That Weasel has been busy; there are several new flavors of the trailer (and one official flavor) at That Weasel Television; these are (for the most part) very low-bandwidth items. (These have been added to the full mirrors list.) Apologies for the delay in the HIGH-bandwidth re-encodes from me; first versions had screwed-up gamma. If you want sub-20mb versions, go visit the Weasel! (Ask him about the Weasel dance while you’re there…)

Jay Weinland, otherwise known as Jay the Younger (in deference to the hard-of-hearing Marty O’Donnell), has put forth a challenge to the fans: can you tell what meter(s) the “outro” music for the trailer is written in? (Check the thread for more details, and as of now, one guess.)

Couple of notes about European Halo play; the big one is in France. Swing by Halo-Game’s site for full details, but here’s the quick rundown: competition is the last weekend in August in Clermont Ferrant (central France). Entrance fee is €20, top prize is €4000 in merchandise. Sign up if you’re gonna be in France during that time. We also got word (on our forum) of a tournament (multi-game, including Halo) in London, on July 5th and 12th. Entrance fee is £3, winner will appear on British television.

Nukedude has converted the WMP9 version of the demo trailer to a 320×216, 20.3 mb DivX-encoded .avi. If you’re tight on bandwidth, you might want to grab this. It’s not nearly as majestic as the original… but it’s light-years ahead of the shakeycam versions floating around. I have no way to get this to mirror sites right now, so be gentle to nukedude’s server! Update: nukedude has added another small pipe for this one, via ftp. Anybody else wants to mirror it, we’re HAPPY to spread the word. 🙂

Target’s current sale of Halo for $37.88 might be the only actual sale of the game… next week’s purported drop to $27.88 might not happen, according to some insider tips I received. If you wish, you can hedge your bets: buy the game now, and if it does drop down another $10, you can take it back to Target and get the difference refunded.

In the insanity that was yesterday, the Friday edition of One One Se7en was overlooked. After WATCHING the flaming ninja material, however, you’re more equipped to appreciate this episode…

Don’t they ever stop? Bungie has put up yet another desktop for you – this time, it’s a pretty straightforward screenshot adaptation, using material from Halo PC. Check it out on the Halo PC Wallpapers page at Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation. Thanks to nukedude for the heads-up. (This was actually announced, along with the Ghost Chase II image we mentioned yesterday… but somehow I missed the reference. Busy, or something. Not sure.)

The mirror list for the E3 Demo Trailer continues to grow… more links were added overnight. We’ll also be beginning to add alternate formats. Any alternate formats added will be created from existing files, so there is absolutely no need to download them if you’ve already got a copy that you can watch; these are for people who couldn’t, for one reason or another, view the originals. None of these alternate formats will be available until 1) we can get them to mirror sites, and 2) current bandwidth demands drop far enough that the mirror sites can handle the load. (Mythica served almost 400 GB yesterday, with BitTorrent clients adding another 200 GB or so to that – and the Red vs Blue guys did double that. Add to those numbers the big boys like IGN, Gamespot, and FilePlanet, and all the smaller mirrors that served thousands more copies… there was a LOT of demand, and it’s not gone yet.) There’s a Sorenson3-encoded version of the QT movie for machines that aren’t good with mpeg-4 encoding… and an MPEG1 version in the works for those with even more limits. Dropping to older technologies means losing the bells and whistles (like the WMP9 version’s Dolby 5.1 sound)… but for those who can’t PLAY the newest stuff, losing bells is better than not having ANYTHING. We’ll probably put together a WMP7 version, as well, at some point.

mnemesis, bored because he saw the demo footage 3 or 4 dozen times during E3, took the opportunity to update the Halo Story Page today. Twice. I mean, come on. Twice?

Geez, almost missed it… SketchFactor, thinking that maybe you didn’t have ENOUGH media to look at today, tossed up another screenshot for the Tru7h and Reconciliation website. You’ll find it on the bottom of the page.

The mirror list for the demo trailer continues to grow. Latest addition is Xbox Community HK – it’s a Hong Kong-based server with excellent connections to Taiwan and mainland China (and the rest of Asia). Hopefully, we’ll have more European links for you soon, as well. (Brian Towne updated the forum on the efficacy of the BitTorrent links; they’re really starting to pick up. Remember, if you use them, leave the window open after your download finishes, and share the wealth! The more people who help out with uploading, the faster it goes for EVERYBODY.)

Catching up… SketchFactor reminded everyone on Bungie.net that next week marks the debut of the Discovery Channel special on the Xbox, which highlights Bungie. Check it out (and see Sketch’s writeup for a link to a teaser trailer)!

You ever have one of those days? Well, I’m having one now. Anyway, after… what, two and a half hours? we’re finally up-to-date with the demo trailer mirror list. (The Bungie.net list is still accurate, but ours breaks out what’s available at each site a little better. Downside is, it’s harder to get to.) More as we know it.

Go here for now. (I can’t even get in to edit this site, so you need to rely on bungie.net.)

CobaltNova points out that registration is in progess for the iGames Summer Season, which starts next week (06/21/03). Visit the iGames news page for more details.

If you were to walk into your local Target store, you’d notice that they’re selling Halo this week for $37.88. If you wait until next week, the price drops down to $27.88! Since I’m sure we all have our own copies of Halo already, this would be a good opportunity to pick up a backup copy… and to increase Bungie’s track record with the number #1 selling Xbox game. 🙂

Another (unannounced) desktop image has been released on bungie.net: E3 2003: Ghost Chase II (bottom of the Halo 2 Wallpapers page). It’s not mentioned on the front page of Tru7h and Reconciliation or the main bungie.net site; we only know about it because gd pointed it out in our forum. Go grab a copy!

The E3 2003 demo trailer will not be available before 10 am PST (5 pm UTC). Nothing will be posted about it until then… and constantly refreshing this page, or any other page at HBO, will do nothing except bog down this server, and remove any chance you have of actually seeing useful information when 10 am finally rolls around. Thanks.

Apologies for the short downtime this evening. No, the box isn’t having troubles – it was actually up and running, just not serving this website. Why? because it was preparing for tomorrow’s massive Halo goodness (that oh-so-luscious direct-feed footage we’ve all been waiting so long for). We’ve been helping Bungie do a little bit of mirror site setup. I figure half an hour of downtime tonight is easily compensated by what you’re gonna have access to tomorrow…

BOLL has added 16 new panoramas to his Halorama collection – you can see them here. These are all multiplayer maps, and they (mostly) include players. There are some pretty cool ones in there! (The Flash interface is still not useable; the last two collection exceeded the maximum number of files it could deal with. BOLL’s working on it.)