Uncompressed Episode 20
Uncompressed reaches another milestone as we deliver to you this, our 20th episode. Hang on to those safety rails kids, because this weeks show is a wild ride through the jungles of RAID configurations and rack-mounts. Thom and Tony go on with thier usual video game jibber-jabber in the first half, while the second half features Matt and David (Floyd) delving into the depths of geekiness previously unknown! You’re gonna love it. 
http://uncompressed.org/podcasts/uncompressed_ep20.mp3
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We hope everyone enjoys the show and thanks again for listening!
Xbox 360 Rumors
-Xbox 360 Premium Pack price is going to drop $100 in October.
-Xbox 360 Core Pack price is going to drop $80 in October
-Gears of War is going to be released the last week of October with an huge marketing campaign at global scale.
-HD-DVD for the next month of September. Add-on that you can connect to the USB 2.0 port. It is going to be priced for $100
-New HardDisk Drive with 100GB of storage, price and date not specified.
-Webcam “My Eye on you”, for the month of September with a price of $50 without game and $75 with a game.
-Xbox Backward compatibility list is going to be updated in June with 50 new titles
-The capacity of the Xbox Live Servers is going to be 5 times more than the actual servers
-Halo 3 is going to be in the market the next month of March, in E3 we are going to see the first videos.
-Possibility of an “urban game” that could be GTA. Microsoft is working on it and this isn´t a joke.
-A possible price drop in Xbox Live Gold or it is going to be free because they are going to get money with promotional advices.
-From the next month of October we are going to change some records in some games for “MSpoints”.
-Paramount Pictures and Microsoft has anounced an agreement where Paramount is going to provide HD content to Xbox Live.
-NBC has signed with Microsoft for the possibility of see the online tournaments like an sports live retransmisión.
-Aliance between Epic and Microsoft for exclusive content in Xbox Live.
-Creation of a Dashboard for kids.
-A new service in june: Download and play.
-Rare is working in Kameo 2 since before the release of Kameo. Is going to come before than expected.
-MS is working for an upgraded friend list (until 200 contacts)
-Virtual Console with Sega games before the next month of October
-An spectacular upgrade in the number of Xbox Live Arcade games in the next months.
-New look for Dashboard.
Nintendo DS
- Nintendo is putting up some big numbers with thier online service
- The DS is taking on the PSP in more than just sales
Playstation 3
Randomness
- Take the 8-bit (NES) challenge! (I got 9/16… NO CHEATING!)
- Is your copy of Windows genuine?
- Have you ever written a crappy program? Viacom might want to give you $102 million!
- RAID keeps your data safe(r) …and I heard people who don’t use it hate puppies. Do *you* hate puppies?
- Physics — The new way to blow a wad of cash on prepetual upgrading
I think that’s about it for this week… If I missed something feel free to comment below and fill in as needed. Also, I apologise that the audio is a bit funky this week (digital noise) — this particular show was a logistical nightmare, and got a bit wacky when I normalized it. Oh, and Silent Hill kinda sucked.
April 26th, 2006 at 8:22 am
I really screwed the pooch on that 8-bit test. I only got three.
I can’t wait to get back to civilization to check out the rest of this week’s show. =)
April 26th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
I was able to get a 9/16. There were two more that I should have had, but I gave up trying to remember them lol.
April 29th, 2006 at 10:24 am
Yeah, I sucked on that test as well. I only had a few games when I was a kid, and played the crap out of those. So if the characters weren’t in Mario or Metroid, I didn’t know who they were. lol.
April 29th, 2006 at 10:27 am
Also, thanks a ton guys for the overview of RAID. I have one question for ya, though. I don’t think you mentioned it in the show. Is it possible to implement a RAID 1 (I think that’s the one where one drive is an exact copy of the other) on an existing setup without formatting and losing all your data? I would be interested in doing that soley for backup purposes. And it would be nice if I could configure it and set it up without having to reformat and start all over.
April 29th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
Tyler, the official answer is “maybe” — but I wouldnt try it. If you wanted to load a RAID array as a secondary “drive” it should be pretty easy, just pop in the card, load drivers, and away you go. Now, if you wanted windows to be on that drive, things are a bit more tricky. When you set up the array, the controller will write to the boot sectors of all hard drives involved thus destroying your Windows install. You best bet would be to make the array and reinstall the OS, using F6 to install RAID drivers at the begining of setup as described on the show. The other thing you could do, is make an array, then use an imaging program like Ghost to image your current setup onto the created array — the problem here, however, is that if XP doesnt have drivers for the card, windows will not be able to boot off the array once you get everything imaged.
April 30th, 2006 at 10:16 am
DINOSAUR WORLD!!!
http://www.dinoworld.net/florida.htm
It actually was a nice place to walk around. We also hit the Lowry Park Zoo (www.lowryparkzoo.com) and that was a good time as well.
May 2nd, 2006 at 8:34 am
I’m bummed you guys talked so much about PhysX when I wasn’t around.
I think we touched on this before, and Tony’s right. PhysX is the 3dfx of physics acceleration, and just like 3d graphics acceleration, it’s essential that everyone use a common API so that it’s supported by every game out of the box rather than buying a $300 card and hoping Game X supports the physics accelerator you bought.
I’m hoping DirectX 10 includes a physics API and these things take off.