David Hingtgen

You can fill out the support form online and MS will email you a case number, then they'll want you to call. It might actually save time to just call first, as you'll still have to go through all their generic "help" questions first. Note that MS's automated help is the most annoying I have ever encountered. To get right to a person, keep saying "agent" until it recognizes the word. Try to emphasize the T, it kept hearing "main" when I tried. I despise voice-recognition software for stuff like that. Plus they hired someone to sound "cool" which is truly obnoxious. Trust me, you'll learn to hate "Max" pretty quickly. It'll probably save some time/effort if your personal info is at xbox.com already. http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/contact/

Well by now a refurbished replacement would almost certainly have the extra heat sink. But it'll be a long time before refurbs start having HDMI/65nm. Personally I'd send it in right away. (I still don't get how so many people on other forums buy new 360's to replace the old---do they know somewhere to sell old ones for a very large chunk of what it cost to buy in the first place or what?)

I wish there was more news on the Ben-Q drives. What was it, a 1-week production run that they were used?

Any noise/heat reports from people with a 65nm one? (of course, I want a quieter DISC DRIVE more than anything--fan noise doesn't bug me at all)

Grandia II did seem to go on too long at the end. Liked the music and character designs though. Skies of Arcadia was really good overall, but thought the final villain plot kinda sucked---he was pretty generic, everything involving the silver moon etc was RPG cliche and predicatable. Also, WAY too high enemy encounter rate, especially the map. And fights overall took too long, especially bosses. Even "fire against ice" could take a while. Basically the characters and story overcame the battles. And I just loved customizing the ship and the ship battles. Code Veronica is one of my fave RE games, always wondered why it didn't "get a number"---it's better than some numbered ones, and shouldn't be grouped in with the many poor numberless off-shoots. I believe it's also going to be the basis for the next movie.

I think I've seen every Alternator ever at various local stores (definitely saw Swerve--I thought "ANOTHER vette???"). But I "got tired of them" after Tracks. Same 2 basic transformations basically. Considered Mirage, but never picked him up. Haven't seen any Alts for a while though.

I'm saying, out of all the good DC games, there were far fewer available in the US than Japan. Sure, we got all the locally-produced games, but a LOT of good Japanese stuff (read: 2D fighters and shmups) never came over. Sega of America pretty much declared 2D was dead for US DC's it seems, even though 2D made up a HUGE percentage of DC games overall.

Sad that even reissues shoot up to $100+ instantly.

I had Twinsticks, but actually found many moves easier with the controller. The twinsticks basically allow a "slight variation" in moving at an angle that experts use--but make many other moves much more difficult. I sold my twinsticks having not used them much. Plus they take up a ton of space. PS--Saturn is the best 2D system ever. Even the DC can't do a 2D fighting game as well. X-Men vs Street Fighter is probably my all-time fave, along with Darkstalkers 2. Could play them forever.

The Dreamcast had few good *US* games. If you imported, there's tons of cool stuff. If you like SNK/Capcom 2D fighters, it's the best console ever for sheer number. (Though I'd argue the Staturn was better for quality). My import DC games outnumber my entire GC and 360 libraries combined. And Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram is still sheer bliss and will never be equaled. (Though so complicated that when you pick it up again after not playing for months and months, you really, really suck and can't remember any of the moves). I still leave my DC in my room by my TV, though it's not hooked up often. (It swaps cables with the DVD player when needed)

360's basically read/write to the save file all the time, so it's always one of their first steps to ask you to remove the HD. Also, Soul Calibur 3 is known for corrupting its save BIG time. Many threads about it.

I think all current production Elites get the new heatsink. But from looking at it, I really don't see how it can help that much. It's just a small additional set of fins attached to a heatpipe, connected to the standard GPU heatsink. It's tucked way in the corner, above the capacitors, with little air flow----and what airflow it gets goes right past the CPU's heat sink. IHMO it may radiate a small amount of heat piped to it from the GPU, but it's sure not actively cooling it any better or anything. Perhaps it's simply piping some GPU heat to the CPU sink area? That's almost how it looks to be designed. 65nm and 45nm will make much more difference I think. But 45's pretty far in the future.

Yeah, I was thinking tonight---if it never fails, that's good. If it does fail---hopefully it'll be far enough in the future that I'll get the cooler, *QUIETER* version. Just my luck, if I'd have gotten one with a heatsink--it'd be loud, and never die.

In addition to being way too complex and expensive on a toy, it'd only work if the wing curved in only one direction. The YF-21 has clearly shown it can curve the wings both up, and down. It can flat out "magically stretch" the wing itself. Fowler flaps may allow some semblance of that, but only in one direction--especially if you want a smooth curve with multi-slotted flaps.

Thanks much for the link. Darn, looks like I have the older style. I don't want to have to get ANOTHER refurbed unit a few months from now... PS to Mike---I could customize it just how I wanted, it's just that MS puts purchased theme components way down at the bottom of the list, despite the rest of the list being alphabetical--that's why I didn't see them when I checked the first time.

I really wish I knew if my refurbed replacement has the new heat sink. It's from right around the time they were first reported. But my luck, I got the last one that didn't have it...

