If you’ve been thinking of buying an Xbox for a while but have bravely held off through numerous price cuts and the opportunity to play games like GTA IV, then your time to shine could be just around the corner.
Rumour has it Microsoft might be planning another rather significant slashing of prices for its console again, with the ‘entry-level’ arcade model suggested to be a bargain basement $199 (£100).
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The squabble over whether the games industry or the BBFC should be put in charge of rating games took a decisive turn today following the publication of a House Of Commons report.
The CMS Select Committee report, which covered videogame classifications among other things, recommends that the BBFC - which mainly certifies movies and some contentious adult-games - take the lead in classifying games for ages 12 and above.
The decision will come as a real blow to the pan-European games rating system, PEGI, backed by games software developer organisation, ELSPA as well as big guns like Microsoft, Nintendo and Ubisoft.
The report concluded:
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Blu-ray iMac
We’re looking to buy an iMac, but there’s no indication of if or when Apple is going to offer Blu-ray drives.
Rachael Johnson
JS: It’s more than three years since Apple joined the Blu-ray Association’s board and more than two years since Sony announced Windows laptops with built-in Blu-ray drives, so Apple’s silence is a mystery. The iMac is based on the same Intel technology that is found in Sony and other laptops that play Blu-ray discs when running Windows XP or Vista, so it’s not clear why there has been a delay.
However, Apple needs to offer the H.264/AVC High Profile and VC-1 video and various audio codecs, support the Blu-ray Java interface software and implement the required DRM (Digital Rights Management) system - none of which it appears to do, so far. Monitors must also support HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection), but Apple’s website doesn’t actually say if any of its screens support it, and Apple’s Cinema Display screens do not. This makes it impossible to predict when Apple will finally offer Blu-ray, but I’d guess it would come with a new range. You could, of course, connect an external Blu-ray drive, such as the LaCie d2 (£546 at Amazon.co.uk), to an iMac if you wanted to use it for storage. If you want to play commercial Blu-ray movies, I suspect you’d be better off buying a standalone player or a Sony PlayStation 3.
From Tiny to Bit.ly
Until two weeks ago, it was all TinyURL. Now it’s all Bit.ly. I can’t find an article explaining the difference. Is there one?
Tim Gossling
JS: Both services let you paste in a very long web address then provide you with a short code that redirects to it. The main thing that Bit.ly adds is URL tracking: in other words, we get a number for how many people clicked each link. Unlike TinyURL, Bit.ly also keeps a copy of each page. For more details, see bit.ly/3Z5DAA
Closing Task Manager
There seems no way to close the Task Manager in Windows Vista other than rebooting. Once opened, there is no close button, and right-clicking does nothing.
Callum Brown
JS: Normally you can close applications by clicking the cross in the top right hand corner or by pressing Alt and F4. Not having a close button was a bit of a mystery, but a Microsoft Knowledge Base article reveals that Task Manager has a Tiny Footprint Mode. Briefly, double-clicking the top border of the window will bring back the usual controls. This applies in Windows XP as well.
Failed update
I was trying to update Windows Defender in XP but the application declared that error code 0×80241001 prevented this. Afterwards my browser, Firefox, kept crashing.
Alan Braddock
JS: The error code indicates that an update was not installed successfully. The Microsoft Knowledge Base describes two ways to fix the problem. If that doesn’t stop Firefox crashing, try uninstalling Firefox 2 and then reinstalling either Firefox 2 or 3.
LA in a TIFF
I submit environmental reports to a local authority. It says: “TIFF files are required for archival purposes as they are uncompressed which means they retain image detail and are stable (ie, do not degrade through successive opening and closing and saving)” unlike JPegs.
David Lynn
JS: JPeg files are “lossy” - they use a compression system that loses some detail - but opening and closing images does not cause any degradation. However, loading a .jpg image into a paint program and saving it can cause degradation, even if you don’t change it. There is no reason to do this, of course, but paint programs typically have a quality setting somewhere, so you will be re-saving them at “95% quality” or whatever. The rule is therefore not to mess about with original images, only with copies. TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is a very old but very flexible format and it provides the option for lossless LZW compression, for example.
Backchat
Meriel Whale wanted an MP3 player with a built-in FM radio. On the Ask Jack blog, Paddydog suggested using a mobile phone: “The Sony Ericsson W960i has all the benefits of a Walkman and great sound quality. It also has FM radio and a capacity of 8GB.” I also suggested only buying DRM-free tracks, and Peter Killick adds: “You need to make people aware of the big quality differences between what you get from different suppliers for more or less the same cost.” An MP3 from Play.com might have a bit rate of 320kbps and one from Tesco Digital only 128kbps, he says.
