Netflix added the ability to stream movies some time ago, and after taking the plunge to try it out, I have to say I’m sold on the concept.

At first I was hesitant to give it a try because you could only do it on your computer, and I didn’t feel like going through the trials and tribulations of watching Internet videos on my TV.  Eventually a company named Roku brought a Netflix set top box to market, but, I also didn’t feel like plopping down $99 for a dedicated device.

Then, in November, Microsoft updated the Xbox 360 dashboard and added the option to stream Netflix to your TV without any more equipment then I already owned.  With the temptation being too great, I finally gave in and reactivated my Netflix account and decided to give it a shot.

For as little as $8.99 a month (we’ll ignore the $4.99 option as that only gives you 2 hours of video streaming a month), you get one DVD rented at a time, but you get unlimited video streaming to your Xbox.  Quite a bargain if you ask me since they have over 12,000 selections for you to choose from.  True, the movie selection is mainly older films, but for a film buff like myself, I’m thrilled.  They also offer help a very healthy selection of older TV shows, all which are available on DVD, but for three months of streaming, you can save your self buying a DVD set you may not even like, and you will save room in your house.  I finally can try out an older British comedy I have been dying to try for years called Yes, Minister without rolling the dice on an expensive boxed set and risking not even liking the show.

The only drawback to the system is you have to go to the Netflix site to add more videos to your queue.  You can only have 6 active selections show up in your Xbox dashboard at any time, but that is plenty for a night of video watching.

My biggest fear was that you were going to end up with heavily pixalated veiwing since it was streaming over the Internet and being blown up to the size of a TV screen, but I am pleased to say I was totally wrong about that.  Last night my father wanted to watch a movie since he is laid out on the couch recovering from knee surgery, and he chose The Illusionist from 2006.  What little I watched of the movie since I had work to do was just stunning in its quality.  It might not be true high def, but coming over an HDMI cable to our 42″ Toshiba Regza LCD, I noticed little to no “image noise”, no buffering except before the film started, and an overall better experience than a standard definition DVD played on a standard DVD player.

I would still like to see a broader slection of films to watch, and also the ability to add new things to your queue on the fly, but overall, if you have an Xbox 360 already, or feel up to getting a Roku device, this is well worth $8.99 a month.  Also, keep an eye out, but some Blu-ray DVD players are starting to add the ability to stream the videos also.

With another year under their belt, why does Blu-ray still seem to be another “also ran” in the home media market?

It was one year ago today that I announced that I had decided to go with HD-DVD, and I knew full well that probably meant I had picked the wrong format in the high def war.  I was proven right in February of this year when HD-DVD threw in the towel, and it looked like a lock that Blu-ray would become the dominant format.

So, why hasn’t it happened?  Blu-ray is still languishing with only a single digit percentage of the home media market, and it doesn’t look to be gainging more traction with the economy in its current uncertain state.  As I see it, Blu-ray is fighting a multi pronged fight that it didn’t even ponder it was going to have to.

• As people have said everywhere, DVDs still look too good on a high def television to warrant people running out and buying yet another format.  With upconverting DVD players pushing standard definition discs to near HD quality, and those players still selling for less than a Blu-ray player, it’s hard for people to make the justification for going with Blu-ray.
• Even when people do go with Blu-ray, they are not buying films in the numbers they were with regular DVDs.
• Streaming media is becoming more common, and on numerous devices people already own.  For instance, the fact that you can stream Netflix films via the XBox 360 now.  Why purchase what you can stream, and be out more money and space in your home?
• The prices for Blu-ray players and their accompanying discs are still just too high compared to their standard definition counterparts.

You add up all of these problems, and it doesn’t look too promising for the high def format.  Yes, I fully admit that this may sound like sour grapes over me goign HD-DVD, but it isn’t, because I have been very close to throwing in the towel and buying a Blu-ray player several times since February.  At this point I don’t think buying into an HD format is a wise choice for any one.  Streaming is becoming more and more prevalent, and I don’t see standard def DVDs going anywhere, so I’m thinking it may be wise to just sit out this home media iteration and see where the chips land.

In short, don’t be me and put all your money on what could be a losing horse.

In what seems to be becoming an annual event, it’s time for a new entry in the Call of Duty franchise of video games.

This year’s entry is going back to the roots of the series by moving the setting back to the days of World War II, with a heavy focus on the Pacific Rim theater.  There is also a change up in that last year’s mega-popular Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4) was by the design house at Infinity Ward, and this year’s version (Call fo Duty: World at War is the full title) is by a group named Treyarch.

