He owns a PC computer OK? he makes next level beats….

11-30-10 AM

Finally something worth writing about…EA dropped the one map beta for BF:BC2 yesterday…

Port Valdez is a “Rush” mode map, similar to Push in insurgency, where the offense parachutes in to attack 3 sets of 2 fixed positions each along the frozen coast line of a large oil industrial port. DICE came through strong with this one. I had almost forgotten how fun a good BF game was….The sound effects and concussion effects are excellent, the graphics are great, and the game play is too fun!!!

BC2 does suffer from the laggy feel of 2142 so much so that DICE has a scrolling message at the bottom of the game promising that they are doing everything possible to fix it. Several of my friends using newer gen cards, gtx2xx etc.. are experiencing random and constant CTD’s. In gaming terms I am on legacy hardware and my c2q9550/8800gtx plays BC2 without issue.

Based solely on the beta this game is a must buy for any fps enthusiast. See you on the battlefield…..

11-30-10 PM

OK, the game suffers from a whopping overuse of *Bloom* effect and there is no way to toggle bloom on/off from in the gui, you have to make the changes in the settings.ini, you can alos force which dx version you want to use in the settiigs.ini file as well. These issue will no doubt be fixed in the gold release.

11-31-10 PM

I’ve noticed a bug where I spawn in and continue to strafe in either direction, it’s unstoppable. I have to die before it ends. Also getting some lag with large artillery blasts. Overall maintaining 60-40fps @ 1680×1050 w/ medium settings. Been hearing alot of stories coming from people with dual core pc’s not being able to get above 30fps regardless of video card.

There is a very special place in my heart for The ‘Fits. I have been listening to this band since I was 12 years old. A skater friend of mine loaned me “Energy” by Operation Ivy and “Legacy of Brutality” by the Misfits, both on vinyl… My days of listening to Huey Lewis and the News on KVIL in my mom’s car were OVER!!!!

Since the bands inception it has evolved with every album, new drummer here, new guitar player there…the only real constants were Jerry Only and Glenn. I think Chill said it best..”Glenn Danzig is the Elvis of Punk Rock.” He really is one of the best voices in any genre of music. Many said that the Misfits died when Glenn left, and there was a time that I too shared that sentiment. The “reincarnation” of the ‘fits in ‘99 did spawn several good tracks with Michael Graves on as lead singer, but I knew that was not the Misfits I wanted to see live. Graves’ voice was a little too high for my tastes, and while they did stay true to the “Whoa Whoa” punk style of the original ‘fits, they never captured my imagination like the ‘77-’85 ‘fits. Cut to today’s incarnation:

Jerry Only on Bass/Vocvals
Dez Cadena(formerly of Black Flag) on guitar
Robo(formerly of Black Flag) on drums

Words cannot describe the greatness of the set I witnessed at The House of Blues on Novemeber 29th in Dallas Texas. Yes, they f***ed up 3 times by my count, and yes Glenn was not the front man. The power….The speed. Jerry Only is the f***ing MAN!!! No B.S. get straight to the point…fast…hard…punk…rock. All of my reservations about Glenn not singing…totally erased. They whipped out a good deal of the old catalog faster and harder than i had ever heard it, and I loved every minute of it.

My sincere gratitude goes out to PeePoo for the tickets and to Chill and Amber for sharing with me what will most definitely go down as one of the best nights of my life. November 29th, 2009 The Misfits at House of Blues.

Check the pix from PeePoo’s iphone, balcony and floor (Click to Enlarge)

The Big Brother U.K. cast find themselves trapped on the set of their T.V. show during the zombie apocalypse; an ingenious location to host a zombie outbreak due to it’s secluded and guarded nature. The amount of time given to the five part series allows it to explore every aspect of a good zombie film. Overwhelming numbers of undead, base fortification, and human paranoia; all are staples of any good zombie flick and all are well represented in Dead Set. 10/10, 5 stars, two thumbs up, and all that. This is a must see for any fan of the genre. If you’re looking for a happy ending look elsewhere, if you’re looking for one of the best Zombie flicks ever made….look no further.

wiki
imdb
torrent

**I am only posting the torrent here for my American friends. The only version available at retail is PAL.

Jason Schwartzman and Zach Galifianakis with a sprinkle of Ted Danson on top. It’s really good. I watched episodes 1-9 back to back last night. I was tired at work today. It is really good.

