As we know it was the rAge Expo two weekends back, and I have written a basic coverage post on the event with pictures etc… http://txgaming.co.za/events/rage-2009/

One of the stalls present at the expo, which I did leave out of the main post, was the SAFACT stall.

SAFACT is The Southern African Federation against Copyright Theft.

Established in 1999 as a Section 21 Company, an association not for gain, SAFACT’s primary role is to protect the intellectual property rights of its members in the Southern African film, home entertainment and interactive games industries.

“SAFACT’s mission is to create an anti-counterfeiting climate in which the purchase, sale or possession of counterfeit goods is actively discouraged and intellectual property rights are respected.
The Motion Picture Association has been involved in anti-piracy activities in South Africa since 1981. SAFACT was formed by companies in the entertainment industry involved in the production and distribution of motion pictures and interactive games.”

They had a stall at the rAge expo with numerous items, including: Play Station 3 and 2 Controllers, Play Station Memory Cards, Music Cds, Dvds and Software.

The idea behind the stall was to illustrate to the people who were interested just how close to original counterfeit products can be. They also had a handy flyer with guidelines of discreet points to look at when buying potential pirated goods.

I did some further research after the show regarding the whole scenario.

I found that SAFACT does have some very creative ideas when it comes to their challenge, one of these reads as follows:

“South Africa’s Anti Piracy Foundation has come up with a inventive new weapon in the fight against pirated DVDs – fake pirated DVDs.

According to the Financial Mail, the new campaign involves joining pirate vendors at street corners to sell fake discs, but with a twist. Only when the buyers of the fakes play the DVDs will they realise they’ve been fooled. After a few moments of the genuine movie, a message appears on the screen: “Thank you for buying this DVD. Your R40 has been donated to the Anti Piracy Foundation. Piracy is a crime.” Advertising agency TBWA Hunt Lascaris, which developed the campaign, says that while the bold strategy is risky, it’s necessary to combat the problem of copyright theft. “This issue demands some edginess in the advertising to make a strong point,” TBWA group CEO Mike Bosman told the Financial Mail.”

I must admit this sounds like a solid good idea. And it would be very effective, when targeting the “selling” of pirated goods.

As I am very involved in the gaming and general PC industry this was quite a interesting element to see at rAge. I’m not going to beat around the bush here, but everyone I know has either pirated software, games, movies or series in their possession. The thing is that none of them have purchased these products though?

What I’m getting at is: It seems like SAFACT and similar organisations around the world are very persistent on stopping illegal “copying, production and selling” of copyrighted media and hardware. However, in my frame of reference I’d say that internet piracy is much bigger of a threat to copyright laws?

I know some people with over 1000 movies on their hard drive, if this had to be converted to cash value; you’re looking at a odd R350 000 collection… In the same breath I have to add that the person wouldn’t have bought even 10% of those movies if he had to pay DVD prices for them… I do understand that it is much more difficult to control online content, and that it bridges “impossible” to monitor user downloads when talking specific content. Therefore a different strategy needs to be employed?

Einstein once said: “A problem will never be solved when you’re trying to figure it out with the same state of mind as when you created the problem.” My guess is that the collective state of mind in the whole industry was “making a lot of money”

And this gets me to my next point. And I’m saying this with my limited knowledge of the publishing and production industry. But wouldn’t the fight against piracy be easier if media was made available at better selling prices?

See the way I see it is: If it costs you 3 million rand to make and produce a movie, what is the difference weather you make back your 3 million by selling 10,000 copies of the movie at R300 each, or if you make it by selling 100,000 at R30? Wouldn’t everybody buy Original DVDs if they were sold at an odd R50 or so? And the same goes for any other media, software, music, games. I’d be just to glad to buy Windows 7 for R200 as to the projected R2000 it will cost. And who will mind paying R50 for games like Avatar, Starcraft 2, Splinter Cell Conviction etc… We already pay a lot of money for our PCs and consoles. So wouldn’t more affordable games even benefit console and hardware manufacturers alike?

If you ask me it’s because of pricing that piracy primarily exists. I say make it affordable and people will buy it? I don’t know if this is just me thinking to quickly regarding the situation, or if it’s me just not having enough knowledge when it comes to the subject. But more often than not the simplest solution is the best one?

I urge anyone reading this to please reply if you have any extra info or input.

For more info please visit: http://www.safact.co.za/index.htm

Panoramic View of the rAge event in the Sun-Dome

The past weekend marked the coming and going of the 7^th consecutive rAge expo in Johannesburg South Africa.

