Crave

It's a debate that spawned well before the next-generation of gaming even began. Fast-forward to present day, and you'll find that jury still seems to be out on which console provides the better graphical experience.

While console fanboys would have you believing otherwise, the truth is that there really is no dramatic difference in the majority of multiplatform games on either the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3.

That said, CNET sister site Gamespot has re-examined the controversy in their third look at comparing the graphics on both consoles. Quite possibly the most in-depth comparison to date, Gamespot used games such as Grand Theft Auto IV, The Orange Box, and Rainbow Six Vegas 2 in their testing.

Now that you have all the evidence laid out neatly in front of you, what do you think?

Radiohead made it official: the band won't be giving away music like it did with the album In Rainbows.

"I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation," the band's lead singer Thom Yorke told The Hollywood Reporter. "It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do. I don't think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time."

Many music fans had hoped that the band's now famous pay-what-you-want promotion was an attempt by the group to discover a new way to sell music. Now it appears Radiohead at best was after publicity.

Radiohead has never revealed the promotion's sales figures but there was speculation that the money wasn't very good. Nine Inch Nails, led by Trent Reznor, followed Radiohead by offering the digital version of the album Ghosts I-IV for free as well as charging for premium versions. Reznor said last month that to that point the album had generated 781,917 transactions and $1.6 million.

Reznor was critical of Radiohead during an interview with The Chicago Tribune.

"I think the way (Radiohead) parlayed it into a marketing gimmick has certainly been shrewd," Reznor said. "But if you look at what they did, it was very much a bait and switch, to get you to pay for a MySpace quality stream as a way to promote a very traditional record sale."

It appears now that among marquee artists, no one is doing more to experiment with the Internet as a distribution channel or alternative music-business models than Reznor.

Ubisoft held the company's latest press event in New York this week, and we were lucky enough to get in some time with a few highly anticipated new games coming from the publisher this year. Yesterday, Will Greenwald told you about Far Cry 2, with its Crysis-like physics and effects. Today, we'll shed some light on Rainbow Six Vegas 2.

We're gonna need a new dealer

(Credit: Ubisoft)

Just when we thought we had enough of Las Vegas (CES can do that to a man), Ubisoft throws us right back into the mix of things in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2. While the first Vegas had us running through casinos and garage lots at night, Vegas 2 takes place more during the daylight hours as you'll be seeing back alleys and the grittier side of the town. Rather than giving us an "add-on" to the first title, the team at Ubisoft Montreal has built a game worthy of being labeled as an official sequel. So rest assured, this is certainly not Rainbow Six Vegas: Out of Cash.... Read more

One of the recording industry's most daring experiments ended on Monday. Three months after Radiohead stunned the music industry by allowing fans to pay whatever they wanted for the album, In Rainbows, the band has now opted for a more traditional sales approach.

That was fast.

Just weeks ago, the group was being congratulated for laying the groundwork for a new business model that pundits said could one day save the music industry. But as Radiohead prepares to distribute songs the old-fashion way--selling CDs out of retail stores--not everybody is cheering.

Nicky Wire, a member of the Manic Street Preachers, a rock band whose hits include "Send Away The Tigers," told a news publication last week that Radiohead's offer "demeans music."

"Fair play to Radiohead for doing something different," Wire told the United Kingdom's Daily Star. "It's certainly great publicity, but I think it kind of demeans music. Music used to be a market; now it's all gone digital. It's worrying (that) cinema is doing well, video games are doing well, but music isn't. The free-download phenomenon is ruining the industry."

Such statements are heresy to the "free" culture, but Wire may be right to question whether Radiohead's experiment was a success.

Nobody other than Radiohead and its handlers know how much money the groundbreaking promotion generated, and they aren't sharing figures with the public. Nonetheless, there are signs that the revenue was less than spectacular.

Last month, ComScore, a traffic-tracking company, stirred controversy when it estimated that 62 percent of those who downloaded In Rainbows did so without paying a cent for the music.

The band called ComScore's figures, which were calculated by tracking a sample group, "wholly inaccurate."

The obvious question now is why would Radiohead kill the promotion and go back to a traditional sales model if the cash were rolling in?

The album is still in its infancy, say music industry executives. The economic life span of an album can last as long as two years. It starts when an act releases a record and is extended when the performer goes on a concert tour.

"For those of you who wish to buy In Rainbows in the usual way," said a message at Radiohead's site on Tuesday, "it will be available on CD/vinyl and download from traditional outlets from the 31st December 2007."

Several publications have also reported that Radiohead is negotiating to make In Rainbows available on iTunes.

You can argue that the reason to pull the plug on the offering is to give the band a chance to tap into the shrinking but lucrative CD market. Discs are still the way most people listen to music.

But if the pay-what-you-want promotion was a cash cow, why not keep it going at the same time that you sell CDs? If the digital and CD markets are separate then there's no fear of undercutting disc sales. If they are not, then hasn't the high-profile online promotion already doomed physical sales?

