New Xbox Experience is Live?

I don't like the NXE. Graphically yes it looks nice but the functionality of it kind of sucks. I want my blades back. The new Guide menu sucks too IMO. They still haven't upgraded the MP3 player in the damn thing (no artist, album, scrolling song title if it's too long to be displayed, no time elapse, total time or whatever in the guide menu). I hate how it comes up with the Ads "Channel" at sign in. Oh and the avatars... total rip off of Mii's (like we didn't know that though haha) even down the shitty music during the creations of the blasted things. I think I actually prefer the Mii's cuz I could get one close to what I look like.

Eh maybe it'll grow on me but my initial impressions are "No sir, I don't like it. I don't like it at all."
 
Netflix works good.
you still have to use a PC to put stuff into your Instant Queue. It updates in a couple of seconds, which is pretty cool.
 
well the xvid/divx streaming from a removable device feature is now broken.....go to get the "Optional Media Update" like on the old dash to make it play avi's and such and it says it cannot complete with some error code....hope they get that working like today, we have our entire DVD collection on a external drive hooked to the PC, we stream everything and put the discs away as backups
 
It's nifty for about 5 minutes, but it really didn't add anything...and if anything the extra little blade menus bog everything down. I know you can hide the welcome one, so hopefully I can hide the one with the pointless ad videos, too.
No HDMI 5.1/2.1 fix as was rumored either.
I love the 16x10 support for PC monitor gamers, and the Netflix thing is cool, too. I'm just not sure the update really did anything but make navigation more tedious.
Of note, the Netflix item requires you to login online...but if you have a cell phone or iphone that can reach real websites, it's smart to just bookmark that page and make it easier.
 
I've been reading on another message board, people having issues setting up Netflix, and so on. It looks like it's simply the amount of traffic. Hopefully as the day goes on things will get better. As it is Microsoft is slowly rolling out NXE, and not everybody will get prompted to download it, right when they turn on their systems today.

Also, just a heads-up to everybody here, on this other message board I frequent somebody posted a couple things that might be of interest:

Photo Sharing is a separate app and has to be downloaded.

Once you get your NXE, make sure you stop by Game Marketplace and download the Photo Party application. The direct route is: Game Marketplace >>> Game Add-Ons >>> New Arrivals . . . Photo Party
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Some people were saying that it wasn't there anymore, but then somebody else said:

Just found that if you go to Gold Member Benefits, you can download Photo Party through that route. Which I did.
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Also...

The Community Games channel just went live.

There were only three games (one you could only find inside of Marketplace) on it the other day, now there are 20.

EDIT - On further checking, there are now 31 games in the Community Games section.
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Interestingly, none of the community games, that were up for download earlier this year as trials, are in the list of 31 games... so hopefully they show up later today, or just later on in the week/month, whatever. I think a lot of people really want to get Dishwasher.

and finally:

Premium Themes (the really cool 3D ones made specifically for NXA) are now filtering into Marketplace. So far Halo 3, Castle Crashers, The Last Remnant, Fable 2, Viva Pinata, Forza 2, Halo Wars, Tomb Raider: Underworld, and Gears of War 2 are all representin'. Gears 2 getting three premium themes. Later today, SSF2HDRemix premium theme is also supposed to show up.
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The themes cost money, but hopefully some free ones show up soon, since there's always free themes for the original 360 dashboard.
 
I'm at work and can't get to Photoparty. What is it exactly? How do you get your photos onto the 360? Are these like Flicker or Facebook or can they be from a flash drive or ipod?
 
On Netflix HD: So far, I've only found 3 products with HD - "coincidentally," they're Heroes, The [American] Office and 30 Rock, all NBC shows. They look great and it's nice that you don't have to do any extra selecting. If the content is in HD and a fat enough pipe is detected, the HD just kicks in.

As for the interface overall? I miss the blades for their familiarity, but I like this better at first blush. We'll see if it stands the test of time.

