Wednesday 21 February 2007

Blu-ray Vs. HD DVD

VHS won the first round against Sony's Betamax, despite being less advanced, so will Sony's Blu-ray beat the more simple HD DVD???
Here are some articles on the 2 formats:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluray
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDDVD

PS3, Xbox 360, Wii

PS3
As you all will no doubt have heard the Sony PS3 is going to be released in the UK next month and it is going to cost £425 for the 60 Gb premium model. Is it worth paying such a sum of money for a games console? It is a very powerful and revolutionary piece of kit, here is an article including the full specification for the console: http://playstationteam.com/ps3_specification/
What is interesting to note is that like the battle with VHS and Sony's Betamax, there is to be a second one - HD DVD and Sony's Blu-Ray. VHS, despite being the least advanced won the battle, but the PS3 has been designed for Blu-Ray, Sony are evidently confident that this time they will win the battle this time.
What you must bear in mind in the cost of the PS3 is that it is technically cheaper than what the PS1 cost which was £400, I believe. This is because of inflation, and also a much more technologically advanced console costs merely £25 more than its grandad.
If you are interested in the history of consoles then this Wikipedia article may interest you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console_sales

Xbox 360
I have quite a limited knowledge of the Xbox 360, but I have played one many times, can't really be bothered to talk about this much, we all know about it.

Wii
Having played a Wii several times, I can confirm it is a fantastic console, despite my doubts about it early on before it was released. The controller is what everyone talks about really, once you are used to it you will love it and going back to the good old Joy-pad will not be so easy...

PC or Mac?

You have probably all seen the Mitchell and Webb's adverts for Apple's Macs on Myspace. But which is the better, I would take a good guess that most people reading this post are on a PC, but are we better off with Macs? (which I might add are more expensive and much less common than the PC). It would be good if anyone who owns or regularly uses a Mac have an opinion, and of course anyone who uses a PC. And is a PC really for families that "clock in for dinner time" and dont have fun, as opposed to the Mac which Apple are marketing as more fun than a PC?
And then theres the viruses, PCs have so many more viruses than Macs and you have to restart them more than you do with Macs, so even if PCs are cheaper, are we better off with Macs which are incorporating more and more pieces of software prieviously exclusive to PCs? What you have to take into account is that Macs have so few viruses because the minority of people use them so the people that create viruses go for the most popular platform to cause the most trouble, but if we all started using Macs, then surely it will switch around and it could be 114,000 viruses: not on a PC...
opinions...?