Xbox 360 + HD-DVD + Kong = Pretty

Okay, I caved.

This weekend I picked up an Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive from Circuit City. It came with Kong.

Initial impressions of HD-DVD in general and the Drive:

0) The WOW starts now. This is pretty. on my 42" 1080p (native) Westinghouse... gawk factor approaches 100%. Looks better than even House via the Comcast cable.

1) It's been said before, but for those of us who must horizontally mount it... it would be nice if the eject button was rotatable.

2) Occasionally, the drive doesn't report that it has a disc in it on boot. so you get the Dashboard saying "Eject Disc" for both DVD and HD-DVD... even though there's an HD-DVD in the drive.

3) it would be nice to be able to resume playback after shutting down the player by warming up the box with the "Play" button. Or to power up straight to the Disc Main Menu by pressing "DVD Menu" on the remote... skipping the Dash entirely in both cases.

4) Where is slow-motion? (forward and reverse)?

5) Where is frame-advance, frame-reverse? I like gawking at the fine details on stills... it's really hard to get just the right, which is a pity since Kong has some awesome sets.

6) The menu sometimes flys out if i press right on the remote... and sometimes it doesn't. Really inconsistent. DVD Menu works most of the time too. Sometimes if U-Control is enabled, the menu doesn't show up until its disabled. I maintain that this could be the individual disc's fault.... which brings me to:

King Kong impressions:

0) Visually, double-wow. Looks beyond amazing. Sound's pretty good (low-end is a bit muddy at times, but it's still a friend of my portable earthquake generator, which is more than many movies can claim). It's no House of Flying Daggers in this regard, but it's still enjoyable.

1) U-Control in its current implementation *sucks* [censored] fat [censored] [censored]. Yes, i know it's a video game console, and yes, i know this is TOTALLY Universal's fault... but it's totally lame to have to watch through 3 hours of Kong again with U-Control enabled just to find the dozen or so vignettes within (totally maybe 15 minutes of actual content). Even worse, you have to play whack-a-mole with the content indicator. Even if you press it right a way you invariably miss a few seconds, which means you have to rewind, then press it (because the shuttle lag causes the u-control to still be active, even though the video hasn't started yet) to catch the entire thing. Biggest omissions to make this content actually worthwhile:

* jump-to-next... let me skip through the movie, watching only the Scenes that have U-Control content. manual and automatic modes for this would rock.
* autoplay... let me enable U-Control and enable auto-play of it to boot... so that it always pops up right-on-cue.
* an index... the U-Control should have a menu of all the extra content items, so i can access them directly.
* PIP resize... let me change the size of the PIP. Yeah, i can see it down there as a little SD window, but i have to practically squint at it when i'm 10' away... and my tv isn't small by any stretch. this is especially egregious for the art gallery stuff. it's so small as to be worthless most of the time.
* PIP swap... let me watch the movie in the PIP and the special content full-screen.

Suffice it to say, the only nifty U-Control feature is bookmarks... and i don't think they're actually U-Control, since they show up under extras. Rather like that it has these, however... since I couldn't find any other way to resume where I left off after shutting the box down.

2) The Screen Saver is nifty... but it has some bugs:
* First of all, when your movie is paused, and the screen saver kicks in, there's about a second of video and audio that plays before the SS loads.
* I should be able to disable it. I have a TFT. It doesn't need a screen saver.
* This feature should prove interesting, since clearly the SS is stored on the disc. Be fun to see what happens in the future if studios decide to get fancy with this. I'd love to see what kind of SS they can come up with for Spider-Man, X-Men, etc.
* Resuming play takes forever...

"Lowpoints" or "George Lucas, why have you forsaken me?"

Today I have a few lowpoints to share with you. Aside from these, it was a good day, and not unlike most days.

1. Comcast DVR died (okay, to be fair, it died last Friday, but today I had the joy of taking it back and exchanging it, after spending way too much time on hold).
   
2. Xbox 360 died (okay, this makes me thing something's amiss... two pieces of hardware die at the same time? hmm... still, stranger things have happened!)
   
3. Speaking of stranger things: George Lucas, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME? (caps definitely mine, for effect). I buy the stinking "Unaltered" versions of the DVD and find some things horribly awry:
   
   
   
   1. The Unaltered versions are Disc 2. Wait, I thought the title of the project was "Star Wars: UNALTERED." So why are the unaltered versions relegated to Disc 2-status?
      