For those of you who do not know what rAge is all about; rAge stands for “really Awesome gaming expo”. It’s a huge expo held at the Coca-Cola Dome in Johannesburg. Several of the big names out there in the IT industry have stands set up, either just for exposure or to make some decent sales, although I think that most are leaning towards exposure.

Combined with a brilliant display floor, presenting the public with the most awesome and newest gaming and PC technologies, rAge also hosts one of South Africa’s biggest LANs. I know they can hold a capacity of around 1800 gamers, however this year a record breaking 2,162 gamers participated in the rAge LAN!  Thirty km’s of cabling was used, around 4400 power points and an 8Gb/s symmetrical link between the 1822 rAge LAN players and the 340 competitive Telkom DoGaming players who were located at a separate more secluded hall downstairs. There are major sponsored gaming competitions on the go every year, these include Counter Strike, Call of Duty, Dota, Guitar Hero and this year even Quake 3.

Several companies also take the opportunity to launch new products at rAge every year. This results in massive giveaways and freebies being thrown out to the public. The Catz Digital stand had a lucky draw where they gave away a 40” Sony Bravia TV this year! Three years ago Microsoft had the launch of the Xbox 360 at rAge; it was very successful and created an awesome overall vibe crawling with anticipation throughout the whole expo. This year I know the Play station 3 Slim was available to see and try out for the first time in South Africa. The Play Station stand also had some fine young ladies marketing the Play Station Portable GO (PSP GO).

In a nutshell that would be what rAge is all about. Basically, if gaming and technology touches your life in any way; rAge would be quite an experience of notable excitement. Stephan and I were there for a short while on Friday the 2^nd of October, most of the day on Saturday and around the end on Sunday and we are very pleased to bring you some info about what went on during the weekend.

Because of my day job I could only be at the event for 15mins just before it closed up for the day. However at 13:30 Friday afternoon, Tx Daily writer and editor, Seagyn Davis headed over to the MSI stand where they had a new motherboard launch. He was lucky enough to be one the first 10 journalist at the launch and received the MSI P55-CD53 Motherboard for free! There will be more about this awesome motherboard on Tx Daily in the next few days.

I was surprised to see that there were a lot of people still at the event even 15mins before closing time. I had a good feeling about the event, there was definitely a good vibe going around. In the centre of the event floor a huge stage was set up with a huge projector screen. At the back of this screen was another screen where the Quake 3 Competition, hosted by Arena 77 in conjunction with Intel, Sapphire and ATI, was to be held throughout the following 2 days. I had a very quick stroll through the stalls and managed to get myself over excited for Saturday and Sunday.

A Big Part of the LAN area with the stands at the back.

We were there early on Saturday morning. I took way too many pictures and spoke too so many interesting people regarding so many exciting new products, technologies and events. I’ll be covering a few of the most exciting ones very briefly.

MiMoney

One of the first very interesting discoveries I made was a product (if you can call it that) called “MiMoney” I had the pleasure of a very beautiful and helpful young lady called Genevieve. MiMoney is a very new system in South Africa; it basically enables anyone with a cell phone to use their phone as a credit card. All you need to do is to register with MiMoney by using your cell phone number, name and ID number. From there on you can order Mr Delivery or even book movie tickets online, then choose MiMoney as payment option, the bill will then be charged to your cell phone bill at the end of the month or deducted off your airtime if you’re on a pay as you go system. There are no extra charges on your behalf to use this system, a R32 movie ticket will still cost you R32! At this stage there is only a hand full of companies who accepts MiMoney, but with names like Ster-Kinekor , Mr Delivery and MXit already onboard only good things can come from this.

Genevieve at the MiMoney and MXit Stand.

Mede8er

I was pleased to see Mede8er had a stand there as well. I have done a post on the latest Mede8er product on the Txdaily. It works with a hard drive inside or from a USB external had drive, and is able to play back all the modern media formats like MKV x264 files. It’s one of the leading if not top multimedia playback centres available on the market today, and it has a price that supports this notion very well. If you want more info go here.

Logitech

Logitech out-did themselves with a truly stunning stand that was huge. They had their new range of Guitar hero instruments for the public to see and try out; I can honestly say that there were people playing on the instruments all the time. There was not once that I walked past the Logitech stand without having to squeeze past a crowd of people. As for the new instruments, they are compatible with the Xbox 360 and the Play Station 3. They are of extreme quality, with the guitars being made of real wood and the drums being quite heavy and robust. On a personal note I can also say that they had the best looking gaming case at the expo. I’m struggling to find it online though? It had the same style as the Logitech G19 Keyboard, the CDROM opened with a dual action door on the case and it was brilliant, I did not get any pictures of it… Could Dean, Claire or Wayne please reply to this post and explain what case this was?

