All change...

So, it's been nearly a month since my last post. There's been a fair bit going on in recent months, what with my holiday to Majorca with H, getting engaged to H, funeral for Kennedy etc, so it's all been a bit hectic.

It was also my birthday last weekend, and I was lucky enough to get several 360 games from H (DiRT & Forza 2 - yeah baby!), and I got a new laptop from my family!

In addition to that, I've also purchased some Hosting, so it'll be all change from here. I'm currently re-modelling this page and it will be migrated over to my new host, along with several other sites which have been hosted elsewhere.

Time to merge everything, and store it in one place.

I'm not sure if many people do read this page, but if you are reading it, I will be back soon, hopefully with some quality content.

Thank you very much, good night.

Don't tease me like that!

I logged into my Gmail this morning to find an email titled 'Your Xbox Console'... This is what it said...

Your Xbox Video Game system has been shipped!  You can expect to receive it in 2-5 days.  Thank you for your patience and get ready to get back into the action!

Oh man, I gotta wait some more?  D'oh!

If that's not enough, the E3 coverage is coming thick and fast, and I've learnt that 'Sonic the Hedgehog' (teh original!!?!) is out now on the marketplace (complete with HD & achievements ftw!!  I remember standing in my local games shop looking at the box wishing I had a Sega Mega-Drive (Genesis to the stateside readers!).  400MS points ain't too bad either!

I've just gotta wait '2-5' days for the box to turn up, and I hope it still has the faceplate I forgot to remove =\ eeep!

What a fortnight of highs & lows

The last 2 or 3 weeks have been so full of highs and lows, it's unbelievable.  To start,

14th June (up)

My friend Jimmy & his wife (Alex) had their blessing on the 14th June.

15th June (down)

Helena & I went round to Jimmy & Alex's place to see him.  That was incredibly emotional. I hadn't seen Jimmy in ages and nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.  Cancer really is a horrendous disease.  It still couldn't beat his fantastic sense of humour though!

16th June (up)

Helena & I jetted off on our first holiday abroad.  We boarded our plane at Gatwick, and flew to Palma airport, Majorca.  We hired a car, and drove right across the Island to C'an Picafort, where we stayed for a week.  It was nice, very hot!  Nice beach, and nice people, especially at the No.1 Bar! on Avda Josep Trias!!

17th June (down)

Jimmy sadly passed away - RIP pal, you'll never be forgotten x

22nd June (up)

At around 8pm in the evening, whilst laying on a sun-lounger on the beach in Majorca, resting in the cool breeze, I got onto one knee, and asked my beautiful girlfriend if she'd give me the honour of being my wife... She said YES!  Helena has made me such a happy man over the last 4 and a half years, and things are only going to get better! Thank you angel!  Here's to the rest of our lives :)

23rd June (down)

Had to fly home from Majorca.  Had 7 beautiful days of sunshine.  Got back to Gatwick. It was cold, it was raining and it was dark :(

24th June (up & down)

(up) Went ring shopping with Helena, and found a nice platinum ring with a diamond on top! Will add pictures soon!

(down) Got home, fancied a game of Worms on the 360 and got the Red Ring of Death! (RROD) So unfortunately, the 360 has gone BACK to Microsoft for a second time. Not happy!

25th June (down)

back to work. need I say more?

27th June (down)

Today was Jimmy's funeral. A very sad day :(

30th June (up)

Today was my cousins wedding.  Congratulations to Stephen & Amie who had a wonderful wedding.  Shame about the weather. It's meant to be the summer, and it spent the whole day raining!  Luckily there was a marquee to keep everyone dry :)

So that's a recap of the last 2 weeks!  I feel mentally exhausted, and to top it off, I've had a cold for the last couple of days and that's really not made things better!

Pissed off with Microsoft

So that's another 360 that's been sent back to Microsoft.  I'll now be on my third Xbox in 10 months.  That's quite poor really.

I originally got my Xbox 360 for my birthday last year, August 2006.  It worked perfectly out of the box, and has done up until February time where it started freezing randomly but rarely. 

Then in May, enough was enough.  I sent the box back to Microsoft as it was just not working properly. 90% of the time, it'd crash within 15 minutes of playing.  That was real annoying.  So on the 3rd May, I sent my Xbox back to MS for repair under warranty.