Everyone on XBox Live has been able to download a demo for a few days now which allows you to play on three of the multiplayer maps.  As long time readers of this blog know, I am a huge fan of online first person shooting games, so I downloaded and gave the game a try.  To be honest, Call of Duty 4 has literally not left my XBox since the day I inserted it, which has been about 8 months now, so me playing anything else is a novel concept.

First impressions tell me… I’m not going to be nearly as addicted to this game, and that is if I even buy it.

To be completely honest, this game is so similar to CoD4 that it feels more like an expansion pack than an entirely new game.  I almost wonder if that is why this game doesn’t have the number “5″ in its title, it almost feels more like a “4.5″ than a wholly new game.  Sure, there are some new aspects such as the addition of vehicles in at least one level of the three they let the public sample, and at some point in the game there is the inclusion of flame throwers, but otherwise the basic mechanics of the game just feel far to close to the last game.

I will say they did add far more details to what weapons damage could do to you, which I am not sure is such a wonderful idea.  I noticed after shooting a guy with a shotgun at fairly close range that I could see his rib cage clearly where the blast hit.  At another point I got hit with a grenade and as my character fell backwards I could see his left leg was missing.  Not to mention the amount of blood that gets splattered on the “camera” when you kill people at close range.  While I understand thay are going for a realisitc approach, I’m not sure I need that much gore in a game I play to relax after a long day of work.

One of the largest annoyances, and I know this is minor, is the inclusion of the attack dogs.  In CoD4, after you would get 7 kills in a row, you could call in an attack chopper.  Well, seeing as this is WW II, they couldn’t have coptors, obiously, so they replaced them with attack dogs.  As an animal lover, I’m not thrilled with haing to shoot dogs to save myself, and my 3 real life dogs are not thrilled with the barking coming from the TV whenever they show up.  Again, minor, but annoying.

True, I am judging this game by only a small slice of it, but the basic mechanics are there, and the actual character movement even feels a bit clunkier.  I mean the way the character itself moves, I expect the weapons to be clunky and harder to manage, but the actual physics of the figure you control just doesn’t feel smooth for some reason.

Will I end up buying it?  I don’t know, I’m tempted, but I may just wait for Infinity Ward to come back to being the designers with the next installment before I once again answer… the Call of Duty.  (Stop groaning!)

Hollywood has tried turning numerous video games into movies, and most of them… well… lets be honest, most of them have sucked. Now the savior may be on its way, and its name is…

Guitar Hero: The Movie!

-commences to slamming his head against a wall-

Mind you this is in no way official yet, but according to an interview with MTV, Brett Ratner is keen to do it.  Luckily for the masses of the world, Activision, the makers of the game, don’t seem so keen on the idea.

For those of you unfamiliar with the popular gaming franchise, you play a plastic guitar and hit the corresponding colored buttons on the instrument to what you see on the screen.  The game is enermously popular, but it doesn’t exactly scream “movie plot” to me.  Ratner has an idea in mind, though:

“It could be about a kid from a small town who dreams of being a rock star and he wins the ‘Guitar Hero’ competition. One of these dreams-[come-true] kind of concepts.”

Didn’t I already see this movie?  Ah, yes, the 1989 “classic”, The Wizard, starring Fred Savage.  Not EXACTLY the same, but close enough.

Anyway, no, this is not a good idea, and thankfully Activision doesn’t want the franchise messed with.  Apparently they think a lackluster movie could possibly damage the name of the game.  Brett Ratner is a big time director though, so I’m not sure how they think the man behind the Rush Hour series and X-Men: The Last Stand could possibly make a bad movie…

Aw crap.  RUN, ACTIVISION!  RUN!

In a move that is sure to leave me scratching my head for days, Microsoft has partnered up the Xbox 360 gaming platform with Rock the Vote.

In a press release put out today, Microsoft revealed that as of today, users of Xbox Live will be able to take polls about the upcoming presidential election, participate in forums and… oh, how this scares me… register to vote.  Don’t get me wrong, I am all for people registering to vote, and I actually went and did it the day of my 18th birthday I was so anxious to have the right.  What scares me is, and I know I will catch flames for this, is the goofballs on Xbox Live messing this up.

I’ve written a couple times this year about the intellectual titans I run into playing some of the games online, and it worries me that some of these folks, for laughs, may try to register fake people or some other way gum up the works.  I have not looked at the process yet, but I am hopeful there are multiple safeguards in place.  I asked my mother for her feelings on this since she used to be the president of the local League of Women Voters chapter, responsible for many people being registered to vote, and her reply was simply, “this troubles me.”

