The Xbox 360 is fully iPod compatible with correct download from Xbox Live. Unless you’ve been downloading your MP3s from iTunes without stripping them of Apple’s DRM, FairPlay. A FairPlay MP3 won't play through Xbox 360. Apple and Microsoft are incompatible, go figure.

Here is exactly how to go from this:

 Xbox 360 with iPod connected to one of its two available front USB ports. 

To THIS:

 Mind blowing psychedelic music listening bliss with a high definition laser show pumping to your own playlist.

First stop is Xbox Live. This is the online service that may just be the online shopping wave of the future.  Here we have my account on Live ready to login to the Marketplace. This is the shopping mall according to Microsoft. Don’t laugh, shopping by remote control from your couch is going to seem very normal very soon.

Once inside Live you can navigate your way to all kinds of free goodies. Many of the downloads cost Microsoft points which are purchased with your credit card. But there are enough freebies to make it interesting for the cheap among us. Including this little gem.

Here’s an handy app developed by a third party Nellymoser that allows XBox 360 to play with your iPod. It’s a free download from Xbox Live, costing no points just download and install on your 360’s hard drive. You did get the one with the hard drive didn’t you?

Here’s a look at what Nellymoser does to your Xbox 360's Media Blade, a new music playback device at the bottom. Except you'd see YOUR iPod (not mine).  

 Sitting back in front of your telly you get to all these swell controls over the iPod.  Look, I'm browsing 20Gigs of musical bliss. 

Play a song and hey look, you get a visualization just like using Windows Media Player or a Winamp plug-in. Okay, call me a hippie but the full screen visualization has provided me with hours of entertainment while I listen to music.

And yes, my mind is fully blown now. Sorry all you competitive gamers there are no Achievements to be had for wasting time listening to music with the visualization on. There should be, but only if you have taste.  Rocking your vis to Nelly or Jessica Simpson doesn’t’ count. There you have it.  Full screen that baby with the letter X and away you go!  It's the 60's all over again, only cooler.

A shopper walked the aisles of Wal-Mart needing to buy a few things before Christmas.  He chose Wal-Mart for the best price on winter floor mats for his car but also needing to pick up inexpensive batteries for a toy he bought his niece.   Not far from the rechargeable batteries he spied an amazing deal.  It was a portable DVD player with a built in mini LCD display selling for a mere $50.  Our Wall-Mart shopper automatically tossed the incredible bargain into his cart without considering if he had any use for such a device.

The no-brand portable device was never inspected closely by our shopper because after all, it’s outrageously cheap.  The shopper didn’t care to read the specs on the box that state a charge from its non-removable batteries only lasted 1.5 hours (shorter than most DVD movies).  Nor did it matter that the LCD screen was made from left over panel material from a sweat-shop in Zhenjiang China, deemed unsuitable (with too many bad pixels) for any of the name brand consumer devices the factory had been contracted to build.

The shopper, proud of his thrifty nature gleefully continued up the aisle.  Then he happened upon a wise old sage.

“Oh, wise sage of ancient wisdom.”  The shopper said to the sage.  “Will you teach me how to get the most of my Christmas shopping dollar?”

The sage eyed the contents of the Wal-Mart shoppers cart and then spoke.

“I can show you how to make $50 cash with a mere wave of the arm.”

Wide eyed with disbelief the puzzled the shopper begged the sage demonstrate and teach him the secret to making $50 cash with a single wave of the arm.  The venerable sage leaned over the shoppers cart and plucked the LCD portable DVD player from his cart and tossed it back onto a nearby shelf.  As the elderly sage turned to walk away the shopper exclaimed.  “But venerable sage!  What about the $50 dollars?”  The sage left the shopper with these final words.

“It’s already in your pocket.”

It’s not home theater but it is acoustic news.  I found this an interesting tidbit that speaks to the degradation of our ears as we age.  I’ve long held that many of the so called golden ear audiophiles are delusional and imagine many of the qualities they associate with high end audio gear.  Here is further illustration that the real audiophiles should be teenagers.