· Get your queries answered by Jack Schofield, our computer editor at jack.schofield@guardian.co.uk
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Microsoft’s a stubborn old beast. Despite receiving some rather underwhelming feedback for its Surface and Table touchscreen products it hasn’t stopped trying to project content onto weird and wonderful places.
We’ve seen tables and walls, so a giant ball seems like the next logical step. The Sphere is slightly more interesting in that it uses internal projection along with the touch sensitive surface to allow you to interact.
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We were a bit surprised last week when Yahoo decided to shut down its DRM servers, rendering all sorts of “purchased” music close to worthless. After all, when Microsoft had done the same thing, public outcry forced Microsoft to keep the servers running for a few more years. Now Yahoo has leapfrogged that decision, promising either refunds or a replacement DRM-free version of tracks that you downloaded via its service. This may turn out to be expensive for Yahoo, but that’s what the company gets for agreeing to a DRM’d solution in the first place, rather than trusting its instincts and telling the labels to ditch the DRM years ago.
What’s more interesting about this is that retailers may need to start matching this offer. In other words, people are now (reasonably) expecting retailers to “future proof” their music, so that they don’t have to buy the same songs over and over again. If people are buying music, they expect to be able to continue to use that music no matter how the technology changes — and they’re pushing to make sure that happens. Yahoo’s decision to now make its music (even as its shutting down the music service) future proof should make the recording industry realize that the days of getting consumers to rebuy all their music every time there’s a format shift are long gone.
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It’s no secret that Microsoft has a bit of a problem on its hands concerning the general public’s impression of Microsoft Vista. The fact that people regularly joke about “upgrading” to the previous OS version, XP, is clearly an issue for the company. So what did it do? Apparently, it played a bit of a practical joke on people, getting them to play around with Vista, while pretending it was an early version of the OS that will come after Vista. Microsoft was clearly trying to get quotes out of people about how cool it looked — and the company carefully made sure to get users of a wide variety of operating systems (Mac, Linux, Windows XP and Windows 2000, according to the site). While it might come across as a neat little publicity stunt, it does give you a sense of just how bad Microsoft’s initial marketing campaign was. In order to make up for it, the company had to trick people into trying out Vista. Ouch.
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If you’re planning to see a movie, rent a DVD, buy a CD or - most importantly - a video game, then Metacritic is the place to go. It reads the reviews so you don’t have to, then adds up the ratings to provide a single metascore out of 100. It’s a consensus view, and it carries weight.
Of course, you could argue for days about whether Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which scores 93) is a better movie than Raging Bull (92), but that’s not the point. What you can instantly see from Metacritic is that The Dark Knight gets a green light (82), Mamma Mia! is on amber (scoring 51, with mixed reviews) and Space Chimps is at red (35). Job done.
Metacritic has some powerful rivals in the movie business. IMDb, for example, provides the most amazing detail, while Rotten Tomatoes adds news and features to its metascoring. Where Metacritic wins is in covering DVDs, TV series, audio CDs, books and video games, as well as new movies.
Metacritic’s scores are particularly important in the games business, as the site’s co-founder and games editor Marc Doyle explained to The Guardian’s games blog. A moviegoer spends $10 and two hours on a movie, whereas a gamer can spend $60 on a title expected to last 30 to 50 hours. Buying a game is a bigger commitment, so there is more incentive to find the best.
Metascores are compiled from a highly select group of (mostly American) sources such as daily newspapers, weekly magazines and prominent websites. The emphasis is on quality, not quantity. Each review is converted into a numeric score, but again, not all reviews are equal: the big names carry more weight, as decided by Metacritic’s section editor. Metascores change as more reviews appear, but quickly settle down. For those who care, the site has a long explanation: How We Calculate Our Scores.
One drawback with Metacritic is that it doesn’t go very far back. The site was launched in January 2001 by three “former attorneys who were happy to find a more constructive (but less profitable) use of their time”, and was acquired by CNet Networks in 2005. It generally doesn’t cover titles launched in the 1980s and 1990s, though it is adding classics “as time and resources permit”.
Also, Metacritic doesn’t cover everything. It doesn’t attempt to cover all the new CDs and books that appear every year - there are too many - or “straight to video” movies. If titles are not being reviewed in The New York Times, The Guardian, Newsweek, Empire and similar publications, or websites such as Pitchfork, Salon and Slate, then there won’t be any scores for Metacritic to tally.
And if you want more depth in support of a metascore, Metacritic provides brief quotations and links to the original reviews (if they are on the web). Just as a way to find from three to 33 good reviews of a recent title, Metacritic is worth knowing.
