RealVideo

Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds
$36.00
Very good book on the theory of videogames. Accessible, innovative, thoughtful, and centered on concrete (and popular) examples. He also includes lots of screenshots, which is good.

Juul takes what might be called a "grassroots" approach to game studies, not bringing heavy disciplinary baggage to colonize the area, but instead trying to build a formal theory of games from the ground up. He takes his lead primarily from game and culture theorists like Huizinga, Caillois, Crawford and Sutton-Smith rather than from literary theory or media studies. But he really charts his own course and stakes out his own ground in many ways.

He has a strong interest in game rules, which has led some to criticize him for being overly formalistic, but I find this a refreshing and interesting contrast to the more standard "new media" approach to video games.

Noah Company MediaGate MG-M2TVD Digital Media Player HDMI Full 1080P with DTS 2.0 Digital Audio Out (Black)
$84.98
I just received the unit and was very sad that I'm going to have to return it. I tested the fan and the noise is not really that loud at all. Besides, I've lost both of my MG-35 and MG-45 due to heat generated by internal HDD, so the fan is a welcoming addition (I wish they had installed them on those other models). I also got the Antec MX-1 active cooling case for the external HDD.

Like other reviews, this model plays pretty much everything I threw at it with ONE exception. Sets of DVD files (I use DVDFab to backup my DVDs). When I runs the IFO file, it takes me to the DVD menu. However, neither the cursor buttons nor the enter button works. So basically, I can't select anything on the menu (can't play movie, select scene, change settings, etc.). I did get the movie to play by using the play button. However, it decides to play the second section of the movie in French. The other sections of the movie played normally in English. There's no "menu" equvalent button on the remote, so I would have to completely stop the movie and start all over (the resume function works but what's the point). The MG-35 and MG-45 both handled DVD files flawlessly, so I was totally surprised that the same functions are not available in this model. How disappointing. Especially since they finally added support for MKV and H.264 formats. I guess I could convert the DVD files to ISO but that would take me a VERY LONG time to do all of them.