Klipsch Pro Media 2.1

Klipsch has been in the audio business for more than 60 years, so making a speaker isn't anything new to the company. Its Pro Media 2.1 speaker set is a testament to that when it comes to sound reproduction. The $150, entry-level, speaker set sounds great and is a great value in spite of some minor quibbles.

Setup is dead simple, and the included wiring should be sufficient for any desk, as well as most room setups. The conventional speaker jacks also allow you to replace the included wiring with any other speaker wire.

The metal speaker stands for the left and right channel bend rather easily if you lean on them by accident (which we did). But getting them back into proper shape is just as trivial. You can wall mount the speakers, but frankly, the result would look silly because many of the wires would hang out of the left speaker.

Once plugged in, the set handled everything from Nick Drake to Nine Inch Nails quite well and was detailed enough to bring out minor elements in the music at low volumes. When cranked, the set played on distortion free. Bass response at the recommended setting felt fantastic at all volume levels, and you certainly don't need to crank up the set to feel the punches.

The speaker!

Input options are the Pro Media 2.1's biggest stumbling point. With just two inputs, even with a few devices (computer, game console, MP3 player), you're going to have to play the cable-swap game. Both inputs are of the headphone-style variety, so you'll need adapters for your consoles. In an interesting twist, there's no button to push when you switch between inputs. If you have two devices plugged in and playing music, the speakers will pass both signals through at the same time.

Outside of the limited number of inputs, we're quite pleased with the Klipsch Pro Media 2.1s. Excellent sound quality, compact size, and a tolerable price point make it hard to go wrong with them.

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The Radeon HD 5570 and 5450

ATI released two more budget-oriented Radeon 5000 series video cards. The Radeon HD 5570 and Radeon HD 5450 roll in at $80 to $85 and $50 to $60, respectively. You'll get all the usual Radeon HD 5000 series goodies--triple monitor support and DirectX11. Just don't count on any of the gaming horsepower to make an appearance.

The Specs:

Radeon HD 5570

650MHz core

400 stream processors

1GB 900MHz DDR3 RAM

Radeon HD 5450

650MHz Core

80 stream processors

512MB/1GB 800MHz DDR3/DDR2 RAM

At first glance, the Radeon HD 5570 seems like it might be a decent contender, but then we encounter the pesky DDR3 problem. The reduced memory bandwidth will nip any performance aspirations in the bud. The Radeon HD 5450, like just about any $50 GPU, gets carved down to the bone. With less than a one-fourth of the cores present on the Radeon HD 5570, it's all down hill.

On the plus side, these lean cards draw almost no power. The Radeon HD 5570 draws 38W and idles under 10W. If that seems low, the Radeon HD 5450 uses even less: 19W under load and 7W at idle. Their miniscule power consumption is also matched by their small physical size and low noise output. Both of the cards are half height, which helps them fit into tight cases. The Radeon HD 5450 doesn't even have a fan, so it's completely silent.

Performance Tests

Putting the cards through the paces, we couldn't help but hope for better performance. The specs didn't inspire much, and the tests confirmed it. The 3DMark Vantage GPU score shows the Radeon HD 5670 to be five times faster than the Radeon HD 5450, and almost one-and-a-half times as fast as the Radeon HD 5570. Yes, the Radeon HD 5670 costs twice as much, but when we're down in the $50-to-$100 range, it really pays to save for an extra week or two to get something vastly better. Dirt 2 and Batman showed similar results. To even get Dirt 2 playable on the Radeon HD 5450, we had to set everything to ultra low and kick the resolution down to 1280x768. The Radeon HD 5570 fared slightly better, but it's hardly $20 away from the Radeon HD 5670 and GeForce 9800 GT. Unless your biggest concerns are power and space, do yourself a favor and move up the chain a bit.

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The Radeon HD 5670

Guess what? ATI has yet another Radeon 5000 GPU up its sleeve, albeit on the budget end of the spectrum: the Radeon HD 5670. $100 buys you an almost completely silent, triple-monitor-capable budget gaming card.

The basic specs: 775MHz core clock, 400 Stream processors, and 512MB of memory clocked at 1GHz. It's basically half of a Radeon HD 5770, but it still manages to hold its own. Like other Radeon HD 5000 series cards, the 5670 is DirectX 11 capable and has the usual suite of features you'd expect: HDMI 1.3a support, DTS Master Audio, Dolby True HD, and Eyefinity. Although, if you're going to purchase an additional two monitors and bother to build a triple monitor gaming setup, do yourself a favor and get something with a bit more oomph.

The Radeon HD 5670 is tiny compared to the dual slot behemoth that is the Radeon HD 5970. It also doesn't need a power connector and has a maximum power consumption of 75W (minimum of 14W), so forget about having to upgrade your power supply.

