So as most of you know, until recently, I've not owned a 360 or a PS3. I've owned a Wii, and I owned a GameCube, PS2, and Xbox.
I've heard the hype about the 360 and PS3. The 360 would play games in 720p or 1080i, and now with the Elite and HDMI, 1080p. The PS3, however, can play any game in 1080p since launch. Or at least that's the impression I had.
So I got this nice new 360 (well, not new, but you know) and hooked up the component cables. I'm aware that component cables carry a maximum resolution of 1080i, and my TV supports 1080p. I picked up some games - Halo 3, Gears of War, GTA IV. Gears of War says it supports 720p and 1080i on the back of the case (it came out before the Elite 360), and the other 2 say that they support 720p and 1080p. So I played GTA IV for a while but wasn't super happy with the quality of the component cables. So I dropped $90 on the HDMI conversion kit and cable. Guarantees 1080p. Great. So I set it all up and turned it on. Great. The dashboard looks astounding in 1080p - much cleaner and clearer, and brighter.
Then I loaded up GTA IV. First thing I noticed was that it too was brighter and cleaner - no blurs. But it looked kind of blocky for 1080p. I checked my TV, and it said in fact it was a 1080p signal, so I figured I just was expecting too much from 1080p, or sitting too close.
I got to thinking about how the games are able to run at the same speed at different resolutions, so I figured that they either had a speed limiter for lower resolutions OR it just always rendered the max resolution and scales it down if you select a lower res.
Ends up it's the latter- sort of. Any given 360 game is rendered at one resolution only, and is scaled to the chosen resolution. Problem is, there are only TWO GAMES WHOSE NATIVE RESOLUTION IS 1080P. ALL OTHER 360 GAMES ARE RENDERED AT A LOWER RESOLUTION AND ARE STRETCHED TO FIT THE RESOLUTION YOU SPECIFY. WTF!! For example, Halo 3 is actually rendered at 640p. SIX HUNDRED FORTY PEE. That's like 1100x640. That's sickeningly small for a game which is ADVERTISED ON THE BOX AS 1080p. MOST 360 games, however, are rendered at 720p. For example, GTA IV. So what do you get with a 1080i or 1080p signal on a 360? You get a pretty dashboard, and a stretched 720p or 640p image.
If they advertise 1080p (1920x1080) on a game that is actually 1100x640, they might as well say it supports 2160p. Cause hey, I can take that 640p signal and stretch it to 2160p. Another crappy thing about this upscaling is that in GTAIV at least, there is no anti-aliasing, which can result in flickering and just a crappy picture overall.
The PS3 is better in some ways, worse in others. On the good side, PS3 games are advertised right. If a game is SCALED UP TO 1080p, it says so on the box. If it's NATIVE RESOLUTION is 1080p, it says so. No BS like from Microsoft. Also, unlike the 2 games on the 360 that support 1080p, there are 15 on the PS3. The downside? All of the other games on the PS3 that aren't 1080p native are rendered at 640p, lower than the standard of 720p on the 360.
So if you think that the HD-gaming revolution is now, you're sadly mistaken. The only console not bullshitting anyone is the Wii. EVERY GAME on the Wii is playable in fullscreen or widescreen, 480i or 480p. No scaling, no BS. It's sad that even if you have the *smaller* HD resolution of 720p on your TV, you still get a stretched picture on most PS3 games. Sad, sad, sad. At least on my PC, I pick a resolution and I get it.
The real HD-gaming revolution will take place only when games are natively rendered at the maximum HD resolution (1920x1080) and are scaled DOWN if need be. It just makes sense. Hello PS4 and Xbox 3.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
Lemonade
So I kicked off the season "so-to-speak" yesterday by going to my first show of the year and my first drive-in movie of the year. The show was the Mothers Day cruise-in at DJ's Diner, and the movie was, er... were Ironman and Drillbit Taylor. We went to the Sunset Drive-In in Shinnston. That's where it's at. Also that's the photo to your right.
About the movies... I kind of expected Ironman to be better... I mean, it's really great, but everyone made it sound like it was the "BEST SUPERHERO MOVIE EVER MADE", and it's not. IMO, Batman Begins and Spiderman 2 were better. Possibly Superman Returns. I have two major gripes about the movie - first is the flow - it's hard to watch because it doesn't flow like you'd expect. I kept waiting for the Afghan military guy to have a huge robot fight in Afghanistan with Tony, but he kind of faded off of the map halfway through, leaving this old non-evil-looking guy as the main villain. And then near the end, after the rest of the movie being pretty believable, rather than shooting each other or fist fighting or calling the cops or arguing, they have a ROBOT BATTLE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CITY. Sounds realistic. That being said, it is a great movie, and I'm looking forward to the sequel.
