Since buying C an Xbox for her birthday, I’ve spent a lot more time in the computer room playing on my Xbox Elite than playing in the front room on limited edition Halo Reach Xbox, on the 52″ TV, connected to the TrueHD 7.1 Amp.
To be honest, I actually prefer it, as we’re being a more sociable with each other. In the past, I would normally spend a good couple of hour playing on the Xbox downstairs, and C would lose hours on a “Dinner Dash type” time management game.
In the computer room we both have an LG LED 23″ FullHD Monitor/TV which we have the Xboxs connected to, which we then use as a 2nd monitor. The LED TV’s are great and give a great picture, however the sound quality is only average at best. I’ve spend the last week or so with a pair of £10 Sony headphones on, which does give a lot better sound, but….I do miss the surround sound.
Now we have the history out of the way, you now know why I’ve been out and bought this headset. As I mentioned above, I tend to spend more time in the computer room being “sociable”, but miss the surround sound. I knew there were headsets out there that could product a surround sound experience, as this type of stereo expander has been mainstream for quite a while.
I did look as some headphone which actually had multiple speakers in each earphone which would give an actual surround sound, however these are advertised as being able to give a true 7.1 using only a stereo headset….obviously I was intrigued and bought them.
The DPX21 is essentially a bundle. It’s the Ear Force PX21 headet, with the Ear Force DSS digital processor. The processor itself has an optical input, which then passed 7.1 / 5.1 to the headset giving you the 7.1 surround sound experience.
Now to be honest, I was a little dubious, as everything in my head suggests, that stereo headphones and and will only produce a stereo sound ….surly ?…….I wrong was I !!! These things are AMAZING !!!
Once I’d got everything wired up (which was slightly messy to be honest), I fired up Red Dead Redemption on the Xbox and was totally blown away the the ambiance. I then fired off a couple of shots, and just sat there with the biggest smile on my face. I have to say, that my expensive amp and 7.1 speaker system in the front room has been equalled if not beaten by this £100 headset !
I then plugged these into the PS3 and put on the Black Hawk Down bluray (my Bluray of choice when testing an audio system), and again… AMAZING !
As you can probably tell from the above, the headset is universal, it works on the PS3, Xbox and Mac/PC (assuming you have an optical port)
The headset itself is very comfy, it is a little weighty, but the head strap is adjustable enough to take the weight.
All in all, this is an amazing headset, and suggest to anybody who is playing games on a Xbox, PS3 or even PC/Mac in 2 channels due to not having room to place the speakers….and have a £100 spare, go buy theses, they are amazing !
I found these at Amazon for about £110, however with shopping around I found them at just over £90 at shopto.net with free shipping.
As always, unboxing photos below, as well as the official blurb from Turtle Beach describing how these work.
Posted by Ub3rG33k on Mar 19, 2011 in Brain Dump, PS3
I’ve got a few good things to say about Sony’s Playstation plus, however a lot of bad things. Granted it’s still in it’s infant stages, but it’s so lacking at the moment, especially when you compare it with the Xbox Live service.
When firmware 3.60 was release, with the online storage option, I finally took the plunge and dropped £40 on a Playstation Plus subscription. I’m in a fortunate position where I have 2 PS3′s, (one in the front room, and one in the bedroom), and the idea of being able to save to the “cloud”, then pick up again in another room really appealed to me. I also like the idea of the automatic download feature, that basically downloading the updates to the games while the machine is switched off. This would fix one of the things I find most annoying about the PS3 over the Xbox, size of the updates, for some reason updating a game on the Xbox takes literally seconds, where the PS3 takes minutes….sometime even hours (Currently updating GT5 as we speak)
Now maybe I should have read up on this first, or at least spent some time in the forums reading peoples impressions first before dropping the £40, but was what I was hoping for.
The ability to save directly to the cloud, and pickup on another PS3 (just like the Steam Cloud)
The ability for the PS3 to download my updates while I slept (this way I never had to see again the “There is an update, do you want to download it” screen)
What I actually got….
The ability to manually backup my save games to the cloud (the same functionality we used to have with a USB stick……). Unfortunately non of my games recognise the cloud storage, so it means I have to manually download my save game, then remember to re-upload it once I’ve finished playing. This has already caught me out a number of times….I fired up a game of the other PS3, only to have to quit to the XMB to copy the save game local….or even fire up the other PS3 to copy the game to the cloud :s
On the subject of copying, Sony really don’t make it easy. Probably like most people, the first thing I did was to copy all my save games on to the cloud storage, this I had to do once save at a time !…..there is a “group saves by game” function, but you still have to go into the grouped folder and manually copy each one across….took me an evening to back everything up.
Next the storage size…..150Mb ?….in this day and age…..when each one of my later Fallout 3 saves were over 5Mb each….obviously I didn’t have room to fit them all on, come on Sony, if the likes of Dropbox can offer us 2GB for free, 150Mb is a joke.
