So I (and apparently a few million other people) picked up my copy of Halo 3 on Tuesday (about 11am if you must know). I beat the campaign last, and although it does start off a little slow I can say that it is by far the best Halo of the three.

Something has surprised me more than the twists and turns of the plot though, and that is Bungie’s Halo 3 website. It is a whole new level of game and interweb integration. Dare I say it, it is almost a social network.

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Recently when I was browsing some movies on Netflix, one of the movies I was rating had at warning that said “NOTICE: This DVD is not compatible with some DVD players. See details.” The details revealed that “Certain movies released by Sony Pictures (listed below) were encoded with a version of the ARccOS copy-protection software that made the DVDs incompatible with certain DVD players.” Sony has been employing a form of DVD mangling copy-protection call ARccOS on films released by Sony Pictures for some time now. It is one of the reasons many of their DVDs will not play on computers and apparently certain DVD players. Here is the list via Netflix of DVD players that can’t play Sony/ARccoS DVDs (emphasis added):

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div>The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has been running quite a few stories on the release of Halo 3, all of which seem to be extremely positive with titles like “Microsoft’s ‘Halo 3′ Game Meets Approval of Critics” and “Casual Gamer Takes a Turn At Halo 3 to Judge the Hype.” One of the articles cites Halo 3’s high score on Metacritic (an aggregator of reviews) and then speculates that the critics’ acclaim caused the boost to Microsoft’s shares yesterday (which rose 43 cents or 1.5%) and explained the nearly doubled volume of stock trading.

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So everyone and their dog is talking about Amazon’s announcement today to offer MP3 downloads. In brief, Amazon MP3 songs are DRM-free and start at $0.89/track with the top 100 best-selling albums priced no higher than $8.99. The store opened with 2 million songs from 80,000 artists. EMI and Universal are the two big labels on board. Song quality is even very high – 256 kbps. All of this, of course, is available via iTunes for $1.29/track or $9.99/album.

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Most desktop systems sold today come with only a single display port, usually VGA or DVI. In the past, if you had one of these desktop computers and wanted your system to use multiple displays, you would probably need to install a new video card. And if you had a laptop and wanted to connect more than one monitor, you were basically out of luck. But a company called DisplayLink is changing all that with their DVI display adapter and connecting multiple displays is now easier than ever. DisplayLink has developed a technology that allows displays to connect to computers through a USB 2.0 connection.

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div>This is the second installment for my series on video rental options that work with Xbox 360 (or set top boxes in general). Vongo recently announced support for the Xbox 360, and with a 14-day free trial I thought I ‘d try it out.

Vongo is a download video service owned by Starz Entertainment that can best be described as a video subscription service similar to Netflix meets CinemaNow. For $9.99/month you get all the movies you can download from their current selection of movies. While the selection of movies (2,500 titles) isn’t as large as Amazon’s Unbox, there are more current mainstream movies (The Queen, Stranger than Fiction, Bridge to Terabithia, etc) than can be found on Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” service.

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div>Purdue University announced this morning that they received 47 new settlement letters from the Recording Industry Mafia Association of America.

Purdue spokesperson Jeanne Norberg said: “As an Internet service provider, Purdue will forward these letters when the user can be accurately identified.” “Purdue will not voluntarily provide names to the RIAA. However, should those notified choose not to pay the settlement, the RIAA may obtain court-ordered subpoenas to obtain the individuals’ names.”

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div>As the countdown for Halo 3 nears an end I thought I’d post some deals I’d come across recently.

Sam’s Club, Costco, and Family Video all have the standard version for $50. Family Video even has a $5 off coupon code (NEWPGMEM) and $.99 shipping. The rest of the versions are between $10-$15 off the normal price.

BTW, if you really have to have a life-sized Master Chief helmet the Legendary version, it looks like you should order your copy ASAP.

Note: This article is cross-posted at PseudoSavant.

div>Recently there was some “big”, but expected, news that Nintendo’s Wii took the #1 seat in the “next-gen” console console race away from Microsoft’s Xbox 360. One thing that oddly no one mentioned was that the only country or region the Wii actually has the #1 spot in is Japan.

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div>I have a standard rule of thumb: any product that sells with a warranty usually becomes a product I have specific questions about before I’m willing to make the purchase (especially technology/electronics). But what are my options for getting these questions answered? If I want answers now, I have to check out an FAQ. (Has anyone else noticed that FAQs answer your questions less often than not?)

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