For Drillbit Taylor, it was pretty good. It wasn't anything special, but it wasn't total crap. Not a lot to say about it, other than I actually found the humor in most of the stuff that the bullies did to the freshmen.
For the past few days, Dane's been telling me about this friend of his who's selling his 360. He had no details other than that the guy wanted $150 for it. Initially I figured it must be RRoD'd or bare bones, but in talking to the guy today, it's a 360 Arcade (45nm, no HDD, but HDMI), a few months old, with 2 wireless controllers and 3 games - and he only wants $130 for it. Woot. So I told the guy I'd buy it, and he said great. He said he'd bring it to school on Wednesday and we'd exchange there. No prob. Then he called back and said he'd like to do the exchange today, so I told him to either stop by my house or we'd meet at some gas station or something. He said he'd stop by my house, so I gave directions.
So anyway he never came and now he's not answering his phone for anyone, so hopefully he didn't die or something. I figure I'll hear from him tomorrow, and if not, he'll probably have it at school on Wednesday.
About the movies... I kind of expected Ironman to be better... I mean, it's really great, but everyone made it sound like it was the "BEST SUPERHERO MOVIE EVER MADE", and it's not. IMO, Batman Begins and Spiderman 2 were better. Possibly Superman Returns. I have two major gripes about the movie - first is the flow - it's hard to watch because it doesn't flow like you'd expect. I kept waiting for the Afghan military guy to have a huge robot fight in Afghanistan with Tony, but he kind of faded off of the map halfway through, leaving this old non-evil-looking guy as the main villain. And then near the end, after the rest of the movie being pretty believable, rather than shooting each other or fist fighting or calling the cops or arguing, they have a ROBOT BATTLE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CITY. Sounds realistic. That being said, it is a great movie, and I'm looking forward to the sequel.
For Drillbit Taylor, it was pretty good. It wasn't anything special, but it wasn't total crap. Not a lot to say about it, other than I actually found the humor in most of the stuff that the bullies did to the freshmen.
For the past few days, Dane's been telling me about this friend of his who's selling his 360. He had no details other than that the guy wanted $150 for it. Initially I figured it must be RRoD'd or bare bones, but in talking to the guy today, it's a 360 Arcade (45nm, no HDD, but HDMI), a few months old, with 2 wireless controllers and 3 games - and he only wants $130 for it. Woot. So I told the guy I'd buy it, and he said great. He said he'd bring it to school on Wednesday and we'd exchange there. No prob. Then he called back and said he'd like to do the exchange today, so I told him to either stop by my house or we'd meet at some gas station or something. He said he'd stop by my house, so I gave directions.
So anyway he never came and now he's not answering his phone for anyone, so hopefully he didn't die or something. I figure I'll hear from him tomorrow, and if not, he'll probably have it at school on Wednesday.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
I hate titles
Seriously. Maybe if I was expected to cover a single topic for each post, a title would be useful. I wish I could just turn it off, and have the date as the headline instead. Anyway, got some updates. I ordered an ipod a few days ago, and it came in the mail yesterday, so that's cool. It's an ipod classic 80GB. Got it shipped factory refurbished for $195, $55 off retail. Works and looks like new. I've always been an anti-ipod person in the past, but after owning one and using it, I see why ipods are superior to other MP3 players. But for the sake of comparison, I'll list some pros and cons:
Pros:
1. Everything works with ipod - virtually every accessory out there is designed for ipod, and virtually every video download and podcast is designed for ipod.
2. It's thinner and lighter than the competition - but interestingly, also larger capacity. I can understand why it may be debatable which is better if you had to choose between high capacity and small size, but ipod has both. (classic anyway)
3. The user interface. It's amazing. I remember on my Zen Vision M, all of the menus were very plain, very simple - and even in the "album art" view, it would take sometimes ten seconds to load the album art. On ipod, all of the interfaces are quick and responsive, as well as unique and asthetically pleasing. You get the coverflow view, etc.
4. Smart playlists. This is actually a pretty big deal that I wasn't aware of until I used it. A smart playlist allows you to create a playlist which uses logic to choose the contents. For example, I could create a playlist which would automatically select any files dated 2002-2004, AND having the genre "metal" AND NOT having the word "Metallica" - there's a variety of switches, even things like beats per minute (you could have fast and slow playlists), and they are all dynamically updated.
