theMediaman.com

Well, I’m back up for air following over one full month of late nights, weekend hours, and two overnights at work. It feels like every moment outside work has been filled with wedding plans. Aside from the business surrounding my 32nd birthday and sleep, I really haven’t had an hour to do anything but work or plan.

After three days off from work, I managed to catch up on (almost) all the personal To-Do’s outside of work and the wedding. It feels really good to be nearly caught up.  I even managed to set aside some time to beat Guitar Hero III on medium, and get a few stages further in Mario Galaxy. Yes, part of my personal To-Do list was to chill out and play video games. I still have WipEout Pulse, God of War, Darkstalkers and Ratchet & Clank on my PSP to start-and-finish.

As for the wedding, the venue’s been picked and the date is set - September 14, 2008. Following a successful weekend, the band and bridesmaid dresses have even been secured. I need to get moving on the tux’s now.

First, we have to meet with a photographer/videographer studio.  Simone’s the expert in photography, and I’m the video guy, so we decided to split up those duties. However, our first choice for video and a top-three for photography is the same place. Hopefully we can spin enough of a good package deal to justify the cost.

We sat down with all the paraphenalia from the Wedding Show we went to at the top of the year, and systematically went through each website to watch the demo reels. Some ranged from Woodbridgian, MTV-generation, seizure-inducing music videos to sappy documentaries featuring the bride and/or groom doing a voiceover of “why I love him/her so much tee hee”.  I’m serious. An uncomfortably large number of video houses fit into one of these two classifications.

The one we’ll be going to visit tonight is so damned good, our eyes were damp following the first demo reel. That’s a pretty emotional response considering we didn’t even know the couple in the video!

Simone will be taking the TTC up here in order to visit this company. The car’s battery is dead, and I’m worried that the car is going to go into another long stretch of expensive repairs. I’ve already spent over a thousand bucks on it in the last few months, but a new car will cost several thousand a year.

Hopefully I can pick up one of those sleek 2009 Matrix’s (Matricies?) from this year’s Tim Horton’s Roll Up The Rim To Please Play Again.

The current generation of consoles could not be more different, yet if I were to buy one, I’m not sure which I would get.

I have been to two parties involving Nintendo’s Wii… one was actually centered around the idea of people playing Wii…

…sidetrack - the phallic jokes are far too easy so I won’t bother injecting one on purpose.  Most likely it will happen by accident, or you can read double entendres into  previous or following Wii-related passages…

There are single-player games for the Wii, but that’s like playing T-ball by yourself; you don’t get quality time with your friends and it’s not a real game anyway.

The games are also a little cutsy since Nintendo aims for the family-friendly market.  Aside from a Resident Evil port, the only “grown-up” game Nintendo’s had in ten years was the Conkers game with is still cartoon-based. As I’ve said many times before, sometimes I come home from work and I want to blow the shit out of some fucking cacodemons! I don’t want to think, I don’t want to solve puzzles, I don’t want to be clever, I just want some gore.

The PS3 has a number of advantages, and the list doubles when you own a PSP like I do. One cool here-or-coming-soon feature is the ability to turn on the PS3 from your PSP anywhere on the Internet, watch TV or a Blu-ray movie, or play a game. It’s also better than the Xbox 360 when it comes to functioning as a full home theater.

The list of kick-ass games is far more limited, especially if you’re not into RPGs.  However, it would be interesting to compare the list of games 1 year after the Xbox360 came out to where the PS3 list sits now. The PS3 is the most expensive of the bunch, and even when the 40 GB version comes out this month it will cost $400. When 500 GB OEM hard drives are retailing for under $120, there’s no reason there should be a 40 GB drive in anything but an iPod.

I’m not a gamer, but I like playing video games. The wider scope of Home Theatre capabilities is what appeals to me most about the PS3, just like the PSP appealed to me more than the Nintendo DS primarily because I could watch videos and surf the Internet on it.

If I played games more, then the 360 is probably the way I would go.  As far as cost, it sits between the bargain-basement, non-HD-enabled Wii, and the holy-shit-that’s-too-much-power Playstation 3. The 360 has the best selection of current games, but it would have been better with more backwards compatibility.  Both the PS3 and 360 suffer from “supporting the most popular games (but by no means all) from the previous generation console”. Hell, even the Wii plays all GameCube games even though it uses a different size and format of disc.

JoB bought a Halo 3 Special Edition console yesterday. It’s barf-green in colour, but it comes with a wireless earring headset, uses the second-generation chips and heatsinks (the first generation had overheating issues), and spins gold from straw or something like that. In any case, that brings the number of my friends who own this console to four.

In the 8-bit Nintendo generation, the more friends who had a console, the less you needed to get one too… unless you’re more of a peer-pressure person than a leech. Now, with more friends (and a bend-over-and-pull-out-your-credit-card $50 annual subscription fee to Xbox Live), you can play against, or side-by-side with your friends through the games. 

