The main reasons were basically that I refused to pay Roger’s rip-off data fees. (well, IMO, all the “unlimited” plans offered by all the companies are pretty disgusting… Butvthat is another post…). Also, I couldn’t avid the fact that apparently, you cannot turn off the “wireless” without also turning off the wi-fi… WTF? So you really have no choice but to hope you mever roam without first remembering to disable the wireless, and then it’s basically just a glorified touch anyway. That is a big mistake in my opinion.

I also have wireless at home an hopefully soon at work as well…

Now, after a week of playing, we, working with this little gadget, I have to say I’m pretty impressed. Yes, it has crashed a couple of times, but they were on 3rd party apps. Also the keyboard though not ad awesome ad the blackberry, is fantastic I can write much faster with this than with my old Dell Axim (especially with the handy auto correct feature…).

The responsiveness can sometimes be quite sluggish of it thinks it is busy. And once or twice it has stalled on me a for a few seconds.

The app sellection is quite food considering that the store and SDK has only been available for a few weeks. A BIG missing is a proper PDF reader, and no, emailing yourself a PDF does not count!

Shame on apple for not having one already!

I now get why people get zoo bloody attached to tjiet crack berries. My girlfriend has accused me of being too attached to this thing already. Imagine if I did get the iPhone instead… I would always be connected…

One thing I am wishing this touch had, was the GPS. I was hoping using google maps and cashing the last route would cut it, but sadly, it does mor really get the job done well.

Also a big missing is bluetooth! Now, you know apple is just being petty here. They don’t want us using the touch as a voip phone…

Anyway, again, overall I’m pleased. Who knows maybe there telly is a hidden bluetooth chip on this thing, and apple is just waiting to offer it as the 3.0 upgrade, of as an extra fee for $25… Ok, come on, you know that is exactly apple’s style, and that we would prolly all whine and complain, then pay the man.

(though I origonally posted this via my Touch, I posted to my old WP.com blog… oops…)

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Features:

• Cell Phone (obviously)
• MP3 Player (mp3, aac, aac+, wma, etc…)
• Video Player (mp4)
• PDA (Organizer, date book, contacts, etc)
• Trainer (pedometer, running assistant, graphs, etc)
• Games (java based)
• Bright, "hi-res" screen (240×320)
• Misc features (shake to change, matrix-style keypad, calculator, Bluetooth, email, sms, mms, etc, etc, etc…)
• USB/Bluetooth Synchronization!!!
• Expandable memory (M2 - Memory Stick Micro)

It’s small, light and stylish.  It slides open (instead of flippingopeN0 I like that because it is harder to accidentally sit on it when it is open and snap it in half.  as well, with the large screen, the hidden keyboard keeps it small.

The battery seems to be pretty good, I used it a lot the other day (listening to music, playing with apps, putting in phonebook entries, etc) and the battery barely noticed it.  According to reviews on the web, you can expect about 4-6 hours of actual use (not standby) before a charge.  The official site says 9hr talk & 370hr standby.  But those number are always optimistic to an extreme.  As long as I don’t have to charge it every night when I’m not using it…

The MP3 player is great.  As good as or better than my Samsung in audio quality.  The controls aren’t as good, but then again this isn’t a dedicated music player.  It has a programmable EQ, and come with 4 presets, including "Mega Bass ", which really pumps the bass up (I don’t use it…).  It also features stereo widening and visualizations, playlist compatibility, etc.  It is actually more functional than my Samsung yp-t9, in that it supports aac and aac+ as well as wma and mp3.  It does not support ogg to my knowledge, but only Linux geeks use that anyway.

The video player is fine, but I never used the video player on my yp-t9, but that was mostly due to having to use Samsung’s proprietary format.  The w580i uses standard mp4 (apparently, h264 is a little sluggish, hopefully it will be fixed in an update).  Speaking of updates, the phone can update its firmware over USB from the web.

Overall, I’ve been using it about a week now, and I’ve been pretty happy with it.  The default earphones that come with it are great, they are the in ear type and come with 3 different ear-size inserts.  The only irritating thing is that the connection to the phone is a proprietary connection (surprise) but the cord has a standard earphone jack on it, it just converts any pair of earphones to a hands-free headset.

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This review is LONG, which is why at the beginning, there is an "Executive Summary".  The Final thoughts (Jerry’s moment), and rating are at the end.  Though I do encourage you to read it through, mainly because I spent the time writing it.  There should be no spoilers (or at least none that give anything away other than my thoughts on controls etc).

Executive Summary

Overall, Two Worlds is an ok game.  Not a great game by any standards.  The Graphics are good, the game is a fair size, there are more or less options for how you play the game, and difficulty settings to make the game a bit more challenging.

There are major problems, some which may be fixed by patching, such as poor performance, too much freezing, crashing, stuttering, etc, bugs that skip cut-scenes, etc.

My advice is to wait until a patch (or 3) has been released and then get it.  If you liked Oblivion, you will probably be ok/not pissed with a Two Worlds purchase/rental.  Just don’t compare them, they don’t compare.  Oblivion was better by far. (Yes, I’m an Oblivion Fan-boy… bite me).

