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.
The Eye of Judgement, well what can I say…. I saw what I thought was a bargain, which has turn out to be quite an expensive hobby.
I was in the High Cross in Leicester the other Sunday morning, and popped into PowerPlay while waiting for the Apple store to open. I notice sat on a shelf on it’s own a game called “The Eye of Judgement”. The box didn’t have a price on it, however it came with the Playstation eye in the box too, me and C agreed that we wouldn’t pay anymore than £40 for the game, as the camera was £23 on it’s own. We took it to the counter, and the guy said “it’s not on the system”, let me find a price for you, then I can add it, then you can buy it. We agreed to let him do all this while we popped to the apple store.
Upon our return the poor lad seemed to be having the worse day of his life, apparently he’d been on holiday for a week, and this was his first day back, however while he’d been away, they’d upgraded the EPOS system, and it was running dog slow, and half the products were missing. He asked us kindly if we’d give him another 10 mins to sort the system out and he could finally give us the price.
We wondered of, (can’t remember where as I had a small 6 day hangover from the Tallinn stag do) and returned around 10 mins later, they guy had finally got the game on the system, and it was £30, bargain !, While I was there I picked up a copy of Ghostbusters for the PS3 (blog to come)
The thinking behind the game was as follows…..if the game is crap, it’s only cost us £7, as the camera is £23…however we didn’t really need a camera, as the one we got in “Your In the Movies” on the Xbox360, and this worked just fine of the PS3.
Anyway, we finally got home and unboxed. You get the Playstation Eye, a stand for holding it on, the mat, a pack of the 30 starter cards, and a bonus 8 pack of card.
The game itself rocks !, The best way I can describe it, is the 3D Chess type game you see R2D2 and Chewbacca playing in Star Wars, but using your TV to project the creatures.
Now personally I’ve never used trading cards or got involved in the whole trading card world, and to be honest didn’t think this was one of those types of games (I know, I should have done my research…but it did seem like a bargain)
The game basically plays, but you get 2 mana each turn, each card has a specific mana value, as well as health, and damage points. Each card is either Earth, Water, Wood , Fire or Biolith, you place each card on the map, and get positive and negative reactions based on the placement.
Quick YouTube Vid
Now the game is fun, and defiantly worth the £30 we spent on it, but to be honest, after a couple of hours of playing, we started to get used to the cards, and quite frankly a little board of the same cards. I had a quick google for somewhere to buy them from, and everywhere was sold out…so ebay it was !
Found a guy selling a full set 1×3,2 and 3…so the bidding war started, and ended on Friday night….£46 later, I had all 3 sets ! Woot !…this did however drive the price of the game up a little…well to £76 !
Luckily for me, they ebay guy was lightening fast with the delivery and I had all the cards on Monday. Got home, downloaded the update for the cards….which took over 3 hours, and we were finally ready to play with the new decks…..wrong !…to use the set 2 and 3, I had to buy the DLC (Downloadable Content) to unlock these…Grrrr !…and that was another £11.99 from the Playstation store.
Finally after downloading we were able to play, and it was fun fun fun….well until it started to get dark outside…..wtf you may be asking, what the hell as the light outside got to do with a game your playing inside….well I’ll tell you. As I guess it is with most people, my lighting in my front room is pretty dim, as this is the room I watch all my movie, and play most of my games. Even with the main light on, it’s light enough, but obviously not light enough for the Playstation Eye to pick the details on the cards. So there we were, £88 down, a handful of brand new shiny cards, but not enough light in the room for the eye to recognize them…Booo !
All in all, it is a very fun game, and if you buy it for nothing else but the playstation eye, it’s defiantly worth the £7 for the game..and if you live anywhere near me, I’ve got loads of duplicate cards you can have
Around Christmas time I bought a Sony PS3, with a 40Gb hard drive, feeling this would be more that sufficient. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve found myself having to delete demo, audio and video file, just so I can install games.
Last weekend I bought Ghostbusters (blog coming soon), but was unable to play the game as it insisted on installing content to the hard drive before I could play, so time for an upgrade.
Basically, there is a small plastic plate on the bottom, you remove this, your then met by a crosshead screw, remove this, pull up the small metal handle and the drive slides to the right…remove the drive. The drive is held in by 4 screws remove these, replace the drive, and reverse the above steps.
I then fired up the PS3, and was met by the prompt of “New Hard drive, would you like to format”, selected yes, and 30 seconds later I was met by my normal PS3 dashboard, checked the system setting, and I had 465Gb free ! Success !
I was happy that all the system settings were still intact, and all that was missing was any game data.
I then spent the rest of last night re-installing all my games, as everyone seemed to have an update it wanted to download, or had the option to install to hard drive (which I think is a brilliant idea, and glad they’ve finally copied the 360 way), and set downloading all my DLC (DownLoadable Content). With all games that could be installed, all the DLC downloaded, and all games updated I still have over 400Gb free !
I do however have a slight annoyance, I know I could have done a full system backup, and restore, but instead decided to just backup my save game and do a fresh install (far to many years working in the computer industry), however there were a number of games that wouldn’t allow me to copy my save games till memory stick. Street Fighter 4, KillZone 2, NFS Carbon wouldn’t allow me to back up the save games, Street Fighter I can understand as I person could unlock all characters, and then hand around the save game to every man and it’s dog. NFS Carbon, I wasn’t too bothered about this, as I was only 2 races into the game, but the one that really annoyed me was KillZone 2, as I was about halfway through this extremely hard game…..oh well rough with the smooth I guess.
out to be quite an expensive hobby.
Around Christmas time I bought a Sony PS3, with a 40Gb hard drive, feeling this would be more that sufficient. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve found myself having to delete demo, audio and video file, just so I can install games.