Logitech also had a competition running where one could win a set of their very high-end speakers. Logitech was very successful in finding a few very very attractive young ladies to promote the stand and the competition. I’m sure Logitech was very happy with the response they have received from rAge this year.

The lovely ladies at the Logitech stand.

Sapphire

The next very exciting stand was the Sapphire stand. They had a 3 monitor system set up with a bucket racing seat and all. The new Need for Speed was the game you could try out, it was running on AMD’s new ATI Radeon HD 5800 graphics card with Direct X 11 support and the works. We had a quick chat to Len from Sapphire, based on the pricing Len gave us for the HD5800 it seems like this card is about to take the market by storm. Len also mentioned some interesting facts about the new DisplyPort technology which is the next big thing after HDMI and DVI as it’s a royalty free concept.

The Ladies of Sapphire

Quake 3

The quake 3 competition hosted by Arena 77 in conjunction with Intel, Sapphire and ATI was also quite a big attraction. They had a nice big stadium chair setup going with the players facing the audience. It was very exciting to see the revival of this fast paste action filled game. Games these days have lost the kind of excitement that one experiences from games like Quake 3. I did truly enjoy watching a few of the games which were played over the weekend. I do have to say that it was a bit disappointing that there were constant interruptions while trying to watch a game. There was even a point where they had a tedious talent show on the stage while a game was being displayed on the screen… Even some of the best games, where players like Ph4ntom were playing, only the last 5 minutes of the game were shown? Since he’s the number one Quake 3 player in South Africa this was quite disappointing.

The Quake 3 comp Stage

Players up to 15^th place received prizes in the competition, the prizes consisting of high-end motherboards and CPU’s sponsored by Intel, ATI graphics cards, liquid cooling systems and AVG antivirus. The main prize went to Stephen “Ph4ntom” Cloete winning a trip to Dreamhack in Sweden. Congratulations Stephen!

Sony

Sony had a pretty impressive stand, with a few upcoming titles and the Play Station Slim on display. They also had very knowledgeable young ladies promoting the PSP GO. The PSP GO looks very stylish and more compact than the first one. It also doesn’t have a CD ROM anymore so all your games will be downloadable onto its internal hard drive. Thanx Bianca, for explaining that to us so professionally.

The beautiful Sony ladies!

KULT Fusion Anime lounge

Over at the KULT Fusion Anime lounge there was a huge sheet of paper for fans to draw some fan art on, I’m not sure if this was linked to a competition or just for fun. There was also an abundance of anime fans in costumes representing their favourite anime characters! Some of them went really big and did look awesome! Well done too every one of you!

Incredible connection and Asus

Incredible Connection and Asus had a combined stand (very clever). It seemed to me like there were always people buzzing around their stand which was a shop as well. It might have been because of the extremely attractive ladies doing their promotion and assisting customers…

Incredible Connection and Asus staff.

Guitar Hero competition

There was also a huge Guitar Hero competition running on Saturday. It was sponsored by Samsung, and brought to you by PenQuin International and AGASA. Players engaged in 1 vs 1 battles in Guitar Hero World Tour on Xbox 360 for a chance to compete against the winners from 72 other countries in the World Cyber Games Grand Finals taking place in Chengdu, China from 11-15 November 2009. I’ve honestly never seen anyone playing like these guys who participated! It was something out of this world! Much Respect.

Guitar Maddness

Telkom DoGaming Competition

Telkom had their DoGaming Competition in a hall downstairs which was secluded from the rest of the event. They also had a whole bunch of Xbox 360’s set up downstairs, there was even a soccer ball kicking game and foosball tables! I would have liked to do more coverage on what happened in all the games that were played in the competition section of rAge but unfortunately it’s quite involved and I did not have enough time. Anyone reading this can feel free to either comment with some results or even post a link to a site where we can view the results.

The Secluded Telkom DoGaming Competition LAN downstairs.

Hospitality Suite

There were 2 Hospitality Suits for VIP and Media members. Logitech’s suit was truly something worth mentioning. They had a Play Station 3 set up, a bar, snacks, coffee, tea, the works. A very welcome sight when you’ve spent hours walking around taking pictures and talking to countless people.

I was quite happy to be at rAge once again this year. There was alot of exciting products and people, a lot of prizes and freebies! And an insane amount of money was given away to Competitive Gamers and the public a like. I think the event was coordinated perfectly, I honestly can not say that I saw any lack in organization in any aspect of the event. There were an abundance of beautiful promotion ladies, even more exciting products and plenty of activities to have kept you busy the whole time.