But the weird thing was every other TV was fine. Typically BB has several different sources for even a small group of TV's, often some very poor ones, with some TV's in 4:3 mode or something. But for the new setup they just did--it looked like they were all done right (maybe someone from corporate who knew what they were doing came down for the initial setup) with the exact same source and settings. Except one, which was so wrong I couldn't figure out the problem. Of course, having read about tearing issues on that Samsung in 720p mode (which is the main thing it'll be doing) and finding Youtube videos showing it, I've switched to looking at Sony's top 32in, the KDL-32XBR4, and their 2nd-highest, the 32S3000. XBR cost 400 bucks more than most of the others, and is basically out of my budget. But it does have the 120hz (simulated) refresh thing, AND it'll accept 1080p24 (scales down to 720p though). That could be worth it. Mainly for the 120hz refresh. The S3000 is rated very highly, but lacks the above 2 features. And is 300-400 bucks less. Also, it seems Sony is making a new "budget Bravia" line which will be sold in Target and Wal-Mart. And the S3000 series will be the core. They'll do 26, 32, and 40in versions of the S3000, called the M3000. And they're be ~200 less than even the S3000 series, and likely perform very similarly. That'd basically make the M3000 "almost" as good as the XBR4, but cost almost 500 bucks less. I really need to find some 120hz TV's SET UP CORRECTLY to go see if it's worth the money. Of course, I don't plan to actually buy until Black Friday or so, prices could change drastically by then. Heck, the XBR4 dropped 100 this month, and is down like 300 from May. (And there's always the new Panasonic one with 120hz)

Gah, I really can't afford an extra 500 bucks in the next 2 or 3 months to snag a 60gig before they're gone, but backwards compatability is a huge issue to me. I'd rather not have to keep my PS2 hooked up all the time.

I'll go fiddle with it some more tonight, see what I can do.

Barricade's toy just isn't good enough IMHO. He needs a Voyager or Leader class toy. I mean c'mon--he's got way more screen time and presence than Brawl. And dialogue!

I didn't know you could customize a downloaded theme, I've fiddled with the customization before. But it still limits you to "default" options. I was hoping you could use the guide color from a downloaded theme. The two defaults aren't that cool IMHO. The AC6 guide is pretty close to default, but the Darkness guide--as I said, it's the coolest ever. It's like "purple-blue carpet hexagons" or something.

Target reset, and like everywhere else---lots of new "stuff" but no deluxe/voyager toys. "Robot replicas" look nice at first, but taking a good look----the sculpting is "soft" and all the paint apps are gone. Compared to his packaging, Barricade lost ALL his gold accents and his red ones. He suffers from "utter blackness" like Ironhide now. His molding just isn't crisp enough compared to other figures of that style IMHO. SW unleashed are better done.

Went to Best Buy today, and they finally (9 months after every other BB) re-did their TV section. All the CRT's are gone, just a giant wall of HD now. The entire left side is 32in, so I spent some time looking. Of course, the one TV I'm most interested in at the moment (Samsung LN-3253H I think) was the one TV that BB had totally F'd up. I couldn't even fix it (I'm pretty used to adjusting color/aspect ratio in TV stores to get a correct picture). Never seen anything like it. I'm curious as to what was wrong with it: 1. The aspect ratio was correct. But, there were massive black borders on all 4 sides, in proportion. It was like the entire screen was zoomed out to 50% or something. 2. Image quality was horrendous. Not just "bad connection shared among 50 sources". Every other TV in the store was about as good as I've ever seen, so obviously the reset included better sourcing for the TV's. It was like this TV was playing a copy of a copy of a copy of a VHS tape. Blurry, streaky, rainbow bands, tearing. But it was the same "HD demo" every other TV was playing. 3. The source itself seemed to have a much lower resolution. Even accounting for borders, aspect ratio, etc ---it seemed to be getting a very low-res pic. Blowing it up ("4:3 full zoom") to fill the screen showed that. It's like the other TV's were playing a 1080p version of the demo, and this one was playing a 480i VHS tape with dirty heads. It looked a LOT like a bad VHS tape. I fiddled with every aspect ratio/source setting I could find, and nothing helped---because the aspect ratio was correct to start with, it was just zoomed way out. And the source just seemed wrong---horribly pixelated. Even zoomed down small, it had a much lower resolution than the other TV's. Like looking at a jpeg at 800%. It's like it was playing a 56k stream when all the others had 700k streams. Very similar effect. Sigh, I just have to hope they fix it fairly soon so I can do some comparisons. I did learn some things though: 1. 32in is a very nice size, and I'm pretty sure it'll fit, and look good at 4-5ft distance. I *might* be able to do 40in, and could thus get a LED backlit one when they come out--but they cost 3x what I plan to spend, so that's not going to happen. 2. Brightness/viewing angle on LCD's is notably better than even 6-9 months ago. Not perfect, but "acceptable" now.

::puts on moderator hat:: Just reminding everyone we have a "warfare" thread: http://macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=22252

Sigh---if they used that G1 scheme on the leader-class Prime toy.... (though actually it might look a bit strange, as the red fenders would be on the blue legs) :edit: LOL, everyone had the same thought.