Performance Charts

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5670 doesn't exactly disappoint. The $100 card gets you gaming at 1920x1200 on all of the games we tested and with high-quality settings. Nvidia's direct competitor to the Radeon HD 5670 would be the GeForce GT 240, but we didn't have that on hand for testing. In its stead, we used the similarly priced GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, which comes in anywhere between $95 and $110. It outguns both the Radeon HD 5670 and the GeForce GT 240, but it's missing quite a few home-theater-oriented features, consumes more power, and generates more heat. Get the 9800 GT if all you care about is games. DirectX 11 is a nice feature for the Radeon HD 5670, but we don't consider it a must-have. However, should the home-theater features and Eyefinity support entice you, the Radeon HD 5670 is a good bet.

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PlayStation Home keeps evolving. What started as a simple place to hang out and move furniture morphed into a land filled with game spaces, minigames, and much more. Now it's moving another step forward. The virtual space will get full-blown games, the first of which is Outso's Sodium One, an arcade-style shooter with massively multiplayer online and social gaming aspects all tied up into one.

Cost factors into any game, and Sodium One is no different. The first five levels will be offered for free, and the rest of the game (an added 45 levels) is available for $4.99. The game will feature rooms you can navigate: a bar, a dance floor, a mission area, a VIP lounge (available to those who purchased the game), and even some scorpion-stomping grounds, among other areas.

Sodium One has a few games built into it, some of which involve squishing scorpions and making virtual drinks. The core of the gameplay resides around Salt Shooter, where you're fighting off waves of enemy robots in the desert with a hovertank. You'll basically want to shoot down enemies, grab their loot, and run off to buy better weapons and upgrades for your ship.

You'll get missions from Vickie, an odd-looking robot with one goofy leg, blue hair, and a rather skimpy outfit. As you complete more missions, which might involve shooting robots, stomping on bugs, or going to various events, you'll level up your character, get patches for your avatar's outfit, and win upgrades.

Outso related that the game will be updated at regular intervals with new quests, added levels, and other various improvements. The developers will lean heavily on user feedback to determine which way to take the game. They indicated that cooperative modes might come in future iterations of the game.

As for the social gaming aspect, don't expect anything like Zynga's Mafia Wars, where you're constantly bombarded with invites, requests, and anything of that nature. As far as we can tell, you'll be allowed to purchase credits for upgrades and gift items to friends.

The game is accessible today via Home in North America and Europe and will be free for 1,050 users over the next seven days, at a rate of 105 users per day.

Sony's Director of PlayStation Home, Jack Buser, indicated that Sodium One marks the start of a shift in PlayStation Home. Expect a whole lot more in terms of full-blown gaming experiences over the next year.

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AMD has been on a tear releasing new DirectX11-capable Radeon HD 5000 series parts. Over the past month or two, the company released the Radeon HD 5870, the Radeon HD 5850, the Radeon HD 5770, and the Radeon HD 5750. All of those cards were apparently just the appetizers. Today, the company unveiled the Radeon HD 5970, a beast of a card that weighs in with dual GPUs, 2GB of RAM, and a $600 price tag that should make more than a few people dizzy.

Did we mention it was long?

Like other Radeon HD 5000 series cards, the Radeon HD 5970 comes with support for DirectX11 and triple monitor outputs capable of Eyefinity. Each of the GPUs has 1,600 stream processors, giving the HD 5970 a total of 3,200 stream processors. The core clock is set at 725MHz, and the memory is set at 1GHz. By comparison, the Radeon HD 5870 has an 850MHz core and 1.2GHz memory. When you get down to it, the Radeon HD 5970 is the equivalent of two Radeon HD 5870s slapped together and running slightly slower. ATI made it a point to tell us that the card is highly overclockable: ours made its way up to a 795MHz core clock and 1150MHz on the RAM.

To say the card is large is an understatement. It's roughly a foot long, which means it's going to be a tough squeeze fitting it into anything but the largest of cases. Forget the card exists if you have a small form-factor PC, and quite likely if you have a medium-sized computer. If you're even vaguely contemplating picking up a Radeon HD 5970, do yourself a favor and pull out a ruler to see if it will fit. In all likelihood you're going to have to move a hard drive and likely even remove an entire hard drive cage.

The Radeon HD 5970 gets difficult to test if you're not a computer store. We've got a room full of stuff, and even then we're outclassed by this video card. We've got 24-inch monitors that run at 1920x1200, and the Radeon HD 5970 trots all over them. Even a single 30-inch monitor with a resolution of 2560x1600 wouldn't stress it enough. Our results show that the Radeon HD 5970 is quick, but it's capable of much more. We're actually going to have to defer to Anandtech if you want a full performance rundown.

Click here for the results.

If speed's the name of the game, the Radeon HD 5970 qualifies handily. With a $600 price tag and performance that falls off the right end of the charts, it gets hard to recommend simply because you're going to need so much more to tap its potential. At the very minimum, you'll need three 24-inch monitors, which cost roughly $750 or more combined. To seriously use the Radeon HD 5970, three 30-inchers will cost over $3,500, and at that point you might as well spend the extra $600 on a second Radeon HD 5970 (since the Radeon HD 5970 is the only Radeon 5000 series card capable of Eyefinity support in Crossfire at the moment). For the rest of the population (all 99.9999999 percent of us), we're better off scratching that pixel-pushing itch with something considerably less expensive.

