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FOX is giving away 200 MS point codes for FREE! [update]
Update: All of FOX's free Microsoft point codes for this promotion are now gone. Congrats to those who got in on the fun.Come and get your free Microsoft points! As part of their marketing fun for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, FOX is giving away 200 FREE Microsoft points to anyone with an email address and a gamertag. Yes, FREE with no strings attached. Simply head on over to the official Sarah Connor Chronicles website and look towards the bottom right hand side. There, you'll spot an "X-BOX FREE POINTS" form where you can enter your email address and gamertag. Then, wait a few seconds, check your email and tada! You should have received an email with a code you can redeem for 200 Microsoft points. We aren't sure how many codes they are giving away or how long this will last, so we advise heading over to the Sarah Connor Chronicles website stat. We love you FOX ... free Microsoft points FTW![Thanks, Eddie Barrera]
ABC Television and MGM brings HD content to Xbox Marketplace
At CES today, Microsoft announced an expansion of its Xbox Live video offerings. ABC Television and MGM will both offer HD videos on the Marketplace. Coincidentally, these studios are exclusively aligned to Blu-ray. This agreement gives Xbox owners a chance to experience this content in HD as well.ABC Television Network, ABC Family, ABC News, Disney Channel and Toon Disney are all part of this new offering. More than 500 hours of content, in both standard definition and high definition, will be offered including ABC Television shows Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives. Past and current shows will be offered, as will archived ABC News broadcasts.MGM will offer a wide variety of movies, from the Rocky series to Dances with Wolves. Movies across all demographics will be available, including Terminator, Silence of the Lambs, Legally Blonde, Barbershop and Agent Cody Banks. Platoon, Rain Man and The Usual Suspects will also be available.Price and an exact launch date of this newly announced content have yet to be revealed. HD DVD may have gotten a serious death blow this week, but it appears Microsoft's on-demand offerings should more than satiate the HD film appetite of the Xbox fan.
Blu-ray movie releases for the week of Dec. 16
Wow, what can this be? Yet another week with several great Blu-ray releases? Apparently so as we're treated to one of Harrison Ford's greatest movies, Shakira in HD and the Governator. What more can you ask for? Blade Runner: Complete Collector's Edition Blade Runner: Ultimate Collector's Edition Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines Shakira: Oral Fixation Tour That's Entertainment: The Complete Collection The Simpsons Movie Underdog While we'll happily pass on Underdog and That's Entertainment, The Simpsons Movie is definitely a must-buy. But if this week's releases aren't enough, you might be interested in the Fox and MGM buy one, get one free deal that's currently going on at Amazon. There are some pretty decent deals to be had.
Halcyon adapting Terminator for new game
If you're looking at it objectively, Terminator should be the best video game license in the known universe. It's a story about a robot who travels through time to kill other robots. Doesn't that just scream GOTY? Puzzlingly though, the franchise has had mixed success in its interactive form. Now it seems a new, untested publisher will be taking the reins, and fans can expect the streak of disappointing Terminator games to finally ... continue.Halcyon, the studio that picked up the rights to Terminator, is working on a new game based on their upcoming film Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. Both are due in mid-2009. Both are also their first projects, but we already know one thing they're bad at: Naming things. ... Oh, and filling us with confidence. So, two things.
New helmet allows fighter pilots to peer through the jet
No, the headgear in the photo above wasn't some unused prototype created for The Terminator; rather, it's a snazzy new helmet designed to give fighter pilots a better look at their surroundings. Within the tinted faceplate are two projectors which sync up with plane-mounted cameras and display images from the outside for the pilot to view. Essentially, this enables the operator to view high-resolution images (yes, even at night) of areas previously imperceptible without a warplane constructed entirely of plexiglass, and onboard sensors make sure that the imagery reflects exactly where the pilot is looking at any given moment. Furthermore, computerized systems can even feed in "essential flight and combat data on to the display," as well as target symbols of friendlies / enemies. The new visual system is apparently just one amenity on the oh-so-sophisticated Joint Strike Fighter, which the British are planning to pay £66 million ($139 million) apiece for after it hits the production line.[Via Switched]
Terminator 3: I'll be back, in a couple of weeks
We all have to wait a couple of weeks longer than expected to check out Terminator 3, Warner's first Blu-ray release with IME. The release date has been bumped from December 4 to December 18. It's been an interesting road to release for this title: an initial HD DVD-only release; then its announcement as a Blu-ray "catch up" disc; clarification that the PiP commentary would come from two copies of the movie on one disc rather than a single Profile 1.1 version; and now this delay. No word on what the cause for the delay is -- hopefully Warner isn't having to compromise the sound or video quality to make space for the IME version.
Warner: Terminator 3 on Blu-ray to include IME, but not Profile 1.1
Terminator 3 will be Warner's first Blu-ray release with IME, but it won't be the first to support Blu-ray Profile 1.1 features. High-Def Digest confirmed that Warner is including the PiP commentary from the HD DVD release by putting two copies of the movie on the disc, one with commentary and one without. This has been done before, most notably on The Descent, and should have the benefit of being viewable even on older (or newer) Blu-ray players. The bad news is that whenever updated hardware and software exists to support more BD-Java, there may not be anything new to watch for a while (we're hoping for The Matrix Trilogy).[Thanks, domerdel]
Warner's first Blu-ray catch-up title due in December
Although Warner is officially format neutral, some of their biggest titles are HD DVD exclusives. Warner has never came out and stated that it was due to Blu-ray's less than complete interactive layer, but it's been the general consensus. Now it seems those speculations were dead on, as the first Warner Blu-ray title with their "In-Movie Experience" will come to Blu-ray on November 3rd -- Terminator 3 has been available on HD DVD since September 2006. At this point it seems that only owners of the LG BH200 will be able to enjoy the new feature, but we'd expect there to be at least a few other profile 1.1 complaint players by then. Blu-ray fans can only hope that this is the first of many otherwise exclusive HD DVD Warner titles -- yes we're talking about the Matrix, which was promised this year -- to make it to Blu-ray this holiday season.
