Mad Props!

Did you know that in the US, they don't have beetroot on their hamburgers? In fact, when I was over there I asked a hamburger guy about it, and he didn't know what I was talking about.

You guys are missing out!

Wikipedia has an interesting list of hamburger ingredients from around the world on their hamburger entry. You too can make an authentic Aussie hamburger (with fried egg, bacon, pineapple and beetroot)!

Thought I'd post a few comments about my new DVD player, the Denon DVD-1930. Although the 1930 has been available overseas for some time, it was only released in Australia a few weeks ago, so with any luck this post will draw some interested Aussie readers here.

The 1930 is an upscaling DVD player. That is, given a DVD with 480 or 576 lines of resolution, it can upscale the image all the way up to 1080 lines. Better still, it can output 1080p - a progressive-scan (non-interlaced, for you old-school computer-users) picture. Note that it can only upscale over HDMI, and you do it by clicking a button on the front panel of the player, which cycles through the various resolutions (720p, 1080i, 1080p). Because my TV has a native resolution of 1365x768, I opted to scale up to 720p.

The first movie we watched on the player was Fight Club, which was probably a bad example to begin with. Fight Club has a very dark, blotchy, scratchy picture, which was a deliberate design choice by Fincher and co, so it wasn't a great way of seeing how good the image could be on the player. It did, however, highlight something that concerned me greatly - the audio sync was terrible. The characters' lips were moving a fraction of a second after the dialog. Very off-putting.

After a few posts to Home Theatre Central, I learned that many upscaling players suffer from audio-sync issues (since the time it takes to upscale the image can leave the picture fractionally behind the sound). Fortunately, most players (including the 1930) come with a setting known as "audio delay". This allows you to tell the player how far away from the speakers you're sitting. If you're further away, it'll output the sound earlier so that by the time it reaches your ears it will be in sync with the video. The default, of course, is up around 3m.

The 1930's audio delay settings only appear to be for HDMI and Analog output (I'm using HDMI for video but optical digital for audio), but I set them all back to 0m distance anyway (meaning that the sound would be slightly delayed and thus in sync with the image). I also adjusted the delays on my old Sony receiver back to 0m.

The second movie we watched, Panic Room (is this a Fincher love-fest or what?) was outstanding. Audio sync was just fine, and the picture was very clear. There were concerns on the HTCentral forum about a problem known as "macro blocking", where dark parts of the picture appear to move and/or have purple splotches, and I may have noticed this effect, but it's really hard to tell.

The DVD-1930 is capable of playing DivX files directly off a data disc. We watch most of the DivX files that I download using Transcode360 - streaming the movies directly from my XP Media Center PC to the Xbox 360. However, the first episode of Heroes had been giving me (and others, according to the Transcode360 forum) grief - it simply wouldn't stream. So I burned the first two episodes to a CD (yes, a CD - we're only talking about two 350MB files here) and popped it into the 1930. They played without any problems. Very impressed.

The last movie we watched (this past weekend) was the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The picture quality in this flick, particularly in the earlier scenes in Hobbiton, simply blew me away. I don't recall ever seeing it so vividly and sharply. Clearly the upscaled image was doing my HDTV justice.

At $699, this isn't a cheap DVD player, but it's around "entry level" when it comes to high-end upscaling players. Like my previous player (also from Denon), it's quality stuff, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Remember that awesome SCART RGB cable I imported for the Xbox 360? It's yours, if you want it. I don't need it now that I have my new TV.

I've posted a For Sale message over on HTCentral. Leave a reply there if you're interested, or drop me a note here.

Another month and another AWDNUG meeting, and if you missed this one you should be kicking yourself.

Michael from Border Express gave an excellent presentation about SQL Server replication, breaking down the different types of replication, the pros and cons of each type, and how (and what) to monitor them. He also touched on some query optimization tips which I think were appreciated by everyone.

Did you know that if you select a table name in Sql Server Management Studio and hit Alt+F1 it dumps the table structure to the query results? I didn't either.

We had about 20 minutes left over after Michael's presentation (did I mention it was excellent?), so I gave a quick introduction to Windows PowerShell. There really wasn't enough time to touch on all the things that PowerShell is capable of, and I didn't have anything prepared, but I hope that those present got an idea of just how amazing this little command-line engine is.

