One thing that I’ve been meaning to do since setting up my home theater was to try out a few games on it. Now I’m not the biggest game player, but how could any self-respecting geek resist playing Halo on a 106” screen. Come to think about it, the last games I’ve played are: Halo, Quake, Doom (the original).

Here’s what I discovered: Getting games to run on a 16:9 widescreen isn’t as easy as it seems. Most games don’t offer 16:9 options in their UI, and require either command line options (such as Halo), or to muck around with config files.

Here are some great resources I found when trying to get both Halo and StarWars: Battlefront setup for 1280×720:

• AVSForum Home Theater Gaming Forum (the FAQ on game configurations is particularly useful)


• Widescreen Gaming Forum

After some reading, I was able to get Halo up and running, but still cannot get Battlefront setup for widescreen. Anyone have any thoughts?

The other thing I needed to do was pick up a good wireless gamepad. It was actually kinda shocking how difficult it was to find one. I finally ended up with the Thrustmaster Wireless Gamepad from Frys (which was the only wireless pad they had). So far, I’m not too impressed - it keeps drifting to the left. I need to spend some more time next weekend calibrating it.

If I get some time, I’ll post some pictures what Halo looks like. Pretty freakin awesome.