It’s the holiday season!
It’s the holiday season, and most of you are probably thinking exactly what I am. New stuff! Sure there’s the part with family and friends, sipping hot chocolate by the fire, singing Christmas carols (being forced to do so, at a hospital up in Oregon when you were younger. Aherm). We know all that already. I wanna talk about cool stuff though, so for a moment lets forget about that crap. Want Barbies or a new Christmas sweater? Then get out of here, click the red x in the upper right hand corner of this window and head down to Kohl’s. If you wanna see the best video games and other stuff, keep reading. This is for you. Some of this stuff might not be in your price range though, so just do what I do. Look and drool.
Samsung HD TV
The Samsung LN32D403 32-Inch 720p 60Hz LCD HDTV
, this 32 incher is pretty cool. At first the 720p turned me off. I almost didn’t buy it for myself. Target had a larger TV for sale on black Friday that was an off brand 1080p. Luckily (and I do mean luckily) they were out, so I had to fork out a little bit more for this smaller one. As it turns out, if your TV is under 40 inches your eyes can’t really tell the difference between 1080p and 720p anyways unless you get right up in it’s face (who does that?), and the colors on this TV are VIBRANT! It’s a very bright, colorful display, with tons of customization options. It has the regular component video/audio ports and 2 HDMI ports, one of which doubles as a DVI so you can connect your PC to it. (You’ll need a DVI to HDMI cable I believe). The sound is really good for a TV and the coolest thing is, it has a USB port! If you’ve got movies or pictures on a flash drive, you can plug it right into your TV and watch/view them. You can get TVs of this size that are off brand at a cheaper price, but after using it I’m glad I paid the extra to get a Samsung. I can’t speak for it’s reliability yet, but from what I’ve read it should outlast its cheaper rivals.
Halo Anniversary
-Other Games
The game that started it all is back for it’s 10 year Anniversary, aptly named Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
. It’s Halo 1 for your Xbox 360, but completely overhauled with awesome graphics and Xbox Live multiplayer! “Say what?” you ask, “Blood Gulch on Xbox Live?” Yes my friends, please take a moment and watch the demo on youtube, it’s pretty awesome.
On the subject of awesome video games, there are a lot more that I don’t think I need to write about. The latest Call of Duty
and Assassin’s Creed games are pretty awesome. Skyrim is one of my favorites, and I have a blog post about it here. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
has been said to be the greatest Zelda game yet.
We also strongly recommend that you DO NOT get the game “Jimmie Johnson’s Anything With An Engine”. If there was ever a lame game with a lame title and lame box art, this is it. Definitely worthy of some facepalms.
Gift Cards
How are gift cards awesome enough to make it on my holiday list of awesome stuff? My friend, because it’s Amazon, that’s why. Let me explain further. You have to keep in mind 2 things. The first thing is, don’t think of this as something you should buy for yourself, nobody does that (unless the card is worth more money than what you put into it, but that doesn’t happen very often). This is definitely a gift idea. The second thing is, what a better way to say “Merry Christmas” than a gift that enables someone to buy whatever they want from their bedroom or living room? Plus, you don’t have to leave your bedroom or living room. In fact, you don’t even have to deal with a physical card. You can have Amazon send a virtual gift card via email at a time that you choose! (like… Christmas morning?). You’ve got lots of card options for all different occasions, so it’ll look just as nice as a regular one.
Gaming Computers
This particular one I have linked is the iBUYPOWER Gamer Extreme Intel CrossFire A958SLCK Liquid Cooling Gaming Desktop
, and it is a beast! There are lots of different versions of these iBUYPOWER gaming machines, with all sorts of different specs and prices. You can check out Amazon’s list here. These machines aren’t insanely expensive all things considered, and they can plow through the latest video games set on the highest graphics. Sure it’d be a bit cheaper to build this same machine with all the same parts yourself, but are you really going to do that?
I like this post a lot! Also the humor to it.
“*luckily*…I had to fork out a little bit more for this smaller one” <~~ this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. You paid more for something less than expected, how's that lucky? That sentence is simply contradicting itself, let alone your willingness to spend money just because you have it. What, are you the 1%?
Anyone who says there's no difference between 1080p and 720p, doesn't know any better. I take it you've never seen or owned any 1080p monitor before, otherwise you wouldn't have said so. There's a huge difference between 1080p and 720p. In case you didn't do the math right, let me break it down for you.
Assuming your brand spanking new TV is 40" and has a 16:9 aspect ratio, this means the width and the length is 20" and 35", respectively. This equates to the surface area being 700 in^2. Now, with your 720 (mind you, 720 means you have 720 dots in the vertical direction, 'p' stands for "progressive) resolution, you have a total of 921,600 dots. What does this mean? It means your pixel density is approximately 1316.6, give or take a few electrons.
Now, instead of having 720, let's imagine, since you don't have access to one, a 1080 resolution, which equals to 2,073,600 dots (oh, in case you didn't know, the technical term for LCD is "dots" and not "pixels"). That my friend, will give you 2962.3, given or take a few electrons. That's almost 2.5 times more the amount of pixels per inch squared. That's 2.5 times more the resolution than your 720. Unless you bought this for your grandma, I'm sure anyone else would've noticed the difference. Given that you're a gamer, I suppose you should know better than that.
Resolution aside, I agree that Samsung is a good brand. That being said, USB port for TVs have been around for quite some time now. Most TVs support that, along with Divx codec, so you can watch downloaded media files. Some have Wifi, some can even make you a sandwich!
It doesn't seem like you've got the best bang for your buck, but more like you got banged for more bucks.
Happy gaming.
Thank you for taking the time to reply on this subject
I like all the numbers and technical jargon that you’ve thrown out, it’s good. You are missing a couple crucial points though. First off, the 40 inch TV was an off brand. Element. Reviews on the TV were sub par. I don’t know about you, but for me I’d rather have a slightly smaller TV that has a better chance of being reliable rather than a larger TV that I might have to deal with warranties and repairs.
Second, you are absolutely right, technically there is a difference between 720p and 1080p. What you are aren’t paying attention to though, and somehow missed reading in the article, is that the human eye can’t tell the difference between one insanely high amount of dots and another even more insanely high amount of dots if the screen is small enough. Any expert on the subject will tell you that TVs under 37 inches in size, it’s not worth extra money just for the 1080p resolution.
Next time before commenting, you should try a Google search. Look at articles on faqhdtv.com, or ehow, and carltonbale.com has an excellent chart which shows the exact distance per screen size to get the maximum benefit from your resolution. If you have a 32 inch tv and sit closer than 4 feet, by all means go with 1080p. As for me, I’m placed about 6 to 7 feet back, which is where 720p has it’s optimal viewing distance over 480p. Happy Holidays! -Kyle