360 Spring Update Now Available

A little late, but just as impressive as promised, the Spring Update to Xbox Live is now available for download. The most anticipated feature is the addition of 'background' downloading and download queueing. The update also reorganizes where several oddly placed options were located, and generally smooths the UI experience.

DIVX support would have been nice

[maddskillz]

It's nice to see there will be a bunch of new features added. Most of them do look quite helpful.
I just wish they would support DIVX. I guess this would only encourage copywrite infringement or something.

Re:DIVX support would have been nice

[Tweekster]

Yeah but if they just told the Movie studios to screw off and made a real media center (that plays MY videos) there would be a whole lot less people bothering with modchip and hacking,.

Re:DIVX support would have been nice

[F_Scentura]

They get little to no income from that target market, so it's not worth addressing.

Re:DIVX support would have been nice

[drinkypoo]

Personally I use the SUPER video converter for everything. It comes with all the encoders and will convert just about anything into, well, just about anything.

Re:DIVX support would have been nice

[NekoXP]

It would kind of dilute their marketing for Windows Media.

That, and DivX charges licensing fees for it. Every XBox would be "encumbered" with an extra fee payable to DivX Networks, Inc. - this is how the DivX DVD player industry works. I don't think MS want to pay for an MPEG4 codec when they have a pretty okay MPEG4 codec they can license to themselves for free (including the one specified for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as a mandatory supported codec..)

Re:DIVX support would have been nice

[twistedsymphony]

They could easily get around that by just offering the Divx codec for download through the Xbox Live Marketplace. People who wanted it could buy the codec, people who don't want it don't have to pay the extra fees... everyone is happy (well except the MPAA but their happiness doesn't count)

Re:DIVX support would have been nice

[NekoXP]

DivX could get around it by offering it to Microsoft as a product on Live Marketplace, sure. For a play-only codec (how many would consider encoding on an XBox360?) which is free to every other PC owner on the planet, I dunno if many people would buy it.

That said with a Mac version, decent ATI graphics support (videosoap, pixelshader tricks etc. to improve quality) they have little work to do to do it. Maybe it could be a $5 download and everyone would be happy. I wonder how much development DivX would ACTU

Playing DivX ;-) on a Media Center Extender

[jmcneill]

It's not quite as seamless, but if you're using Media Center, you can install transcode360 [runtime360.com] on your MCE PC and select 'transcode' from the more menu when browsing videos from the device. Works great for me, apart from the few extra remote presses to play the clip.

Re:Playing DivX ;-) on a Media Center Extender

[bigman2003]

I use Transcoder. But, my audio and video get out of sync when I use it. It would be fantastic for a 20 minute clip, but anything longer than that and it's pretty much unwatchable.

And the other problem is that when I STOP the movie, and play again, it will re-sync. But that means I need to fast forward from the very beginning...

Re:Playing DivX ;-) on a Media Center Extender

[maddskillz]

I use transcode360 too, it just would be nice if you could do stuff like fastforward, and if you din't need MCE on your PC

Re:Weird.

[entmike]

All projects have deadlines, and when you have a product due to ship, I say it's better to ensure what does ship has the best possible set of core working features that is possible. I believe that the Dashboard has to use 3% of one CPU Core or less to work properly, so they had to delay this feature until after launch to ensure that they release it with hopefully no bugs in it. I can only imagine something like background downloading could have introduced a myriad of problems. I applaud them on putting i

Re:Weird.

[Saige]

Oh, you can download while you play games. The only time it stops the downloading is when you're playing online - so you'll be downloading the entire time you play Oblivion, but hop over to COD2 for some online action and the downloads will pause to make sure it doesn't negatively impact your play experience.

And background downloading wasn't there at first because some tradeoffs had to be made to get the console out on time.

Not got a box but...

[djsmiley]

Is there any worry of turning your box into a brick when doing this?

I.E. is it firmware based and can people mess it up? I would like to know (just out of curiosity) how they are maanging this...

Re:Not got a box but...

[GundamFan]

I do not beleve it is 100% firmware based but don't quote me. But relax it's Microsoft what's the worst... oh, right, never mind.

