Gamez & Gadgetz

High-definition television (HDTV) potentially offers a much better picture quality than standard television. HD's greater clarity means the picture on screen can be less blurred and less fuzzy. Almost all commercially available HD is digital, with all the advantages digital video brings. The system cannot produce a snowy or washed out image from a weak signal for example, or other effects from signal interference, such as herringbone patterns, or vertical rolling.

The colors will generally look more realistic, due to greater bandwidth. The visual information is about 2-5 times more detailed overall. The gaps between scanning lines are smaller or invisible. Legacy TV content that was shot and preserved on 35 mm film can now be viewed at nearly the same resolution at which it was originally photographed.

The "i" in these numbers stands for "interlaced" while the "p" stands for "progressive". With interlaced scan, the 1,080 lines are split into two, the first 540 being painted on a frame, followed by the second 540 painted on another frame. This method reduces the bandwidth and raises the frame rate to 50-60 frames per second. A progressive scan displays all 1,080 lines at the same time at 60 frames per second, using more bandwidth.

Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound is often broadcast along with standard HDTV video signals, allowing full surround sound capabilities. (Standard broadcast television signals usually only include monophonic or stereophonic audio. Stereo broadcasts can be encoded with Dolby Surround, an early home video surround format.)

Nintendo has ventured off the beaten path with its newest system, and the company knows it. While the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Microsoft Xbox 360 both emphasize their impressive graphical capabilities, Nintendo downplays the importance of graphics on its new console. While the Sony and Microsoft consoles keep the branding of their respective predecessors, the oddly named Wii is a semantic departure from Nintendo's more literally named 2001 console, the GameCube. And while the PS3 and the Xbox 360 both use conventional gamepads bristling with buttons, control sticks, and directional pads, the Wii uses a device that looks more like a TV remote than a gamepad to control its games.

These strange choices could have spelled failure for Nintendo's newest endeavor. Underplaying processing power, using a strange new controller setup, and giving the whole package an odd name could have been major mistakes for Nintendo. (Consider some of the company's earlier attempts to go against the grain: the Power Glove and the Virtual Boy.) But the gamble paid off: since its November 2006 release, the Wii has become a runaway hit, so popular that it remains difficult to find it in stock. It's strange, it's different, and it's not as powerful as its competitors, but the Nintendo Wii succeeds in its primary mission: it's fun to play.

Microsoft's Xbox 360 was the first "next-generation" game console to hit the market in November 2005, beating the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3 by a full year. Like its peers, the 360 initially suffered from a somewhat anemic game lineup and some annoying hardware and software limitations. Since its launch, however, the Xbox team has implemented an assortment of incremental improvements, even going so far as to release an updated version of the console. The result, as of fall 2007, is the best version of the Xbox 360 to date. The current model features the HDMI output with 1080p video support that was missing on the original version, as well as a host of other tweaks and improvements to the system's underlying software. Best of all, the 360 now boasts the largest--and many would argue, the best--game lineup. In addition to great games such as Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty 4, the 360 is the only console where you can play such must-have exclusive titles as Halo 3, BioShock, Gears of War, and Mass Effect. Add to that a host of impressive digital media features, including an add-on HD DVD movie player and a decent online selection of downloadable pay-per-view HD movies and TV shows.

There's general agreement that Sony stumbled out of the gate with the PlayStation 3. Months of intense hype were followed by a late launch (fully a year after the Xbox 360) and a staggering $600 price tag for the deluxe model. Even worse, the PS3 didn't have any real must-have exclusive titles, and despite the power of its vaunted Cell processor, multiplatform games from third-party developers didn't look appreciably better than the respective titles on the 360.

Since then, the company's been modifying the PlayStation product line to better fit the competitive market landscape. As of November 2007, a "bargain" PlayStation 3 can be had for a mere $400--but that model lacks the ability to play older PS2 games. If that feature is important to you, you'll need to shell out an additional $100 for the "deluxe" 80GB PlayStation 3 model--or if you're lucky enough to find a 60GB version, the one reviewed here, we'd highly recommend jumping on that as well. While the 60GB version of the PlayStation 3 is currently being phased out of production by Sony, the differences between it and the 80GB model are minimal. Owners of PS2 games may prefer the 60GB model because of its greater compatibility with that system's games due to its internal hardware emulation instead of the 80GB's software emulation. In addition to backward compatibility with many PS2 games, the $500 PS3s include more USB ports and a built-in flash media reader.

Riding high on the success of the mega-popular Game Boy Advance (GBA) line of portables, Nintendo decided to take a risk when it released the Nintendo DS--short for dual screen. Forcing a second visual output and a touch screen on a generation of gamers weaned on controllers could have resulted in a disaster of Virtual Boy proportions. It faces some tough competition in form of Sony's graphically superior PSP, which also features movie and music playback, but fortunately for Nintendo, the system has been a breakout success, due in no small part to the uniqueness of its titles.

After roughly a decade at the top of the home console industry, Sony decided to tackle the portable system market--one heavily fortified by Nintendo's Game Boy Advance and DS. Sony sought to take down Nintendo by adopting the tactic that made the PlayStation 2 such a runaway success: by offering sophisticated, graphically intensive games and a heavy dose of multimedia functionality. The device is called the PlayStation Portable (PSP), and in addition to playing games of PS2 graphical quality, it can play music and movies (downloaded or via disc) and surf the Web. It may not be the best handheld media product on the market, and the games lack the innovation of ones on Nintendo's portables, but as an all-in-one device, the Sony PSP is king of the hill.