On the 15th May, almost 2 weeks later, it returned, and I was ecstatic!  I couldn't wait to get home and play... worms!  Yeah, I'm hooked.

The little note that was in the box with my Xbox said that the motherboard had been found to be faulty and had been replaced!  How nice :)

I had that Xbox for 5 weeks before it went screwy again.  On the 24th June, the day after returning from holiday, I powered up Worms (last level!) and within 5 minutes, the Xbox froze. D' oh!

I Reset the Xbox, walked back to my sofa, sat down and stared in disbelief as my screen was black, and my Xbox was flashing it's 'Red Ring of Death' at me! Noooo!

So another phone-call to MS revealed another UPS label & another hunt for a box to send away.  I was also informed that I'd be waiting 20(ish) days.  I sent it Last Monday, which was the 25th May.  It was picked up by UPS.  And as far as i'm aware, that should be a quick delivery to 'Havant' Where the broken boxes go.

Alas, on Friday, 5 day's after sending the box, i receive an e-mail saying that they had received it.  Maybe it's not in Havant after all.

So now I'm stuck, with no Xbox360.  I plugged in my PS2 to try and get some gaming in over the weekend. I went through several games, and all where rubbish! The only one which held my concentration for more than 20 minutes was GTA:San Andreas, and even that got boring (which worries me about GTA IV!).  I've got several games on my original xbox which i could play, but it's hassle setting it up!  And my desktop PC is nowhere near any good for PC Gaming.  

So I figure i need some next-gen gaming.  What are my choices?  The 360 (obv).  The PS3 & the Wii.  I've played the Wii, and I can pretty much agree with Matt Brett that the Wii is quite poor.  I've got no interest in the PS3 as the games seem rather poor (maybe they'll get better?).  Which leaves me with the 360.

Hmm.  Many people are reporting an error rate of 30%.  So far for me, it's a big fat 100% error rate.   Yet, my brothers 360 is a launch box, and that's had no trouble!

How can i stick with a fantastic system (360) but crap hardware?  I've kind of lost all faith in the Microsoft hardware. I'm pretty certain that my 360 will be going back to MS a few more times, and I'm certainly not willing to pay £80 to get it fixed each and every time!!

Why aren't Microsoft addressing the problems though? So many people have reported the problems regarding heat. From what I've read (i forget where), the heat ends up warping the motherboard which in-turn, breaks the connections and this creates a fault.  There's also stories of MS installing newer more efficient heat-sinks into newly repaired 360's to curb the problem! 

Let's hope that this new heat-sink idea works and my 360 doesn't have to return to "Havant" (read: Prague).

Rant over. meh

Need For Speed: Carbon

So that was easy.  In my last post, I mentioned about the shocking price differences between UK supermarkets on this game (between £17 & £40!). 

Anywho, the game turned up, and I had great pleasure in playing it for all of 3 days before completing the actual story-line.  I was a bit unimpressed with the fact that I could complete the main storyline within 3 days, and only being caught by the cops once and having to purchase 3 cars for the whole game.

But yeah, it was a good game. Pretty similar to Need for Speed: Most Wanted, but not nearly as much fun!  The drifting part of the game was really fun!  But the other parts of the game, like speed trap & circuit were near identical to NFS:MW which made me feel like instead of releasing a whole new game, EA could of just released a new map-pack!

The graphics were good though, and the choice of motors wasn't bad.   Handling was alright, and obviously different with each car.  The only gripe i had with the handling was when you put the brakes on, the car seemed to jolt, and the frame rate seemed to shake.  I'm not sure if this was intentional, or just my xbox screwing up but this really put me off.  It wasn't smooth!  Speaking of handling though, I thought it'd be easier to drift during normal races.  And as hard as i tried, i really couldn't get it down.  I managed to get the Drift King acheivement though so that's all good :)

The other part of the game is the challenges, which im currenlty working through now.  Well, i say working through, i've done them all except one or two, and they were pretty easy too!

There is one gripe I have with this game though, and that's your crew.  As you progress through the game, you get to recruit other racers into your crew to help you progress, but they really are more of a hinderance than anything!  And what's even more annoying is that they tend to get in your way, or cross the finish line for you!  Now i can't remember where i read it (probably metacritic) but to me, the computer shouldn't win the game for you.  A game doesn't seem fun when the computer is winning for you!  You might as well watch a demo!

