Alpha OTS

Sigh. I've been all over google trying to find a solution to this, but I can't find anything other than articles saying that this is a problem. I know it is, tell me how to fix it! My ps2 games look like complete and utter crap on my ps3. I tried changing the resolution(1080, 720, i's and p's), the smoothing, the normal versus fullscreen, and it still looks the same: a jagged, misinterlaced, shaking, blurry mess. Help!

Whoa....what's the story behind the crucified Ultramen? I don't know much beyond the first two seasons.

I'm a little ticked off at the moment. Not sure who to be mad at. Probably myself for not doing enough research. I knew I wanted the 80gig model because I wanted PS2 b/w capability and the bigger drive(the pack in game helped too), and I wanted to buy it now before the free disc promotion ends at the end of this month. That was the extent of my investigation. That said..... It really befuddles me that a BLU RAY machine, where BLU RAY and HI DEF is one of the selling points provides me with a standard 480i max AV cable out of box. I told the guy when I bought this that, at least initially, it was primarily for movie playing. I specifically mentioned blu ray and sd upscaling. He even tried to get me to buy some of their used blu ray movies. It would have been nice if he would have mentioned that I need new AV cables. Grrrr.......so now I have to plan to go to the store again to get a new AV cable. Ok, I'm calming down. I thought I'd have to buy a ps2 memory card drive too, but I'll be able to download ps2 memory saves from the internet to save me the time and expense, I hope? Right? Please?

I had to get my gunship out of storage to take a look because I couldn't remember. Yeowch, those shoulders are immobile. The snowspeeder has better articulation, but not by a huge stretch. It can move its arms a tiny bit forward, but the covers really limit movement so its nothing notable. The biggest improvement is the elbows which can bend the arms upwards towards the face which is something the gunship can't do at all. The snowspeeder can also raise it's arms out laterally and it looks natural doing so, which the gunship doesn't. ie: The speeder can scratch his belly and have his hands on his hips, the gunship can do this too, but it doesn't look quite right. The snowspeeder has better leg articulation too that can better handle the weight than the gunship does. I like the gunship. It looks good in robot mode, but it doesn't have much useful arm articulation, and the legs can't really handle the weight of its torso, so it only really has a couple decent poses. You can do much more with the speeder.

One of the reasons(besides it being Star Wars) I'm probably more forgiving of this line than most is because it features pilots. Alot of the problems with the molds so far probably could have been remedied if they hadn't had to compensate space for pilot compartments at this small of a scale. I'm tempted by Cody despite it being a prequel vehicle. Does the pilot seat have any details? Edit: Just noticed........This......is.....my 300th post!

Are we seeing a little bit of articulation on those pilots?

They should have mixed it up a little amongst the existing teams. Give the combaticons a decepticon repaint of one of the aerialbots, and the aerialbots an autobot repaint of their helicopter mold. The construction vehicles don't really go well with any of them, but you probably could have gotten away with giving the combaticon tank mold to the constructicon team. Not perfect, but it would have been better than dual repeats.

Don't even joke about that.

On the upside, if this is spelling doom for the HD-DVD format, there's going to be a lot of titles to pick up on the cheap.

I think he does too. He looks like a mash of construction vehicles, which is always a vibe I got from G1 Devastator especially because of the legs and feet. The Energon mold is just too symmetrical and the chest is too flat.

It was one of those sets that if you weren't paying attention to a Transformers forum(like the allspark) was probably easy to miss. It hit the store, was discounted soon after, and then quickly moved off the shelfs. There was also the Walmart "Classics" Devastator which you mentioned which is a repaint of Energon Constructicon Maximus, and before that the KayBee Micromaster Devastator set. If you look around on eBay now, you can find the KO World Smallest Transformer scale Devastator set, which I added some paint touch ups to in the pic above. I'm not sure of any other transformable Devastators that have been released.

I'd be really interested on hearing how the hands are. Is the plastic better there? Are they painted, and is it really an issue? Plus are those chest missiles removeable? I've been tempted to buy one just to get a blue Scott at a reasonable price.

I find that hard to believe. I always thought hi def DVD was inconsequential compared to standard DVD. Some of the wiser heads in this forum and elsewhere usually advise calm because the "war" is niche in the scheme of things, which always made sense to me given the numbers that would be posted. Could it be that there just weren't any standard DVDs released recently that were worth owning? I'm no insider or industry exec though.

Unfortunately, if the SWTF X-wing had larger wings and kept the same transformation, he'd look considerably worse, because that's one of the unfinished looking parts of the figure. And they did do a Falcon , which is pretty decent and while the Han half looks pretty crappy compared to the decent Chewbacca half, it's another example of electronics done right.

They usually don't know because the people displaying them or doing the promotion for them are not the people who designed the toy. Landfill(Build King) is one notorious example, although it's easy to see why. He's really easy to mistransform, and it takes quite a bit of attention to make him look cohesive in combined mode. To illustrate, here's the Target Constructicon repaint set of this team: Compare that with the entry for this figure at www.tfu.info here.

