Tag Archives: xbox live

New Xbox 360 Dashboard

I have played with the updated Xbox 360 dashboard for a few weeks, and really am enjoying several of the new features.  The new additions that I like are better support for using an Xbox Live account on multiple Xboxes and improved support for  new video content sources.

Multi-Xbox support

We have two Xboxes in our house.  The second Xbox is upstairs, and has been used mainly as a Windows Media Extender and as a way to watch Netflix and Hulu content.  We haven’t used it to play games because it was too much of a pain to either recover our Gamertags or copy the profile and saved games to a USB thumb stick.

With the new Dashboard update, Microsoft added two features that help with users with multiple Xboxes.

Roaming Profile

Microsoft renamed “recovering” profiles to “downloading” profiles.  With this you can “download” a profile on multiple consoles, with specifying the live.com password.  This allows you to use the same Xbox Live account on multiple consoles (though not at the same time.)  With this functionality, I am able to play a game on the upstairs Xbox while my wife or kids are watching something else on the downstairs TV.

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January 26, 2012 0 Comments Short URL , , , , , , , , , , Electronics, Games

E3 Xbox Announcements

Microsoft announced several things at the opening keynote for the 2011 E3 conference and in a release.  Personally, I am interested in some of the announcements:

  1. Xbox Live Cloud Storage
  2. Integrated search
  3. Live TV features

Xbox Live Cloud Storage

With Xbox Live Cloud Storage, you should be able to keep your profile, and some game saves on the Xbox Live servers.  This should allow you to go to any network connected Xbox, and log into your profile.  This is better than the Gamertag recovery that you have to go through now.  For users that choose to keep their profile online, I wonder what happens if the user tries to use the account when they aren’t online.

Integrated Search

I have mentioned before that it is hard to find a particular piece of content that you are interested in, especially with the  various content provider.  For example, if my kids wants to watch a movie, I currently look on Netflix, then Hulu, then in the Zune Marketplace.  The new integrated search should make this easier.

Live TV

Microsoft is supposed to be providing access to live TV content. I don’t know which content partner they will be working with, but I am more interested in how open they allow this to be.  For example, I want to be able to plug in the following sources into my Xbox
  • UPnP ATSC tuners
  • Windows Media Centers
Microsoft was promoting Kinect control of the Live TV experience.  I hope that they also improve the experience when using an Xbox media remote control.  This would reduce the barrier for switching to the Xbox in our house.
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June 8, 2011 0 Comments Short URL , , , , , , Electronics, Games

Extending Xbox LIVE Family Membership

A while ago, I transitioned to an Xbox Live Family Gold Pack. This allows us to manage our son’s Xbox Live account from a single dashboard, and add Microsoft Points to the Xbox live account that we use on the Xbox in the bedroom.

Amazon had some pretty good deals on Xbox LIVE 12 month membership cards, so I purchased one of these.  But,I was not able to redeem the code.  I expected that I would be able to apply the 12 month Xbox Live membership to extend my family membership, in my case by 3 months, since I have 4 people in the family membership. But I kept getting errors trying to redeem the code.

When I created the family subscription, I was able to add several Xbox Live Gold accounts, and for each Gold account, the subscription length of the family membership was extended by each.  So I figured that I would do the following:

  1. Remove one of the Xbox Live accounts from the family subscription
  2. Redeem the code on that Xbox Live account
  3. Re-add the Xbox Live account to the family account

Unfortunately, this didn’t work.  I was able to complete the first two steps, but when I try to re-add the account, I get an error.  It looks like the account is added to the family, but not that account is not part of the subscription.  So I won’t be able to share Microsoft Points with that that account.

I am hoping that Microsoft starts to sell Xbox Live Gold Family cards (and Amazon sells them for a discount).

Update 5/14/2011: It looks like Microsoft fixed a bug that was preventing this from working. Today I was able to add the account to the Family Subscription, and that extended the subscription by 6 months.

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March 24, 2011 0 Comments Short URL , Gaming

Interesting Kinect features/behaviors

We got a Kinect a few weeks ago, and have really been enjoying it.  There are some interesting features/behavior of the implementation:

  • You can sign into your Xbox Live account with facial recognition, but if you have a PIN on your profile, you will only be logged into your local profile, but not logged in online.
  • While some games let use your avatar while playing, and some will use facial recognition to log into your account, I haven’t seen any game that will correctly choose a show more than one avatar, when two people are playing.
  • You are not able to use voice or hand controls to do everything in the dashboard.  For example:
    • You can’t use voice or use your body to control Netflix playback
    • You can’t open the DVD tray with your voice.
  • You should definitely plan on redoing the KinectID calibration multiple times, to make the facial recognition work well.
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November 21, 2010 0 Comments Short URL , , , Electronics, Games

Xbox 360 "slim"

My wife and kids bought me  a new Xbox 360 “slim” for Father’s Day.  So far, I like the hardware, especially how much quieter it is when compared to my older Xbox 360.

The setup/transfer went pretty easy, especially since the software to transfer data from the old hard drive is included on the new Xbox.  (You do need to purchase the Xbox 360 transfer cable.)  All content was transferred, except for the games that had been installed on the hard drive.  Even though the content was transferred, it was still licensed to my old Xbox.  (The DRM on the Xbox licenses content to the Xbox where the content was purchased, and the Xbox Live account.)

Since I want the content to be playable when my Xbox Live account is not logged in, I needed to transfer the licenses to the new Xbox.  Microsoft has a tool where you can transfer the licenses for your content to a different Xbox.  Unfortunately, after you transfer the licenses, you need to redownload the content.  The download manager on the Xbox only allows 30 items to be added to the queue.  So I re-downloaded the games, but haven’t redownloaded the Rock Band tracks that I had purchased.

I do like the hardware on the new Xbox, for reasons other than how silent it runs.  Since HDMI and toslink optical are on board, I can now use HDMI and digital audio.  (There wasn’t room with the placement of the ports to use both before.)

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June 27, 2010 5 Comments Short URL , , , , , Computer, Hardware

raptr

In this post, I mentioned Twee60.com.  One problem with Twee60.com is that it only does a rudimentary amount of filtering.  (It only filters duplicates.)  For games that change the Xbox Live status often, this will still cause a lot of Tweets to be created.

raptr is a site that does a better job at broadcasting Xbox Live status on Twitter.  Instead of posting a status every n minutes, raptr will post a message, like “paul just started playing %s”, when starting to play a game.  In addition to sending statuses when playing games, it will also send messages when you get achievements.  Raptr also supports gaming systems other than Xbox Live.

Here is my profile on Raptr:

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May 18, 2009 0 Comments Short URL , , , , Computer, Games

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