Posts by Iain

Blu-ray dominates Japanese HD recorder sales

Recorders only

BluRay was designed from the start as a Recording medium; pre-recorded discs were only an afterthought, because the people behind it thought the future was all about people taping stuff off HDTV. So while HD-DVD has many technically nice things about it, its use in recording devices really isn't one of them.

@Scott - as a HD-DVD player owner, I wholeheartedly agree that 30Gb is enough for a pre-recorded title. However, this is the case because the advanced codecs allow you to squeeze a movie in that space easily. When used as a blank disc to stuff video on from off the telly, more capacity is a really good thing. Partly to give you more hours of recording, but also because it means you can use a simpler, cheaper encoding path that well and truly outweighs the costs from the BD-ROM format.

Xbox Live gamers to get game, gratis

Come again?

Where exactly did you notice that you couldn't download games directly from the 360 store? You've been able to since the 22nd of November 2005 - it _was_ a feature from the off; Geometry Wars was an instant classic.

Yes, it's Carcassonne

which is a bit of a pity, since I've already bought that.

Still, at least there will be some fresh newbies to beat in multiplayer.

Xbox 360 outsells PS3 in Japan

Ace Combat, probably

A quick glance at the software charts for the same week shows the 360 release of the new Ace Combat game coming in at number 2. Albeit a very distant second to Mario Galaxy. Halo 3 was briefly at number 1 the other week, as well, so maybe they've actually found some games the Japanese want to play now?

Tumbleweeds outnumber punters, as iPhone's First Night flops

Budget no limit at Reg Towers, then?

So no-one at El Reg who works in the UK offices wanted to cover this, and you flew Andrew all the way from San Francisco over to report?

Or did he just make it all up after reading a couple of blogs telling how people would rather join in the fun at Apple's Regent Street store than walk into a Carphone Warehouse (who alone have more branches than the Apple shops that were busy on the US launch)?

Sony posts PS3 firmware 2.0

Chicken/Egg

With PS3s accounting for 90-something percent of all BluRay players, and no sign of that changing particularly soon, there won't be too much in the way of interactivity features that it won't support on real discs. It's a niche format as it is - for all they like to crow about outselling HD-DVD, both formats together account for around 2% of the numbers regular DVD is shifting in the US, and even lower elesewhere. BluRay versions 1.1 and 2.0 are niches of niches.

David - Home has been put back to spring next year, because they're not yet happy with the closed beta version.

Apple hit with another class action

@Stuart

No, it's not even like buying printer cartridges, because those cost money, rather than coming as a free download.

Having to use iTunes with your iPod is like starting a class action suit because NVidia tie me into using their drivers with their graphics cards.

Teflon top cop evades justice, responsibility

Terrible? Terrible how, exactly?

Yes, a police marksman might have to decide whether it was right to shoot a suspect seven times in the head before doing so.

Isn't making people think about whether killing people is legal or not rather the WHOLE FECKING POINT of prosecuting the people responsible for innocent people dying?

The retro arcade controller

Hori Fighting Stick

A much better option would be Hori's "Virtua Fighter 5 EX2 Fighting Stick". £50 retail and Sanwa parts. Yummy.

Hori's sticks are always great, and at last we've got one here without having to import.

Transformers director favours Blu-ray Disc

Minor correction:

I think what Bay was _trying_ to say was

"As a director whose best work was all released by Blu-Ray exclusive studios, my critical eye is that Blu-ray is where my money is,"

Apart from Transformers, the only other Michael Bay film owned by a HD-DVD-supporting studio is the execrable flop "The Island". Which, as a Warner-distributed title could come to both formats, should they see a point in bothering. Everything else is either Disney or Sony.

Sony talks up PS3 update

@Anonymous

"bear in mind most releases are encoded to the lowest common denominator"

How do you figure this? Warner are now the only major studio publishing on both formats, apart from if you're counting their subsidiary New Line seperately. Every other BluRay publisher is making their discs without any HD-DVD release in mind; even in cases like Resident Evil, Underworld and Fantastic Four where shared rights mean some regions get a BluRay and others a HD-DVD they have different transfers - often even using different codecs.

