Dashboard update today!

[Lord Helmet]

The fall update is today. Any new features you guys are looking forward to? I'm digging the new video codec support (xvid), and the price drops for some of the "greatest hits" XBLA games.

[StormSurge]

Cheaper Marble Blast Ultra, which I'll be buying based on Lord Helmet's recommendation.

 

The larger profiles could be interesting too.

[moycon]

Looking forward to the new video formats that are now supported. I do some streaming from my PC so hopefully that'll solve some of the issues I have playing things. I was disappointed to see they haven't included a web browser yet.

[Atariboy]

Guess its time to buy Marble Blast, enjoyed the demos on the original XBLA and on the 360 but always thought it was overpriced.

[Lord Helmet]

Heh...I bought it last week before I read about the price drops

[Gabriel]

I don't like the new Marketplace arrangement.

 

Plus, I had intended to download the demo of Culdcept Saga, but I'm prevented from doing so since I'm a mere silver member. With boneheaded moves like that, I wonder how long it will be before they say "Purchase a gold membership to be eligible to purchase Live Arcade games."

[Lord Helmet]

I'm still getting used to the new arrangement.

 

I'm pretty sure that some demos have been available first to gold members only...then a week or so later to everyone else.

[Shannon]

I don't like the new Marketplace arrangement.

 

Plus, I had intended to download the demo of Culdcept Saga, but I'm prevented from doing so since I'm a mere silver member. With boneheaded moves like that, I wonder how long it will be before they say "Purchase a gold membership to be eligible to purchase Live Arcade games."

 

Just wait about a week and it will be available for silver.

 

In some ways I like the new layout, in some ways I don't. I'm glad they finally broke down game sections into categories like (themes, demo's, video's, etc). It can get pretty tedious digging through some stuff.

 

Although not mentioned there is an option to determine what your xbox does on boot (go into dash, run disc, etc).

 

The biggest thing is xvid support! Whooohoo. I don't use it much, but when I do... Now my xbox can take a media retirement (although it does have other uses).

 

Microsoft knows how to do updates! They download quickly, and install quickly. I find PS3 updates to be a pain in the neck.

 

I still wish that they'd make the product description window bigger. It's way to small. Almost all of it is taken up with rating and copyright info.

 

Also the parental option to limit yer kid's play time would have been nice if it included an option to exlude weekends.

Edited December 5, 2007 by Shannon

[BydoEmpire]

I don't like the way they buried all your games in the same menu - I liked having XBLA and Demo games separated. It made it easier to find what I want to play. The dashboard feels zippier, though.

[Lord Helmet]

I don't like the way they buried all your games in the same menu - I liked having XBLA and Demo games separated. It made it easier to find what I want to play. The dashboard feels zippier, though.

 

I agree 100%

 

I am loving the new video codecs though. I'm sticking all of my dvd's on an external drive as we speak. It will be nice to have all of my movies at the touch of a button

[moycon]

I agree 100%

 

I am loving the new video codecs though. I'm sticking all of my dvd's on an external drive as we speak. It will be nice to have all of my movies at the touch of a button

 

How are you going about doing this? Is there a way to rip DVDs like you can CDs to a drive and once there can you play them through the 360?

[Breakpack]

I agree 100%

 

I am loving the new video codecs though. I'm sticking all of my dvd's on an external drive as we speak. It will be nice to have all of my movies at the touch of a button

 

How are you going about doing this? Is there a way to rip DVDs like you can CDs to a drive and once there can you play them through the 360?

 

Sweet grief!I can't believe I'm watching some old shows I burned onto DVD awhile back with my 360!DivX and Xvid INDEED!!!!!

[Lord Helmet]

I agree 100%

 

I am loving the new video codecs though. I'm sticking all of my dvd's on an external drive as we speak. It will be nice to have all of my movies at the touch of a button

 

How are you going about doing this? Is there a way to rip DVDs like you can CDs to a drive and once there can you play them through the 360?

