That's funny, I completely missed the first lockup, but I sure didn't miss this one. Actually it didn't initially present itself as a lockup -- it just stopped recording. (Everything showed up as "Partial" in History and didn't show up at all on the recorded list.) I had to watch Heroes on *hulu*, for G-d's sake. Hulu! So humiliating.

Rock Band has a viral achievement too (Riding on Coattails).

I think the setlist looks fine, I just don't think (especially after playing Guitar Hero III) that Neversoft is capable of coming up with intelligent note charts and getting timings right and so forth. Yeah, I'm a Harmonix fanboy, and that's because I love music and I love games, and Harmonix is the company that has the experience, the know-how, and the will to combine the two. I always found it insulting, especially as someone with years and years of musical training, that Activision figured it could take the Guitar Hero name, get a bunch of good songs, and throw a developer with no musical experience at it, and bam, we have a music game. If this were the setlist for a skateboarding game, sure, I'd be all over it.

I'm betting the problem was that in a theater setting like that, the lag was way off from what she was used to. Not that this is an excuse, they should have planned better. But I doubt that it was an issue of her generally sucking at the game.

I'm betting the problem was that in a theater setting like that, the lag was way off from what she was used to. Not that this is an excuse, they should have planned better. But I doubt that it was an issue of her generally sucking at the game.

I asked a Harmonix employee on the Rock Band forums why Rock Band Strats don't work on at least Guitar Hero II (since that does seem to go against all their crowing about controller standards). I got a strange answer:
http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?p=802107#post802107

Basically, "I really can't say anything, but I swear it's not our fault."

Just to reiterate and keep beating this dead horse, the key here is the "bitstream" vs. "PCM" setting. 5.1 "bitstream" IS possible over optical cable and is probably what you've been doing with other surround-sound-outputting devices. 5.1 "PCM" is NOT possible over optical; 2.0 is the upper limit for PCM over optical.

The Guitar Hero controller completely works. It doesn't have the solo fret buttons or the effects switch, but you don't NEED those to play. Although, once you've gotten used to having the solo fret buttons available, it's hard to go back.

How about "I couldn't care less about football, but am planning on stalking Craigslist in the days after the game to take some football fan's HDTV off their hands after they realize they couldn't really afford it"? :)

Grande Communications in Austin, TX. Much better service (cable and especially internet) than the leading provider here, Time Warner.