PS3 vs X-Box 360, a personal perspective

Firstly, this isn’t really a versus, rather brief comparison between the X-Box 360 and the PS3 from someone who has owned both machines for a while.

Some people ask me which I’d rather have if I had to choose one or the other. To me it’s a bit like asking which leg you’d rather have chopped off!

Both machines are truly next-generation, and very impressive in their own rights. I’m going to be brief, and focus only on the current unique positives of each machine…

XBox 360

• X-Box Live is a fantastically fast-evolving, intuitive and slick system.
• Movie rentals are available in the UK now.
• There’s a fantastic system for comparing your games with friends, etc.
• You can buy a cool little keyboard for texting mates online.
• There are a few 360-only killer games, such as Halo 3.
• The controller fits in my hand nicely, has vibration, and you can buy a cool little keyboard for texting mates online.
• You can do voice chatting with friends in and out of games out of the box.
• You can chat to friends logged into MSN Messenger from your sofa.

PS3

• Streams video, photos and music directly from my DLNA compliant Buffalo LinkStation Live with no tricky setup, firmware upgrades to the LinkStation, and without Twonky or TVersity running on my PC.
• Has lots of control over video output quality, leading to beautiful pictures. See my other post here for how to best setup with a Sony KDL-40V3000 TV.
• Can play Bluray, and the quality is astounding. According to this site, Bu-Ray seems to be winning the battle recently.
• Renders (not the same as outputs) some games at higher resolutions, for example the excellent Uncharted: Drakes Fortune.
• Has a web browser which works pretty well.
• Has some very cool photo browsing modes.

Summary

For gaming only I think the exclusive titles swing it. For media streaming, I much prefer the PS3. For HD and SD DVD playback, I also prefer the PS3.

I’ll post more on this comparison, and answer questions if the post gets enough views.

I hope this little snippet has been helpful.

My due-dilligence on the JuicePlus+ nutritional product

Since November 2007 I have been involved with JuicePlus+ as a distributor. I was initially attracted to the product by it’s whole food philosophy, having personally felt the benefits of a diet high in fruit and veg contents.

As with any business I get involved with, I have invested considerable time in due-diligence on the company. This is an ongoing process, and to-date the hard evidence that I have seen has been nothing but positive.

Working backwards in time from the product arriving at your door…

Delivery

In the UK JuicePlus+ is currently delivered by Parcel Force. As a distributor you are able to track deliveries of each customers’ order, and I have found that Parcel Force are generally reliable and provide excellent tracking information on their website.

Pre-delivery support

Me and my distributors aim to keep in close contact with their customers prior to delivery of the product, and to under promise the time-scale at about two weeks.  Furthermore, the customer is at liberty to call the very helpful call centre in Milan, where sit a team of happy, friendly and professional staff with a wonderful view over the Swiss alps.

The sales process

Being a direct sales business, sales are usually made by word of mouth to people who you know. We simply share the vision of taking a small amount of a wide variety of fruit and veg on a daily basis. We invite people to try the product themselves, to see if they find it beneficial.  I am very careful to ensure that myself and my team only make claims that can be substantiated by hard evidence.

Encapsulation

My recent visit to the encapsulation plant in Switzerland has been incredibly inspiring. From the moment the fruit, veg and vitamin powders arrive at the NAIE plant in Lugano they are treated like royalty. The plant meets strict GMP manufacturing standards, and is meticulously clean. The powders are treated with respect, kept cool, and huge care is taken to ensure the product is exactly what it says on the tin.

I have absolutely no doubt that the the stated contents are exactly what is in the capsules, no more and no less. Furthermore, I have seen the lab testing process and am completely confident that the product consistently meets the stated nutritional vales on the label as well as quality standards regarding physical stability.

That’s it for now. In future I will trace the process right back to the soil, ensuring that the powder production meets the same high quality that I have seen in the rest of the business and production process.

Ben Tristem
www.onjuiceplus.com

Getting the best picture from your new TV

Once you’ve got your spanking new TV (LCD or plasma) how do you get the best picture? The ideal settings for home are often very different to the manufacturers’ defaults, which are often adjusted for the harsh lighting of a showroom. By setting the picture correctly, you may well save both your money, and the planet by consuming less energy. Read on…

Start by writing-down the default settings. Beware that with some TVs (certainly with my Sony KDL-40V3000) there is the option to adjust picture settings either for the channel you are watching, or for every channel in one go. I suggest that you adjust for each source separately (TV, XBox, PS3, etc)

1) Set brightness (black level)

Brightness is a little misleading, and it may be clearer to think of this as black level. Use a scene from a film or game with plenty of shadow areas, and set black level (brightness) until you can just see all the shadow detail without making the blacks turn white.

2) Set contrast (white level)

Secondly, find a bright scene and adjust the contrast (white level) until the picture is comfortably bright enough without the picture being ‘washed out’.

Return to the dark scene and recheck. If necessary, re-adjust this, before returning to the bright scene to check this again. After a couple of tries you should find a satisfactory balance.

With an LCD, and depending on the model, you may find it difficult to get good black levels without ‘washing out’ picture or vice-versa, and you may have to compromise. How high you set your white and black levels simultaneously is related to the contrast ratio of your TV.

3) Set colour (saturation)

A good picture to use would be someone’s face, in a scene shot in natural light. Adjust the colour so that skin tones look natural. Sometimes a TV offers various colour temperature settings (e.g. cool, warm, neutral). Cool may produce a blue caste, with warm producing a red cast. Neutral is often be the correct setting.

