Tag Archives: Xbox 360

My 2011 Tech Resolutions

Would you believe I made good on my 2010 tech res­o­lu­tions just this week? Sure did. When the year began, I vowed to sell old and upgrade my equip­ment, name­ly my MacBook.

After wast­ing a whole year, I sold my Mac­Book and Xbox 360 this week. I’m ful­fill­ing my res­o­lu­tion next year by upgrad­ing to the new Xbox 360 Kinect and a 13″ Mac­Book Air. Real­ly excit­ed for both of them.

Addi­tion­al­ly, I’m tak­ing a Final Cut Pro course in Feb­ru­ary for work that I hope to use in my per­son­al life as well. Think­ing video Christ­mas card in 2011!

I real­ly fol­lowed through on most of my tech res­o­lu­tions, like redesign­ing my blog and — more impor­tant­ly — post­ing to it more often than ever.

What are your tech res­o­lu­tions for 2011?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

I don’t real­ly know how it hap­pened. I guess I just got sick of the Phillies being so great in MLB 2K10 that I had to set it aside and find some­thing else to play. Need­less to say, a few quick games of Team Death­match and I was hooked on Call of Duty all over again.

Then I come across this video over at Giant Bomb. Sure, it turns out that it’s fake, but it makes me wish all the more that some pub­lish­er would just get the guts to go to a sub­scrip­tion mod­el or straight up DLC already. I’m sick and tired of buy­ing games that are more or less iden­ti­cal to the pre­vi­ous year with the excep­tion of a ros­ter move or a new logo or a new map. I’m will­ing to pay good mon­ey for some­thing I won’t regret sell­ing off a year lat­er when it’s worth zilch. Charge me say $40 to buy the new game with­out all the pack­ag­ing. The Earth would be bet­ter off with­out all that noise anyway.

Unless some­one fig­ures out how to charge less for games out­right, which seems unlike­ly, there are prob­a­bly some well known fran­chis­es that I’ll nev­er buy again. I’m look­ing at you, Madden.

A Tale of Two Upgrades

I’ve been pret­ty adamant about how much I love my iPhone. Since Char­lie joined us last year, it’s been my go-to device for all things Inter­net and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I still break out my much maligned Mac­book for the heavy duty usage, but the iPhone does what I need for the most part.

It’s an old, 2G iphone that came out in ’08. It’s banged up a bit, but the screen’s still intact, which is more than I can say for most iPhones I’ve seen of that vin­tage. I near­ly jumped to the 3G when it was first announced. What can I say, I have a thing for GPS! But now I’m glad I did­n’t. iPhone 4 is the device I’ve been wait­ing for. Can’t wait to get my mitts on it. The new cam­era, com­plete with HD video, makes it per­fect for tak­ing on vaca­tion. Every­thing about it sounds like the phone peo­ple start­ed imag­in­ing once they held and played with the iPhone when it first launched.

Did I pre-order mine? No. Why, you ask? Because of AT&T. What a night­mare! Do I qual­i­fy for unlim­it­ed data at $30 per month? Yes, I do! But do I real­ly need that much? How does this affect the plan I cur­rent­ly share with my wife? There are so many ques­tions about how to get the appro­pri­ate plan that won’t result in gazil­lion page sur­prise bills at the end of the month. Fun!

Buried beneath the inces­sant iPhone 4 cov­er­age was the intro­duc­tion of a brand, spankin’ new Xbox 360! It’s qui­eter, mean­ing I won’t have to set the sub­ti­tles for every movie I watch on the thing. It has wi-fi, which means I won’t have to use a wonky adapter that did­n’t work well enough to keep Net­flix Watch Instant­ly titles from buffer­ing non­stop. But that’s not all: word is that Red Ring of Death will be a thing of the past! Glo­ry be! The best part? I can sell what I have right now for $205 at GameStop, which gets me with­in strik­ing dis­tance of the $299 price tag.

I should have both of these items in house by the end of the month. I can’t wait!

An Avalanche of Entertainment

It’s easy to under­stand why some peo­ple feel com­plete­ly over­whelmed by the enter­tain­ment options at their dis­pos­al. I do, too! When Net­flix and Xbox 360 paired up to stream Watch Instant­ly titles, I sud­den­ly found myself awash in on-demand options. Is it amaz­ing (and a much bet­ter expe­ri­ence than watch­ing on my com­put­er?) Absolute­ly. Do I feel like like I can’t pri­or­i­tize my enter­tain­ment options? Total­ly! All these options are a bless­ing and a curse to some­one who likes more than his fair share of movies. How do I know where to watch them?

Here’s what I’ve watched recent­ly and where:

  • For­get­ting Sarah Mar­shall (Com­cast On Demand)
  • Man on Wire (Net­flix Watch Instant­ly on Xbox 360)
  • The Horse’s Mouth (Com­cast DV‑R)
  • Gomor­rah (actu­al movie theater)
  • Sal­vador (Net­flix DVD)

I’m look­ing for some­one to pull togeth­er all of the enter­tain­ment options I have so I can man­age them from a cen­tral hub. I want to be able to pri­or­i­tize my Net­flix queue by know­ing if some­thing will be avail­able on Turn­er Clas­sic Movies or not. I want to be prompt­ed to record or rent when I search IMDB.com. I know I’m not alone. Who does­n’t want to get the most out of their cable and Net­flix sub­scrip­tions? Isn’t stuff like this at the heart of the seman­tic web?

Criterion Delays Blu-ray Collection, Again

Engad­get dropped this lit­tle tid­bit last week about Cri­te­ri­on delay­ing their Blu-ray launch yet again. Do I sus­pect any­thing nefar­i­ous? Not real­ly, but I wish Cri­te­ri­on would recon­sid­er dump­ing mon­ey into a for­mat that will nev­er be adopt­ed in any mean­ing­ful way. I’m hope­ful that their flashy new web­site (pun intend­ed) is an indi­ca­tion that they may be rethink­ing Blu-ray and con­sid­er­ing some sort of HD dig­i­tal deliv­ery system.

With the HD Stream­ing Net­flix on New Xbox Expe­ri­ence blow­ing my mind, I’d hope that they’d find a way to get their con­tent uploaded there to spare the expense of author­ing Blu-ray discs. I have my fin­gers crossed.