Deep Thought · fun

An Adventure In Phone Shopping (Ode To Crackberry)

2010-11-28T00:39:19Z

Posted courtesy of http://www.piratedthoughts.us the private blog of Jay Grider, DTgeeks.com features editor. Original article can be found At this location. This is a modified version of the article edited to better suit the content of this site.

My Curve was a gift from a friend and former boss Chip. Chip bought the phone through T-mobile probably when it first came out as the Curve 8320 was released in 2007 and it was gifted to me in 2009. Chip moved from that crackberry to another quickly, and shortly after moved to AT&T for an iPhone. When my Nokia flip phone, whose model number I am too lazy to find but we can suffice that it was a piece of crap, died after a long string a abuse (being pushed into the pool during JAWS camp, being thrown into my wall and getting stuck, being dropped out the car window on the interstate on accident [you get the idea]) I tried to seek a cheap alternative to pay for a new phone.

As someone who has task management issues I found myself craving the scheduling features that a smartphone packed. Posting around and tweeting asking if people had any old blackberry’s laying around *since i knew no one would give out a free iPhone or Droid* @ichip offered his to me. I fell in love as soon as I unlocked the T-Mobile device to work on my wireless carrier, a process that only took me 18 hours of active hacking. The phone was fast, easy to use, and feature rich. This was a whole new league of phones I had never experienced before.

Yet like all my phones during those teen years of angst and pubescent rage, the crackberry took abuse. Anger over breakups and douches with beards stealing the girls I pined for at night, the crackberry began to see some wear and tear. About a year ago the trackball went out, a combination of angst fits, clumbsyness, and using my phone while my hands were greasy. This was an easy fix, a four dollar order from overstock.com meant a new trackball for my crackberry, and another year of functionality.

Now as 2010 is drawing to a close, my crackberry cries in pain everyday, as I weep over missed calls and sms messages. Recently the sim card pins soddering has come loose, either that or my sim card is busted, which it appears to be alright, and replacing it is not an option as my wireless carrier doesn’t know I am using a smartphone (SHHHHHHHHH). Leaving me with a phone that drops service every ten minutes or so and requires a reset to get it to come back. These are dark days in my digital world.

As my crackberry began to die I felt it was time to let it rest in peace. I began examining the newer models of crackberrys available from my wireless carrier. I went to several wireless stores to play with the models of the new phones, and even called a friend who has one of them and asked if I could play around with it for an hour or so. The outcome was glum at best. Despite being a crackberry the features and apps offered were just to downbeat. The new interface was confusing and extremely complex. I quickly grew to fear that I may have to venture into a realm of a new phone manufacturer.

In my senior year of highschool I spent about $1200 on a macbook. This was the worst decision of my life. If I had saved that money I would have $1200 less in student loan debt.... ok maybe it was an ok decision, no it wasn’t. The truth is that I love PC’s, I love playing video games, I love being able to take the side off my desktop and move things around and change speeds of fans and physically manage every aspect of my computer. Beyond that In the two years I owned that macbook I had numerous failures of the hardware, and numerous issues with the customer relations team at Apple. In the few instances that they refused to repair an issue caused by poor manufacturing I found that getting angry and peeling keys off the macbook’s keyboard and tossing them at them would usually get them to fix it for free, and buy my something from Captain Ahab’s Coffee ARRRRR. However, it was only a matter of time until I got bored of wasting my time doing this and sold the piece of crap for a cold $600. That was a good decision. Anyway, thats why I hate Apple now.

So with iPhones off the table, I decided to look at windows 7 phones, since they just came out and all. These phones, although cool, and full of features, were not very customizable. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the interface, its what makes me love my Zune HD so much, but there is not much you can customize about it, and I like to customize. This only left one option, Android. My carrier, like all non Verizon carriers does not offer a stellar offering of Droid phones. However they have a few, and one that is about the size of my Curve and just as cool.