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I recognize that Yahoo was a bit busy fending off the repeated acquisition offers from Microsoft a few months back, but could they seriously not have noticed the massive backlash that Microsoft received for telling people that it was turning off its DRM servers, effectively locking all the songs people had “bought” to their current computers. The loud complaints resulted in Microsoft backing down and agreeing to keep the servers running for a few more years.
So, what does Yahoo! do? It mimics Microsoft’s original move. It’s sent out an email to users noting that its DRM server will be shut down, preventing the “buyers” from moving the songs to new computers. This seems doubly ironic, given that Yahoo’s last two music bosses, David Goldberg and Ian Rogers had spoken out against DRM. While neither is still with the company, it’s rather amusing that Yahoo is now helping to prove the point — though probably not in the way that was intended when either Goldberg or Rogers spoke up.
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If you’ve got an Xbox but haven’t gotten busy with Xbox live and the various online services it offers, then Microsoft has come up with another reason to get you on board.
It has recently signed up a number of big names to direct a series of short horror films designed to be downloaded or streamed direct from the service to your television in 26 countries around the world.
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I have tunes bought from the Apple site, but I also use Windows Media Player and have music that isn’t iTunes compatible. I would like to get an MP3 player that will let me play all my songs. I also want it to have a radio.
Meriel Whale
JS: I don’t know of any player that can handle music protected by Apple’s digital rights management (DRM) and also Microsoft’s. Apple has avoided supporting WMA (Windows Media Audio) and hasn’t licensed Microsoft’s DRM. Apple also hasn’t openly licensed its own FairPlay DRM so that companies such as Sony and Archos can use it. You must therefore go for one DRM or the other, depending on which is most important to you. You can rescue the incompatible tunes by burning them to disc in audio CD format then re-ripping them to WMA, AAC or MP3. However, this will lead to some loss in quality.
Choosing an MP3 player is partly a matter of taste, and it’s worth trying them in a shop to see which you like. Look at the 8GB iPod nano, even though it doesn’t play WMA files or have a built-in radio. Other 8GB models to look at include the Sony NWZA818, the Creative Zen (model 70PF216000115), and the SanDisk Sansa e280. All three can play WMA, protected WMA and MP3 files, and the Sony and Creative Zen models also play unprotected AAC files. The Sony has the best sound quality, beating iPods etc in a H-Fi World review. However, it does not have a radio, and the other two do. Since these players generally cost around £70 each at Amazon.co.uk, you could also get an iPod Shuffle and cover all bases for roughly the cost of an 8GB iPod nano. For the future, I’d suggest never buying any music files that include DRM.
My service provider told me that I would shorten the life of my router (Netgear DG824M Wireless) if I were to continue my practice of switching it off as a way of reducing our energy consumption. I had been in touch with their support staff over occasional brief interruptions in my broadband connection.
Graham Rooth
JS: I don’t know of any reason why turning a router off should shorten its life. On the other hand, I had two routers die in about three years: I turned them off and they never came back on. I now leave mine on all the time, and stand it on Blu-Tack legs to get some air underneath. Routers consume relatively little power - probably around 8-15 Watts - but you could measure yours with an energy monitoring plug.
I am using a broadband router which has a firewall built in. Is it still necessary to run a software firewall?
Steve Gorwits
JS: Yes. The firewall in the router should stop most probes, but if your PC gets a virus or Trojan from a USB drive, a program you have downloaded or some other source, the router will not stop it from calling out. And after it calls out, your router firewall will not block the response. You need a software firewall to control the programs running on your PC: not only malware but also legitimate programs that access the net without telling you.
Could you tell me why I keep getting “Internet Explorer cannot display the web page”? Also, is it safe to use Microsoft Updates, as I read that these were causing problems.
M Alderson
JS: There are a lot of reasons why IE might not display a web page, and Microsoft has a trouble-shooter. One reason not covered is that you might have a virus or browser hijacker, which can result from failing to install critical Windows Updates. These can sometimes cause some problems, but not as many as can be caused by not installing them.
Hotmail now makes me enter my password twice. After the first time, the page refreshes and says my username or password is incorrect. If I retype my password, it lets me in.
Harry Annison
JS: This seems to be a recent Hotmail bug and it affects Mac and Linux owners with various browsers, not just Windows users. The trick is to bookmark the second page when it appears, and go straight to that page in future. The address will look something like bit.ly/2im8EV, and this may work for you.
Backchat
· Following our discussion of firewalls, “Bill Blagger” provided a link to firewall tests. The results are exaggerated because if a firewall fails the first test, it doesn’t get to take the others. But Comodo and Online Armor come through as the best free firewalls.
Get your queries answered by Jack Schofield, our computer editor at jack.schofield@guardian.co.uk
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