'm happy.

HD DVD player sales share slumps

@Chris

"HD-DVD do not have any uncompressed audio tracks available"

Where did you get that idea? There are absolutely loads of HD-DVD titles with lossless Dolby TrueHD on; even Phantom Of The Opera, one of the discs released on day one of the format, had it.

PCM is IDENTICAL to Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio once it reaches the amp - that's what lossless means. Or do you argue the superiority of WAV over FLAC, too?

@Christopher

Actually, the HD-EP30 is now a mere £119.99 at Amazon with 7 movies, having come down from your £179 figure over the weekend.

Yes, I can say 'firesale', and no, I'm not getting one to replace my XBox add-on drive right now, as the money is being saved toward the ineviatable PS3 once Warner titles dry up.

Star Trek XI teaser trailer beams onto web

Re: odd-numbered Trek

They broke the "even = any good whatsoever" meme with the last Trek, so maybe this one can avoid the "odd = rubbish" one?

US HD DVD sales hit new low

Where, Scott?

I'm currently a HD-DVD-only owner, and fancy some bargains too. But while there are BOGOF offers all the time on Amazon.com, the import duty will kill you as they mark the full undiscounted package price. Where are you finding the cheap discs?

@Allan

Yes, the BBC will touch BluRay. Or at lease 2Entertain, who they license to, will. Planet Earth is on both, and looks gorgeous on both. Bleak House, Galapagos and Robin Hood are also either out or on the way, too.

@James

"How much did blu-ray sales fall by in the same period?"

Much less, hence the Blu/HD split going from 65:35 to 85:15. Yes the numbers are down on both sides, but between the HD-DVD camp seeing a plummet in figures as people wait for the upcoming firesale, and the Blu guys continuing to throw vast sums at 2-for-1 deals everywhere, the ratio is showing a huge shift.

Play.com have the Toshiba HD-EP30 at £119.99 with 7 movies, which is just silly cheap for what's comfortably the best upscaling DVD player you can buy for that money if you can cope without multiregion, but it's not enough; the war is lost. Sadly; I've got the 'wrong' side as usual.

Alcohol where the sun doesn't shine, and nanotubes darker than that

Wikiwikiwildwildwest - Luther Blissett (nom de plume)

See above, Alex. "He" is a world-wide troll or trolls. Sorry, Situationists. Which is completely different, honest guv.

Computer system suspected in Heathrow 777 crash

"Unthinkable" engine failure

On the contrary, they thought of it, examined the engines at the crash site and one of them (but NOT the other) shows that it was still working during the impact because the blades have dug through the soil and forcibly sprayed it all through the interior of the engine.

If I had to speculate, I think we're looking at multiple contributary causes. Hats off to the crew though, for getting the plane down as well as they did.

Lindsay Lohan packed off to morgue

Lohan in a morgue?

Maybe she's looking for the career she had as a hugely talented teen actress with the likes of Mean Girls, Freaky Friday and The Parent Trap, before she misunderstood what they meant about being old enough for 'adult' roles.

'EcoDisc' allegedly trashes man's optical disc drive

Danger! Danger!

Schadenfreude levels at overload!

I couldn't wish it on a nicer readership. What are MoS readers doing with Macs, though? Don't they read the articles in their own paper about how eeevil computers are?

Jobs: Blu-ray wins HD format war then loses to downloads

Do calm down, Richard.

I can't help the actions of your nephew (who, I rather suspect, was merely using video downloads to justify a new games console for himself). But I can say that the cost of media + player is smaller for the 360 download service than it is for BluRay rental, and that's the only point I was trying to make. For that matter, a 360 costs about the same as a Sky HD box, so you can't get your HD movies cheaper that way, either.

DVD players are ubiquitous now, even if, since they're not HD, they're not strictly comparable to the matter at hand. But there are more 360s out there than PS3s plus standalone players (for either HD format) combined. So even if the market for downloads is restricted to those who already own the machine, it's bigger than that for any other HD delivery system.

