It’s that time again, time to review some of my cherry picked smaller stories of the week for those that might have missed them. This time round we’ve got an Adobe Flash update that doesn’t suck. OK, sucks a little less. Flash 10.1 beta was unleashed to the willing public with GPU video acceleration for certain Nvidia cards on Windows, but perhaps more importantly reduced CPU usage across all platforms. What does this mean? YouTube that doesn’t make your Mac or PC red-line that’s what. A step in the right direction Adobe, maybe Flash isn’t a lost cause after all. I’ve certainly seen some improvements on my netbook and Mac. (more…)

So you’ve heard that the God of War 3 collectors edition is going to steam roll you wallet ($100 for the privaledge) and you’ve noted that the demo will be available on the District 9 Blu-Ray (available 29th December) if you’re not too keen on buying the first two games again on Blu-Ray with the God of War Collection, but what does God of War 3 handle like? Should it have been an FPS? Is it more of the same? Does it deserve your hard earned rent money? Well Pixelated Geek is on hand to find out.
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Along with a few noticeable features such as larger XMB, some glitter and a new ‘What’s new’ annoyance, Sony released an update to the flash player on the PS3 with a TV shortcut to the BBC’s BigScreen iPlayer in 3.0. The update brought hardware accelerated video and builds on the recent addition of h.264 support in flash video. Along with some tweaks on the BBC side of things, this has brought much higher quality iPlayer content to the PS3, which has obviously resonated with PS3 owning Britons.

Since the update launched a little over a week ago the PS3 has become the BBC’s second biggest IP-delivery system with a 10% share of demand. This even beat out the Mac crowd, who have been pushed back into 3rd place with their lowly 8.5% of all iPlayer views. Of course both are lead by a county mile by Virgin media’s VOD service which incorporates iPlayer. Whether or not this is just the newness factor or exploration bringing in the views, or whether the PS3 will become a shoe-horn to get iPlayer into the non-Virgin living room needs to be seen. Either way it does bode well for the BBC’s other IPTV proposals such as Project Canvas.

[Via BBC]

We’re in a recession, but that doesn’t mean someone out there doesn’t have money to burn, a desire to own every movie in the latest and greatest format and wants to have as many ‘on-demand’ as possible (without a Jeeves sitting at your BD player putting the discs in for you of course). So fear not dear readers, if you’re in the market for such a device, Sony has you covered. The Sony BDP-CX7000ES is a 400 disc Blu-Ray changer (yes that’s four hundred) that’ll play almost anything apart from SACD and supports Gracenote to tell you what all the discs are in the behemoth.

400 discs in one machine, does that make it 400 times better than your puny single disc player? Well in a word, no. But luckily for Sony, and for all you ‘money-to-burn’ buyers, Electronic House have reviewed the CX7000ES and found the performance of the player to be in line with Sony’s other ES players (read very good). With a 40 second start up to play time from cold (for a disc already in the changer) and the capability to store all your BDs (probably) without fear of mishandling all in one place, allowing Jeeves to get on with serving you drinks, the CX7000ES is an excellent entry into the BD multi-changer product category. Head on over to Electronic House for a full review of the BDP-CX7000ES, which can be yours for the bargain price of $1899 *cough*.

Download this Episode

In this episode, we make fun of Nelson.  Then Nelson fails and we make fun of him again.  Then we talk about stuff, like:

• Blizzcon
• The Hilton Parties at Blizzcon (but who cares?!)
• My impressions of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3
• Joe the Peacock talks about MMO addictions and his experiences
• District 9 impressions
• Sony PS3 Slim
• making fun of Nelson.

Some notable links from this episode

• Fark
• Fark
• Second Skin (An MMO Documentary)
• WoWDetox
• Fark

The first TV ads for Sony’s new PS3 Slim have surfaced online.  This Japanese campaign focuses on the fun your face is having while you play video games.  I hope that I never confuse a “play face” with an “OH face.”  If I did, I’d probably get “socked in the face.”

Photos? Screw official photos.  Here’s the real thing.  On video. What more could you want? Well, sorry, no.  We can’t get it in your hands. This is the closest we can give you.  If you want, hug your screen and it’ll feel like you’re unboxing it yourself.

Today reports are going out that Sony has started informing retailers that the 160Gb PS3 bundle will receive a $50 price cut in the US whilst the 80Gb PS3 is going to have stock levels reduced and a price cut to the tune of €100 in Europe.

Rumours are floating around that Sony will unveil the PS3 Slim at Gamescon in Cologne during the Sony pre-event press conference on August 18th. What with leaked box photos, Amazon Germany listings for the PS3 Slim and all the rest of the rumours, the new rumours seem more and more likely. Of course this is all speculation, cloak and dagger stuff, and so should be taken with a pinch of salt but don’t be surprised if a slimmed down same spec PS3 emerges mid-August.

[Via Engadget]

A Couple of days ago, my good friend Aric brought over his PS3 to help cure my boredom form being jobless.  What I didn’t expect was him booting up an old school game we used to play back in grade school. Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo is a game that has most of the characters and special moves form Street Fighter 2 but has nothing to do with the fighting aspect of it.  This is a puzzle game thats a little bit of Dr. Mario and a little bit of Tetris.

What you are supposed to do is keep all the colors connected.  It doesn’t matter which direction, they just need to be touching each other.  If you have a 2×2 square of one color, they turn into a bigger gem.  You want to grow your gems because once you get a “sphere” in that same color, they break all of those blocks that are connected to it.

The more blocks you break, the more random color blocks you give your opponent.  First person to get a full screen loses.  This game is available now on PS3 for download. I highly recommend you get this game if you own a PS3.

Ever wondered how those mighty fine BDs are made? Yeah, so have I. Now thanks to News Corp Australia’s Charlie Brewer you get to have a sneak peak inside a factory through a 16 slide photo gallery. From the polycarbonate crystals to the disk packing it’s all there, so head on over to the Inside Sony’s Blu-Ray Factory gallery and satisfy your craving for knowledge for today.

[Via News.com.au]