Zath! Archive for

August, 2008

Play TV Announced (PS3)

Sony has recently announced a price and release date for ‘Play TV’.

Play TV is a digital receiver that enables you to watch Freeview through your PS3 and use it as a recorder as well. So you can watch one program and record another or record two programmes at once. All of your recordings will be saved on the PS3’s hard drive so you’ll be able to watch them back whenever you like.

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Sky HD Review

I’ve been looking at buying Sky HD on and off for over a year now, basically since I got a my Samsung 32″ LCD HDTV. Up until now I’ve been using an upscaling DVD player to bring my viewing closer to High Definition quality, but now here’s my Sky HD review.

I’ve been waiting for the prices to drop on the initial cost of the Sky High Definition box and the HD additional monthly subscription – in that time the cost of the box has about halved in price to around £150 for existing customers. The £10 additional monthly fee remains for the High Definition subscription, however I looked at it that you’re getting a much higher quality viewing experience for the sake of £2.50 per week – around the cost of your favourite beverage while you’re out and about – decent value I think!

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The Path of Zath – Volume 11

It’s been a while since I posted my last ‘Path of Zath‘ post, but I’ve now got a shiny new logo for this feature, so I should be back to posting more interesting links found on Zath’s Path round the Internet!

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‘Hellboy 2: The Golden Army’ Review

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (12A)

Cast: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Luke Goss, Anna Walton, John Hurt
Director: Guillermo Del Toro
Running Time: 120 minutes

Guillermo Del Toro films are always a joy to watch. He tries to use as little CGI as possible and creates some visually stunning characters. Hellboy 2 is, in my opinion, one of his best to date.

The story sees Hellboy (Perlman) sick of being in hiding and wants the world to see who he and his team are, and what they do. His relationship has ‘blossomed’ with Liz (Blair) but they’re going through the ‘bumpy’ part of the relationship which has some nice touches throughout the film.

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PC Wii Remote – Asus Eee Stick Announced

Asus have come up with the Eee Stick which is essentially a PC Wii remote. The PC’s answer to Nintendo’s impressive Wii Remote?

Asus will be selling the Eee Stick with certain models of their Eee Pc and Eee box, as well as some of the games that have been made for use with the Eee Stick.

There’s no news yet as to whether or not the Eee stick will be sold separately to be used with other PC’s.

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New PS3 160GB

A new PS3? If you’ve just bought the brand spanking new PS3 80GB and you’re in a bad mood anyway…..don’t read anymore into this!

Sony have announced that they are to release a 160GB model of the PS3 in October 2008! – Only 2 months after the release of the 80GB model! Also, I very much doubt from what I’ve read that the new 160GB version will have PS2 backwards compatibility or any of the features of the 60GB model.

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‘The Hobbit’ Script Being Written!

The team behind ‘The Hobbit’ have started to write the scripts for the two Hobbit movies. Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Guillermo Del Toro have put pen to paper and The Hobbit is finally a reality.

I was worried that this was never going to be made, but with Ian McKellen and Andy Serkis back as Gandalf and Gollum, and the Lord of the Rings’ team back behind the screenplay, this is looking really good – so much better than what this might have been had Peter Jackson not been involved!

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Wii Motion Plus Controller

Nintendo are set to release a new attachment for the Wiimote called ‘Wii Motion Plus’.

The idea behind this is to improve the responsiveness of the Wiimote and make every little movement count and make it a true 1:1 experience.

All you need to do it plug the Motion Plus into the bottom of the Wiimote to give you a more realistic control over what you do on screen.

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‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ Review

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (U)

Cast: Matt Lanter, Ian Abercrombie, Anthony Daniels, Christopher Lee, Samuel L. Jackson
Director: Dave Filoni
Running Time: 98 minutes

I always thought that The Clone Wars was going to be a bit too much for Star Wars. After the atrocities that were I, II and III, I thought Star Wars films would be no more and this was going to follow suit.

I was pleasantly surprised by Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

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Free Fantasy Football – Zath Premiership 08/09 Update

It’s been great to see so many people sign up to the challenge of the free fantasy football ‘Zath Premiership‘ so far, even before I’ve announced the prizes on offer – more on this in minute!

I just wanted to let everyone know that there is still time to sign up before the first points scoring week of the Zath Premiership which will actually be Game Week 2 of the overall game. The free fantasy football game itself started last week (Game Week 1), but I held off on starting our league as I wanted to do some further promotion, get a proper logo (hope you like it!), organise some prizes and ensure everyone had got signed up that had shown interest in it so far.

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A-List Games – Should All Games Aspire? (Games Blog Banter)

“Welcome, welcome to the 7th instalment of Blog Banter, the regular blogging extravaganza headed by bs angel and coordinated by Game Couch! Blog Banter involves our cozy community of enthusiastic gaming bloggers, a common topic, and a week to post articles pertaining to said topic. The results are quite entertaining and can range from deep insight to ROFLMAO. Any questions about Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!”

Do all games need to be A-List games?

I’m not sure if this question itself implies that we should settle for mediocrity, I interpret this as meaning, should we need and require multi-million pound budget games that take years to develop?

