I just got it and set it up today, and so far it’s just as good as I’d hoped. It’s about as big as I’d want for the distance I sit away from it since it already pretty much fills my view, the PS3 looks amazing on the HDMI input, I can put both PCs on separate DVI inputs, the 360 can get the VGA input to itself and not go through the KVM, and the Wii can finally use component instead of crummy old S-video.

The only caveat so far is that for the Wii, I have to set the monitor’s scaling mode to ‘Fill’ in order to get a proper widescreen display. But I don’t want it set to that for the PS3, or it scales the 1920×1080 mode up to 1920×1200, stretching things vertically a bit, so the PS3 has to be set to 1:1 or ‘Aspect’ mode. Making sure it’s on the right mode is a minor annoyance, but I can leave it on Aspect 99% of the time since I haven’t been using the Wii much lately anyway.

Edit: Hmmm, I can see some backlight bleed in the corners on the right-hand side when the screen is dark. I don’t think I’ll do anything about it, though; I’ve heard of people returning their screens six or seven times in a row before they got one that didn’t bleed at all, and it’s only really noticeable when the screen is completely dark, so it’s not really that big a deal.

People are inventive though, and have come up with a lot of quick, homebrew mods to try and make the drums more reliable. One of the best so far doesn’t even need you to break the drum set open; you just need a bunch of…socks?

Enjoy! Or not.

On the one hand, this will be my last chance to get a model with the hardware-level PS2 compatibility, and I’ve still got a lot of unfinished PS2 games that would benefit from the upscaling and faster loading (the 80GB models use a software emulator that’s not nearly as compatible). And, being the gaming whore that I am, I’d probably wind up eventually getting one anyway. And it can run Linux and things like the MythTV frontend, which always tickles my inner geek.

But on the other hand, the thing is freaking expensive. It’s better now, at only $50 more than I paid for my 360, but that’s still a lot for something that’ll largely be used as a glorified PS2 in the short term. Which leads to the next problem, the lack of games. There are a couple that look interesting, like Resistance and Warhawk, but they’re not really compelling by themselves, since they’re not really my preferred genres. A bunch of others are turning out to be disappointments (i.e., Lair), and most of the rest are also available for the 360 anyway, where I’d prefer to get them for things like the Achievements and better online integration. And it won’t even work with my LCD monitor (damn HDCP), so I’d be stuck using it on S-video until I get a proper HDTV. And I don’t really need the backwards compatibility since I already have a PS2; it would just be a convenience.

The PS2 library did have a lot of games I liked, and hopefully the PS3′s library will eventually turn out the same way, but is that hope that it’ll live up to that potential enough to balance out the immediate hit to the wallet…

The red is a fairly dark metallic crimson which complements the black nicely, and otherwise it’s a regular old DS Lite. I’m a bit wary of the controls at the moment, as it seems like I have to push up and down a lot harder before they register, but maybe I just have to get used to them.

Brain Age 2 is garbage, and I’m just saying that because after the first test it immediately told me my brain age is 80. Let’s just say that “scissors” is the new “blue”. Really, it’s exactly like the original, just with a different set of tests and some more new sudoku puzzles. The tests seem to be a bit harder too, with things like being trickier with concealing information (in one it asks a series of addition problems, but covers up one of the digits and reuses it in the next problem, so you have to remember what it was), making you play musical sequences, and more memorization (e.g., a grid of 25 numbers).

The case is a bit unusual in that it just wraps around the two flat sides, and there are a few bands to hold the DS in place. That makes putting it in the case take a bit more effort, but it looks really classy, at least.

Oh well, at least it happened late enough that the replacements going out now should have the overheating fixes in place.

It’s great that you can add more songs to it, of course, but the current pricing scheme seems a bit…excessive. The songs released so far are only available in packs of three, at $6.25 USD per pack, and are songs imported over from the original Guitar Hero, not new ones. Over $2 USD per song seems a bit much when their relative value was more like $1 each when you bought the original game. And the bundling scheme encourages them to put one good song in with two crummy songs, so you may wind up paying $6 for just the one song you really want.

I still like the 360 and Live service overall, but this is the kind of nickel-and-diming people were worried about finally coming to fruition… Hopefully they’re just testing the waters, response will be poor, and they’ll start doing more reasonable bundles and prices.