The Shrine

sign up to be in the New xbox experience early? didn't make the preview waves? Well, turn on your 360 because it's ready to be downloaded. Everyone else just wait until wednesday which is technically tomorrow.

I have to wait. During that time I can ponder which game I'm going to install to the HDD. There's only space for one...

I don't think the loading times are bad enough to warrant that. If I had the space, sure, but the games load relatively quickly. I ain't THAT impatient

I'll be getting that sucker tomorrow. If I can, I'll start the download in the morning before work.

it's really pretty. I'm sad canada doesn't get netflix

bovine wrote:it's really pretty. I'm sad canada doesn't get netflix

That's because no one likes Canada.

Zeus wrote:I don't think the loading times are bad enough to warrant that. If I had the space, sure, but the games load relatively quickly. I ain't THAT impatient

No disc spinning = less strain on the system and no noisy drive.

My newer system doesn't really have that issue. We had Gears 2 on for 14 hours straight a week and a half ago and it wasn't irritating and didn't blow up my system. But for the old ones I can definitely see the benefit

Nobody has an opinion of NXE? Well I guess I'll go first...

Definitely a huge improvement, imo. It's more organized, much more aesthetically pleasing, and easier to find what you want. All the new info they give you about your games is also very fun, as well as the Friends pane. Hell even the menu that pops when you hit the Xbox button during a game has vastly improved-- now instead of the very basics you have access to almost any part of the dashboard. The new avatar I could take or leave, but it was fun to customize.

Netflix IW is pretty damn cool, it is seamless and actually gives you more information than the Website version does. For instance, when you go to watch a series it'll tell you which ones you always watched, that was always a huge problem for me cause I'd watch 1 episode every couple weeks and never remember if I was on episode 12 or 13 and have to go digging through my history. Sure you have to go to the website on a PC to queue up what you want to watch, but it streamlines the Xbox experience and makes the whole thing a hell of a lot less complicated.

I installed Gears2 on my hard drive, but thanks to LOTRO: Moria I haven't had time to try it out yet

I love NXE also. I agree with everything you said. I haven't had any Xbox time other than yesterday morning so I am looking forward to playing around with it.

As soon as school cools down, I'm going to start trial Netflix account to see if it's worth the $8/month for me.

Will you only have access to the Netflix Watch It Now stuff? I already hook my laptop up to the TV for those.

Flip wrote:Will you only have access to the Netflix Watch It Now stuff? I already hook my laptop up to the TV for those.

Yes. It's the same stuff you get through the PC (minus anything owned by Columbia Pictures). It wouldn't be something for you, it sounds like.

When I installed it last night it somehow screwed up my connection to Xbox Live. Now I have to spend time I don't have trying to figure out why. So not a good start for me.

Flip wrote:Will you only have access to the Netflix Watch It Now stuff? I already hook my laptop up to the TV for those.

My DVR is a PC running Windows, so I used to do the same but it was still a pain in the ass. This is so much easier to put together it's ridiculous.

Tessian wrote:

Flip wrote:Will you only have access to the Netflix Watch It Now stuff? I already hook my laptop up to the TV for those.

My DVR is a PC running Windows, so I used to do the same but it was still a pain in the ass. This is so much easier to put together it's ridiculous.

Yeah... but it costs. My current 3 disk netflix sub comes with unlimited watch it now, no way i would pay an extra 7 bucks a month for it to be on my xbox.

Flip wrote:

Tessian wrote:

Flip wrote:Will you only have access to the Netflix Watch It Now stuff? I already hook my laptop up to the TV for those.

My DVR is a PC running Windows, so I used to do the same but it was still a pain in the ass. This is so much easier to put together it's ridiculous.

Yeah... but it costs. My current 3 disk netflix sub comes with unlimited watch it now, no way i would pay an extra 7 bucks a month for it to be on my xbox.

By the $7/month are you referring to the Xbox Live Gold membership? It's really $3/month if you buy a 13 month card. If you already have Netflix, this will work so it's nothing extra on the Netflix side.

