November 19, 2006

We got up this morning and decided that the Nintendo Wii was so cheap that we would just get one. But we decided to go online and check to make sure that Nintendo was actually making the device, low end as it is, able to connect to modern monitors. Nintendo’s range of websites themselves have been down for several days with no way to get any information from them. But searching around online provided far more disclosure on the machine itself than Nintendo was willing to give anyway and the answer is absolutely not. Nintendo is so ridiculous and out of touch that the Wii doesn’t even have the capability nor does Nintendo make or intend to make any type of adapter that allows it to connect even to VGA let alone digital monitors. Buying a component to VGA adapter is expensive like close to $100 plus you have to buy the component adapter from Nintendo as well. Suddenly it turns out that the Nintendo Wii is pretty expensive. About the same price as the XBox 360 almost once you try to get it to connect to anything modern.

We decided that we really need a television of some sort for our bedroom. So we decided to just get one today. We decided just to get something inexpensive and a little small that we can mount on the wall above our closets. We looked at a number of options and there is nothing that we could find that can handle 1080p so we figured that we will have to settle with a 720p display. We did further research today and discovered that the Sony PS3 is not nearly as powerful as they have been claiming and is having a terrible time handling 1080p rendering and will be limited due to practicality to 720p so since we intend to use the PS3 as the main source for the monitor having it be only a 720p (aka HDTV) isn’t really a limitation. Originally Sony was claiming that the PS3 would have dual 1080p outputs but once the units were being tested they discovered just how wussy the hardware was and it definitly is not on par with modern computers. Dominica and I saw a PS3 in action last night and while it was impressive for a console it was not impressive at all compared even to some very inexpensive and not too recent computers. In fact, now that the PS3 is is only outputting 720p it is still failing to produce output for computers monitors made in the last six or so years. Even playing Quake II on a Pentium II 350 on Windows 98 back in 2000 with nothing but a VooDoo 3 video card did okay on a 1280×1024 display!

We also decided that even though the Nintendo Wii is incredibly unimpressive that we were going to try one anyway just because it was original and cheap. But when we went to the store we discovered, much to our surprise, that the Wii was actually widely sold out and unavailable! We have no idea what is driving so many people to want to get the Wii.

We ended up just getting the Westinghouse 32″ 720p monitor. It is big enough for our bedroom but small enough to still fit. One of the benefits of the monitor is that it has a variety of inputs so that it can even take input from the low end Nintendo Wii if we still decide to get one when Nintendo finally gets that back onto the market.

We also had to run out and grab a cheap DVD player because we had nothing to hook to the monitor except for the computers. One of the best bits is that we are now able use both computers while watching something. We watched the original Disney That Darn Cat with Haley Mills and then Just Friends.

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