   2. 4:3 Letterbox format (Aspect Ratio 2.35:1). Now, I'm not a swearing man on general principle, but this made even me go "what the f***?!?" Now, if BOTH disks were 4:3 Pan & Scan, I'd be willing to forgive and go back to the store and say, "Excuse me, apparently *I* am a bonehead and picked up the WRONG BOX. Please let me exchange this for the 'Widescreen' version..." But then I look at the first disc which contains the 'Special Education Edition' version and it says "Widescreen format enhanced for 16:9 TVs (Aspect Ratio 2.35:1). Even the front of the box says "WIDESCREEN."
      
      Excuse me, Mr. Lucas, but the ONLY reason I bought this version (I already OWN the version you included on Disc 1) was for the UNALTERED version. So when I see a box that says WIDESCREEN on it, I expect a WIDESCREEN (read: anamorphic, read: enhanced for 16:9 TVs) version of the original, UNALTERED film.
      
   3. It looks remarkably like the letterbox versions of the originals that came out on VHS over a decade ago. Seriously. At best, it looks like a laserdisc->DVD transfer that I bought off Ebay (out of sheer curiosity) 5 years ago.
      
   
   

So, there you have it. Despite it all, I still love Star Wars.

Darth Lucas would apparently like to change that.

Do Consoles Blog of Electric Sheep?

Will wonders never cease? Apparently even my Xbox 360 has a blog now. At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if my little workhorse of a console announced a cure for cancer within a fortnight.

In other news, I've been playing a lot of Dead Rising, whilst my cohort Aaron has been slaving away at GRAW.

I've also been playing some Battle for Middle Earth II with Rich and his cadre of capable junior combatants. We even found a bug:



It only happened once, but lasted so long I was able to fraps it. What happened was one of the members of the ringbearer "party" was unable to enter the town center for reasons unknown... and so it tried over and over again. The solution was sacking the town center, which ultimately released the ring. A second attempt to store it in a new town center worked fine. Still, this is a bug that needs to be fixed, assuming it can be reproduced in a development environment.

Here's the second attempt, just as evidence of what should happen, as well as to prove that the game wasn't totally bugged out. :)

It's MY island.

I just got back from visiting the Chappy, the Heather, and the Tom out in Lexington, Kentucky. I strive to make an annual pilgrimage to see Chappy and hear him go boom. This year's festivities:

• Introduced Frankentubby to the Lazarus Pit and witnessed the rise of Tubby al Ghul.
• Introduced Lord Mordak (a.k.a. Noah Bear, a.k.a. The Bear) to Superman in big-boy underwear form. Let's just say that ol' Sups can now shoot something new from his eyes if little Lord Mordak forgets about his throne.
• Acquired (1) copy of the Magna Carta Deluxe Box Set for Playstation 2 at the spiffy used price of $40 (originally it was $55 and was produced in such limited quantities that you could hardly find it new, let alone used). Score.
• Introduced Chappy and Heather to the joys of Ask A Ninja and Ze Frank.
• Played more Rise of Legends than advisable. At first I wasn't sure I liked the game (probably because Kruzen pwnd me in every match right out of the box. At that point I decided to quit while I was ahead to avoid universe implosion), but now i'm quite hooked on it. Gameplay tip: enable the "auto-place new districts" in the Options menu... it makes your life a lot easier when things heat up.
• Read devoured House by Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker. Yes, it's good. No, I couldn't put it down. First time I've ever gotten a hangover from a book.
• Acquired and read the Batman: Hush Returns trade paperback. Rather miffed that they omitted half a dozen parts of the series to keep it down to a single volume. Also rather miffed that Jim Lee wasn't involved... he ruled the roost int the first Hush.
• Still can't find a decent statue of Harley Quinn anywhere... rather a bummer. She's my favorite DC character.
• Started reading The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything by Brian McLaren. So far (about 1/3 through), it's challenging and compelling. I have a feeling this one is just might get a whole lot deeper.
• We took a day to see the grandparents and eat lunch at O'Charley's. Pepperjack Cheese bites: A+. Caramel Pie: A-. Chicken Fingers: C+. Three-Cheese Burger: B.
• We played Risk. I started in Asia, and I won. (They fell victim to one of the classic blunders!)
• We played Munchkin. Halfling-Cleric-Bard ftw! Oh, and for the record, an Orc with a Doppleganger is still "fighting alone."

My thanks go out to the gracious hospitality of Castle Chapula for another fun-filled adventure week. I brought home many pieces of P.J. the wonder-tongue. And I'd like to give a shout out to my main man Steven Rodriguez (scroll down), without whom I would have had a long midnight walk home from SeaTac. ;-)

Ain't no party like a Clockwork party 'cause a Clockwork party don't stop!