Although I know better, I’d like to say that we come to these conventions with open minds and the pure absence of cynicism usually reserved for a newborn. Of course, I’ve been to enough of these things and had my heart broken enough to know that I can’t take what they say at face value. Sony, I’m looking at you.

Microsoft had a lot to show at their press briefing today. A lot of it was cool – Rock Band: Beatles seems more interesting than expected, Joy Ride will definitely be more popular than anyone is willing to believe, Left 4 Dead 2 is sure to please, Crackdown 2 has to be awesome – but then they had to go and talk about the new additions to the XBOX out-of-game functionality and that new camera interface (Project Natal).

In order to avoid getting my post deleted by Josh, I’ll preface this by saying he thinks I’m speaking prematurely. In fact, I think he called me a little bitch once, or maybe five times. So, here’s the thing. Microsoft is telling me that I’ll be able to watch video with “no delay”. Specifically, 1080P video, streamed right to my house, with no fucking delay. I won’t throw crazy looking numbers at you to describe the mad bits and bytes they’d need to push to accomplish this in a way that matches the expectations they’re setting. Instead, I’ll just ask you to think for a minute.

Given that you’re all dirty pirates, I know you’re used to staring at a torrent client download an iso. You know how big a DVD movie is? Well, I said I wouldn’t throw numbers at you… just remember that a DVD shoves video down your eye sockets with 480 lines of clarity. You need the oomph of a BluRay (or HD-DVD) to watch 1080P video. That’s a lot more data. A lot more. About five times as much, actually. Now, when was the last time you downloaded a whole DVD iso in two hours. You didn’t, that’s when. Honestly, today’s common bandwidth options don’t make it impossible, just really fucking unlikely. However, there’s no chance in hell you’re getting 1080P video streamed to your house faster than the time it takes to watch the video. This is when Josh comes in and yells at me about compression, but he can shut the hell up. They’re gonna have to compress it to 20% of its original size just to make it the size of a DVD, and then you’ll need a bombass internet connection that never dips for a second. So I’m claiming Microsoft’s “No Disc, No Download, No Delay” slogan is total bullshit.

Don’t even get me started on the Project Natal camera. They had this video (thanks, Joystiq) to show off what it “could” do one day. Also total bullshit. It will be fun. It could even be a significant jump in terms of gaming interface technology, but there’s no way it’ll ever do what they want you to think it can do by watching that video.

Take a look at that disclaimer and you’ll see even they don’t believe it…