Why I hate Blu ray and HD-DVD

I'm on a posting streak lately, huh?

Ok, Blu-ray and HD-DVD. They're both pretty decent media formats. Both are capable of outputting in 1080p, with Dolby TrueHD 8.1+ channel audio. Both store a heck of a lot of media. So what's my beef?

Well, first off, neither seems terribly space efficient. Granted, the H.264 codec is pretty solid. But 8.1 channel audio? How the hell many speakers does dolby think the average joe is going to surround himself with? Frankly, I watch most of my movies without my surround sound system even on. Ooh, I can hear rain drops pitter pattering behind me! It's like being in the movie--except I'm not, I'm sitting on my couch eating potato chips!

Don't get me wrong, I dig surround sound. It's a pretty kickin' idea, really. But I had a hard enough time setting up my two surround speakers up behind my couch and at the right positions and distances and all that. Now they expect me to find a home for another 3 speakers? I think Dolby's ultimate goal involves building little rooms made of nothing but speakers and a screen at the front (which is also a speaker) and having 267.1 surround sound.

Beef the second: I just bought a dvd player like 10 years ago! This isn't like high def tvs replacing standard def--I got my money's worth out of my old tv. And it isn't like dvd replacing VHS--there was a huge difference between the two: not only was quality better, but dvds didn't wear out, dvds had chapter skipping, dvds has interactive menus, dvds had extra features, etc.

Now I like high quality video as much as the next guy, but I have no intention of buying a new video player every 10 years. Frankly, I'd just assume save my money and buy more dvds with it.

My third issue: unless you get a movie sourced in 1080p, the video is just going to be upscaled. Most decent dvd players will do that without requiring fancy-pants new discs. So frankly, unless your movie was made in the past 5 or 10 years or so, its probably going to suck as much as it did before.

My final issue with Blu-ray and HD-DVD: there are two friggin formats!!!

I don't really give a flying hoot whether Blu-ray or HD-DVD wins this format war. Frankly, the only people who do either own Toshiba or Sony stock, or are fanbois. I don't care if the next video format to take root involves etching data into cat turds. So long as its universal.

See, I'm not interested in investing hundreds of dollars into equipment that may end up only supporting a discontinued format. This is one of the main reasons I refuse to buy a PS3: it costs so much because it has a blu-ray drive, and I'm not at a point where I'm willing to bet $600 on the future of blu-ray. Its also the single greatest reason I refuse to buy the HD-DVD addon for the 360: I'm not at a point where I'm willing to bet $180 on the future of HD-DVD.

And the kick is, I don't think I'm alone on these concerns. Look at how suq the sales have been for HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Hell, if anything I'm most surprised at the sales HD-DVD has: at least people who got a ps3 for games might be tempted to get blu-ray movies since they have the player anyhow. But otherwise, who wants to be stuck with the 21st century version of the beta max?

So my advice for Sony and the DVD forum is this: give it up already. Pick a format, cut costs, and settle in for the long haul. But this 2 format crap has gotta go.

I love free speech, and I hate that I do

After removing a scene involving testicular torture and blurring other graphic depictions of violence, Rockstar games has successfully gotten the rating of Manhunt 2 reduced to M (Mature).

I'm glad that Rockstar is now allowed to sell their product. In fact, I think it sucks that they weren't able to release their game in its original form. After all, the one thing that defines America is our commitment to freedom of speech (most other countries, even in the West, have some form of censorship).

That being said, I played the original Manhunt for about 10 minutes, and was disgusted. I don't understand how anyone could enjoy this game. The premise is simple: you're being hunted for some reason, and the only way to escape your situation alive is by killing the hunters. No great shakes there; it actually sounds like the basis of every other movie Hollywood has ever made. But the Manhunt difference is that when you kill a hunter, the game gives you a brief scene (5-10 seconds) showing your avatar killing the hunter. And it's graphic! One such kill in the original Manhunt involved placing a plastic bag over the hunters head and holding it tight around his neck while he suffocates, thrashing the entire time.

Why in the hell would anyone want to watch this? I mean, if there were some sort of gameplay mechanic where you were grappling with the hunter and this suffocation happened after an intense, interactive struggle, I guess I'd understand the need for the gratuitous violence. But it serves no gameplay purpose. All it does is show you a guy being murdered. Uh, yay?

I love freedom of speech. I really do. But I really wish I didn't, because I would love to be among those raising a hue and a cry against this glorified snuff film of a game.

What I don't get about video game consoles

All 3 of the next-gen video game consoles on the market today must have cost a small fortune to develop. They all have custom CPUs & GPUs, proprietary controllers, protected disc formats, blabbety blabbety. In fact, the last I heard the 'profit margin' on each PS3 sold was -$200. That's right, the best thing you could do to help Sony's bottom line right now is buy a 360 or a Wii. That's how much this stuff is costing.

So let's say you're Sony, and you've just finished the main components for your video game console. CPU jointly developed with IBM for super computers? Check. Custom GPU developed by NVidia and capable of outputting at 1080p? Check. Brand-spanking new high density optical drive that also plays high definition movies? Check. Now we just need to put ram in the system . . . wait, we're only giving it 256 megs of video ram, and 256 megs of system ram?

Microsoft is just as bad as Sony. They were a little smarter, going with a unified architecture that lets the GPU access more than 256 megs of ram if it needs it (and lets face it, most of your ram is going to be used for textures). But they still put the same suck amount of ram in their system.