Well done NAG, TS Communications and all the other parties involved in rAge 2009. I think it was a big success!

And all good things has to come to a end...

Here are some more pics that I took at rAge Expo 2009

Mede8er Multimedia Monster

I’m quite a fanatic when it comes to High Definition TV, media and hardware. I have a 42” Plasma screen set-up together with a new 23.6” AOC monitor. Having a plasma screen I am very picky when it comes to video and the quality thereof. I have been keeping up with the times and been enjoying Full HD content a lot, this leads me to the subject of this post.

There are a few media players on the market but to date I have not even considered getting my hand on one of them. Mvix did in the later models support Full HD content which was the first product I looked at. However it only had HDMI 1.0 support which means no sound through HDMI, so I was still not sold. I am pleased to say that I have found a media player worth looking at. This nifty device is called the Mede8er MED500X.

Mede8er Multimedia Monster

I’ll start off by listing the features for those of you who are interested and understand them:

Video Codec Supported: MKV, H264, DVD (VOB – IFO – ISO), DIVX, XVID, DAT, AVI, MPEG, HD MPEG-2, TS, HD MPEG-4, SP, ASP, AVCD (H.264), MTS, M2ts, WMV9, FLV, VC-1, Real Networks (RM/RMVB) 8/9/10, up to 720p

Audio  Codec Supported: MP3, MP2, OGG Vorbis, PCM, LPCM, AAC, RA, Dolby AC3 Passthrough, Dolby AC3 Downmix, DTS Passthrough, DTS Downmix, FLAC, WAV,
WMA Standard (DRM, & Advanced Profile not supported)
Photo format Supported: JPEG, BMP
File System Supported: FAT32, NTFS – UI Format Feature

Input / Output
•  HDMI 1.3, Component video, Composite Video
•  Stereo RCA audio for analogue audio connection
•  SD / Sony Pro Duo Card Slot
•  S/PDIF optical Output / Coaxial Digital RCA Output
•  Video output resolution – NTSC, PAL, 480p, 576p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p, 1080p24hz
•  USB – 2.0 HOST port x 2 (compatible to USB 1.1)
•  USB – 2.0 SLAVE port

General
•  3.5″ SATA Internal Hard Drive Bay up to 2TB compatible
•  Built in 40mm cooling fan – TPE mounts for low noise
•  Playlist creation from remote
•  Screensaver – Selectable in GUI setup
•  In folder JPEG preview feature
•  Easy navigation button use (excl DVD files)
•  Time Bar FF/FR and Time Bar jump
•  Media Library Jump To file number feature
•  Resume playback feature
•  Photo slide show with background music
•  Network – Ethernet 10/100 Mbps
•  Optional Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n up to 300Mbps)
•  Samba server – NAS storage
•  A/V streaming via UPnP Media Server (CNN – YouTube etc via optional program such as PlayOn,   Tversity etc)
•  Internet Radio (SHOUTcast)
•  File Copying – Card, USB, HDD and Network
•  Subtitle: SRT, SSA, SUB, SMI format

Contents: MED500X, RC, AC Adapter, Carry Bag, Cables – AV, HD HDMI, USB, Component, USB extension with Base

Looking at the specs it all seems to be pretty impressive. It is one of the first media players in SA to support HDMI 1.3, X264 Compression and 2TB hard drives. The whole look of the device is really appealing and elegant and the installation of the hard drive was very straight forward.

The setup of the system was very easy and took a mere 10 minutes to do. The menus on the Mede8er are super fast compared to some of the products that are available on the market and are very aesthetically pleasing and modern. Browsing around and looking for a specific file is relatively easy if you know your alphabet, it also has a in-folder viewer which allows you to see previews of all the contents inside a specific folder.

When copying from an external hard drive to the internal hard drive I reached full USB 2.0 speeds with no complications. The unit even works without any internal hard drive installed. You can run your content directly from a USB stick, a SD Card, a cameras hard disk and even streaming via LAN, or Wireless LAN.

Mede8er Multimedia Monster

I did play around with a lot of the features and settings; it played authentic 1080p MKV files, ripped from BluRay originals seamlessly and even when browsing around through the movies the sound and video stayed in perfect sync. I could also enjoy 5.1 Channel Dual Audio through the HDMI 1.3 output, this can also be forced down to 2ch Audio as to not lose the rear channels’ audio, should you be using it on a 2 speaker system. Up to this stage it was hard to find a media device which had all these features and specs.