When I took Tuesday off to play Halo 3 - yes I was one of ‘those people’ - JoeE and I played at his place, while two of his friends helped us through the campaign (story-mode) from two other houses. So now that I have four friends with 360s (only one with a Wii and none with a PS3), the gamer in me would want a 360.

Mind you, everyone likes playing together with a multiplayer Wii… (dammit).

I’m still no closer to figuring out which one I would want. After spending $600 plus taxes, I could get a “crappy” PC that would run circles around my current 2002 relic. Playing games on that would compensate for not having a console. So that’s a fourth option.

The fifth option would be to stick with my PSP and have a few beers while driving race sims. $300-600 is a lot to spend on a pasttime, especially since I don’t even have an HDTV… or $300-600 for that matter.

Three consoles, very different, yet I’m still so conflicted. At least I’m not the only one.

Simone and I made the trip out to Sportsworld in Kitchener this weekend. I got to show her how all the fun stuff in Kitchener (well, except for the drinking establishments) were all on the south end of Kitchener while all the students lived at the north end of Waterloo. I guess it was a pretty good strategy in order to keep overwhelming piles of cash from rolling in.

Sportsworld (or as it’s called now, “Moose Winoski’s With An Arcade And Mini-Golf“) was the scene for the First Annual Tang-Del Monte Mini-Golf Tournament. I managed to win, but all the scores were close so it wasn’t a Tiger Woods-like conquest.

I did manage to win the punching bag game. While my first attempt numbered in the low 200’s (out of 999), it was only because my fist glanced off the side of the bag. On my second attempt I scored in excess of 700 points. Damned good, when you consider that the two athletes in the group (Reg and Ben) got high 500’s. They seemed more confident in their abilities, so they didn’t need to go a second time. I, on the other hand, have a fragile ego and needed this victory.

Now I want to watch Rocky Balboa just for that “blunt force trauma” motivational speech.

Finally, I beat Sony. I bought a new analog controller component for my PSP for about 13 bucks US. With shipping and 95 cents on the dollar, it cost under $20. My hands were really shaky when I took the casing off my PSP, but I managed to replace the part. It’s working perfectly fine and now I can’t wait to get a copy of Crush and start playing.

So, while Sony gets a point for coming out with a new PSP that will have a feature I have dreamed of, I win this round. I’ve already ordered a new part that I can use to replace the controller on my brother’s PSP (same break, same weekend). So, together we save over $200. Sounds like I’m winning, Sony.

One of my favourite successes in the operation is lifting up the VOID sticker with an xacto knife and getting at the screw without damaging said sticker. Done carefully, you could easily crack open your PSP and get at the innards without voiding your warranty. Done poorly, you better hope that you can make ALL repairs on your own.

In the interest of full disclosure, replacing the PSP controller component is one of the easiest fixes a person can do. The second is replacing the faceplace… something I’m seriously considering now. Unfortunately, the biggest manufacturer of faceplates had to shut down operation.

I guess Sony was too busy suing Lik-Sang to focus on building quality parts that don’t crap out just out of warranty.

The same day I order away for the broken part of my PSP (yeah, I’m jumping in with both feet and making the fix myself), they announce a new, sleek, feature-enhanced PSP at E3.

Not really that many extra features… more battery life, 19% thinner, 33% lighter, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There are new colours - which every region in the world except North America has enjoyed. We even get blessed with a Chewbacca-approved Star Wars edition.

The feature I wish I could have on my current generation PSP is the video out.  Since the PSP now supports 720×480 video (even though the screen only supports 480×272) you could play back DVD-quality videos on your widescreen TV. Additionally, you can play games on the big screen. Tied in with a PS3 at home, you can watch Blu-ray sourced movies over the Internet while at your friend’s house. Damn sweet!

Arguably, this is a feature that should have been in the first iteration of the PSP. The UMD movie format has all but died, and I have little doubt that it’s being maintained as a loss-leader by Sony. They don’t want another Betamax on their hands, and they would lose money to prove it.

However, if they had just managed to work this into the first version of the PSP, then UMD would probably be a prefered format… more portable, fewer “DVD Features” to sort through, and the studios would love it simply for the difficulty in making illegal copies. I suppose hindsight is 20/20.

So now I’m waiting for a part so I can fix my PSP analog joystick and continue playing on a 4.3″ screen.

I just wish they listed “non-crappy analog joystick that won’t crack apart just out of warranty” as a new feature. It’s the little things that make your consumers happy.

Sony PSP - $250 (birthday present)
Video games - $20-40
1 gigabyte Memory Stick Pro Duo - $48
Software to convert DVD to PSP video format - $35
Twice sending unit back for repairs to the logic board under warranty - $20 (shipping)
Sending unit to repair broken analog controller out of warranty - priceless $99 + taxes (+ shipping)

So now I’m trying to figure if it’s worth it for me to try one of the $40 repair kits I can get online. If it doesn’t work, I damage the warranty sticker and I still have a broken PSP. Apparently, registered repair shops won’t even touch it if the warranty sticker is damaged.

A slightly more expensive option is to buy a new one, and sell this one “as is - for parts” or something.

I never had these troubles with my NES.