Angry Puppy

How’s that for a headline?

The fifth largest paper in Canada by circulation, the conservative “National Post”, published a column “Lessons Learned: The crack cocaine of the electronic world” by Father Raymond J. De Souza in which he says:

“Don’t play video games. Don’t own them. And for the sake of all that is good and holy, don’t buy them for your children.”

I’m not going to try to follow the logic, but De Souza falls just short of blaming Tetris for his “worst academic performance in 12 years of post-secondary education”. I personally blame Anton, my Russian crush in college, for my poor performance as a sophomore undergrad, but I somehow don’t think Father De Souza would approve of that, either.

Almost anything can be blamed on video games (rather than on lousy parenting): lack of corporate productivity, childhood obesity, poor development of imagination and creativity. And of course, no anti-gaming rant is complete without references to violence and sex. I mean, even this jaded blogger can only take so much Tetris before being overwhelmed by the graphic imagery.

Susan Arendt at Wired had a great spin on things. De Souza points out that his mother would not allow him to play games and that his addiction started in college. Had his mother not created this forbidden fruit, then perhaps Tetris, that Slavic seductress, could not have tempted him with it so easily.

To complete my hyper-sensational headline:

According to a report released yesterday by research firm NPD, 63% of Americans are gamers of some sort, playing on consoles, PCs, portable devices (phones, mp3 players). | via Next Generation

Watch out Canada! We may not be “intrinsically evil” yet, but we share with you the largest undefended border in the world, and we’ve got Tetris Evolution for Xbox 360…

Here are some updates on a game we reviewed in Episode 4  (when we were still “Geek Talk”).

According to a Wired blog post, Activision is blocking a patch for the PS3 that would allow their Guitar Hero III guitar controller to be used with Rock Band, developed by Harmonix. | via Wired

As we mentioned in our review, the Xbox 360 version of the Guitar Hero III controller is already compatible with Rock Band.

If you’re on a Mac and you use GarageBand, though, it seems that the PS3 drums have one over the Xbox 360 version: with the addition of a cheap shareware program, you can use the drumkit as a midi input. | via Gizmodo

I just picked up the David Bowie pack for 440 Microsoft points ($5.50). For that you get “Queen Bitch”, “Moonage Daydream” and “Heroes”. If you’re not a huge Bowie fan (what‽), then you can get each individually for 160 points.

“Moonage Daydream” is the only one of the bunch that’s not a cover, but if one of your mates is the singer, this won’t matter much. Even though there’s no solo, “Queen Bitch” is the best of this pack for guitar.  All three seemed pretty whammy bar heavy to me, but I’m a little obsessive about hitting all of those.

Here are a couple photos of my rocker (named, wait for it, “lee”) in his official Angry Puppy t-shirt after playing some of the new tracks. The second pic shows the reason I’m saving all the money I earn from gigs - The Goat Head guitar for only $66,666.

With iTunes out of the NBC Universal picture, where will you go to get your Heroes and Battlestar Galactica fixes? Probably not to the SanDisk Sansa TakeTV video player.

According to the SanDisk Press Room, “hit current TV shows” from NBC, USA Network, SCI FI Channel, Bravo and “vintage library” shows from NBC Universal will be available in January on fanfare, SanDisk’s web-based service which is currently in beta. And yes, they like it all lowercase.

Cancel your iTunes account? Nope. This is not a replacement for getting NBC content in the Applesphere after Apple and NBC’s public spat, but rather another way to watch purchased content on your TV (and on your TV only).

There are two new parts to this system: the TakeTV hardware and the fanfare web service for downloading content. The TakeTV itself is available now. You can get one with 4GB for $99.99 or 8GB for $149.99. It works on Mac, Windows and Linux machines and lets users drag and drop video files or use the fanfare service to purchase content. It’s made up of:

• Video player (connects to your computer, then to the cradle via USB)
• Remote control (battery included)
• TV Cradle with integrated cables (connects to your TV via S-video or composite video inputs)
• AC power adapter

Supported video formats are MPEG-4, DivX and xVid with resolution up to 720 x 576 and up to a bitrate of 7Mbps.To get purchased content (like stuff from NBC Universal) onto the player, you’ll need to use fanfare, which works like this:

1. Plug the TakeTV player into your computer (via USB).
2. Browse for TV shows and movies on the fanfare site.
3. Download what you want to the TakeTV Player. (Make sure you’ve installed fanfare.exe. Shouldn’t this be step 1 in their list?)
4. Dock the TakeTV into its cradle and watch TV.

How does Fanfare itself work?

• There are no subscriptions fees
• This is not a rental service. You permanently download the shows and store them on your computer’s hard drive.
• New episodes will be available the day after they air on the original network.
• You must watch the downloaded content on a TV - not on a computer or portable device
• System requirements: Windows XP SP2 or Vista. Internet Explorer 6 or above. Microsoft .NET framework 2.0 or above. Adobe Flash Player 9.0

Angry Puppy’s conclusions:

It seems odd to have to physically carry the player to the cradle - especially when almost everything else is wireless these days. Of course, its small size means you can take it with you and watch TV elsewhere, but one of my main reasons for downloading TV shows is to watch on my iPod on trips, not so I can carry it to the in-laws’ place for Thanksgiving dinner.

About Macs, they say this: “Nope. Sorry, the fanfare service is supported only on Windows XP SP2 and above.” About Linux they say nothing, but the same applies. That’s understandable for a beta, but Internet Explorer only? I’m double out.

My favorite lines from the press release:

“Under the terms of the deal, SanDisk plans to use their security expertise in collaboration with NBC Universal to implement a series of measures to protect NBC Universal content, including partnering to explore the implementation of watermarking and filtering technology solutions.”

TRANSLATION: “Consumers will be locked into viewing this purchased content in the way SanDisk and NBC deem appropriate.”

“Additionally, NBC Universal and SanDisk will collaborate on new consumer content acquisition models, including flexible pricing and packaging.”

TRANSLATION “Sucks to you, iTunes. We’ll charge $4.99 an episode for popular shows if we want.”

Episode 7 of Angry Puppy is now available on AfterElton.com.

In this episode:

• We answer nagging questions about us.
• Marc is excited for the upcoming Serenity: Better Days.  This full-color, 40-page Firefly comic from Dark Horse will be available in March 2008.
• We compare the experience of watching purchased content on the TV and the Xbox 360.
• I review the Spike Video Game Awards, which aired this past Sunday.
• Marc presents his website of the week: Extreme Ironing.