The turn-out this month was less than spectacular, but I'm sure that all those who didn't attend will read this post and realised that they can't afford to miss any more meetings! See you in December, guys!

Sal and I travelled to Melbourne yesterday to pick up my new Denon DVD-1930 DVD player. This player has an HDMI connection and will upscale a standard-definition DVD all the way up to 1080p (although I'm only going to 720p on my TV). I will post more about it after I've had a decent play with it.

Anyway, as reading material for the trip, Sal brought with her a couple of issues of a magazing called Frankie. Like most red-blooded Aussies, I enjoy flicking through chicks' magazines and then saying that they're trash and that I never read them. However, the articles in Frankie that Sal was reading out to me while I was driving sounded quite interesting.

The mag seemed to have more real content (ie. real articles written by real writers, rather than just fluff pieces about how to score a better boyfriend or where to buy the latest fashions). They had interviews with musicians like Sarah Blasko, Clare Bowditch, Art of Fighting and Lior.

So anyway, go check out the magazine's web site, and if you get a chance to leaf through it in the newsagency, do so - you might be surprised.

Ok - after I posted about the drawbacks of a web browser on the Xbox 360, Crucible brought up the topic of RSS feeds. I left a comment on his post, but I'm going to elaborate here.

Currently the 360 has a great interface for streaming pictures, music and video from your PC. You do all the content management (uploading photos, ripping MP3s etc) on the PC itself, and the Xbox is used as a read-only "browser" for that content.

Imagine if RSS feeds worked the same way. The Common Feed Store that comes with IE7 is a great place to subscribe to and manage web feeds. What if the Xbox could connect to that and let you scroll through new feed items? The PC itself would be responsible for tracking which items have been read, and for keeping the feeds up to date.

I've mocked up a screenshot in Paint.NET - what do you think?

I hear a lot of people asking Microsoft to add web browsing functionality to the Xbox 360 dashboard.

I'm starting to think that this wouldn't be a good idea.

For starters, unless you have a high definition TV, you're running a resolution of either 480 or 576 pixels in height. When was the last time you tried doing anything on a PC running at 640x480? Most web sites now are almost unusable at that resolution.

How about navigation? Sure, you can plug a USB keyboard into the 360, so for those of us who have a spare one lying around we'll be able to type in URLs. What about clicking on links and/or scrolling pages? Navigating around a page using the remote or controller would be really cumbersome.

Then you have to ask yourself how many different standards an Xbox 360 browser should support. Just HTML? Javascript? Java? Flash? ShockWave? Heck, should it be able to view PDF files? How about embedded QuickTime videos? A lot of our daily browsing experience relies on these sorts of technologies.

Of course, as soon as you enable things other than plain old HTML then you're opening up the "attack surface area" of the platform. Do we really want to have to install virus scanners on our Xboxen? And how about parental controls? The Xbox 360 has very strong parental controls, but the web is pretty lax on that subject. Should protective parents just lock their kids out of the browser completely?

There are so many issues when you really think about it beyond the initial, "Ooh! I could read Major Nelson's blog on my Xbox!" Be careful what you wish for.

I swear, somehow Scott Adams is spying on me.

Ooh! Art of Fighting's new single, Eastbound, is up on their MySpace page!!! Go check it out!

After a few hours' playtime on the weekend, I managed to progress a little further into Dead Rising. Man, this is a frustratingly-difficult yet kick-ass fun game. I've had it for ages and yet I'm still only up to dawn on the second day, which means I'm less than a third of the way through the 72-hour in-game time period.

I've resolved to forget about saving civilians and instead focus on completing the main storyline. That means I'm less distracted and have a bit more time to explore the mall. On Saturday I found an antique store which happened to have a katana and a couple of battle-axes - very handy for slicing through the undead. I've also managed to find a book which, when carried, lets me hold onto tools (lead pipes, chainsaws, sledgehammers etc) for longer periods of time.

If you have an Xbox 360 then it's hard not to recommend this game. It really shows off what's possible on the platform, and man it's fun wading through hordes of zombies with a chainsaw!