Ok, maybe ’sale’ is a little too strong a word, as there is only one item going cheap, but it’s a goody!

If you pop along to the Xbox Live Marketplace anytime from Midnight on 28th December, you’ll be able to download a copy of the film ‘300′ in HD for a measly 100 points.  Usual price of the HD version is 540 points.

For the official words on it, just hop over to Xbox.com.

That’s it for the time being, more updates from the world of GBS to come shortly.

Whilst taking a saunter through xbox.com, as I sometimes do, I happened upon a banner claiming ‘Xbox All Nighter’ with a picture of Call of Duty 4 as it’s background. Well hello!

Clicking the banner took me to a page proudly claiming that Call of Duty 4 was the chosen title for an ‘All Nighter’.  Ok, so these things aren’t really organised by M$, more the idea is put out and the community is left to decide whether they want to go for it or not.  Being a massive fan of CoD online, I though I’d have a pop.

At least the intention was there, as the Xbox Live service was not.  I can only assume that a ton of people saw the same banner and did the same as me.  I’d load up the game and as soon as I reached the main menu, a notification would pop up telling I’d been signed out of Live!?

Check the router?  It’s fine. Check the wireless bridge running from the 360? No problem. Is my CoD disc ok? Not a mark in sight.

Back to the dashboard, and it’s signs in within a few seconds.  Back to the game, it signs out automatically, so I try to sign in from the main menu. Still nothing.  Yet any other game I try is fine.

Annoying does not quite cover it, but it probably turned out to be a good thing otherwise I would have been on for a fair few hours, and it was already 10.30pm at that point.

Anybody else get the same problem?

I managed to sign off one game tonight - Tomb Raider: Legend - is now complete. In fitting style when I returned to the dashboard the 360 froze. A quick reboot led to you-know-what.. oh yes. Three lovely lights that I hoped I would never see.

My 360 is a launch machine and probably one of the few remaining that hadn’t died. In fact I distinctly remember being number 44 in the line. I watched in sadness as Pauls and Duncans 360’s both fell foul of the ring of death. Only recently another good friends 360 moved onto the electronics junk yard in the sky. Somehow I thought mine was invincible.

So a Christmas and New Year without a 360. The ‘cube can make a return to the living room with party games galore, which in itself is no bad thing. I’ve said to the missus that I’d probably look for a Wii in the new year, that hasn’t been brought forward.

At least I managed to finish Lara and move into the 6k gamerscore level. Typically SWOS is on XBLA this week too. Timing, fantastic timing.

UPDATE : I left it to cool for a while and now it’s running again. Just testing it to see if it goes again.

UPDATE : Nope, definately gone. Ran for a minute and then crashed. Ring of Death is back. Super.

After about two weeks worth of searching and comparing specs and prices, I actually took the plunge and have now ordered my brand new gaming TV.  And the winner is…

*drum roll*

The LG 26LC46!!

In the end it became a very close toss up between this LG and a 32″ in a different range.  Although two things made the decision for me:

1. As much as I would have liked a 32″ screen for my 360, it would have completely dominated the room to ridiculous proportions.  The 360 is set up in a spare bedroom which is kind of our office/gaming room, rather than in the front room.  26″ fits in just nicely.
2. Buying the 26″ meant I didn’t have to use finance or credit cards, just!

So where did I buy it from? Believe it or not, dixons.co.uk!  Although they don’t have any high street stores, they are still an online presence and weirdly they seem be able to beat Comet, Currys and PC World for online prices.  Seeing as they are in the same group, it makes me wonder quite how they agree their pricing structures.  However I don’t care too much, as I managed to get the TV for about £80 to £100 cheaper than anywhere else!

Although this was 4th time lucky to try and get one, as the three TV’s I’d previously found at the cheapest price all went out of stock the day I decided to buy them.  I was beginning to think someone was trying to tell me something, but having spent so long investigating I had to actually get one.

Hopefully the newbie will be here by Friday, although I’m not holding my breath as with it being Christmas the delivery networks will be rammed to capacity. I’ll give the TV the GBS review treatment when it’s arrived and I’ve had a good chance to play around with it.

Oh yeah, this does also mean that the Samsung D900i mobile phone I wanted to get is officially out of the window for the next few months.

Under the orders of my doctor/surgeon I’m not supposed to do any strenuous exercise, such us writing blog posts, and it’s not just down to the lack of concentration or available brain power to do it either. But like any good soldier I’m here to do my duty and in the run up to Christmas I feel I must.

Towards the end of the month I’m sure collectively we’ll post up our thoughts of the year but before then we have Dec. 25th and hopefully lots of happy children (and adults) unwrap their gifts as we all celebrate the real meaning of christmas. (Let us not forget what it’s really all about). Lots of houses will be getting Wii’s and DS’s (good move). A few other houses will get 360’s (excellent) and a few houses (single figures I expect) will unfortunately get a PS3. For that we apologise and promise to teach your parents (or if it is for your parents we’re sorry there is no hope) the error of their ways. (This is my own view, Paul and Duncs may feel differently)

So, anyway, today in a brief (very brief) trip to a local electronics store I managed to pick up a digital hdd freeview recorder for under £80. So far it’s been great, really easy to set up and use. Already queued up a week’s worth of tele. Very nice little box, and very quiet too.

We’re so very clever (Who do you think you’re fooling - Paul) that we now have our own widget for the Mac OSX dashboard under development! It’s still very much in a beta version and isn’t finished so there are a few bugs in it, but as we’re jolly eager to let you lot play with new toys we thought we’d give you all a go of the beta version.

You may ask what it does to enhance your GBS experience, well, to put it simply, it shows you the most recent post on the blog. It also shows you our three Xbox Live Gamercards in all their glory, so you can see when we’re online and what we’re playing.

To download the widget you must use a Mac and run OSX 10.4 or above! To look at the reported bugs use the menu option above. Also as new options are made available we’ll update the page.

Anyhow, download it, put it on your dashboard and marvel in its GBS magic!

Good, Bald, Stupid Widget
Latest version : 0.01
Release date: 6th December, 2007
Download our fantastic widget

I’m not going to comment on this, but rather I’ll let you guys read the article over at gamesindustry.biz, and make your own mind up.

Comment away people!