New Video Blog READY for Viewing

Quick update to point you folks to my 3rd Video Blog. This time it's a surprising look at Xbox 360's "backward compatibility". You'll be surprised at how many titles in my collection didn't make the cut!

Click here to watch it!

My First 24 Hours with My Xbox 360

After handing out the hard earnt and then parting off from the shop with my newly prized 360 my first impression was "damn this beeyach is heavy!" as it broke the plastic bag it came in! After carting it home I got to the task of unpacking it. Gotta say it's the biggest console packaging I've seen since I bought a Mega CD back in the day. I was impressed with the fact that Microsoft have included most items needed to get play underway. Remote, wireless controller, one big mutha of a power pack and plenty of other gizmos. The fact that they include Energizer battery's instead of some hack Taiwan bootleg power cells didn't go unnoticed.

Being able to plug the optic 5.1 straight into the 360 via the AV plug was something of a bonus that was a sore point with me last time round. Xbox was always advertised as a 5.1 unit and to find you needed to outlay a further $60 was a slap in the nether region when all you wanted was out of the box in your face action. But it seems enough of us complained to make M$ get it right this time. So after having all the jacks in place I power up. No more bang bang bang start up screen. A nice simple bing and I'm faced with setting screens. I had to fiddle about with my wireless adapter (DWL-G820) but a simple power cycle sniped that problem in the butt.

So I'm now up and running and connecting to Xbox Live, my favourite single most thing about the whole Xbox eXperience. Getting my profile ported over was a sinch. Rather than the dicky Credit Card verification method I simply needed to use my Windows Live sign in. Cool. Since I use that often I knew the password's etc off by heart. Once I signed in everything fell into place.

I then hooked in my webcam which I purchased as a headset came with it (but not with the 360 itself tsk tsk). Once I plugged that in the dashboard changed ever so slightly. My image was in a watery mess in the background as a nice touch. Well done R & D. Subtle but slick utilisation of the cam. After sorting that I now wanted to get online with Halo 2 (afterall we did refer to the Xbox as "that Halo machine"!). Downloading the maps was gonna be a bother so I remembered I bought the Map Pack DVD and got that installed. Got into my first game and found that the voice with the 360 headset was a little more rough on my end but other users stated I sounded clearer. Strange indeed. I also had probs with the forementioned wireless adapeter. Seems the 360 is a little more greedier with data traffic so I had to stop and re-config to speed the DWL-G820 up in "Turbo G" mode.

Right so that's the Live side sorted out. Lets play Kameo. Yawn. Eject. Maybe I gotta give it time but it seemed like a chore to play this right now. So I leave it for another day. I then hop back in to see what this new console of mine can do. I head to market place. Buy some M points or whatever they're called and buy Bejewelled 2. Yeah I know Streetfighter 2 was there but I'm hooked on this puzzle thing! Played that but didn't earn any gamer points.

So sussed all that out but what about this streaming music thing? So I head to the Windows Media section... follow the prompts and although I don't have Windows Media Centre I still manage to send music from my Wi-Fi to my Hi-Fi thanks to my wireless router network I have in my house. Looks like that Logitech Music Anywhere bluetooth music streamer is out of a job! I couldn't believe how easy it was to get the music from my PC to the 360. The visualiser looks fantastic with the webcam throwing in a surprise or two with some creepy effects when I moved. But the lack of a shuffle or random feature is a bit of a concern unless I have plain missed it.

I also watched some video's streamed to my telly and it all looked good in widescreen. Photo's come up surprisingly clear as well! So overall they score highly for the media aspect of this machine which goes way beyond expectations in music management. Even simply displaying music titles despite not being online was a big surprise to me.

So after some Red vs Blue on Marketplace, getting my first accomplishment points and watching a DVD that wrapped up my first day with the 360. Overall I am keen to see what other surprises Microsoft have in stall for what promises to be a great console for years to come. I'm stoked.

Of course I'll be updating this blog with any new problems or good surprises that come my way so keep an eye out for that!