ETA -- My Xvid streaming from the PC worked just fine when I tried it.
 
Domingo said:
I'm at work and can't get to Photoparty. What is it exactly? How do you get your photos onto the 360? Are these like Flicker or Facebook or can they be from a flash drive or ipod?
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I haven't downloaded it yet. I have to wait until I am finished with work. Here's the description from xbox.com:

The New Xbox Experience will also bring a photo sharing feature to Xbox LIVE members called Photo Party. With Photo Party, you and up to seven friends can share digital photos from a camera, disc or USB drive while voice chatting in real-time. You can even rate each others’ photos...
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It sounds like it's just an extension/app while in a party session.
 
The Office is in HD? Cool. I'm adding that to the queue and watching some of it tonight! I never really watched the show before, minus a couple snippits here and there. I have a friend who keeps telling me to NetFlix the seasons, to catch up. I'll try it out on the 360, instead of getting the disks, or streaming from the PC.
 
Babbster said:
On Netflix HD: So far, I've only found 3 products with HD - "coincidentally," they're Heroes, The [American] Office and 30 Rock, all NBC shows. They look great and it's nice that you don't have to do any extra selecting. If the content is in HD and a fat enough pipe is detected, the HD just kicks in.
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so there isn't a separate section for HD? that's a pain in the tush
 
I am pretty impressed so far. It's definitely more streamlined and clean interface.

The marketplace is much nicer to browse now. It's slick and smooth. It doesn't have those odd delays where the system seemed frozen. It does take longer to load some pages, but there's alot more info displayed and only seems to effect it the first time. Probably caches the info on the harddrive?

And people that complain about the avatars.... WTF? Have you even installed the update. I not a fan of avatars myself, but you barely even notice the avatar. I mean where does it show up that bothers you? The Friends tab is the only places I have noticed the avatar.

Installing Gear of War 2 to my harddrive now. Lets see how that works out.
 
Milenko said:
so there isn't a separate section for HD? that's a pain in the tush
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I can see where that might be desirable for "tech heads" but for those who just want the content this method is much, much better.

I'm going to show this to my parents on Thanksgiving and I know that while they might be willing to grab an Xbox 360 for this and the Xbox Live Arcade (my mom loves "casual" games), if the HD content was separate from the rest they'd never look at it despite their 42" 1080p Sony LCD.
 
Bleh, still won't stream .MP4 files larger than 4GB.
 
|Tch0rT| said:
I think I actually prefer the Mii's cuz I could get one close to what I look like.
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That is the biggest thing that is bugging me right now. I was able to setup a Mii that is pretty damn obvious that it is me within a few minutes. I spent about 10 minutes trying to do the same on with my avatar, and nope, its not even close.

The other big thing that annoyed me is why the hell can't I change the color of my clothes? Almost everything there is only made up of 1-2 colors. I should be able to set those colors to anything I want. The whole thing felt way too limited.

On the other hand, running games off the hard drive kicks ass. It is nice not having my 360 be so damn loud and not having the annoying sound of the optical head tracking back and forth is great too.

Everything that I use on it works fine and I haven't encountered any bugs or problems. Right now that is good enough for me.
 
I feel like I should import my Mii just so I can be consistent across my consoles. :D

It's OK. Haven't had much of a chance to play with it as I just installed it this morning while I was getting ready for work. First glance, it reminds me of a glorified Media Center menu. I'm sure it'll be cool once I get used to it and learn where everything is, but it's always a pain in the ass to have to retrain your habits. I'm very happy for the new features, but at least for now I'm quite "meh" on the new look.
 
why is it that when i change the res to 1680x1050 on the xbox i get a black bars on the top and bottom. when this is imy monitors native res
 
For Netflix, the Lost Boys straight to DVD/Blu-Ray sequel was available in HD. It was the only movie in my queue that had an "instant" watch option.
The more I think about the interface, the more I think that simply being able to hide certain things might fix it. There are some menus that I'll never use and there are some things like Netflix that I'd like to be able to move closer to the items I *do* use.
If they ever let us move things around and form a custom menu (a la the Windows start menu), then this new interface might not be so bad.
 