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Xbox Live's promised land of social networking is getting closer to fruition. The company's been telling us about the upcoming Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm, and Instant On 1080p video marketplace for some time. We got to sit down with Ron Pessner, a general manager of Xbox Live Engagement, to test drive these upcoming additions.

Microsoft knew it would be difficult to recreate the full experience of all of these website applications, especially since they're best experienced from two feet away, and with a mouse and keyboard. The new apps are very focused in their capabilities, and from what we got to experience, quite functional in their own right.

Facebook on Xbox Live pulls in the news feed and auto scrolls it if you leave it to its own devices. Poking around the New Experience themed menu revealed that we could check up on friends, update our status, and really get down and dirty in the photos section. We had a blast flipping through both our photos and those of our friends. Navigating through the snapshots was quick and intuitive, and commenting on them, even easier.

Out side of that you're also able to able to find friends on Facebook that have Xbox Live accounts. Quite a time saver if you don't want to bother asking all of them what their gamer tags are.

Last.fm lets you stream music, set up faux radio stations, and even explore the musical selections of your friends. The whole experience is geared around getting to the music as quickly as possible. While the tunes plays, the app streams in pictures of the band as a backdrop. Should you want to explore a bit while listening, amble over to the more information button to learn more about the band. Microsoft and Last.fm are also rolling out a "Gamer" radio station that they think will appeal to us. We didn't get to explore that as much as we'd like to, but we're certainly curious as to what they came up with.

Twitter is probably the least New Experience stylized app of the bunch. The service is dead simple. Post 140 characters or less on whatever you want and that's it. The Xbox Live app lets you explore your friend's feeds, follow new users, search, and post new tweets. You can also leave it on to automatically get a stream of Twitter updates from your friends as well. The backdrop shifts around with simple animations so that your screen doesn't burn-in.

We really got a kick out of the Instant On 1080p Zune video marketplace. The service still has its quirks (we saw a beta), but it looks and feels spectacular. In a nutshell, you can buy and rent video from it in 1080p quality. As a plus, files you purchase will be usable on the Zune, Xbox 360 and your PC. We didn't get to experience downloaded video, but streams we saw looked great. Microsoft's software constantly checks your bandwidth to make sure you're getting the best image possible at any given point in time. If your brother starts downloading a large file, the video quality will get a little blockier, but it will continue without a hitch. Once he's done downloading, the video quality will automatically get much more crisp.

Microsoft didn't indicate a specific date for all these new features, but it aims to release them sometime in November.

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ATI's on a roll at the moment. After successfully launching the Radeon HD 5870 and 5850 a scant two weeks prior, it's following up with some more mainstream offerings - the Radeon HD 5770 and 5750. The Radeon HD 5770 will cost $159, and the Radeon HD 5750 will hit the market even lower at $109. We received the Radeon HD 5770 for testing and put it through the gauntlet.

Specification wise, both cards are essentially cut down versions of their top-end brethren. At roughly half the price, you're also getting half the card. The numbers for both cards follow below.

Radeon HD 5770

• 800 Stream Processors
• 850MHz Core Clock
• 1GB GDDR5
• 1.2GHz Memoy Clock

Radeon HD 5750

• 720 Stream Processors
• 700 MHz Core Clock
• 512MB or 1GB GDDR5
• 1150MHz Memory Clock

By comparison the flagship $379 Radeon HD 5870 has 1600 stream processors, an 850MHz core clock, and 1GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1.2GHz. The rest of the benefits of the Radeon 5000 series apply to both the 5770 and 5750 - lower power usage, DirectX 11 support, and great home theater support for Dolby True HD and DTS Master Audio.

Eyefinity

Both the Radeon HD 5770 and 5750 support Eyefinity, ATI's multi-monitor output solution. The two cards can run three monitors, although doing so could prove tricky. If you already own three monitors and want to plug them in, two of your monitors can run on either DVI or HDMI inputs with plug converters. To enable the third monitor you will need a Displayport monitor or an active Displayport adapter to convert an existing DVI/HDMI monitor into one. We've seen numerous posts, in forums about just this issue. ATI didn't go out of their way to hide this little fact. It's just not something most people are looking for in the manual, and to be honest we were a little blindsided by it too, despite the company's best efforts.

At $100, an active Displayport adapter doesn't come cheap. Depending on how big of a monitor you have, you might be better off selling it and simply getting a new Displayport monitor. Displayport monitors aren't nearly as plentiful as standard DVI/HDMI monitors, but fortunately there's not much of a cost premium attached to them either. Dell has numerous models ranging from $200 on up.

