The Blog for the Sports Gamer

Well any night is alright. Day too. But being married and all, that headline is just a tease.

Okay getting back to other things, I dropped $64 on not one but two HDDVD’s at Target…I must have been blinded by the fact they actually had them. Fifteen titles to be exact, which while it’s only fifteen, it’s 15 more than I thought they would have. I picked up Happy Feet for $34 (ouch) and The Good Shepherd which sounded interesting..but damn HDDVDs are pricey and make a good case for renting on Netflix…but I wanted to use the player now dammit.

One thing I am very glad I did is get the Planet Earth BBC series, but now Discovery Store has the US version and it’s much more expensive. Click here to check it out.

In other news, I was having quite a bit of trouble with my Harmony remote and switching to HDMI with my Samsung TV. I called Harmony support on the phone today and while I was thrilled they had Saturday hours, I had to go to Tier 2 support so the holding time was a little long — about 25 minutes. But I will say that the wait was definitely worth it — I spoke with someone in Toronto, he spoke English and was able to figure out a workaround quickly and now it works fine. Keep in mind I bought the Harmony 2+ years ago and they still have this level of support. Awesome. Nice job, Logitech!

I’m starting to feel better — I wasn’t really sick but the effect of all the prescription drugs I’m taking at the moment have robbed me of energy, excitement and everything else. Oh yeah and I’m staying up way too late. Not from the subject line mind you, I Just am up setting up HDDVD players for example :).

Okay, I’ll get some gaming in tonight :).

Here’s a funny Onion article if you’re a baseball fan. Link

Tell me that isn’t the truth. ESPN practically shuts down all other reporters the second that the Red Sox and Yankees play.

Also, here’s another classic Onion sports story. I try to go back and read this one at least once every few months. I laugh every time I read it though.

We were supposed to see the Bigs for all platforms released next week, but Gamefly has bumped the Wii version to the week after. I have to admit that I’m curious about this one, but not as curious as I am to play the newest Harry Potter game on the Wii next week.

Now that we’ll have a Harry Potter game, the waiting game begins until LucasArts finally announces a Star Wars game with Lightsaber control. Geeks everywhere will probably go into a coma when that game does come along.

Here’s an interesting article at USA Today about the sales of the Planet Earth DVD and how well it’s doing on BD and HDDVD.

Quick hits:
1. Only 250,000 players-only have been sold in the USA for BOTH platforms, which is hardly the way to make a decision, Blockbuster. (90 million have DVD plkayers)

2. Consumers have spent $3.2 million on the Planet Earth set. 45,000 have sold for hi-def formats, but they don’t reveal which one is selling better. I will say it was my first HDDVD purchase. Apparently the US version of the show is released today, but it’s $100, shorter and narrated by Sigorney Weaver (like it is on DiscoveryHD)…

3. I think I’m going to go to Target and buy an HDDVD to watch over teh weekend, just for kicks.

For $199.99, I can’t believe what a deal I got becuase you can’t find the deal like that any more…best I’ve seen is $289…and I have to fill out my 5 HDDVD rebate form!!!

As I’m finishing my lunch reading USA Today, there’s a full page Panasonic BD ad and they are promoting 5 FREE BD movies right out of the box — no rebate. That is pretty cool….you get the first two Pirates of the Carribean movies, Fantastic 4, The Transporter and Crash. I do have to say I’m a little jealous of those movies. If Disney ever moves to HDDVD I would be thrilled. But…the Panasonic players are $600. Ouch. I can see there that why would someone do that if they can buy a PS3 for that amount…but OTOH, I never end up using game consoles for DVD playback. I had the Xbox 1 DVD attachment, the PS2 the PS3 and the 360, and I think I’ve watched one movie over all of them…

Yay! It’s Friday! Which would be awesome if I didn’t have to work tomorrow!

Anyway some news of note:

1. Played golf yesterday and did pretty well…chipped one from the bunker. Then there were the other 17 holes. LOL. Seriously though, it was a great day for golf, just these tournaments take a long time. Shotgun start at 8:30, and we were done at 2:15…just a tad long.

2. Not surprised to hear that Girardi turned down the Orioles. If his reasons truly are family and travel, like he said with the Nationals, why the hell would he say yes to Baltimore. Oh and the team sucks too.

3. Really sorry to hear about Tejada’s streak being broken by a broken wrist. It reminds us a)how amazing was Ripken’s streak and b)maybe Tejada needs a rest anyway.