antok86 said:
why is it that when i change the res to 1680x1050 on the xbox i get a black bars on the top and bottom. when this is imy monitors native res
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Games on the 360 are designed to display in either 4:3 or 16:9. The 16:10 is for those that don't want things to stretch. I don't think any games are designed with a 16:10 viewable, so they're letterboxing them.
 
antok86 said:
why is it that when i change the res to 1680x1050 on the xbox i get a black bars on the top and bottom. when this is imy monitors native res
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The output of the 360 is 16:9. 1680x1050 is roughly 16:10

Edit: what Domingo said.
 
so there's no way to see just HD vids to stream from netflix without searching through everything?
 
guitarguy316 said:
so there's no way to see just HD vids to stream from netflix without searching through everything?
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Nope, but I'm sure it won't be more than a week before someone with OCD compiles a list of everything available in HD. :)
 
|Tch0rT| said:
I don't like the NXE. Graphically yes it looks nice but the functionality of it kind of sucks. I want my blades back.
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Really? You like hitting the guide button in a game and waiting 3 full seconds for anything to become usable on it? You like pressing down on the D-pad and waiting a full second before it actually responds? You like NOT being able to jump to literally anything your 360 can do from anything you're already doing?
 
I've found one thing that I don't like at all.

When you are scrolling through content in the left pane, such as downloadable updates for Tiger Woods 2009, it has a MAJOR pause on each item as it loads the right pane with the object info. Before the NXE, it would wait for you to stop scrolling before updating the info pane.

Now, to scroll down say 5 items on the left, you have to wait for it to update each one as it goes along, taking about 3-5 seconds each.

This is not good.
 
they really need to make their hard drive pricing much more aggressive now, or even better allow the drive to be swapped out for a larger unit and then made "legit" by offering a hard drive reprogram service over live that comes with a fee

for instance, allow me to swap out the hard drive (with the understanding that the warranty on the hard drive itself is no longer valid through MS) and then connect to Live and have it make that drive, (whatever size) usable for a fee, like a $50 charge to activate/format a 250Gb drive.....i'd pay $50 to do that if they would offer the service instead of paying the prices they want for their tiny hard drives

or hell, just give us the option to install our game discs to an external HDD, keep the necessity for a disc in the drive to keep things legit, fine, but dont set the price per Gb of your drives WAAAYYY over the market rate for any other hard drive...
 
nobody_here said:
they really need to make their hard drive pricing much more aggressive now, or even better allow the drive to be swapped out for a larger unit and then made "legit" by offering a hard drive reprogram service over live that comes with a fee

for instance, allow me to swap out the hard drive (with the understanding that the warranty on the hard drive itself is no longer valid through MS) and then connect to Live and have it make that drive, (whatever size) usable for a fee, like a $50 charge to activate/format a 250Gb drive.....i'd pay $50 to do that if they would offer the service instead of paying the prices they want for their tiny hard drives

or hell, just give us the option to install our game discs to an external HDD, keep the necessity for a disc in the drive to keep things legit, fine, but dont set the price per Gb of your drives WAAAYYY over the market rate for any other hard drive...
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That sounds like a decent enough idea. That is the one thing I like about the PS3 over the 360 is the HDD options. I have the 20gb and well it is full and I would really like to install the games but at the same time I don't like the cost of the 120gb drive. MS just wants more money of course. If the 120gb was the price of the 60gb I could at lest stomach that, but $150 is just nuts given the price of drives currently.
 
Blauman said:
If the 120gb was the price of the 60gb I could at lest stomach that, but $150 is just nuts given the price of drives currently.
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Well people are saying that some Target stores have the 120GB hard drive marked on clearance, down to like 90 dollars. I'm hoping to get to a Target this weekend, but as of now I haven't been able to confirm such a thing. However, I've seen it from a couple credible sources.