99% of zombie movies have a short montage that illustrates the endless supply of fun one can have when you are the last person(s) on earth. Zombieland chose to focus on that angle for most of the movie. It was a decent stab at Zomedy but really comes nowhere close to the precedent set by Shaun of the Dead. I think I set my expectations too high for this flick, but it is definitely worth the rent.

First correct answer gets a check for 2 trillion dollars.

One site for searching @ Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, and Twitter. Just click the Google logo to switch between sites.

http://go.infinise.com/

Being that Korean gamers have been grinding on Aion for almost a year it was no surprise that the North American launch went so smooth, at least when compared with other recent mmo launches *cough* AOC *cough*. The only real issue that arose were the queue times with some people reporting five hour wait times. On my server, Marchutan, there has been queue times every day after 5pm the longest of which I have seen personally is one and a half hours. There is an upside to this though, a server deficient launch may stave off what ultimately served to be Warhammer Online’s demise; low server population within weeks of kick off.

As far as MMO’s go it doesn’t get much more solid than Aion. From the built in quest helper to the transparent map overlay it’s apparent that NCSoft can really add some flare to classic mmo game mechanics by adding just a few much needed HUD enhancements.

Since I’m still in noobville I cannot comment on the dynamics of in flight pvp, but I’m sure high level duels will be quite interesting. Check the pics…

Alien apartheid own!! 7/10

Tarantino own!! 8/10

I had a 1gb stick go out on me last month. I filled out the RMA form, mailed Corsair the broken stick along with the other stick from that matched pair, which was still working, and Corsair replaced both of them with a brand new matched pair for free. That positive RMA experience coupled with my recent issues concerning the 8gb of G.Skill I just picked up has placed me solid into the Corsair for life category.

Section 8 is a very well thought out and executed Starsiege Tribes clone. Jet Packs, myriad deployable turrets, pre configured load outs…the whole 9. Now I am a Tribes fanatic so I really enjoyed playing this beta, but I’m not sure how well received it will be to the masses. I guess only time will tell. Check the homepage @ http://www.joinsection8.com

Ya’ know when you’re doing character creation at the beginning of an mmo and a you have such a hard time deciding between the elf archer, the warrior, and the wizard? Trine alleviates that problem by allowing you to be all three at the same time, but it’s not an mmo, it’s a side scroller…a side scroller in the year 2009….hmmm….nonetheless a great game. You’ll get hooked after playing the demo for a few minutes. The graphics are great and it has that good ol’ gaming feel of yesteryear that will have you blowing out your contra cartridges. Check out the Trine homepage at http://trine-thegame.com/site/

Set in the not too distant future, Neotokyo is a squad based tactical shooter borrowing much of it’s texture and feel from the popular Sci-Fi anime movie and series Ghost in the Shell. For a 3rd party mod it feels pretty authentic all the way down to the thermoptics =) The NeoTokyo team has put together a solid release with the promise of more content to come. You can check them out at http://www.neotokyohq.com

I plugged in the same incorrectly spelled query into google and bing. Guess which one linked to what I was looking for. Hint: it rhymes w/ oogle. More fail from Redmond, Bing returned “We did not find any results for ….”

Apparently UT:3 is doing so poorly they had to give it away on Steam this weekend. I gave it a shot and after a few games it became apparent that UT as a franchise is on it’s death bed. Graphics are great, but the gameplay is reminiscent of the fps’ of yesteryear. I was able to find some silver lining on the edge of this dark, dark cloud however. A Total Conversion Mod called Angels Fall First: Planetstorm that immerses the fps player in the Angel’s Fall First universe. If the name “Angel’s Fall First” sounds familiar then you are probably old enough to have played the AFF mod for Homeworld, which was hands down the best Homeworld mod created, and believe you me there was plenty of competition in the HW mod community.

