Sony has announced that they will be upgrading the hard drive in the PS3 and also cutting the price by one hundred dollars to try and increase the sales of the unit. PS3 sales have not done as well as Sony initially thought they would so this is a move to try and entice more people to buy them. On the other hand Microsoft has had their hands full with the Xbox 360 console which has sold well but recently had hardware failure problems. Microsoft has increased the warranties to three years on the consoles and will pay for shipping a defective unit back. There is speculation that to fix the Xbox it could cost Microsoft one billion dollars which is a lot of money on a product that is unprofitable so far. But it’s not all bad news for video games, Nintendo’s Wii is the number one selling game console and at a fraction of the cost compared to the other consoles. So far I really haven’t heard any complaints about the wii except people letting go of the controller and smashing a TV or window. The Wii is a much unexpected champion of video game consoles so far, and it is responsible for resurrecting Nintendo.
Technorati Tags: videogame, PS3, Xbox
It would seem that lately Blu-Ray has began to pull away from it’s competitor HD-DVD with the announcement that blockbuster will be sticking with just blu-ray disc and replacing their entire line of HD-DVD with Blu-Ray disc. Both formats are about the same really as far as quality and storage capability, the only real difference is that one group of movie studios and hardware manufacturers support blu-ray and the other group support HD-DVD. The problem with blu-ray and HD-DVD is that the consumer will be the one to lose out if they pick the wrong format, which has already happened sometime ago with VHS and Betamax. While one of the formats will win (and it seems to be blu-ray) I think that people are starting to warm up to the idea of digital content, bypassing a physical media all together. With bandwidth becoming readily available and products like the appletv and netgear eva8000 starting to gain momentum I really believe that physical media such as DVD’s no matter what format will be a thing of the past in the very near future. Digital Media receivers have been around for a few years but have never really caught on until now because most of them were very unstable and had really poor codec support, but those issues seem to have been resolved recently with the latest crop of receivers. The online music business has become very popular in recent years thanks in part to itunes and record studios seeing the potential and growing market of online distribution, I think that now is the time for the movie industry to really embrace online distribution of movies, because then the consumer wins and also has more choices.
PURCHASE YOUR NETGEAR EVA8000 DIGITAL ENTERTAINER HERE!!!
Everyone is racing towards being the champion of the new “Digital Home” craze going on right now, with more media becoming digital including pictures, music and now even movies, companies are trying to find a stable yet easy way to bridge the gap between the Pc and TV. The two products that have the best chance right now seems to be the Netgear Eva8000 or the AppleTV, both of which have unique features but the real question is which one to choose? I think apple could have run away with the market on the appletv just like they did with the ipod, but the problem with this is that you are tied to itunes for all of your media which means every file you want to stream has to be in your itunes library which if you have kind of movies that are not mp4 you are out of lucky, and who wants to spend the time to convert a entire DVD collection? That is what leads me to the Netgear Eva8000, which does not have as good an interface as the appletv but can play just about any kind of file you throw at it without the need for any type of conversion at all. Here are some pros and cons of each unit.
Netgear Eva8000
Pros: Extensive format support for a wide variety of audio and video files, including high-def content; streams purchased iTunes songs from Windows PCs; lightning-fast onscreen user interface; streams YouTube videos, public Flickr photo galleries, and Internet radio straight to your TV; can schedule TV shows and stream recorded content from PCs with TV tuners; excellent connectivity options provides compatibility with all TVs and stereo systems.
Cons: No 802.11n Wi-Fi, and wireless performance was not flawless; protected iTunes songs take 15 seconds to load; interface isn’t quite as simple as Apple TV’s; would occasionally freeze up and require unplugging and plugging back in; large compared to Apple TV; no built-in hard drive.
AppleTv
Pros: Sleek external design and elegant user interface; simple, streamlined setup; streams music and video files purchased from the iTunes Store; capable of HD video output; includes state-of-the-art 802.11n wireless networking while maintaining backwards compatibility with older Wi-Fi and wired networks; smooth, hiccup-free streaming.
Cons: Only streams iTunes content–leaving it up to you to get your videos into iTunes; current crop of iTunes movies and TV shows look much worse on a big-screen TV; no HD content on iTunes Store; no support for surround sound audio tracks; can’t connect to older non-wide-screen TVs; small 40GB hard drive has only 33GB of usable disk space; oversimplified remote can’t control other devices; no ability to purchase iTunes Store content directly through Apple TV; no A/V cables included; no Internet radio support.
While I do believe that both units have great features I also believe that they both have room to improve.