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

[falzbro]

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.

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

[Jesterboy]

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.

Re:List of features to be added / fixed:

[CSMatt]

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.

Really weird limitation

[iainl]

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.

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

[fotbr]

By default XP and Vista both use NTFS, but they retain the ability to do (some) FAT32 formatting to keep the users happy.

If they dropped FAT32, there'd be bitching and moaning here about how MS is "forcing" users to use something else.

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