The AFF team has continued their legacy of excellence with Planetstorm. I cannot say enough good things about this mod. In it’s current public beta there are only two maps, one terrestrial and one space. Both maps play like an insurgency “push” mode map where the offensive team has to capture point A before point B is made available. This style of gameplay is great for FPS because it localizes the action, you know where the fight is going to be when you spawn. The game feels somewhat “BF2142-ish” in that you can commandeer a host of vehicles , repair your ships, and drop turrets. The space map, titled Meudeverre, plays almost like a “Titan” mode bf2142 game. You choose which type of ship you want to spawn in, fight your way through enemy defenses in a 3rd person space flight sim mode, land in a space station built into the side of an asteroid, disembark, and take part in a large scale shootout.

Like any mod, AFF:P is a little rough around the edges, but there is no doubt that the direction this game is being taken will put it on course for FPS classic status. Let’s all pray to the gaming Gods that AFF brings this mod full circle, because it is the own. Check the screens below.

[Angel's Fall First Universe Website]

I was never really big into the Trek franchise prior to the new movie. I have seen it twice, once on an Imax screen , and once on a regular screen. The CGI is 10/10 and the plot stays at a frantic pace delivering a total package that leaves the audience dumbstruck. If you are like me and not that big of a Trek fan you will still enjoy this movie. Go see this movie while it’s still in the theaters, and try to make it to an Imax showing if you can.

For the longest time StarDock was known for their myriad Windows GUI tweak utilities, then in February of 2008 they dropped “Sins of a Solar Empire” which IMHO is one of the best RTS games ever made, and although Sins didn’t get the hype it deserved at launch it didn’t take long for the gaming community at large to sing it’s praises, thus thrusting Stardock into the spotlight as a top tier game developer. Four months after the release of Sins Stardock rolled the dice again, drifting even further away from their roots and launched Impulse, a content delivery system of the same ilk as Steam, or Direct 2 Drive.

One of the best things about Stardock is that they release their games DRM free. This gives them a lot of street cred with hardcore gamers, unfortunately you cannot run a business on street cred alone. Some of the first statistics from their most recent release, “Demigod”, showed a 5:1 pirated to legit ratio. The fact that a torrent for “Demigod” was available online prior to the retail release is sure to have been the catalyst for the mass illegal downloading of that game, and although most copies were illegal they still communicated with Stardocks servers which caused quite the fiasco for an ill equipped server farm the day of launch. All of the top tier review sites had the same review, all of them gave iterations of this statement: “Great Game, but I cannot recommend it due to the net code failure.”

The vessels by which gamers are comfortable purchasing games online already existed at the time of Impulse’s launch, and as much as I like Stardock because of Sins, I think they’re headed down the wrong track with Impulse. Had they forgone Impulse and licensed “Demigod” sales through D2D I believe that A) They would have sold more copies due to the exposure and B) They would have cut down on Piracy by using D2D’s version of DRM. I suppose there is something to be said though about Stardock wanting to control their content from creation to distribution, but given the delivery power and volume of gamers that already reside at D2D and Steam I think that while it’s a noble cause it is a bit short sighted.

I thought this was kind of cool. Japan is giving away netbooks ultra cheap upon signing up for unlimited data plans. I wonder how long it will take before this trend hits the states?

[STORY]

Decent, felt like they skimped on the cgi in places but overall it was o.k.

The Pirate Bay guys all caught a year….

[FULL STORY]

I won’t hide my bias, this is an anti adobe post. PDF is just another image format, opening them shouldn’t require a 40mb program. Adobe Reader Std. 9.1 is 41mb, you can opt for the non std. version which is 21mb, but like it matters, 21mb is still ridiculously large, and they don’t push the non std. version on their website, you have to dig to find it. If you DL Reader the way Adobe intends you to you have to first DL an active x control that installs a DL manager into your browser, it makes me sick to my stomach..really it does…. You can see the growth rate of the Adobe Reader file size over the years. Check this screenshot (Provided by www.oldversion.com, which btw is a great site for apps.)

From 93′ – 08′ pdf never left version 1. The PDF format is now only at 1.7. I’m not convinced that such minor changes to the file standard warrants a 1,540% increase in file size for the program that opens it. Enter Foxit Reader weighing in at a whopping 3.6mb. Foxit not only DL’s faster, but there’s no active x controls and it opens pdf’s significantly faster than does the fat cow known as Adobe Reader.