Part 1: The Good

Two worlds was a good sized game, taking me about 22 hours to beat, including completion of just about every quest I could find (some quests are impossible to do if you do a competing quest).

Unlike Oblivion, I think you can kill anyone, for example, I took out the entire city of Ashos.  As long as you are powerful enough (which shouldn’t be hard to attain) you seem to be free to wipe out the entire world.  I didn’t try to kill a main quest line character, but I did kill other quest givers, the only side effect is that quest or quest line disappeared for me.

The game is pretty. There are fields of grass, forests of bamboo, butterflies, bunnies, grass snakes, etc.  The wilderness environments are in many respects "stunning".  Cities are comparable with Oblivion, maybe a bit prettier.  Characters are quite well done, even better than Oblivion IMO, until they talk, which is why I took out Ashos.  I reloaded after that though.

The customization is kind-of neat.  Your ability to create potions, increase the power of Armor & Weapons, etc is rather encouraging.

Many of the xbox 360 achievements are achievable, some are down right too easy.  This does matter (at least for the 360 port) as many games on the 360 have achievements that are downright next to impossible to attain.  That’s irritating, sure hold back a couple 50 point achievements for being a complete fan-boy and getting 4000 black pearls in Hexic, but make the majority of the achievements accessible.  Two worlds does that for the most part.  There are only a couple achievements that are nigh on impossible ("visit every location!": suicide is more appealing that crawling the country side for that last location… especially since there seems to be a bug where some locations don’t register unless you stand in the right spot!)

Part 2: The Bad

The game is too Easy.  Granted I was playing on easy, but that was because it was the default setting.  Take "Gears of War" as an example.  That on the easiest setting is still hard enough that you die from time to time, especially if you aren’t playing co-op.  I died once in Two Worlds, once, right at the beginning.  I thought "Sweet, this game is going to take actual thought and strategy".  Well, you can still die if you are a complete moron, but if you don’t let yourself get to overwhelmed by the enemy, there is zero chance of death.  Especially later on in the game (see below under Customization & Alchemy).

The dialog is abysmal.  I don’t mean that audio id badly done.  I mean the scripted writing is so bad you want to groan all the time.  Their attempt at old-English is laughable.  The voice acting isn’t the best either, but it is more or less on par with many other games.

Customization & Alchemy = Godhood.  I kid you not.  My character could kill anything in less than five hits, most with one (with one or two "boss" exceptions, though I did kill bosses in a two or three hits too).  The ability to make permanent stat adjustment potions was a mistake in my opinion.  My ending strength was about 220, with a vitality of 250. I had about 30000 hit points, 10000 mana (healing didn’t even touch my mana reserves… it regenerated too fast).  My defense, thanks to adjustment potions that affected my base defense, was such that I could literally stand there and take a beating and only heal every so often.  My weapons were the wrath of god.  My armor was way too powerful.

Mages don’t have a chance.  A tank can own anything, and even an archer can usually hold his own relatively well as compared to a mage.  If you think the games is too easy, like I did, then play a mage.  I tried, gave up it wasn’t necessarily that it is challenging, more just repetitive, when you are using weapons, yes, it is still very repetitive, but at least the battle doesn’t last 10 mimes longer than it needs to…  Fire off your best spells, run.  Fire off best spells, heal & run, drink potions, repeat.  Anyway, I quickly became bored.

There are lots of places where there is just wasted space.  Stuff could be there, more quests, dungeons, baddies, etc.  But there’s nothing, just empty barren land or city blocks, etc.

The game is NOT bigger than oblivion.  The "land area" may be bigger (thought it sure does not feel like it), but when you factor in content, it is barely a quarter of the size.

Part 3: The Ugly

The game freezes, a lot.  Granted, at the time of writing this review, the game had been out only a week or so.  One expects games, these days at least, to freeze once or twice, to have a bug here and there.  The studios seem to let a lot more through now that games can be patched, which is a rant of its own,   but Two Worlds froze on me about a dozen or so times in 22 hours of play.  That’s completely unacceptable.

The game chugs and stutters badly on the 360, I bet it never went over 15-20 frames per second the entire game, and more often than not it probably attained around 10 frames per second on average.  I’m sorry, I’d rather the game look a little less pretty, than have to feel noxious while playing.  The stuttering in some parts was so bad I just about turned it off and gave up.  On a PC I could have dialed down the graphic options, it irritates the crap out of me that the developers don’t include graphic options in the 360 version.

IT IS NOT OPEN ENDED.  Contrary to their propaganda, there is only one path through the game.  Sure, you can ignore the main story line completely (except that if you approach a main character you will trigger an encounter & main story quest.  But you can still ignore that quest.  There is no real good or bad, you can do some things that will make it a bit harder to get "in" with a certain guild.  But that really means wiping out a town or two.   You can be "thrown out" of a guild, but that only means you lose the perks that they award you for doing quests for them.  They still won’t really be aggressive towards you, in fact they will still converse, trade, etc. 

IMO, in order for the game to be considered "open ended" it would have had to have enough content to give the user choices.  True, you can immediately go just about anywhere at any time right from the beginning, but that’s not good enough.  You have to have options for how to complete the game,  joining factions should have consequences (you can join all the factions and nobody cares until the last quest or two).  It just wasn’t good enough IMO to use the words "open ended".