It also has a photo mode built in, but this is definatly not a patch on PGR3 which has a fantastic photo mode and EA should of looked to PGR3 for proper implementation of photo mode!

It's not a bad game, but it's not a fantastic game either.  I much enjoyed NFS:MW faar more than this!  I'd still be playing that if my disc wasn't cracked :(

Overall though, this gets a 7/10 from me!  It's good. It has it's great bits, but it also has some poor bits.  The game is generally quite easy but you do have the odd difficult race which adds a bit of a challenge to the game!

Happy new year!

Just a quick post to wish you all a happy new year!.. I shall be back soon with some reviews & posts regarding xmas presents I received. Namely 'Gears of War', 'Lego Star Wars II', 'Eric Meyers on CSS' & some 'Sennheiser CX300' headphones... THEY ROCK!

Oh, and also, Matt Brett has developed & released a new website which let's you see Xbox360 dashboard themes before you buy them! That has been lacking with the 360 Marketplace seeing as there's no refund on themes!.. Check out Dashboard Themes here!

Back in a bit :)

Convert video for the 360 (Part 2)

Sooo.. a couple of weeks ago, i made a post about how to quickly convert video for the 360. Tonight, i decided to try it out.

getting started...

So i downloaded the VLC software & the batch file to help with the encoding. This was pretty easy for me, and should be quite easy for most people. I proceeded onto the next step of the instructions, which told me to drag my selected video file onto the batch file, and then watch it encode.

Right.

So i selected an episode of Top Gear. One of my favourite programs, and will quite happily pay my TV license for it! Each episode of Top Gear is an hour long, so i thought "It shouldn't take too long".

problems...

I Dragged my .avi file over onto the batch file and watched as a command window flashed before my eyes. Surely it couldn't be done? It's not so quick, that it's almost instant, is it? So i spent 5 or so minutes looking for the outputted file. I couldn't find it, so i opened up the .bat batch file in Notepad++ to see what it was actually doing.

It turns out that the file path to the VLC player was wrong. Humm. Maybe i didn't follow the instructions.. Ho hum.

I set the File path and tried again. No luck. Double checked the settings, all fine. So what was the problem? I looked into the .bat file using Notepad++ (excellent tool btw!), and noticed that although the bat file was referring to a folder, it wasn't mentioning a specific program, so after altering the path, i tried it again, and success, it worked! I dragged the avi onto the bat file and then the dos cmd prompt appeared, and a few seconds later, the VLC Player appeared, and it started converting the video!

converted...

Half hour later, it finally finished (30 mins to convert an hour program? Not bad!). So now i had my original file (.avi) and my new 360 file (.wmv) Woot!

The only problem i could see was size. The avi was 350mb(ish) in size. The .wmv file was 1.6GB! WOW! Something should be done about that!

So next up was to play it on the 360, and surprisingly, it worked straight away and it played perfectly. No distortion, so sound problems, just an hours worth of solid entertainment! The only problem with it was that i had dragged it onto the 4:3 bat file, but the avi source was actually 16:9, so the perspective was wrong.

Never mind, i doubt i'd keep the new wmv because of the size. It's just a case of finding your 'sweet spot' between file & size and quality i guess.

Conclusion...

However, first impressions on the guide to converting video for your 360 is spot on, after a few teething problems, it worked fine, and it's bloody easy!

Oh, and if i find a decent quality setting with a decent file size, i'll post it!

edit: After playing with the bat file & reading up on the Happybeggar forums, there seems to be a few tricks to try, in order to get the optimum quality vs size. In my original article, i mentioned that a 350mb file was converted to 1.6gb. I tried the same file with different quality settings, and got it down to 700mb. Still twice the size of the original, but not half as bad! And the quality wasn't bad either. Definitely watch-able!

Quickly convert video for the 360

I spotted this link somewhere (i forget where) yesterday, which gives you a quick run-down on how to convert video's to WMV (windows media video) format to play it on your 360.

I've yet to try it, but by looking at the details, it seems pretty good. I spent a good 6 or so hours converting a bunch of home movies to test them out on the 360 using a program called WinAVI. That was slow. If this is as quick as it suggests, then im laughing!