Hopefully this will lead to legitimate sign-ups, and hopefully it will also lead to people actually going to the polls come election day, but it still makes me a bit nervous to see it done in this fashion.  Going to the gamers is a great idea, but why not set it up around the release of a major game?  Madden ‘09 just came out with a huge push for midnight releases, wouldn’t it have made sense to set up at some stores and do it there?  Yes, there is a certain convenience factor to doing it at home, but I worry about faked names, hacked accounts and any other number of potential problems.

In my heart, I hope it is successful because I think our freedom to vote is one of the greatest things in this country, it is just the method of registration that is worrisome to me.

According to The NPD Group, Grand Theft Auto IV from Rockstar Games, sold 6 million copies in its first week of release.  At a retail price of $59.99, that puts the gross sales of $359,000,000 in one week.

I decided it would be interesting to take a look at the top grossing domestic films to see where this would be on the list if it was a movie.  According to the list on Box Office Mojo, this would place it just $2 million ahead of 12th place, Jurassic Park.  For all of 2007, the movie industry grossed $9.6 billion, and so far this year, the video game industry has grossed $6.6 billion, on track to top somewhere between $21 and $23 billion.

So, are we looking at the gaming industry doing nothing but growing?  The film industry has been suffering from diminishing ticket sales, and as readers of this blog know, I feel it’s from a severe lack of fresh material.  True, video games do get the bonus of being virtual, so they can create the most fantastical settings they want with no extra cost in “building”, but their stories are also fresher.  I’m not a fan of the GTA series, but from what I know of them, people do enjoy the storylines of building your way to being a top criminal.

You also have to look at a value for money when it comes to what is going on with films.  According to the National Association of Theater Owners, the average price for a movie ticket in the USA in 2007 was $6.88.  A movie averages 90-minutes in length, meaning you spend approximately $.08 a minute for the movie.  GTA IV costs $59.99 for a reported 40-hours of game play, which works out to around $.02 a minute.  I know this is a highly simplistic way to look at it, but you also add in the cost of gas to go to the theater, snacks, wasted time in a theater, popping in a video game starts to look a lot more appealing.

Several years ago I went to a conference of video retailers, and I heard something that stuck with me like nothing else I had ever heard at a conference: “We aren’t in just a battle for their entertainment dollar, we’re in a battle for their disposable time.”  If someone is spending 40 hours playing GTA IV, that is 40 hours not watching TV or going to movies.  If anyone in the entertainment field starts to wonder about diminishing funds, I think we’ve found your culprit.

Just the other day I spoke about how a social network, Faceparty, had decided it was best to delete people over 36-years-old because they may be sex offenders.  Well, this made me think of another situation I have been running into a lot more lately: ageism in video games.

I have spoken before about some of the… “stimulating”… conversations I have while playing games like Call of Duty 4 online, but now it is becoming a regular occurrence for me to be slammed on for being 36.  In the past it has been insults of everyone being “gay”, or “you suck” or just general stupidity, but as gamers are trending to be older (the average age of video game players is now 34), the teens are getting more insulting about people in my age range being “losers” for still playing video games.  As I so kindly tell them, if it wasn’t for people like me having played video games since they came around in the 1980’s, they wouldn’t have their games today, so… stuff it.  (I have no patience for these kids… I’m sure you all are shocked since I’m normally Mr. Cuddly)  This is usually all followed up with I have no life… I must be on welfare (… how did I afford the game…)… aendlessly with the same insults over-and-over.

I have to wonder where this animosity is coming from.  What possible difference does it make to some kid if I’m 16 or 36, so long as I’m doing my “job” in the game, what does it really matter?  It doesn’t, but I think it speaks to a common distrust of “older” people I see creeping back into the social consciousness.  Ever heard the saying from the 1960’s of “Don’t trust anyone over 30″?  Well, from what I see, it’s happening again, but this time I think it’s for very different reasons… just plain snottiness.

At least when this saying popped up originally, we were engaged in a highly questionable war, with a country still reeling from an assassination that no one understood.  True, we are engaged in another questionable war, but somehow, I don’t think these kids are even remotely aware of it.  These are “the mellinials” and their only concern is themselves.  You thought Generation X, my generation, was bad?  We have nothing on this group.

