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Today we watched opening ceremony in HD on our big screen. A day late, but I prefer to watch things on my own schedule, even sporting events! The ceremony was Inspiring, especially in all the High Definition glory on the wall.

You will need specific setup, to bring the best quality available Olympic coverage to your Big Screen TV. First thing you’ll need is Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate edition. Next, you will need an XBox 360 connected to home network, or you can skip this in case your Windows Vista PC is already hooked up directly to TV (it happens!).

Now, simply install TVTonic add-on on your Windows Vista MediaCenter PC, and start it. You can use it on your Windows Vista PC or naturally view it via XBox 360, using the Media Center extender functionality.

Actually, TVTonic brings a whole world of Internet TV to your local computer. It is actually similar to Miro and others, in that it simply pulls RSS feeds of Podcast style broadcast shows. It comes with pretty impressive guide with all kinds of Internet shows, including Dilbert, and GameTrailers in HD, both of which me and the kids enjoy tremendously!

Of course, you can always simply visit NBC Olympics site and watch highlights or even full events, steaming and online.

I am very pleased with this progress! The TVTonic client is completely free and brings home very high quality video, for convenient viewing on the Big-Screen TV. We have configured it to download specific sports, like soccer and fencing, automatically as they become available!

If you have Vista 64 Bit edition (very rare still), they are promising to make it available soon (via EngadgetHD).

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Hulu.com has been growing nicely, you may recall that I wrote about them back when they were in private beta. Well, since then they have opened to the public, and constantly adding new shows! If you crave some quality entertainment, they are becoming my first destination to check out, Kudos!

And finally, the sensational hit series Battlestar Galactica is there, in an almost HD quality. Of course, ABC’s HD streaming online is still by far the best quality out there, but it does score stiff requirements, both from your computer hardware (dual-core minimum) and your Internet connection (above 3mbps). Hulu’s quality is a compromise, it seems. It is much higher than YouTube’s and other clones out there, but it isn’t quiet as high to require very fast PC and super broadband connection.

Speaking of Battlestar Galactica — I am one of those fans who still managed to catch a few "original" battlestar episodes, and I did expect a similar cliche from the new show, which actually a reason behind my initial refusal to watch this. But, eventually, I did catch a few episodes and saw how different this was. Much better writing, high quality production, are killer ingredients. This may shock you, but I am actually the vice-versa of most fans out there (check out why), so I actually think the show’s been stretched Too Much and it really Should End sooner rather than later!

If you haven’t watched this show, now is a time to catch up, either via your Netflix subscription or Amazon Unbox or other methods. Below is a little teaser, now that the final season is coming, when ALL Will Be Revealed! Which reminds me that I need to rant (for a friend) about Dish Network — Where Is your Sci-Fi channel in HD!?

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Today I got invite to private Hulu.com Beta. Looks like they are expanding their beta user base, and I was lucky to get in on this next round. Though, pretty soon they will go public, I’m sure.

So, first impressions are positive! The navigation is pretty intuitive, though I did not see an easy way to navigate to other seasons of things. These are very minor, the important positives are:

• High Quality — Duhh!!! This is a single most important issue today for streaming video on the web, and so far I am very positively impressed with hulu!
• Streaming — On Demand TV is here, for real, finally!
• Huge Library — Since it’s an official effort by several major studios, they actually have Quality Content! OMG! Simpsons! House MD! Journeyman! Monk! Pretender! The list goes on and on. It looks like they are mixing old classics with new favorites, great formula, if you ask me!

Stop the presses! I can embed entire episodes or show snippets in my blog!!! This is so big that I worked hard to modify the layout of my blog and make it wider to accommodate their excellent wide-screen video size.

And now, without any further delay, check out this funny Simpsons episode! Which, hilariously enough, investigates Tivo and the demise of traditional TV model.

Remember! You saw it here first!

PS: After additional confirmation, I see that video embedded on my blog appears to be slightly lower quality than the one you would get to see on hulu.com, plus the Full Screen feature only available on Hulu.com

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But First - Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and special Thanks for reading!

While browsing Amazon’s Black Friday Deals, I stumbled across a Pre-Order page for the revolutionary game called Spore. Will Wright, one of the best known game designers, who created titles like SimCity and The Sims, is the creative Genius behind this one.

This game attempts to simulate an entire Universe within your Computer and then uses the Internet to extend it even further. You play the coveted role of God, the creator of all things, or at least one planet and one species, for starters. You get to help your species evolve through the ages, from a small cell organism to big Star conquering Civilization. Obviously, such grandiose game was years in development and until  today no-one knew the release date. But, Voila, it’s coming! Enjoy the video below and you can read more about it on Wikipedia and Gaming sites!

And looks like the Universe is giving me a Birthday gift! Why else would the release date be March 3rd, 2008? It must be a hint, and it also means that this will be yet another one of these few precious Gem games that we purchase on the release day, the last one being Sims 2, ironically.

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"We are boring people to death" - I believe is the exact quote from non other than Electronic Arts CEO. He was referring to the endless sequels to established games, which bring little more than shinier graphics and few more features.

He has a point! Gaming companies need to get the ball rolling on more innovate gameplay! Still, as technology matures, there is always time to revisit the tried and true formula of Wolfenstein’s 3D first person shooter genre. Just few recent games come to mind that raise the bar across the board and really take this style to the next level. They bring us amazing improvements in graphic visuals, realistic sound, and most importantly very real physics. Two such games come to mind for this holiday season, and the most technologically advanced one is Crysis.

Just watch this short 30 second trailer. Make sure to watch it full screen to see high quality of real in-game visuals. Of course you will need DirectX 10 Windows Vista PC, with decent nVidia GeForce 8000 series graphics card. But, I hear it should run on lesser PCs also, just not with such shiny graphics.

Another holiday favorite this season is Halo 3 for XBox 360. This game has come of age, and is probably the most feature complete first-person shooter today.

Personally, I mostly avoid first person shooters.

After playing Wolfstein, many years ago, then later some Doom 2 — it’s really becomes more of the same. I am also not a fan of doing first person shooters using joystick. Really, this is exactly what the mouse was created for, to aim with and shoot, while running sideways or jumping, using the keyboard, of course.

Remember, both games are rated M for Mature! And I really think they aren’t kid or even teen material.

For your family, check out Playground, an up and coming fun title from EA. Looks like they are finally trying to avoid boring people to death, though, this one is just a fresh Wii style take on the classic Party games genre

In my opinion Gaming with your Family is the new spending time with kids. This is what they are into today, and joining in their activities, and showing them "how it’s done" is something that Parents must strive for, to maintain that all important link with your kids and have their ongoing trust of being Authority on All things Life.

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