250GB Xbox 360 Kinect Special Edition Unboxing December 27, 2010

I’ve been promising it since the Move Unboxing, and now here it is.  The unboxing of the Kinect.  Now I’ve talked about the Kinect plenty already, but like many I’m just really curious how it works.  Well that and I wanted a new Xbox.

I crack open the Special Edition Xbox 360 Kinect Bundle.  This comes with a Kinect and a 250GB Xbox 360 Slim and retails for $400US.

Good things about it:

• Less Prone to Red Ring due to increased airflow in case design and heatsinks.
• Native HDMI, something my Xbox 360 does not have.
• More USB ports.  There are 2 in front and 3 in back, compared to 2 in front and 1 in back with my original.
• Kinect Port (dubbed AUX port)
• It’s got a nice surface finish.
• Integrated Optical Connection, don’t need to plug in the Xbox 360 cable to use Optical, espessially if you don’t need it.
• Integrated WiFi.

Bad things about the bundle:

• Kinect which came with it is ONLY compatible with Xbox 360 Slims.  No USB connection included.
• HD Data must be transferred, not compatible with old Hard Drives.
• No Faceplate support.
• Does not come with native Component or HDMI cable.  My original Xbox supported Component input out of box, as did diskreader117’s, and the old Elites (first-gen 120GB w/HDMI) came with HDMI cables.

I also noticed that after fully hooking the Xbox and Kinect up, the system would NOT work without first inserting Kinect Adventures into the Xbox on startup.  Likely this is some kind of theft deterrent.  A friend of mine told me he could get around this by simply disconnecting the Kinect before turning it on, and updating it through Xbox Live.  I have not tried this myself (I inserted the game on request and calibrated my Kinect) but I can imagine this would work.  Instead of booting the game, the Xbox manually updated itself to the newest firmware when I inserted the game disc, then ran the Kinect calibration tool.

Spike’s Video Game Awards Show Live Review December 12, 2010

Maniac watches the Spike TV Video Game Awards Show for 2010 and makes some comments while it’s airing live.

Disney’s Epic Mickey Collector’s Edition Unboxing November 30, 2010

Maniac cracks open the highly anticipated Wii exclusive game Epic Mickey and finds an injured Mickey Mouse. In a nice twist, the CE revolves around the all important physical content. It’s great to find a well priced CE these days that isn’t 90% DLC!

I’ve been really looking forward to this game release for about a year now.  I’m a big fan of Warren Spector, as he has the distinction of being one of the few developers who ten years ago earned the title of “God”, the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a game developer.

Director’s Note: Mickey Mouse is recovering from his injuries in shipping and appears to be okay. He has taken up residence on my desk. I don’t think he would’ve been injured if he hadn’t been packed UPSIDE DOWN

How to Make Your Sony Receiver 3D Compliant November 16, 2010

For all my surround sound needs, I use a Sony STR-DH810 7.1 reciever.  My father uses it’s little brother, the STR-DH710.  However, the flaw with these units that was always in the back of my head (even when I bought them) was that these receivers would have to be replaced if I ever upgraded my HDTV to support 3D.  I don’t have that concern anymore.

Sony released a fix for their current line of receivers on their official support site.  But what puzzled me was how can you update one of these receivers?  There are no USB, Ethernet or WiFi connections on the units, pushing data into them (I believed) would be impossible.  I was surprised by the solution.

In a blast to the past the likes of even Steven “The Woz” Wozniak did not see coming, the receivers update themselves through a pre-programed set of sound tones which have to be burned to an audio CD and played through a very specific input.  Take a look for yourself what I had to do to get mine running.

Sound tones to create programs is not unheard of.  The early Apple II, since disk drives were so expensive, would use cassette tapes (the ones your car plays) you would have to play entirely to get your program to load.  If there was a jam or error, you’d have to play it through all over again.

Heavy Rain Move Demo November 14, 2010

You’ve been promised it for about four days now, and I was only now FINALLY able to get the entire video up on YouTube.  You really can’t see how different the Playstation Move is as a control system unless you see someone actually physically playing and using it.  Take a look and enjoy!

Playstation Move Troubleshooting November 11, 2010

While preparing to demo Heavy Rain on the Playstation Move I noticed I was not getting any response from the Move system, making playing Heavy Rain impossible. However I was able to solve the problem before taking the Move back to the store for a refund. Hopefully this’ll help someone else out.

Playstation Move Unboxing November 11, 2010

Maniac bought a Playstation Move and it’s companion Navgation Controller today so he could test it out and see what everyone’s been talking about. He’s already got what could very well be the Move’s Killer app, and most PS3 owners already have it on their shelves, Heavy Rain.

UPDATE:  There seems to be a problem with YouTube encoding the video, if the video is still not encoded properly after a day I’m going to pull the file and re-upload it later.

Movie of the Week Full Theme Song November 5, 2010

I edited together a three minute video for all of my major site videos from this point on.  An edited 1 minute version was shown in the “How to Make a Monster” review, and while all versions of it seemed to be highly enjoyed I don’t think any further version is going to use a version longer than about thirty or so seconds.

So for fans of the site and fans of the “Movie of the Week”, here’s the entire video as it was originally designed unedited and at full length.