If you believe that you can rock the hardest in Neversoft's Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, PC), then you may want to participate in the tournament to be hosted by Xbox Live. More details in the full article!

Xbox users who have modded firmwares may want to steer clear of Xbox Live for a little while. It seems Microsoft is once again exercising their banhammer muscles with a good old-fashioned ban wave.

More on the banning after the jump!

According to a forum post at retail site Fatwallet.com, a few Sam's Club warehouses in the US are selling dirt-cheap Microsoft Xbox 360 HD-DVD drives to interested parties at the low price of US$ 72.54, far below Microsoft's suggested retail price.

The external drive that allows the playback of high-definition discs is officially listed at US$199, though Sam's Club's legitimate channel samsclub.com offers a discount that reduces the retail price to US$ 181.42.

The HD-DVD drive was created in conjunction with the impending US release of the Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite package which has HDMI and a 120GB hard drive bundled in.

HD-DVD is one of the two competing formats for the next generation of storage media. It was created by Japanese electronics giant Toshiba and is supported by the Microsoft Corporation along with Hewlett-Packard and Korean firm LG.

Its rival format Blu-ray, created by Sony, is the more high-end of the two, sporting a much bigger storage capacity. Blu-ray currently holds a 70-30 market share advantage over HD-DVD due in large part to the fact that all Sony PlayStation 3 game consoles sold are equipped with a Blu-ray drive. HD-DVD is supposedly the more preferred format, leading the competition in stand-alone player sales. However, users get Blu-ray automatically when they get a PS3, making it hard for Toshiba to cope up.

The Official Xbox forum thread is attracting attention: M3ATPUPPET reported a couple of days ago that his Xbox 360 locks up "semi-frequently" while playing Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. Five pages later, replies to the thread are mixed: some report lockups at different points in the game, others report flawless playing.

They also seem to have different DVD drive setups (which might contribute to the lockup - or maybe not). Other games work fine - including sister Ubisoft title Rainbow Six: Vegas. Multiplayer also seems to be running without a hitch, according to many of the reports. Hopefully Ubisoft is keeping tabs on these reports and are working on a solution.

So far, reading through the thread, they seem to suggest that early/launch 360s, and with Hitachi-LG drives, are more prone to locking up with GRAW 2, if that helps.

We interrupt the game news with hardware "news" (more sales figures, an exec says something quotable, intercorporate politics, and questions about game format).

Parts of the porn industry may have "sided" with HD-DVD, but according to NPD sales figures, Blu-ray is still way ahead. Not that the HD-DVD Xbox 360 add-on isn't moving: the MS hardware sold an impressive 92,000 units in the last two months of 2006! But Sony's Blu-ray has sold 687,000 units in the PS3.

Still, Richard Parsons, CEO of Time Warner (Time Warner supports both HD-DVD and Blu-ray) says the PS3 sales figure doesn't necessarily mean Blu-ray is winning the format war. "Do I think that the game console platform is really going to drive the conversion?" Parsons said, "I don't think so. People get those things [PS3s] to play games, not watch movies."

The real winner will be determined by the sales of HD-DVD and Blu-ray players. Or both could end up as losers with some companies opting to manufacture a compromise. Warner Brothers is fielding Total HD, a disc that can play both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD media. Meanwhile, LG Electronics has its Super Multi Blue player which plays both formats.

What would be interesting would be a hybrid HD-DVD/Blu-ray format. That should end all this brouhaha about which HD-DVD versus Blu-ray, so we can finally stop arguing about disc players and start talking about what matters most: game titles. Right? Right?

Talk about a comeback - LG Electronics is apparently giving their dual-format concept another shot. They've just announced that they'll be releasing details on the player at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

For the guys who can recall, LG had made a much earlier announcement for this dual-format player, which ended up getting scrapped.

Consider this a confirmation of at least one facet to the recent video format  talks that have been closely tailing the next-gen consoles. With that said, we'll wait for word on the other dual-format entries, such as Samsung/Toshiba's player, or NEC's dual-format chip. For now, we'll just have to wait out the next four days before CES begins from January 8 to 11 in Las Vegas. Remember to check out the other console-related treats to be featured while you're there.