Mede8er Multimedia Monster

The mede8er is neat and compact, easy to set up and even comes with a decent quality carry-bag. It is truly the perfect solution if you are in the market for a lightweight media player because of its Full HD support and x264 compression support it is at this stage unparalleled with its price of around R2000+ (without a hard drive).

It’s perfect if you are like me; very much concerned about your original disks. You can now copy them onto the Mede8er and have those files at the tip of your fingers. While your original disks sit safely in the safe! What’s more is you can pack up and go in a matter of seconds and view your movies on any kind of screen you’ll find these days.

Conclusion:

If I did want the best in media playback, and I had the Surround Sound with the HD ready TV already set up, I wouldn’t look any further than the Mede8er. Get yourself a BluRay ROM for the PC, use that to rip your BluRay movies to MKV format, and store them on your Mede8er. With a 2TB Hard Drive one can truly have a HUGE amount of data on there, thousands of music files and movies by the dozen. For the price of a 2TB Hard drive, a BluRay ROM for the PC and a Mede8er you will probably still struggle to find a stand-alone BluRay player. If this isn’t enough you can have a hard drive server, with 4TB of space, connected to your LAN network and stream content from there. The only thing it is lacking is a gyroscopic remote which would make browsing your media awesome; other than that I can not think of any other negative points.

I would gladly recommend it to anyone looking for a total Full HD solution which would be up to date for all the new and upcoming home entertainment technologies.

For those of you who have had the pleasure of watching a Real-D 3D movie, you would know why I’m calling it the new trend.

I’ve seen Ice-Age 3 and G-Force in Real-D. For the time being it seems like only animated movies are released in Real-D. If you understand the theory behind Real-D and even Stereophonic 3D (the blue and red lens glasses) you would understand why, at this stage, animated movies are easier to produce in such a fashion. I will go into some detail later in my post.

This post isn’t about the movies though, it’s about the technology behind it, and nVidia’s brilliant pioneering innovative zest! The reason I mentioned the movies first-off is because of the timing at which nVidia released their 3D-Integrated drivers and the release of Real-D movies in South Africa.

Stephan and I sat next to each other when watching Ice-Age 3. I distinctly recall mentioning to him that “this” must be the next step in gaming. Graphic cards these days are powerful enough to render very-very close to real images at alarming frame rates. Where would we go from here? And this is it, Real-D 3D games. I am well aware that 3D goggles have been around for some time now, but to be honest I’ve never tried out a pair that really blew my mind. They all felt too “fabricated” (for the lack of a better explanation).

This new Real-D technology works on a renewed concept from the classic blue and red lens pictures (and odd movies here and there). The theory behind the Red and Blue glasses is this: When we as human beings look at any object, we are presented with two different images of the same object. This is because of our eyes being separated by an eye sized gap in-between them. What Stereophonic 3D does is the same thing. It presents you with 2 different angles of an object; the problem is though, that both your eyes look at these images at the same time. So what the creators do is to remove red from the left image, and remove blue from the right image. When looking at the picture through your red-blue glasses, the left eye is presented with a complete image with the red added. While the right eye is presented with a complete image with the blue added. Both eyes are now looking at complete images of the same object, but from slightly different angles. This creates a 3 Dimensional effect.

3D Screen 1

Now I hope you understand the theory, I can get into Real-D 3D. The concept stays the same; both eyes are presented with different angles of a certain scene. The difference now is that the two images are projected at different wave lengths and in full colour, by 2 different projectors. Because of this special cinema outfit there is at this stage only a hand full of cinemas which have the capability of showing Real-D 3D movies. The two lenses on the glasses are polarising glasses, the left blocks-out the right signal completely and visa-versa. This creates a stunning 3D image with no loss of colour what-so-ever.

Now that we have the theory behind us, I can get to the reason for writing this post!

Within 2 weeks from seeing Ice Age 3 in Real-D nVidia released their GeForce drivers with built in Real-D 3d and Stereophonic 3D support!

These drivers have a simple option in the nV-Control panel to switch on 3D effects. When choosing to activate 3D effects a wizard pops up. The wizard then searches for the presence of nVidias Real-D 3D glasses and IR Transmitter. I do not have this gear though, and it then gives you the option of enabling Stereophonic 3D effects. This option is usable by anyone who owns a Direct X 10 nVidia card and a pair of blue-red glasses! Initially I thought this is going to be coupled with the download of huge game updates, to my surprise it wasn’t! These drivers created Stereophonic images in all your games! There are games that work better than others, luckily the drivers displays a “tip” when starting up every game, this displays a rating for the game, and also some tips for creating a better experience. The first game I did try was Tomb Raider – Underworld, and boy was I surprised! Here with only the installation of new drivers I was able to play any game in Stereophonic 3D! And it was done well. I could not find any badly rendered objects or graphic tears of any kind. Sure I was only utilising the Stereophonic 3D aspect of the drivers, which meant that I did loose some colour in the games. But it is so worth it, Objects really appeared outside of my screen, as well as way inside and beyond the back of the screen. Judging from the amount of effort and the success rate of the Stereophonic 3D function in the drivers, I have no doubt what-so-ever that I will invest in nVidias Real-D 3D Glasses and IR Transmitter soon. These will allow my games to be played in Real-D 3D and it also supports Real-D 3D movies, which I don’t think is even available on the market yet, but it’s only a matter of time!