Ok, so now you’re like “But I can’t create PDF’s with Foxit, I have to have Acrobat Pro to do that” True, Foxit reader can’t create PDF’s, but you can create pdf’s for free using CutePDF Writer. CutePDF writer adds a virtual printer to your printers list so you can create your document in Open Office or GIMP and then using the CutePDF printer save the file as a .pdf. “But I want to password protect my pdf’s, and Foxit can’t do that either.” Ahh my children, 200 has all the answers. DL 7-zip(1mb) and throw your pdf into a passworded zip file. Foxit, CutePDF Writer, and 7-zip all weigh in at 16.1 mb, which is less than half of Adobe Reader 9.1’s file size and can get the job done for free versus paying 300 bucks for acrobat std. “200, I have four 1.5TB hard drives in a RAID 5 and I could care less if Adobe Reader was 41mb or 410mb.” Well sir, I guess this post wasn’t for you then. Have fun wasting your hard drive space with crappy bloatware.

[Foxit]
[7-zip]
[CutePDF Writer]
[ghostscript(required for CutePDF Writer]

I read my fair share of hardcover books, most of the time they are rather thick, and in the beginning and end of the book the pages bend steeply inwards toward the seam making them rather hard to read. You have to apply a good amount of pressure to bend the pages back far enough to read them. The remedy for this problem was only $350, and came in the form of Amazon’s Kindle.

Amazon came up with a pretty good way to lock Kindle buyer’s into buying their books on Amazon. The first thing you have to do is register your kindle via the wireless connection, and then you can begin purchasing books via Amazon’s Kindle web storefront. If you would like to upload a .pdf to your kindle Amazon charges you a fee to convert the file so it will be compatible with the device. Needless to say I found a better way of doing things. I disabled the wireless connection first thing out of the box, then I charged it, and I DL my ebooks from anywhere and then convert them using Mobi Pocket Creator.

I wasn’t sure what to think about the Electronic Ink technology the Kindle utilizes until I used it. It literally looks like a book, you can stare at it for hours and not get tired eyes like looking at a laptop lcd. Overall I like my Kindle. It’s small, it enhances my reading experience, and when I’m not using it the device displays pictures of famous dead authors. The battery life is literally unbelievable. I’m still showing only slightly less than full battery after my initial charge 3 weeks ago. The disabling of the wireless nic plays a big role in this no doubt. Here’s some pics for your viewing pleasure….

Many of you probably didn’t know my Grandmother was good friends with Ethel Rosenberg, the wife of famed communist spy Julius Rosenberg. Immediately prior to their arrest in 1950 the Rosenbergs mailed my Grandmother this laptop for safe keeping as it was thought that if it were found it would only help the prosecution justify the claim that the Rosenberg’s were guilty of trafficking American nuclear secrets to Russia. The Rosenberg’s hung in spite of the fact this laptop never saw it’s day in court. I would now like to share this piece of my families history with you.

Not too long ago Bigfoot networks released a pair of $250 NIC cards called the “Killer” and the “K1″. Both cards debuted with tons of hype surrounding them, but were ultimately not well received. The goal of these cards is to prioritize UDP traffic which in theory should speed up your online gaming experience. The “Killer” cards may have in fact achieved their goal of UDP prioritization, but all the benchmarks pointed to little or no real world benefit from doing so, and with a price tag of $250.00, no one was shelling out the mulah to test it, not when you can pick up a perfectly good GB NIC for less than $40.00.

Well, it looks like the Killer is back, this time teaming up with gaming hardware heavyweights EVGA in an attempt to peddle yet another pair of outrageously expensive (starting at $139.00) NIC cards. They’re called the Killer Xeno Pro(128mb), and Ultra(256mb), and they are claiming these cards can do everything the originals did and so much…no wait a minute…the only thing the new cards can do above and beyond the originals is VOIP offloading. It should be interesting to see how many people don’t buy this thing. Let’s take a failed product, and offer it under a similar name, only this time lets get some street cred behind it by using a well known gaming hardware manufacturer to put some stickers on it and do the advertising, we’ll make millions!!! Doubt it, GL though. Don’t get me wrong, if this thing can deliver on what it advertises I’ll be the first kid on the block to have one, but from what I can tell it’s pretty much the same card with similar hardware specs claiming to do the same thing it did 2 years ago, only this time it says Killer and EVGA.

