Xbox Live Fall Update Drops Tomorrow

Game|Life has a rundown on the Fall Update for Xbox Live. In addition to the Friend of a Friend feature we discussed last week, you'll also be seeing the first of the Xbox Originals download titles, a few Arcade games will be a bit lower cost, and a new 'family timer' option will let parents put caps on service use time. "You'll also be able to expand your bio, providing more detailed information about yourself to the Xbox Live community ... apparently I wasn't the only one going blind trying to watch those itty-bitty move previews, because now you'll be able to see them full-screen. The update also comes with "enhanced video codec support," which means that your DivX and Xvid files will play on your 360." Remember, if you don't want everyone seeing the folks on your Friends List you need to change your settings now. Plus, everybody should snag Psychonauts; make Tim Schafer a happy man for Christmas.

Compatible Media Streamers

Just a heads up for some poeple who intend to use the Xvid support but want to stream. The 360 requires a UPnP server to do it, they prefer you use Windows Media Center or whichever version of Vista does that. However, there are several other alternatives. The one I was able to get work best on FreeBSD (actually, the only one to work on FreeBSD) was ushare [geexbox.org]. There are several other options for linux, as well as windows and OSX.

Re:Compatible Media Streamers

TVersity (for windows boxes) is quite nice too. I've tried a couple under Ubuntu and Suse, and all are better than the crippled Windows Media Connect software and Media Player 11. Tversity is the best I've seen though, wish they had a Linux version.

Re:Compatible Media Streamers

I'm not really sure what you're complaining about here. The 360 will stream from any compatible upnp server. Tversity isn't a "hack", just a upnp server. I can stream videos from my desktop (or my server) just fine...no laptop required.

And as for your "There's no reason why the 360 couldn't act like a normal PC and just directly play media off my desktop hard drive" - what protocol would you like them to support? SMB? NFS? Personally I prefer upnp (although it's far from perfect) because it gives you different browsing models (like by Artist, Album etc) rather than just a file hierarchy.

When free60 finds a hole so they can run unsigned code, Microsoft patches the hole. Nooo! We can't have anyone violating our principle of control! Cunts.

Yeah, imagine that, they want people to actually pay for games.

Psychonauts

I started playing Psychonauts this weekend (on the original Xbox) and my God, is that a great game. I used to play Monkey Island and Full Throttle when I was younger so I don't know why I ignored this game for so long. Everything about it is awesome. Great graphics, great voice acting, great story, amazing level design. I put in about 12 hours this weekend and had to struggle to stop last night. I seriously have to recommend this game to just about everyone. Right now it's free on Gametap through the end of the year but you can also find it on Steam and now Xbox Live. I bought a copy from a friend for cheap and it's been worth every penny.

From MS: Vista can't do it, use something else

Found through Xvid / DivX files link [msdn.com], there's this little gem:

12. What size USB storage device does the Xbox 360 support?

The Xbox 360 will support as big of a storage device as you can format using FAT32. Unfortunately when formatting a device in Windows Vista or Windows XP you will be restricted to a maximum FAT32 size of 32GB. You can work around this limitation by using a 3rd party utility or using an alternative Operating System that does not have this restriction. Please note that the maximum size of any single file on FAT32 is 4GB.

Rather amusing. According to this article [microsoft.com], the 32GB limit was decided upon due to FAT32's linear-time algorithms; above this limit, they start taking inordinate amounts of time to just calculate free space.

It was good for a chuckle, though.

Really weird limitation

For some reason I haven't quite got my head around yet, when you come to try out the Divx streaming, be sure to do it via the WMP sharing and the "videos" option of the media tab. Not through Media Centre Extender. According to the docs, it doesn't work there.

Which is a bit strange, but the same goes for .mp4 files already, so there you go. I'm looking forward to not using Transcode360, as it's a bit flaky on my network, and my ageing PC isn't up to doing HD in realtime.

I guess they learned from the Wii

I remember reading this story about a guy finding out his wife was cheating on him using the wii usage thing on it. I guess it would kinda hurt those that struggle with infidelity.

Will it be deployed to all SKUs simultaneously?!

"Drops tomorrow"? Give me a break.

You can tell gaming is now mainstream because it has so much bullshit...I mean, marketing buzzwords surrounding it.

Shit and a WTF

From section 10 of the blog entry

You can stream or play Divx files from everything BUT Windows Media Center. Why the hell would they prevent that? Either a) they continue to not understand what users want or b) they don't want dvix/xvid competing with WMV for people who use Microsoft's preferred setup of WMC and an Xbox extender. Thank god for Transcode 360 but I was looking forward to ditching that and having native support.

ummm is it just me but i DO NOT see Xvid support

hey there

I can not see xvid support on that list.... DivX yes but not XVID

also Windows Media Center (not player) under vista how would you get XVID support ?
(I can install the direct show filters but I think this only supports the media player not Media Center )

strange

john jones

Can we stop with the "Drops?"

Seriously. Is it to difficult to type "to be released?"

If you really want to use an external drive

You can format the drive using HFS (Mac file system) and the 360 will read files from it perfectly. I use a program called Mac Drive http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/ [mediafour.com] to transfer data from my Windows PC to my USB "Mac" hard drive. I then plug the USB HD into my 360 and play media off of there. It's a bit of a pain in the ass but for me it's the best option.

Can I make a request?

That we all institute a moratorium on saying that such-and-such drops, with the intent to mean debuts?

But when...

...is "Talisman" on XBL coming out?

Everything else is secondary for us board game geeks.

Re:List of features to be added / fixed:

Just as a heads up, don't click on that link. It causes your computer to scream "Hey, I'm looking at gay porn," among other things.

Re:List of features to be added / fixed:

Actually, it just brings up a note from TinyURL.

Notice from TinyURL admin: This URL opens a lot of windows with reportedly "distasteful" pictures and has audio saying "Hey everybody, I'm looking at gay porno." It may also crash your browser/computer.

Proceed to this site.

Now if you actually click the link there, you'll get Last Measure, but they've forced an extra step in there just to make trolls like this fail miserably.

This AC speaks the truth.

Re:the new slashdot

Were I to believe you, it would disturb me greatly to know that Steve Ballmer had graduated to throwing around entire tables. I'm glad you're wrong.