3D Screen 2

As far as the Stereophonic 3D goes I must add that I am very grateful to nVidia for putting the effort into it. It is a really awesome experience to try out all your games with a little bit of an edge. I played Dead Space, WarCraft 3, HAWX, Grid, Tomb Raider, Prototype and Crysis with 3D enabled. All of them were brilliant; it was like playing a new game all over. I’m definitely trying out all the games I buy from now on in Stereophonic 3D. My eyes are also wide open regarding prices and availability of the Real-D 3D kit from nVidia!

3D on and off

I must admit that there is some work to be done regarding support in some games. And my eyes do get tired after playing for an extended period of time. In the same breath I must add that this feature is new with the drivers and I have no doubt that nVidia will continue improving it as they go along. It is super exciting living in the times that we are in, nVidia has already given us the next step of gaming, this combined with some teaser videos of project Natal from Microsoft is TRULY exciting! Imagine wearing ONLY a pair of glasses which allows you to have a total 3D view of the gaming environment.  While playing the game on a console which picks up your body movement, and integrates your movements as the controller! I believe that there are big things on the way for gaming, and I cannot wait!

Prototype Box Shot

I’ve been playing a game called Prototype on the PC the last few days. I must say right off the bat that the game had quite a decent publicity / marketing campaign backing it. With the publishing company being Activision it’s well expected. The developer is Radical Entertainment. They have definitely managed to create imagery (posters, web adds, flyers etc.) which glorified the game to a very high and exciting level prior to its release. The image of the main character standing with his back towards you, veins coming out of his shoulder and then becoming a organic HUGE blade makes for quite an intriguing image. There were posters of all the main “transformations” you can acquire throughout the game. Some of them include Hammer Fists which is exactly what it suggests. It allows you to shift “Bio-Mass” to your hands and turn them into huge fists with which you can smash up enemy veh

icles and soldiers. You also get an ability called “Claws” which allows you to turn your hands into giant bone claws, allowing you to slice and dice your way through almost anything… The marketing was the first thing that really caught my attention and that made it a very effective campaign in my eyes.

The game wasn’t the fastest game to install, yet not the longest either. It takes up 7.7Gb of Hard-drive space which is average for games these days. It starts up pretty quickly too.

The menu is fairly straight forward to navigate, audio and video options are pretty user friendly. On the video side you have quite a decent selection of options to tweak the game with.

When first starting the game the controls feel a bit too random and unsorted, they throw you right in the middle of a big battle with most of your powers and abilities already activated, just to give you an idea of what you can become. Luckily they supply you with plenty tooltips explaining what you should do to use your powers. After the “intro” part of the game is finished the main character Alex Mercer tells a story in first person to describe what happened in the few days prior to the “intro” events. It reminded me of a Max Payne style of story telling.

You play as Alex Mercer, and your mission in the game is to discover why you are the way you are. And “of cause” to make the people responsible pay for what they have done. Prototype is a “Sandbox” game, meaning it allows you to run around anywhere you please, with only markers on your mini-map indicating where you should go next to continue the story.

There are time challenges scattered all over the city, when completed these will unlock some special level-points. As you progress, you gain abilities and upgrades by consuming specific targets. Some targets possess skills which you’ll need to continue on your quest. Some of them have some information which gives you hints of a back-story going on.

In order to get this info from your targets you “consume” them, this literally refers to you eating them, not with your mouth but by some bio-chemical action allowing you to absorb their body into yours. Except for the info you retain from certain targets any innocent bystander can be consumed to retain health from. Your “consume” ability can even later be upgraded to be“stealth consume”, this cuts out hysteria when people spot you consuming a fellow human being right in front of them, and thus also avoids being hunted by the military which is present all around the town of Manhattan.

