Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Xbox 360's RROD, RROL or 3RL

Fascinated on what the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii is in store beyond its games, I was browsing the web when I found out about Xbox 360's "Red Ring of Death/Doom" ("RROD"), the "Red Light of Doom" ("RLOD") or the "Three Red Lights" ("3RL"). Check out Wikipedia's site to learn more about it.

Anyways, I am already inclined on seriously buying the Xbox next year if I had the extra dough since the Wii seems too expensive for me and even more expensive than the Xbox when I had to step back and rethink if it is really worth buying with these technical problems that have been plaguing the console. What made me consider Xbox is its low cost due to being the first next-gen being released ahead of the others and its library of games which is almost similar with the PS3 which would probably take me 3 to 4 years of convincing myself to buy it before actually buying the hardware.


Actual Fix for the Xbox 360's 3RL


Step-by-Step fix for 3RL

Familiar with Microsoft's Windows XP's BSOD? Yup, Blue Screen of Death! It suddenly came into my mind that the 3RL is actually very similar to the Windows' BSOD. Well, somehow Microsoft has been poor at thoroughly testing their products at the user acceptance stage. That is why people who are still considering on buying the Xbox instead of its hardware competitor PS3 are thinking twice on buying it.

While there may be lots of workarounds circling the web for these bugs. Certainly we, the gamers, hope that these major technical problems be addressed before releasing it to the us and hope that it won't happen again in the future.

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Saturday, July 26, 2008

How to Record Videos from Video Camera to PC via TV Tuner

Just hours ago, I recorded lots of videos from our Sony Handycam Vision CCD-TRV118 NTSC. Unfortunately, unlike the latest camcorders with USB and/or fireware capability, it only has an S/Video out and AV out slots built in it. Here are the steps on how I recorded it:

Specs Used:
Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP WDM TV Tuner
WinFast PVR
Intel Dual Core 2.66 Ghz, 1GB DDR, WinXP
Sony Handycam Vision CCD-TRV118 NTSC
Sony Video Hi8 Tape

Steps:

  1. Make sure that the drivers for the TV tuner is properly installed together with the software capturing tool Winfast PVR.
  2. Connect the S/Video Out of the videocam to the S/Video in slot of the TV tuner.
  3. Connect the AV out of the videocam to the microphone slot of your sound card. In my case, the sound card of the PC is built-in in the motherboard Asus P5D1-X. Optionally, you may connect the AV out of the videocam to the AV in of the TV tuner.
  4. Open Winfast PVR then select S-Video as the input source. Click the configuration option. The set-up should look like the screenshot below. Click the check icon at the bottom once you've finished the configuration.
  5. Press the Play button of the videocam and then press the Record button.
  6. Click the Record button again to finish the recording. If you have enabled the playback, WinFast will automatically playback the recorded video.
The saved file format is MPEG-2 and is most probably located at the hard disk with the largest disk space partition available.

Don't worry about the large file format as there are many Video Editing tools available like the following:

Cyberlink Power Director
Windows Movie Maker
Sony Vegas
Adobe Premiere





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E3 2008 Recap

E3 2008 Recap

2006-2007 were the years of the next-gen consoles. Now, 2008, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are strengthening their consoles by enriching their libraries of the next-gen games while they themselves are strengthening their online services.

Only Nintendo had surprisingly added another hardware feature which debatably should have been included in the Wii's package at its first release. While currently, they have surpassed Microsoft Xbox 360 in terms of sales in the North America, the future may still be unclear for the next-gen console wars.

Slowly creeping up the Wii is Sony's Playstation 3. With the recent release of the much awaited Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots in PS3, it has recovered from such a slow start due to its relatively expensive console against the Wii and the XBox 360. Only problem hindering them from a gigantic leap to be at par with the Wii is with Final Fantasy XIII's release on XBox 360 and a lot of formerly exclusive Playstation titles appearing on the XBox.

