So I finally sent in my broken Xbox 360 to be fixed after falling victim to the dreaded red ring of death. I hope I get it back fairly soon, I want to play some Halo and try out some of the new RPGs that the 360 has to offer like Tales of Vesparia and Infinite Undiscovery. Anyway, since my 360 is out, I've been playing my PS3 more. I actually started playing Metal Gear Solid 4 this week, and I rented Heavenly Sword for the weekend. So far, both games are really fun, and the visuals are great. I was actually a bit surprised as the visual quality that the PS3 could support. I must say, the facial expressions and the voice acting in Heavenly Sword is probably the best I've seen/heard in a game (except for a few characters/bosses). So yeah, I expect to finish Heavenly Sword by tomorrow, then just do homework and go out the rest of the labor day weekend. I'm buying a new laptop w00t.

So I finally come back from my ever-so-busy life.... and by life... I mean WoW.... and what do i find? Jeff left GameSpot? Lame. All the best editors and producers are now gone (except for maybe Alex). GregK, Carrie, BobC, RichieG, and now Jeff. LAME! How about I play this tune? I quit. I quit. I quit. I quit! EDIT: (I was going to delete my gamespot account after this but then I quickly realized that if I deleted my account, no one would be able to read this message and I would have just wasted 1 minute of my life writing something no one would read.... not that anyone even looks at my gamespot profile anyway. Ok, so Jan 1, 2008..... this account is no more.... same with paranoiasurviva)

Do it

So I finally made it to level 8 here on GameSpot. Two more levels to go before I can start uploading videos I guess. WTF is Quad Damage anyway... Eh, it's probably just some random classic game no one cares about.

The VGA cable I ordered online two weeks ago finally made it to my house yesterday. I was relieved because up until then, I had believed it to be lost in the mail. Anyhow, I finally got to see the differences between a VGA connection and a component cable connection. It is really about trade-offs. My TV supports 1080p through component, VGA, and HDMI. Needless to say, I can get 1080p picture either way. I had heard that the picture quality of VGA was superior the picture quality through component, I found that it is not entirely true. There are two big differences between VGA and component picture quality. Firstly, the colors through component cable are far more vibrant and the image is much sharper. With VGA on the other hand, the colors are a bit dull, but my TV has some post-processing technology (titled "PC Home Theater Mode") to fix that which results in some input lag. Without the post processing, the images are much too dull and too dark for me to enjoy the movie or game, so enabling the PC Home Theater Mode is a must. VGA's picture is a lot softer than component as well. As far as clear advantages from the VGA cable, I was able to up-convert DVDs to 1080p (through component, DVDs can only be displayed up to 480p, limited by CSS). It ended up making less of a difference than I had hoped, but the upgrade in quality was still evident. Also, VGA eliminated all signs of overscan which was good, but also felt a tad weird at the same time. It seems that the Xbox 360 was engineered with overscan in mind since the 1920x1080 wallpaper I put in the background had gray bars above and below them. I would rather have no overscan though... In the end, I've decided to continue to use my component cables due to the fact that there is no HD/input lag without having to sacrifice the quality of the color display. I'm a bit disappointed since I waited for such a long time, but it is good to finally know how each connection can really affect the picture. I have yet to experience an HD source though HDMI, and unfortunately my Xbox 360 did not come with an HDMI port. I might have to wait a few years to actually find out for myself, but in the meantime, I'm very much satisfied with the 1080p picture I am getting through my component cables. So anyway, is there anyone interested in buying my lightly used VGA cable for a cool $7?

GEEZ LEWIS PS3 pwnz itzelf with bottlenecks. Anyway, I found out today that the PS3 does not up-convert games 720p native to 1080p. Reading that article makes me wonder why some developers even continue to make exclusive games for the PS3. Oh wait... that's probably why PS3 already lost a bunch of exclusives.

Here is a very informative video that shows how optical disks (particularly blue-violet disks) are created at Imation. It is actually in two parts in youtube, so here is part one. And here is part two. I found it to be rather interesting. Enjoy. :)

Yeah, so my game finally arrived today. It is weird because I ordered this a couple days after I ordered my Xbox 360 VGA cable, and the cable has yet to arrive at my house. I'm a bit disappointed because I am still looking forward to seeing the difference between an unconverted DVD and a DVD being played in 480p. Also, if it is good enough, I may very well deter me from buying an HD DVD player or HD DVD add-on for my 360.

It is really a step up from what they had before. Anyway, it's really not that big of a deal, and I wonder why I am even writing about it. but here it is anyway.

Well, looks like Sony is finally stepping up to promote their PS3. That console really has a lot of ground to cover if it is to stay competitive with the 360 and Wii. Watch the new ads here. They are actually really good.