2010 Porsche Panamera

Xbox 360 outsells the original Xbox, Microsoft heads down to the trophy shop

In the manner of a modern day fable on par with The Little Engine That Could or Rocky, Microsoft has just announced that sales of the Xbox 360 have outraced total sales of the original Xbox, a mere two days after the 360's third birthday on November 22. Do you feel yourself getting teary-eyed? Sure, the gang in Redmond could have stopped believing, or reaching for that rainbow (or whichever tired cliché you prefer), but it looks like all the hard work has paid off -- Microsoft has won a race with itself, and in doing so has given us all hope. To put this in perspective, a total of 25 million original Xboxes were sold during its lifecycle of November 2001 - May, 2005 (roughly three and a half years). The company has yet to release precise sales figures for the 360, but between price cuts in Europe, Black Friday, and the New Xbox Experience, they expect to ride out the tail end of this year with a huge sales boost. Great job, guys! We knew that some day your company would be a success.

source : engdget

GT(Game Trailer.com) is NOT Biased! PS3 is OUTDATED!

Look, I'm sick of all the kerfluffle about how GT is biased towards 360 and how GT favors 360 and how GT hates on PS3. That ends now! The fact remains that 360 has just released better content than PS3. Period. See what I did there? I put a period after Period. That means conclusion; the end of discussion. The reason why GT gives 360 games better scores in the reviews is because the games are simply better experiences. The main reason for this--and it is often an overlooked and underestimated one--is because the 360 controller is a far superior gaming device than the Sony controller. This is to be said within the context that we are talking about influential, significant, market moving franchises--eg. Gears of War 2, Call of Duty, GTA 4, Halo 3 for crying out loud! Have you tried playing any of the previously mentioned multi-platformed titles on the PS3 with that awkward, unintuitive Sony controller? It simply cannot compete. The 360 controller's design is sleeker, more form fitting, and lends itself to a much more instinctual gaming experience. That Sony controller has been around for how many years now? It's time to update, reinvent, and innovate, and that's exactly how Microsoft has managed to stay ahead of the curve. I had posted a forum about this very topic and got reported for inciting a flamewar as they call it. Before the forum could evolve into a discussion it was taken down, but I did receive a very constructive critique about my thoughts from a fellow GT member who claimed that the PS3's D-pad was superior to the 360's, especially in fighter games, to which I give him credit and agreement. However, this goes without noting that I was focusing on major blockbuster titles like the Halos and the Gears and the Call of Duty's; titles that move consoles and market share. Sony not only needs to update its controller, but it also needs to incorporate it with an enjoyable, story-driven exclusive franchise to rival the mind-blowing Microsoft heavyweights Gears of War and Halo franchises. Do this, and you shall live. Do it not, and every one of you will die today.

Toshiba Regza 42ZV555D: "World's first" upscaling TV

By Ian Morris, CNET.co.uk
Nov 13, 2008

That's right, you read the headline correctly. Toshiba has just claimed to have created the industry's first upscaling TVs, the Regza 42ZV555D and 46ZV555D LCDs. With such bold boasts flying around the Internet, we feel like making a few ourselves. Did you know that we invented blogging? Or that without Crave, there would be no Moon? No, we didn't think so, either. But we've looked into it and it's true. Honest.

Let us explain why we're stroking the skeptical cat here. All HDTVs have upscalers built in, because if they didn't, when you came to watch something that was shot in a resolution different to that of the screen, you'd end up with a postage stamp-sized bit of video. If you were watching something with dimensions of 720 x 576 pixels, it would float in the middle of a 1,920 x 1,080-pixel screen. We've lovingly demonstrated this concept in our image above.

In a high-definition TV, the smaller, standard-definition image is stretched to fit the full-screen resolution. The TV's upscaling hardware will also apply some video processing to make it look as good as possible. It will do some additional processing to turn a standard-definition, interlaced picture into a progressive one because LCD and most plasma TVs can display only a progressive image.

source: cnet asia

Philips 42PFL5203S LCD TV

Pixel Plus 2 HD for great details, depth and clarity

Pixel Plus 2 HD offers the unique combination of ultimate sharpness, natural detail, increased depth, vivid colors and smooth and natural motion from standard TV, High Definition signals and multimedia sources. Each pixel of the incoming picture is enhanced to better match the surrounding pixels, resulting in a more natural picture. Artifacts in compressed multimedia content are detected and reduced, ensuring that the picture is clean and razor sharp. Digital noise reduction ensures that the picture is perfectly smooth yet razor sharp.

