A friend of mine is selling some of his old hardware. Among the phat l00t available were two video capture devices: the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-350 and the WinTV-PVR-USB2. Since both allow for recording from RCA inputs (read: video game consoles), I decided to purchase both.

After I pick up the items and install the WinTV-PVR-350 in my desktop computer, I plan to record videos of rare and import console games, including Puyo Puyo Box for the Playstation, Super Puzzle Fighter II X for the Dreamcast, undub versions of Persona 3 FES and Persona 4 for the Playstation 2, and Tatsunoko v. Capcom for the Wii. When I record the videos, I plan to upload them to my YouTube channel.

I don’t know when I’ll be traveling to pick up the items, but it will likely be around late May or early June. Watch this site for further updates.

Unreal Tournament 3 shipped with a campaign mode that was pretty meh if played alone, but much more fun if played with friends. Unfortunately, configuring one’s router to allow hosting of online co-op campaign games can be frustratingly complex. Epic has provided no official documentation on the subject, so UT3 owners have been left to figure out which ports to forward for themselves.

There are already several great guides with instructions on discovering your computer’s IP address, changing your router’s configuration, and forwarding ports, so I won’t cover that in this article.

You could place your computer in your router’s DMZ, but that opens all ports on the computer to the Internet and presents a serious security risk.

Instead, here’s a list of UDP ports (not TCP) you’ll need to forward to get online co-op campaign play working:

• 6500
• 7777
• 8767
• 9989
• 13000
• 49152-65535

I need to conduct further tests to determine whether all ports listed need to be forwarded to allow for online co-op campaign play, but I have personally tested these settings and they work for me when no other configurations I found during my long search worked.

If you recently purchased a Dell Studio notebook, you may have noticed that games like Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Unreal Tournament 3, and other graphics-intensive games appear overly bright, faded, and washed out on default brightness settings.

DON’T PANIC!

There are steps you can take to alleviate, if not entirely eliminate, poor in-game image quality issues produced by the Studio’s default settings:

1. Turn down in-game brightness settings. Brightness controls differ for each game, but are usually located under an Options or Settings menu.
2. Set your monitor’s brightness to two-thirds power (10 steps up from the lowest brightness settings). Use the Fn+Up and Fn+Down key combinations to adjust your brightness.
3. If your computer features an ATI video card:

• Download the latest drivers for the desktop equivalent of your card directly from the ATI web site. For example, if your notebook features an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650, download the drivers for the ATI Radeon HD 3650.
• Download and run the Mobility Modder tool from DriverHeaven on the downloaded drivers.
• Install the modified drivers.

I hope these steps help alleviate confusion for new Dell Studio owners. Dell provides no documentation on image quality issues, ships Studio notebooks with screens set to full brightness, and hosts outdated drivers for video cards on their support web site.

Thanks to my friends who recommended Mobility Modder.

No thanks to Dell, who last updated their drivers for the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 on Jan. 14, 2009. ATI released version 9.3 of their Catalyst Suite, which includes drivers for many ATI video cards, on March 18, 2009. Upgrading from stock drivers provided by Dell to drivers modified using Mobility Modder made a visibly significant difference in game image quality.