And then there are the statements made this weekend by the group's manager, Chris Hufford, in an interview with the The New York Times. He indicated that the In Rainbows strategy was a one-off.

"This was a solution to a series of issues," Hufford told the Times. "I doubt it would work the same way ever again."

He's not saying the promotion was a bust, but neither is he hollering, "Eureka, we've discovered the new paradigm!"

There's no doubt that Radiohead's gutsy move scored points with fans. Another benefit is that other performers who follow Radiohead's experiment, such as rapper Saul Williams, are sure to learn much from their experiences. They might even improve on the idea.

Last month, Williams launched an offering similar to Radiohead's but tweaked it so people would have more motivation to plunk down money. At the same time he gave away a digital version of his album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardus, Williams offered a higher quality download that could only be obtained with a $5 donation.

At this point, it looks like Radiohead began a discussion. There's plenty still to be debated.

To be truly legendary, a band needs a hidden message for fans to discover. The Beatles had the Paul is Dead rumor. Pink Floyd had the Dark Side of Oz.

Now, according to the indie-music blog Puddlegum, Radiohead has joined the list. Leading up to the 10/10 digital-only release date for the band's new In Rainbows album, Radiohead released cryptic messages to its fans involving the letter X (Roman numeral 10). Puddlegum believes the message goes beyond the release date, but instead suggests that In Rainbows is a sort of sequel to the band's breakthrough album, OK Computer, which was released a little more than 10 years ago, and was originally entitled Zeroes and Ones, and which (like the new album) has ten letters in its title, and...well, just read it for yourself.

I'm currently listening to the suggested playlist that combines both albums, and so far the connections seem tenuous at best--for instance, the four-beat "beep" count at the end of the first song on the playlist, "Airbag," is at a completely different tempo than the next song, "15 Step." But the songs do seem to fit well together, and overall it's a good playlist. Especially if, like me, you haven't listened to OK Computer in a long time after burning out on it.

There are pros and cons to video projectors. On the one hand, films can look stunning when blown up to the size of a wall. On the other hand, Deal or No Deal is unlikely to benefit from being expanded to such epic proportions. With high-definition content becoming more common though, there is an increasing amount of stuff just begging to be projected on to a huge screen.

(Credit: Crave UK)

The Projectiondesign M20 promises high-end performance, but it doesn't come cheap at 3,500 pounds (about $6,935). The price seems particularly steep when you consider this is only a 720p projector. The good news is that the M20 is nice and quiet, registering at -24db. It also claims to produce 200 trillion color shades. Now, call us skeptical, but we couldn't name 20 actual colors. Even allowing for all the shades of pink in the spectrum, we aren't sure how 200 trillion shades are possible.

The connectivity is fairly basic, offering DVI, component, S-Video and composite inputs. There is no HDMI on this projector, so instead you'll have to get an HDMI-to-DVI adaptor if you want to hook up your PlayStation 3 or HD DVD player. In practice, this isn't likely to cause many problems because it still supports HDCP, so copy-protected content will still be playable.

The M20 also has a 7x color wheel, which might sound like the sort of thing you'd find on a hippie's Christmas list, but is in fact quite an important feature. All DLP projectors have a colour wheel, which rotates very quickly in order to produce the image you see projected. The problem with color wheels is they can produce an ugly rainbow effect, which can be very distracting. The M20 claims that the 7x color wheel cuts down on these artefacts and produces a much smoother image.

The projector itself is available in several colors, including British racing green, which we think is a particularly strange one to produce electrical equipment in. Clearly someone at Projectiondesign likes cars though, because you can also get it in Vanquish gray and Maranello blue.

(Source: Crave UK)

(Credit: Discovery Communications)

Crave usually isn't fond of objects that change colors just for the sake of doing so. But there's something about sunglasses that makes a chromatic carousel seem natural.

A pair of shades developed at the University of Washington promises to "change colors on command," though it's limited to various intensities of blue at present. "It uses an organic compound inside the lens, which, once zapped to change, stays that way without any sustaining power," according to Shiny Shiny.

The real fun will begin when researchers add red and green to the mix, which will then allow a veritable rainbow of options. "The wearer spins a tiny dial on the arm to change color or shade," the scientists say. All you'd need is a lava lamp to complete the '60s-style psychedelic experience. But don't spin the colors too fast while looking at something like a mood lamp, or you might end up on a bum voyage.

(Credit: Vavolo)

Being of a blatantly superficial nature, we're fond of gadgets that come in a variety of colors. Even laser pointers, as we noted with a recent one in green.

But there is a limit to our chromatic fetish, especially where our wallet is concerned--even if it does involve a blue laser. China's Vavolo says its "PowerMaster 5mw Blue Beam Laser Pointer" is much brighter than green counterparts with the same power output.

That's great, but wait till you see the price: $600. (And that's discounted from the original $800.) For that kind of money, red looks just fine.