Live from Austin!

Last week, Sony finally released a PlayStation 3 bundle that actually shipped with the rumble controller included, rather than expecting people to spend an extra $60 to get one. The bundle also comes with Metal Gear Solid 4, the new iteration of one of my favorite games.

This new MGS4 bundle promptly sold out everywhere online. So on Saturday, while rothko was helping to run a local election, I figured I’d try a few stores to see if anyone had one in stock.

I was pretty pessimistic, expecting another Wii/Wii Fit scenario, based on the lack of online availability. However, my first call (to Best Buy) turned up a small cache of units. I wolfed a breakfast burrito and dashed over there. Sure enough, they had 8 new PS3 bundles, so I grabbed one.

However, while I like Metal Gear Solid, it wasn’t the game I had been waiting months to play. So I picked up a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV as well.

I already had an HDMI switchbox and suitable cables, purchased from the excellent and awesomely cheap monoprice.com. I was a good husband and got everything installed tidily in the TV stand, no trailing cables. I even cleaned and dusted. Then I settled down for some quality time.

My early impressions of GTA IV are that they’ve pretty much gone in the direction I wanted: greater realism, more interesting locations, and less empty space. Motorcycles are less unbalancing now; it’s harder to corner, and if you hit something, rather than just getting back on and continuing, you tend to tumble like a rag doll across 20 meters of asphalt and cripple yourself. It’s also possible to drive a car into a solid object fast enough that you fly through the windshield in a shower of glass and end up bleeding in the street.

The violence level has been toned down as well. Rather than ridiculous overkill missions with rocket launchers, the initial focus is on small-scale crime. You, a handgun, and a baseball bat. The story is better too; the protagonist gradually gets drawn into crime, reluctantly.

Haven’t tried multiplayer yet.

I’ve had it for over a month now, and I have to say the Oppo OPDV971H is great. If you dislike censorship, like obscure movies, or download unavailable TV shows and movies from the Internet, this is the player for you.

In a nutshell: It will play any DVD from any country in the world, on any TV in the world. It’ll also play XviD and DivX Pro MPEG-4 files on CD-R, CD-RW, or DVD-R, at resolutions up to 720×480. It runs at 110 or 240V, 50 or 60 Hz, so you can plug it in in any country.

If you have an HDTV, it has HDMI/HDCP and DVI output. If you have a reasonably new non-HD TV, it has component output and S-video. If you have an old crufty TV, it has plain old composite video too.

It has a Faroudja DCDi chip in, which is pretty much the state of the art in consumer upscaling. What does that mean? It means your regular DVD can be interpolated up to a proper 720p or 1080i signal, so you don’t see pixels or scan lines on your HDTV. It also does cross-color suppression, so your classic black and white movies stay black and white. It also does 3:2 and 2:2 pulldown, to turn movie DVDs into 24 fps progressive signals.

There’s the usual optical digital output for the audio, or coaxial digital if you prefer. It handles DTS as well as Dolby Digital 5.1. The onboard digital circuits are 192KHz 24 bit, and there’s a 3D virtual surround encoder for those who don’t have 6 speakers and don’t have a receiver that’ll do the job. There’s an adjustable delay to deal with lip sync problems caused by the advanced video processing; I find 30ms is about right.

It supposedly plays DVD-Audio. I haven’t tested that, because DVD-Audio is crippled into uselessness by its DRM—you can’t rip it for your iPod, car, or computer, and you need three extra cables because the music industry won’t allow the signal to travel digitally.

It also does slideshows of JPEGs burnt on a CD, and plays MP3s if you make sure the filenames are short (12 characters + extension).

Yes, it handles anamorphic just fine. Play anamorphic PAL region 2 releases on your NTSC TV, play PAL DivX rips scaled up to 720p, play NTSC DVDs on a PAL TV.

And the best bit: it’s $200, including the cables.

There are a few tiny downsides. The remote’s a bit crap (all the buttons look identical and the labels are hard to see). The disc drawer feels disturbingly flimsy. Sometimes the DivX decoder can’t quite keep up the frame rate at high bitrates, and you get a visible tear in the bottom third of the screen—but that doesn’t seem to affect DVDs. Oh, and it’s a bit slow to boot (you have to wait 3-4 seconds after power up before the tray will eject).

So: I say get one and give the finger to the MPAA. Watch the uncensored Region 3 version of Eyes Wide Shut. Watch UK comedy and Japanese Anime. Download bizarre 50s educational movies from the Prelinger Archives and view them from the comfort of your couch.