Filed under: Announcements

C’mon, you know we wouldn’t miss this. We’re going to be live and direct from Apple’s “spotlight turns to notebooks” event in Cupertino. Dying to know if there’s a new MacBook or MacBook Pro in your future? Want to see if those “Brick” rumors pan out? Think Steve Jobs might wear a pair of jeans? Keep your browser locked in to our liveblog to get real-time updates on all the news as it happens!

Where you’ll need to be:

Live from Apple’s “spotlight turns to notebooks” event

Time zones:

07:00AM - Hawaii
10:00AM - Pacific
11:00AM - Mountain
12:00PM - Central
01:00PM - Eastern
06:00PM - London
07:00PM - Paris
09:00PM - Moscow
02:00AM - Tokyo (October 15th)

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Filed under: Announcements

Yes, it seems like some kind of crazy dream, but Apple’s big Fall event is descending upon us at a merciless speed. Join us tomorrow when we’ll be liveblogging the whole thing from its destructive, brain-shattering start, straight through to the thirilling (yet inevitable) universe-collapsing finish. Will we see those heavily rumored iPod nano 4Gs? Will Apple finally release a fresh Newton? Will Steve Jobs float magically over the crowd like a figure from a Chagall? Find out tomorrow.

Where you’ll need to be:

Live from Apple’s ‘Let’s Rock’ event in San Francisco

Time zones:

07:00AM - Hawaii
10:00AM - Pacific
11:00AM - Mountain
12:00PM - Central
01:00PM - Eastern
06:00PM - London
07:00PM - Paris
09:00PM - Moscow
02:00AM - Tokyo (September 10th)

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Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment

They said they were going to do it, and do it they did. While Samsung’s tru2way “demonstration” was barely more than a hack job used to show off what the technology was about, Panasonic demoed the real deal at its CEDIA booth. The 50-inch TH-50PZ80Q plasma contained a real CableCARD (yes, we checked) and was receiving a live signal from Comcast. Denver is just one of a few markets where tru2way is theoretically ready to rock, and according to a Panny rep, the set we saw today is a production unit that will ship sometime “later this year.” The idea here is to provide buyers with the ability to insert any CableCARD from any carrier (if you move, for example) into an HDTV, thus eliminating the cable company’s stranglehold (best known as a “carrier-issued set-top-box”) on you. The demo we saw went over very well — everything was responsive and image quality was excellent. See for yourself in the gallery at Engadget HD.

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Filed under: Displays, Misc. Gadgets, HDTV, Home Entertainment

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Filed under: Gaming

Interesting that this didn’t get announced at E3, but Games for Windows Live is now free for all. Yep, totally free, cross-platform multiplayer with the 360 included — which obviously raises the question of whether Live will ever be free on Xbox. We think that’s a pretty safe no — unlike Games For Windows, Xbox Live actually makes money, which is pretty hard to turn down, and without a ton of competitive pressure from, say, Playstation Home, it’s hard to see why Microsoft would turn that funtime cash fountain off. Still, there’s always hoping, right?

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Filed under: Gaming

It wasn’t all Zune gaming at Microsoft’s GDC keynote this morning — a lot of time was spent discussing Community Games, the new official name for XNA-based games. Amateur devs will get “creator identities” along with their gamertags, and Live members can rate, grade, and discuss your efforts. Of course, as we’ve heard, games can move from the 360 to PCs to second-gen Zunes, which is definitely pretty cool, but it’ll be interesting to see what that means for devs who want to try and take advantage of the 360’s horsepower — will they be restrict their code to a specific platform? While we wait for those answers, it looks like we’ll be able to get a taste of what Community Games have to offer right away — Microsoft announced that the first seven XNA-based games are available immediately, with an open beta to begin in spring and full-on launch by the end of the year. List of games after the jump — but what are you doing reading this when you could be playing?