Performance

Depending upon the game, the Radeon HD 5770 performs right underneath the Radeon HD 4870 and the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 or fairly close to them. The GeForce GTS 260 is close in price, but the real competition comes from the Radeon HD 4870, which can be had for as little as $145. Choosing between the two is difficult, as you could opt for higher overall performance or go slightly slower and gain the benefit of lower power requirements, DirectX 11 support, and a glimpse into the future of multi-monitor gaming. With less than $20 up or down, you pretty much have to figure out what's more important to you. We'd side with the Radeon HD 5770 simply for the triple monitor desktop support.

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With the holiday's almost upon us, the GPU gnomes come out to play. ATI's little men were the first to pop out this year and they're coming with something big and small at the same time. We got a glimpse at some of the larger features a few weeks back with Eyefinity, but now we have the full scoop. ATI's launching two new video cards, the Radeon HD 5870 and the Radeon HD 5850. The big boy 5870 rolls in at $379, and the 5850 at $259.

GPU manufacturers are big on numbers, and they are LARGE this time.

Radeon HD 5870

• 1600 Stream Processors
• 850MHz Core Clock
• 1GB GDDR5
• 1.2GHz Memory Clock

Radeon HD 5850

• 1440 Stream Processors
• 725MHz Core Clock
• 1GB GDDR5
• 1GHz Memory Clock

The new GPUs are built on a 40nm process and have a whopping 2.15 billion transistors - more than double the amount found on the previous generation Radeon HD 4870. Support for DirectX 11 comes from day one, although we're still waiting for the Windows 7 launch. ATI claims to have doubled performance per watt and reduced power consumption drastically when the the board is idle. At peak performance, the boards draw between 170W to 190W. Power consumption drops to 27W when idle. By comparison the Radeon HD 4870 consumes 160W at peak and gulps down 60W when idle.

Rumors indicate that supply for the board will be tight around launch, and initial reports show both the Radeon HD 5870 and Radeon 5850 out of stock at many online retailers. Basic supply and demand issues will likely push prices upward. We've already seen the Radeon HD 5870 creep up to $407, and the Radeon HD 5850 to $300.

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AMD's making quite a hullaballo with its next generation ATI graphics parts. The company held a press conference to unveil the new graphics processors but didn't spill all the beans just yet. Outside of some really big numbers that we can mention, the new GPUs support a brand new feature called Eyefinity, a method by which to connect up to six monitors to a single video card.

Yes, you read that right - six monitors. No limitations either. Feel free to hookup six gigantic 30" displays if you want. Not all the new video cards will support six outputs, but three seems to be the new minimum. ATI's reasoning behind enabling support for so many monitors actually makes a lot of sense. While most of us can't afford a single 30" LCD (let alone six of them), grabbing three 20" LCDs can cost as low as $400. Six quality displays can easily be had for less than $1000 if you want to go all out.

Outside of giving you an absurdly large desktop space, ATI states that the new GPU will actually be able to drive insane resolutions in-game. You don't have to imagine what World of Warcraft would look like at 7680x3200, because you can actually do it. Game compatibility might be an issue, but ATI assured us that more than a few games work well out of the box, and that simple patches can enable many others.

ATI let loose two figures to allay concerns that their GPU can't possibly run games at such absurd resolutions. The new GPU will have 2.15 billion transistors, and will be capable of over 2.5 TFLOPs. To put those numbers in perspective, ATI's current generation Radeon HD 4890 has less than half as many transistors, and is capable of around 1 TFLOPs. We got to toy around on Left 4 Dead for a bit, and at the risk of sounding effusive, it rocked. Silky smooth and ridiculously large.

We'll see how the new GPU performs soon enough, and whether it's capable of driving more graphically demanding games with high quality settings at such insane resolutions. Until then, have sweet dreams of large multi-monitor displays and stupidly high resolution gaming.

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(This story originally appeared on CBS Interactive's Webcrawler site , and was written by associate editor Josh Lowensohn.)

Sony's announcement of the PlayStation 3 Slim on Tuesday was no surprise for most gamers and industry experts. Parts that once cost a small fortune, such as hard drives, processors, and special disc-reading lenses, continue to fall in price and take up less space. It's only natural the machines that use them would shrink as well.

The PlayStation 3 was physically the largest of the three current-generation home consoles, followed by Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii. With never-ending lust by consumers for smaller gadgets, the current configuration was just not cutting it.

What's surprising about the Slim, though, is that Sony was the second-most recent of the three companies to have released its console, yet it's the first to offer a completely new form factor. Microsoft was the first out of the gate with a North America release of the Xbox 360 in late November 2005. Sony and Nintendo followed suit with the PlayStation 3 and Wii, respectively, which were released a week apart from each other in mid-November 2006.

The closest either Nintendo or Microsoft has come to a redesign since is Microsoft, which began including an HDMI port and increasing the included storage, alongside a major revision to the system software which allowed games to be played off the hard drive.

In the case of the PS3 Slim, it's actually the fourth generation of the device. During that three-year period, things like the included storage space jumped from 20GB to 120GB. And a recently unearthed patent at the FCC filing shows that a 250GB model is just around the corner.

