After a long day at the office, nothing feels better than to have your kids jump into your arms and tell you all the great things they did. Better yet, after playing with the kiddos, you have this wonderful warm feeling from within as the dinner being cooked slowly fills the home with it’s aroma. BETTER YET, after a great meal and tucking in the kids, nothing can beat the feeling of watching the latest Hollywood Blu-ray release or gaming on a 106″ screen piping sound to a discrete 7.1 channel system built around Denon and Paradigms. Yes, I believe every home should have a theater. The picture above is our main hangout. Out in the living room, I have a 5.1 Paradigm setup with an Integra receiver feeding to a very sad 32″ CRT (UPGRADE soon!).

The kiddos love both setups as each serves a purpose. The living room has a lot of space to run and play, perfect place for the Nintendo Wii. The theater room has the higher-end gear, a great place for the Sony Playstation 3. 5.1 minimum surround sound to support the impending move to digital broadcast and gigabit networking to all the rooms for media server goodness. It is nice to have a home that has no limitations with technology. Buying a home is fun. Being there while it is being built, priceless.

So my parents got my children a Nintendo Wii (they got one for themselves as well, a little more about that later). I went to hook it up and for the next two days, Keyla and I have been relentlessly attacking the virtual bowling lanes trying to outdo each. I hate to admit it but the little white box is addictive. The controls are intuitive enough that the flow of the game is very natural. The controls are so good that my parents, MY PARENTS who always thought my time I spent on gaming was a waste, are giggling hysterically at their virtual tennis counterparts hopping around on the screen frantically swatting a digital ball. Though I love my PS3, I understand the attraction to the Wii and kind of chuckle at hardcore gamers on the little white system. There have been complaints lately that Nintendo is drifting away from it’s core market to gain mass appeal. Hardcore gamers are up in arms with this move by Nintendo but my question is why? Nintendo was NEVER a developer of bleeding edge systems and games. Come on now, all franchise characters are cartoon-like for crying out loud. Remember how it was a HUGE deal when Mortal Combat made it’s presence known on the SNES and even then the blood was green.

Now I understand the purist stance that gaming does not have to have the eye candy to be great. As long as the game play mechanics are well implemented and the story is compelling and engaging, then you have a great experience. I can also understand that true gamers are the ones that built the company and they felt betrayed that Nintendo is abandoning them to attract a new market. It is strange to see grandma playing on a system you use as well. But remember what you bought into. You bought Nintendo, a company who never denied their rooted belief in the family model. Embrace the fact that we have a company that bailed on the whole horsepower race and try innovative ways to interact.

Regardless of the complaints, if you are a true gamer, hard-core gaming should only be done on PCs anyway. Console gaming is a poor man’s substitute and though I love my PS3, I do miss my gaming rig. One day, I will be able to afford to go back. Till then, I will be trashing any and all on Warhawk come end of August. Keep an eye for me on the battlefield. I will be keeping one on you, on my frag count!

I was reading all the hype leading to the iphone launch this Friday, including some writings from the Consumerist. One thing I always enjoy is the modified images such as this one that are posted on their site. Now about the iphone. Do I think it will succeed? Most likely yes but not for what people think it will. Come on now, who out there would not do a double take on the design? It is frickin gorgeous! Shinny on the back with a glass cover on the front. Great gui interface with a (what appears to be) high res screen, full browser support and email. And of course…IT IS AN iPOD! Notice something missing? Yep I personally think the phone aspect is going to suck. Have you notice all the videos for the iphone are done in areas where the environment is dimly lit? Of course the display is going to be great but take that out into the world where the sun blazes down washing out any LCD display and you are going to have problems finding a contact or number. Sure you can do voice recognition, I do that now with enV (does the iphone have that?). And sure you can use one-button dialing or speed dialing or some other ingenious method of calling out that Apple has invented, but ask anyone who has ever worked with a touch screen phone and they will tell you that IT SUCKS! It is hard to see the keypad but more importantly, you cannot use your fingers to navigate around the keys because of the lack of tactile feedback. Another example would be the keyboard. I NEED tactile feedback when I am texting. A perfect example of a horrible phone would be the PPC6700, by far the worst phone ever created. As an email device, it was not that bad because of it’s built-in keyboard, but the bulk was a major pain. I like to have a phone that I can put in my pocket and not look like a tablet/pocketpc nerd. My phone has to be small. So it may seem like I’m a hater and but I’m not and here’s why, I still want one (but not the phone). Here is my hope. I hope that Apple takes cues from this toy and use it to refresh the ipod product line. With only a dial as your main navigational tool, a touch screen would be perfect. Hell that is very much what we have now with the vid-ipods. I love my 1g and 2g shuffles, my 20 and 30 gig ipods and the software that manages it. Actually Keyla takes care all of this for me. She is my personal DJ and I love the playlists she creates. I know I am building this based on my poor experience with a crappy phone (PPC6700) but I guess I just cannot see how Apple can innovate a touch screen (Apple will undoubtedly prove me wrong). The iphone will succeed on sheer looks alone. It does not hurt that it is actually functional too, but as a phone, I do not think so. The point is this, I want the iphone design in my next ipod. Please make that happen Apple.

I love the fact that Sony is pushing hard to ensure their PS3 will succeed but in doing so, there is some need to stop the bleeding. Part of this is to lean up on products and offerings that are not doing much for the bottom line. Thankfully Sony is going to keep the Sony Connect e-reader division up and running and thus keep the Reader alive but it does trouble me to hear how close the reader is to being a defunct product. Well…actually it may already be one, but damn if I do not love using it! On the upside Sony is committed to supporting Adobe’s Digital Editions software in it’s line of e-readers so hopefully I will see a firmware update from this announcement.

Ok, ok, ok…I am getting ahead of myself. I have to get a 1080p projector first (currently own an Optoma HD72). But still I’ve always wanted a DVDO. Those not in the know, a DVDO is a video processor that can make almost any video gear shine. From de-interlacing to artifact removal, this gear rules. Why buy the VP50? Well it is the latest model, duh and for the fact that it can do hdmi magic like no other. I understand that there is no support for the 1.3a standard but maybe that can be taken care of with a firmware update. Regardless, it seems to handle HDMI 1.3 video material as good if not better than 1.3-compliant gear. Lossless audio support is there through PCM decoding (this is how I am currently passing HD audio to my Denon 3806). Since I do not have one, I would be the worst for finding info on it’s performance. For a reliable review, take a look at ProjectorCentral. Those guys are the ones I trust for HT gear. In fact my Da-Lite screen and projector were purchased because of their recommendations.