davidfarmer

going to my local wal-mart to check things out tonight. Don't know if I want to spend $600 to buy one now, but they games look promissing

davidfarmer

and don't forget Grand Turismo



Finally have HDTV games in a console (yes I know the Xbox 360 came out last year), 5 years later than we had them in the PC market.

RyanZ06

Sorry but rFactor destroys those games. PC will always be > than PS3/Xbox/console...

John Shiels

yea they are camped outside Circut City by me yesterday in tents. Wonder where they are whizzing to not lose their spot? If you tent is their I guess it still counts?

davidfarmer

I agree, I am a PC gamer, but I'm still excited that consoles have finally gone HD. I'll have to check out rFactor (never heard of it).

Also want GTR2, but GTR is pretty hardware greedy, and my 3-year old machine just struggles with it (although it was a really fast machine in it's day). Consoles have one large advantage in that all games will be designed for the same hardware, NOT the hardware that won't be available until next year.

rasrboy

David likes that F1 game cuz it looks like his race car. There were people at BestBuy by me lined up in tents Tues early morning. Ebay has one right now and the bid is at $4,050.00. WTF?

Aaron

xsiveone

http://www.comcast.net/news/national...tn_ps3lineShot

TooManyIDs

Sorry, no interest in the games, but I was wondering if the PS3 was a cheap alternative for a blue-ray DVD player? Seems like the "regular" blue-ray players go for about $1K. Does it have an optical out that can pass 5.1 sound to a receiver?

talon95

Specs say it has optical out.

http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/Ab...Specifications

I can't imagine it wouldn't have DD output and I think it is the cheapest BD player right now.

The other really sweet deal is the XBOX HD-DVD drive addon. It works in WinXP. Of course you need a decent PC and the software to go with it. Obviously not cheap if you don't already have that stuff. XBOX system or standalone player is cheaper then.

Dave G.

davidfarmer

carefull with the xbox drive. You have to have an HDMI compliant system, from disc, to drive,to video card, to monitor, and there are only a couple of video cards that are. If you don't have this, when the encryption is started, you will be downconverted to 480p (normal DVD resolution) when you watch a disc.

While I was an early fan of HD-DVD, since the Playstation3 is Blu-Ray, I think that is the way of the future. However, I currently simply store HD movies on my HD TIVO. I have a 750gig drive that can hold about 100hrs of HD content.

TooManyIDs

Aren't HD-DVD's coming to market with twice as much content? And check this review, not too good a start for Blue-Ray?

http://www.thedvdwars.com/index.cfm


http://www.dvdtalk.com/hd/

talon95

Right now there are some "challenges" with that setup, no doubt, and definitely not for the casual computer user. The biggest problem is that the software players have not been released here in the US. That should change in the next few weeks.

There are a bunch of cards now with HDCP:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2874

Also, currently they're not enforcing a full HDCP compliant system. It's actually easier to get a analog connection working (XBOX system itself is analog). Full HDCP is only required for an all digital setup.

Dave G.

talon95

My guess is neither format will win anytime soon. It's likely in 1-2 years there will be dual format players on the market, similar to the DVD+R vs. DVD-R stuff.

Dave G.