As for all the other picture enhancing features, my motto is that “you can’t polish a turd”. Charming though it is, it’s grounded in good science. The panel its self has a certain capability, and it’s rare that clever settings actually improve the picture. Start with them off, and see if any improve the picture.

In my experience settings regarding the basics like colour, brightness and contrast tend to be less useful than things like MPEG noise removal, etc. Suck it and see.

Use a calibration DVD?

If you want to be more scientific about it, I suggest using a proper calibration DVD. I have used The AVIA Guide to Home Theater for many years, and find it to be very quick and easy. It even comes with funky little colour filters to look through at the test patterns, when setting colour.

This DVD is avilalbe from Amazon here

The Sony KDL-40V3000 is available from Amazon here. 

Hope this has been helpful?

Vitality: Chapter 1 – what you put in your mouth.

People tell me I’m full of energy and vitality. I have decided to share what I know with as many people as I can in order to help them to access this childhood vitality that is within all of us.

The challenge is recognising what I actually do. Many of my physical and mental patterns are deeply ingrained and automatic habits and it will take me some time to discover them all, so bear with me!

This is some of what I know I know regarding food…

What you put in your mouth?

First of all, I should say I’m talking about food & drink here! There are other websites that will give you guidance on everything from musical instruments and SCUBA gear to bubble gum and whatever else you can imagine.

In pure physical terms, ALL of your available energy comes from the food you eat. Thankfully, very few people reading this blog will have a problem with eating enough food. If you’re overweight it’s because, over the last few months or years, you have on average consumed more energy than you have used, full-stop.

The whole game of diet for fat management centers around psychology, and I’ve never been overweight so I wouldn’t be congruent talking about this, save to say “eat less and move more!

In my simple model, weight management is mainly about how much you eat whereas health and vitality is as much about what you eat. You can be thin living off McDonalds and chocolate, just not healthy.So, let’s kick-off with five simple fundamentals of healthy heating…

1. Eat plenty of raw food. Humans are the only animals that cook their food, and it doesn’t look like we’ve been doing it long. Eating cooked food is a little unknown from an evolutionary standpoint, and it makes sense to eat plenty of raw food. I’m not, however, advocating 100% raw at this stage as I haven’t tried and and am not convinced that the modern food sources are up to it.
2. Minimise that amount of ‘crap’ you eat. Please excuse the technical term, but you know what I mean. Just displace rubbish like deep-fried Mars Bars, or Brie on Hob Nobs (an old favorite of mine) with stuff you may never have tried like raw chocolate, roasted vegetables, fresh fruit & veg smoothies etc etc. If you’d like more healthy eating ideas, please comment on this blog asking.
3. Wait 15 mins before saying “yes” to more. You know how over eating feels. Also, it doesn’t help you stay a healthy weight. It takes at least 12 minutes for your brain to get the idea that your stomach is full. Therefore, I feel there is a real danger zone between one course and the next. Just have the self discipline to wait a bit before accepting more food.
4. Eat water rich foods. People spend a lot of time talking about how much water to drink, so I won’t. All I will say is do drink when you’re thirsty. Another, often overlooked, source of water is through food. Salads, veggies, fruits etc are all “wet” foods and are full of water. Eat plenty of these as another way to keep hydrated.
5. Listen to your body. It’s constantly giving you feedback, get in the habit of listening to it. If certain types or combinations of food consistently give you sever wind, then (unless you love farting for the fun of it) try new combinations. If you feel bad after a meal, consider whether it was worth it.

To keep this post short, I’ll leave it there. If you found this interesting or useful, please comment as I use this to determine what to write about next.

In the meantime have as much fun as a kid, whilst being as responsible as a pensioner!

Ben Tristem aka Mr Vitality

Optimal PS3 picture settings with Sony KDL-40V3000 LCD TV

I have just been setting-up a Sony KDL-40V3000 LCD HD television with a Sony PS3 console. After some research on the web, mainly centered around this excellent article. I am after settings for optimum picture quality when playing DVDs and Blu-ray discs (BDs). I thought it woud be helpful to share my findings here, in the hope I can save people some time.

What follows represents the settings in the PS3 settings (system software 2.10)…

Settings > Display Settings > RGB Full Range (HDMI) = Full
(as the KDL-40V3000 does have a 10-bit processor)

Settings > Display Settings > Cross Color Reduction Filter = Off
(as using HDMI and doesn’t apply here)

Settings > Display Settings > Y Pb / Cb Pr / Cr Super-White (HDMI) = On
(will this take effect in RGB mode?)

Settings > BD / DVD Settings > Cinema Conversion = On
(as the KDL-40V3000 definitely supports progressive scan)

Settings > BD / DVD Settings > DVD Upscaler = Double Scale
(as running at 1080p and this setting won’t distort the image)

Settings > BD / DVD Settings > BD/DVD Video Output Format = Automatic
(and see what it chooses!)

Settings > BD / DVD Settings > BD 1080p 24 Hz Output (HDMI) = On
(as the KDL-40V3000 supports this)

That’s the theory, now to test each one from this setting, one at a time. If I find anything that can be improved upon, I’ll write again.
At the time of writing, you can get help regarding this on Sony’s site here.

I will be looking at sound settings at a future date, probably in Q2 2008. Why not subscribe to my RSS feed to keep posted?