@vincent

No, key revocation is to make some players not work with old firmware but new discs, rather than vice versa.

So far, the only keys to be revoked are for PC-based players, and the owners of them need to go get the latest version that fixes the "bug" making it too easy to steal the key from memory; a new key comes with the patch.

There isn't a single disc/player combo that I'm aware of where they've introduced new bugs that break things. Yet. Doing so is beyond the capabilities of both major graphics driver teams on PC, Microsoft and Apple, so regression bugs are bound to happen eventually; we'll just have to hope they get fixed again.

@Alex - Yes, this is the news that the PS3 will probably have a driver update for version 1.1 of the format. Goodness knows why it wouldn't; Sony keep telling everyone how much more powerful the PS3 is than the XBox 360, and that is perfectly capable of playing back HD-DVD; a standard that does everything BD 1.1 is supposed to handle.

BluRay 1.1 from November - still a bit weird

Actually, it's fine to sell PS3s from November without a firmware update. Companies are allowed to still sell players that only meet the 1.0 version of the spec, just as long as they initially released them before.

Which is why there was a massive rush of new players announced a while back all with release dates of the last week in October - they're still using up all the old chips that can't handle 1.1 in standalone players.

Since there really aren't many discs that use 1.1 yet (why would there be, until the PS3 can do it?) it's not something to get immediately overjoyed about.

What is worth getting excited about for PS3 owners, however, is that Warners are currently sitting on a whole pile of movies that are currently HD-DVD exclusive, because they can't get the extras to work without 1.1 - Batman Begins, Harry Potter and The Matrix being the big ones that spring to mind.

MS keeps mum on 'Go Play' Xbox 360 Arcade edition

Not necessarily.

While some reports are indeed claiming that the Arcade will have a Falcon motherboard, the mere presence of an HDMI port doesn't guarantee it. The motherboard design used on the initial batch of US Elite machines doesn't have the 65nm chip, so it could be more of these to use up the remaining chips.

MSI lets slip AMD 790FX mobo

re: iPod

Also bear in mind that the latest ones only sync over USB anyway; you can only use Firewire as a fancy charger with a 5th or 6th Gen.

Nintendo limbers up for Wii Fit

More realistic conversion

$75 is $15 more than a 360 game costs in the US. And they're £50 here. So that's at least £60, and probably more like £65-£70.

Only Sky can save digital TV

Keep Murdoch's grubby hands out of it

Personally, I'd be happy if _every_ commercial broadcaster went to the wall, as I don't watch advert-based TV unless it falls off the internet straight from the US with the ads removed.

But that's by the by. The whole point of Freeview is that you don't need to pay a monthly sub to Murdoch. Giving up some of that pitiful quantity of spectrum to him so he can force us all to need more boxes under the TV, because he wants to use a different, incompatible standard, is a terrible idea after Ofcom -sorry- the BBC has been forced at gunpoint to waste millions (that could have been used to stop turning their factual department into a ghost-town) persuading the country to buy boxes you want to make paperweights.

Bloke buys supercar 'without proper consent from the wife'

@Kane

The Paris Hilton connection is that she's got a Proper Supercar; an McMerc SLR.

Sony's 40GB PS3 for Europe confirmed

BC fuss?

The short reason for the fuss is that many people were factoring in how much they could sell their PS2 for as part of the upgrade to the painfully expensive new one.

Even the other PS3 doesn't do backward compatibility as well as I'd like it to, so I'm not terribly bothered. I just want a cheap Blu-Ray player, because I'd rather use my 360 for games. So this will suit me fine when I get around to it.

PC superstore puts Microsoft on sale for under £150

Can I buy Microsoft in the US?

It'll probably cost about half that, thanks to the way they convert dollars to pounds sterling.

Apple TV 160GB media player

Hmm, not that tempting, then.

