Some upgrade news on two fronts… one is that of OS. The other is that of home audio: a new receiver.
More after the jump – this is working out to be a much longer post than I planned – and obviously Geeky in nature – so it might not be of interest to all!
Continue reading Upgrade News
The rule of thumb, when jumping on a bandwagon, is to always look forward before your feet leave the ground.
Over the last 24 hours I’ve spent, um, 18 hours or so working on getting some anime content down to my PSP. Since most tutorials assume you’re going to be converting a 1.5 hours movie – and not 3.5 hours of 18 episodes – there were a number of false starts, do-overs, and PSP viewing sessions throughout the process… and it’s working now. Got the DVD Encoder thingy to drop the 18 episodes as 18 separate files and got PSPVideo9 to convert it using 320×240 (it’s 4:3 on the discs) with 15fps (because it looked like ass with 30fps) – also with a two pass approach, which really makes a difference in quality, it seems. So I’ve definitely jumped on that bandwagon.
And then there’s jumping over the current wagon and creating a ride for other people to jump on, which Steve has done today: How To: 20GB External Storage for PSP. Unlike the most recent enclosure news, where files are simply shuttled to the MemoryStick, this offers access to the entire 20GB HD over the air. w00t.
Very cool shit.
Over the years I’ve written a few posts about the iPod, XPlay, and iTunes for Windows. Over the years, I’ve amassed a number of comments on these threads, with people looking for help – sometimes from other readers and other times for me (via email).
I’ve opted to close a couple of those threads and point people here: I figure it would be better to put all of the “tips” in one location, rather than having people leave pleas for help all over my blog. In fact, my nominal advice is to contact Apple for help, since it’s their product, but there were a few things that have bubbled up that can help.
Continue reading Troubleshooting iTunes: Roll-up
For over a year I’ve been using a Harmony 688 universal remote and been rather happy with it. Well, now technically it’s a Logitech Harmony 688 universal remote, since they bought out Harmony a while ago. It’s been a great remote. Nearly perfect, in fact.
So why have I recently tossed the 688 into a drawer, in exchange for another remote? Frankly, nearly perfect means that there’s a little bit of room for improvement. Besides… Logitech has released new products to the Harmony line!
Continue reading Harmonic Upgrades
This game is worthy of its own post.
Continue reading Call of Duty 2
boingboing via Gizmodo: Xbox 360 DRM makes your rip your CDs again — Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 has a dumbass DRM countermeasure: it won’t let you store MP3s on its hard-drive unless you rip your CDs again using your Xbox. My CDs are in a storage locker on a different continent — there goes the whole Xbox-as-Media-Center thing. Thanks, Microsoft, for putting paranoid record execs’ phobias ahead of your customers’ legit needs.
What the hell is he bitching about? That the Xbox 360 isn’t behaving like a server? Duuuuuh.
Continue reading Xbox 360: Mountain Out Of A Grain Of Sand
FurryGoat’s Law just got another case study for validity.
The Adventures of Teapot the Cat: rsstroom reader – toilet paper printer! A crazy new product out of Taiwan seems to be aimed at the feed dependent of us out there. The ‘rsstroom reader’ is a bathroom gadget that prints news feeds onto your T-P – that’s right, your TOILET PAPER! The best part is the “biometrics” toilet seat that’ll figure out who you are based on your weight and prints the news you want – not your roommates tabloid garbage. Going to the rsstroom will never be boring again!
I shit you not.
Not sure what is going on, exactly, but it would seem that my category pages are completely hosed. I have them set to “last 25” which used to show the last 25 posts for each category. It still seems to filter OK, but it’s now only pooling out of the last 25 posts in all categories, meaning that things like SharpMT and books are completely empty.
Accordingly, I’ve updated the links on the menu to jump to the “Archive by Category” page, with the initial focus on the category clicked… an imperfect solution to be sure, but my hands are pretty much tied until Six Apart gets back to me.
Not often I have to clog up the Rants with blog issues, but this one has irked me for some reason… I’ve been through a few outages and other random errors with TypePad without much complaining – this one, showing a blank page all of a sudden, is really pissing me off for some reason.