FYI: Your only really test of "good vs. evil" is at the very end. And then it doesn’t matter. When you beat the game you don’t continue playing.  it ends.  In oblivion, you just kept on going, with most people liking you a whole lot more.  Left room for expansion opportunities.

Final Thoughts & Rating

I don’t regret buying Two worlds, and I did enjoy playing it for the most part if I put aside the freezing, the stuttering, the bad dialog, etc.  I’m not sure it was worth $60 though. 

Thank goodness I didn’t get the collectors edition.

I kind-of wish I got Blue dragon.  Luckily, however, I did buy Guitar Hero II for 360, so I had something new to play when Two Worlds froze for the umpteenth time.

Anyway, here’s my ratings for it…

Leave a comment if you have any questions, or insights.  Did you have a different experience?  If you are going to complain that I should have played through on Normal or Hard, then go away.  I played on the default setting.

PS: There are no screen shots because I refuse to hook my 360 through my HTPC to capture them.  I could steal the screen shots, but why bother that are lots of screens out there if you want to see them.

PPS: This was a review of the xbox 360 version, the PC version might have been "Better".

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UPDATE: Pictures added to the bottom of the post.

The problem

The problem I was solving was simple: Eastlink’s digital cable/DVR & HDTV package is crap, and expensive.  I was tired of paying $50+/month for channels I rarely watched, HDTV content that my or may not have sound & a DVR that consistently either refused to record items that were scheduled, would erase them, would report it was full when it was not and had HORRIBLE picture quality on standard broadcasts (non-HDTV).

I priced an HTPC (in parts) from NCIX.com and found some wicked deals.  At first, the system was going to cost me about $800 before taxes and shipping, but I pulled that down to less than $600 with some careful and exhaustive searches of their site.  I got a great deal on the Motherboard, CPU & Ram by buying them in a package.  I also saved money on almost every other component by buying items that were on sale, not name brand or not “latest & greatest”, though the motherboard is very new.

I also scavenged parts from my currant PC that I used in this one.  After I was done I ended up spending another $250 on a new video card and hard drive, though these were not required, the on-board video was passable, just not good enough in my opinion (more about that later).  I had an extra hard drive already, but it was SATA1, not SATA2, and it was in use in my current PC.  I stole my current PC’s Hauppage WinPVR-150.

Just as a note, I kept regular cable and just got rid of the DVR, Digital & HD packages, which alone saved us over $50 on our monthly bill.  We still wanted NBC, CBS, ABC, and yes, even Fox (they have “So you think you can Dance”).

The System

The system & parts were as follows:

Again, the Hard Drive & Video card were extra, and were not necessary, I could have done without them.  I had an extra 320GB SATA1 drive I could have used.  The motherboard’s onboard video also would have done fine, except it’s gaming performance would have sucked, and it tended to stutter the video if too much was happening in the background.  Some of this may have been that the drivers for the onboard GeForce 7050 were rather new, and apparently buggy.  Time may have made it more acceptable.

The TV Tuner I took out of my HP media center PC I bought last year to replace my old dead computer.  I never used the card in the media PC so it would have been a waste not to scavenge it.  I also used the nice HP Media Center Remote and receiver that came with my main PC.  I was using the remote with my Xbox 360 anyway as a DVD player remote.

Building the system

The system came in two big boxes, one containing the case, the other containing all the parts.

The first step was to put the motherboard in the case.  The instructions that came with the case kind-of sucked.  I think there were about 3 pages of “useful” instruction total, telling you how to connect the various cables that connected to the front USB/card reader slots, power button, & temperature sensors.

It took about 5 minutes to seat the board properly & another 10+ minutes to get the connectors in place (still not sure I connected them all).

Next, the CPU.  This was VERY easy.  The stock fan came with cooling compound applied (I know, I know… but it works).  The stock cooler fit right in place with no issues.  The case has a special connector that intercepts the CPU’s Cooler’s power connector, this allows you to set the case up to adjust the speed of the CPU’s fan according to how hot the CPU is.  But I think the BIOS does this anyway…

Here’s where I made my first mistake.  The Hard drive enclosure site directly behind the Power supply.  I put the PSU in next, and ended up having to take it back out to seat the Hard Drive.  Rookie mistake.

From there on, the memory, Tuner, Video was pretty easy.

The next issue came with the DVD writer.  When I seated it in and attempted to press the drive open button (after powering the system up) it got stuck against the cases’ drive door.  I had to take it apart and “raise” the rear of the drive by a couple millimeters with a couple of washers.  This worked well.  However, this seems like something many people may run into.  The holes put in place to attach the DVD drive were too high on the enclosure.

After everything was in the case & hooked up, I closed the case, plugged in the power, the keyboard’s RF receiver, network cable and hooked up the Cable & FM inputs.

Last of all I connected my TV to the video card with an HDMI cable using a DVI-HDMI converter.

Setting up Vista & Media Center

I booted up the machine to make sure all the components were being found.  Uh oh.  No SATA Hard drive (the DVD was being found).  I shut everything down & re-opened the case to check that the SATA cable was securely connected.  It was.  I tried again.  It saw it. Huh…

I put in the Vista Install DVD & let the installer run.