Why Droid though? Thats the real question. The market demand seems to be calling all of us to buy an iPhone, not a Google mobile OS based smartphone that is made by some Taiwanese person. The simple answer is in the quality of the hardware and the market experience. The phone that I chose to purchase is made by HTC, a mobile industry leader since the mobile industry began. This company is the big leagues of mobile devices. They created the IPAQ, the first touchscreen phone, one of the first 3G phones, and the first 4G phone. Thats quite a list of accomplishments, on top of the fact that they have a custom distro of android that features a much smoother GUI. HTC, a company that many of us never heard of till the last few years grew in silence. They didn’t start branding devices as HTC until just several years ago and the first big one that anyone can remember was the myTouch.

Lets look at Apple, more specifically their accomplishments in the mobile communications industry: ~~Multi-touch technology~~ (Invented far before the iPhone was released, 1982 by the University of Toronto to be exact), ~~a mobile phone that sync’s with itunes~~ (first done my the motorokr), ~~Application market~~ (done first by RIM with blackberrys), ~~Retina Display~~ this is really just a combination of an LED screen with TFT and capacitive technology, in other words “they took a bunch of things and put them together"). To summarize, it is impossible to find innovation by Apple in the mobile market, it was all done before the iPhone came along, it was all done after the iPhone came along.

All in all, I find the reasoning to go with an opensource OS and a trusted hardware manufacturer more reassuring than a company that simply duplicated features and claimed they were new. Just saying.

A History of Black Coffee (Via Piratedthoughts.us)

2010-11-19T19:19:44Z

Posted courtesy of http://www.piratedthoughts.us the private blog of Jay Grider, DTgeeks.com features editor. Please note that this is an article of fiction. Original article can be found At this location

Commonly my 8am class will get out early, which leaves me with nothing to do until nine. This down time commonly leads to me meandering my way into the nearby Einstein Bros Bagels and getting a cup of black.

Let me be honest with everyone here. I drink my coffee black, not because I am lazy, but because I find a simple elegance in black coffee that cannot be found when you drowned something in whip cream and caramel syrup. Black coffee is something I feel has lost its appeal over the age of sugar sucking idiots that comprise my generation. There is a confusion amongst humans as to what being a connoisseur of coffee is.

Most people consider coffee to be graded upon the quality it was prepared, the quality of the extra things added to it, and the quality of the milk that they drown it with. Not to discredit this theory, but where is the actual quality of the bean involved in this process. Indeed the bean is forgotten.

Black coffee was a staple of the life of a man up until the mid 80′s. Along with the decline of the diner, the most common place that coffee was propagated to the public, black coffee also declined. The decline of the diner can be traced to the great cockroach rebellion of 1983 where in the cockroaches of New York and New Jersey signed a cease fire in the intents of disrupting the business of any restaurant where the facade was wider than the eating area was deep.

This of course was not the final nail in the coffin of black coffee served in small, off color, commonly beige mugs. No the rise of mainstream coffee houses contributed quite a bit to the death of black coffee. It was the launch of the Captain Ahab’s Coffee ARRRRR chain (Later to become as Starbucks) that ultimately began the downfall of black coffee across the nation.

Captain Ahab’s Coffee ARRRRR and its nautical themed caused an almost exponential effect upon the back of the great cockroach rebellion. The effect was almost catastrophic for diners and diner-esque style restaurants. After the downfall of the League of Diners in 1994 there was only one man left standing.

Waffle House, or Das Waffel Haus for my German Readers, became the final contender for sharing black coffee with the world. Obviously I am excluding conferences of any kind here as no business man wants some idiot with a beard trying to put caramel in his French roast. Indeed only the shape of a Waffle House saved it from the destruction. The ingenious shape of a square restaurant had been previously unexplored by entrepreneurs prior to this point in history. There had been a lot of geometrically correct restaurant shapes over the years, but only Waffle House had perfected the square restaurant shape by this point.

Despite the decline of black coffee there was still hope to be held. A shining star of pure black gold rose out of east Boston in 1998. Larry Bird’s Dunkin’ Donuts! (later shortened to Dunkin Donuts due to Larry not wanting Shaq to start a chicken restaurant called “Im’a Dunkin my Bird”) became the most popular chain of coffee houses ever started by an NBA player.

Bird’s dream of a world with easily accessible black coffee quickly looked like it was becoming a reality. A dark force from the west arose and quickly threatened the entire coffee world. Indeed it was the second coming of Ronald Reagan. But thats another story.