So is it normal to release a heavily revised version of a gaming system within three years of the initial release? It depends on who you are. Let's take a look at some notable shrinkage from the last three generations of consoles. I think that you'll notice a trend.

Note: We're not including handheld consoles in this story, but parallels can be made between revisions to Nintendo's Game Boy and DS products, as well as Sony's PSP.

Previous generations

Last generation:

Sony PlayStation 2 (PS2) Released: October 26, 2000 (North America)

(Left) The original PlayStation 2 design next to (Right) the Slimline model. (Credit: Sony / CNET)

The PS2 was the only console from the last generation to undergo a major facelift. Neither Microsoft's original Xbox nor Nintendo's GameCube underwent any physical changes.

Sony's first major revision was actually its ninth. Sony frequently changed internal components as circuit boards were streamlined, and parts were moved around to deter people from modifying the hardware. The revision, which came less than three years after the launch, added an infrared port to the front of the device, which would allow users to control the built-in DVD player without an IR dongle. It also ran quieter than older versions, which was Sony's nod to the fact that many were using the system primarily as a DVD player.

In 2004, Sony released the Slimline version of the PS2, which moved the power supply outside of the machine, which shrank the size of the device down considerably. It also did away with the tray-loading disc mechanism, and had users place discs inside the device using a flip-up panel. Other changes included the addition of the once-optional (and not free) network adapter inside of the machine so that users could connect their machine to play online matches.

Three years after that, Sony began shipping a version of the Slimline that was a third lighter, followed closely by a version that brought the power supply back into the unit, and did away with the external power brick entirely.

Two generations ago:

PlayStation 1 Released: September 9, 1995 (North America)

(Left) The original PlayStation next to (Right) the PSOne. (Credit: Sony / CNET)

The original PlayStation had the most hardware revisions of any home gaming console due mostly to the fact that it was produced for 11 years and sold more than 100 million units.

While most of the changes were internal parts, its biggest external change was the release of the PSOne in July 2000. This was a much smaller iteration of the hardware and had all new system software and a circuit board that featured smaller chips.

Three generations ago:

Super Nintendo Released: August 1991 (North America)

(Credit: Super Nintendo 1-Wikipedia, Super Nintendo Jr-Wikipedia)

To fight some of the attention that had been taken away by Sony's PlayStation, in late 1997 Nintendo released a smaller, simpler, and less-expensive version of the Super Nintendo. It did away with the ejector button for cartridges, and simply let gamers pull them out with their hands. It also featured a slightly different version of the A/V port in the back that was unable to run S-Video or RGB signals. At $100 it also cost close to what a single game did at the height of the system's popularity.

Sega Genesis/Sega CD Released: Genesis-August 14, 1989; Sega CD-October 15, 1992 (North America)

(Credit: Sega Genesis 1 w/Sega CD 1-Wikipedia, Sega Genesis 2 w/Sega CD 2-Wikipedia, Sega CDX-Wikipedia, Sega Nomad-Wikipedia)

Sega's console combination underwent several distinct revisions over the course of its existence, all of which brought smaller sizes. It's also worth nothing that Sega was not the sole creator of some of its systems, since it allowed licensing to third parties that could build its technology into other pieces of hardware. (For the sake of simplicity we're not including those.)

As for Sega's own hardware, the first and only major change for the 16-bit Genesis was to shrink in size. In 1994, roughly five years after its launch, Sega released a square version of the console which did away with the headphone jack and volume control slider on the front of the unit.

With a smaller version of the Genesis out, Sega had to create a smaller version of its CD-ROM peripheral, the Sega CD to match it. Thus, the Sega CD-2 was born. Instead of sitting underneath the Genesis, it plugged in to the right of it. It was also able to work with the first generation of Genesis hardware via an extender plate.

In 1994 Sega released the CDX, which was a combination of the Genesis and the Sega CD in one piece of hardware. It fizzled with a high price tag ($400) and the impending release of Sony's PlayStation, along with the imminent release of Sega's 32-bit console--the Saturn--and incompatibilities with Sega's third system add-on, the 32X.

Interestingly enough, the CDX was not the end of the line for the miniaturization of the Genesis. In late 1995 Sega released the Nomad, which was a handheld version of the Genesis. It played regular-sized Genesis cartridges and had a 3.25-inch color LCD and button controls that mimicked the Genesis controller. It could also be connected to a TV, so that players could play their games on a normal-sized screen.

Lessons learned

Out of all the console makers, Sony is the only one to completely revise its hardware every few years. What's interesting is that those revisions are coming closer together. In the case of the PlayStation (versions one through three), the time between initial launch and major revision has gone from five years down to just three. The original PlayStation launched in 1995, and was remade in 2000. Sony's PlayStation 2 launched in 2000, and was shrunk in 2004. The company's most recent console, the PlayStation 3 was launched in 2006, with the revision taking place in 2009.

Does that mean it'll creep even lower, into two-year or even yearly cycles between major revisions? Quite possibly, yes. It's worked very well with handheld gaming devices, and even some consumer electronics devices like iPods. Apple has turned out slimmer, more powerful versions of the iPod every year since 2001, and yearly events like E3 put continued pressure on console makers to show off something big.