That's a bit unfair, Richard

You're asking us to compare a £20 BluRay disc with a £200+ XBox 360, but not factoring in the £300+ BluRay player for some reason.

Nobody is going to buy a 360 just to rent HD movie downloads, but they might already have one for playing games on.

Caught on camera: the Downfall of HD DVD

@Ian

So import your PS3 from the US or Japan along with your movies, if that's where you want to get the discs from. It's cheaper than a UK one, and most UK disc releases are multi-region anyway.

Re: the LG multi-format drive, I've heard so many tales of woe from people trying to get the software to work reliably without blocking digital audio, blocking digital video, stuttering despite specs being well above the minimum, or just plain refusing to run at all, that there's no way I'd spend the money to go the PC route.

Apple looks to movie rentals to revive Apple TV box

Any news on titles?

I don't have a US iTunes login; do we have any indication of the titles they're getting in HD, and most importantly if there's anything much that isn't already on HD-DVD or BluRay?

Toshiba pitches HD DVD players as... DVD machines

@Morely Dotes

The BBC aren't even shooting Doctor Who in HD, so it's never going to look any better than the DVDs you can already buy. The HD budget is reserved for 'superior' drama like Torchwood. Oops.

Upscaling, and upscaling.

While the PS3 is now even better, a Toshiba HD-EP30 will wipe any £70 DVD player's backside at upscaling. Frankly, my Sony TV's internal upscaling is better than the £70 upscaling players I've tried, so you're better off leaving them in standard-def mode.

Tesla hits ejector button on staff

Re: German cars

All German cars are silver, a fact easily verified by simply looking for the nearest Merc. Painting the metal any other colour is inefficient.

PS3 component cost halved in 12 months, analyst claims

@Tim

They already did, or haven't you noticed that a PS3 is now £300, not £425?

This piece of speculation (analysts only have access to the same data as the rest of us) is merely suggesting that they cost $400 to manufacture. Sony then sell them in the US at $400. So not exactly a huge markup to cut.

Network Solutions games net domain biz

@Stew

Domain hijackers are going to HATE NS if that's what they've been doing. This story has been all over /. and several other sites at the same time El Reg printed it - they stand to go bankrupt in 4 days time if they lay out for every single one of the mass of 'test' domains people have been automating to taste.

Toshiba demos Cell-equipped HDTV

"What it's doing with the PS3 processor"

Not decoding HD-DVDs? Oh well...

Microsoft takes a shine to Logitech?

I don't like this for the opposite reason.

I love my Microsoft mice, and would never swap them for Logitech ones. So I don't want them taking any styling advice there.

As for the worrying Apple fans, I can use my MS mouse on a Mac, so I can't think why they'd stop that all of a sudden for Logitech ones.

The only area I _would_ be concerned letting MS ruining Logitech over, though, is their excellent range of Playstation wheels.

Japan to lose 20GB and 60GB PS3

You can still import

You've just got to know someone going to Japan. There are plenty of places that still ship US or Canadian models to the UK, if you want BluRay Region A, too.

YouTube biker clocked at 189mph

Since it's a Kawasaki...

...is this another instance of someone importing a bike, not bothering to switch it to mph mode, and then getting really excited as they do the slightly less impressive (but still obviously dangerous and illegal) 117mph?

Xbox 360 could back Blu-ray

@jason

Isn't Aiwa owned by Sony, though?

As for not making MD a PC format, I think (just as they so ably demonstrated with the NetMD fiasco) they were far too paranoid about someone breaking the DRM shackles to let us actually use our own data in the way we want to.

@Darren

No, the 40Gb PS3 can't play PS2 games at all. The UK 60Gb model did it in software emulation, and you need a US or Japan 20Gb or 60Gb one if you want the hardware emulation.

That's because the "software emulation" was only using it for one of the two main processors in the PS2. The other one has been yanked off the PS3 board for the 40Gb to (a) save a few pennies and (b) sell more PS3 games to people who might otherwise be playing old PS2 games secondhand.

Apple cuts UK iTunes prices

@Greg

iTunes songs are 79p, not 99p. Gavin's maths are correct.