A British inventor Howard Stapleton created this device to exploit younger people’s ability to hear sounds in the higher bands than we of the over 30 set cannot.  It’s designed to repel rowdy teenagers by annoying the hell out of their eardrums with this high frequency sound that adults simply don’t hear.  The Mosquito had a successful field test at a store in Barry, South Wales.  Robert Gough a store owner tried the device because a particular crowd would hang out in front of his store drinking, smoking, disturbing customers and frequently making “disruptive forays” into his business.  The unruly teens were even blamed for the occasional assault on staff.  The device emits a 75 db tone, loud but within safety limits so it won’t damage anybodies hearing.  A rock concert is around 100 db, 85 is the accepted maximum before damage to the eardrum occurs.  Well the device worked, Mr Gough had kids coming in holding their hands over their ears begging him to turn off the device.  He told the kids that it was to ward off birds because of reports of bird flu in the area.  Classic!

It seems like only a month ago that HP announced plans to back Blu-Ray as the next generation optical storage format with some reservations of course.  For more details on what the a Blu-Ray (or an HD DVD is for that matter) click here and read this fascinating article that will keep you riveted. 

In fact it was only a month ago that HP announced they may second guess their own plans to back Blu-Ray if they don't comply to certain features that will be included in Windows Vista.  The features include iHD and Mandatory Managed Copy and as consumers we should hope these features are included.  They'll be key in adding an element of interactivity with your software and you'll be able to copy your content easier with these features included.  But, they may never see the light of Blu-Ray.

Fox Filmed Entertainment just came out with a statement not only backing Blu-Ray (if that was ever in doubt) but boldly predicting it's practically assured victory over the HD DVD format in the pending format war.  Fox's co-chairman James Gianopulos said at a Rueters Media and Advertising Summit in New York: 

"We believe that Blu-ray not only has the superior technology and backing in terms of strength to market but also the superior content protection,"

INCOMING!  Take THAT Toshiba, Ruper Murdoch is calling you out.  Of course the studios prefer the format that won't allow easy copy of their properties.  Owners of the data prefer to consipate the free exchange of data and it's Blu Ray that does it.  Thus making HD DVD the better format as far as I can see.  Sure, HD DVD doesn't have the capacity of Blu Ray and really who has actually seen the new WinVista features anyway?  But they sound good on paper.

So, it seems you may never see the Windows Vista features HP wants on Blu-Ray.  But, how strong is Fox's backing?  It's not just Fox but every major studio except Universal already backs Blu-Ray.  But with powerhouses like Intel and Microsoft backing HD DVD you can expect it's not completely down and out.

As a consumer it's still best to wait and see.  So don't go pre-ordering your Pioneer Blu-Ray player just yet.  Pioneer anounced delays in releasing its 50Gig Blu-Ray disc players until late '06.  This is the second major delay in Blu-Ray's release (we were supposed to see a Teac RW player for PC already in late '05).  By the time this pending format war gets rolling maybe they'll have another competitor. Holographic Storage Technology.

Note to readers:  Please, make an account on the forums to give us any feedback on these stories you read here.  I'd love to hear from you.  Unfortunately the feedback utility is broken.  I know, that's lame but I'm working on it.  If only there wasn't such a thing as spam.

Yes, I love Onkyo even though I own nothing made by the manufacturer.  I’ve heard enough and almost bought some of its gear on a number of occasions.  I personally would avoid HTIB, but that’s just my situation and I can see where others might benefit from it.  But I do own a small stereo system, basically an HTIB without the HT, more like SIB or Stereo-In-A-Box.  Okay, I didn’t actually buy it I won it.  It’s a cheapie and I use it in the basement for workout noise.  It’s a JVC, nothing special but it plays burned MP3s on CD which is handy.  And no, I wouldn’t sit and really listen to it but it does a good job at blasting Black Flag while I do some bench presses.  I am surprised by the frequency response.  These little systems have tricks up their sleeve where they augment the middle bass, bloating it to make it seem like you have bigger speakers than you actually have.  It seems whenever I hear a system that boosts the 100Hz range I think … cheapie!  It must be hiding something.  Yes, 100Hz is to speakers what a Hummer is to sexually insecure guys.  Real bass response is felt, not heard.