Re:Not got a box but...

[Morinaga]

Since the update is loaded to the Bios for lack of a better term. It's available for core systems with no hard drives. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 17508 [gamesindustry.biz]

Re:Not got a box but...

[emmetropia]

I ran through the update this morning, xbox works fine, no brick in my living room. The update was applied really quickly, too. I believe I had to wait about 20-30 seconds, from hitting the power button, until I could start playing again.

Not bricked...

[Hasney]

No bricking here and people over at http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=5 18359 [xbox-scene.com] forums have confirmed games working still on Live. No banning/bricking at the time of this comment.

Re:Not got a box but...

[twistedsymphony]

The whole "Xbox Dashboard" is stored like a bios on one of the motherboard's chips, that way even consoles without a hard drive will still run properly (it also makes it harder to hack). Also IIRC it includes a non-flashable portion containing a recovery bios so if say the power were to go out the console can still recover itself and attempt the update again.

Re:Not got a box but...

[sammaffei]

Well, it made mine a X-Brick 360... I have to send mine for service now.

I downloaded the update at approximately 6:15AM EST. Went through 2 progress bars and then my screen went black (no VGA signal). I let it sit for 2 minutes with no response. Shut the machine off (had to go to work).

Came home today, it failed to go through the familar boot sequence, and called support. After 15 minutes on hold (researching the problem), I was told that I would have to send it in. The representative told me that "ther

Better support for Xbox 360 game disc recognition

[macaulay805]

I wonder if the "Better support for Xbox 360 game disc recognition" update is made to work around the DVD firmware hack. Anyone have any input regarding this yet?

Re:Better support for Xbox 360 game disc recogniti

[entmike]

Several people at MaxConsole are reporting that this has not prevented them from running their backups with the hacked DVD firmware.

Source: http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&newsid=7645 [maxconsole.net]

Re:Better support for Xbox 360 game disc recogniti

[Psychotext]

What might be more interesting is if this update stops the hack being possible in the first place. I doubt that too, but if I was MS, that's what I'd focus on first.

Re:Better support for Xbox 360 game disc recogniti

[entmike]

I am no expert on the subject, but I'd be surprised if the 360 had the mechanism in place to flash the drive at all. I am pretty sure they are aware of the vulnerability, as the new batches of drives from the drive manufacturers now have an epoxy over the flash chip (I believe Hitachi AND Toshiba/Samsung models) which prevent one method of tampering with the drive which became a practice of piggy-backing a modified flash on top of the original. (However the original flash can still be modified by means of

Re:Better support for Xbox 360 game disc recogniti

[qlippoth]

I imagine this has something to do with disc read errors in certain games. I've encountered this problem a couple of times while playing Oblivion when it tries to access character voice dialoge off of the disc.

Re:Scrambling To Counter Sony And Nintendo's Onlin

[AgentDib]

It's easier to support free online play when neither the console nor the games exist.

Re:Scrambling To Counter Sony And Nintendo's Onlin

[RexRhino]

Having played free online gaming on the PC, and having played online gaming where a Gamer Tag is connected to physical address and credit card number - I will gladly pay the $50 a year to be able to block cheaters, racists, spammers, etc. and my leisure. The ability to close people's accounts and have it actually mean something on Xbox Live is worth a lot more than you think.

Re:Scrambling To Counter Sony And Nintendo's Onlin

[twistedsymphony]

Agreed... the $50 is well worth it...

No idea how nintendo's service will pan out but Sony's "Free Service" doesn't actually include online play (don't believe me? GO READ IT). Basically they're offering the same thing MS does with their free Silver level service. Sony's strategy seems to still be "just let the developers handle it". And if previous consoles are any indication it means half the games will have free service on crappy overloaded servers and the other half will charge game specific monthly f

Re:Scrambling To Counter Sony And Nintendo's Onlin

[TerenceRSN]

In general I agree with you about XBox Live. I've got it for my original XBox and I think it's great but let's not get carried away. There are still plenty of racists on XBox Live as well as its fair share of immature people in general. But I'm sure I've never seen any cheating on it - not that I play a whole lot but my brother plays the SOCOM games on PS2 and according to him there's lots of cheating on that system.

