Monthly Archives: March 2007

Articles, Video Games

Microsoft shows mercy to the competition with their Elite Xbox 360

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(AKA an article to prove I’m not a total Xbox fanboy)

Last week Microsoft officially announced the upgraded Xbox 360 “Elite”. This is basically a souped up 360 with the following stuff added:

  • HDMI video output
  • 20 gig hard drive
  • The color black

All for the bargain price of $479. It does include an HDMI cable which is pretty nice – I am sick of people saying “you can buy one online for $15!” True, but for all the schmucks who get one in the store it’s at least $75. I could buy screws for 1/10th the price off McMaster Carr, but 9 times out of 10 I just go down to Ace. That said, it doesn’t include:

  • Built-in Wi-Fi
  • 65 nm process chips

One less bullet point, but a big deal. In this article that I’m writing to sluff out of doing other things on a Saturday morning, I’ll postulate on why I feel Microsoft is making a mistake with the Elite / pricing and what it could mean to the PS3 and Wii.

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Video Games

VCSp Rev 5.1 Prototyped At 7 Year Mark

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It was 7 years ago (ish) that I completed my first video game portable – the original VCSp. How do I know this? Well I had it sitting in the car, newly done, as I went in to get my taxes done (always at the last minute) and I was worried someone might steal it. And I recall sitting there looking at it and thinking “Damn that thing looks good!” To this date it remains the only portable I’ve ever kept for myself.

Super Bonus Download – Get the original “technical” drawing files I used to create the VCSp Rev 1, and, um, look at them I guess. So primitive, you’ll swear a monkey laid it out! (Hint: view in wireframe mode)

Enough of that sentimental crap – take a look at my latest portable creation – the Atari VCSp Rev 5.1:

VCSp Rev 5.1
The new hotness

On the X-Y this unit is almost as small as the Rev 7 I made a few months back, but it has the added bonus of being just over an inch thick. (1.08″ to be precise) It’s by far the skinniest Atari portable I’ve done yet, and it’s funny to think back to when I was making then 2 inches thick. Ah, the memories…

The first 2 prototypes are already spoken for, but please email me if you’d be interested in getting one of these in the near future. I’m thinking about having some PCB’s made and running 20-30 of these. Price target is $300 with trade-in of an Atari 2600 4-switch. I think this is one of the better portables I’ve made thus far, it’s simple, small and stylish.

More pics and specs follow…

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Podcasts

Podcast Episode 16 Up and Away

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We return to our audio roots with episode 16 of the Benheck.com podcast. Topics this time include the PS3 loosing exclusives to the 360 and “Tech Monopolies of the Ages”, dating back to the 80’s at least. We look at the various monopolies (or near-monopolies) and examine how they were earned.

For a fun mini-game, try and count how many times we say “Welcome to California!” Enjoy…

www.benheckpodcast.com

Oh, regarding the intro contest. We didn’t get as many entries as I would have liked, but one was good enough that I decided to let it win. Since I made the decision very late it’ll appear on the front of the next podcast, but rest assured, it’s coming. If you’re wondering if you won or not, if you haven’t heard from me then it wasn’t it you, sorry.

For Episode 16’s intro in the meantime, it’s a sequel to a classic intro from last year – have fun.

Regarding portable projects, there are some coming up so don’t despair. The 2600 Rev 5.1 is turning out really nice…

Movies

Movie section more or less up

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OK I have now uploaded Port Washington, The Adventurous and Lizard of Death to the new server. Adventure going up tomorrow. You can now once again download these fine classics and watch them in glorious iPod video.

Use the link on the right hand side to visit the Movies page. Clicking “Movies” on the upper bar reveals all movie-related post entries in chronological order.

Articles

Why Star Trek 11 should be a TV show and not a movie

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Normally I don’t post things like this on my site, but I feel I must sound off about this. For about the past year Paramount Pictures has been trying to get an eleventh Star Trek movie off the ground. Heading things this time will be JJ Abrahms, who brought us Felicity, Lost, and directed Mission Impossible 3.

The gimmick is it’s a “Star Trek Academy” sort of idea, a “Kirk Begins” if you will. Now that’s all fine and dandy, but I can see several problems with this idea. Sure, I’m not limo-crusing executive, but it doesn’t take a brain scientist to see…

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Podcasts

Podcast Episode 15 – Now with Video

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For episode 15 of the podcast we went with video. Just to try it out, thought it might be fun. Was mostly a pain, took up way too much hard drive space and my video camera microphone isn’t nearly as good as our USB headsets. Long story short it’s not exactly Lawrence of Arabia but you’ll get the idea. At least we had an excuse to make a video intro, which you should get a kick out of. (It has lots of blood for some reason)

Topics of this podcast are video/audio compression, a Lost Planet review and a God of War 2 segment.

www.benheckpodcast.com

We’ll be back to doing audio podcasts on the normal schedule after this. Perhaps in the future, should something lend itself to video, such as last fall’s Wii hunt, we’ll do another. But probably not for a long while. Also please do not email me asking for an audio version of this podcast, “what you see is what you get”.

Download Intro alone