In practical if you’re listening to kicking beats it actually works well.  As long as you understand that from HTIB you’re not going to get highly detailed sound, these aren’t the kind of system where you’re going to listen to some chamber music and hear the audible effects of rosin wiping across strings.  You will get kicking beats from your Crystal Method MP3s and if you’re just ripping MP3s you don’t care about that leve of detail anyway.

Of all the mini-systems, I’ve long extolled the virtues of Onkyo.  Mind you this is no deep analysis just a generalization.  I’ve shopped for HTIB in the past for friends and we’ve done some in-store listening.  I’ve always been impressed by the Onkyo systems that seem to have that innate ability to bring out the kinds of details where you might just be able to sit and do some critical listening.  Sure, they have the 100hz bloat of a cheaper system compensating for something.  But at least you can control it, the Onkyo HTIB systems I’ve listened to also has a surprising level detail in vocals and midranges, an uncommon trait in mini-systems aimed at a younger crowd who probably just wants some kicking beats from their Fity Cent MP3 collection.

Now Onkyo is making the ultimate HTIB system.  Yes, truly the OzzFest of mini-Home Theater and it’s called the CS-V720.  This thing is going to do it all from virtually any format.  Playing your burnt CDs with MP3 and WMA files is small time for this thing.  It’ll play your DVD-Audio and SACD, it’s XM-Ready and will process your 5.1 audio both DTS and Dolby Digital and ProLogic II for your two channel material.  It even has an iPod dock so you can plug in and control the iPod using Onkyo’s Remote Interactive feature giving you control of the iPod through remote control.  It also contains a mit-full of other Onkyo proprietary technologies found in their higher end receivers like their WRAT amplifier technology and Vector Linear Shaping Circuitry for enhancement of the analogue outputs.

The complete system retails for $400 dollars.  I think it’s going to be a winner.      

Amar Bose hasn’t stopped inventing.  After creating his speaker company that employs acoustic designs he developed while studying at MIT 72 year old Amar Bose is still branching out into various other areas of research.  The most recent endeavor by Bose is a new automobile suspension system that allows a car to literally jump over potholes.  The successful test in Bose headquarters own parking lot involved a car with Bose experimental suspension passing over a sensor that caused the wheels to pull back and allow the car to pass over the pothole like it wasn’t there.  The experiment was a success.  This is one of Bose many other pursuits outside of audio.  Apparently Bose has been using his privately held company for experiments from nuclear sub technology, cold fusion and this automotive technology.  You’ve got to give the old guy credit for trying.  But this area of study is not without competition, it seems that others have invented the same and cheaper.  TRW Automotive out of Michigan has a similar high end suspension system that will do the same thing, cost much less and will be available in automobiles sooner than Bose.

Wired’s article on the topic of their auto suspension and various ways Bose research has branched out is interesting and somehow typical of Bose.  Like most of their so called innovations they’re a day late and way more than a dollar too expensive.  It’s equally suspicious how Bose maintains that reputation for being an innovator and an audiophile brand.  Even Wired contributes to the notion in this story.  It’s sad really.  Bose is the Ketchup of speakers but maintains a reputation for being an audiophile brand.  There is nothing wrong with Ketchup per se -- it’s good on Kraft Diner, but nobody puts it on a fine steak.

