Creative Maze

In other words, how come video games are so much better on PS3 or XBox or Wii, etc.? Why can’t they make equally good games for the computer so that I don’t have to have both a computer and a game system?

Because computers are designed to do a variety of things while a platform is designed for one purpose only. They also are designed to run on your HD tv which has a better resolution than the common computer CRT/monitor. The more lines of information you can get on the screen the crisper, clearer the image…its not just processor or bit size. Even if you made a game with the same 128-bit graphics, without a screen that can handle that much info, or renew the monitor lines, it will still look really bad! Attach a PS3 to an old color tv and you will see the quality drop as well.
Now why do you have to buy seperate games for each platform? The same reason you have to buy seperate programs for Win & Mac…different languages, different ways of reading the info. You can find "emulators" for some platforms which will allow you to play your disked games on your PC, but the quality is low because of the nature of your computer to do so many things at once whether you know of it or not). PC games rely on your computer to keep certain programs for multiple use so disks don’t need to store that data (such as Quicktime, macromedia, etc) – that’s why you can have Win/Mac disks…Platform disks need to carry all that information for EACH game, which takes up so much room they couldn’t put a second game language on there if they wanted to. Some PC games are switching to DVD formats, in some cases it helps resolution but mostly it just keeps you from having to do the "floppy disk shuffle" but still it would not hold enough information to get more than one platform on them.

I have a Sony 40 inch xbr 4 tv. I just want to know if it is normal for the back of the tv to get warm or hot after playing video games or watching an a blue ray movie. Will playing video games shorten the lifespan of the tv? How long would a tv like mine last when all I use it for is video games? Any ideas,concepts or theories?

The only thing playing video games, in regard to just them, does is add hours to your TV. But it adds the equal amount of wear as watching TV would. HDTVs are typically rated to some number of hours (a Sony of that class I would guess 60,000 – 80,000; which is 20-25 years at 8 hours a day 365 days a year).

But if you have the brightness or contrast cranked really high that can add additional wear and tear to your set. So I would make sure to optimize my set to also help reduce some of the wear and tear on it.

Lastly, make sure its well ventilated. You don’t want it right up against a wall and you don’t want any vents/fans it has blocked. Make sure its allowed to breathe and that there’s room for the heat it dissipates to move away from the TV.