So, once I’d back up all my saves, I thought…ok time for the automatic download setting. Once I’d finally found the setting, I selected my 2 hour windows of “when to download” and left it too it. I then went to the 2nd Ps3 to set up the automatic download on that, in the hope to select a different 2 hour windows, but was politely told that I already have automatic download setup on my account, and I do have it on this or the other 1, but not at the same time …….really ?
Now if my understanding is currect, the automatic download feature is useless if you use the cloud storage, as it uses your local save game files as it’s base of “what to download”, if there are no saves on the PS3 (which on mine there aren’t as they’re all in the cloud), then it doesn’t download anything !….*clap, clap, well done Sony*
Ok, so finally the content, and what you really get for your £40 a year. Now I agree, you do get benefit when you have a plus subscription, but are they worth it.
Below is the list of what I downloaded from the Playstation plus “benefits”
Sonic the Hedgehog (not HD’d up, just added trophies), looked and sounded horrible
Astro Tripper, Pix’n Love and Enigmo (all mini games, played once, and deleted)
inFamous 2 Dynamic theme (does look pretty cool, I have to say)
All apart from the theme have now been deleted, this was from the below list of possible downloads for the month of March
2 March to 5 April 2011 All titles are for PlayStation 3 unless stated otherwise.
Games
Sonic the Hedgehog – one month exclusive for PlayStation Plus members
Astro Tripper
Pix’n Love Rush (minis) – two weeks early for PlayStation Plus members
Enigmo (minis) – two weeks early for PlayStation Plus members
Full Game Trial
Prince of Persia
Special Offers
PlayTV Live Chat – 25% off until 6 July 2011
Fat Princess – 50% off
Fat Princess (PSP) – 50% off
StarDrone (PS3) – 50% discount on day of launch
Premier Manager – 50% off
Dynamic themes and Premium Avatars
EyePet Avatars
inFamous 2 theme
Sega Mega Drive Classics theme
MotorStorm Apocalypse Urban Avatar
MotorStorm Apocalypse Burning Avatar
MotorStorm Apocalypse Rookie XMB theme
Maybe I’m just disappointed as I was expecting more, I was hoping for Steam Cloud type storage, I was hoping to never see a “Update is available” screen again, but currently this isn’t the case.
Maybe now they have the Cloud storage backbone in place, developers will release updates to their games to allow saving directly to this. I do however think that if they get their butts into gear and get this working properly before the NGP (Sony’s Next Generation Portable aka PSP2) comes out, then saving a game on the PS3, then continuing on the NGP ticks all my boxes. I know that Microsoft attempted to do this Windows to Windows Mobile to Xbox….but it’s not really happened yet.
Personally if anybody is planning on dropping on the PS+ subscription, I don’t think it’s worth it yet, give it a couple of months and see if developers start to implement the “direct to cloud” saves.
Wow ! What a busy, and expensive week, only 2 days ago the Halo Reach XBOX 360S turned up (and I’m blogging instead of completing that fantastic game).
So what do I think of the Playstation Move, will it replace my Wii ? Well let me tell you.
First of all, the controller feels pretty solid. I’ve always found the Wii controller and Nunchuk to feel like toys in my hands instead of controllers. Now don’t get me wrong, I still use the Wii , probably a lot to do with the face that it runs a lot of the games from the external hard drive (You can find that post here)
The buttons on the Playstation Move Controller seem to be well placed, on the main controller you have all the 4 usual buttons, a select and start, a playstation button and a trigger on the back. There is also a “move” button in the middle, this seems to get used as the “Select” button
The Navigation Controller is simplified, and reminds me a lot of the Nunchuk. It has a D-Pad, Anagolue stick, the X and O buttons and the playstation button. There are 2 trigger buttons on the rear, very similar to the Nunchuk. Both devices feel solid in the hand, and benefit from the curved shape (instead of the squared off WiiMote).
I did notice one slight annoyance, there were no USB cables in either of the boxes, it’s a good job I bought the charger, otherwise I’d have been unplugged other USB devices to charge these.
So how do they work ?….Well, very well to be honest, the tracking is spot on ! I realised today, that the Playstation Move didn’t come with any demo games, so had to buy something on next day delivery just to try it out. I then decided to check out Playstation Store, only to find there’s a handful of demos on there.
So far I’ve only played the demo of Sports Champions, and it’s really good. it works very much like the Wii with the motion plus attached, however a lot better graphics. It did however want me to calibrate the controller every time I started a new game, however this could just be because it’s a demo. I played table tennis, and Frisbee, both of which were ultra realistic, (each of my frisbee’s would end up in the trees )
You can also control the XMB with the Playstation Move, simply hold down the trigger on the back, and move up, down, left and right.
All in all, a good purchase, and look forward to more games to come out, and think that this could be the end of my Wii usage.
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