Don’t try installing vista using a HDMI connection.  At least it was an issue for me.  Only 1200×720 was shown, while the full 1360×768 was being rendered, so I was not seeing the bottom or far right of the screen (hiding the next buttons in the Vista install & any error messages)

I reconnected the TV using the VGA input instead of the HDMI (Using a DVI-VGA Converter).

Setup now looked great!  I put in my Vista Key & clicked next to setup the Hard drive.   I chose the HD & clicked format.  Done.  Then next.

Error: “Windows cannot find the Hard drive” (or something to that effect).

Crap.  So I ran a Google search for the Motherboard & Hard drive.  I remembered reading about other experiencing similar issues.  I figured a bios update would fix it.  Well, it will, but its a beta bios.  No thanks.  They others got around the issue by disabling to Quick Power on Test when the bios boots.  (Does a fast little test to see things are there instead of a more extensive test of the ram, drives, etc).

I disabled the Quick test, and it worked.. It was very slow to finish booting, but it worked, and I knew a new bios was eventually on the way. 

UPDATE: This appears to be an error specific between this motherboard and model of hard drive.  I’ve been in contact with both Western Digital (horrible support) and Biostar (better, got a personal contact who tried to help).  Biostar blames Western Digital, saying the other models of WD drives they have work fine.  Western Digital seems to have nothing but form replies and 2 week waits between those replies.  There are a number of posts on the net from individuals who are facing the same issue.  The only solutions seem to be either disabling the Quick POST or installing a floppy drive (which causes the post to delay for a second while it looks for a disk in the drive, just long enough to detect the SATA drives properly)

So I went through the Vista install again, and it immediately found the drive. 

For those who have not done a Vista install before, it is usually a dream, pretty much once you enter your key & choose an install point, you wait about 10-15 minutes or so and it’s done.  This time was no different after about 15 minutes, I was sitting on the Vista desktop, ready to setup media center.

Media center was a breeze to setup as well, it asks a few simple questions about where you live and presents you with a list of cable/satellite providers, you choose the right one and it sets up your tuners, program guide, etc.  If your movies/music are in weird places other than the public video/music folder or your personal folders, you can tell it to look wherever you want.

After that, the video was a little choppy, but I realized I had not yet installed the video drivers (it was using the default crappy ones that come with Vista), a quick download and install (and reboot of course) and the video was crystal clear.

FYI: I tried two different cards for video a EVGA GeForce 8600GT and a Sapphire Radeon HD 2600XT.  There were issues with both.  The GeForce won out big time however, see the issues section below.  I may upgrade to the GeForce 8600GTS so I get HDCP however.

The Experience

Now that the System is up and running, I thought I’d give a brief description of my experience with it to date (about a week).

TV works wonderful.  The Windows Vista Media Center interface is absolutely wonderful.  Only a few complaints (see below).  The GeForce’s video post-processing does a great job of scaling, removing artifacts, color correction and edge enhancement.  It by far beats out Eastlink’s Motorola DCT 6412 DVR.  The picture is very clear, with little to no compression artifacts, where the DVR had many.  Adding new show to record is much simpler, especially with the wireless keyboard, you simple type what you want and it shows up, it does series recording and has options to start early, end late, etc.

I installed Civilization 4 & the Warlords expansion, they run great.  I also have OneCare running as my virus scanner/Anti spyware, etc.  It works very well in my opinion, some people may not think it is powerful enough, but it also has a much smaller visible footprint & starts up much faster than McAfee/Symantec.

I love being able to browse my email & read the news/Google Reader from my couch.  Rhonda seems to have gotten along with the HTPC well also (She would be the first to tell you she is technology illiterate… especially with computers) and has caught on how to start it up, etc.  Though she is still used to the old remote & has accidentally pressed stop instead of FF/RW/Pause.  There was no stop on the old DVR, and it kills the record buffer on live TV if you press stop, that sucks.

Anyway, here’s a list of problems I’ve found with Vista Media Center:

• Clicking the stop button when watching live TV causes the record buffer to empty.  Would be nice to be able to disable the stop button while viewing live TV.
• The Video Section tiles frames captured from the video streams as a list.  It only displays the title if it cannot read the stream or if you are selecting that video.  a “list” view would be much nicer.
• Likewise for the Audio library, though the artist titles can be viewed here.
• Vista does not recognize DivX, and other non Microsoft video formats until you install a codec pack (like KLite).
• Browsing the Video section is slow to respond if you have a number of DivX/xvid movies.  This may be an issue with the codec I have installed however.

Hopefully many/all of these will be fixed in the upcoming (some day) Service Pack. Until then, it still is vastly superior to the Eastlink DVR.  I have no regrets.