OK, This is Just Excessive, Guys

2009-02-26T00:16:36Z

Seriously, two times now? Come on, did you people really think Valve wouldn’t notice you running around with items that should take months to acquire on release day?

Part of me thinks the penalties should be getting more severe, not less.

Ok that’s enough GENERIC INTERNET RAGE for now.

4chan.org’s Popular Board /b/ Taken down

2009-01-10T23:26:45Z

In wake of the DDOS attack on /b/ that I reported on a few minuets ago. It has taken only twenty seven minuets for the moderators at 4chan to take down /b/. At 7:27PM EST /b/ was reported as 404’d.

Mac Heist 3 Begins

2009-01-06T20:38:46Z

Mac Heist three began today. They are offering Process, normally $39USD, for free just for logging in. Beware, the web server is buckling under the load of people. So it may take a long time to get anywhere.

Head over to www.macheist.com to join the fun!

UPDATE: It appears that the next piece of loot is MacDust

Tomorrow is Wednesday, and You Know What That Means

2008-10-22T01:50:33Z

Yes, that’s right, a new Zero Punctuation episode is released. Remember class, it’s okay to Laugh Out Loud as you young people say, just remember to take notes because there will be a test on it tomorrow. It’s recommended that you review previous editions in the archives to help prepare yourself for the test.

In other news, I went on a nostalgia trip this week when I found my old Rollercoaster Tycoon disc. It actually installed, and then showed me why 2D isometric perspective could not have died sooner. Imagine trying to line up two sections of path in three dimensions, except you have no depth perception at all and you have to stand 20 feet away from whatever it is you’re constructing. Yeah.

I’m not the guy to go to for old school gaming, let me tell you.

DT @ Digital Life 2007 - Novint Falcon Game Controller

2007-10-08T08:18:01Z

Deep Thought staff writer Uchendu Nwachukwu (AKA UnnDunn) recently visited Digital Life 2007 in New York City to test out the latest wares from major technology companies. He also had the opportunity to speak with representatives from some of the exhibitors. Previous interviews we have posted discuss the FordSync in-car entertainment system and the Gateway One all-in-one PC. In this interview, UnnDunn discusses the Novint Falcon game controller.

The Novint Falcon is unlike other input devices on the market. It’s not a mouse, trackball, or joystick. Instead, it is described as being a “small robot” that provides “three-dimensional force feedback,” according to Novint’s web site. The Novint Falcon is currently available, and is now also available at CompUSA stores.

Anyway, enough of me writing about it; let’s listen in as UnnDunn gathers details about the Novint Falcon, including information on pricing, availability, compatibility, and more.

Click here to listen - MP3 format; 1.6 MB

Team Fortress 2: Of Teams and Fortresses

2007-10-03T07:00:01Z

There’s no denying that Valve Software is a household name in video games, though I doubt anyone was going to do it anyway. Despite their dishearteningly slow development process (never heard at Valve: “Hurry up guys, we’ve got a deadline to meet!"), nearly every game they create is considered excellent (oops, I mean pwnsome!) The interesting thing is that most of their games have roots in unlikely sources, usually mods to their own, or to other games. Team Fortress is one such game.

What started as a mod to Quake became a standalone game in its own right once Valve bought the company that created it. That certainly doesn’t sound impressive at all, but what Team Fortress was isn’t what’s important; the important bit is what they’ve done to the game to get Team Fortress 2.

For those who don’t know, the gameplay in Team Fortress involves two components: teams, and fortresses. Most maps involve team-based gameplay either involving command posts (where one team attacks and the other defends,) or flags (you know what CTF is, you just do.) That gameplay hasn’t changed much at all in the sequel, the Valve one, if you will.

What makes TF2 so amazing is how much they have changed between TFC and TF2. The style is even a new one for Valve, and I must say that it’s a hit. Within TF2, they’ve created a first person shooter that doesn’t take itself seriously one bit. One need only look at some screenshots or trailers to see just what kind of look and feel the game has. Hint: think The Incredibles in game form (and it looks good enough to be close to the movie in actual quality.)