5. Extras. You could easily argue that you don't care about extras for your music player, because all you care about is music playback, but I must admit that I really like some of the available extras on the ipod. It comes with a few games - a solitaire game, a 3D block breaker game, and a quiz game. I bought Sonic the Hedgehog, and it's pretty cool as well. The quiz game is really my favorite, though, because if you play in "Music Quiz" mode, it plays like a game show - 5 rounds, each worth more money, each with different questions. The cool part is that they ask you things about your own music. For example, it might play a song, and ask you to choose which album it's from - or it might give you an album title and a few album covers and you have to choose the right one. LOTS of fun.
And now, the cons.
1. itunes. The only way to sync multimedia files on this puppy is apple's crappy itunes software. It's clunky and not customizable. Additionally, if I add a video file, I have 3 choices for the type: MOVIE, MUSIC VIDEO, or TV SHOW. Cause apparently there are no other types of videos. No news, no clips, no youtube, etc. Lame.
2. filetypes. It plays a very limited number of formats. In my case, I don't mind how many AUDIO formats it plays, since ALL of my music is MP3, but the very limited video playback ability is annoying. On my Zen Vision M, I could drop just about any Mpeg, WMV, AVI, etc. file on there and it would play it. On my ipod, I have to convert it first.
3. Customization. There is none. You can't set a theme or color scheme on the player, nor can you set wallpapers or backgrounds. Basically all you can change is what appears on the main menu.
That's all for me talking about the ipod for now. Prom was also last night, it was pretty cool. That photo is me with Nickky B. We's pimps. Shayla's got finals this week, so I won't be seeing her, but I have Elizabethans every day this week but Friday, so I would have very limited time anyway.
That's all for now.
Pros:
1. Everything works with ipod - virtually every accessory out there is designed for ipod, and virtually every video download and podcast is designed for ipod.
2. It's thinner and lighter than the competition - but interestingly, also larger capacity. I can understand why it may be debatable which is better if you had to choose between high capacity and small size, but ipod has both. (classic anyway)
3. The user interface. It's amazing. I remember on my Zen Vision M, all of the menus were very plain, very simple - and even in the "album art" view, it would take sometimes ten seconds to load the album art. On ipod, all of the interfaces are quick and responsive, as well as unique and asthetically pleasing. You get the coverflow view, etc.
4. Smart playlists. This is actually a pretty big deal that I wasn't aware of until I used it. A smart playlist allows you to create a playlist which uses logic to choose the contents. For example, I could create a playlist which would automatically select any files dated 2002-2004, AND having the genre "metal" AND NOT having the word "Metallica" - there's a variety of switches, even things like beats per minute (you could have fast and slow playlists), and they are all dynamically updated.
5. Extras. You could easily argue that you don't care about extras for your music player, because all you care about is music playback, but I must admit that I really like some of the available extras on the ipod. It comes with a few games - a solitaire game, a 3D block breaker game, and a quiz game. I bought Sonic the Hedgehog, and it's pretty cool as well. The quiz game is really my favorite, though, because if you play in "Music Quiz" mode, it plays like a game show - 5 rounds, each worth more money, each with different questions. The cool part is that they ask you things about your own music. For example, it might play a song, and ask you to choose which album it's from - or it might give you an album title and a few album covers and you have to choose the right one. LOTS of fun.
And now, the cons.
1. itunes. The only way to sync multimedia files on this puppy is apple's crappy itunes software. It's clunky and not customizable. Additionally, if I add a video file, I have 3 choices for the type: MOVIE, MUSIC VIDEO, or TV SHOW. Cause apparently there are no other types of videos. No news, no clips, no youtube, etc. Lame.
2. filetypes. It plays a very limited number of formats. In my case, I don't mind how many AUDIO formats it plays, since ALL of my music is MP3, but the very limited video playback ability is annoying. On my Zen Vision M, I could drop just about any Mpeg, WMV, AVI, etc. file on there and it would play it. On my ipod, I have to convert it first.
3. Customization. There is none. You can't set a theme or color scheme on the player, nor can you set wallpapers or backgrounds. Basically all you can change is what appears on the main menu.
That's all for me talking about the ipod for now. Prom was also last night, it was pretty cool. That photo is me with Nickky B. We's pimps. Shayla's got finals this week, so I won't be seeing her, but I have Elizabethans every day this week but Friday, so I would have very limited time anyway.
That's all for now.
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