Also, Amazon has the hard drive for 135 dollars. Still more then I want to pay, but certainly cheaper, compared to other retailers.
 
nobody_here said:
they really need to make their hard drive pricing much more aggressive now, or even better allow the drive to be swapped out for a larger unit and then made "legit" by offering a hard drive reprogram service over live that comes with a fee
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Well, customers certainly "need" that, but the opposite is true for Microsoft. They're going to sell a lot of 60 and 120GB drives before the end of the year because people are going to want to cram it with installs -- that's a terrible time for a company to lower prices. Maybe in April or May they'll think about knocking all the prices down a couple notches while introducing a 250GB model.
 
Considering that the installs aren't required and you can kill off the game cache at any time - I'd say 250GB is overkill. Even 120's not really needed. For that matter, most games don't benefit from installs THAT much. For those that have a 20 or 60GBer - you're probably fine. Unless you actively play 4-5 games that all benefit from installs constantly, you can just run 'em off the disk or install only the ones that gain a lot from the install.
 
I've seen the hard drives at Target for $90, saw 6 of them last night at my local one, but didn't pick it up. I just called the wife this morning telling her to run and get one.

Can someone answer a basic question: The description text for items, such as the long descriptions for DLC, etc, is there a way to manually scroll through it? I _LOATHED_ the fact that the original wouldn't let you. As a speed reader, it had an _incredibly_ slow scroll time that you couldn't control, and it would take a full minute to read 3 sentences of text. Please tell me this has been fixed.

FYI, my 20GB has only 7.5GB free. 4.5GB of demos, a few GB of videos, and a lot of software updates, DLC, and Arcade games. The space goes quick.
 
Rurik said:
Can someone answer a basic question: The description text for items, such as the long descriptions for DLC, etc, is there a way to manually scroll through it? I _LOATHED_ the fact that the original wouldn't let you. As a speed reader, it had an _incredibly_ slow scroll time that you couldn't control, and it would take a full minute to read 3 sentences of text. Please tell me this has been fixed.
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This was one of the little things that annoyed me with the original dashboard too, and yes, you can scroll through descriptions yourself, with the NXE!
 
Domingo said:
Considering that the installs aren't required and you can kill off the game cache at any time - I'd say 250GB is overkill. Even 120's not really needed. For that matter, most games don't benefit from installs THAT much. For those that have a 20 or 60GBer - you're probably fine. Unless you actively play 4-5 games that all benefit from installs constantly, you can just run 'em off the disk or install only the ones that gain a lot from the install.
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Or you store alot of media like me ;)
 
I installed GTA IV this morning (I didn't have a 360 until last week after I sold the first one 2 years ago) and while there wasn't a speed increase that I could detect, the noise benefit was huge. Then again, my setup is rather unconventional with the 360 sitting on top of my desktop PC and plugged into my monitor and speakers right here. I suspect that if one has a more standard TV/console on one side of the room and chair/couch/Mountain Dew on the other side, the noise from the DVI-ROM isn't as distracting.

For the record, I have a 120GB drive with about 85GB free after a week of use - the biggest chunks are the Battlestar Galactica miniseries in HD, GTA IV and Sid Meier's Pirates! (you can't stop me from buying Pirates! if it exists on any device I own). Still, I've also got a bunch of XBLA games and I expect to have 2 or 3 boxed titles in the rotation at any given time. 60GB would probably be sufficient, but it's nice having that extra 60GB cushion for the future. :)
 
Unfortunately I am stuck here at work instead of being faithful and taking the day off to pay attention to my gaming habit.

Out of all the games I have, the ones that will benefit from being installed are: Fable 2, Mass Effect, Halo 3, BioShock, Assassin's Creed, The Orange Box, Lego Star Wars, Lego Batman and possibly Rock Band. Most of these will be installed tonight :D
 
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