Being able to view YouTube and iTunes Store content seems to be the beginning and end of features this has over a 360, then. Given you can have a 360 Core for less money and it happens to double as a half-decent game console as well, I'm mystified by this device.

The single big problem with the 360's media functionality is that it doesn't do Xvid. But neither do Apple.

Italian website names 40GB PS3 price

re: Michael

Yes, the current PS3s in the US are without the EE now as well. Only the 60Gb model had it, and nearly all of those have gone from the shelves now, leaving just the $599 80Gb one that is like European machines.

If/when I ever get a PS3, I'll just go for a US model. They're multi-voltage and multi-region for PS3 games, so it's no problem as long as I keep my UK-spec PS2.

Sony Walkman NWD-B105 2GB MP3 player

Re: WMA

Yes, it's more intensive than mp3. All the players report that drop.

MS makes, sells 65nm 'Falcon' Xbox 360s

The real question

So, do the new Falcon machines run any more quietly?

Because my old 360 is running along just fine, thanks, but the volume of the thing could be better.

Apple iPod Nano third-generation

Yes, you have to use iTunes

Rob, the Creative Zen player is just over there --->

Personally, I can't stand having to copy files individually to and from players, and would far rather ask iTunes to keep my database up to date, based on what's set in my iTunes. So I'll stick with Apple devices.

The width of these new Nanos puts me off a bit, though. If the thing is going to be that wide, I can't think why you wouldn't just pay the extra and get 10 TIMES the disk space with a full-size one. But then, I did exactly that last generation. I suppose some people just don't need the space.

As for the complaint that the screen is 4x3, and that means black bars on widescreen material, well, yes. But a 16x9 screen means bars on 4x3 material too, and I find telly stuff more suitable to the tiny screen of my iPod than films anyway, so I'm not bothered. Everything is a compromise of some kind or another when it comes to aspect ratios.

Halo 3 UK launch fails to fire

Why bother?

Without knocking Halo 3 at all (although I'm not rushing to get it myself), why would people queue up?

Everyone who has preordered will get their game, so coming down early to pick it up before work, where it will sit on your desk all day is pointless.

Everyone who wants to save themselves a tenner will have ordered online. Some of whom will have found it falling into their letterbox yesterday, thanks to the vagaries of the Royal Mail ensuring that everyone had to ship it in plenty of time to avoid offending customers with a day-late delivery.

The really rabid fanboys will no doubt have been exploiting either the Argos or Tesco slip-ups. Even if you're not lucky enough to have your Tesco slip up, finding a 24-hour supermarket willing to hand it over at midnight (and mostly at something like web prices) isn't hard, either.

So who were all these people you expected to see queued outside Virgin at 8am?

Sony poo-poos £299 PS3 claims

I've heard this before...

A version with worse backwards compatibility for less money? What, you mean like the one that Sony stiffed Europe for _MORE_ money than the US and Japanese versions on release?

It's a really dumb idea, which is why it's so believable.

Apple iPod Classic

That's odd.

"Incidentally the new nano coped much better with this."

Which is rather strange; I'm sure the people that do such things pulled them both apart and found the same (Samsung) CPU in the two machines. Oh well.

Consumers confused by HD

Wha?

Where did Christian Berger come from; 2005? There are plenty of HD-DVD and Blu Ray players. What is more, they cost rather significantly less than 3000 Euros; Amazon France lists the Toshiba HD-E1 at around 300 Euros, for example.

As for any perceived lack of films, get them from the US - HD-DVD is region-free, and many Blu-Ray titles are as well. Sure, there aren't quite as many as DVD's decade-long list, but it's vastly better than where we were at the same point in DVD's lifecycle, as rubbish like Lost In Space in my collection will attest.

FInally, if you can tell me with a straight face that your TV broadcasts look as good as HD-DVD and BluRay then you need either a new TV or new glasses.

Argos admits selling Halo 3 early

no banhammer

MS have very sensibly backed down their banhammer threats, initially claiming they were only for MS employees being naughty with office copies, then dropping even that bit. Apparently.

