There was a bit of histrionics going on shortly after the 360 launch over privacy from people who apparently couldn’t work out how to turn on the privacy options, but I’ve come across undeniable proof that the amount of information that Live gives out on your current activities could be incriminating. Names have been obscured to protect the perverted.

Telling everyone what game you’re playing or your current score is one thing, but this is going too far and people can go to prison for this kind of thing. I just hope the Daily Mail doesn’t catch wind of this underground of paedophiles hiding in our gaming community and start up another banning campaign.

The first phase of my conversion of my home entertainment system to HDTV has begun with the purchase of a new DVD player, the Toshiba SD-350E. Ain’t it purdy?

It’s replacing my current Toshiba SD-220E, and comes with HDMI output, upscaling capability (720p/1080i), DivX playback, and multiregion capability via a simple hack. I’ve had my current one for a couple of years and have been constantly impressed with the quality for the price, but this new one takes the cake – all those features for £64 including shipping.

I’m not sure when exactly it will be here because of New Year and everything messing with the post, but I’m looking forward to trying it out. With any luck I’ll be buying the TV in the next week.

Don’t worry, I’m not pathetic enough to be blogging at midnight on New Year’s Eve. I’ve written this in advance and set it to go live at midnight, so I apologise in advance if something horrible has happened in the meantime and it now seems really inappropriate. Failing that, I’ll be at Eynon’s NYE party as Tim the Enchanter, since it’s fancy dress with a sci-fi and fantasy theme. I’ll post pictures when I remember.

Anyway, hope everyone is having/had a good time and that 2006 will be equally good. For auld lang syne and all that.

This is annoying…

The region codes for Blu-Ray have been announced (you can ignore the comment about PS3 games at the bottom because it’s not gonna happen) and Japan has been changed to a region 1 territory, the same as North America, as opposed to the region 2 that it was for DVD. That means for now the only imports that we’re going to be doing are from Africa, that great cinematic paradise.

While American anime fans are no doubt rejoicing, we’re probably going to be heading back to the dark days where piracy was the only way to get hold of all but the least obscure stuff. Here’s hoping that Blu-Ray region codes are as easy to bypass as DVD ones.

Tonight’s edition of Top Gear (possibly the best show on television, and I’m not even interested in cars) had an interesting games-related item which seems like an obvious idea but I’d never seen done. Jeremy Clarkson is something of a luddite when it comes to anything that doesn’t have an engine, so he drove a lap of Laguna Seca in a Honda NSX on Gran Turismo 4, achieving a lap time of 1:41, and then tried the same car on the real track incarnate to see how he did.

To be honest I’m not all that surprised that he found it was nothing like the game because anyone who’s ever driven a car knows that it’s completely different to getting behind the virtual wheel, but after several attempts and with the help of the track instructor on the real thing he could only manage a time of 1:59. Trying some of the driving techniques easily possible in the game left him leaving the track or spinning out, and braking in the way that you can to get around the infamous Corkscrew gave him nothing but the strong smell of burning brakes.

Just goes to show that for all the flapping that goes on about tracks with satellite imaging and thousands of hours spent test-driving various cars, a game still can’t accurately simulate the experience. If an experienced driver can drive a lap in the game in 1:41 on their first attempt but is 19 seconds slower in real life when they spend a day racing the track you can tell that something isn’t right.

Wow…I just watched The Christmas Invasion, the first episode of Doctor Who under David Tennant’s tenure, and it was fantastic. Definitely the best of the new episodes so far, and I can’t wait to see the rest of the series after the little preview they did (Sarah Jane and K-9!).

I can confidently say that Tennant will make a great Doctor and if the writing and action in the rest of the series are this good we’re in for a treat. I really loved the whole episode, and seeing him trying out his new costume (which I’ve already said that I liked) while playing around with some of the older ones was a nice little touch for the fans. More than anything though, parts of this episode were just hilarious:

“From the day they arrived on the planet and blinking stepped into the sun, there’s more to see…oh, sorry. That was The Lion King.”

And since ginger jokes are always funny, we can’t forget:

“Am I…ginger?”

The new series starts properly next year, as does the new spinoff, Torchwood, which was alluded to in no uncertain terms. No firm date as far as I know, unfortunately.