Honestly, their actual words don’t phase me in the least, but the general attitude is disturbing.  I’m not sure where it came from, what causes it or if there is even any way to stop it.  Hopefully it will disappear with time, and for now it is just generally annoying, lets just hope it doesn’t get any worse.

Somehow I doubt this will be the last time I touch on the “old people suck” attitude I’m encountering more and more.

Okay, no one pass out… I’m actually going to praise something.

Inifinity Ward, the makers of Call of Duty 4, released four new maps for the online version of the game on Friday.  After some errors with buying them (it was the fault of Xbox Live, not Infinity Ward), all was well and you could purchase the new release.  Now, in the past when I’ve bought maps for other games, you have to hope enough people buy them for them to show up in normal rotation.  Usually this leads to frustration, cursing and wondering why you bothered to buy the maps because not enough people got them for them to show up in the playlists.

Well, in a show of forward thinking, Infinity Ward set up special rooms just for people who bought the maps and, for this weekend only, are offering you double experience points for playing in them.  All I can say is kudos to them for thinking of this very situation and I can say I’ve already gotten my monies worth out of these new arenas.  And, bonus, the new maps are kick-ass.  I never thought I would say, “Wow, this map is TOO big!”, but the map named “Broadcast” really is!

Take note other game makers: this is how you handle an expansion release.

While playing Call of Duty 4 last night, I had a conversation that made me actually question humanity.

Sitting in the lobby, waiting for the next round to start, we got notified the next map we’d be playing on would be “Bloc” – a set of decaying apartment buildings in post-nuclear accident Chernobyl. This isn’t a huge fan-favorite map, but it did generate the following conversation.

Male player: Ugh, I hate this map! Everyone vote to veto it.

Me: I agree… although I was surprised the other night when I found the pool building! I never even knew it existed!

Male player: The what?

Me: It’s in the back corner, there’s a whole other building with a pool. I never knew it was there.

Female player: pfft It’s not a pool.

Me: Uh, yes it is.

Female player: There’s no water in it, so it’s not a pool.

Me: …

Male player: If it doesn’t have water in it, it’s not a pool?

Female player: Right.

At this point the game started, on a different map as we had vetoed “Bloc”. The girl was on the other team, but the other guy was on my team so we could talk to one another.

Me: Was she serious?

Male player: She sure sounded like it.

Me: What do you do when you call someone and want them to build you a pool, but it’s not a pool until it has water in it?

Male player: Hi! I’d like you to build me a large cement hole in the ground, shaped like a tub, and water proofed in case I want to put water in it someday.

Me: -gets shot by an opponent as I am choking from laughing so hard-

I played a couple of rounds with the girl, and considering her general attitude, yeah, she wasn’t joking, and she had many opinions on a great many subjects… all of them of equal intelligence.

Do you ever wish you could slap a sticker on some people’s foreheads that say “Do Not Breed”?

I can’t believe it, but I think I’ve been swayed from my love of playing nothing but Halo 3 on Xbox Live.

Triston McIntyre, of GAMER.BLORGE.com, told me while we were co-workers that I should give Call of Duty 4 a try. I mumbled and grumbled that I was fairly loyal to Halo, but since he was such an ardent supporter that I decided to trust him and give it a try.

Well, Halo 3 has not returned to my Xbox since.

This is strictly about the online portion of the game, as I found the COD4 off-line portion too short, just like I did with Halo 3.  I think game makers are starting to ignore the single players games a little much, and need to remember that not everyone gets online all the time.

That aside, I’m loving the online version of COD4 far more than Halo 3, like a lot more.  For those unfamiliar with either,both are First Person Shooters (FPS) where you are placed in to the role of someone fighting some form of enemies: in Halo it is either other soldiers or aliens, with COD4, it is alway some form of soldiers.  The perspective is always that of looking from behind the gun, or just slightly behind your character depending on the weapon you’re using.

So why is COD4 winning me over?  I feel like I’m accomplishing something as opposed to just going around shooting people.  Yes, they are both video games, but Halo 3 gives you medals and ranks that earn you nothing but shiny things to look at; COD4 unlocks more weapons, special weapons, and challenges as you increase in rank.  So while you’re going around fighting your enemies, you’re also thinking, “I need to get another headshot to finish off that Marksman achievement.”  It adds another layer of fun to the game and extra value.  What do you do when you max out your rank, and finish all the goals?  Well, when you hit rank 55, you get to start all over if you like, but with new rank badges that indicate this isn’t your first time through the game.