[EVGA Release]

I’ve taken a departure from the normal FPS, RTS, and MMO reviews and decided to try out the HAWX demo now available for DL on Fileplanet. HAWX is an arcade syle flight sim that’s pretty fun to play. I have a Logitech 3D Force Pro which added to the experience. The missles have camera view so you can watch them all the way to impact, and if you’re getting tailed and need to out maneuver a locked missile you can toggle 1st/3rd person to get a better look at the situation. This game is good for a few hours of fun, though I’m not sure how high the replayability factor is. Here’s some video of some 1st person targeted missle shots.

How do you spell own? M o W..

The American release of MoW took place about a week ago and I jumped on board snatching up my copy at the first place that offered it, gamersgate.com for $39.99. Little did I know Direct2Drive would offer it 2 days later for $10 cheaper. lol

The 1.0 release ships with 28 MP maps and 7 modes of gameplay. All of the maps I have played so far have been great consisting of meticulously placed buildings and forested areas with plenty of locations for cover. The map design on this game is second to none, and the direct control option really sets this game apart from any rts you have ever played.

It was rumored that the Japanese army would be available for MP in the 1.0 release but it has been delayed until a future patch. All in all this game is RTS gold despite a few major flaws, like the planes, that are offered on a select few maps, being essentially worthless and able to fly underground, or the fact that the “unofficial” 1.11.3 patch completely disables single player mode, which imho is no biggy because no one plays single player anyway. The biggest downfall of this game is the amount of U.S. players that don’t play the game. It’s mostly Russians and Europeans and the lobby empties right around 5:00pm EST. During U.S. prime time hours you’re lucky to see 25 people in the lobby. Keep your fingers crossed that this game will get more U.S. exposure via D2D.

Quote from PCworld.com

a group of Chinese hackers who broke Apple’s gift certificate algorithm and are now using a key generator to sell bargain gift cards on the Internet.

[Full Story]

I was speaking with my friend -w-.Dirt the other day about the varying degrees of intimacy present in a relationship when at least one of the parties involved is a hardcore gamer. A few observations have been made that I believe need to be shared with you.

1) If the hardcore gamer has been single for a long period of time and somehow by the grace of god finds a girlfriend, they are likely to not be seen online in anything approaching normal capacity. Our subjects for this observation include, but are not limited to, -w-Flandez, Experttact, and D1.Spartan.

2) If the hardcore gamer has been in a committed relationship for over 2 years they are likely to be seen online in a much more abundant fashion than the gamer who is within the first year of his relationship. Subjects for this observation include, but are not limited to, 200mg and -w-Dirt.

3) 100% of the time this trend will reverse. ie. If the hardcore gamer stays with the gf long enough for the relationship to be considered long-term, the gamer slowly, but surely, integrates back into his online habitat until eventually it’s as if they never left at all.

What is the moral of this story? Girls are fun for a second, but games stand the test of time? One must find a happy medium if he is to sustain a relationship and continue gaming on a regular basis. Too far in either direction will result in disaster. Too much time playing Men of War, and too little time watching American Idol w/ your gf will result in her leaving you for someone who doesn’t spend 30 hours a week on his computer. This must not happen, who now will bring you beers and pizza while you’re playing Men of War? Who now will come with you to a LAN and make you look that much cooler because A) you have a gf, and B) she came with you to the LAN. And vice-versa, too much time going to the movies and watching Grey’s Anatomy will translate into a below average KDR and an overall loss of respect from those individuals with whom you spend time with in vent, or ts, or wherever your online hangout may be.

Intimacy in the digital age, oxymoron? Or totally doable? You decide…

Alan Moore is not a new comer to writing stories that beg to become movies. He was the mind behind such films as From Hell, V for Vendetta, and Swamp Thing. Finally someone had the balls to attempt to bring his masterpiece to the big screen, and very successfully I might add. The Watchmen was originally released in 1986 from DC comics only to be reprinted again and again in trade paperback form. Time magazine picks Watchmen as one of its 100 best novels, and this is a first from such a source as a comic.  “Who Watches the Watchmen?” …. I do and so should you.

From Bit-Tech.net

We have just learned that Intel filed suit against Nvidia late last night in which it alleges that the four-year old chipset license agreement the two companies signed is not valid for Intel’s current and future generation CPUs with integrated memory controllers.