Lox wrote:

Flip wrote:

Tessian wrote: My DVR is a PC running Windows, so I used to do the same but it was still a pain in the ass. This is so much easier to put together it's ridiculous.

Yeah... but it costs. My current 3 disk netflix sub comes with unlimited watch it now, no way i would pay an extra 7 bucks a month for it to be on my xbox.

By the $7/month are you referring to the Xbox Live Gold membership? It's really $3/month if you buy a 13 month card. If you already have Netflix, this will work so it's nothing extra on the Netflix side.

$3 is a small price to pay to be given the gift of being able to play with bovine.

psssst, I hear he's dead sexy.

bovine wrote:$3 is a small price to pay to be given the gift of being able to play with bovine.

As if I needed another reason not to pay for Live :-)

my gamerpic got a visist from an invisible giant man......yum...

I installed Fallout. Don't really notice much in the way of decreased loading but the Xbox is quiet.

I still prefer the simplicity of Sony's XMB strictly as a way of accessing media, but NXE (when can we stop calling it this? Now? okay) has made the social interaction end of XBL even better.

I fiddled with it a bit more after resetting my router which I still think was cause by the install...

Honestly, I find very little different other than a re-arranged and far more visual GUI. They just changed the blades to a list and cascaded the options. Functionality is almost exactly the same. It's more for them to be able to push their stuff on you since it's easier to display ads everywhere. I don't dislike it or anything it's just not really an upgrade.

It's basically Vista just not nearly as messed up with re-arranging the GUI.

Lox wrote:

Flip wrote:

Tessian wrote: My DVR is a PC running Windows, so I used to do the same but it was still a pain in the ass. This is so much easier to put together it's ridiculous.

Yeah... but it costs. My current 3 disk netflix sub comes with unlimited watch it now, no way i would pay an extra 7 bucks a month for it to be on my xbox.

By the $7/month are you referring to the Xbox Live Gold membership? It's really $3/month if you buy a 13 month card. If you already have Netflix, this will work so it's nothing extra on the Netflix side.

Ohhh, ok, i thought it was extra. Where did i read it was an extra $7... im an idiot.

No idea man, but it's ALWAYS been advertised as being free to Netflix subscribers and XBL gold members. If it were $7 more a month that' be rather insulting and VERY not worth the price.

I bet we will almost definitely see Netflix raising the prices (or charging separately) for Instant Watching in the next year or two, but for now they're doing a damn good job of just trying to get everyone to try it out and use it. When it starts becoming really popular they'll almost have to charge more in order as I imagine the costs for hosting such a streaming media service can't be cheap.

The first hit's always free!

Black Lotus wrote:I installed Fallout. Don't really notice much in the way of decreased loading but the Xbox is quiet.

*snicker*

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/932/932273p1.html

X-Play last night did a thing on it... they found that it at best saved a few seconds on loading. Even load intensive games like Mass Effect didn't see any performance increase except in loading a saved game.

What they theorized is probably the case-- nobody designed these games to be played on a HDD, and actually up until now they weren't allowed to, so most likely you'll start seeing games out in the future that ARE designed to take advantage of this.

I hate the avatar thing. It's just a direct rip-off of the Mii bullshit. I liked it better with the avatar icons.

Overall, the interface is cool, but it seems to sacrifice functionality for style in some places. For example, the friends screen doesn't really give you a quick glance at who is online right now. For that matter, none of the menus do that with the new format, since it's not really designed for viewing many things to scan through.

We're trying out the Netflix trial, but it seems like their selection is lacking right now. Also, I wish that rewind/FF wouldn't restart the buffer all the time. A good idea, but they need to improve upon it to survive long term.

That friends' screen is bullshit. I can hard tell what the hell is going on there. Just go to the Message option in your personal menu and you get the old school one. But not it actually gives detail on where the person is in the game. Good if you're lookin' for a multi partner