California game law won't be back
The California game law which would have restricted anyone under the age of 18 from buying or renting "violent video games" has been effectively terminated. The bill, signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger back in 2005, which was created by politician Leland Yee, had a preliminary injunction put on it while the ESA fought the bill in the courts. Today a judge made the injunction permanent. The bill follows in the long list of game laws found unconstitutional at this point. Yet, that still doesn't stop more states from attempting to recycle the tired legislation. According to Bo Andersen, president of the Entertainment Merchants Association, "It was inevitable that the federal district court would find the California video game restriction law unconstitutional, as eight similar laws around the country have been overturned in the past six years." Ready kids, here comes the fun part -- how much is California going to have to pay the ESA back for fighting the law? Politicians need to learn that when they push through unconstitutional laws, it's the taxpayer who pay -- literally.
Japanese hardware sales, 4 December - 10 December: Terminator edition
Listen to me. I've been sent from the future, sent to warn you about the impending destruction of the human race. There were so many, we just couldn't ... we were overwhelmed within weeks. Humans now live in scattered clusters, fearful of the raids, desperately clinging to life. We need to stop it. They're gaining power.Surely, you've seen the signs. They're infecting homes, complacent, waiting for their chance to strike. Soon, their numbers will be unstoppable, and you're allowing, nay, helping their cause. Every week they grow stronger! They added what will be their strongest general, Dragon Quest, to their arsenal quite recently. Yes, surely you see it now: within two months, the DS Lites will become sentient. They'll launch a attack on the Pentagon and all major military bases in the continental United States, removing our defensive capabilities. From then on, it'll be inevitable ... Judgement Day.From their seat of power in Akihabara, Japan (the new capital of Nitro, their self-proclaimed worldwide empire), they will launch wave after wave of attack on the remaining humans. We're led by the one man who might rally us from defeat ... Reggie, of course. He sent me here, to prevent it, but now I see that it's already too late. February 13th is the day, gentlemen. May Iwata have mercy on your pathetic souls.- DS Lite: 309,630 132,729 (75.03%)- Wii: 85,439 264,919 (75.61%)- PS3: 50,171 18,735 (59.6%) - Xbox 360: 35,343 31,290 (772.02%) - PS2: 30,460 7,345 (31.78%) - PSP: 28,930 5,013 (20.96%) - GBA SP: 1,896324 (20.61%) - Game Boy Micro: 1,555 303 (24.20%) - Gamecube: 569 252 (30.69%) - DS Phat: 167 27 (19.29%) - GBA: 17 5 (22.73%) - Xbox: 6 5 (45.45%)[Source: Media Create]
Wiimote + AI = Skynet?
AiLive, a company that focuses on developing artificial intelligence algorithms and software packages for games, has recently scored a partnership with Nintendo to develop the tool LiveMove. LiveMove is a development tool focused on making the Wiimote "learn" from player's movements. The goal is to make the development easier by allowing developers to program the Wiimote for more natural movements.According to the official site for LiveMove, the program, while using less than 5% of the Wii's CPU, can recognize up to forty different motions on up to eight Wiimotes at once. Pretty soon, we imagine through the use of this tool, the Wiimote will know how much salt we enjoy on our french fries and, even sooner, how much pressure to apply to human craniums for massive damage. Is Judgment Day coming?[Via 4cr]
DS Robot frightens DS Fanboy staff
Suffice it to say, the more leaps we make in the technological field, the closer an apocalypse brought on from sentient robotic AI comes. We all know that sooner or later, man and machine will face off in the ultimate action movie war for dominance of the planet Earth. Well, it would seem two gentlemen by the names of Jandujar and N3TKat are hard at work, attempting to bring this conflict to the globe at a much earlier date than all of us loons prognosticators are predicting. Although the robot looks like it's incapable of wielding a laser cannon at the moment, it's only a matter of time.[Thanks Nushio!]
Attack of the animalbots: octopus, fish inspire new robot designs
Rather than a future filled with humanoid robotic overlords as envisioned by the Terminator films, the proliferation of animal-inspired robots makes it seem much more likely that we'll be doing the bidding of a veritable zoo of snakebots, insectbots, robolobsters, mulebots, and perhaps the occasional sharkbot / attack dolphin. The latest animals to have their moves cribbed by researchers are the octopus and fish, with DARPA working on a pneumatic tentacle to replace the clumsy robotic claws of old, while students and faculty at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University have invented a robotic, propeller-less propulsion system that mimics the undulating motion of fins. DARPA's invention, called the Octarm and part of the larger Biodynotics program, was developed in collaboration with scientists at the University of North Carolina, and uses a 24-volt electro-pneumatic pressure system to control a tapered, inflatable arm that can do both fairly precise work as well as heavier lifting. NTU's project, meanwhile, employs an artificial fin attached to adjustable spokes that create a wave-like motion for propelling the bot forward in a manner very similar to a stingray's movements. Movies of both new members of the growing animalbot army, whose purposes are mostly military in nature, are available by following the "Read" links below...Read- Octarm [Via Engadget Japanese]Read- Fishbot [Via Yahoo! Asia]