The biggest selling point to me, and one I can’t even begin to guess why it happens, is that there aren’t nearly as many idiot running around shouting how “gay” something is, or how wonderful it would be to be raped.  It’s not that this is some sort of intellectual game, but there certainly does seem to be a higher maturity level in the players and how they act inside the game.  My theory is it has to do with the game being far busier than Halo 3; you almost always have a vulnerable direction you could be shot from, or your thinking about finishing your challenges, you don’t even have time to talk, let alone be annoying.

Overall it is a far more satisfying experience in the multi-player game than Halo 3, and that is something I honestly never saw myself saying.  I have been a die-hard Halo fan for some time now, and now it just seems like a far less satisfying system.

So, if you’re looking for a game, RUDEBOY71 is my handle and you can join in a game and you can promptly kick my behind.

Computer gaming enthusiasts are an interesting lot.

Case in point was a comment I found on this post on Engadget about how people are still flocking to Windows XP, even though time is running out. One commenter mentions how he’s skipped Vista as he prefers a more stable OS to work with. He then received the following reply from another poster that said “Let me know how that works out for you when all games require DX10 in the next year or two.”

The original poster came back and stated that he doesn’t game on his computer, and there was no reply, so I imagine the issue is dead. Still, this is a common attitude I run into all over the web from computer gamers that they simply can’t comprehend how anyone can be satisfied with a computer that is anything below a top end gaming rig.

I’ve played my fair share of computer games back “in the day”: Master of Orion II, Civilization 1, 2, and 3, several Star Wars games, I loved the Mechwarrior series and so on. What stopped me was a combination of things, but namely my unwillingness to purchase a new video card every time I turned around. The games constantly expect you to be upgrading and upgrading to keep up with them, and, I’m sorry, but I’m not made of money. Mind you, this was several years ago, and from what I know of the current crop of games, it’s only gotten worse.

As I’ve gotten older (ugh), I prefer the simplicity of console gaming. Sure I have to buy a new console every few years, but when I buy a game for a specific system, I know it’s going to work. I’m not going to put it in, fire it up and be told I need a more powerful video card… or more RAM… or a new sound card… you get the picture.  I just prefer the ease of enjoyment that a console gives me over finding out I can’t buy a game because I don’t have the WillyWooly 256X Video Card with the Slushee attachment in my PC.

So, I have nothing against computer gamers, knock yourselves out, have a ball and enjoy it if that’s your hobby, but why is their this attitude that those of us who don’t are somehow lesser? I have had many conversations with one gamer in particular who just can not comprehend how I am satisfied with run-of-the-mill video cards, he can’t understand how I enjoy any games with my current computer. No matter how many times I tell him I don’t do computer games, he still doesn’t get it.

To each their own I say, just remember, now all of us are using our computers for gaming, some of us actually use them for work!… and porn… can’t forget the porn.

While playing a quick game of Halo 3 (you can see my lousy service record here) the other night before bed, I somehow ended up with seven teenagers on my team. Considering the hours I play, that was fairly odd, but no big deal. The problem was 2 of them were female, and that just made it that much more difficult to play.

See, when you stick 5 teenage boys in a “room” with 2 teenage girls, all that gets accomplished is flirting. And let me tell you, there was plenty of that! I tuned out listening to them when one boy kept insisting the girls prove they were really girls by sending him pictures of thmselves, which they refused to do. As the game progressed though, and we were getting our asses kicked, I finally started listening to them again and… they were discussing where they would like to be raped.

Yes… rape.

“I think I’d want to be raped in a hot tub!”

And I thought, “Okay, they just don’t know what the word means. It’s disgusting, but they don’t know what they’re discussing,” but then one of the two girls says, “I think I’d want to be raped in the bathroom… it’s already dirty.”

After I picked myself up off the floor, though my jaw was still down there, I couldn’t help but finally make some comments to them about it.

“DEAR GOD! Do you all know what you’re talking about?!? Rape is not something to be joked about! Wait until you get older and you’ve known people who have been raped and then see how funny you think it it is!”

To which one of the boys said, “… you’ve been raped? What was that like?”

Cue sound of me repeatedly slamming my head against my controller.

I think I have finally reached that point in my life where I have to wonder, “These kids today, what are they thinking?!?” Which, I guess officially makes me ‘old’, but I’m okay with that in this situation because I don’t think I would be mentally right to not wonder this time.

Hopefully none of these kids will ever suffer such a fate, but I certainly wish they get a clue about what it they’re saying, and soon.