@ChaosEngine

Everything @newtboy said. I think you're exaggerating just a tad. You're not going to build a PC that runs newly released games at 1080p at 60fps and also includes a blu-ray drive , 500 GB HD, and wireless motion sensitive controller for under $400 US (current price of PS4 on US Amazon). Plus, you're almost certainly going to have to buy a 1080p monitor (since most people don't do their computing on their TV or keep their tower case in the living room), which will set you back $200 minimum even for a cheap one that's likely to ghost.

As far as games go, nearly EVERY major release will be on all platforms and in fact will likely come out on console first (GTA V). Sure, some kickstarter stuff like Pillars of Eternity won't be available but it works both ways--you won't get some awesome console exclusives on the PC (Mario Kart, Little Big Planet, etc.) either.

Plus as newtboy mentioned, you can rent and sell console games. Yeah, PC games drop to much lower price points as they get older (I usually pick up all the good stuff I missed at $3-5 during Steam sales) but reselling isn't an option for most stuff (yet). You can mod most PC games, though, so that's a plus for them.

Look, I play 90% of my games on my gaming PC. That's because I have the time and money to do so. I don't understand the attitude of looking down on people who don't have those luxuries or who don't want to spend the prerequisite time required pouring over tech forums, price comparing at hardware vendors websites like Newegg, and downloading proper drivers just to build a gaming PC on the cheap when they can just go to a store down the road and pick up something comparable with virtually no effort.

Just finished it. Wow, what a phenomenal fucking movie. I have to get the blu-ray.

Absolutely loved it. Can't believe I missed out on it for 21 years.

P.S. Funny that his dad's dog's name is Rommel. (It's a very uncommon name, so whenever I hear it, I jump to attention.)

I liked both Dredd movies, though for different reasons.

behind-the-scenes on the new Dredd blu-ray are pretty cool - they have interviews with all the comic creators.

*facepalm*

Wanna know what kind of moron I am? I have all three blu-ray box sets and I'm still making my way through season 3, but I haven't even considered watching the special features.

I think I'm going to have to backtrack to watch all those before I continue.

Thanks for reminding me what a dipshit I am! And thanks for the links!

(I also just finished the full Breaking Bad series and didn't watch any special features on those. Now I'm contemplating if I should.)

I get the idea that people want their friends on the same system, so they can play with/against one another. But the degree all sides get worked up is just odd. It's one of those cases of can't we just agree to disagree, but all sides get nearly evangelical.

My take... I prefer the 360 controller to the PS3 controller. I like the weight, the button and stick placements... just the whole feel is better, for me, at least for most games. Some 3rd person games benifit from the PS3 layout a bit better, but for shooters and platformers I think the 360 layout is better. Most of the exclusive titles next Gen are leaning me to the One, but most are cross platform, so that has little influence. For the current generation, I found the PS3 to be a far superior media machine, beyond the Blu-ray support, I think it does Netflix better (even discounting the poor UI the XBox had prior to the upcoming unified interface), which might be an issue with my router and it working better with the PS3 than the XBox, but even for connecting to my Windows PC and PlayOn (a program on my PC that allows me to use Hulu on the TV without Hulu Plus, and allows me to play more media types from my PC on the TV), it was better. However, the multiplayer on XBox seemed better, despite the fee... which gets me to a rub against the One, I wish Microsoft would remove the Gold requirement to access video services like Netflix, YouTube and the like. Leave the Gold requirement for multiplayer gaming, but video services should be broke off.

That said, most of my gaming is PC side... though for a game like Battlefield 4 or Titanfall I prefer a console... do in part to my lower end PC... yeah, the graphics on those games would look better (if my PC was a bit more modern), but I don't know, something about those style games makes me like the experience on the console better... same with Assassins Creed 4... actually, many console type games... but Steam and I love one another...

Fuck off haters. Saw this movie twice in theatres and loved it. Saw it for third time yesterday on blu-ray and LOVED IT. I say this as a guy with more than one full comics box devoted entirely to Superman.

I have the blu ray set. I don't recognize them

Now I'll have to get the blu-ray to see that cold reading.

This is one of the rarest shows I've ever seen where every episode is great and it seems to just be getting better at the very end.

Most other shows are disappointing at the end, like Dexter, for example.

Yeah, I think if HBO opened HBO Go to people beyond people who have cable and HBO, and if they kept the fee reasonable, their subscriptions to HBO Go would go through the roof, piracy would go way down on their shows, and I don't think there would be any real long term impact on Blu-ray/DVD set sales. The combo pack at Walmart is $35 or something like that a season, not a bad deal, but the normal price elsewhere is a bit high.

Living in Thailand, most TV shows aren't available here until WAY after the Western airdate, if ever.

I live in a pretty small town. Western movies don't play here, and if I travel an hour or so to a town where they do, they do they are dubbed in Thai with no English subtitles. DVDs are readily available, but they are usually pirated cam copies burned to disc, and again dubbed in Thai.

Games? Not available in stores in my town. Bangkok, sure -- but again they are almost always pirated copies burned to disk. Console games are the same way and any shops selling the game will also chip the console to play pirated disks. I could, and admittedly probably SHOULD use steam for PC games.

Other software? Basically same story as games. If you go to a computer store here, advertising usually says that they are sold with Linux OS or bare drives. But, the shop will automatically put on a pirated Windows plus loads of software (office, Photoshop if you ask for it, etc.) upon purchasing the hardware. They are usually fairly inept at it, frequently have viruses or fail to actually activate the OS, etc. so I tell them to leave the drives bare and do all that stuff myself. But for 99% of people who buy a PC here, they will automatically get a pirated OS and software along with it.