The thing I love most about the game is that each class isn’t merely a class, but an individual character. Again, watch one of the “Meet the xxxx” trailers to see what I’m talking about. The best is Meet the Soldier, just saying.

The result? A very fitting addition to Valve’s portfolio, and a strong multiplayer component to The Orange Box.

October 10th can’t come fast enough.

Steam - Team Fortress 2: learn more about Team Fortress 2 and watch the trailers

New release watch: Bridge Construction Set & YAI updates

2007-10-01T08:00:00Z

We’ve got a couple new releases to tell you about; lucky you!

Bridge Construction Set 1.36

Bridge Construction Set is, as its name suggests, a shareware bridge construction simulatior game. The point is to construct a bridge that won’t collapse. Bridge Construction Set comes with over 40 levels, plenty of bridge construction types and materials, a level editor, and more. If you have an interest in bridge construction, you may want to check it out; it sounds like fun!

Version 1.36 now supports Intel-based Macs and fixes a number of bugs.

The skinny

Requires:
Windows 98 or higher; Linux; Mac OS X
Intel, AMD, or PowerPC G3 800 MHz processor
OpenGL Compatible 3D Graphics card with 32 MB VRAM
128 MB RAM
20.1 MB hard disk space

Price:$19.95 US; free demo available

From: Cronic Logic

YAI (You Are Invited) 1.2

If you use your Mac in a corporate environment, you may appreciate this one. YAI—or You Are Invited—takes meeting invites sent from Outlook, Google Calendar, and other sources, and translates them for use in iCal.

Version 1.2 is available today; it fixes incompatibilities that exist between Microsoft Exchange-style invites and iCal, and is a free update for registered YAI users.

The skinny

Requires:
Mac OS X 10.4
Apple Mail, iCal, Address Book

Price:2 Great Britian Pounds (or $4.08 US); free demo available

From: John Maisey

The Steam Community is Open

2007-09-14T09:00:00Z

On September 12, Valve Software, Inc. launched the new Community feature of their Steam digital-distribution software. This release follows a beta period lasting several months. The Steam client software updates automatically, so the new features have been rolled out to almost all of Valve’s users.

The Steam Community aims to compete with other gaming solutions such as the entrenched Xfire and the up-and-coming Windows Live branch of Xbox Live. At present, the Steam Community only supports Steam games for more advanced features, though any game can be added to the Steam list and receive some basic features, such as in-game instant messaging. Additionally, Steam will also communicate which game and server (if applicable) users are playing, offering quick access to joining the same server. Users can also create groups on Steam and communicate between members of these groups easily.

Expect a comparison here on Deep Thought as soon as Xfire releases their currently Beta update to Xfire In-Game.

The Steam Community’s main page from within Steam

The Steam Community

Sony Releases PSP Firmware v3.70

2007-09-12T22:07:00Z

Sony yesterday released the newest version of the Playstation Portable’s firmware, version 3.70 (up from 3.52), for both the PSP-1000 “phatty” and the new PSP-2000 “slim”. This new release includes several large features, including theming support (with theme editor upcoming), simultaneous playback of pictures and music, and the display of shortcut buttons throughout the user interface. The update is available only through Network Update on the PSP’s XMB at the time of this writing, but is expected to be available through sony.com soon.

Currently there are two themes available, though neither are downloadable through an obvious place. Instead, one must go to a part of the Sony Japan website to download them. Further instructions may be found at the linked article.

Opinion, ho: Neither of the themes are better than the default, in my opinon, but they do show off what different kinds of styles can be made (a simple color-scheme change like Pink or something more drastic like Cookie.) Whether this takes off hinges entirely on the theme editor; no one wants to leave the themes entirely to Sony (indeed they haven’t; theming is possible through homebrew, but then again, so is bricking the PSP.) The good thing is that Sony does have some experience with making software, so we more than likely won’t be stuck with something buggy and nearly unusable. Ideally, making a theme would be pointing the application at images for each icon, giving it a wallpaper, and choosing some colors. I’ll have a hands on with the theme editor when it’s released.

System Update Page (currently showing version 3.52)
Firmware Version 3.70 Update Available
How to download and use the Sony-Made themes

Guitar Hero III - coming soon to a Mac or PC near you!