Screen 1

The next great part of the game is, of cause, the upgrades you can unlock in your body. They all relate to survival skills, weapons and durability. There is quite a big list of upgrades which I’ll leave up to you to discover when you play. I will add though: When playing prototype you repeatedly get the strange feeling to want all the powers you possess in the game in real life! It would definitely be the most awesome thing to be able to get on top of a 50 story building and then jump down to the street below. Just to land on your feet with a shockwave of dust and particles (occasionally cars and people too) flying around you. This part of the game is done brilliantly, when anything extreme happens to you like falling from a 50 story building or being shot in the face by a 100mm tank projectile, the developers have added a short “freezing” of time. For instance when landing on the ground, time “freezes” just when all the objects around you starts flying, it creates a split second for you to embrace the feeling of extreme power before continuing on your rampage.

Screen 2

Screen 3

Conclusion:

Prototype was definitely very entertaining. I still have the craving to turn my right arm into a huge bone blade and be able to stop a truck from running me over on the highway.  I still crave the ability to jump off the Hillbrow tower and land on my feet, just to walk away like nothing just happened, I even crave the ability to take a tanks projectile in the face, just to turn around and hijack the tank. Then to drive it through a military base and score 1000000 points to further improve my seemingly immortal existence.

On this note I must add that Prototype was way to easy, even on Hard it’s not hard to die after getting your second upgrade. It was quite repetitive with a big lack of restrictions. There definitely is a thing like too much freedom in a sandbox style game. This is the type of game I will keep on my PC, every odd week or so I will start it up and go on a 2hour rampage through the island of Manhattan just to get that rush of being able to send tanks, cars and pedestrians flying through the air!

Usually I’m quite the sceptic when it comes to PC parts and brands; there is good reason why well known brands are well known. It’s because they managed to enter the market with a good quality product which usually appeals to visual stimulation and the budget at the same time.
Considering this I was sceptical about AOC from the word go. Even more so when I saw the pricing.

I was in charge of setting up a demo unit as soon as we received the 18.5”, 21.5” and 23.6” 36-series LCDs. The 36-series is AOC’s Green series of monitors; they are made from fully recyclable and bio-degradable materials, and also hosts a 40% more energy efficient backlight. The 36-series LCDs also has advanced power saving standby modes.

When first opening the box I was very pleased to find that it’s equipped with a decent quality 3-point South African plug. There was also a DVI Cable, RGB cable and a Male-A to Male-B USB cable. After setting up the screen and pulling off the protective plastics, I must admit I was impressed. It has a brilliant ivory black finish; all the buttons are touch sensitive so there are no resenting buttons spoiling the overall feel. The screen is worked off brilliantly, unlike some other competitors’ screens which I have seen in the same class (size, features and price).

When switching on the PC I found that the OSD (On Screen Display) was of exceptional quality, I know with LCDs the OSD graphics tend to be very low res and block like. Even the settings menu is quite aesthetically pleasing.

The next big thing I realised was that this screen is huge. I had it setup next to a 22” LCD and the 23.6” seemed to be way bigger than just it’s 1.6” difference.

The screen is fully HD Ready. The sheer resolution of the screen amounts for a crystal clear image; this backed up by the 60,000:1 Contrast Ratio makes your overall experience a pleasure! I work with a lot of graphic programs while at the same time enjoying movies and series on my PC. After working on this screen I struggle to come to terms regarding how bad the display is on older, smaller resolution and less Contrast LCDs.

It also has a handy USB port at the bottom left corner. For this to work you need to plug in the supplied USB cable, but I can imagine there are plenty situations where this feature will be more than handy. A bit of a Apple monitor gimmic, but it is still very cool.

Something I was quite (and still am) excited about is that this screen is fully HD compatible. This means you can connect your Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or even a multi media device directly to this screen (via HDMI with a DVI converter). You can set the device to maximum resolution (1080p) and the result will be the same as connecting your device to a high end LCD TV. That is brilliant! You can now have a gaming console solution with the best visual quality possible for a lot less money than a proper LCD TV.

Conclusion:
The 36-series LCD screens from AOC are truly worth looking at when in the market for a LCD screen. It has a brilliant finish and superb features like the USB port, DVI and RGB inputs and touch sensitive buttons. The specs runs alongside any competitors’ specs, with the exception of the 60,000:1 Contrast Ratio, which I haven’t seen on any LCD screen before.

The software goes by the name of G Data. I recently installed the 2010 version on my personal computer at home for reviewing purposes. Initially the installation is a bit of a lengthy process, taking an odd 30mins or so. On top of that it had to download about 60mb of virus definitions and updates. To justify this it does run a dual engine virus protection module, which means you have two different monitoring modules keeping your PC safe with both these engines needed to be updated. I was also pleased that there were no tedious registration forms and activation processes, I was simply asked to enter a email address and a desired password, that’s it.