Basically, my default mode of getting ANY media is piracy. Price (free versus not) is a part of that. Incomes are low here, but cost of living is comparatively even lower. Still, if media was fully available here but equal to the price in, say, the US the vast majority of people here don't have enough disposable income to afford much if any of it. A bigger issue for me personally is convenience. Piracy (torrents, etc.) as a distribution system is infinitely more convenient, easy, and "customer"-friendly than any more legitimate service. I get what I want very quickly, usually in multiple options for filesize vs quality on up to as-good-as-broadcast/blu-ray 1080p, with most everything available from a single source (isoHunt, kickass, PirateBay, take your pick). In terms of user experience, legitimate distribution can't even begin to compete with that -- and that is BEFORE considering price.

Instead, they exacerbate the difference by treating paying customers with open contempt. Pay for TV service? Enjoy 10 minutes of ads for every 12 minutes of show. Buy a DVD? Sit through un-skippable ads, dire piracy warnings, etc. before the show actually starts. Move or simply take the disk on vacation to another country and you will likely be screwed by region locking. Buy software? Get some DRM that slows things down or restricts fully NORMAL use of the software, nags you to register, etc. On the other hand, if you pirate stuff all of that goes away. No ads. Watch/use the media wherever you want, whenever you want, on whatever device you want. Software DRM circumvented easily, usually hours after the first release if not *before*.

I honestly see it as a problem that I am not supporting the creators of the media that I enjoy. But, Pandora's box has been opened on this one. Generation X and Y learned to scoff at the idea of paying for music due to Napster. iTunes has been extremely lucky to turn that around even slightly, making lots of mistakes along the way (DRM and device-locking, etc.). Gen Y and beyond are going to have the same attitude towards piracy with regards to ALL MEDIA that we learned to have towards music. I don't think there is any getting around that.

For content creators, I think that funding via Label / Publisher / Network is going to die out. And soon. The good news is that something akin to an evolution of patronage of arts and creators can work even better than it did in the past. The Motzarts and Beethovens of the future don't need 1 rich duke or king to commision a work, they need 10,000 average Joes on kickstarter or the like. I see things trending more and more in that direction, and all the time. I think it is an exciting time -- unless you're an exec in one of the old dinosaur publishers/networks.

As with season 1, I'm not going to watch the individual episodes. I'm instead going to wait for the blu-ray to arrive in a month or two (hopefully), so I can gang-watch them all at once.

*promote the new BluRay print-Haven't seen it but it looks incredible, can't wait to see it in a proper theater.
http://videosift.com/video/How-Jaws-was-Restored-on-Blu-Ray

The current XBox allows you to borrow, rent games. You can buy and sell used games without any issues as well. The upcoming XBox One however allows a title to be resold only once through a very specific process that they haven't revealed yet. You can't borrow a friends copy of a game, and I'd presume you can't take your game to their house to play there unless the game is tied to your account not just your XBox One... Either way...

As Jinx noted, this was likely done to appease the publishers. They've been wanting to get rid of the used game industry for some time (an industry I don't get anyhow, you'll give me less than half the used price of a game, then sell it for $5 less than a new copy... why buy used if it is only $5 less?).

The question becomes, as noted before, if the publishers make it worth Microsoft's time and losses due to that policy then it will work out, but if they support Sony just as well, or even after a short delay, then Microsoft gambled wrong. They are going to lose sales over the policy. That, the fact the system needs to connect every 24 hours or it will lock down even single player use until it connects again...

To play games online with XBox Live you need a paid Gold account. You can play games on the PS3 without a PS Plus account, but there are rumors that the PS4 will require a paid PS Plus account to play multiplayer. That will just be leveling the playing field, and if you still don't need a paid account to access Netflix (you need a paid Gold account on XBox to get Netflix or Amazon videos... and I think to access your YouTube account fully) on the PS4 then they'll still have an edge on the multimedia front.

Another of Sony's big upsets was pricing the PS4 $100 under the XBox One price... now I'm going to hazard a guess they had a couple prices ready to roll based on the XBox's price and decided to undercut, it could have been the planed price from the start, but I'd guess they wanted to scare Microsoft. I'm also guessing Microsoft will announce "new cost saving measures" right before the holidays and adjust theirs down, they are already behind the 8 ball with the used and borrowing game limits, I can't see them letting Sony getting a huge boost from price as well... if they reverse course on borrowing/used games they might be able to keep the price up "we've heard the complaints from our users and have decided not to implement that feature at this time" sort of thing, but I'm guessing they are too far into that to reverse that and will just price match.

EDIT: I should note that I'm mostly a PC Gamer, followed by XBox games then PS3... well iOS games are probably after PC Games but before console games... I like XBox better as a gaming platform, but my PS3 has better networking for Netflix and Blu-ray support (XBox One gains Blu-ray support) so it is my multimedia machine of choice. I don't think I'll upgrade either system at this time though...

I'm sure the "TV" side of this is just like the Sony blu-ray players that have been for sale a for a couple years... stream from various providers. Already have a $48 box to do that though.

Here ya go:
http://www.amazon.com/Roku-2500R-HD-Streaming-Player/dp/B007KEZMX4/ref=dp_ob_title_ce
750 channels?

I just went to Myanmar in December but was not offered rubies, only cigarettes, counterfeit purses, fake Cialis, and zero day Blu-Rays.