2007-09-12T07:57:00Z

Okay so you’ve just spent the last three hours playing Guitar Hero on your console, but now you have to get down to business and write that paper that’s due tomorrow on your computer. But what’s that? Guitar Hero III will be released for Windows and Mac OS X?

Goodbye, productivity; we hardly knew thee.

Yup, that’s right, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock will make its debut this fall as expected, but game port house Aspyr will also release a hybrid disc containing a version for Windows and (surprise!) Mac OS X.

In an interview with GameDaily BIZ, Jay Gordon of Aspyr states that that the company is “working toward a simultaneous ship with the console version.” He also notes that, “all of us in this business know that dates can slip, so we’ll let you know when we’re able to announce a ship date. We’re quite certain that you’ll see Guitar Hero III for PC/Mac in stores before the holidays.”

The Mac/PC version of Guitar Hero III will feature a guitar with USB connectivity modeled after a Gibson guitar. Details regarding system requirements and pricing has yet to come (I’ll be happy as long as it runs on a MacBook ).

Outstanding. My guitar-junkie brother will be pleased. It’s also nice seeing that Mac users won’t be left out of the Guitar Hero fun.

GameDaily BIZ: Guitar Hero III Shocker… Coming to PC & Mac

A couple little-known, open source, cross-platform 3D games

2007-04-01T14:00:01Z

I am simply a cheapskate, and I hate to spend money on things that I know that I won’t use very long. Computer games are one of those things, so in the late hours of the night I scour the web for open source games. I’ve found two that are noteworthy and work on Windows and Mac OS X alike.

First we have Armagetron Advanced, a Tron-like cycle game that lets you duke it out against computer or human players. Simple and playable for hours, this game is just plain addictive. It’s almost reminiscent of the old arcade games that you would spend all your tokens on, then crawl around on the gum-covered floor to find two more, at wich point you would race back to the machine, only to find that another child is in the process of losing the $5 that his parents gave him. An interesting aspect of Armagetron is its cameras. You can adjust the camera to be a first person view, which allows you to watch a light-wall come racing towrd you at 150mph and then turn at the very last second to avoid certain doom. The feeling of motion in first person is so realistic, it’s replaced my “falling” dreams with “Light-wall racing toward me” dreams. The game allows full Internet and LAN gameplay, something few games of the open source variety do. The beta allows you to insert a link to a .M3U playlist, after which it plays the playlist in-game (MP3 files only).

The second game is Cube, a far more noteworthy game. It’s a fully 3D FPS that I would definitely pay for. Recently the developvers have begun working on an RPG version of Cube that ... I guess is RPG… I don’t know. Anyway, the game is like a 3D Quake (original) and totally beats the socks off solitaire anyday. Playing the game comes easier than any other FPS I’ve ever played; so easy, in fact, that I often find myself pressing the “e” key to open doors that open automatically. I also keep hitting the darn “r” key to reload, even though there are no clips in the game; I always feel so stupid. Despite being primatively easy to control, Cube busts the balls of any other free FPS I’ve ever seen. Allowing you to create you own maps in game while defying the laws of in-game gravity, Cube also boasts one kicking soundtrack, with songs that are as heavy as metal gets, all without lyrics so you can hear those aliens scream when their heads explode. I’ve found myself addicted to this game ever since it was just me running around in a partially 3D world. The stunning water efects and visuals justify the time it takes to download the 100+ MB installer package.

Xbox 360 HD DVD Player

2006-12-31T00:00:00Z

There are two kinds of TV owners in the world: HDTV owners and everybody else. HDTV owners know how much high definition enhances the TV viewing experience. It’s so good that many HDTV owners (myself included) will watch practically anything as long as it is in HD. Daytime soaps, the 10 o’clock news, even mindless reality fare—shows one would never even consider watching previously—suddenly become riveting entertainment, solely for the fact that they are in high definition. That’s how compelling High Def is.