Check it out here

the 360 is slowly taking over my lounge

Just over a week ago, Microsoft announced the 'fall update' to their xbox 36o dashboard. This brought over 70 new features to the dashboard. One of them being the ability to stream & play WMV video from a networked PC to your 360! This opens up a whole world of possibilties!

On top of that, Microsoft recently announced that they will be launching a marketplace for TV & Films. This suggests that you can download movies & TV episodes to your HDD, and then watch them when you want!

This is a great idea (imo), however, this creates a bit of a problem. All those people who have got 360's & the 20gb hdd will need to buy a new hard drive if they want to download more than a couple of films!

And then what happens when your hard drive fills up with movie content that you want to keep? Surely Microsoft wont allow you to transfer films from your 360 to your PC, because that would just be offering pirates a way to share films!

So what will happen? You pay £8 for a film, it takes up 2gb (HD films will likely take up ALOT more space)?. You can fit 6(ish) on a 20gb hard drive. So what happens when you want to download more than 6? I wouldn't want to delete films after i've payed for them!

So, the obvious answer would be get a bigger hdd, which Microsoft haven't announced, but there are plenty of rumours regarding 100gb drives. What happens when that fills up though? Where will it end?

To me, the perfect answer would be to download files via your PC and save them on your computer. And then either stream them over your network to your 360, OR burn them to disc, and put the disc in the 360. This will allow you to create a catalogue without using hard drive space.

However, Microsoft have only just announced the Video Marketplace, and as far as im concerned, there aren't many details about just yet! Let's see how it pans out!

Need For Speed: Most wanted (360)

What a damn good game this was! Man oh man!This was one of the only games i was really excited about when i got my 360, and i have been playing it for the last 6 weeks! I’ve slowly been working my way up the blacklist, and finally, last night, i managed to beat ‘Razor’, the big man!

The story goes like this. You roll into Rockport. There’s a blacklist of 15 Racers. You want to be number one. Sounds easy enough, except, some punk called Razor fiddles with your motor, and you lose it in a race at the beginning. So you then have to buy a car, and improve on it to win races whilst evading police.

It’s the evading of the police chases though that is most fun for me. Point to point race’s are cool, circuits are ok, but trying to evade the cop’s whilst skimming corners, ducking down alley-way’s, and boosting down the freeway’s is where most of the fun for me comes from!

The graphics are very very good on this game, you can see reflections off car’s, you can see sparks up against walls, theres no slowdown and the cut-scenes whilst doing jumps etc are very very nice!

I will write a proper review another time, but my rating for this is: 4/5

Audio via the 360 Controllers

I noticed at the weekend that the 360 controllers for the xbox have a little plug underneath which is used for plugging in the headset for use with XBL (Xbox Live). Now, this little plug has a headphone socket in the middle. Surely i’d be able to plug headphones in and play games without any disruption to others? I THINK that would be a good idea?.. but apparantly not so. The socket is just for communication! Right then!.

Still, it’s a shame. I’d love to be able to plug my headphones into my controller and play my 360 with out disturbing anyone else in the room!

HI-Def comes to the 360

360hd Hosted on Zooomr

To be honest, i’ve not been that bothered when it comes to the HD-DVD add-on for the 360. Yes, hi-def does look incredible, and yes, i will purchase myself a HD-Ready TV in time, but at the moment, im happy with my 24″ Mitsubishi Box. Now i could be miles off the mark here, but i’ve been told that standard TV looks awful on HD tv’s, and i wouldn’t be surprised. And seeing as in the UK, there isn’t a great deal of HD shows broadcast, i see it as a waste of money.

Give it a year or so, when i’m in my own place with my girlie, and the price of HD Ready flat screen’s drop to a reasonable level, and the amount of HD programs broadcast over the UK airwaves & cable goes up, then i will move into the HD era.. But until then, it’s a no-no.

But it’s still good to know that, when i do get that TV, HD movies wont be far away because the hd-dvd add-on to the 360 has finally had it’s prices announced. Unfortunatly, only to the japanese market, but the UK prices will be coming with-in a few weeks “apparantly”. Anywho, according to T3, and a little dollar to sterling calculation, the HD addon for the 360 should retail around £90. That’s a bargain if ever i saw one!