So here's my question for the console designers out there: why do you guys spend so much on custom chips, and then cheap out on ram? For goodness sake, it isn't like ram is expensive. You could buy 1 gig of ram retail for $30. Assuming you didn't get any wholesale or bulk discounts on the stuff, would it really kill Sony's bottom line if they lost an extra $30 on each system?

You might be wondering why it matters so much to me. It's simple: All the fancy-pants hardware in the world doesn't amount to a hill of beans if the system doesn't have enough ram to store high res textures. Take the ps3. It easily overpowers the 360 in terms of raw horsepower. Its CPU is the exact same as the CPU in IBM's blade servers and supercomputers. The ps3's GPU runs at a faster clock speed than that of the 360 GPU, and has more pixel and vertex shader pipes (although to be fair, the 360 uses its pipes in a more efficient way by using a unified architecture). The ps3 also uses blu-ray discs, meaning each disc can hold 40 freakin gigs more data than each 360 disc. And yet, when you compare cross platform titles between the two consoles, the 360 versions tend to look a little better.

Why is this? There are theories out there, but my guess is its all about the ram. Sony's GPU could run at double the clock speed of Microsoft's, and it wouldn't matter. If you can't store high res textures, then you can't display them. And without high res textures, all you've got is a ps2 with more polygons and bloom effects.

Oh, and let's not leave the video game wunderkind, the wii, out of this. They're clocking in at an impressive 91 megs of ram (good luck trying to figure out the way its all configured, by the way). 91 megs! All pcs built in the past 15 years have had at least 126 megs of ram. Now I realize the wii doesn't need as much ram since it only outputs in 480p, but seriously, <100 megs is ridiculous. Don't expect any wii games to blow you away any time soon.

If anyone from the console industry would like to explain why you guys prefer investing in big expensive stuff at the expense of RAM, please post here or send me an email. I'm waiting.

So as it turns out, video games don't make you kill people . . .

Mental illnesses do (here and here). Who would have thought?!

It seems like anytime a new media for creating art and entertainment is invented, its going to end civilization. Books make your brain rot, paintings give you sinful thoughts, jazz music has the devil's beat, movies, tv, etc.

The reason the witch hunt on video games bothers me is because it'll only hurt the little guys who actually see the medium as an artistic venue. Guys like the now-defunct Clover Studios, Rockstar, and Epic. If they're all shut down by nuisance lawsuits, all we'll be left with are the big publishers like EA and Ubisoft. And I could definately do with fewer movie tie-ins.

Racism, and why I'd vote for Obama

It seems like every white guy in the public eye is making a racist comment these days. Cowboys are calling college kids "ho's." Actors are driving drunk and dissing on Jews. Well I'm not in the public eye. I don't think more than maybe 5 people know this website is here. And that includes the people I know in real life who I've told that I have a blog. I told like 15, but most of them forgot the url. It's doejo.blogspot.com for goodness sake. Bastards.

Where was I? Oh ya, racism in the media. What's up with that?

A few months ago, Joe Biden got in trouble for calling presidential candidate Barack Obama "the first mainstream African-American [presidential candidate] who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Was he being racist? Or was there validity to his comments? Let's examine.

Al Sharpton. First of all, let's talk about "clean and nice looking." Sharpton isn't dirty looking. Actually, he looks pretty tidy. But nice looking? I don't think so. First off, Mr. Sharpton, if you ever want to win an election, you need a DAMN HAIRCUT. My god. It looks like an animal crawled onto his head and died there. Granted, he's not the only former presidential candidate with bad hair. But Kerry didn't win either. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

Second, what's with the 'stache? Unless you're a princess saving plumber, you don't get to have a moustache. Ever. And "mainstream?" I'm not even going to go there.

Then there's Jesse Jackson. He's got decent hair now, I'll give him that. But he wears BLUE SUITS. BLUE SUITS. And he's also got the power 'stache! What on earth is with these guys and moustaches? Don't they realize how ridiculous they look? Moustaches were cool in the 70s. Actually, they weren't. And they're still not.

And is he "bright and mainstream?" Sure, if by 'bright' you mean 'his son is a drug dealer,' and by 'mainstream' you mean 'womanizing' (actually, that is pretty mainstream).

So I guess Biden was more or less on the money. In fact, it's about freakin' time someone said it. Go Biden.

I'm no racist, but I wouldn't vote for either of those turkeys. Not because they're black, but because they're sloppy idiots. I woudln't vote for Larry the cable guy. I also wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton, but that's because she's a bitch (you /can/ be an assertive woman without being a bitch). Obama? Ya, I'd vote for him. He's a good looking, well spoken guy. Who happens to be black.

Coming Attraction for teh Doejo!

Ya, I'm still here, on the internet, bringing down the collective IQ (which is a nominal feat, I might add).

So anyhow, I've been on an Elder Scrolls bent lately, so I've decided to play through every single game ever made and then review them. I've already played through TES3: Morrowind and TES4: Oblivion, so expect those reviews soon. I'm currently playing through TES2: Daggerfall, and I have TESA: Redguard & TES1: Arena all set up and ready to play through next. Just need to get my hands on TESL: Battlespire and find a bazillion hours to dump into all of these games. Huzzah!

This is why I hate copy protection . . .

I lost my copy of TESA: Redguard.

No, not *all* of it. Just the CDs. So I have the box (sitting on my desk), complete with instruction booklet, map, instruction booklet addendum, and registration card (!)

But no cd.

And the only site on the net with a torrent for the game, demonoid.com, requires someone to invite you.

So hooray, Bethesda Softworks. That's $20 down the drain. If someone wants to invite me to join demonoid.com, my email is jcd@emuhelp.com

Yay. ><