And the winner is... Blu-ray

Today, Toshiba admitted its defeat! They will stop producing their HD-DVD format that rivaled the Blu-ray one, backed by Sony and Co. Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD (high definition DVD) were competing for the succession of the aging standard DVDs. They offer superior video and audio quality than the normal DVDs and have higher capacities (50 GB for Blu-ray and 30 GB for HD-DVD).

The beginning of the end for Toshiba began this year, when Warner Bros. Studios went to the Blu-ray camp. The rest was like a perfectly orchestrated symphony that played exactly like Sony would have liked it to. Sony has lost a similar war with JVC in the 1980s. The Betamax vs. VHS one. And as we all know (because almost everyone of us has one in his/her home) VHS won...

The key to Sony's success is, undoubtedly, the PlayStation 3. There are millions of PS3s in millions of houses, and each one can play Blu-ray, out-of-the-box.

Microsoft, which opposed Sony and backed the HD-DVD format, issued a press release today saying that they "didn't care for HD-DVD's problems". I guess someone wants to cry but is too ashamed to do it. 2 or 3 years later, when the double layer standard DVDs that are used in the Xbox 360 are no longer sufficient, M$ will go crying to Sony so that they can license Blu-ray for use in their console. My pride hurts... You hear me Bill Gates!!!

Congratulations to Sony and hard luck to Toshiba, after all, both are friends. Toshiba is manufacturing the Cell processors for the PS3s, if you don't already know! Toshiba bought the Cell manufacturing plants from Sony some months ago.

"A gift to remind you of the Alliance..."

Last Thursday I received an early birthday present from my three dear friends: Kamolly, Falcon and Leopard. A mighty gift, it was. A Logitech G5 mouse...

Yeah... Finally, a good gaming mouse. This baby has a 2000 dpi laser engine that rocks!!! Not only that but you can change the sensitivity on-the-fly, sans any drivers!!! You have a choice between 400, 800 and 2000 dpi, which is great for playing FPS games.

The mouse is so ergonomic and feels professionally done. It has extra custom weights to adjust the weight of the mouse to your liking. It also has 2 extra thumb buttons.

Add this mouse to my precious Arsenal Gear and you have a PC gamer's wet dream!



Thanks a lot for this gift, my dear friends.

One Rig to Rule Them All

Three Rigs for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Rig to rule them all, One Rig to find them,
One Rig to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

And for my vanity...

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

- Gandalf

Behold... The Rig of Power...

• Intel Core 2 Duo "Penyrn" 45nm E8400 @ 3.0 GHz with 6 MB of L2 cache
• Gigabyte P35-DS3R Revision 2.1
• Gigabyte GeForce 8800 GT overclocked @ 700 MHz with a custom Zalman fan
• 2x1 800MHz Kingston DDR2 RAM
• Western Digital Caviar SE16 500 GB SATA HDD
• Samsung 20X DVD+/-RW
• HEC 580 W PSU
• LG L194WT 19" WS LCD

Precious... My Precious...

ARSENAL GEAR

May God protect you.

And may you last me for many years and give me the power to conquer all those in Game-earth. We wants it... We needs it... It's ours... Ours...

Yes... Precious...

The dust settles...

Oh it's over. The past few months were full of great games, released one after another. The worst thing is that all I could do was to look, but not to touch! My aging PC, Metal Gear REX, just can't do it. It's very old!

2007 may go down in history as the year for gaming. But I still think 2004 was better. In 2004 you got Half-Life 2, Halo 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, Doom 3, Far Cry, UT2004 and GTA: San Andreas. While in 2007, you had Halo 3, The Orange Box, Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament III, BioShock, and many more.

REX managed to run the CoD4 demo quite well, I still have to run the full game. It ran The Orange Box magnificently. This game compilation deserves a separate post.

My PC needs and urgent upgrade, but I will wait a bit more. AMD's Phenom has just been released. It offers great value for money with good performance and peace of mind! The AM2 socket will continue to 2009. Intel is discontinuing its Socket 775 next year. Let's wait and see.