 

Handbrake baby!

 

http://handbrake.m0k.org/

 

Make sure you incode to XVid and AC-3 sound or you won't get 5.1 sound...I started with the Apple TV preset, then changes the filetype and audio settings. You can save them as any supported file type (h.264, mp4, mov, etc) but the only 2 that support dolby 5.1 on the XBox 360 are XVid and WMV (which handbrake can't do).

 

Handbrake works best on a Mac (what I'm doing). If you have to use the windows version, you'll need a program to decrypt the dvd first.

 

I bought a 500gb external usb drive to hold all my movies...My network isn't fast enough to stream them.

Edited December 6, 2007 by Lord Helmet

[Shannon]

Try DVDFab Decrypter for decrypting yer DVD. Boy this makes it tempting to get an external usb drive for movies, etc.

 

Sorry about that got the tag backwards. Fixed.

 

You can also use something called DVD_shrink for taking the info pulled by DVD_decrypter and doing various things with it.

Edited December 7, 2007 by Shannon

[moycon]

Try http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_so..._decrypter.cfm/ for decrypting yer DVD. Boy this makes it tempting to get an external usb drive for movies, etc.

 

I have a couple I snagged off eBay. They seemed very reasonable. I never thought to put my DVDs on them though.

[StormSurge]

Wow, this is news to me too. Thanks for the tip!

[moycon]

Shannon, That link isn't working. Can you submit the URL for the decrypter?

[Shannon]

Try DVDFab Decrypter for decrypting yer DVD. Boy this makes it tempting to get an external usb drive for movies, etc.

 

Sorry about that got the tag backwards. Fixed.

 

You can also use something called DVD_shrink for taking the info pulled by DVD_decrypter and doing various things with it.

Edited December 7, 2007 by Shannon

[moycon]

Hmmmm Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but it's something. I decrypted a DVD of Spider Baby (Just the movie not the menus and extras) using DVDFab Decrypter and then ran the file through Handbrake. I wound up what appeared to be about a little over a Gig MPEG-4 video file, but it wont play in Zune or Media Player and the 360 doesnt even see it. *sigh*

[Lord Helmet]

Hmmmm Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but it's something. I decrypted a DVD of Spider Baby (Just the movie not the menus and extras) using DVDFab Decrypter and then ran the file through Handbrake. I wound up what appeared to be about a little over a Gig MPEG-4 video file, but it wont play in Zune or Media Player and the 360 doesnt even see it. *sigh*

 

When you ran decrypter did you make an iso or just the files Video_ts and Audio_ts?

 

On windows I usually just make an iso, then use dameon tools to mount the iso, then run handbrake with the Apple TV settings...

 

Its a couple of extra steps in windows compared to the mac...

 

 

 

Edit...only SOME of the video codecs can be streamed through media center connect. Are you streaming video or watching it from a disk or usb drive? Check this:

 

http://blogs.msdn.com/xboxteam/archive/200...ayback-faq.aspx

Edited December 7, 2007 by Lord Helmet

[Shannon]

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.

 

ok so what utilities can I use to format an external USB drive at FAT32 and in a size larger than 32gb?

Edited December 8, 2007 by Shannon

[moycon]

Getting closer.

I changed it to an ISO file and now I create a file that is perfectly viewable in Zune and Media Player on my PC but the 360 doesn't see it.

Must have some more adjustments to make.

I did convert a couple DVDs awhile back to play on my Zune and it plays fine through the 360. but it's not the best quality playing on a big screen. Still, my computer crashed awhile back and I lost the software I used to make those files.

[Lord Helmet]

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.

 

ok so what utilities can I use to format an external USB drive at FAT32 and in a size larger than 32gb?

 

OSX will format an external drive of any size to FAT32, which is what I'm doing

 

I know that there are third party disk utilities for windows that don't have the silly 32gb restriction. Maybe something like Partition Magic?

Edited December 8, 2007 by Lord Helmet