4. I did not get a chance to play any of the new purchased games yesterday. I did get a chance to play the downloaded games (part of my job, heh), and I did submit my weekly article. It’s a light week but hey you still get Panzer II Zwei, so it’s all good.

5. I did receive my HDDVD player courtesy of Crutchfield and stayed up until 1:30 setting it up. The biggest frustration was the firmware update. While the back of the player has an ethernet in, downloading the update took almost two hours(! — maybe it’s my crap cable service). The update did load smoothy and I popped in Planet Earth via HDMI. Holy crap. Let’s just say that I’m really, really happy that I got the player for as cheap as I did. The concerns about the start up time are valid, as I kept thinking that I had a bad disc. It’s bearable and did I mention the HDMI output? You can use optical out for your sound still, so it’s all good. In my regular a/v setup I don’t have wired internet, and I guess the HDDVD player has an option to go out to the internet if a HDDVD supports it, but I’m not going to buy a wireless adapter just for that for now. I think I’ll have to go out and grab a second movie to watch for the weekend, just because.

6. Friends coming over tonight, so probably won’t play much of anything

1. Well, here are the Playstation Store updates for this week.
- The Motorstorm 1.2 update
- The last 2 PSOne games (that were PSP only) to be played on the PS3 now (Hot Shots Golf 2 being the big one)
- Another movie trailer.

Pretty disappointing, but I’ll be picking up Hot Shots, because I remember playing the hell out of it. Being able to play a game on the PS3 and copy my save to my PSP and keep playing the game there is a pretty cool feature. Rumor has it that the demo for Lair and Super Stardust HD will be coming next week for those of you that are interested in such things.

2. Diet Pepsi Max is pretty damn good. It tastes a bit like a slightly watered down version of Pepsi One, but it’s pretty good. Plus double the caffeine works for me on a night where I got 3 hours of sleep.

3. We had a house showing today, which was the reason for staying up so late last night. I’m not terribly optimistic, but any traffic is good traffic I guess.

4. Played pretty badly at hockey last night and got hit in the nuts with a slapshot as well. Nothing like kicking you when you’re down.

5. Panzer Dragoon II Zwei is on Gametap this week. I think Dan may have passed out in excitement.

6. Earlier this week it was reported that Tomb Raider Anniversary will be released on Xbox Live Arcade as a series of episodes, with the final price for all episodes being $30… which is the same as the PC retail version. Here’s the kicker though. In order to play the game, you need to have the Tomb Raider Legend disc in your drive. I don’t know if I can get over how silly that sounds. I know it’s just using the assets off of the DVD… but I think I’ll take my free copy that I got on Gametap, thank you very much.

Well, I’m back from my trip to Kelley’s Island. Actually, I returned late Sunday. Monday I drove down to the Cincy area to see my parents, pick up my dog, and take care of some family stuff. On the way, I locked my keys in the car outside of Wendy’s…and it was 96 degrees. Vacation was officially over.

Kelley’s Island was actually a lot of fun. Fun usually involves a specific activity of some sort, but in this case it means doing absolutely nothing. Our campsite was literally on the shore of Lake Erie under a canopy of trees. I could throw a rock and hit the Lake. Most of my days were spent in a chair, by the fire…chilling. At night the boats would park near the shore and it was just totally relaxing.

Ashley rode her bike around the campsite, we did some swimming and shell collecting and even played a handful of games (Ingenious, Settlers, Guillotine, Pente) but most of the time we just relaxed. Relaxing is a big thing on Kelley’s Island. Another nearby island, Put-in-Bay, is known as the party island while Kelley is known as a family place and a place to recharge your personal battery.

It wasn’t all serenity and seagulls, though. See, we went with Mary’s sister and her husband.

And their 3-year old.

As a husband, sometimes you just have to take one for the team.

Gloria, or the demon spawn from Hosuton as she will forever be known, likes to cry. A lot. She cries over pretty much everything. Now, either Ashley was the epitome of a great 3-year old or Gloria just flat out likes to throw tantrums. I never had to deal with that when Ashley was three. I’m talking World Class throw sand in her father’s eyes tantrums. Anything could set her off. Not getting a piece of granola…leaving the beach before she was ready…strong breezes.

Anything.

So that put a slight damper on the Island trip. When she wasn’t in full blown freak-out mode, I loved camping part. We’ll certainly go back there — minus the in-laws.