The Xbox 360 has USB ports, right? Anyone try hooking up a USB keyboard to it? Ya know for typing in text messages?
Saw this article on Gamespot: We also asked Chris Satchell, the General Manager of XNA at Microsoft if we could possibly connect a USB keyboard to the 360. He told us that, “we will allow you to plug in a USB keyboard. It’s very useful for the text entry. What we’re not enabling it for, we’re not enabling it for gameplay.” So the keyboard is a go for text entry, but a no-go for game control.
Yep… my basic USB keyboard works – makes me wonder if the Remote Keyboard for MCE would work, too.
Saw an interesting article somewhere in the wild about not being able to view your Live account information from your old Xbox, after you’ve transfered your information to the Xbox 360. The article went on to say that you wouldn’t be able to do this, since the 360 has new security protection in place that is only found on the newer box… I figured it would be due to the nature of “transferring” your account over to the new box: that implies that you move it from one to the other. At least that how it works with stuff like phone service and Sirius radio.
I was wrong: my old Xbox can still use my current Live account to play online! I once said that backwards compatibility wouldn’t matter, since the old Xbox doesn’t “expire” when you buy a new 360 – I had never realized how accurate that statement was! I figured I’d have to limp along with a few trial memberships, but nope: it’s still online and very much aLive.
Now alls I need is a new receiver – one that can handle three Component devices and five Optical inputs, since my TV has only two Component and my receiver no Component and three Optical… yay!
Yet another Xbox 360 Update.
Sorry about this, but well… the 360 is going to be the major source of new news in my life for the next few days… and what’s wrong with that, anyway? I’ve also recently noticed that I haven’t read a blog in over 48 hours. Scary, that.
Continue reading That’s Just Sick!
Well, I think I’ve spent more time playing Halo 2 on it than anything else, but that’s changing as I now have five 360 games.
What’s neat?
Continue reading Update on the 360
Went to ebGames at 9:10. Got a few fists full of swag! XBox team stopped by, too. In ebGames by 12:01. Out by 12:08. Setup in 1080i, switch my Live account to the 360, and streaming music from my PC via the by 12:42.
I am impressed… and I’m still very cold!
Now to give Halo 2 a run… got Madden 06 and Quake 4 to try out too.
w00t!
Just a couple more hours and the 360 hits the shelves on the east coast; a few more hours after that, it hits the west coast.
Which means in about three hours I’ll go line up with a bunch of other Geeks at ebGames… it’s colder tonight than it was last November 9th – that’s for sure. But I’m curious to see what the crowd is like. After all, no store is getting as many consoles as they thought… at maximum there should be 100 people in line which is much different than the 500+ that showed up for Halo 2. And they had the stock to sell that many for that launch. In addition to the short list of pre-orders that can pick up tonight, how many will stay up to midnight to claim the box? After all, their hold on the first wave lasts for 48 hours, so there’s some leeway for pick up. In fact, I’m sorta worried that there might be people there that will try the “But I’m here!” ploy to get ahead in line… knowing my luck in things like this, that would happen to my 360, if I wasn’t there. Hell, there’s a 50% shot of it happening while I am there! That’s why I won’t wait until tomorrow: fear.
Besides, I’ve already got the place cleared out for it and already tweaked my Harmony remote. Since my TV has one DVI port (used by cable) and two component (currently an Xbox and DVD player) I have to make a choice over what gets hooked up for HD. The 360 is a given, sure, but what about the other port? Rather than retiring my current Xbox, I’ve decided to pull my DVD player: the 360 should easily fill in for it for a while. As I transition off Xbox-specific games, I’ll swap the Xbox with the DVD player again, but in all honesty, the 360 supports HD and 5.1 sound – why keep the extra box around if I don’t have to? We’ll see.
Either way, cheers to the Xbox Team for their last three years of hard work – I know I appreciate it (and will appreciate it a lot more in about five hours!)
There’s been a lot of news lately on two fronts: portable video – in the form of the Gen5 iPod and PSP – and the Xbox 360.
This has caused a lot of whining inside my head…
Continue reading Can’t We All Get Along?