LIVEdigitally

I think I read about 1080 articles (or was it 720) on how impactful HDTV World Cup broadcasting was.  Missed em?  Here are a few good ones to get you started: What’s on HDTV, Engadget, CIO, HDBeat, and Daily Wireless.

So I was flipping through my 18-odd HD channels I receive here in Comcast San Francisco land, and noticed the Miss Universe pageant, and I figured it was at least worth a few minutes of my time.  I was amazed to see that it was actually a standard definition broadcast of the event! 

In good old fashioned TV Guide fashion, JEERS to NBC for this!

I took a few fun minutes in Photoshop to replicate my impression of the quality of the video.  All the images you are seeing are intentionally lousy looking.  Just like the footage of the event.

Of course, I’m not changing the channel just yet…

Like I mentioned previously, it seems like World of Warcraft is setting up a great situation for some new games to come and swoop up its market share. With six million subscribers paying about 12 dollars a month to play this massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (whoo!), the best guess estimate is that World controls half of the MMORPG market. A huge part of that appeal has been the simplicity and ease of entry, but another part has been the huge amount of story and setting that the easy-entry gameplay let old Warcraft fans explore and new WoW fans discover. With the latest mind-numbing bit of stupidity from WoW, we’ve got a good picture of what future content will look like for fans of the game’s setting: rubbish.

Without getting into the technical details of the changes to backstory and classes — WoW fans should already know, and everyone else shouldn’t care — the big concern is how this will change the numerous MMORPGs currently being developed. Games are being pushed out under the approachable “WoW model” instead of the previous godhead of the design environment, the punishing “Everquest/Final Fantasy XI model.” Will games that are borrowing from Warcraft’s model forgo well-thought settings with asymetrically balanced sides, or will they take this as a chance to outshine Blizzard at its own genre (if not game)?

Hopefully other developers will take this chance to show that ease of gameplay doesn’t have to reflect easy design, the route Blizzard seems to have chosen. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the video game industry, the PC game industry in particular, reacts to the route that Blizzard has chosen.

To avoid those moments of sheer panic that occur whenever you discover you’ve left something important behind, consider attaching one of theseto your bag/PDA/dog/toddler and put this in your pocket. The Mini Reminder transmitter will alert the receiver to start making a vibrating, beeping racket if you move more than your specified distance away from it. I need this thing. How many times have I raced back to a restaurant to admit sheepishly that I’ve forgotten my bag on the back of that chair? Yes…the one you’re sitting on…thanks.

via SCI FI Tech