Posts tagged Xbox 360
Chaos!
May 25th
Lot of things happening right now in my life; Am stuck in the middle of a group transition, with the additional responsibility of arranging a function in my house (Ahhh!) + my pet projects demanding more and more time….Whew, I wonder how the company senior VPs and GMs manage to squeeze in some time for their family amidst their busy schedule!!
I managed to setup a full fledged media center last week, at last! I moved over from TVersity to Vista Media center, using my Xbox360 as the extender. Setting up transcode360 was pretty challenging though…I will post regarding this later. Also, fixed my old computer (a P4), so now I can use this as the download-station (?!) and leave my C2Duo for other important things (hmm…like, movie watching, browsing… 
)
Amidst all this chaos, over the past 3 weeks I managed to watch around 10 East-Asian films too, don’t ask me how!
- JennyJuno (Japanese)
- RPoint (Korean)
- The legend of the seven cutter (Kariseuma talchulgi) (Korean)
- Infernal affairs (Korean)
- Dog bite dog (Gau ngao gau) – Vietnamese/Cantonese/Thai
- Suicide club (Japanese)
- Death note 1 & 2 (Japanese)
- Shaolin soccer (Chinese)
I have the Infernal affairs (2 & 3) and Romantic Warriors DVDs, don’t know when I will watch them.
Finally caught up with the reports of Mtel masters 2007 by updating my Chess blog, today. Starting this Sunday, World Chess Candidates matches are also starting, I hope I get enough time to watch them live (I know, I know, it is too much to ask for!). One thing I haven’t been able to concentrate is my Chessvideos blog, will appreciate if someone can help me out there.
Xbox 360 damages discs – Be very careful!
Apr 17th
If you own a Xbox 360 you surely would have come across the famous “Disc not readable” problem. Whenever it happens, you are forced to take out the disc, clean it, sometimes reboot Xbox 360 to get the disc to play again. I was so scared the first time my Gears of War refused to play, even after repeated cleaning/trying…cleaning/trying ritual. I thought I had lost my Rs.2500 spent on that game. Fortunately, a quick Google search assured me I was not alone and it was not a major problem. But, I stumbled upon another serious problem that can happen if you are not careful – Xbox 360 can damage your discs permanently. This was scary! There are some sound advice on what to do and what not to do with a disc inside Xbox360. Though the problem has been root caused, people are still seeing random scratches. I can only attribute this to Xbox360 loving your discs so much it can’t stop itself from caressing them a bit too harsh
Finally Microsoft has owned up to this and has rolled out a replacement program (Note that MS has its own list of Terms and Conditions). Luckily GoW is covered there 
Check out this video that shows Xbox360 scratching a disc.
Xbox 360 to support Windows Live Messenger
Apr 9th
Spring update to Xbox 360 is going to be rolled out starting May 7th. Some notable features are:
- H.264 video support: Up to 15 Mbps, Baseline, Main, and High (up to level 4.1) Profiles with 2 channel AAC LC and Main Profiles.
- Added MPEG-4 Part 2 video support: Up to 8 Mbps, Simple Profile with 2 channel AAC LC and Main Profiles.
- Show folder hierarchy for video and other content played from all devices.
- The screensaver is disabled when playing photos from any source
I am happy they chose to include the folder hierarchy display and disabling screensaver. Those I am sure people would agree, were sorely missed. Now, I can easily play a movie from my movie collection (named xyz part1.avi, xyz part2.avi…) with out searching for individual files. A single “Play” click on the folder containing all these individual files should do the trick!
Another interesting feature (and the topic of this post) is the “Chat with MSN contacts”. Wow! Now, I can chat with my relatives, who don’t own a Xbox, sitting in the living room, with my parents besides me! This is a killer feature, I’d say. I am not sure if this Xbox update supports video chatting with MSN, but if only they do, man…nothing like it! The above picture is the new accessory Microsoft is planning to release this summer. Kinda bulky looking for a controller, but would make chatting painless. We should be able to use the normal USB keyboard too.
I can now finally leave my wife chatting with my in-laws, to go work on that Wordpress Chess plugin with out any disturbance
Why people hate PS3?
Mar 15th
I stumbled upon this funny video in Youtube, on where Sony went wrong with PS3. Listening to Phil Harrison had me in splits 
My first gaming console!
Feb 24th
I bought my first gaming console, Xbox 360, two months back. Though I am not a big gamer, I always loved to design levels and develop simple games (no Unreal or Doom4 from me!). I bought the Xbox360 from Kempfort (now called Kempkids) in Airport road. I got the premium pack. There was a huge price difference between the core system and the premium system, but I preferred the premium as it comes with lots of accessories, which when put together with the core system’s price exceeded the price I paid for the premium. Not bad, eh? The Xbox 360 market price in US is around $400, which is roughly 18,000/- INR. Why then I was asked to pay another 7 – 8K for a premium system, is still a mystery to me.
The premium system doesn’t ship with any game. I was aware of this, even then I didn’t buy any games. First thing – it is pretty costly again – 2500/- per title is kind of expensive for a game. Next thing is, that day I wanted only to check out the interface and if possible connect my PC to the Xbox 360. So, I was not that keen on buying a game that day itself.
