BroMagnon

Absolutely not too soon at all.  The original L4D is a great game, but I GF'd instead of buying, because I was worried about the longevity of a game with only 4 scenarios that each take less than an hour to complete.  I'd definitely pick up the original used, in the $40 range.  Another scenario and a bit more variety would definitely go a long way towards making me drop that $60.  Also, if this is like a semi-sequel or paid expansion/DLC, like a L4D.5 and the original is included in some sort of package... they can count my money right now, son.  I'm going to leave a mark slapping the cash down on the barrelhead.

Just a pure hypothetical here... say L4D was made into a movie.  Since it's a game based on common zombie movie archetypes, it lends itself particularly well to this sort of spitballing.  Who would YOU cast?  Here's my zombie splattin' all-star team...

Bill - Nick Nolte.  If he can skip the DUI's, he's a natural for the gruff, crusty Bill.  If he's otherwise occupied or incarcerated, have to go with my man Ron Perlman
Francis - Francis is a tougher one, since most Hollywood actors are in the mighty mite category, and Francis is an NBA small forward at 6'5".  I'm going to avoid any cheesy wrestlers, even though they fit the body type.  Ray Stevenson of Rome from HBO, and the Punisher of late would be physical enough to pull off a big-ass biker, assuming he can lose the limey accent.
Louis - By far the easiest, I'd go with Omar Epps.  Looks kinda like him, good acting chops, probably tired of House MD... done.
Zoey - I dunno... Kristin Bell?  Why not.

So who are all of your picks?

If you're looking to go beyond fighters (nothing wrong with'em, believe me), my favorite dreamcast game is actually Skies of Arcadia.  I'm not a JRPG fan whatsoever (never played a Phantasy Star, a single FF, or any Square/Enix game ever), but this game is absolutely charming.  Fun fighting system, although it's aged a bit.  It's also the only longer game, or at least one not broken into chunks like a Halo, that I've gone back to play multiple times.  Give it a shot!

Hmmm... ok, I think I was suffering from that problem without even knowing it.  I run my blu-ray, 360, and cable box via HDMI, through and switched by my surround sound system.  I found that most times (not 100%, but enough to change the way I do things), the sound system would only detect stereo sound coming from the 360.  I found that if I set the sound system to cable first, then switched to the 360 after letting it boot up for 10 seconds or so... it played everything in 5.1 without further problems.  Failing that, a hard or soft reset was enough to get things cracking in glorious 5.1 surround sound.  I just assumed it was some bizarre quirk of the 360, or even possibly my tv or sound system, or some combination of all those.

However, with the prompting of this thread, I tried booting up the 360 without setting the receiver to cable first... and it worked fine, 5.1 sound from the get-go.  Problem solved, it would seem.

NIce... 60 gig it is.  Dell.com is selling'em for $250, with kung fu panda and lego indy.  That's what I'm getting.  Dig it!  Thanks for the advice...

Sounds like Pro is the way to go.  I can just buy HDMI cables later, right?  Or does the pro not have that functionality built in?

Well, I'd be buying through dell.com... their Black Friday deals are pretty great... the holiday pack (system + lego indy + kung fu panda) are around $250 for pro, $330 or so for elite.  And after poking around amazon, hdmi cables are cheaper than I thought.  To clarify... I'd have a separate player for blu-rays, and don't think I'll be doing a whole lot of streaming movies, or installing that many games.  More like the occasional download of new content or songs.  But room to expand is obviously always nice... just no frame of reference for how much I'll use.  Thanks for all your help!

OK, planning my Black Friday purchase.  Should I go for the Pro or Elite 360?  To give you a little background... I'm a mid-core gamer.  Since I'm way behind the launch and all that, I plan on using Gamefly to whip through all the cool stuff that's been out since the 360's launch, only buying a few blockbuster-type games (i.e. GOW 2, one of the CoD's, etc.).  I also plan on hookig it up to an HDTV, so the HDMI cable will come in handy.  So please tell me... is the Elite worth ponying up the extra $80-$100 bones?  Discuss amongst yourselves!