Complete coverage of E3 games are on this link:
http://www.ign.com/index/e3/2008/games/


Activision Blizzard Merging, EA-id Partnership

Two of the top third party game development teams have merged - Activision and Blizzard, makers of popular games such as Starcraft, Diablo, Warcraft, Doom and Call of Duty. Not long after, EA and id announced a partnership for the upcoming game Rage. With these sudden acquisitions and partnerships, expect to see more quality games released though yielding to fewer competency and games releasing with such mergers.

All throughout the event, it was more of a so-so year for the three console companies with third party developers stealing the show with their mergers and partnership. Square Enix has been getting their stuff done with the current release of Final Fantasy XIII in XBox 360 and the remake of Final Fantasy IV in 3D for the Nintendo DS. Remakes and franchise releases - this is what fans of Square Enix, including me, keep us happy and dedicated Square Enix gamers. If you are expecting to see a new handheld console release, well it may be around 2 to 3 years ahead of us since gamers of both the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS Lite are still enjoying their games behind it. Although I was really expecting that the rumors for the new version of the Nintendo DS will be announced.

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Friday, July 25, 2008

Spore E3 Evolution Gameplay

Around 5 years in the making and the Spore will hit the market on September this year! That's right Will Wright's masterpiece will definitely be a giant leap not just for the gaming industry but for the programming/ web development as well.



I sure hope the reviews coming from gaming sites like GameSpot be fair enough for open-ended games such as this.

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How to download YouTube videos

In this article, you will find a quick and relatively easy method of downloading YouTube videos.

While you can watch YouTube videos thru streaming, you can also download these videos and save it as either FLV (Flash video which is the format of YouTube videos) or the MP4 format (a much clearer, bigger version for iPod and other portable media players).
  1. First go to the YouTube site, then key in your desired video of download.
  2. Click the video thumbnail for the video.
  3. Copy the URL on your browser's address bar with a format like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBCa2j-Lo60
  4. Open a new browser window or tab. (I'm currently using Mozilla Firefox)
  5. Key in http://keepvid.com then press Enter.
  6. Once the KeepVid site has finished loading, paste the URL of the YouTube video you want to download at the URL textbox of KeepVid then click the Download button beside it.
  7. The Download links portion will be appearing and voila you're ready to download your desired YouTube video. It' s that simple.
Playing YouTube FLV files:
You can download VLC player at http://videolan.org to view the FLV videos.

Alternately, these YouTube files, once streamed at your PC will automatically be saved on your PC's Temporary Internet Files folder. Although it may depend whether if you have fully streamed or just browsed through it, the videos may be incompletely downloaded.

That's it! To wrap it up, this is just the simplest solution to download YouTube videos. You may opt to choose other options which may be installing plug-ins for your browser and other third-party applications.

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Why CD-R King products are so cheap?

Recently I bought a 20-piece bundle of blank DVD+R discs at CD-R King at the MRT Ayala Station. I was very much relieved that their stocks of blank DVDs are now pretty much an average. These past months, they haven't been able to restock blank DVDs and many of their patrons have resorted to buying expensive blank DVDs at other shops.

Well, I must say I am an avid fan of their products. Not only are they way relatively cheaper compared to other shops, they also offer a wide variety of multimedia products.

Anyways, I just found this on their site briefly explaining on why their products are so cheap. Just hanging around the internet...

http://www.cdrking.com/local/support/cdrkingcheap.php

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Capture Screenshots on your PSP


Wanna capture screenshots of your PSP games, desktop and all sorts of stuff? You may want to check out this link for more info: http://www.stylemo.com/2008/01/23/how-to-capture-screenshots-on-your-psp/

It's a cool feature to capture the in-game screenshots of your favorite game. All you have to do is click the Note symbol after you have successfully installed and enabled the seplugins folder in your PSP.

Sample screenshots of my PSP Slim 3.71 M33-2 and some Fight Night Round 3 screenies:





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