Toshiba on Monday introduced technology that enhances the picture quality of DVDs, Toshiba this year lost the high-definition format war with Sony,

XDE, or extended detail enhancement, will be in Toshiba’s new XD-E500 DVD player, which will ship this month. The player will be priced at $150, about twice as much as regular “up-converting” players.

Toshiba claims the higher price is justified because XDE takes DVD picture quality to a higher level, but not quite as high as Sony’s Blu-ray high-definition format.

Toshiba had tried to rally the industry around the HD DVD format as a better choice than Blu-ray. The latter, however, gained broader support from movie studios, prompting Toshiba to stop making HD DVD players this year. Read more » »

The Batman blockbuster “The Dark Knight” hauled in $43.8 million to rank as Hollywood’s top movie for the third-straight weekend, fending off “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” which opened a close second with $42.5 million.

“The Dark Knight” has soared to a $394.9 million haul in just 17 days, according to studio estimates Sunday. The Warner Bros. release should sail past the $400 million mark by Monday or Tuesday, said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner.

That would be on the film’s 18th or 19th day of release, another record for “The Dark Knight,” which had an all-time high opening weekend of $158.4 million. The previous $400 million record-holder was “Shrek 2,” which hit that mark in 43 days.

“It’s a film that is just rewriting the record books every day and redefining our notions of what a blockbuster can be,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers.
Read more » »

“The Dark Knight” lit up cash registers during its midnight debut, stealing away with a record $18.5 million from 3,040 theaters, distributor Warner Bros. said Friday.

That bested the 2005 performance of “Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith,” which took in $16.9 million during its midnight debut in 2,915 venues.

“The Dark Knight” figure did not include any of its 3 a.m. or 6 a.m. showings.

And while Batman only strikes at night, all indications are that “The Dark Knight” will keep landing blows: Advance ticket sales were booming.

The early numbers mean “The Dark Knight” will likely join the ranks of 10 other films that debuted on non-holiday weekends and cleared more than $100 million from Friday to Sunday, said Paul Dergarabedian, president of tracking firm Media By Numbers LLC. Read more » »

The AMD for penetration market in visual computation now was launching the World First Teraflop Graphic Chip via ATI Radeon HD 4850 and first graphic card in the world that carries memory with the very big bandwith, GDDR5, ATI Radeon HD 4870.

“ATI Radeon 4800 series shows double better performance compared with ATI Radeon HD 3800 GPU, the biggest enhanced since the launching of Radeon 9700 that presented game revolution in 2002, ”

ATI Radeon 4800 series, said Dommy, is creating the new industrial standard such as performance-per-watt, performance-per-mm2 of chip die size, and performance-per-dollar.
Read more » »

Natsume, a worldwide developer and

publisher of family-oriented video games, announced today that the

company is celebrating the ten-year anniversary of its popular Harvest

Moon franchise this summer. In commemoration of the anniversary,

Natsume is launching two new Harvest Moon titles later this quarter

and offering a host of retail promotions surrounding the launches.

Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness for the Nintendo DS and Harvest Moon:

Tree of Tranquility for the Nintendo Wii will both be available at

retail later this summer, and will be branded with special packaging
Read more » »

The currently during Brash Entertainment announced today that key Hollywood talent from the upcoming animated movie, Space Chimps, will be featured in their videogame of the same name. Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm, RV) and Patrick Warburton (Bee Movie, Seinfeld) reprise their roles from the movie, Luna and Titan respectively, for the videogame. Based on the highly anticipated film produced by Vanguard Animation and presented by Starz Animation, the videogame is slated for release on July 15, 2008, just days before the film’s July 18, 2008 debut.

In the Space Chimps game, players follow the adventures of pioneering primates on a mission into outer space. Cheryl Hines as Luna, is a by the books, go-getting chimp, who graduated top of her astronaut training class. As the interactive plot of the game unfolds, Luna’s level head becomes an asset, and players take control of the character to explore alien territories and complete quests that explore lands and characters beyond the plot of the movie. Patrick Warburton as Titan, is the commanding officer of their space craft, and uses his deep stern voice to keep his crew in line. However, his quick temper and tendency to go bananas makes leading a squad difficult at times for this commanding chimp. Read more » »

As in past Civ games, the world is made up of a giant grid that mimics the layout of a map of the world (although the continents and oceans are variable, so it usually doesn’t resemble our Earth at all). It’s up to you to found cities, build them up by constructing different kinds of structures, and train military units to defend your borders.

The controls for Civ Rev on the DS are almost identical to its console cousins and the d-pad fills in for most of the selection duties. Of course, the DS’ stylus is put to good use and comes in handy for more minute selection options like when you have multiple units in one square and want to choose only one. Tapping the stylus on anything on the screen will select it (or you can scroll over it using the d-pad) and then you are free to direct your units by dragging the stylus from your unit to where you want it to go or whomever you want it to attack. While the d-pad seemed a bit more intuitive for actually moving units around, it’s nice to have the option of using the stylus if you so choose. Read more » »