Personally, I'm more interested in the new Sega Rally than Halo 3, but I don't like FPS games much.

Turkey stuffs YouTube (again)

Something nasty about Ataturk?

Personally, I may feel the urge to go to Turkey at some point in the future, so I won't say a word against the great guy myself. But the temptation for others to go saying bad things about him on any and every website in an attempt to give the censors headaches must be pretty high.

McLaren fined $100m for spying

Re: dumb??

Yes, the reason that this all came to light in the first place is that the one and only confirmed use of the documents was to catch Ferrari using an illegal floor on their car in the opening race.

For which the FIA thought long and hard, and told Ferrari to stop being naughty, if they didn't mind too much.

Max and Bernie really, really wanted to bring Ron down a notch or two after the whole TV Rights renegotiation a while back. Now they have their chance, they've got a fine 12 times the size of the one doled out for killing 31 people in the Paddington rail crash.

If McLaren really wanted to cheat their way to the prize, they should have just asked Alonso to deliberately plough straight through the Ferrari pitlane at speed; it would have been cheaper.

Retail giants to crack whip over digital dawdlers

Switchoff?

Switching ON a digital signal to my area would be a nice start.

As for who would buy an analogue-only telly? Anyone who can cope with an extra box under the TV, or plans to use Sky/Virgin. You can buy an analogue TV plus a Freeview box for a lot less than a digital one, anyway.

DVD Forum gives three-layer, 51GB HD DVD the thumbs up

Choices? Really?

Personally, I'm just curious as to where this Anonymous Vulture managed to find a Choices Video that wasn't closed down, let alone stocked plenty of Blu-Ray discs.

Church hall bans 'unchristian' yoga for nippers

That's not all...

I really hope they're remembering to ban the mathematicians with their dodgy Al-Jebra teachings from those nasty Muslims, and ensured we haven't got any of those eeevil Mah-Jong or Go players at the local boardgame meet.

Paganistic morris dancers are right out, obv.

Xbox 360 Elite games console

A couple of things.

Firstly, "R" is not playing Motorstorm at 1080p, no matter what they think. Because the game runs at 720p just like Resistance does, and the PS3 (unlike the 360) cannot upscale games, so you need your TV to support 720p as well as 1080i, or you'll be playing at standard-def.

Secondly, the GPU in the PS3 is widely accepted to be slower than the 360's one, due to the number of pipelines. No biggie, the PS3's CPU is a bit better to compensate. But still wrong.

Finally, Devil's Refugee doesn't need to wait until 2008 for the 45nm die shrink to turn up - they've just started rolling off the manufacturing lines and onto the boats. However, it's not yet easy to spot them. If you're dead set on one, check the manufacturing date on your prospective machine in a month or two - there's a little flap on the box to see it. Mind you, they also have HDMI ports onboard the 'Premium' ones, so that's another mark against paying the extra for the Elite just yet.

Sony unveils PlayTV telly tuner for PS3

Wow, TV on TV

Oddly enough, my Sony HDTV already has a Freeview tuner. But no Freeview signal before 2012 at the earliest, so I can't say I particularly care.

Tycoon abandons £80k Maserati in London car pound

Title

"I challenge you to cross London and back with a pram on a busy day before you bother"

How do you think I take my 2-year-old to see the dinosaurs at the NHM? It's surprisingly easy when you get the hang of things. For future reference, though, it's a lot easier with buses than tubes.

Cadbury bows to 'bring back Wispa' net campaign

Wispa != Aero

Aero has the rubbish big bubble texture of Dairy Milk Bubbly, while Wispas were much finer. It's all in the texture of the chocolate before it goes in the vacuum chamber, I think.

iPod Nano revamp to see widescreen display?

Not exactly 'nano'

Sure, this might be flash-based instead of having a hard drive, but making a device as wide as the 'full-size' iPod kind of loses its Nano-ness, no?