But what HD owners really want to watch on their expensive TV sets are movies, and lots of them. The HD movie selection on cable is meager at best, and DVD’s don’t offer the capacity to deliver movies in HD on a large scale. Enter HD DVD. This next-generation optical disc format uses a blue laser to greatly increase the capacity of a disc (DVD’s top out at 9.6GB whereas the smallest 12cm HD DVD’s start at 15GB) and next-generation video codecs to enable HD movies on a disc the same size as a regular DVD. Both HD DVD and its competitor Blu-ray Disc use the same blue laser technologies, and consequently, both require consumers to go out and buy new hardware to play those respective formats. But the hardware is expensive, with HD DVD players starting at $450 and Blu-ray players going for a wallet-emptying $999. Not exactly mass-market prices.

The Xbox 360 HD DVD Player

Microsoft thinks it has a solution. It has released the Xbox 360 HD DVD player that, for $200, allows Xbox 360 owners to watch HD DVD movies through their consoles. When one gets right down to it, the HD DVD player is a fairly unremarkable device. It is literally just a 2x ATAPI HD DVD drive, inside a USB enclosure, with a USB hub included. All of the decoding and movie playback is accomplished on the Xbox 360 itself using the bundled software package (the HD DVD player software apparently has 10 million lines of code and pushes the Xbox 360 harder than any game yet). This characteristic of the player is responsible for both its most compelling advantages and its primary drawback, but more on that a little later.

As mentioned, the HD DVD standard uses new, blue-laser technology to greatly increase the capacity of a 12cm optical disc, with capacities starting from 15GB. This in itself would be enough to deliver HD movies in a compelling format using existing technology, but the standard goes further by taking advantage of next generation video compression formats, MPEG 4 Part 10 (also known as H.264) and Microsoft’s VC-1 format which is based loosely on WMV 9. The HD DVD standard also supports MPEG 2 for legacy compatibility. The result is the ability to deliver feature length movies in the highest available HD resolutions with barely-discernible compression artifacts. HD DVD also boasts beefed-up audio, with support for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD surround sound formats, making for cleaner, fuller audio than with regular DVD’s.

For interactivity, HD DVD uses iHD, which is based on standard Web technologies, to provide animation, menus and other features. These interactive features can play on a layer above the movie as it plays, unlike the current DVD format which requires you to pause the movie and bring up a dedicated menu screen. HD DVD players also include two decoders for picture-in-picture support, an ethernet port for Internet content downloads, and a hard drive to store those downloads. This means in future, movie publishers could introduce new content such as new commentary tracks or behind-the-scenes featurettes, which would be downloaded to your HD DVD player and integrated into the movie experience.

For the most part, the Xbox 360 HD DVD player handles everything with no fuss. Setup is a breeze; simply unpack the unit, insert the enclosed software disc in the Xbox 360 and hook up the player. After a brief installation process, it’s ready to go. You’ll be watching your first movie less than 5 minutes after opening the box. In use, it quickly becomes clear that Microsoft made a concerted effort to make the HD DVD player as unobtrusive as possible. The software makes no changes to your Dashboard, save for a small adjustment to the “Play Disc” command, which is now divided into two sections, one to play the disc inside the Xbox 360 and the other to play the disc inside the HD DVD player. Game discs must play from the 360 itself and HD DVD’s must play from the HD DVD player, of course, but DVD’s and audio CD’s can play from either drive, which lets you set up some interesting two-disc scenarios. For example, if you have a DVD movie that spans two discs, simply put one in each drive and enjoy.

The Xbox 360 Universal Remote,
included with the HD DVD player.

Despite Microsoft’s efforts, there are a couple of maddening ways in which the HD DVD drive doesn’t quite mesh with the rest of the Xbox 360 experience, and this is the device’s first disadvantage. The Xbox 360 has a setting which lets you choose whether to start a game or movie automatically on boot. I have this turned off, because I usually want to go to the Dashboard, check my messages or play an Arcade game first. This works fine most of the time, but maddeningly, if the HD DVD drive has a disc inserted and the 360 does not, it will start the HD DVD disc automatically, regardless of the auto-start setting. Another small but telling nitpick is there is no way to eject the HD DVD disc from your couch. The included Universal Remote has an eject button, but it only opens the Xbox 360’s disc tray, not that of the HD DVD player.