The complete Aeon Flux collection has finally arrived on DVD in all it’s restored, remastered 5.1 glory.  All I can say is; it’s about bloody time!  For years the only Aeon Flux we had on DVD were a few short episodes on an MTV compilation called Liquid Shorts.  Liquid Shorts was a hand picked best-of collection of the animated features that appeared on Liquid Television.  MTV broadcast Liquid Television way back in ’91 and easily its best feature was the anarcho-assassin named Aeon Flux.  Liquid Television was a boon to comic and anime geeks of the era, it was creative, groundbreaking with an artistic integrity unseen on MTV and would certainly never be seen again.  Every type of animation imaginable form claymation, paper cutout, drawn, black and white, pencil and paper, doll animation were all used to spliced together a collage of cultural references that probably appealed most to pot smoking young adults with short attention spans.  Aeon Flux the best feature and the reason you tuned in.  The early episodes were silent, fast paced adventures lasting no more than two minutes each.  Aeon was a nimble female assassin, deadly and lethal but she met many an untimely demise in the Orwellian sci-fi nightmare world she occupied.  Each episode challenged the viewer, the story was beyond unpredictable, it was often confusing but the viewer wasn’t always supposed to know exactly what was going on, this was the beauty of it.  It took place in a future where technologies and natural phenomena are surreal, sometimes with unusual sexual overtones.  You may simply decide this isn’t Earth at all but some realm inside the imagination of Peter Chung, and you’d probably be right. 

What Peter Chung’s animation lacked in anatomy was more than compensated with his unique vision and cinematic direction.  He was truly visionary railing against the animated status quo of the day using shots and perspectives not possible on film at the time, his camera floated with characters and even shifted from one character to another.  Chung was breaking all the rules of animation that had come before.  It’s easy to see how it must have left an impression on the Wachowski brothers.  Similarities to the perspectives and esthetic used in the Matrix are apparent right down to the black leather clad femme fatale leaping from buildings and through windows rapid firing weapons.  Aeon Flux was a predecessor to the bullet time perspective that would influence film and video games for years after the first Matrix.  Chung’s animation dutifully played with perspectives showing us weapons fire from inside the barrel or hand to hand combat literally from under the chin or a fist eye view.  It was the Wachowski brothers Matrix that marked the era in cinematography that had finally caught up to what had been possible in Chung’s anime.  It’s fitting Chung would be asked to add his sinewy, despondent style to an episode of the Animatrix, a collection of animated shorts that take place in the nightmarish future world of the Matrix.  Chung’s “Matriculated” is the final, most surreal, most loved and hated episode of the Animatrix.

Aeon Flux; The Complete Animated Collection is a three disc set.  Disc one and two share all ten of the talkie episodes that appeared through the autumn of 1995.  These later episodes finally gave a voice to Aeon making her more accessible and less mysterious, MTV’s attempt to open the stories to a wider audience.  Fortunately even the talkies retained the provocative challenge that made intelligent viewing.  Disc Three (which should have been disc one) consists of the original non-talking short episodes that appeared on Liquid Television in ’91.  Special features on disc one include a few featurettes including the insightful “History of Aeon Flux”.  In History-of, we get to see Peter Chung talk about developing the character and the world.  We also see short dialogues with the writers and producers of the show.  They even joke that they slipped a lot of questionable sexual innuendo and explicit situations, thinly disguised beneath dreamlike artistry, past the MTV execs who gave approval because they simply didn’t get it.  Another key special feature is a collection of Liquid Television shorts.  These give you that flavor of where the original episodes come from.  There are also a bunch of trailers for other features by MTV that juxtapose the height MTV once reached for a short time producing Aeon Flux.  The trailers are a barrage of ads for features of dumb people rolling in poop or making themselves puke.

The DVD feature arrives in time to whet your appetite for Charlize Theron in the Aeon Flux garb.  The Aeon Flux movie is coming mid December and although I don’t expect much, it would be nice if they manage to aim a little higher than the straight up action flick, perhaps they could delve into some of the more bizarre elements of this futuristic world.  The film is truly another case of borrowed media coming full circle.  From Aeon Flux’s influential anime contributing to Wochowski brothers’ vision in film, now Aeon will have her own movie and of course an obligatory video game.

Background

The new optical formats (Blu-Ray, HD DVD) will support HD video at 1280x760(720)/60.  It only makes sense that high definition sound will be included on these new discs.  The next generation audio formats DTS HD and Dolby Digital HD are going to be the answer.  If the term high definition sound, sounds to you like a bunch hyperbole there are actually numbers behind the hype.  What makes sound high def?  It’s all about sampling rates using something called Pulse Code modulation.  If you’re a little unclear on exactly what is meant by 24/96 audio, check this out.