After installation I can with all honesty say that I did not have any hassles at all. I have a network setup of 5 PCs at home, one of them running as a remote desktop only. When sharing files on my PC I did not encounter any firewall or permission problems, there were also no issues regarding networking in any of the games I tried. It even runs on the Windows 7 RC without any hassles. G Data just quietly runs in the background doing its job, or did it?

G Data Anti Virus

I decided to put it to the test and see if it can really be so quiet and fully functional?

I jumped onto Limewire and downloaded the first “dodgy” file I could find. The specific one I tried first was a “Transformers 2 2009 Bluray Dvd Rip [L33735Group].zip” with a file size of 480KB; this was sure to be a good version of the movie, ?X%@$!

After downloading the file I opened it up and double clicked the “Open Transformers.exe” file, G Data immediately detected a Trojan horse (who could have guessed?), and popped up a notification. After you have told G Data what to do a second window came up telling me all threats have been removed from my PC, it even notified me which of the two engines it used to fix and detect the threat. It doesn’t have access to the zip file so the original exe was still present. I tried another 2 different files just to test it. Both detected immediately and removed the virus. After 2 mins or so it came up with another message alerting me of the dangerous files still inside the zip files and asked if I want to delete, or quarantine the files. I was impressed.

Speed

After putting it to the test I had to ask the question everybody asks when it comes to Anti Virus Software. Does it slow down my system? Especially since it runs two engines and is very capable of serving its purpose. I recorded my start up time of windows prior to installing G Data. With a relatively fresh install of Windows 7 RC my PC managed to boot in 27seconds from power up. After installing G Data I recorded a time of 36 seconds. I found this hard to believe but this was the result on numerous tests.

Performance

Next was a performance test. I was delighted to see that the G Data console itself has a System CPU usage Indicator, and right above that a G Data CPU usage indicator (how much of the CPU G Data is using itself). Quite neat to have when running benchmarks. I was surprised to see that while browsing the internet and browsing around on my PC, the G Data CPU Usage averaged a 9%. When copying a large amount of files CPU usage goes up to 22%. The speed impact of copying files G Data claims to be 8% loss which In today’s day and age, a necessity to have some kind of virus protection, an 8% loss of copy speed is hardly a big sacrifice to make in my opinion.

I have to admit that I was a big fan of Norton before my G Data encounter.   I never had any problems with Norton and found it to be one of the only packages which could actually remove viruses and not only detect them. The only honest issue was that Norton did increase my start-up time by as much as 20 – 25 seconds, and I’m quite positive that it did slow everything else down as well. It seems like G Data has now compared and possibly exceeded my expectations when it comes to Anti Virus software.

The next impressive point was the pricing. Pricing is in the region of R 250.00 for the Anti Virus Package, R 300.00 for the Internet Security Package and R 380.00 for the Total Care Package. All of these packages are 3 user 1 year packages which more than justifies my comment regarding the price.

Some of the features in the Total Care package are:

• AntiVirus
• Firewall
• Data-Backup
• AntiSpam
• AntiPhishing
• Child-Protection
• System-Tuning

G Data Console

The console window displays a complete overview of all the elements and their status. Configuring them involves only a double click and choosing a desired option, simple as that.

G Data also installs a web toolbar where you can choose web-monitoring options on the fly; the web monitor can even be switched off if you do experience any problems with sites, scripts or elements being blocked. There are also hourly virus definition checks to ensure up to date security, the console displays a date and time stamp for the last definition update and update check.

As an individual I am concerned about data, security and reliability on my PC. I am however also a passionate gamer and understand the importance of PC performance. G Data does really satisfy my needs when looking at Anti Virus software; I can now relax and just enjoy the experience of having a functional, high-performance and totally safe computer.

It’s no wonder that G Data has been the Top Record Award winner in Europe for a while now. It has now raised the bar of what I look for in an Anti Virus Package and honestly at this stage considering the price, performance and reliability of G Data I will stick with G Data as my preferred Anti Virus package for now. The software is very new in South Africa and will start appearing in stores all around the country from here on.

PC Specs:
AMD Athlon X2 64 6400+ (3.2Ghz)
Gigabyte AMD MA790X-DS4 SLI Motherboard
4Gb DDR2 800 Dual Chanel Ram
1.5Tb Total Storage
Sparkle nVidia Ge-Force 9800GTX+
Windows 7 Ultimate 64Bit (RC)
G Data TotalCare 2010 Installed

For more information visit http://www.gdatasoftware.co.za/.