Pardon me for a bit while I indulge in some electronic gadget fanboyism.
1. Les, the Stupid Evil Bastard, linked to a quick article in Joystiq that quotes uber-game-developer Will Wright as saying that his long-awaited game “Spore” is “about six months away”. That more or less jibes with the March 3, 2008 release date Amazon is quoting on their pre-order page, depending on how exact you want to figure that date. I’m still skeptical that we’ll see it much before Christmas ’08.
2. Dave Zatz at Zatz Not Funny has been following the trail of the elusive Comcast-TiVo DVR for a couple of weeks and says it is now actually being installed for some customers here in New England, but he can’t figure out exactly where. I went to the Comcast page he links to and put in my ZIP code, but I can’t get it yet either. There has been buzz that the official public rollout will begin next week.
3. I’ve been holding off on giving much serious thought to buying a high-def DVD player while the format war between HD-DVD and BluRay rages on. My hope had been to find a reasonably-priced multiformat player so that we could watch either one. Gizmodo says that Samsung is bringing out a combo player in its highly regarded line of players, and that it can even be upgraded to the new BluRay BD 1.1 profile, which most current BluRay players don’t support. But the damn thing has an MSRP over the magic $1000 mark. Meanwhile, Toshiba is selling HD-DVD-only players at Wal-Mart for under $200, and you can buy a Sony BluRay player for under $500, so it’s cheaper to buy two machines.