Update: We just tried downloading RocketBall and the process is totally different than you’d expect. First you have to download the XNA Launcher, which is under New Arrivals in the Marketplace blade — but you don’t need a membership, so skip that, and the XNA ad that displays points you to the wrong thing, so ignore that as well. Then head over to the Games blade and select Games Library, but don’t open the Launcher, cause it’ll just kick you out. Instead, press Y to view the list of games and download one. So far the “YouTube of games” seems a bit convoluted — hopefully the next Dashboard update makes this all a bit simpler.

Continue reading First Xbox 360 Community Games to hit Live “immediately”

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Filed under: Gaming

Of all the weeks to have a major outage of your online gaming service, the holiday and vacation weeks of Christmas and New Years may have to be the worst — which Microsoft has learned all to well over the last ten days. We know you’ve heard plenty about it here at Engadget — but that’s really only because Xbox Live has had such a solid track record over the years, and we’re all just as surprised as you. But while it’s perfectly clear users have been seeing these issues, it’s still unclear exactly how “intermittent” those issues really are. Care to let us know how you’ve fared in our wholly unscientific poll?

View Poll

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Filed under: Gaming

After treading deeply into some crazy Orwellian statusbox doublespeak, it looks like Xbox Live is finally up and running with no lingering issues or caveats. According to Major Nelson, the entire Live team has been working “day and night” to get things sorted, and while we appreciate their efforts over the holidays, we’re still of the opinion that Live members should be getting a free week or month — you gotta deliver when you run a paid service.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Gaming

After treading deeply into some crazy Orwellian statusbox doublespeak, it looks like Xbox Live is finally up and running with no lingering issues or caveats. According to Major Nelson, the entire Live team has been working “day and night” to get things sorted, and while we appreciate their efforts over the holidays, we’re still of the opinion that Live members should be getting a free week or month — you gotta deliver when you run a paid service.

Update: Now it’s down again! Status message gives the old line about intermittent issues and engineers working on fixes. Ugh, could the timing on these outages be any worse?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Gaming

We’re starting to think Xbox Live’s holiday strategy was modeled after Newtonian physics: what goes up must come down. Although the Live support site shows the service as being “up and running”, apparently users are still experiencing intermittent issues, sometimes more dramatic than those officially listed. We don’t know about you, but even though only some of us on we were able to get on, even they have been seeing a lot of stalling and freezing — and the unlucky ones are just completely shut out of Live. How are things going out there? Any XBL issues of which to speak?

P.S. -Microsoft, congrats on the great holiday season. You obviously sold a TON of Xbox 360s and Live service contracts. Now be a doll. Give everyone a week (or, say, a month) of free Live service for the ugliness over vacation, ok? These people paid for their service when the other guys offer it up for free.

Read - Live support site: still having problems
Read - Our post about problems from last weekend
Read - Our other post about outages on Christmas day

Update: Our broham Major Nelson says the Live engineers have identified a fix for the issues and things are on their way to being back on the up and up. Hopefully this time for good!

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

If you’re a musician of any type, odds are you’ve found yourself on stage more than once desperately hunting for some variety of esoteric adapter which is supposed to plug into a connector you’ve never seen before. Well, for those who’ve mounted Orbital style goggle-lights and gone digging into bottomless bags only to come up empty handed, today is your day. Enter the Electronic Musician’s Emergency Adaptor kit — a little red bag containing all of the connectors, adapters, splitters, and couplers you could ever want or need. With a wide variety of XLR, 1/8″, 1/4″, and RCA plugs, your excuses for sucking are probably going to get a lot more complicated.

[Via Gear Diary]

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Filed under: Gaming

Heads up, Xbox 360 tinkerers — it appears that Microsoft is bringing out the ban hammer once again. According to a thread on an Xbox-Scene forum, users are having their Live wrists slapped left, right, and center due to “bad discs” (i.e., non 1:1 copies of games). Initially, the problem seemed to be modified DVD firmware, but it now appears the cause is due to game data that isn’t properly copied, or has been “touched” in some manner. Keep in mind, these are console bans, as opposed to Live account bans, which is a minor amount of good news. The forums are abuzz with profane indictments of Microsoft and calls for heads on platters (okay, it’s not that bad) — but mostly everyone is just waiting to see where the next hit will come from. You’ve been warned, folks.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!