Next is lossless, the opposite of lossy.  Lossy compression is what occurs when you use most audio compression formats like MP3.  This means that little pieces of sound are removed from the whole analogue audio signal, to digitize it into a small form so it can be transferred across your bit torrent.  It may come as an horrific surprise to some that Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS are both considered lossy compression formats.  So when you’re watching Batman Begins on DVD and everybody’s going on about how awesome it sounds, you can tell them it sounds pretty good for being encoded in a lossy compression format.  But that you’ll take your 16 bit CD audio over it any day.  You’ll sound like a hi-fi geek.

DD/DTS HD

Enter the new audio formats.  The next gen audio formats are a long time coming if you ask me (and you probably didn’t).  We niche market hi-fi geeks have been farting around with DVD-Audio and SACD for long enough now.  It’s time everybody else got on board what we’ve been amazed by.  If you have a speaker system that will do high resolution PCM audio justice these new hi-res/lossless audio formats certainly will amaze you. 

Dolby Digital True HD

Dolby has given us a little more information so far than DTS and will feature up to 18Mbit/second throughput to eight discreet full range channels of 24-bit/96kHz audio. 

DTS HD

Supposedly will be technically superior, but we’re used to that.  DTS says it:  “…supports a virtually unlimited number of surround sound channels, can downmix to 5.1- and two-channel, and can deliver audio quality at bit rates extending from DTS Digital Surround up to lossless.”

The facts are still a little ambiguous.  Both DTS and DD say they’ll be compatible with their older encoding systems.  But that begs the questions; will I need a new receiver to get the lossless hi-res sound?  What hardware specs should my new receiver have if I get one to take advantage of this?

Here is what we know through best guess, press releases and educated conjecture.

These new methods of encoding to be able to at least downsample to regular DTS/Dolby Digital bitstreams so they’re at least backward compatible.  Forward compatibility or the ability to decode DTD/DD HD using your old standard DD/DTS chipsets in your old receiver is not bloody likely.  When did you ever see an advanced standard that could be decoded with the old process?  The new audio formats will require HDMI inputs on your receiver.  Since HDMI is higher bandwidth and HDCP capable, S/PDIF isn’t going to cut it.  That means the services of your receiver’s optical or coax digital audio inputs won’t be required by this new standard.  Blu-Ray/HD DVD to S/PDIF:  “You’re fired!”

The analogue only 5.1 inputs on your receiver will facilitate downmixed audio from the new audio formats.  DTS says their number of channels is virtually unlimited but what does this mean?  Well, it doesn’t matter because the Blu-Ray and HD DVD standards themselves say that the number of channels will be limited to 8.  So, in terms of the purity of the audio signal, DTS HD and DD HD will be equal with PCM sampling rates and both lossless.  This is a great breakthrough.  Until someone figures out how to use that virtually unlimited channel overhead in DTS to their advantage, there is not going to be an on paper advantage to DTS.  But I’m sure differences will be heard or imagined, it’ll be what it’s always been about, the mix.  The engineers mixing the sound will either do a great job or not.  

This raises some interesting problems for anyone in the market for a new receiver.  If you must buy now, HDMI is your best guess at a future proof option (you might get away with an off-board DD/DTS HD decoding option).  As you know, HDMI receivers are damned expensive right now.  How many years will HD DVD and Blu-Ray be fighting … who knows?  It could drag on for years with both vying for your attention.  But one thing is for sure, when the first is released and we know for certain exactly how to get the proper hi-res audio out of them, the cost of receivers that can’t do the hi-res audio is going to drop like a stone.  If you’re not interested in the new HD hi-res audio formats you still have reason to wait.  Sometime in Q1-2 of ’06 HDMI receivers are going to really kick in and all those non-HDMI receivers are going to drop in price.  Personally, I’m happy with my current non-HDMI receiver and it’ll be a long while before I buy again.  If I do buy another receiver in the next three years it’ll have HDMI or possibly even whatever comes next.