In the case of the PS3 Slim though, it could just be that the PS3 had to be pushed out to meet its launch window, and that the Slim is what Sony was going for in the first place. Advances in the PlayStation 3's core technology, like the cell processor, also underwent changes since the console launched, including changes to fabrication that have taken the chip down from 90 nanometers to 65, then 45--the size that can be found inside the Slim. These changes meant less power consumption, smaller components, and easier cooling.

The same goes for the blue-violet laser that reads game and Blu-ray movie discs. When the PS3 was first released, it was one of the few players to feature the technology. It was also the cheapest. Blu-ray players have since dropped in price dramatically, and can now be had for under $100.

This generation of game console warfare is also much fiercer for Sony. It has had to defend its once-dominant spot against Microsoft's Xbox 360, which had a one-year lead to market, and Nintendo's family-friendly (and once $250 cheaper) Wii. The new $299 price tag for the PS3 Slim is proof enough of that.

So will Nintendo and Microsoft follow suit with new hardware this year? Not likely.

Just last week Microsoft released a new version of its Xbox 360 system software that added even more features. And at E3 the company announced and demonstrated Natal, a motion-capturing camera that tracks player movement and tacks it onto games. Shortly after that, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer supposedly told an audience that the camera would be built into a new version of the hardware shipping in 2010; a rumor which was squashed by Microsoft days later.

As for Nintendo, new hardware is less of a reality than a good old-fashioned price cut. For $50 more, Sony is now offering a game system that out-matches it on graphical prowess, and doubles as a spiffy Blu-ray player. For new gamers that's a hard sell--especially when new games that are coming out require extra hardware. Nintendo's sales are also slumping. Recent numbers from the NPD Group show that in July the console sold less than half the units that it did the year before, and with the holiday sales season right around the corner, a price cut is very possible.

Just don't expect it to get any smaller...at least until next year.

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Microsoft gave us a sneak peak of their upcoming Live update and it's choc full of new goodies for the console. However, quite a few of the announced updates didn't quite make it or are still works in progress. The company is handing out invites for the update, which should go live in beta form on this coming Monday. Apply here to become part of the lucky few. The update will be released on August 11th, so if you can't get in on the beta, you won't have to wait all that long.

[ Watch Video ]

If you want the short and skinny, the update will bring new features and revamp existing features in the following categories: Netflix, Avatar Marketplace, Games on Demand, User Ratings, Xbox Live Parties, and Video Display Options. Other minor changes include improvements to the achievement browser, achievement tracking, navigation, and friends list sorting.

Our experiences with the preview so far have been mixed, but that's to be expected, as it is in beta after all. Netflix took considerably longer to load, and we didn't see any queue management options. Terminator 2 allowed us to create a viewing party (which was really easy to do), but failed to start playback. That might also have to do with the fact that we had friends on out list that we didn't know, and were offline. We couldn't add any in-office friends as only one machine had the update at the time. Moving along, Die Hard had the party option grayed out entirely. We're guessing there are some licensing issues that need to be hammered out.

The Avatar Marketplace worked as advertised. There's a small selection of clothing and accessories you can root through at the moment, but that should expand considerably once the update is widely released. We outfitted our character in Halo 3 garb and steampunk goggles to round out the look. Items cost between 80 and 160 points to purchase, and an entire outfit might run you about 320 points. The Recessionista clothing pack in particular caught our attention. It wasn't so much the depression era garb, but the prices. You'd think budget clothing would actually be budget. To defray some of the cost, Microsoft will also enable Avatar awards of clothing and props within games, so you might just get some of the stuff for free.

As Microsoft stated, Games on Demand hasn't been released yet, but will be soon. Ratings for Live Arcade have been implemented on a five star scale, and a Top Rated menu tab lets you see the best that Live Arcade has to offer.

A full list of changes, taken from Microsoft's press release, follows:

Netflix Updates

-Movie Parties – Xbox LIVE Gold members can sit together in a virtual theater with up to seven friends no matter where they are while your Avatars watch a movie, flirt or even throw popcorn at each other.

-Manage Your Queue – Browse the Netflix Instant Watch video catalogue, choose from the most popular movies and genres and add to your queue all from the comfort of your couch – no computer required.

- Enhanced Playback Experience – Enjoy a smooth viewing experience when your internet bandwidth fluctuates.

- Friends Info – Richer information is now displayed in the Friends channel and in the Guide showing what you and your friends are doing.

Avatar Marketplace

- Clothing – Download premium items, including branded apparel from your favorite fashion labels and Xbox 360 games such as "Halo."

- Props – You can now equip your avatar with animated items they can carry around and interact with.

-Awardables – The ability to earn Avatar clothing and props as rewards within games has been added. Please stay tuned for an update on supporting titles.

Games on Demand

Please note that Games on Demand will be available in the preview beginning early August.

