kyrre - Slashdot User

What To Do With a Free Xbox 360 Pro? 416

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 07, 2009 @10:32PM from the donate-it-to-me dept.

OzPeter writes "Last week I won an Xbox 360 Pro. However, I am not a gamer, and after looking at the current MS offerings, I am not tempted to become one. But I am in the market for a Media Center PC that I can use for streaming TV shows off the 'net as well as general web browsing and displaying video through the HDMI port. With that in mind, I again looked at MS and saw they seemed to have positioned the Xbox as an adjunct to a separate Windows Media Center PC and not as a stand alone unit (which is not what I want). So, once again, I did some more research into the Xbox homebrew scene and discovered things like Xbox Linux. But after reading that site, it is apparent that MS is trying to beat down the homebrewers, and I am left wondering how much hassle it would be to go down that path. So my question is: how should I re-purpose my Xbox? Is it worthwhile doing the Homebrew/Linux option (and can anyone share any experiences)? Are there other ways of re-purposing the device that I haven't considered? Or should I just keep it boxed up as a Christmas present for a favorite nephew?"

Comment Re:Incremental "New" Machines (Score 1) 326

by kyrre on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @06:32AM (#28345853) Attached to: Ubisoft CEO Says Next Gen Consoles Closer Than We Think

Its is standardized. But some developers choose to do their own thing. Metal Gear Online made a terrible choice with 3 different accounts to play the game. Another one is Mercenaries 2 with non-standard multiplayer ports*. I have not come across anyone else. I think it is a good thing to give the publisher a choice in the matter. But some of them will obviously make stupid choices.

*) You can also blame NAT for this being an issue.

Comment Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score 2, Interesting) 560

by kyrre on Monday June 15, 2009 @04:11AM (#28332847) Attached to: Does Bing Have Google Running Scared?

I agree with you. 99 times out of 100 when you enter a company's name, you get several hundred hits for web sites selling the company's product, but you won't find the link to the company you are looking for itself.

Care to come up with some examples? I just tried four company names and every one had the company as the first result. It might not be scientific but very far from 1 times out of 100 then? At this point you need 396 search queries that gives no match for the companys website within the first hundret results.

Google is fine when searching for companies it seems. Asus even had a link to their norwegian site as the first result (I sit in Norway).

Comment Re:Version 1 isn't even out yet (Score 1) 381

by kyrre on Friday May 22, 2009 @07:22AM (#28051425) Attached to: Google Releases Chrome V2.0

ketilkn@minipus:~$ apt-cache search chromium
chromium - fast paced, arcade-style, scrolling space shooter
chromium-data - data pack for chromium
chromium-browser - Chromium browser
chromium-browser-dbg - chromium-browser debug symbols
chromium-testsuite - Chromium test suite
chromium-testsuite-dbg - chromium-testsuite debug symbols
ketilkn@minipus:~$

Instructions for Ubuntu are here: https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa

Windows 7 Streams Media To the Xbox 360 and PS3 Seamlessly 121

Posted by Soulskill on Monday April 27, 2009 @03:44AM from the let's-see-this-on-the-big-screen dept.

HardcoreWare reports that the release candidate for Windows 7 contains improved video codecs, and does a much better job of streaming media to popular consoles out of the box. "No longer will you have to install special REG files to 'trick' Windows into streaming video to your PS3 or XBOX 360. And no longer will you have to use UPnP media servers like TVersity that transcode video, severely reducing quality and cause unnecessary CPU load on the server."

Comment Re:$0.16/GB is a pretty good price (Score 1) 127

by kyrre on Saturday March 21, 2009 @02:10PM (#27280335) Attached to: Sony Charges Publishers For DLC Bandwidth Usage

There are some ways around it too - game downloads from PSN could contain only skeleton executable files which would download the rest of the data on first start from a publisher's own content servers

MGS Online does have a ingame update thing. It is very annoying. I this might be the reason. Konami is trying to save a buck. (The updater also feature a non working p2p option).

Comment Re:$0.16/GB is a pretty good price (Score 1) 127

by kyrre on Saturday March 21, 2009 @02:05PM (#27280277) Attached to: Sony Charges Publishers For DLC Bandwidth Usage

Sorry about that. My native language is Norwegian and it is spelled 'pr' in every day writing. I do not know why that is. I suppose we the name Per is in conflict or something.

Comment Re:$0.16/GB is a pretty good price (Score 4, Informative) 127

by kyrre on Saturday March 21, 2009 @02:29AM (#27277271) Attached to: Sony Charges Publishers For DLC Bandwidth Usage

Amazon S3 is likely one of the cheaper providers of storage. They charge from 17 cents pr gigabyte of download. In addition they will costs 10 cents pr gigabyte. They also charge pr request.

Comment Re:The XBOX 360 is Just as Expensive as the PS3 (Score 1) 232

by kyrre on Thursday March 19, 2009 @09:48AM (#27254889) Attached to: Game Publishers Pressuring Sony For PS3 Price Cut

The restriction on the Playstation Store is that you can download purchased stuff to 5 different consoles*. These consoles may belong to you or anyone else. No password is required to use these things later. You can download to one particular console an unlimited number of times. Why are you making things up?

*Exception: Singstar songs. Grand Turismo 5:Prologe

Comment Re:Cuts are to Trim the Fat (Score 2, Insightful) 506

by kyrre on Monday January 05, 2009 @12:01PM (#26330593) Attached to: Microsoft Rumored To Lay Off Thousands Worldwide

You forgot hardware testing. Those guys have not seen any action for years.

Comment Re:The most powerful... (Score 1) 65

by kyrre on Saturday December 20, 2008 @07:47AM (#26183019) Attached to: Mechanical AI Made In <em>LittleBigPlanet</em>

Yeah. Except for a unknown game called Unreal 3. The Playstation 3 version support mods.

Submission + - DirectX10 drops Hardware Acceleration for Audio.

Submitted by

shrewd

on Sunday February 11, 2007 @06:42AM

shrewd writes: ""Imagine your surprise when you fire up one of your favourite games in Vista — say World of Warcraft or Prey — only to find your fancy EAX-endowed soundcard and 5.1 surround speakers are dribbling out flat, unenhanced stereo sound. Then, in a vain attempt to spruce up the audio by enabling EAX, you get a nice taut error message saying EAX is not detected on your hardware. What's going on? Welcome to the world of Vista audio. And a brave new world it is.""

Submission + - Ex-Box: The Death of Microsoft's Xbox

Submitted by

Tyler Treat

on Sunday February 11, 2007 @12:03AM

Tyler Treat writes: "I think it's safe to say that the Xbox has officially passed away (it's no longer being manufactured). It had a decent run, and gave Sony's PlayStation 2 a run for its money. However, instead of letting it fade away into the grave of lost consoles, let's look back at the good times. (Full Story | Digg)"

Slashdot Top Deals