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Cox delivers a half dozen HD channels to San Diego, California
While Time Warner Cable and AT&T have been bolstering their HD lineups in sunny San Diego, Cox has been sitting idly by watching the time pass. Finally, the carrier is stepping up and doing a little something to keep things competitive by offering up a fresh half dozen HD channels in the California city. Beginning on October 15th, Cox will deliver MTV HD (730), Spike HD (745), VH1 HD (746), Nickelodeon HD (747), CMT HD (761) and Planet Green HD (783), while Palladia HD will be relocated to slot 732. If you're still unsatisfied, you can also look forward to Comedy HD and AMC HD hitting the EPG in the near future.[Thanks, Jason]
AT&T takes Total Home DVR to Houston and San Diego
We've a feeling we'll soon be unable to keep up with all the Total Home DVR rollouts, but we aren't complaining one bit about the speed at which AT&T is getting it out there. Hot on the heels of Austin, Fresno, and a handful of other cities getting gifted, AT&T has quietly given Houston, Texas and San Diego, California residents the ability to watch recorded shows on connected TVs anywhere in the house. Dollars to donuts a few more markets get lit up before October dawns.[Thanks, Artur and Anthony]
Time Warner Cable adds Science HD / Disney HD in San Diego
While Comcast has been handing out HD channels like a rich guy hands out candy on Halloween, TWC has been mighty stingy with its high-def expansions. Handing out a network here and there, we see the carrier gifting San Diego, California with two more: Science HD (780) and Disney HD (763). Not much, but we suppose beggars can't be choosers. Well, actually... [Disclosure: Engadget is part of the Time Warner family][Thanks, Joebnsd]
Carlsbad (CA) Apple Store opening Saturday
Practically biking distance from my girlfriend's house will be a brand-spankin'-new Apple Store for San Diego North, in Carlsbad. No longer will north county residents have to drive to UTC or Fashion Valley to get a Mac fix. Or fixed, as the case may be. Apple is planning a grand opening there at 10 a.m. on Saturday, including free t-shirts for the first thousand customers. And if you see a tall, goofy-looking guy in a Threadless t-shirt, say hi! If it's me, I'll say hi back!
Comic-Con 08: Turbine's truck o' trailers
The Massively team has been in San Diego this weekend getting hands-on with the latest beta builds of DC Universe Online, Warhammer Online and Stargate Worlds. Curiously absent from the Con has been Turbine. When we spoke to them earlier in the month, they said they were going to focus their promotional efforts on GenCon and PAX in August. However, this weekend we spotted a truck outside the San Diego Convention Center broadcasting a trailer for the upcoming Mines of Moria expansion with loudspeakers and a six-panel big screen. Seems Turbine decided that they couldn't afford to lose out on getting the word out to the geek crowd after all.
SOE throwing block party at Comic Con
This blogger has always been rather jealous of San Diego residents. In hosting Comic Con, they not only get to meet the best and brightest that the comic industry has to offer, but increasingly, they're getting attention by big names in the MMO industry too. We knew that SOE was going to be in attendance, showing off DC Universe Online in playable form. We've now gotten word, via Grimwell's Blog, that they'll also be hosting a block party on Saturday the 26th outside of the Con proper for anybody in the San Diego area who wants to stop by, Con attendee or no.They'll be busing people to and from the Con to their location, where they'll have food, unreleased games to play, a live band, and plenty of SOE employees to bug about their games old and new. As icing on the cake (do you really need icing?), Jim Lee be making an appearance from 4:00pm to 5:30pm. To say this blogger is simply jealous would be a gross understatement.
Stargate Worlds Comic-Con event plans unveiled
We learned a while back that developer Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment and publisher FireSky are teaming up with the United States Armed Forces and the creators of the Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis TV series to present Stargate Worlds at this year's Comic-Con. Fans will get to ask questions about the game and the series, as well as see gameplay footage. A life-sized stargate wll be deployed for photo ops, too.Now the schedule has finally been announced. It'll all go down in Ballroom 20 on Friday the 25th. From 10:45 to 11:45, the showrunners and stars of Stargate SG-1 will sit in a panel discussing Stargate Continuum, the new movie based on the series. After that, the Stargate Worlds presentation will run from 11:45 to 12:15. Finally, the cast and crew of Stargate Atlantis will talk about season 5 from 12:15 to 1:15. All Pacific time, of course, since the convention's in San Diego.So if you're just interested in the game, show up at 11:45 and leave at 12:15. We figure you'll go for the whole thing if you'll go at all though; most folks interested in this game are probably fans of the series too, right?