The HD DVD drive is also limited by the Xbox in a couple of technical ways. The Xbox 360 does not have an HDMI port (or a DVI port, for that matter). This means there is no way to get a pure digital signal to your new digital TV. Microsoft thinks the Xbox 360’s VGA adapter can serve as an adequate replacement for it, and for the most part, it is just that: adequate. To be sure, VGA does deliver a great picture, as does component output, but nothing replaces the convenience of HDMI, and there’s the ever-present worry that the movie studios will clamp down and require HDMI for full quality HD DVD or Blu-ray viewing. The studios have said they will not impose this requirement until the next decade at the very earliest, but you never know, and if and when they do decide to require it, the Xbox 360 HD DVD player will be reduced to a glorified, expensive standard DVD player, incapable of transmitting any HD signals.

The other limitation is the 360’s lack of support for any next-generation audio formats. All HD DVD audio gets internally converted to Dolby Digital 5.1 or Dolby Pro Logic II (for digital or analog transmission, respectively.) No Dolby TrueHD, no DTS-HD, not even regular DTS, which some say is better than Dolby Digital. Unfortunately, I don’t yet have a 5.1 surround system to test on (I know, I need to drag myself into this century ) so I can’t speak much to the sound quality of the HD DVD player.

The HD DVD drive looks ugly next to the 360, no matter how you position it.

But perhaps the most obvious flaw is decidedly non-technical. The drive just plain looks ugly. I don’t know what Microsoft’s industrial designers were thinking when they came up with this thing, but there is absolutely no way to arrange it so it looks attractive next to your Xbox 360. Microsoft has released several beauty shots showing the drive standing up next to a vertical 360, but it just doesn’t work. It looks like some ugly oversize hardback book hanging off the side of your sleek 360. To make matters worse, the HD DVD drive requires its own power supply and its internal fan adds to the already-considerable racket the Xbox 360 makes at high load.

With all the flaws and gotchas, you probably think it would be hard to recommend this device. And you would be right, if it were not for one minor detail: the picture that comes out of this thing is nothing short of stunning. This is what your HDTV was made for. All of those cable and network HD shows you thought were so special before were just appetizers; this is the main course. The included movie, Peter Jackson’s King Kong, is a great showpiece for everything that HD DVD can do. Closeups of Kong’s face reveal intricate and extremely fine scars, and the fur on Kong’s skin is exquisitely detailed, with each strand waving slightly in the breeze with its own life and character. Even fast action scenes, such as Kong’s race through New York—studded as it is with Jackson’s trademark sweeping aerial shots of the cityscape—remain rock solid, never disintegrating into the telltale blocky mess that signifies the video codec giving up the fight. Color gradients, such as the sunrise-tinged sky framing Kong perched on the Empire State Building, never banded or turned blocky, instead staying smooth and natural. And fast scrolling scenes never tore up or revealed any interlacing problems. Put simply, the HD DVD drive delivered the best video quality I have ever seen in my home, period.

The HD DVD drive can also connect to a PC and, with a quick driver download and HD DVD player software purchase, can be used to play HD DVD movies on your computer monitor. It supports the Mac, but as far as I know there are no HD DVD player applications available for the Mac at this time. Realistically though, this device is tied at the hip to Xbox 360, and that characteristic is both its only blessing and its primary curse. It is a cheap and functional way for Xbox 360 owners to get into HD DVD movie viewing, but you shouldn’t expect it to replace more expensive standalone players, any of which will do a better job than this unit.

Author’s note: This article originally stated that HD DVD uses a variant of Adobe Flash for interactivity. That was incorrect, and the article has been amended to reflect that.

4.0

Going on a Trip

2005-12-23T03:08:33Z

Ah, yes, the holidays. Everyone is traveling, this time including me. I shal be spending the next two weeks up in cold Minnesota, near Brainerd to be exact. The coldness sounds worse to me because of where I am native: Arizona.

I will be gone from tomorrow, December 23rd, and will return on January 4th. During this time, as you may have already guessed, I will be unable to post any entries to my blog. I will try to pop something good off before my departure, but I make no promises.

Happy Holidays, and have a good New Year!