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Cooking Guide Review (DS)

A cooking guide on the Nintendo DS? Why? Can’t you decide what to eat?

In recent years, Nintendo have been real innovators in terms of gaming technology, they’ve obviously had great success with the Wii, but before that came a quieter gaming tech revolution in the form of their latest handheld, the DS.

I’m constantly being surprised by the gaming styles and uses that this flexible gaming platform is being put to use, be it conducting surgery with Trauma Center or in this case utilising the Nintendo DS as an interactive recipe book – Cooking Guide DS!

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EcoButton (Computer Standby Button)

The EcoButton is a cool USB gadget that saves you money and fights global warming! I can practically hear your tuts of disbelief back at Zath HQ. But seriously this little eco-friendly gizmo will do exactly that and even has the balls to gloat about it too!

I am talking about the EcoButton. Essentially it is a large nicely lit button that plugs into a USB port and once clicked puts your machine into “Eco Mode”. This allows your computer to go into a standby mode that only uses 1.8 watts of power (apparently that is loads less then most normal standby modes). “who cares” and “nothing new” I thought when I first saw it, but I decided to look a little deeper.

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Motorstorm Review (PS3)

Start your engines to one of the dark horses of the Playstation 3’s release titles.

I could not believe how good and addictive this Motorstorm is. I got this with a package as I didn’t think there were any other games better looking and thought it would be ok for a couple of hours or so.

A year down the line and I still love this game. Motorstorm is off road racing at its best and now it’s back as one of the PS3 Platinum games.

I’m not really one for racing games as I find them very repetitive and get boring very quickly, but this is just pure chaos on dirt tracks and lots of exploding cars and bodies flying everywhere and I love it.

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3 Mobile Broadband Review (UK)

You might be thinking “why do I need 3 mobile broadband internet?” – Well I’ve recently come to realise that this would be a great addition to my gadget bag, it means I don’t need to rely on the places I visit having wireless internet access. For instance, many coffee shops/hotels still do not provide any form of wireless broadband internet, or if they do, it is often charged at an expensive rate.

Therefore by having a 3 mobile broadband USB dongle (card), it gives you the convenience of working/surfing the internet anywhere with a mobile network signal, in my experience there are very few places these days that don’t have any signal at all. It also makes for a great backup in the event your ADSL or cable connection go down and you still need to access the Internet, particularly important if it involves your work!

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Northern UK Bloggers’ Meet-Up

The first Northern UK Bloggers’ Meet-up took place yesterday at the Old Broadcasting House in Leeds – which is now a one of the facilities of Leeds Met University, which happens to be where I was a student back in 2001-2004 – it kind of felt like I’d come full circle!

The aim of this first session was to decide on the format for future events (which we kind of did), have some informal discussions about blogging and basically get to know each other.

In total there was about 20 bloggers that turned out for this initial event, we proceeded into the “boardroom” – not quite like the Apprentice with Sir Alan Sugar waiting for us – there was certainly no intimidating grillings, it was a very relaxed and good-humoured affair.

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Spore Creature Creator Download Released

The Spore Creature Creator download is the pre-cursor to a new game that’s on the horizon from Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, this game is called ‘Spore’ – you’ll come to know that name well!

The main Spore game is due for release on PC on 5th September 2008. The aim of the game is to create your creature and evolve it into whatever you want it to be. Starting out as just single-cell organisms, the choices you make for the development of your species will have distinct effects as your creature evolves over time. Ultimately you can build an empire and decide to take over the galaxy, or be a peace keeping, fun loving creature.

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Harry Potter & Half Blood Prince Release Date Pushed Back!

I can’t believe what I’ve just read!

After crying for the last hour, I’ve only just managed to pull myself together to write this blog. Ok, here we go……….Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince has been put BACK to July 2009!!

So all of us die-hard fans of the Harry Potter franchise have just been given a swift unforgivable curse (I’ll let you decide which) to the face.

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Dell Studio Hybrid Compact Desktop Computer

The Dell Studio Hybrid is the latest new Dell product range being released – I got to take a sneak-peek at it at the recent Dell Studio Laptop launch at Silverstone, so here’s what I thought to it…

Do you still have one of those large, noisy, beige boxes of a computer sat on your desk? Do you like the idea of minimalist computing like you often see with Apple Macs? The Studio Hybrid is a new breed of computer from Dell.

The Dell Hybrid is a highly compact desktop computer which Dell has really tried to make as green as possible – in the environmental sense at least, the actual case features an interchangeable ‘shell’ casing that comes in a variety of colours see-through colours as well as a bamboo casing which gives it a real distinctive look – it certainly fits well in with their design-conscious Dell Studio Laptop range.

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Prison Break Season 4 Trailer

The Prison Break season 4 trailer and promo videos have now been released ahead of the show re-starting again after what was a shortened season 3 last year due to the writer’s strike.

The last few episodes of season 3 really did feel rather rushed in terms of all the events that were happening and it really makes you think as to how much story was cut from the guys trying to escape Sona prison given it spanned 13 episodes instead of the expected 22 episode run that we were expecting from Prison Break.

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