hd, next gen consoles, blu-ray and hd-dvd

well.. time to reflect back on some current 'next-gen' devices/formats... seems 'next-gen' is the thing to be.. hehe..

me, well i'm forgoing the supposed 'next-gen' consoles by Microsoft and Sony. to me, graphical prettiness does not equate to next-gen.. its just a video upgrade, the gameplay remains the same and the interface too.... so that is why i will be pre-ordering a Nintendo Wii....

Nintendo appears to be the only console maker that actually wants their system to be next-gen, in a true sense not a graphical upgrade sense.... and no, i am not a nintendo fanboy; hello, check out my PSP pages.. i am more of a Sony fanboy than any other... (got a Sony DSC-T9, K800i, PSP, W800i)...

hd.... i must say i already am in love with it.. sure, i only get 3 channels of HDTV Over-The-Air on my pc but nonetheless they are the football channels! hehe.. the only downfall now is that there does not seem to be any hope or sign that a HDTV CableCard ready Tuner will be released for PC's.. seems the cable companies are pushing their own PVR/DVR systems rather than allow us geeks to use our existing setups.. (by using a pc, i eliminate the need to purchase an HDTV but yet still get the resolution)

possible updates to site, new guides!

well... i doubt anyone even reads this blog of mine for my site but what the heck, figure i'd update atleast for my own sake.. hehe..

been slacking a little on the whole hacking/modding scene lately but hope to turn things around and bring my fellow modders/hackers/power users some good tutorials... expect to see a TON of Nintendo Wii based guides (i will be pre-ordering asap!)..! basically expect to see the latest and greatest guides w/my spin/flavor on it as they come out.. who knows, maybe i'll be able to do some of my own personal mods/hacks...

recently i purchased an ATI HDTV Wonder for my htpc setup... figured i had to see what all of this 'HD' buzz is.. and so far i must say that once they get the cablecard solution out for PC's, i'll prob be onboard (given they get those out by next decade!)...

also doing a pretty major upgrade to my pc at home.... just got a new server case (just like the one i sold two years ago, classic SoHo design), a nice 550watt psu, and a scsi ultra320 controller... can't wait to see how my Maxtor Cheetah 10K drive works.... should be up there w/the raptor drives if not faster... and it brings my hd total for my system to 4 drives at about 1TB of storage! hehe..

might be doing a K800i page soon too but might wait until FAR Manager works with CID 49.. for the uninformed, FAR Manager allows those of us w/Sony Ericsson phones to customize any feature on it.. it opens up the filesystem so that the internal rom is fully accessible... seen a ton of cool full system themes for K750i/W800i phones.. plus, we might be able to get our K800i vid quality up to a smoother, respectable dimensions...

so thats about it for now.. oh yea, i totally got ripped off by buying a K800i phone from a user over at http://se-nse.com and am still debating on what actions i may take.... paypal is unable to recover any of my $400.. anywho.. the person goes by the name of wabby69; his email address is: wabby69@gmail.com .. feel free to spam the hell out of him for me... i know i will be contacting some of my 'darker' friends on the web for a little fun...

rule #1, don't rip off a geek.. especially an honest, nice one... cuz we have the darkest, alter-ego of anyone...

peace out...

round 1: k800i vs jimmy: k800.. round 2: jimmy!

well.. its been freaking over 13 business days since paying for my k800i and nothing to report.. decided paypal dispute was in order since you have to within 45 days.. so was a bit bummed out that my funds are prob gonna be tied up in the system for awhile until i get a resolution or my phone shows up.. hopefully the latter of the two..

but decided to splurge again, and got another K800i off ebay.. called the guy after i bought it and scheduled overnight delivery, got my tracking order 3 minutes later and bam! i'm gonna have my baby after all! hehe.. too bad it took only 2 purchases.. man.. thats like a $800+ phone.. anywho.. it better be sweet! guess atleast now i have all of my accessories and screen protector..

btw, the M2 memory sticks for this phone are TINY!
check it out.. a penny, 1gb m2, 1g miniSD, 1gb Duo, and MS adapter for ref.. man, got like 3 gigs in change.. hehe.

my hd breakdown.. my first entry...

well.. i broke down and got an ATI HDTV All-in-wonder pci card.. was only $69 after rebate.. figured, it'd be nice to see how it works and looks and so far i don't know of anyone that has HD either.. and i get the full 1080i signal (if the OTA signal is strong enough...

hopefully i can run both my analog and digital tv through it w/o my other tv tuner.. now i almost have enough extra parts for another system.. :) might just replace the tivo in living room w/my current htpc and then upgrade to a tower in my room... we'll see what funds look like coming up..

a few notes about vista and the ati hdtv wonder install can be noted here..
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/5271628

basically just use native Vista drivers and it should be good to go! i guess i'll find out.. :)

also, this site lets you kinda calculate what OTA HD channels you can get by address.
http://www.checkhd.com/aw/Address.aspx


peace out..

declines in pdas w/o cellular connectiviyt = duh!

well, was out reading some news today (like most days) and ran across an article on yahoo about the decline in sales of handheld computers (being ones that can sync to a desktop but lack cellular/telephony capabilities)..

yahoo news article

and i'd have to say a big DUH! pda's w/o cell connectivity are big wastes of time imo.. unless they can somehow integrate Windows Media Center portable OS into a pda that also can run Windows Mobile, i don't see this niche of the market ever growing again.. eventually, this niche will be squeezed out of the market all together...

still never realized why MS didn't add more PIM features into the Media Center device os.. or even wiif connectivity (use as an extender w/main pc mce 2005)..

just my thoughts.. peace

my first dual core.. :P

well.. still no phone.. :( but did a cheapy mini upgrade to my main htpc system.... added a new AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+

not a huge upgrade but i figure its big enough to help me get by till i decide to really upgrade to a new tower system again....
(been doing the HTPC form-factor for about the last 14 months now, been through about 8 different cases include the Antec Sonat and Nmedia HTPC100 cases)

so install took me a whopping 10minutes (amazing how after you do 13 system builds in 3 months for pals, how easy a cpu upgrade is.. :) )

anywho.. fired her up and booted into vista and then xp mce2005.. in mce2005, uninstalled my prev athlon 64 driver from amd, rebooted, installed the new athlon 64 drivers (include X2 support/fixes, was a prob i prev mentioned w/tv recording and skipping/freezing probs).. then installed the AMD Dual Core Optimizing tool..

so the first test... an easy multi-tasking job: running 3 active IE windows and the latest Intervideo WinDVD playing my newsradio dvd w/TrimensionDNM and no hardware acceleration.. dvd plays in background on my main screen w/no hitches, also plays on my 2nd lcd fullscreen overlay styled w/o any freezing/stuttering.. :)

so far so good! :)

open up outlook 2003, dvd still playing w/o any stuttering.. lets see how big we can go? hehe... load up photoshop now too, just a minor delay when it hits the plugins loading but after program loads back to normal.. did wallpaper making, still no stutters.. so that was a total of: 3 ie windows running cnn and google searches and blogging here, windvd w/trimensionsDNM on, photoshop cs2 photo edits/wallpaper creation, and finally outlook 2003 open in the background checking mail..

so.. i'm hella statisfied!! lets me work the way i can w/o any lagging anymore... of course i need to still upgrade to about 4GB of memory and get my scsi 1000rpm drive in.. then she'll fly for cheap.. hehe..

aiy.. just my AMD Athlon X2 64 experience thus far.. i'm excited to see how it helps w/my video/audio encoding times.. i do a ton of that lately and might get my system back to creating my tv portal so i can watch it on the go..