HD LCD display, with a 1366 x 768p resolution

This WXGA display with state-of-the-art LCD screen technology gives you widescreen HD resolution of 1366 x 768p pixels. It produces brilliant flicker-free progressive scan pictures with optimum brightness and superb colors. This vibrant and sharp image will provide you with an enhanced viewing experience.

HD Natural Motion for ultra smooth motion in Full HD movies

n performance that surpasses the cinema!

28.9 billion colors for brilliant natural images

Vibrant and natural images from most advanced color processing. The 3 color channels (RGB) are optimized using 10 bit resolution, a total processing power of 28.9 billion colors. It produces vibrant colors while retaining excellent sharpness. The advanced algorithms detect subtle color shades , skin tones and processes these to give most natural colors

source: philips malaysia

All new Honda NSX technical illustration

Microsoft exec touts HD streaming over discs, suggests Xbox 360 will outlast PS3

Man, talk about talking tough. In a recent interview with Venture Beat, Microsoft executive Shane Kim pointed out that the impending New Xbox Experience would be the beginning of a "fascinating time as all of these different media evolve." Kim got rough when questioned about the value of a built-in Blu-ray player in Sony's PS3, stating that "Microsoft made the right decision by not including HD DVD or Blu-ray in its box and offering HD DVD as an accessory." Following up on that, he noted that "digital downloading of movies to the Xbox 360 over the online connection would likely prove more important than Blu-ray in the long run," and that it would continue producing the 360 "one day longer than the lifespan of the PlayStation 3." My, oh my.

[Via GameDaily]

Chinese pirates offering cheap AVCHD Blu-ray rips on disguised DVD-Rs

Just last week we heard that Warner Bros. was ending its home video / DVD business in South Korea due to rampant piracy, and now we've got a report from China suggesting that sophisticated pirates are duping buyers with faux Blu-ray Discs that are actually DVDs. As the story goes, movie pirates in select parts of Asia are ripping bona fide BDs and then burning them in AVCHD format (which uses 720 horizontal lines of resolution compared to Blu-ray's 1,080) on writable DVDs. Word on the street has it that these discs are being offered for around $7 each, and they even boast the BD hologram and the iconic blue hues on the packaging. Reportedly, none of the discs have made it outside of Asia just yet, but stay sharp should you ever get the urge to snag a discounted BD title while traveling abroad.

source: engadget

SuperSpeed USB 3.0 spec officially released, first chipset demonstrated

It's been nearly a year since we first saw the USB 3.0 connector make an appearance at CES, and after months of corporate infighting, spec-polishing, and technical navel-gazing, the future of consumer peripheral connectivity is here -- in the form of complete specifications and a demo. Yeah, so maybe SuperSpeed USB isn't making the most dramatic entrance ever, but hey, it doesn't have to with 4.8Gbps transfer speeds, improved power management, and backwards compatibility with USB 2.0 along for the ride. As expected, the first wave of devices won't hit until 2010, but Symwave's giving attendees of this week's SuperSpeed conference a taste of tomorrow with a demo of the Quasar USB 3.0 chipset, which is targeted at "sync-and-go" devices like phones and media players. Sounds lovely -- now if you'll excuse us, we have to go back to mourning the death of FireWire 400.

USB 3.0 to Deliver a Tenfold Speed Increase

Tighten your seat belts. Data transfer is going into overdrive as the ubiquitous Universal Serial Bus, better known as USB, prepares to make a tenfold jump in speed.

That means the vast sea of USB devices -- from HD camcorders to hard drives and music players -- will be able to transfer music, video, photos and other data much, much more quickly.

The new standard, the first update to the USB specification in eight years, will also deliver greater power efficiency and the ability to recharge a wider variety of gadgets -- and it will most likely mean the death of the competing standard known as FireWire.

To get a sense of the speed increase, consider this: Transferring high-definition video of 27 GB, the amount on a standard Blu-Ray disc, takes about 10 minutes with the current USB 2.0 standard. With USB 3.0, it will take just about a minute.

"What the user will see is really a much faster response time, less waiting, more productivity," says Patrick Moorhead, vice president of advanced marketing at AMD, one of the supporters of the USB 3.0 standard.