We ended the trip with a three night stay at the Great Wolf Lodge. It’s basically a huge indoor waterpark. We had a blast. It also helped that we were there during a special week when rooms were $149 a night instead of the usual $300. For $300 a night I better get a Burlesque show and free drinks.

Other quick notes:

I need to get the new White Stripes CD. I love Icky Thump (the song)
I discovered an Akron band called the Black Keys on eMusic. Love these guys. (all two of them.)
GameShark traffic went sky high while I was gone. Hmm…the fact that I did edit most of the material is cool and all, but still, maybe I need to take more vacations?

Finally, I have some cool boardgame news to report, but I’ll save that for later.

Gotta get up at 6:45 to “work”/ “Golf”, so gotta go to bed early.

My cable company flashed/formatted/fucked my DVR cable box tonight, so I had to call support and that took an hour. Good news is that’s it’s fixed in time for Rescue Me. Bad news is I lost everything that was on the DVR. Good times!

I very (VERY) briefly put in DIRT for the 360. Holy shit does this game look incredible. I played a Dirt Track race…reminds me of Dirt Track Racing in a good way..my god the graphics are beautiful, did I mention that? Forza what? The racing…well the physics are on with what I would expect for a dirt vehicle. I can’t wait to try it with my wheel.

Resident Evil 4….holy shit does this game look like shit. I mean I think the Dreamcast had better visuals. Okay, maybe it’s not that bad, but they aren’t that attractive. Luckily the game is quite amazing so far. Scary, violent and impressive in my quick time with it.

I’m watching Jay Leno Headlines because it’s free on XBLM…wow…who thinks this guy is funny? He gets better ratings than Letterman? Really? Can someone post who loves Leno over Letterman why this is great? Dave did Small Town News before Jay did Headlines, right? I’m not 100% sure…but I do know this sucks.

Alright I gotta go to bed. And I have to write my article for the hard ass (Bill) for Friday. LOL.

Went over to Gamestop today to pick up Dirt for the 360 and RE4 for the Wii. Dirt does support force feedback (as oppposed to rumble) and allows for 100 people online! Of course, this is a rally game so it’s not like you’re racing each other for the lead, which makes it easy to support 100 people online :).

In other news the Orioles formally announced they hired a new guy to run the GM side of things — but I’m not sure how that works because wasn’t Mike Flanagan doing that? Sounds like too many cooks if you ask me….

1. The Brewers are 6-1 after being no hit and the fewest number of hits they’ve had in a game since then is 7, a game they won. They should consider themselves extremely lucky that after starting 24-10, and going 10-20 after that, that they still have a 7 game lead in the division. I guess it just goes to show how bad the Central really is.

2. To add my own post to the HD-DVD conversation. I’m pretty much like Dan, but I’m waiting for a deal on the Toshiba 1080P model. I saw that it was $319 the other day on Amazon, but I passed on it. $200 would be about what I want to spend on a 2nd HD player… and by the time I have a 1080P TV, they should be in that range.

3. I’m in the same boat as Dan when it comes to gaming time. In my case it’s not due to reviews or anything like that, but I’m dealing with a lot of new tasks at work and then taking care of both of my kids at night when I get home. By the time I get a chance to look at a game it’s already after 10 and I’m pretty wiped out at that point. Thankfully, I haven’t been able to buy all of the games that Dan keeps telling me that I should. Seriously people, every day he tells me a few games I should buy. I’d need a 2nd job just to support “Dan recommended” games and accessories.

4. I love getting older. I slept odd the other night and have had, what feels like, a pinched nerve in my neck ever since. That should make hockey very interesting tonight. I’m starting to think of myself as the hockey version of Bill, a new injury every time I’m starting to feel better.

5. I don’t know if you’ve seen this screengrab from the newest Game Informer, but the projected drum kit for Rock Star looks pretty damn good. I’ve been thinking of picking up an electronic drum kit for quite a while now as my wife doesn’t want the real thing in the house. Even at $79.99, I’ll be all over it like… something on something.

6. We finally have another showing for our house. Man… this market stinks.

1. Nice to see that managerial change working immediately. Nine in a row. Go O’s!

2. Thanks for the feedback and debate about DVD players. It’s nice to talk with like minded gadget freaks :). Thanks for the engaget post, although I smell a rat there. It doesn’t make sense. A retailer is seeing a lot of cancelled orders? By customers? I seriously doubt that, because when do customers make orders and then cancel them at a retail store? Makes more sense if stores are cancelling orders, which might make sense. I would agree that Toshiba has one shot here and that’s lowering the price to make it attractive but not lowering it enough to make it look like a fire sale. Good luck with that. I will say that when BD is under $200 and if HDDVD is dead, I’ll pick that up…but not at $400…I have thought about a 2nd (used) PS3 though…but that would still be expensive, even the 20GB model.