Issues

I ran into a number of issues with my setup.  Some minor, some not.  I’ll detail them below…

eVga GeForce 8600GT (Super-clocked version)

The GeForce ran great, though there is one major issue.  It doesn’t seem to properly support HDMI.  Basically, if you attempt to turn off your monitor while the PC is running.  The monitor will turn right back on.  This only happens over an HDMI connection, and also happened using the motherboard’s onboard HDMI slot (GeForce 7050).  At first I was led to believe it was the TV’s fault.  Granted, my ViewSonic is not a name brand, so I was quick to put the blame there (though in the back of my mind I doubted it).  I chatted with a ViewSonic rep, and they were of little use, telling me that they only supported PC connections through the PC port.  This is garbage, after all it worked with my DVR, and it is really a low-end PC running a custom OS.  She said a tech would get a hold of me 24-48 hours later.  It’s been well past 72 hours, and no word.

Performance other than that is ideal.  The only major concern for me, as the HDMI issue will likely be resolved in the coming weeks with a driver update, is the lack of HDCP.  I thought that this card supported it, as the GTS version does, but should have paid attention to the box.  I may yet still return it and get the GTS version.  This really only an issue if/when content providers incorporate the flag that tells vista to require a secure connection between the card & TV.  From what I understand, cable providers/distributors are reluctant to do this as too many people have HDTVs that do not support HDCP.  This people would be a little upset if they could not view the content correctly.

Sapphire Radeon HD 2600XT

The only major hiccup I ran into was when I tried to install Sapphire’s new Radeon HD 2600XT.  The system seemed to accept the card, and the issue I had with NVIDIA’s GeForce 8600GT’s HDMI compatibility did not exist, I was able to turn the TV off without it turning back on, however, the performance of the card was severely lacking, the list of issues was enough for me to return the card:

• The video compression was very poor.  ATI has a feature called “AVIVO” which is supposed to take much of the effort of compressing/decompressing video away from the processor as well as improve the quality of low-def/compressed streams.  Compared to the NVIDIA card, it was poor.  But add to that color dropping, over-compression, faces that turned half-pink, artifacts clearly visible all over the screen.  Also when you paused, interlacing was clearly visible.  I should have taken screen shots, but I didn’t.
• If the system put the monitor to sleep (power-saving feature), it seemed to lose the connection to the TV.  (ie: you had to turn them both off & back on for them to reconnect.) This did not happen with a VGA connection, only over HDMI.
• If the system went to sleep (I think S3 state) then it would lock. Needing to be rebooted.  This happened over HDMI or VGA.
• The system would randomly lock if left running for a long period of time (more then a few hours, with S3/S4 turned off (no sleep or hibernate).
• The gaming performance was crappy to say the least, the GDDR4 ram seemed to do little, the 2 year old Civ 4 stuttered frequently.
• Playback in Media center would stutter & skip after fast-forwarding/rewinding/pausing/skipping.
• It was LOUD compared to the GeForce.  Not good for an HTPC.

This is all pretty bad for a supposedly high-end card that is mean for HTPC usage.  Maybe people using MCE 2005 aren’t having these problems, but I was under the impression that HDMI doesn’t work with 2005, only with Vista.  And I already paid for Vista Home Premium, I’m not paying for MCE 2005.

Next…

I would like to do a couple things to make this system really be all it can be. 

A Second Tuner

For starters, I definitely want to add a second tuner card.  We are used to being able to record 2 things at once and watch TV at the same time.  Right now with the singular card, we can watch an old program while recording another, but in the fall when more shows we watch come on, we will be forced to choose who gets to watch their show. 

I’m looking at AverMedia’s AverTVHD.  It comes in a PCIe x1 variety, which would leave me a PCI slot free, and since the video card is right next to that free slot, I’d also like to keep the space open to let the breath more freely. 

The card also supports decoding ATSC/QAM (over the air HDTV), so should that technology ever come here to Nova Scotia, we could take advantage of it.  As well, it is a “dual tuner” card, with the ability to tune both ATSC and NTSC at the same time. (theoretically, I could record two standard def channels & 1 HD channel while watching another show!)

Potential Cost: about $90.00 or so

Quieter Cooling

The only loudness comes from the CPU’s cooling fan & the two rear case fans.  I’d like to replace the CPU fan for starters, and then try and find to more quite small case fans.

Potential Cost: $70+ (really depends on the parts.. you can find CPU coolers for as little as $30 that are supposed to be pretty quiet… but they can also range to well over $100)

RAID Hard Drives

This is mainly so that if a drive fails, I don’t have to spend a week putting everything back on the computer. It would also provided a bit of a performance increase depending on the drive array I used.

Potential Cost: $120+ per HD (would need (extra) 1 drive for RAID 1, 2 drives for RAID 3 or 5, 3 for RAID 6.. in all likely hood, RAID 1 would do just fine..)

Faster Processor

This can wait for a while, the Dual Core 3600+ is more than enough right now, but when the price on the 6000+ drops to a reasonable $120-$150 or so, it would be silly not to increase the life of the machine.

Potential Cost: $120-$150 (depending on how long I wait & what processor I buy)

In Closing

Well, that was a lot of writing.  Again, I hope to have pictures up soon.  I’ll also post a review at some point of my overall experience with Windows Vista & Media Center.

If anyone has comments, or questions, feel free to leave them here or email me thecatwhisperer _at_ gmail _dot_ com.

Pictures

 
The case, a little hard to see since its black against a black background.

