Back in my day a video game console was a video game console. Now? They’re all over the place. The latest example: Sony has inked a deal with Major League Baseball to bring live baseball games to a PS3 near you.

No price has been announced for the service. Plain ol’ MLB.tv costs you $100 per year, or $20 per month. HD costs extra. I guess the league has to pay for those fancy camera somehow.

I think in the UK you can watch Sky Sports live on the Xbox 360, and word on the street is that Microsoft is, or has been, trying to convince Disney to send over ESPN programming to Xbox Live.

Not sure I understand the point of this, but if it floats your boat, eh, no harm there.

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On the face of it, today’s story that 2009 was Hollywood’s best ever (so thanks for rewarding creativity, America), raking in some $10 billion, should be good news for a few people. It should be good news for the movie studios, which will now invest that money in yachts, caviar, human growth hormone, and sequels to today’s sequels. It should be good news for theatre owners, who were concerned that people would stop going to the movies as a result of the recession. Not so! (As if they didn’t have a precedent to cite…) It should be good news, in a weird way, to people who pirate movies and bleat that their doing so isn’t harming the industry one bit.

What I’m wondering is, do these figures take inflation into account? Should they? I remember when AC Milan transferred Kaka to Real Madrid last summer Sky Sports, which is UK-based, was all, “This is a world-record transfer fee!” (The fee agreed upon between AC Milan and Real Madrid was 67.2 million euros.) The thing is, Sky Sports converted that currency amount, 67.2 million euros, into pounds sterling, which worked out to 68.5 million pounds. A few years prior, in 2001, however, Zidane went from Juventus to Real Madrid for 78 million euros, which, went at the time was converted to pounds was less than 68.5 million pounds. Basically, between 2001 and 2009 the pound sterling had lost valued compared to the euro, so when you converted the 2009 transfer fee into pounds it looked bigger than it actually was.

Then you have to take into account the relative inflation of both currencies between 2001 and 2009.

Back to my point: is $10 billion in 2009 dollars really anything to get excited about? I mean it obviously is, here and now, but when we’re talking records these things really ought to be clarified. If something cost $10 in 1940, for example, it’d cost $15.07 in 2009. See what I mean?

Oh, who cares. Hollywood made a bunch of money this year. Hooray and so forth. Let’s drink wine.

Time to write my screenplay about a college chemistry professor who bilks the government out of tax revenue by claiming liquor store purchases as “chemicals” for his classroom, and thus a write-off.

Don’t expect every country in Europe to follow France in implementing a “three strikes” anti-piracy laws. A report called Digital Britain, which assess the UK’s preparedness to enter the digital era, will be published next week, and inside are methods that the UK could use to combat Internet piracy. One such method: slowing down the Internet connection of file-sharers so as to prevent them from effectively downloading illegal content. (Though, if my UK acquaintances are telling the truth, broadband in the UK is garbage to begin with. It’d be like telling a slug to slow down.)

Slowing people down is one option, rather than just cutting people off from the Internet altogether, which is something the EU doesn’t support. The Government there, now less a few Blairites, sees Internet access as being as important as something like running water.

Also in the report: a demand that ISPs cooperate when copyright infringement is found. You know, sending letters to customers saying, “Yeah, we found out that you were downloading Premier League games, and now the FA and Sky Sports are breathing down our necks. Knock it off.”

Of course, that’ll open up ISPs to all sorts of nastiness. “If they can catch people downloading episodes of “Lost,” why can’t they spot people who are looking at terrorism sites, teasing Gordon Brown, etc.?”

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Cecil Rhodes once said “to be born English is to win first prize in the lottery of life.” I know this because Ricky Gervais said it at the beginning of “The Rickey Gervais Guide to… The English.” Today, being born a English probably isn’t as great as it once was, but it does mean you’re able to watch Sky Sports’ coverage of the Premier League. And, starting in the fall, people in the UK and the Republic of Ireland—not that a Scot or a Welshman are English, mind you, but I needed a flashy opening—will be able to watch Sky content on their Xbox 360. That’s really, really great.

The deal was just announced, and it will, again, let people in the UK and Ireland watch live Sky content, including Premier League football, on their Xbox 360. All you’d need is an Xbox 360; no set-top box required! (That said, current subscribers may get a discount if they choose to add Xbox 360 service.)

That you’ll even be able to watch Sky with your little avatar friends, à la Xbox Live party mode, ain’t too shabby, either.

As for video quality, Sky says it’ll be “DVD quality,” and that you’ll need at least a 1 megabits/s Internet connection.

I’m trying to think of a U.S. parallel, but the only thing I can think of is ESPN, but if ESPN did things in addition to sports coverage. Imagine being able to watch The Big Game without having to have a Comcast cable TV subscription; you download all your TV from Usenet anyway! All you’d need is a broadband connection—which, sure, that can be from Comcast—and an Xbox 360, and you’d be able to watch sports to your heart’s content.

It’s a pretty big deal, in other words.

Revista de la Liga is the best show on TV.