Now, of course, im assuming that HD-DVD win’s the current format war between HD-DVD & Blu Ray. A lot of people said that Blu-ray would win because of it’s increased capacity over HD-DVD (50gb over 30gb), however, HD-DVD has been first to the market with their media & players. In Addition, Microsoft have had a good year+ headstart over the PS3, and if it means that 360 owners only have to shell out £90 for the HD-DVD addon in comparison to the £400 player, then that’s going to be a boost for HD-DVD straight off.

Now originaly, i thought, that because blu-ray had the extra space on the disk, and the PS3 come bundled with a blu-ray drive, that it would win over hd-dvd, however, it seems to be changing. Obviously, the big US film studio’s have some sway in the final winner. Most are supporting both formats, however Universal announced today that they will not support blu-ray. Coupled with the high price of the PS3, and the delay in getting blu-ray (and the PS3) onto the market, these could lead to hd-dvd winning the format wars. This would be a serious kick in the teeth for Sony & their PS3, but let’s save that story for another day!

CEX.. Heaven or Hell?

Cex (Computer exchange) is a cool shop. It sells used games, DVD’s, consoles, phones etc.. All things gadget-like. It’s nice as it’s generally quite cheap. Games from a couple of quid, same for DVD’s. Many a weekend i’ve walked out the store with 4/5 DVD / Games in my bag after shelling out a poultry £25!.. It’s generally a bargain shop and i like it.. for that.

Now, in my last post, i mentioned that it was my birthday, and i received a 360 premium console of my mum, dad, brother & sister!.. My Girlfriend also purchased me a 360 Hard drive & game unaware that a hard drive would be included in the premium console (as she thought i was getting the core package).

So i was now left with 2 Hard drives. One of which i had no use for. My girlfriend had picked the Hard drive up from CeX for £55 (OUCH!) which is a lot cheaper than new (£70+). Anywho, last night, i went to return the hard drive, which i hadn’t removed from the box. As far as i was concerned, i had had it for a week (hidden) and then when i was given it, i had no reason to use it, so it was in an identical condition as to when she bought it. It’s not difficult to understand!

However, Mr CeX had implemented some stupid company policy saying that if you want to return something for refund, you can only do it within 48 hours of purchasing it (?)! 48hrs is a bit rubbish. Especially as this Hard drive was over a week old now.

So i went in there last night asking for a refund for the hard drive (and obviously, got stung by the above 48hr rule!).. After standing around for 10 minutes waiting for my refund, the clerk came back to me and told me about their 48hr policy, and all i could do was sell the Hard drive back to CeX for a much lower price! If i wanted cash, i could have £30. Or i could take £40 in vouchers… What the fuck is that all about?

My girlfriend bought me a hard drive for £55. I hadn’t even touched it, removed it from it’s box, or used it, yet because of some stupid rule, i am now down £15, and they’ve now been given a hard drive & £15 for being thick!…

No wonder CeX is the biggest used game retailer in the UK if it can pull off tricks like that! Im certainly not happy, but i will be complaining so we shall see what happens there! 

mmm... next gen!

It was my birthday on Saturday, and having received a huge box from my family, i was quite intrigued as to what was in it. Come saturday morning, i woke up, made some breaky & had a cup o’ tea, then ripped the wrapping off to find a box full of crumpled newspaper. Hmmm..

Inside the box, covered in crumpled up newspapers stood a white & green box with the words ‘xbox360′ written on the side!

After picking my jaw up from the ground, i realised it was actually a 360 premium, with the Hard Drive, wireless controller etc already inside the box (Bonus!). Also inside the box was about 10 or so games that my brother (who also has a 360) had piled in there from his collection to keep me going till i get some of my own games!

Man im loving this next-gen business!!!.. So i shall be back in a couple of days with a proper review of the box & some of the games!

Forza Motorsport 2... mmmmm (360)

I’ve just been reading my RSS feeds, and came across a rather tasty looking vid of Forza Motorsport 2 over at XBox360 Fanboy… Now i own & play Forza on the original xbox, and it looks & drives really well, but Forza 2 is lookin mighty fine!

I know the video doesn’t show any in-game footage, but the motor’s look shiny, plus, i do really like the 350z’s :).. Here’s a link to the post over at Xbox360 Fanboy!