“Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gadget in your hand?”
On MSNBC.com:
One game, three platforms: Which is best?
by Joe Hutsko
Does ‘The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion’ play better on an Xbox 360, PS3 or PC?
“Shivering Isles” lured the author back into playing “Elder Scrolls” on the Xbox 360. But which platform best showcases this epic adventure title — console or PC?
Today is the day owners of Crackdown for the Xbox 360 may download the Halo 3 beta. As of 11 am EST there’s no download and I’m getting the message: “Check back here at a later date to download the Halo 3 Beta.” All the usual suspects are reporting that Bungie has alerted the Xbox Live group of the hiccup and they’re working on it.
More interesting is Major Nelson’s post on highload.majornelson.com, which appears as an absolutely plain, text message:
We’re aware that some users are having difficulty downloading the Halo 3 multiplayer beta via Crackdown. Bungie Studios is working with the Xbox Live team to resolve this as quickly as possible - stay tuned. Gamers entering the beta through other means, such as the Friends and Family remain unaffected.
I am headed back to Seattle in a few hours, so I’ll be offline while I am in the air. For the most up to date information, keep an eye on Bungie.net for the latest from Frankie regarding this issue.
This site is experiencing an excessive traffic amount of traffic at this time, so sorry for the temporary nature of this message. We’re working on getting back online as soon as we can.
(Click here for a screenshot of the message.)
Personally I’m not crushed by the delay since I’m a multiplayer wimp and will be more into the single-player game when the real thing ships on September 25. My friend Ric, however, is visiting, and he’s an insanely great multiplayer gamer. He came prepared with his profile on a memory card, gripped in his sweaty fist and waiting for the download to happen so he can log in and lay into other Halo 3 beta go-getters.
UPDATE - Xbox 360 Spring Update “Reference Levels” explained.
Received an updated reply from Microsoft that further clarifies the reference levels enhancement included in the Spring Update. The reply is from Microsoft’s John Rodman, Senior Product Manager, Xbox Global Platform (followed by the original post):
Q: Any chance one of your tech contacts could explain in layman’s terms exactly what VGA level referencing is and how it affects 360 users who connect with VGA?
A: We added a new feature to the 2007 Xbox System Update which is actually fairly common among consumer electronics devices. You may know it by a variety of names; Reference Levels, Output levels, Black Levels, Blacker than black, Enhanced Blacks, Setup, PLUGE -all of this is talking about roughly the same functionality. In Xbox 360 we call it
“Reference Levels” for those using HDMI or VGA cables and “Black Levels” for Component or Standard cables.At a very high level, this feature is here to accommodate the different methods that TVs use to receive a video signal. More specifically it addresses the different ways that “black” and “white” can be represented in that video signal. If you want to dig a little deeper, the easiest way to think about this is to imagine a scale from 0 to 100. 0 is the dark end and 100 is the light end of the scale.
Because of the multiple “standards” put out by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) there is some confusion around what the term “Black” actually means. Some TVs expect black to be 0 while others expect it to be at 7. So, if the Xbox 360 outputs 7.5 as “Black” and it is connected to a TV that expects “Black” to be 0, it will result in a washed out colors. Conversely, if the Xbox 360 outputs 0 as black and the TV expects to get 7.5, it will end up with a very dark picture.
If video from your Xbox 360 looks too bright or too dark, you should try each of the settings and see what works best for your particular TV. If you are happy with you’re the video from your Xbox 360, then don’t bother changing it.
Continue reading ‘Review: Xbox 360 Elite & VGA vs. HDMI’
I’ve posted the short story “Nikko’s Dream” in text format in the Pages section of this site. The story is also available as a free ebook download in various formats from eReader.com.
Recent Comments