— bit-tech.net Feb. 18th, 2009

From what I gather from the chatter surrounding this suit this essentially means Intel doesn’t want Nvidia making mobo’s, or more precisely, chipsets for mobo’s that supprt Nehalem/I7 processors. They were obviously able to get together amicably in order for intel to offer SLi on the x58 chipset, I wonder what went wrong….

Full story [HERE]

It’s not very often a game this good comes around. Men of War is an ultra realistic WW2 RTS. What sets it apart from the other one billion games in the same genre is a function called “Direct Control” which allows you to take control of single units and maneuver them using W, S, A, D like a 3rd person shooter.

The U.S. Fileplanet beta and subsequent open beta didn’t attract as many players as I would have hoped. I think the learning curve for this game may have alienated a few thousand players. I read somewhere that upwards of 3,000 people downloaded the beta, but at any given time there’s only about 200 people playing it, which is a shame because this game is great. The beta has 3 different game modes all of which completely transform the gameplay and tactics. If you have a fileplanet account you can still get the beta right now, if you live in Europe you can already get the 1.0 release. I hope the European publisher of this game (1C Publishing EU) throws a few more advertising dollars for Men of War into the U.S. market prior to it’s release, the open beta just didn’t pull in enough players and I would really like to see this game jump off.

The judge has rescheduled the hearing for Feb. 24th 2009. The prosecution is seeking an order to disallow the court to webcast the proceedings.

One would think that if the prosecution had a strong case they would want to broadcast the hearing if not only to make an example of the defendant for all of the internet to see.

Check the [LINK]

I read about this in CPU mag. It’s an SSD card that doesn’t use SATA or PATA, instead it uses PCI-E 1.0. 80gb for only $2,300.00. LOLz…The future is now. It’s called the Samsung IO-Fusion and it’s apparently 5 times faster than the fastest SSD on the market today. This is the only link I could find about it. [LINK]

And it just keeps getting better folks. Ubuntu version 8.10 supports WPA out of the box, no more having to install and config WPA_supplicant…yay!! I have VMWare 1.07 installed successfully running WinXPP. Still cannot bridge wireless connections, but thats a vmware issue and not an OS issue. VMWare NAT works via wireless well enough to support Cisco VPN, which is the whole reason I installed VMWare to begin with. Ubuntu just keeps improving, download your copy from HERE.

A while back Netflix teamed up with a consumer electronics manufacturer called Roku to build a platform to host their streaming media service. The result is the Roku Netflix player, available online at www.roku.com for $100. In order to stream movies to your television you will need a broadband connection and at least the $8.99/mo subscription at Netflix which allows unlimited streaming and one DVD out at a time, the more expensive packages only allow more DVD’s to be sent to your home and do not impact the streaming service at all.

THE HARDWARE

The Roku box arrived at my door in a Roku branded cardboard box. The unit itself can fit in the palm of a grown man’s hand. 5″x5″x1.75″ is tiny, it can fit anywhere. It comes with all the standard ports found on any modern home media device, plus a few extra networking components:
1x Component
1x Composite
1x S-Video
1x HDMI
1x Digital Optical
1x Ethernet
1x Wireless Network Adapter
1x 5v power adapter

INSTALLATION

Installation was extremely easy. I use TKIP encryption on my home wireless network and was worried the Roku box wouldn’t support it, not only does it support TKIP it was able to find my SSID even though I’m not broadcasting it. Overall, setup was very intuitive and only took about 3 minutes.

IMPLEMENTATION

Movies load via my wireless connection in about 20 seconds. I have seen some variation in the load times but generally less than half a minute seems to be the norm. I have also tested movie downloads while running torrents. 2 torrents seeding with 30 connections did not impact the movie DL times. 6 torrents with 2 seeding and 50+ connections slowed the load times considerably, though this is no fault of the Roku box, it’s more likely limitations on my cheapo Linksys wireless router.

The picture on the non HD movies varies. Most of them lie somewhere in between SD and DVD quality. I have seen a few that are “granier” than others, but overall the picture is surprisingly good, especially considering the fact I’m using a 51″ tv to test with.