San Diego FOX / ABC affiliates taking local news high-def
While KFMB-TV has had a stranglehold on the HD news market in sunny San Diego, that's about to change. Beginning in September, the local ABC affiliate (KGTV) will begin airing its local newscasts in high-definition, and for those impatient souls, the local FOX affiliate (KSWB-TV) will be making the same switch on August 1st. Furthermore, KUSI-TV Channel 51 is expecting to take "everything on the channel, including local news broadcasts," to the high-def realm starting in February of next year. Seems like a few other cities could learn something from this one.[Thanks, Tony]
GotFrag's Orlando Tournament Preview
American arena's best of the best will be back in action this weekend as MLGs PC Circuit continues in Orlando. Once again, the winning team will be awarded $12,000 and three Blackbird Gaming PCs. There is a lot on the line with a total prize purse is $31,500. You can watch the tournament live on GotFrag TV. Broadcasts will begin Saturday and Sunday, July 12th and 13th at 9am Eastern time. Many of the same teams from the San Diego event will be representing in Florida. GotGrat's Knitt Quinn posted a preview analysis of the teams to beat. The analysis describes the strengths and weaknesses of each team. You can expect to see some well known teams and a few newcomers to the MLG scene. Many of the teams have a pool of known compositions to draw from:
Time Warner Cable rolling out SDV, new HD channels in San Diego
Wouldn't you know it? Just weeks after AT&T announced an expansion of its U-verse service in sunny San Diego, along comes Time Warner Cable to keep things marginally competitive. According to a local, the cable company is sending out informational cards which inform users of an impending switched digital video (SDV) rollout, and while it does mention that tuning adapters may be offered for free to TiVo owners, we suspect we'll have to wait and hear about all the details. As for new high-definition channels, you can look forward to seeing Universal HD, MOJO HD, HDNet, HDNet Movies and NBA TV HD, all of which should go live on July 28th. [Disclosure: Engadget is part of the Time Warner family][Thanks, Josh]
MLG Orlando tickets on sale
Tickets are now on sale for the next step of the Major League Gaming 2008 PC Circuit, which will be in sunny Orlando. The event runs from July 11 until July 13, and will once again be covered by GotFrag. We'll see more of the best Arena players going head to head in a 3v3 Arena tournament, with over $31,500 available in prizes. You can visit the official site for registration details. There are 32 team slots available in MLG Orlando.Of course, you can still view the videos from MLG San Diego on GotFrag. There's a lot of interesting gameplay available there, and everyone who's wondering about how to handle Season 4 can pick up some tricks. As news develops and we start seeing who registers, we'll get a better idea of what compositions we might expect at MLG Orlando.
Gotfrag releases videos of the MLG 3v3 WoW Tournament
Remember the MLG San Diego 3v3 WoW Arena Tournament we reported on a while back? If you missed the live streaming video of the event, you now have a second chance to watch, as GotFrag has begun posting videos of various matches and interviews with team members at their website. If you have any interest in Arena PvP, these videos are definitely recommended watching. The commentators obviously know what they're talking about, and explain both teams' actions in terms that your average WoW player should be able to understand. A lot of us at WoW Insider watched, and we all agree that we learned something valuable about life, love, and learning to play Arena PvP from it. You may even pick up some tricks to kick off your Season 4 playing from them.
AT&T brings U-verse to 250,000 San Diego homes
Nary a month after AT&T celebrated the one-year anniversary of U-verse in Los Angeles, the operator is sparking the party back up with a similar celebration for San Diego. Since launching in June of 2007, AT&T has delivered access of its fiber-based TV / internet service to over 250,000 domiciles in the Greater San Diego area. Granted, it didn't say how many actually took advantage and signed up, but it's still maintaining that it will have one million subscribers before 2009 dawns. We'll see, now won't we?
Time Warner Cable to add six HD channels in San Diego, CA
Just days after Cox flipped the switch on SciFi HD in the always classy city of San Diego, Time Warner Cable has announced that it will bolster its high-def family by adding in a new half dozen this Tuesday. As of April 8th, TWC subscribers in and around San Diego, California should have access to Discovery HD (743), Animal Planet HD (764), TLC HD (755), HGTV HD (753), Food Network HD (751) and CNN HD (726). According to Marc Farrar, vice president of public affairs for the carrier's San Diego division, the company is "poised to add even more HD channels to the lineup this year," though no specifics were doled out beyond that. [Disclosure: Engadget is part of the Time Warner family][Thanks, creanium]
San Diego's channel 4 treats Padres fans to HD
When it rains, it pours -- 2008 is shaping up to be the year that spring fever is accompanied by HD fever. Take a peep at the linked Padres TV schedule for San Diego's channel 4 and what do you see in the right-most column? That's right -- every game carried (a whopping 144) is in HD, right down the line. It's nice to see that Jays fans north of the border won't be able to hold that number over us Americans. We're compelled to tell you that if you can get out to PETCO park, please do -- it's a great place to take in some baseball. Otherwise, break out the cooler, fire up the grill, invite some friends over and bask in the overabundance of HD pixels. [Thanks, Andy!]
