The thought that people would bother to do this for a reason other than piracy baffles me.

I just leech them off usenet and the free filehosts.

That's the problem, trying to record and encode TV on a regular schedual yourself instead of getting someone else to do the hard work for you....

I grab all my regular TV shows from usenet. I have the Alt.binz usenet client hooked up to the the tv and hdtv rss feeds from newzleech. It checks my wildcard text filters against the rss feeds, grabs the nzb files for the tv shows I want to watch and then downloads them for me overnight, automatically runs the parity check and fixes broken files then unrars the shows to the correct folders on my FreeNAS box.

I switch on my XBMC Windows HTPC, which boots and loads XBMC without any problems (boot time is a little longer than I'd like, but I live with it). XBMC scans the smb shares on the FreeNAS box, finds the new TV shows, runs the filenames through the tvdb.com scraper, collects episode information, plot synopsis, generates a thumbnail and adds it to the library where I can view all the episodes, with fullscreen background art, cast lists, etc.

Setting up XBMC for Windows was trivial. Setting up the FreeNAS box was prety simple. Setting up the rss filter list was reasonably straight-forward, once you understand how you use a modern usenet provider as an alternative to torrenting. The usenet subscription costs me Euro 8.50 /quarter for unlimited downloads at up to 2.5mbps, which I find to be excelent value as I use it quite a lot.

This sort of setup may not be everyone's cup of tea, especially if you want to record less popular shows that don't get a scene release. It does occasionally glitch and miss a show, so I end up having to download roughly 2 missing episodes per month, which Isn't exactly a hardship if you consider I'm watching 10+ shows at any one time with 4 episodes a month, so a 2/40 or 5% miss rate roughly. This solution is working well for me at the moment and I'll stick with it until somthing better comes along.

... our new remote controlled president!

Anyone else thinking that sales are down because there is only a finite market for music based games and it's much closer to saturation point now than it was when the last batch of good games were released? GH Metalica is really only a purchase if you're a metalica fan, while GH Greatest/Smash Hits has had lack-luster reviews and will largely only get a purchase from the hardcore fans and those new to the series that didn't get to play GH1/2/3/80's.

RB Beatles and GH5 are slated for September release and have now been out of the top 20 for 2 months. How exactly is the last major game release of a developer dropping out of the top 20 just 4 months before the release of their next major title a "decline"? Most development studios would make blood sacrafices to be in the top 20 that long!

Filler article for the summer games-news drought.

£30 for 12 months of live is way cheaper than £5 - £8 /month for an MMO. Besides which, I tend to just play with my friends and the good mannered, non-dbags that I've picked up on my friend list along the way. I very rarely play with randoms and not at all for co-op games.

TBH live is more like an MMO than most people like to admit. You create an avatar and spend ages trying to find an unused variation on the name you want. You grind quests (games) to increase your level (gamerscore) and frequently undertake these quests with friends, or just chat codshit to them while you're off doing your own thing. The content updates are far more regular and the quests more varied than any other MMO I ever played.

Bill payments & Pre-pay phone top-ups. Although in theory all they would need to be is additional UI options, because the actual processing would be taken care of at the server.

Wait... Slashdot has adverts on it?

I know of a few that wouldn't cut out their new purchases entirely, but would certainly buy in less quantity. Also it may lead to a lot more people using sites like gamestracker, where you find the game you want, put in the price you want to pay for it and let the site email you when one of the thousands of retailers they do a daily price-scan on has it for that price. It'll be just as good in a couple of months as it is on day 1. Believe me when I say that virtually all new releases will be offered at a sub £15 price point within the first 3 months of release. Someone will get a massive overstock, be using it as a loss leader or whatever. If you're late to the market because you didn't buy the console in the 1st year then you've already got a huge back catalogue of cheap titles to get you started as well! I won't say that the loss of the used market would do massive damage to the new market, but it would likely push people to wait longer and get titles from the mid-price and budget ranges.

The "game" to these guys is getting the release out on the net 1st. They recieve points if they are the 1st group to release, but not points from MS!

Besides, the bans for playing games early on live have been stopped for a while now, there were too many complaints from legitimate customers who'd orderd the game from web/mail order and were unaware that the retailer had broken street date.

I believe there has been talk in the past of not including a main game executable on the disk and only copies that have been activated at checkout will be able to download it. Obviously this doesn't account for things like review copies, beta leaks, etc.

It's about stopping the pirates from getting the game much earlier than it's retail release date. Some studies have indicated that there is a good 10% extra to be had if you manage to have your 1st 3 days of release without a pirate version available. People who might have bought, but went for a pirate copy instead because they couldn't be bothered to drive into town for example. Most of the pre-release pirate games come from retail, where games may have been shipped to store anything up to 2 weeks before the street date. Employee's of games stores who have ties to scene release groups will purchase or borrow a pre-release game, upload it to the group who will crack it if necessary and then upload it to a private FTP where they hope to win points for being the 1st group to release. From there the game will be disseminated via the usual channels like torrents, usenet, rapidshare (aparently much to the disaproval of The Scene, who just do this to see who can get there 1st). Basicly for years the carefully craftd release scheduals and marketing plans of huge media companies have been screwed up by a bunch of teenagers having an e-penis waving contest. It's nothing new though, it's been happening for 20+ years and has it's roots in dial-up BBS'. There's a scene for virtually everything, not just games. Albums, singles, vinyl DJ promo's, DVD, Blu-ray, PC Apps, Mac apps, Music Production sample packs, they all have their own scene and their own set of groups that are fighting to be the 1st to get a pirate copy on the internet. This is where piracy comes from, not terrorism, not organised crime, just a bunch of teens playing a game against each other.

On the subject of the used market, publishers will be shooting themselves in the feet if they want to go ahead with killing the used market. It's estimated that a substantial number of new game buyers partially fund their games buying through trading in their old titles. So the loss of the used market will more than likely have a negative effect on new sales close to the value of
I think that peple need to realize that there is simply not an infinite amount of money in the ecconomy and that somwhere you reach a point where no more sales can be made until more cash flows back to the pockets of your customers. However, if you keep the money moving around fast enough, it can seem like there's an infinite amount of it.

Meanwhile on the other side of MS, they're just about to start offering streaming 1080p movies on demand over Xbox Live. So that's a minimum of 9GB being consumed in under 2 hours. They obviously don't care about your cap that much.

Is there a good reason for the skateboard in the picture being made out of Lego? TFA makes no mention of Lego.