 
Inside the case, as you can see, the power supply fan is a monster, and it is super quiet.  The two rear fans don’t seem to push any real air, so I removed them.  The case is about 2-3 degrees warmer without them.  I’ll keep an eye on that and may have to re-add them or add in new, better fans.

 
Vista’s MCE start screen.  Really easy to navigate, you press up or down on the remote (or keyboard) to switch between sections (like TV + Movies, Sports, Weather, Music, etc…) and left & right to switch between parts of the section (in TV you have recorded tv, live, guide, etc…)

 
The TV Guide in Vista’s MCE.  Much better than Eastlink’s.  Prettier too.  If you are currently watching something it appears in eh background or in the lower left corner.  Wish that was configurable.  That “Categories” tab to the left allows you to immediately filter out shows based on Movies, Sports, News, etc… It only shows the items that match, putting blank space in the rest of the guide.  Neat, but we rarely use it.  That little red dot in “A Model Life” means it is scheduled to be recorded, it it’s 3 red dots it means a series record is set.

 
The menu screen if you are watching something.. again you can navigate by clicking up down, left right.

A Standard definition TV program via analog cable.  The camera didn’t do it much justice, it’s actually more clear than that (and better color.. I prolly could have gotten better results had I found the right setting on the camera.. it tried to warn me).  IF that were an Eastlink DVR picture the text would be slightly pixilated and ugly.

There. I added pictures

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I took a look through some reviews online & found the perfect MP3 player for me.

The Samsung YP-T9.  Its small (4.3 x 8.3 x 1.1cm, 50 grams) and pretty, sleek black, pretty full color 208×176 pixel screen.  The model I picked up was the 2gb model, I almost wish I got the 4gb, but this one holds a lot of music & a movie.  That’s right it plays MOVIES!  mp4/avi format, but i downloaded “Jesus Camp” on it, it took about 20 mins to convert it to the right size & push it over. (BTW: “Jesus Camp” is a friggin scary documentary on Evangelical/Born again Christians and how they are raising their kids … might post a mini-review/retrospective later).

Anyway, I’ve had it for  a few days now, (the MP3 player), and it works great, it is soo light, took it running and didn’t even feel it in my pocket.  It’s sound is great, excellent bass, even with the earbuds provided by samsung.  The interface is done in flash & is pretty, you can change the color of the interface to blue, green, white, pink, orange, purple & a new interface called something like Lovely White or something.  It’s really gay. but pretty.  The controls are bloody simple & tactile, though the pause/menu buttons could have been placed on the face instead of side.

One wierd feature, is that when you are watching movies on it, the controls for volume up/down & ff/rw flip sideways (you watch the video sideways on the device) which is a neat feature but takes you buy surprise the first time.

Anyway, I love it.  It cost less than $200 for the 2gb model (I think the 4g is $209.99 at futureshop). (note: it comes with or without bluetooth)

PS - Other features:

• MP3 Playback
• WMA (Plays4Sure) compliant (Napster, etc)
• MP4/AVI video
• FM Radio (including 9 pre-settable stations
• Flash games that suck, but better ones that might come out
• Text reader (I guess if you wanted to push over an ebook to read while listening to music?)
• Multiple Equalizer settings including “3D” or enhanced ones (DNSe)
• “Street Mode” which increases the volume a bit to knock out background sound
• Something like 20 hours of music battery time, or 6 hours of video.
• Recharges in about an hour (included li-ion battery)
• Voice recorder (yay…)
• Picture browser
• Bluetooth (cool if you have a bluetooth headphone set.. like $100+, no wires!, supposedly you can also transfer files to & from it and synch using bluetooth?)
• Its soo sexy!

Ok.. done bragging now.

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The Back Story:

On March 25th I called Xbox Support (1-800-4MY-XBOX) and scheduled a repair as a fan on my $700 toy was failing (grinding sounds). They were great, told me all i had to do was wait for a box to show up (about 2-4 business days) and them follow the instructions in the box… all shipping would be paid for & my Xbox should be back to me in 6-10 business days at the most. (Note: as Xbox Canada does not actually “repair” consoles, they just check incoming broken consoles to make sure they have not been tampered with & are indeed broken & send out new/refurbished console the next day)

On March 27th a box arrived at my house. Int eh box was a plastic bag to cover the console in & two foam supports to place it in the box securely. Also provided was a pre-measured piece of tape, a shipping label (paid) and a piece of paper instructing me to:

1. remove any game discs from drive
2. remove the HD unit (and instructions, including pictures show)
3. remove any custom face plate
4. place xbox in plastic bag
5. place xbox in foam inserts
6. place in box
7. use tape provide to seal box
8. apply provided label
9. call Purolator for pickup (the paper said i was responsible for pickup charges, but Purolator said i was not)

Pretty simple. So on the 1st I followed the instructions. Purolator picked up the package from my office & I waited for a response from MS telling me my console was received (via email….).