The thing that is much better on PCs is dedicated servers. Maybe this is different for s

Re:Scrambling To Counter Sony And Nintendo's Onlin

[Fulg]

But I'm sure I've never seen any cheating on it

Same here (never witnessed any cheating on Live, and it's the reason I gladly pay for the service). This Slashdot post however implies we were just lucky: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/26/ 2035200 [slashdot.org]

Re:Scrambling To Counter Sony And Nintendo's Onlin

[HellPhish]

Don't be so foolish. With Live you pay one flat fee for all the games you wish you play. Don't forget that the PS2 has free online play already. Except you have to pay all the developers and publishers seperate fees to play their specific games. There's the catch.

I'd much rather pay 50 bucks a year rather than 10 bucks per month per game.

Re:Scrambling To Counter Sony And Nintendo's Onlin

[PSXer]

With Live you pay one flat fee for all the games you wish you play.

You mean except for games like PSO and FF XI? It seems to me that with Live, you have to pay a monthly fee for the same types of games that you'd have to pay a monthly fee on PS2. Only difference is that Live has an extra $50/year on top of it.

Re:Wake me up when it's competitive with piracy

[tgd]

Um. I can saturate my FiOS 15mb connection with XBox Live.

Why would I care where the data was coming from? If they've got big enough pipes to give me 1.8mb/sec all the time, I could care less.

Re:Wake me up when it's competitive with piracy

[AbRASiON]

Could care less you say? So you're implying you do care then - interesting.

Re:About fucking time.

[Saige]

You do not need a Media Center PC. All you need is Windows Media Connect, which is a free download. Once you've done that, it's easy to get to music and pictures straight from the 360 dashboard.

The 360 also shipped with support for USB keyboards. I used one when dealing with FFXI Beta installation, and for miscellaneous other things.

As far as the drive goes... remember, it's a very high-speed DVD drive. From my understanding, just about every drive that runs at that speed is that loud. You may not noti

Re:About fucking time.

[NeutronCowboy]

Again - I don't want to download anything extra on my laptop. It's full of "necessary" junk as it is. The Media Connect is, as far as I know, little more than the library of calls that allow XP to act like a Media Center, minus the interface. Why should I download and install Media Connect when all I want is to access my files on the network drive? I know X360 has the TCP/IP stack to do it - it's just that the GUI for the OS is so braindead that there is no interface to access stuff that isn't on the local

Re:About fucking time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you even touched a 360? Or seen one? Did you even read TFA?

"- make me forget that I'm using an MS product. Seriously, there is no need for me to be hogtied to a Media Center PC when the X360 is essentially a Media Center PC."

Windows Media Connect? You can assign NAS mapped drives with it. And I'm not sure what you mean about the make me forget I'm using a MS product... They made it what should they do make the GUI look like OSX? If you want a different look change the skin.

"- make it easy to access

Re:About fucking time.

[NeutronCowboy]

All I need is two buttons to navigate my music.

Xbox button->Media pane->Music->Select music. How does your setup work?

Windows Media Connect?

Again - why should I have to install another little widget on my laptop or PC (which has to be MS, btw) for functionality that is technically already in the X360? Furthermore, if a change in GUI is all it takes to make you forget your using an MS product... I'm assuming that your entire network is already MS centric.

This has been in for a while and they p

Re:About fucking time.

[Osty]

Again - why should I have to install another little widget on my laptop or PC (which has to be MS, btw) for functionality that is technically already in the X360? Furthermore, if a change in GUI is all it takes to make you forget your using an MS product... I'm assuming that your entire network is already MS centric.

You don't. You could certainly copy all of your music to the Xbox 360 hard drive, if you really wanted to. You can also connect mp3 players and external hard drives (FAT32-formatted only)

Re:About fucking time.

[NeutronCowboy]

Media Connect is not a huge app full of bloatware that changes fundamental dlls and registry entries on my laptop? Mmhh. Color me surprised. I didn't expect that from MS. I'll look some more into this.... though it still means that I have to have the laptop on to do the streaming. But at least it's a good stopgap measure.