This just sounds like the latest in a whole series of "this one is the video iPod, honest" rumours. Quite apart from the fact that the current Nano can't even do Video.

Sony threatens to evict naughty gamers from Home

The downside of a 'free' service

Microsoft probably do know where you live, if (like most people) you bought your subscription to Live with a credit card instead of a pre-pay voucher.

But Sony's system isn't charging, so what excuse do they have for asking for your address? I really hope it's not an IP Block ban, in case there are griefers at my ISP.

Alienware Area-51 m9750

Quicktime on Vista

Official Quicktime on Vista is still quite remarkably poor - since upgrading from XP my machine won't even play 480p files completely smoothly in it. And yet Nero's player can get the 720p versions of the same files running fine, so it's not an insurmountable problem.

Not much use for iTunes-purchased content, though.

Free Software Foundation plans protests at 'corrupt' BBC

Kontiki is horrid anyway

If you're sensible/paranoid enough to be running Linux in the first place, the absolute last thing you'd want to do is install a rootkit to give the people behind Kontiki complete unrestricted control over your network connection. So why do you want iPlayer?

If you can get Freeview, buy a decoder card and record the digital stream at around 4 times the quality iPlayer gives.

If you can't, help yourself to a torrent stream from someone who did. Sure, there are legal questions over it, but it's hardly a bit ethical dilemma.

Or have you been petitioning for a Linux port of Gator, too?

Oklahoma offers War on Terror numberplates

Ah...

so that will be the Twin Towers in Oklahoma, then. Not the slightly more famous ones that were elsewhere.

Still, it manages to make more sense than the special "Killed In Action" plate. I never knew that zombie car drivers were such upstanding citizens that renewed their vehicle tax. On the other hand, even the Undead are actually at home. If you're able to order a "Missing In Action" plate, exactly how missing are you, really?

Miserable Brits declare War on Comfort

Stop trying to avoid the suffering, smokers!

Look, the Government has gone to some serious effort trying to make you horrible smoking people have to suffer for your evil crimes. Patio Heaters are a disgraceful example of cold evasion, and so it's quite right that they need to be banned.

You might as well go and install a telly on the naughty step, if that's your attitude to being told off.

Worm eats music on infected PCs

Other suspects

Hey, if we're taking facetious suspects, I'd put forward Apple and Microsoft, both of whom would prefer you stop using the elderly .mp3 format and moved to their ones instead.

Come to think of it, I notice ogg and FLAC are immune, too...

The BBC iPlayer 'launch' that wasn't

360 streaming?

Since my PC is in the other room, I stream all my downloaded media to the 360 connected to the telly. Does the iPlayer stuff work with that? I'd have thought Microsoft would trust that device for remote output if anything.

BBC iPlayer launches, but with limited viewer reach

Why even bother with DRM?

They're busy shoving out 8 TV channels of stuff over the Freeview airwaves without any encryption every day of the week, ready for anyone with a DVB card in their PC to capture. So this level of DRM paranoia seems a tad excessive.

US price cut for Xbox 360 HD DVD player

No ICT worries, really

I wouldn't worry about ICT Mark. The 360 player looks rather gorgeous over VGA or Component, and frankly the chances of ICT _ever_ turning up on the format are slim to none. After all, it's a bit pointless when people can crack AACS. Even if that weren't the case, they promised not to use it before 2010, and by then I expect one of the following three things to have happened:

a) Blu-Ray to comprehensively win, causing HD-DVD to be dead.

b) HD-DVD to remain as niche as Laserdisc, which didn't even have Macrovision.

c) "proper" players to be as cheap as DVD ones are now, and silent, so you'll want to upgrade.

For what it's worth, I'm very happy with mine.

Harry Potter and the Chancers of eBay

Again with the ebay early order stuff - why?

In my experience of using the post, if you get something a few days early, how are you going to get time for

a) the eBay auction to end

b) the postal service to get the product to the winner

all sufficiently before the rest of the world can walk into a shop anyway? It's certainly not going to be long enough to justify a massive premium, surely?