3 days later.. no email. So I called support… Support guy told me, indeed my xbox had been received (on the 2nd) & signed for but no further information was available… Please call back in a day or two if I’ve not received an email. It just may be a delay at the support center. I was cool with that… I’m a software developer so I know all about delays & backups…

2 Days later… no email. So I call again. Support guys is very friendly, tels me this is indeed very unusual & that he’d sent a request to the Support center to update the file. Please call back in a day or two. He apologizes for my inconvenience and assures me they will do whatever they can. Good enough…

1 day later (I’m impatient now), so I call again. The support gal says no response from Service Center, she will escalate the matter to the next level. Please call back in two days…

2 days later… Call again… same story.. escalated again… call back in two days…

2 days later .. I call again (irritated)… Still no word. The support guy assigns me my own personal case worker, who will cal me within 48 hours. *groan* Ok… sure…

1 day later.. MS guy calls.. get my answering machine (does not follow instructions to call my cell phone.. minor mistake, whatever).

2 day later… MS Guy calls again, gets a hold of me.. apologizes profusely, listens to me rant about how my xbox, my $700 toy that i also paid a service contract on, is STILL missing… that the service center has for all I know, lost it. He assures me, that if anything it is just misplaced he will contact them again with the highest priority, and will call me back in 72 hours (the maximum time the service center has to reply). For my trouble he offers me one of the following for free:

• Call of Duty 3
• Kameo
• Project Gotham Racing 3
• Wireless 360 controller

I take the controller. He verifies my shipping address & says it will be in the mail shortly (great.. so I’ll have a controller, but no xbox to use it with.. awesome ) He apologizes again & assures me I’ll hear from him in 72 hours.

I go buy an Wii & Zelda… (I need some toy to play with! come one!).

3 days (70 hours really), later, he call me back. No word. if he hasn’t heard from them by end of day.. he’ll call MS themselves (apparently the support guys, nor the service guys aren’t actually MS, just sub-contractors or something) and they’ll “get it done”. He’s out of the office until this coming Sunday.. he’ll call me then…

1 day later (today) I received this email:

“Dear Customer,
We have received your Xbox at our service center. It is our priority to process your Xbox in a timely manner and to get it back to you as good as new. We will contact you as soon as we are finished so you can get ready to get back into the game!

Thanks,
Xbox Customer Care”

Right. I guess either the service center finally “found” my xbox or MS laid the proverbial smack down.

By tomorrow (if they, the service center, don’t fuck up further) it should be shipped.

I’ll keep you updated.

I was kinda hoping they’de feel real bad for me and send me an Elite
…

PS: Zelda kicks ass & the Wii is really cool.. more on that in another post…

PPS: Again, I want to reiterate, that both the guys at Xbox Support & my case worker have been awesome.  They put up with me whining about being without my xbox for about 3 weeks, and apologized and were nice and calm and took it all with a sweet voice.  I think they are great.  The guys at the service Center however need a kick in the ass.. but for all I know there could have just been a big backlog, or something else… but then again.. a company run by or for MS should have better SOPs that update their people and the end user as to the status (ie: “sorry, due to an unforeseen backlog, it is taking longer than anticipated to blah blah blah…”).

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• You can skip cut-scenes
• “Best Final Fantasy Ever”, and I’m not just saying that because it is new &different.. read on…
• You can skip cut-scenes
• No whiney, spiky-haired, depressed, loser main character that the story revolves around, you have various characters, most of which have their own stories.. the exception being Penelo.. she’s there for Vaan’s penis.. I’m almost sure of it…
• You can skip cut-scenes (ok, I’m done.. But really.. You know what I mean if you’ve ever played any other FF game…)
• The chicks in FF12 all dress like it’s 50 degrees out (very little clothing, very short shorts, etc.. Hell the rabbit chick is wearing a thong! This is good, because it gives me something to look at while battles are going on & my people are running around the map…
• OMFG the cut-scenes (that you can skip) are BEAUTIFUL!!!! CGI is as good as any I’ve ever seen…
• The story does not suck! Mostly revolves around awar past, present & future.
• Rarely cuts into an annoying narration scene, with horrible wallpaper.. Wtf? (does thisafter you complete a major section of the story), doesn’t really add much.
• More freedom of movement than ever before, and sooner! There are still areas they lock off until you complete storypoints, but still.. I’ve accidentally walked into a zone and been beatendown in a heart-beat.