Cisco opens virtual hospital in Second Life and IBM ... doesn't
Two hospitals opened up in Second Life today. Except only one actually did any opening. IBM's Virtual Health Center actually isn't open to the public. Rumors of its opening seem to be greatly exaggerated, and are largely confined to the press-release and coverage by folks who didn't actually try to visit it. We've asked IBM what's up with that, and we're waiting for an answer - so we can't even show you a picture of the place. So, the more interesting hospital (ie: the one we could actually look at) comes to us courtesy of Cisco, Palomar Pomerado Health, and metaverse developers Millions-of-us. The design of the hospital is exceptionally modern, and the Second Life version of the hospital is - essentially - a model of the physical campus that will be built (by the year 2011) in San Diego, California, all packed with top-of-the-line, medical-grade Cisco technology. Palomar West hospital has its own Second Life account registration portal, and a video tour. On the whole, the campus is very pretty. It's as 21st century as you could hope to see, without flying cars.
CBS8 features EQ2 and Frostfell
CBS8 News in San Diego recently took a visit to Sony Online Entertainment's offices, where a reporter was taken through EverQuest II character creation and visited the Frostfell Wonderland Village. It's a fairly lighthearted report, and we're told inaccurately that the game is "played by millions worldwide", but it's nice to see games in the media occasionally without the attached list of associated behavioral problems, or a death tally.The story is taken from a hugely mainstream perspective, with no real details about the game being given at all, but you do catch glimpses of the Frostfell holiday event. The report was done to present EQ2 as a holiday gift idea, so I suppose it's wrong to expect a meaty and thorough piece -- as one of SOE's representatives tells the reporter in the video, "Jeff, you're a newb. You're a newbie."[Via Cuppytalk]
HIPerSpace visualization system takes the crown with 220 million pixels
For AV freaks enamored with their own HDTV and hardcore gamers who doubt anyone's ability to unleash more graphical firepower than that found in their rig, prepare to be humbled. As part of the HIPerSpace visualization system, engineers at the University of California, San Diego "have constructed the highest-resolution computer display in the world, with a screen resolution of up to 220 million pixels." The system, which links between UCSD and UC-Irvine (responsible for the mighty HiPerWall) via dedicated optical networking, contains a "graphics super cluster" that relies on 80 NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 GPUs. Reportedly, scientists dealing with large-scale applications involving "Earth sciences, climate prediction, biomedical engineering, genomics, and brain imaging" will be able to make use of the newfangled setup in order to better digest the information they're dealing with. Sheesh, all we want is a solid day with this thing, infinite Doritos, and Halo 3.[Via MedGadget]
Cox initiates HD VOD rollouts with HD Movies on Demand
We knew it would just be a matter of months before Cox Communications found the means to offer up HD video-on-demand -- after all, you can't lag behind your main competitors for too long without stepping up, right? Nevertheless, the company has announced that customers in San Diego can now access "more than 20 high-definition titles" via the HD Movies on Demand channel, and the library of HD flicks should hopefully grow as time goes on. On deck to receive the HD VOD luxuries are Northern Virginia and Oklahoma City, with other unnamed markets to get tapped "later this summer." So, for those San Diegans looking for a good HD movie to soak in on Independence Day, why not give Cox's latest offering a whirl and tell us how it goes?
Big Brother-equipped straight jacket further proves you're crazy
While the Virtual Hallucinating goggles and Brain Machine can certainly give you a taste of the erratic, a new behavioral-pattern monitor at the University of California, San Diego will reportedly be used to "study the behavior of patients with mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia." The LifeShirt, "a computerized vest that continuously monitors the patient's movements," sports integrated sensors to monitor hyperactive and repetitive movements and record data on "respiration, heart rate, and other physiological measures." Notably, the padded room wearers are presumably crammed into sports a ceiling-mounted webcam that films their exploratory behavior in order to better analyze movement patterns associated with certain disorders. Eventually, of course, researchers are hoping that data collected from the sensor-laden straight jacket could be used to create new drugs to help combat the behavioral abnormalities, but for all of our sakes, let's hope this thing doesn't fall into the wrong hands.[Via MedGadget, photo courtesy of TechnologyReview]