NETFLIX SELECTION

Movies

This is the only area that I am less than enthusiastic about. They do have ten’s of thousands of titles to choose from, but many of them are, well let’s just say less than desirable. Like the 2003 release of Cheerleader Ninjas (not to be confused with the 2008 release Ninja Cheerleaders). It seems that the B and C grade movies outweigh anything watchable by 4:1. For every Men in Black, there are 4 Toxic Avenger movies.

Television

This is where the Roku box pays for itself. They have several network and cable television series available for instant watch. You can load a whole season at a time and the Roku box can pick up where you left off. They also have several TV documentaries from the History Channel, and PBS.

High Def

Roku has only recently added support for HD content. My box updated the firmware right after I connected it to the network the first time. The HD content from Netflix is 720p and it looks great. Last I checked they had around 200+ titles, the watchable ratio (bad:good movies) is only slightly better than the SD content.

CONCLUSION

The Roku Netflix player is an On Demand Channel that you get to populate with whatever you want. IMHO the content isn’t quite what it should be, but Netflix is adding to it’s streaming library all the time. If you’re a movie buff, then you’ll like the Roku Netflix player, if you’re a casual movie goer in search of new media, steer clear, at least for a year while Netflix builds it’s streaming movie database.

Another flick about the British criminal underground by Guy Ritchie. Starts off slow but then eventually coalesces into the usual Ritchie-esque brand of movie consisting of chance encounters by gangsters at the most opportune moments for the protagonist(s) to eek out of a sticky situation. This movie is a patent Guy Ritchie film, I am a fan so my opinion will be undoubtedly softer than most, but one wonders how long Ritchie will be able to keep this formula relevant or entertaining. Worth the rent.

What better way to kick off 2009 than with a post about a Source Mod that’s been out for a few years. I just found INSmod (Insurgency Mod) through Steam a few days ago and have been playing it every day since. A military FPS focused around realism that to me is somewhat reminiscent of AA. The sound effects are top notch with a concussion effect that is so real you may have a headache when you’re done playing. The city maps are exquisitely detailed providing a feeling of suspense every time you turn a corner. Usually it’s one bullet and you’re done, and many times you have no idea where that bullet came from. This game is far from a run and gun FPS like COD4 or TF2, slow and steady wins the race in INSmod for sure. The guys over at http://www.insmod.net really did a great job with this mod. It’s easy to see why ModDB gave it best source mod of 07′. You can DL the mod for free through steam if you already own a source engine game ie HL2, TF2, CSS. I hope the INSmod team follows through on the promises of their website of continuing support and content release because I think I’ll be playing INSmod for a while.

Abit is synonymous with the enthusiast crowd for manufacturing solid reliable technology and offering it at a fair price. Sadly, tomorrow (Dec 31st, 2008) Abit will close it’s doors for good. For me, it’s always been Asus first, but if the Asus board was a little too pricey, Abit was my solid 2nd place goto for a mobo. This news will no doubt impact my future builds. So long Abit, you will be missed.

When I saw this movie floating around I assumed what any zombie flick enthusiast would assume. This movie is obviously a remake of the last installment to the Romero/Savini zombie trilogy. When I saw Ving Rhames name attached to the movie it only reaffirmed my intuition. Rhames starred in the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead which loosely followed the Savini/Romero script but was obviously meant to pay homage to the original. With Day of the Dead I feel somewhat cheated. It takes on a story line that is separate and of itself far off script from the original 1985 release. It is an extremely mediocre zombie movie lacking in gore and plot, but excelling in horrible acting on the behalves of Nick Cannon and Mena Suvari. Use this DVD as a coaster for your beer while you are watching Resident Evil: Degeneration.

Degeneration is a fully CG movie that picks up where the live action series left off. Raccoon City has been nuked to contain the T-Virus, but not before a terrorist rescued samples of the virus, and it’s more vicious cousin the G-Virus, which he now uses to extort information and money from world governments.

Sony Entertainment (Japan) did a great job with this movie. It’s one of the best zombie flicks I have seen in a while. The CG is good, but at times it does have that video game intro look to it, you know… the over use of motion blur and bullet time aspect ratio, though I suppose this is to be expected seeing as how it’s a movie based on a video game and produced by a video game manufacturer.

This installment of Resident Evil is better than it’s live action counterparts and is a definite must see for CG fans. Degeneration went straight to DVD and drops on Dec. 27th. Read more HERE.