MumbleyJoe

Hmm, while snowboarding at Lake Louise last month I lost my lift ticket on my second run and hand to buy another one for the day (an extra $70). Yeah, boo hoo for me.

Tickets? I'm >>18, live in SF, and would like to go.

Brian wrote:

"I think there is a misunderstanding here. HDTVs in the US must support 720p and 1080i - but only on ATSC sources. The TV itself doesn't have to actually display 720p, just the (possibly integrated) receiver.

Most CRT HDTVs produced will only sync to 1080i or 480p - it's up to the integrated tuner to scale the picture to the correct format. That doesn't mean that the component inputs have to accept 720p, and on many older HDTVs (like my 38" RCA direct-view CRT HDTV), they don't! There are probably many European HDTVs that are exactly the same - their tuner accepts 720p but the component inputs do not.

This is not a problem for almost all devices. Almost all devices (upscaling DVD players, ATSC tuners, satellite/cable boxes) support multiple output formats and have scaling built into their hardware. The XBOX 360 works this way too - the hardware automatically scales games to the proper resolution, whether you are using 1080p, 1080i, or 720p.

Of course, those of us with LCD TVs don't have to worry about this - my cheapshit Olevia HDTV will sync to just about anything (PAL, NTSC, 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p) over component or DVI/HDCP."

And this is completely correct and being overlooked by many trying to make arguments here. I've got a Mitsubishi CRT TV that's about 3.5 years old that fits the description. Everything that comes in over the ATSC tuner in either 720p or 1080i gets displayed as 1080i. My newer DLP set converts either signal to 720p because that's what it displays natively. However the conversion is being done to the native digital ATSC signal.

When I connect an analog source to my Mitsubishi the TV could display 1080i, 480p, or 480i signals no problem. But an analog 720p signal would have to be digitized, scaled, and sent as an analog signal to the CRT guns. The bottom lines is that it adds another piece of Analog-to-digtal hardware under the hood and who knows what else, but that means added cost. And for how freakin' expensive that TV was in retrospect I'm glad it didn't cost anymore. And as for the reason these CRT sets cannot display 720p natively I believe again it's mostly a matter of hardware cost. A 480p signal requires the CRT beam to be deflected 480 times per cycle, at 1080i it's 540 times. For a 720p analog signal the beam has to sweep across the screen 720/cycle and that just means things like bigger power supplies and more costly components. I'm not an expert here, but more functionality means greater cost and in the earlier (but not so distant) days of HDTV that was a bigger issue than it is now.

So these sets are fully functional HDTVs in that they accept any HDTV signal through the ATSC tuner, they're not fully functional monitors capable of displaying any resolution.

Just before the 360 launched it was unclear whether or not games that didn't render in 1080i would be scaled from 720p or not. There was plenty of discussion on their official (though generally terrible) forums... they responded, clarified, and modified their official game pages to reflect the fact that any game will be scaled to display in any resolution (480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i at the tiem). Having had a year to learn from those kinds of experiences it's very surprising to me that Sony let this slip (though now I'm editorializing, which I shouldn't bother to do).

I'm a 360 fanboy to the end, but I'm an even bigger fanboy of Oblivion. As cool as it is to have great games exclusive to the console you happen to like, I think this is such a great game that it should really have the biggest audience possible.

Yeah, it's several months old now but who cares, it's a game worth the wait if you're into RPGs (even if weren't previously into RPGs).

Congrats Sony & Sony fans, you just scored a great game... enjoy!

I played the PC demo briefly Todd H and to me it's a very arcadey racer with powerups and weapons that reminded me of mario kart more than anything. There were also mini games like soccer and foosball using your car to move the ball around.

I had been looking forward to it when I assumed it was going to be online, then wasn't so sure when I heard they wouldn't be able to add the multiplayer (via XBOXIC as well), but now that it's back in it will be a must-buy for me.

Cool! Kudos to Microsoft and Mistwalker for capturing some positive attention in Japan.

Adam (no.3), from the link provided in the article to the Todd Holmdahl (Corporate VP of the Xbox Product Group)interview, his full quote is:

"We’re poised to hit the sweet spot of the HD market at launch and as the market matures, and we will provide an HDMI for our customers when it makes sense. The reality is, you don’t need HDMI for HD gaming."

This was after last year's E3, so potentially before all the hardware was finalized. But to me it illustrates that they've planned to be able to implement HDMI on the existing hardware all along.

I'd personally never heard of this, or at least taken note of it until it started getting a lot of post-E3 comments. I'm still a little in the dark about it so I definately agree with cringer8 above... Microsoft should start getting the word out about this title.

copa, I'm a fellow Oblivion junkie now too, and it's really renewed my interest in RPGs, so I'm really looking forward to these other 360 RPGs on the horizon.

Well Scott, I kept reading anyways and I even see your point. I've got more email addresses than I can tolerate too.

Anyway, I've already used the messaging while a friend was online in the early stages of Oblivion answering some questions. I like being able to send a message straight to the screen. I won't use it a lot, but I do like it.

I guess what I don't get is complaining about a feature just because it's one that someone might not use. It's just as easy to ignore it as it is to complain about it... easier in fact.

I'm pretty sad about the death of the Amped franchise. I was afraid that it would happen when TakeTwo acquired them. I was concerned that they'd mess with the franchise, which they did (although I still found Amped 3 fun, but it was nothing like the first two).

I thought the Amped series was really high quality, and refreshingly unobnoxious compared to the competition. I personally think Microsoft Game Studios has consistently gotten good results from their development partners. So even though the franchise could be revived if TakeTwo wants to go through another developer it will just be a name and have neither the producer or developer of the original series.

...and snowboarding season has just drawn to a close here in California... how sad.

I really feel like people will complain about anything.

The interuption to service was really minor, at least for me everything was up and running when I got home from work which was hours before the time they had allotted.

And personallly I think the feature is great. I personally interact with a number of people on my friends list and this is a feature that I've thought would be a nice addition for quite some time.

I'm sure there were other reasons for the service being down than this, but from the announcement that service would be down, they did say there wouldn't be any changes to the dashboard. (At best an automated voice message was ambiguous about it, Major Nelson was however unambiguous).

Minor XBOX Live interuption, new service. No gripes from me.