One of the easiest ways to tell how cool a dude is is to take a look at his TV. If it’s not HD, there’s something seriously wrong. But just because a TV is “HD” doesn’t mean it’s good. There are a lot of things that factor into what makes an HDTV good but all the numbers that get thrown at you can be confusing. Don’t worry, dumbass. We’re here to steer you in the right direction. (more…)

That’s right, folks. We’ve made it! We’ve hit the big time! Average Dudes was featured on ESPN last night! Ok not really. They just liked how pissed off Dyna was and decided to show the country how frustrated a UCF fan can be. If I were the official that called an offside penalty on UCF, I’d watch my back. That scowl probably burned a hole in his shirt.

The sad part is the dude with the party hat next to Dyna. You can’t wear a party hat and look that upset. Oh and you can see Jason’s Tampa Bay Rays hat on the bottom right. He went to USF so he was probably rubbing his hands together and saying “eeexcellent.”

Nothing beats a fun college football Saturday, right? Well maybe if you can convince your girlfriend of a little action while watching. Go Miners!

People who frequent message boards and blog comments crack me up. If you were to read some of the comments on posts about the HD format war, you’d think it was bigger and more important than Iraq. People defend their format of choice so jealously that they’ll get into ridiculous spats, call each other names, call each other’s mothers names, etc. Then there are the people in the middle; the fence-sitters. They’ll say things like, “AHH I can’t WAIT for this war to be OVER!” and “This has gone on long enough. Can we please just call one a winner so that I can start spending all my money?!” Ok that was an exaggeration, but that’s what they might as well be saying. Seriously though, let’s step back for a second and analyze this. (more…)

Wal-Mart announced today that it plans to phase out HD DVD products completely by June. Seriously, it’s like salt in a wound. I would love for this format war to be called by someone official so that I can stop reading about it and hoping that HD DVD drops a nuke on Blu-ray. Engadget has already called it and supposedly Toshiba is on its way. It’s probably a matter of hours before there’s a press release. Then maybe I’ll start searching for a backwards-compatible PS3 on eBay.

[Hi-Def Digest]

Apple has always had a stranglehold on the music industry with their iTunes Store. Their latest target: Hollywood. They upped the ante at this year’s Macworld conference when they introduced movie rentals through the iTunes Store. Users can now rent from a growing collection of movies from all of the major studios on their computers and transfer them to their iPod or iPhone. That alone is pretty cool, but what really makes this a huge deal is Apple’s often overlooked Apple TV and its ability to rent many of those movies in HD. (more…)

Just in case you’ve recently read our Dumbass’s Guide to the HD Format War and made a decision on which format you prefer, you may want to reconsider. Warner Bros., the last studio left releasing movies on both formats, announced that they will exclusively support Blu-ray. Does this mean the end for HD DVD? (more…)

As another year comes to a close it looks like we take another small step toward a pure digital society. It appears 2007 will be the first year Americans spent more on cell phone service than land line service. (more…)

So you’ve read through our Dumbass’s Guide to the HD Format War and you’ve decided to take the leap, huh? Well I commend you, brave soldier. If you’ve got an XBox 360 and you’re looking to get into the HD game without breaking the bank, then Microsoft’s HD DVD Player is the best and quite possibly the cheapest way to do it.
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Editor’s Note: As of February 19th, 2008, the HD DVD format is dead. Blu-ray has won the war. I liked this guide though, so I’m going to leave it up.

There’s a war going on right now, only it’s not the kind that’s fought overseas with guns and tanks (not yet, anyways). Its battles are fought with marketing dollars, on message boards across the internet and on store shelves. It’s the worst kind of war, besides those ones mentioned before with the guns. Those are worse.

It’s a format war, and it’s causing mass confusion and apathy.

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