My HD-TV was mainly for gaming. Transformers was the reason I bought the HD-DVD player for my 360, the 5 free disc deal made it easier to do(which looking back was also a bait and switch tactic, imo). If I was going to watch that movie at home, I wanted to see as much robot detail as possible. But I'm pretty likely to buy a PS3 soon. The format war's kind of a moot point to me though. If there are things I want to watch in as high a detail as possible, I'll find and buy the way to do so.

I can't believe the promo pictures Hasbro was showing for the Speeder had the shrunken dwarf legs and the At-At's head was flush against the body making it look like it didn't have a neck. Neither are the case, and both are things that make their figures considerably far better than what those promo pictures promised. Then again, this isn't the first, nor will it be the last, time that Hasbro has mistransformed its own product while promoting them. Sadly, the snowspeeder doesn't have full shoulder articulation. He can't raise his arms fully in the air because the shoulder "covers" that you see in that pic prevent such movement. He can stretch them fully outwards, either frontwards or laterally, and bend at the elbows to reach towards his face. So below the shoulder line, he has full movement. The X-wing is one of the weakest in the line. Arm articulation is terrible. The ankles are a very weak spot prone to snapping. The head looks like they took it from a normal rebel pilot action figure and painted the face under the visor silver. It just looks like it needs another step or two to fold up more parts so the robot mode is more aesthetically appealling too. The vehicle's the best part, but this is one of the weakest vehicles in the line. Partly because of the stubbiness, but mostly because there isn't a stable X mode for the wings. Personally, I like it because it's an X-wing that turns into a robot, but there's no denying it has problems. Cody's been getting good reviews from what I've seen. The character/vehicle(pre-AT-AT on wheels) don't do much for me, so I passed. It does look well proportioned, and is clearly a representation of its namesake. The clones are some of the better figures in the line. The vehicles modes are excellent, but that's not surprising. Robot modes have some issues, but not many. The ARC-170s have knees in a really odd spot, too low on the leg. The Clone carrier(name eludes me for the moment) is kind of gangly in robot mode, but the vehicle mode has slots in it so you can fill the bay with the pilots from other figures. Supposedly Hasbro's confirmed that we'll see more of the line in 2008, which if true is good news, imo. We need some Tie Fighter variants, a Twin Pod Cloud Car, a Y-wing, an A-wing, a landspeeder, an AT-ST and anything else Original Trilogy related.

Yeowch. That's a real dissappointment. I heard the achievements are maniacal too.

The Darth Star is awesome, and one of the few examples of electronics making a transformer *better*. The Snowspeeder from the new wave seems to have been sadly ignored, and it really deserves an honorable mention. It's something of a shellformer too, but the proportions aren't near as off as what had been shown in pre-release pics. The legs stretch out to normal size and you can shrink the backpack mass a bit. The ship mode is excellent too, but that's not surprising since that's the strength of this line. I'm still tweaking my display with these SWTF figures. All OT only. I'm probably one of the few who's been pretty happy with most of the line.

JS and some others here always mention how great an upscaler the PS3 has. Is that a software only thing, and more to the point if so, what are the odds that we'd ever see a 360 update that improves the one it has?

Heh, I went back to Best Buy to buy Fire Pro because I figure for $10, best to buy it now than to want it later and buy it for far more off ebay as it seems like the rare type of game that will actually appreciate rather than depreciate especially given how high 6man Scramble on the Saturn used to go for. They were sold out. KoF XI and NeoGeo Coliseum were all sold out too.

Ratchet is the grumpy one.

RiD was what brought me back into the fandom because of the realistic designs(The Car Brothers and RiD Prime are the forerunners of Alternators, imo). I can kind of see Hasbro's long term strategy. RiD caught everyone's attention after the long vehicle(vehicons are not quite the same thing) hiatus since G2 much to Hasbro's surprise. Armada tried to capitalize on that attention and hook them young. Energon and Cybertron tried to keep them hooked as they grew older. The movie line took this another logical step further. And with Animated, they're starting over again, but with the lessons they've learned along the way(thank Primus). In the mean time they throw out Alternators, MPs and Classics for those who're the long term diehards, or just want something even more realistic than what the other lines offer. It's a really smart business model, imo, but I might be speculating a bit too much. It might just be a lucky turn of events. I might buy a couple of the Animated figures. The Primes(I'm really happy Earth Prime has his face plate), Starscream(although I'll wait for the inevitable strict G1 repaint courtesy of Target ) and Megatron, because I collect figures of those three. Seeing them in motion and hearing the voices really helped me warm up to the designs, but still, the rest of the lot don't really appeal to me, nor do I think are they supposed to. Kids, on the other hand........

I hadn't seen these in quite a while, but my impression is the same: kids are going to love these.

Different heads, different weapons, it looks like.