XBox 360 or PS3...a tough one.

[unreal]

Heyas Unreal, nice to see another ecchi hermit (jiraiya) fan hahaha (naruto ref for the rest of ya) - Yes, you've make quite a few valid points. Tbh I don't expect the PS3 to be on time either - usually things never go as planned and as you said add on the wait for Jap/US first it's deffo gonna be a year later...

Now if only I find an easy way of connecting the XBox to a DVI display (has a DVI male connector)....This is an Apple 23" display, not a TV - hence the problem.

LOL yeah, I'm a Jiraya/Gai Sensei/Rock Lee/Naruto/Kakashi fan, along with a few others... it's almost as good as Bleach IMO, which I've just noticed you've got in your avatar

I think DVI to HDMI connectors or something like that is very easy to get hold of - maybe you can get the VGA adapter as said and use an adapter on that? The only thing is though, is that apparently it doesn't work so well with higher resolutions (such as 1080i) which I'm sure you want to use...

[bsodmike]

Heh yea BLEACH is fantastic...right now it's taking a pause waiting for all hell to break loose, eventually at least.

Well the 23" is natively a HD display, and does 1920x1200 iirc is 1080i, but whether it will look crystal or not is another question hrm...

Just dled the latest Naruto, off to watch

Cheers, Mike

[Nick]

The Xbox 360 is a proprietary plug ont he back of the console, you just buy the cable you want for what connections you need the other end.

Third party makers are bringing out VGA cables for it now, so availability should improve from now on and console availability should be good now too so DON'T buy a boxed new one second hand off EBAY, you CAN get them direct from the shops with little trouble.

Should you go for a PS3 or an Xbox 360? That's a personal decision really but I would say that the PS3 as yet unannounced details don't help it any... we don't know exactly what the console is going to able to do as yet... will it act as a media centre? Will we be able to rip music to it? Can it do any of the stuiff the Xbox 360 can do, media wise?

The Xbox 360 is a rock solid media extender as well as a gaming console, so suddenyl all those photos on your PC are back into play by being able to stream them over the network, through the Xbox 360 and onto your TV... all your music too. And if you're running MCE with a digital TV card, you've now got all that cool PVR stuff you could do on your PC in your living room without having the PC in there... A fully fledged media extender and top notch gaming console for £300? You'd be mad not to, really.

That said, I've not got anything against the PS3 and will be getting one in my professional capacity anyway, but we just don;t know for sure what the PS3 is going to be able to do ontop of being a games console... As the Xbox 360 has demonstrated, it's possible to seamlessly intergrate more than one core function into the console, so Sony will really have to go along a similar route too...

[bsodmike]

Heyas Nick,

Thanks for that heads up - I will head into town tomorrow and see how quickly I can get my self an Xbox. That said, I'm not too hot on all these various 'Media Centre' stuff, simply due to my situation. Currently all my photos are 8mb RAW files inside Aperture which I enjoy on the 23" Apple display. Also all my music (digitally stored) are on the same G5, played via iTunes over Coax into the Denon 3805.

The 3910 will handle all DVDs, DVD-A and SACD discs - for the best possible reproduction of the media. Sorry, I'm not boasting here but simply stating that I'm not attracted by any of these media centre features. As for playing stuff I download movies wise on the Plasma I will be having my powerbook hooked up via a 7m DVI cable, and another coax interface through a M-Audio Sonica Theatre USB (7.1 chan) - which might be overkill due to source content, but I can stream stuff off the G5 easily as well.

I am however attracted to the xbox360 simply as it is currently the 'best' out there and to be honest since Metal Gear Solid 3 on the PS2 there hasn't been *anything* out there that has caught my fancy. Quite a lot of the xbox360 titles have me intrigued and I'm sure with time the developers will start to actually utilize the hardware to its full potential. It is shocking how amazing some of the recent PS2 titles look in comparison to titles released a year ago - same hardware, better looking games heh!

I don't see my self of going the full hog of getting a xbox360, ninty what'sitcalled and a PS3 but I'm gonna start with an xbox for now. Let's hope some stores in Leeds will have 'em in stock. I'm in no real hurry, but it would be nice if I could have one by next week.

Cheers, Mike

[MAdMaN]

That said, I've not got anything against the PS3 and will be getting one in my professional capacity anyway, but we just don;t know for sure what the PS3 is going to be able to do ontop of being a games console... As the Xbox 360 has demonstrated, it's possible to seamlessly intergrate more than one core function into the console, so Sony will really have to go along a similar route too...

They have said that the hard drive (released with of after the console) will have Linux on it, so it should be able to be used for a number of other things (though, if the PS2 Linux kit is anything to go by, there may be restrictions, e.g. music CDs won't play).