- Purchase Options – Browse and download a great selection of full Xbox 360 games using Microsoft Points, direct debit, or credit card.

- Game Manuals – Game manuals for Games on Demand titles can be viewed, downloaded or printed on Xbox.com.

- It's Yours Forever! – As with other Xbox LIVE content, Games on Demand titles are linked to your Xbox LIVE account, so you can delete and re-download anything you have already purchased to the same console or another console.

User Ratings

- Rate it – You can now rate every game on the Xbox LIVE Games Marketplace using a 5-star system.

- Sort and Find it – Now you can easily find the games that everyone's been raving about by visiting the Top Rated games in the Browse All category of Xbox LIVE Games Marketplace.

Xbox LIVE Parties

- Party Reconnections – If you are accidently disconnected from your party, Xbox LIVE will automatically reconnect you.

- Streamlined Party Invites – Invites are now just one click away! No need to click through multiple screens to get all your friends together.

Video Display Options

- Display Discovery – Make sure you can see and hear your entertainment in the highest resolution and sound quality possible with the option to override and select audio and video formats independent of the information your television sends to your Xbox 360 console.-

Other Improvements

- Gold Member Veterans – Xbox LIVE Gold members get to show it off with a stamp on your Gamer Card that tells people how long you've been a Gold member.

- Indie Games – Xbox LIVE Community Games has been renamed Xbox LIVE Indie Games. We feel this new name better represents the independent spirit of these titles.

- Achievement Browser – We've revamped the Achievements browser so it's now easier to read through all the achievements while playing a game. You can now also launch a game directly from the browser.

- Achievements Tracking – A new view inside the profile panel which includes a summary of Achievements earned across all the games played, and shows of all your completed games.

- Streamlined Navigation - Streamlined navigation, including new entry points in the dashboard for Active Downloads, redeeming codes, recovering Gamertags and more.

- Voice Messages – No more blank voice messages! When recording a voice message, a warning will pop up if no audio is detected.

- Friends List Sorting – It's now easier to find your friends! Find and sort your friends by activity, Gamertag or online status by pressing the Y button while viewing the friends list in the Guide.

- Memory – Time stamps now appear in the memory area, which particular handy when managing saved games.

Account Management

- Subscription Notification – If your Xbox LIVE subscription is about to run out, you will now be notified when you sign into Xbox LIVE.

- Updates for Invalid Windows Live IDs – If the Windows Live ID you provided has expired, you will now be prompted to update it the next time you sign into Xbox LIVE.

- Account recovery – We've enhanced the account recovery process to make it faster and more reliable.

What does this Xbox LIVE Update not include?

The following features will be coming in future Xbox LIVE updates, which we'll be sure to let you know about.

- Facebook, Twitter, Zune video and 1080p Instant On, Last.fm

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The PlayStation 3's more than just a gaming machine. It's also a Bluray player and a media server. When used as such, the DualShock is passable, but hitting pause or rewind on a remote is easier for most people than fiddling with a gamepad. Unfortunately, most remotes don't work with the PS3 natively. You've got two options though - you could go out and buy a new Bluetooth remote control for about $20-$30, or you could get the $60 Logitech Harmony Adapter for the PS3, provided you already own a Harmony remote. Ultimately it's the price of convenience. You either add that new remote to the existing stack or make the console work with a universal Harmony remote.

Setting up the Harmony Adapter didn't take too long. A quick tap of the button on the underside of the device had it synced with our PS3 in a few seconds. The trip to the computer to setup the Harmony remote itself took a little bit longer. Logitech would do well to simply include a Harmony Adapter device setting, instead you have to add a generic game console and call it the PlayStation 3. Minor quibble, but it would make setup that much easier.

Harmony remotes are well known for their ability to build out "activities". Activities basically give you one button macros to watch TV or play a game. In a full home theater you'd be pressing more than a few buttons on at least two or three remotes to get to where you need to be, what with all the devices and inputs. With a properly setup activity, one button press turns on the PS3, the TV and the home theater receiver, while simultaneously choosing all the appropriate inputs. If you've used universal remotes before it sounds like a tall order, but Logitech's software makes setting up activities relatively painless.

Within 15 minutes we had the PlayStation 3 integrated into the home theater setup with hardly a hiccup. The Harmony Adapter for the PlayStation 3 delivers exactly what it offers. You can't really go wrong if you can stomach the cost.

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TVs are great, but they're not particularly useful if you want to game somewhere else, like say while camping or setting up a second station at a friends house. Sure, you could lug a 50 inch screen into the car, but it's far easier to move a projector. And it's even easier to move a projector like BenQ's Joybee GP1. At about $500, this tiny projector the size of an Xbox 360 controller offers a 100 lumen brightness rating, a 2000:1 contrast ratio, and it's capable of outputting at a maximum resolution of 858x600.

