HD-DVD Picture-in-Picture Commentaries

This is a very cool feature with HD-DVDs. You can watch the movie with the director's or crew's commentary in PIP mode. Very interactive content...Way 2 go HD-DVD...lets hope HD-DVD wins the media war..

Xbox 360 HD-DVD player

Got the drive from Buy.com for 179.99 after using Google checkout. Nice deal! Retail costs run 199.99.

I am sure i dont need to explain what HD-DVD is..With 6 times as clear as a regular DVD, HD-DVD is one of the hottest media format out in the market right now (along with best buddy Blu-ray). Atleast 200 movies are expected to be out on HD-DVD format (with atleast some of them offering a dual format - DVD on one side and HD-DVD version on other side of the disc). I am sure i wont be disappointed by this vast collection of discs that will be available by end of the year and in the coming years.

The Xbox 360 drive comes with Peter Jackson's KingKong movie free, and a universal media remote ( it sucks that i bought one of these remotes earlier this year with my 360, so now i have two remotes, got to sell one of this on ebay). The HD-DVD drive is almost half as huge as the Xbox 360 and connects via a high speed USB 2.0 cable to the Xbox360. I am running my Xbox 360 to my 50 inch Plasma over Component so the max resolution i am going to get is 1080i. My plasma doesnt support 1080p, so i dont have much choice there. I am waiting on the Xbox 360 VGA cable so that i can hookup the 360 via the VGA port on my plasma...another 39$ to the pot..

I will upload some screenshots of some movies in HD-DVD format here soon..

Halo3 - New ad

Check out the new halo3 ad that came on tv this week. MChief looks pretty cool.

Click here to watch 'Halo3-New-ad'

Gears of War

I Have to tell you this is one of the best games ever other than halo that i have played...cant play this game without ducking or taking cover...graphics ...amazing..More pics to follow..

MChief climbs on MChief

Head on Head match: Click to enlarge.

Controllers for sale

Look at my house turned into a controller showroom..LOL
Click to enlarge pictures.

Halo 2 Frag fest - Stats updated (Scroll below)

I remember those days, over a year ago, when we all meet up at one of the many in the gang's apartment , bring multiple televisions in, along with xbox (regular) consoles for a frag festival. Halo and Halo2 were our all time system link based favourites. Since last one year..all my buddies have been busy and career focused (including myself)..that we have never been able to find time to get together and get fragged..

I am glad somebody brought this up on our Friday night dinner party at Melting pot about setting up a Halo2 lan party on Saturday. I dont remember who brought up the idea, was too drunk myself...

Again the venue for the event was decided to be at my house, now that i have a 50 inch plasma tv + a 27 inch tv which could be used for a second xbox console. I decided to borrow a projector from ma office which could help connect a third xbox console. So all together I could setup 3 xbox consoles on the lan on three different tv's, to accomodate up to 12 players. The audience included 10 people (7 men, 3 women). We had two long sessions of gaming from 2.00 pm to 8.00 pm in the night on Saturday) and then from 12.00 am on Sunday morning to 6.00 am. (God i couldnt believe that we stayed up all night playing Capture the flag) and slept almost half the day on Sunday morning. At the time of writing, I m feeling sleepy, so I am Parding your Beggon!! (I ll give ya 5 bucks if you can guess what that is!!)

The second session had only 5 people, the women walked away from the gaming session for da night to take care of their own discussions (you know what they talk when they meet up). We split ourselves into teams of two (with no choice), a team of two (myself and vinod) and a team of three. (aslam, ibu and partha). Ibu was supposed to be a football between the two teams..viz..he was supposed to alternate between the two, which betrayingly he didnt...(sucker)

Here are the gamer profile mappings.

Sankar - cciesucker (Blue team)

Vinod - lynx (Blue team)

Aslam - coolchic (Red team)

Partha - Aslam (Red team) (not sure why he chose Aslam)

Ibu - Jaggesh (Red team)

We selected Coagulation (which is one of the biggest levels in Halo2) to play CTF and this game went on for ever with no result at 6.00 am in the morning, when every bodys hands and shoulders were numb with 6 hours of non-stop fragging. i m still having my elbow and fingers paining, coz of last nights play. We played about 25-30 rounds of this CTF in Coagulation with a final result of 1-1 (Red vs Blue)

Click on pictures below to enlarge them:

My PC needs a heck of an upgrade

It was and still is a good rig...at the time when this was built.
P4 - 520 - 3.4 ghz running at 3.8 ghz
PQI turbo DDR memory - 1 gig - 2- 2-2-5 timing
250gb hdd - 2 ata133 HDD
ATI Radeon AGP X850XT - Platinum Edition with 256MB ram.
DVDRW +- 16X
Gigabyte 3dCooler Pro with adjustable fan speed
2 80mm fans
1 120 mm fan
Custom case with 400 W PSU

Keep your medics and techs safe, as they heal you through out the game

Unlike most FPS games where you go shoot baam shoot and kill all that comes to your front..and use health packs that unusually lie around the entire game world. You would think how the hell did a health pack fall on the floor ? In Quake 4 there are health packs still lying around, but there is something more that is unique..You get 2 or 3 team mates in certain missions. One guy will be a medic while the other one being a technician. Keep your Techs and Medics safe from enemies as they will keep your health and ammo maxed out, all the time. You can just walk to them and ask them for a refill.

Prey for Xbox 360

One of the hottest titles that is available today. I got the collectors edition from my friend as a gift on my birthday. Prey uses Doom 3 engine. (same as Quake4). A piece of advice, the game has so much 3d built into it that if you have vertigo problems, this game is not for you. As you walk through the world, walls become floors, floors become walls, mirrors become passageways so on and so forth.

The Collectors edition also comes with two metallic character set of Tommy (the hero) and the alien

Quake 4 on Xbox 360

Look at how crisp the armor has been rendered by Xbox 360

xbox360 dashboard

Finally bought an Xbox360

Been waiting for months to get one of these. Stores were out of 360's that each unit was getting sold at over 700 $ in ebay. After 5 months of release, the demand has saturated a little bit, now that most stores are having good numbers in stock. Got this one 11th april 2006.