3. New XBL game today, but I haven’t looked at it yet.

4. I picked up Smackdown vs Raw for the 360 (it was the Amazon deal for $19 over the weekend). I haven’t played a wrestling game in some time and it was pretty impressive.

5. Dirt and RE4 today. Talk about a great night of gaming!

6. I don’t have a lot of time to play games for myself. I know, poor Dan…seriously I envy those guys that are still playing Halo 2 still….in this industry it’s tough to go back and see how Gears of War is…because you’re always reviewing the new/hot thing. I seem to have writers block on Call of Juarez for the 360. I’m leaning towards a GameSpot synopsis…(ie Despite all it’s flaws, this game is fun)…sort of feeling. I mean Western + FPS + stealth levels + horse riding …you can’t go wrong with that, right? It’s just not moving me though, like an OMG you have to play this game. Unless of course I’m talking to Glen because I need to get his credit card close to my balance so I tell him it’s awesome :).

7. Peter Gammons says the Orioles have offered the job to Joe Girardi. Yawn. So just to recap, a guy with one year of managing experience under his belt with a losing record is a “good move”? Hey here’s a thought: why not get someone who actually played for the Orioles and has a winning record and got manager of the year and then quit because Ange-lose was around? Bring back Davey Johnson, and you’ll have my support. I know the front office reads this and does what I say. LOL

Even if you aren’t a fan of Hillary, this video is worth watching.

While perusing Netflix’s incredible HDDVD library (Fuck you blockbuster), I noticed one movie that makes the decision all the more easier.

Shawshank Redemption is in HDDVD only. Not Blu Ray.

What other reason do you need? LOL

Watch the transfer suck or something.

1. After allowing it to digest, the Orioles firing of Perlozzo, I don’t have a problem with it. What I do have a problem with is promoting the bullpen coach to a manager job. This is a bullpen that cost the manager his job, so this guy gets promoted? Yeah, that makes sense.

2. A correction about my HDDVD/BD rant. The cheapest BD player is now $499, so prices continue to drop. Still, $199 is cheaper than $499 for now, so we’ll see what happens. Not having Disney is a problem for HDDVD, but I just have a problem with BluRay the way it was shoved down our throats. I will concede that BD seems to have the advantage. However, HDDVD has Christopher from the Sopranos endorsing it, so there you go. LOL.

If you have a chance there are quite a few new trailers (Gameplay included) in SD and HD over at Gametrailers.

I’ll post the appropriate Quicktime links below.

Madden 08 (SD)
Madden 08 (HD)

NCAA 08 (SD) - 1
NCAA 08 (HD) - 1

NCAA 08 (SD) - 2
NCAA 08 (HD) - 2

NCAA 08 (SD) - 3
NCAA 08 (HD) - 3

Nascar 08 (SD) - 1
Nascar 08 (HD) - 1

Nascar 08 (SD) - 2
Nascar 08 (HD) - 2

Tiger Woods 08 (SD)
Tiger Woods 08 (HD)

No opinions on what is there, but it’s worth checking out.

Crutchfield says my order is in final processing, so fingers crossed. The price right now on the site is $399.99, and so if my price of $199.99 rings true it will be an awesome deal.

Today of course was the day that Blockbuster announced they would only stock Blu-Ray discs in their stores. My original thought here is man, just in case they want to totally shoot themselves in the foot a litle more this is the way to do it. My second thought was, wow, people actually go to Blockbuster to rent DVDs?

Anyway with a PS3 and soon to be HDDVD player, I will have both. The HDDVD is going to get most of the use though. It is a disappointment that Disney is not supporting HDDVD so I may have picked the wrong horse here, but still $800 for a stand alone player is an insult. Under $200 is a great price point and I just don’t see how you can get 4 HDDVD players for the price of 1 BluRay (3 for a PS3), and yet BD is going to go over better? Whatever.

I have played some BD movies and they do look good on my PS3. I am now looking forward to the HDDVD player and my 5 free movies and see how they will look. Until the BD players get cheaper, and I don’t mean the PS3 here, I just don’t see how it will take off. So if you are one of those people that actually set foot in Blockbuster ask for the HDDVD format, just to piss them off.