Re:About fucking time.

[Osty]

I didn't go looking for a Linux-based UPnP media server that can support the Xbox 360 when I posted my previous comment here, though I posited that such software must exist. Today, I accidentally stumbled across the answer: GeeXboX uShare [geexbox.org].

While it's intended for GeeXboX [geexbox.org], it apparently supports the Xbox 360 (not surprisingly, since the Xbox 360 looks just like a "normal" UPnP media device). I haven't tried it so I can't say how well it works, but it closes the gap. There are now media-serving options fo

Re:About fucking time.

[entmike]

As a couple of other posters have noted, you don't need Media Center edition to share music, photos and videos with your 360 ... Windows Media Center edition is needed only to distribute TV feeds, and that's not because Windows Media Connect can't distribute video

To avoid confusion, I want to make sure people know that this is slightly inaccurate. Windows Media Connect CANNOT stream ANY video at this time to your XBOX 360. The quoted statement above makes it sound like you do not need Media Center/Vista.

"...over 125 features added..."

[romrunning]

... and yet none of the Arcade games that were demo'ed at E3 were released, even SF2:HF that other reviewers are saying is fully ported over and working well. Sheesh, give some stuff that I want, and I'll finally redeem my 15000 pts card.

Re:"...over 125 features added..."

[Osty]

Sheesh, give some stuff that I want, and I'll finally redeem my 15000 pts card

You spent $187.50USD on Microsoft Points? Damn. Then again, it would cost you $957.38USD [pixelgamers.com], or 76,590.4 Points, to purchase everything on the Marketplace (as of last month, anyway).

80 Points = $1USD, so 15,000 Points = $187.50USD. I assume you mean either 1,500 Points (purchased through the Marketplace online for $18.75USD) or a 1,600 Point card purchased for $20USD + tax from a brick and mortar store.

Re:"...over 125 features added..."

[Saige]

Soon. Just have a little patience. You'll have plenty more reasons to use those points soon.

BTW, ask those reviewers if they played SF2 online. I bet they didn't. Considering the reports of online play issues for Capcom's Xbox 1 games (I never played any myself), I'm glad they're taking more time to work on the online play portion for the 360.

I'm more looking forward to Lumines Live myself...

I got the update but....

[jzuska]

I got the update, but as of last night I still could not peform the background downloads. It still says my download was cancelled.

Re:I got the update but....

[twistedsymphony]

I got the update, but as of last night...

If you JUST got the update then as of last night you didn't have the update to allow you to do background downloads. It wasn't released until this morning so expecting to be able to use a feature of the update before you got the update is just silly

"Full" USB Keyboard Support?

[damaged]

Does anyone who has downloaded the update know what the "full" USB keyboard support means? Prior to the patch I was able to use the keyboard at any system-level text entry point.

Re:"Full" USB Keyboard Support?

[ajd1474]

it means you can navigate the dashboard with arrow keys, and the escape key works like "back" :)

Re:"Full" USB Keyboard Support?

[damaged]

Just got home and installed it. Looks like the "A", "B", "X", and "Y" keys work as the corresponding buttons, too.

Update process : Xbox hung

[busternuck]

I had trouble updating for a good hour or so : the progress bar would jump up in steps to about 80% before resetting to 0%. Abt 10 secs after that, an error message would pop-up saying either my hard disk is full or there is a connection problem. I tried this many times of course. Each time the error message occurred, I would be automatically signed out. When I tried to sign in again - on 4 occassions the machine simply hung. Display freezes. Pressing the controller gets no response and I had to turn off t

PAL-50 - PAL 60 Bug

[Kiwi KJH]

They still have not fixed the bug when using the VGA cable in a PAL region some games do not support PAL-60. The error message tells you to go change the settinsg in the display section, which is rather amusing as that option does not exist if you are using the VGA cable. The only fix seems to be hooking up an old tv to get the setting to appear change it and reconnect your trusty Plasma screen...Thats all well and good if you actually still own an old tellie...*sigh*