• Gambits
  • They kick ass!
  • What are they? Well, they allow you to let the game do the obvious parts of the battle. That would be healing, casting recovery magic, stealing, attacking.. Yes, mainly everything.
  • Why is this good? Well, because during the normal battles, it isn’t fun the 500th time you have to cast Cura… or telling your thief to steal at the beginning of every damned fight.. It’s obvious.. The game should do it for me
  • You have control over how you want your characters to fight.. They do similar in other RPGs like the “Tales of …” series, except you don’t have such fined grained control.
  • You can actually say don’t friggin heal until a character’s HP is below 30%!!!
  • You can tell your thief to steal if a enemy’s HP is at 100% (make sure to tell another character to attack that character’s target, otherwise the idiot will keep stealing… again and again…)
  • Gambits can be turned on and off with ease… plus you can interrupt at any time to insert a command such as casting Viagra..oops I mean Firagra on an enemy..
  • As you progress through the game you get better & better gambits.. Allowing more detailed control (ie: if foe == fire venerable, cast {fire spell})
• License Board
  • Both very cool and irritating at the same time
  • Very cool because you can build your characters however you want.. All tanks, 1 tank & 5 healers, support, etc..
  • Irritating because as this VG Cats Comic points out, you need a license to wear a fucking hat.
  • You need a license to wear a hat (I know I already said it, but OMFG..)
  • Can be annoying if you have enough gold to buy a weapon but accidentally spent all you LP in other areas.. Or vice versa.. You have the LP, or the License itself but no money to buy it..
  • A quick glance from afar at a character’s License board will tell you exactly what that character is (Tank, Support, Magic, etc..)
  • Some times you are forced to buy a license for something you don’t want to get to something you go.. (Ie: “poles 2″ to get to “crossbows 3″…)
• Quickenings..
  • Not highlander.
  • They can take ALL of your MP.. If you don’t have the right Licenses, then you can’t gain MP back in the battle except for running around, or using rare ethers.
  • Chaining if you do it right is VERY powerful, and can inflict tens of thousands of HP in damage, but If you are dumb can inflict tens of HP… Ooo!
  • Each character can have up to 3… the first is weak.. The second is more powerful, the 3rd can be very…
  • Each quickening after the first adds on to your MP (2 == 2x MP, 3 == 3xMP)
  • Also called Mist Charges (mist is magic.. Fuck, can’t they just have one term!)
• Espers
  • Pretty.
  • Can be useless.
  • Can be powerful.
  • You only get a few in the main story arc.. The others are hidden.
  • Can also take all of your MP… more powerful espers use more MP (mist charges)… and you can’t get them unless you have enough mist charges…
  • I rarely ever use them.
• The”Field”
  • Pretty.
  • Big, but split into areas.
  • Monsters are visible & wander it, you fight them right there.. Now weird effects that transition you into battle.
  • Battle is instantaneous
• Beasts/enemies
  • Pretty
  • Lots of variety
  • May aggro and aggro-chain if others are nearby… nothing like 15 undead swarming you… can you say horrible rape-death?
  • Will respawn
  • Monsters usually drop loot, not gold.
  • Some are friendly & will even cast nice magic on you or your enemies… I had a beast heal my entire party.. Then cast “Protect” on another mob
  • Beware elementals.
  • Flying beast cannot be hit by swords/spears! YAY! Use bows/magic/etc…
• Loot
  • Dropped from mobs.
  • Main use is to sell for money!
  • This is how you get money (for the most part)
  • If you sell the right combinations (does not have to be at the same time), you can get rare items!
• Weapons/armor/Items/spells/etc
  • You can see the weapons on the characters, but not armor.. Why? (well, we wouldn’t want to hide the furry’s ass now would we? She’s hot for a rabbit!)
  • Different weapon types have different abilities, may strengthen magic/attack/speed. May ignore armor, etc…
  • All controlled by LP & the license board.
  • Spell effects are pretty, but do not involve a cut-scene, the take effect in the battle in real time, even simultaneously!
  • There’s an item for everything… it can get annoying (ie: blind=eye-drops, silence==echo herbs, sleep=alarm clock, etc…)
  • Switching weapons/armor in battle is fast, and can be done all at once, without taking a turn.
• You can skipcut-scenes (ok, I lied.. But I’m done now.. I promise!)

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Apparently according to those “that know”, BSG:S3 is going to be the “dark season”. Darker that 1 & 2??? omg… The last bastion of Sci-Fi (since they cancelled Firefly) just keeps getting better & better…

If you haven’t watched BSG.. you are missing out. It’s got what most people want, all they have to get past is that it is a sci-fi…

Spacecast.com says they are going to show the series a tithe same time that Sci-Fi does, so maybe I won’t have to download the torrents this year (last year they didn’t air in Canada until 4-5 months after they aired in the US & Britain.. torrents were my friend).

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It was thin, greasy, tasteless & under cooked.

I feel sick.

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Read: what did you do on your God-given day of rest?

So, instead I’ll talk about Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth“, which Michelle and I saw on Saturday. (Rhonda was dress shopping for our friend’s wedding).

First of all, I defiantly recommend that you all go and see it, not because I think it is mind blowing, or that it will “open your eyes”, but because it is mainly, just a good, informative move, and interesting. Not for a second was I bored (well, except for maybe a minute where he digressed to his loss vs. Bush in the 200 election, but only cause I know ALL about that already…).

He goes over some very solid, well backed scientific theories & evidence that Global warming is in fact effecting us today, and that we (the human civilization) are the main cause of it. From research on core samples taken from the Antarctic & Arctic regions, to receding glaciers, to trends of extreme warming, etc, he lays it all out without pointing fingers at anyone in particular.

He also takes time to bring up the skeptics and how they are (from his point of view) wrong, and misleading the public.

Most of the movie is done like a slideshow with him on stage, you might think.. bah! boring, but really, it is not at all. Of course if you don’t want to think, or pay attention, go see Nacho Libres
Other Links:
ClimateCrisis.net - The official site for the movie. Also has a lot of good information about global warming and what you can do.
IMDB’s Page - The page at IMDB for An Inconvenient Truth
Rotten Tomatoes Review - self explanatory, but good to note that this very critical site at the time of this posting had it at 90% (good).

And, well.. here’s a trailer for it too (courtesy of Google Video)

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