The Joybee GP1 has three major inputs: VGA, composite, and USB. Composite video is about as low as you can go on the totem pole in terms of image quality, but just about everything under the sun supports it. The VGA input worked well when we tried it out with the Xbox 360, the console actually gave us the option to display at 858x600, the projector's native resolution. BenQ made the input cable on the GP1 with a male VGA connector, which works fine if you've got a laptop with a VGA or DVI port. But you're going to need a VGA female-to-female adapter if you want to hookup an Xbox 360 or a desktop computer to the GP1. You won't find component video or HDMI support on the GP1, but a few cable adapters solves that problem relatively cheaply.

Setup is stupidly quick. Plug in the wires, hit the power button, rotate the silver switch to focus the image, and you're done. You'll likely have more trouble getting four friends to sit down quickly enough. The GP1 has an intuitive menu system, but the touch sensitive buttons are finicky. The remote is marginally better. Fortunately, once the projector is setup you won't really need to push the buttons at all unless you're using the USB input. The USB input is handy if you have video files that actually work with the projector, in all likelihood you'll have to re-encode them. Out of the box image support is nice, but it's easier to plug in your camera. The USB port seems to have been a nice thought, but the limited file playback will have you reaching for your laptop in no time.

The projector produced a great image considering its minuscule size. In brightly lit rooms the projector is capable of throwing a vibrant 40 inch picture onto a wall. You can use built-in software to adjust the picture depending on the color of your wall as well. Our screenshots (which don't do it justice) show a 52 inch image doing quite well in a lit room, and a 122 inch image that looks decent if the room is pitch black. The built-in 2W speaker is passable but you'll likely want to route the sound to an external set of speakers.

BenQ's Joybee GP1 works great for a portable projector, and we're more than willing to overlook minor quibbles to have it sitting in the backyard for some BBQ and game time.

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Streaming media over a network is difficult. It's that whole networking part that gets in the way, assuming you have one. Even if you do manage to get everything working, it still doesn't mean it will work smoothly all the time. We went over numerous options that are freely available for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 a while back. None of them are foolproof, and even when things do go right, you're still bound to encounter a random, utterly inexplicable, error. If you're not streaming, you're storing media on an already crammed console or constantly plugging in a new drive via the USB port. And you still have to contend with loads of codec issues.

You could grab a computer and drag it over to your living room, but that seems excessive if you all you want to do is playback media. Cheaper standalone devices like Seagate's FreeAgent Theater and Western Digital's WD TV fill the void easily. We got our hands on the FreeAgent Theater, which by itself costs around $100, and $200 if you get the model with a 250GB hard drive.

Setup is dead simple - plug it into the wall. The player connects to your TV via S-Video, composite and component video cables. Audio routes via RCA jacks, and a digital coaxial connector if you want surround sound. Note the lack of optical andHDMI jacks. (The WD TV, by contrast, has both optical and HDMI, but lacks component video outputs.) The lack of connectivity didn't affect overall picture quality on our 47" LCD HDTV, especially once you take into account the quality of most of the files.

The included remote is passable, but if you have a universal remote you're much better off using that. Seagate's software package makes syncing folders easy, and as a plus - it's not required at all. If you want to drag and drop files using Windows you're more than free to do just that.

The FreeAgent Theater's menu system works well and is easy to navigate. Although, the text can be a bit large and slow to scroll if you're trying to make your way through a large library of files. As a plus, the menu system has a relatively large preview area that lets you see the video or image file before you commit to opening it.

Seagate's FreeAgent Theater supports quite a few media formats: MPEG-1, MPEG-2(AVI, VOP, ISO), MPEG-4(AVI/Xvid), and DivX. The list is far from comprehensive which means you're going to have to re-encode some videos. Surprisingly, the FreeAgent also displays JPGs as large as 20 megapixels, and a decent variety of audio formats like MP3, AC3, WMA, and WAV(do note the lack of AAC support).

The FreeAgent Theater's biggest appeal is its simplicity. As a dedicated media player the FreeAgent Theater works well enough if you don't want to go through the motions of setting up streaming software for your consoles or bother to troubleshoot it.

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The iPhone and iPod Touch made a huge splash in the gaming world, but a touch screen and tilt functionality take you only so far. An outfit from Australia called 22moo decided to remedy the matter with an external controller called the GameBone Pro. The company doesn't have a price point yet, but they aim to have the controller out by September this year.

The GameBone Pro comes with a D-pad, four buttons in a cross configuration, and two shoulder buttons. A 2000mAh battery powers the device, and Bluetooth and a 30-pin dock act to connect the controller to the iPhone. A built-in speaker plays back sounds and a mic records audio. An additional 3.5'' jack allows audio to play through headphones.

If one company is making an iPhone controller, there are likely others in the wings. Which brings us to the issue of controller standards. The Wii has its Remote, the PS3 its DualShock. Anybody making a controller for either of those consoles has to at least incorporate the standard button scheme. The iPhone has no such template. Who knows how many different kinds of designs we'll see.

Buttons and a D-pad would be an amazing addition to the iPhone. However, the bulk an external controller adds also poses a concern. Would you stuff a controller into your pocket alongside an iPhone or iPod Touch?

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