Those guys at Xbox-Scene really do get word of new modchips quickly. Strangely enough, they've decided to compile some of the latest modchips released to the public for people to try out - all of which have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Want to mod? Not good with tools? Want versatility? Well that's just great. A modchip roundup is just what you need then. Keep reading, and enjoy the info!

The first modchip in this humble roundup is the Xeno 360 DVD Patchmod. Depending on your drive type, you'll need to solder a different number of wires, so it's definitely not for novices to modchips.

Here are the specs that have been dug up so far:

• Patchmod for XBox360 DVD Drive
• Original firmware stays unchanged
• No flashing or damaging of your firmware
• T/S drives 4 wires
• H/L drives 5 wires
• One chip for both drives
• Supported drives: T/S MS25, T/S MS28, H/L DJ46, H/L DH46, H/L DJ47, H/L DH47, H/L DJ59, H/L DH59
• SS required at offset #FC021E (NME-Style)

Looking for more information? Click on "Full Article" for the roundup!

Computer and electronics companies including LG, Panasonic, NEC, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba are planning to come up with a set of standards for WiHD or WirelessHD. WiHD is a high-definition digital interface - it will let devices communicate with each other to share high-definition audio/video streaming and also to allow high-speed data transmission.

Basically, it's like a WiFi standard, only more robust and manly. WiHD aims for 5 gigabits of data per second - and up to a distance of 30 feet. Transmission will take place at the 60GHz frequency. To compare, WiFi operates at around 2.4GHz to 5-point-something-GHz.

60GHz! That's a high frequency usually only used by the military or in ship-to-ship communications!

The companies plan to have a standard drafted and ready by early 2007. Then they'll put WiHD into all their HDTVs and all their audio video gadgets. So...

• Will the PS3 take advantage of WiHD in the future? Did somebody mention HDTV? Yeah, Sony is one of the companies (that's their old Bravia ad in the YouTube vid; we chose it for this article because we love the music).
• Where's Microsoft and Apple? Will they follow suit, team up, or make their own standards? Like WiFi, will we end up with several standards - will there be a WiHD.a and WiHD.b and other standards?
• The Nintendo Wii shunned HD, right? Will this new development make Perrin Kaplan eat her words?

Losing files sure can be frustrating, and heartbreaking at best. If you're the type to always keep a backup, well and good. But if you're the type who gets deterred from having one because of all the hassling procedures, or for whatever reason there may be, well then, now's the time to shed those old ways and have your own backups.

Over at Xbox 360 hacks, Greg was kind enough to post and share with everyone Redline99's Xbox Backup Creator v2.2. This application allows you to easily create your Xbox and Xbox 360 disc backups.

The features for this version are the following:

Fixed:

    * Some drive/media combinations didn't report Available bytes correctly

Added:

    * Option to Perform the OPC or not, Default = True
    * Option to Perform the Track Reservation or not, Default = True
    * Fix for Invalid Xbox One Security Sector (Kreon pre .81 and Hitachi F900)
    * Support for Maximus-Garyopa Hitachi-LG Xtreme v2.2 Stealth 8in1 (limited)
    * Support for Frog Aspi v0.29.4, http://www.frogaspi.org/index.html
    * Support for TS-H943A Xtreme v4.0 Game Partition Unlock command

Changed:

    * Set Write Speed, Hopefully more compatible
    * New method of monitoring the tray status
    * GetMediaStatus routine, to allow for more waiting after closing a disk
    * Increased the File IO read timeout, this puts more responsibility on the burners buffer-
       underrun tech

Redline99 also says to start using the Frog Aspi v0.29 in ASPI mode. He says if it works for everyone, then he most probably will set that as default next time.

When it comes to patchmods for Xbox 360, Team Underdog owns with its NME-360 v1.0. However, Divineo came up with a new product that looks like their initial edition of the DVD patchmod chips, not to mention it being cheaper at $24 only.

Named Aladdin2 Mod360, this product is available in two drives and both have a low wire count: 4 for Toshiba Samsung drive and 11 for Hitachi-LG. Aside from auto booting original games, this mod automatically boots NME360 type backups and "those that are in dual format (xtreme/NME360)" as well.

Once it detects an original game, Mod360 will disabling patching making it excellent for Xbox Live. Keep in mind though that backups should be in NME360 format and the book-type of the DVD+R DL can be either DVD+R or DVD-ROM. For diagrams of both drives, click on the thumbnails below.