Xbox 360 Update tomorrow

[Ilya]

http://news.digitaltrends.com/article11640.html

Beginning tomorrow—October 31, 2006—Xbox 360 users will be able to download a free system update which adds significant new features to the company's standalone gaming console. Chief among the added capabilities: support for games and movies at native 1080p resolution, support for Microsoft's forthcoming HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360, and the ability to play stream WMV video from Windows systems running Windows Media Connect or Windows Media Player 11—or from CD, DVD, USB storage device, or connected PC.

The November update also adds numerous enhancements to Xbox Live Arcade (including auto-download of new demos, an improved leaderboard, new categories, and faster listing of games), support for Zune media streaming, wireless headset support and support for amateur games built using Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Express.

The update will be distributed via Microsoft's Xbox Live service and will be free for download to all members (Silver and Gold!) with no hard drive or disc required. Microsoft has posted a list of all 85 enhancements included in the update.

 

[roachxp]

1080p sweeeet

 

[joverstr2]

Does this mean I can now play movies without having to have a windows media center pc?

 

[BobMurdoch]

Auto Download of new demos???

Prey was 1 GB (I've since deleted it).

I'm down to 5 GB. This one has me a little nervous...

 

[ebonovic]

Sweet...

Any idea of that WMV streaming includes WMV-HD ?

 

[hpman247]

Sweet. I'm Hyped Over This.

 

[stone phillips420]

support for games and movies at native 1080p resolution

damn my tvs only do 720p and 1080i
well it sure sounds neat though

 

[hpman247]

Does this mean I can now play movies without having to have a windows media center pc?

Yes I believe it does, and I THANK M$ for adding this feature. This was my main gripe on the 360, that is having Media Center PC to stream video. I am going to LOVE THIS FEATURE.

I only hope that Sony will have the media streaming capabilities on the PS3 that the 360 does, if not, then there will actually be some use for it other than Gears of War and Halo. THIS IS SO SWEET

 

[ebonovic]

Hopefully this will include Media Player 11 running on Windows 2003 system.

 

[hpman247]

What am I reading about 50hz display modes for DVD and HDDVD. What does this mean??

 

[BobMurdoch]

This is huge.... Now you can download stuff off of the web and watch the video feed on the 360.

Gotta test it on some large media files (I'm assuming Quicktime movies won't work, but I'll try it and see....)

 

[Posty-McPOst]

Mine downloaded when I signed on about an hour ago. Took about 3 minutes over my slow broadband. They added graphics to the menu options and of course 1080p (which my set supports over component) but the dashboard doesn't look or feel any different.

 

[dont24]

I use connect360 on my Mac to view photos and listen to muisc on my 360. Wonder if they'll update the app to support movies.

 

[mikley28]

Mine downloaded when I signed on about an hour ago. Took about 3 minutes over my slow broadband. They added graphics to the menu options and of course 1080p (which my set supports over component) but the dashboard doesn't look or feel any different.

I read that 1080p movies from the HDDVD player is currently only through the VGA cable and the games will be in 1080p through component.

 

[hpman247]

None of my WMV files show up for some reason.all my music and pics do, but no WMV. It makes no sense to me. I have them all in my library, and i told WMP 11 to share all video, so this now seems like a useless feature

 

[mikley28]

None of my WMV files show up for some reason.all my music and pics do, but no WMV. It makes no sense to me. I have them all in my library, and i told WMP 11 to share all video, so this now seems like a useless feature

I think it will only 'see' WMVs that were made by Windows Media Maker 2. It doesn't seem to see any other video except wmv AND NEWLY created WMVs at that.

I got it to work by converting some of my movies to WMV using Windows Movie Maker 2 and even comverting the ones that are already wmv to wmv. I dont know if it was because some other software created it or it just cant see old wmv movies.

 

[hpman247]

I created a WMV out of an AVI file that I have for Entourage and it worked great. It looked decent on my 42in Samsung HDTV too which surprised me a bit. I've seen E* channels that look much worse than that. The 25 minute video was about 290 MB.

I am trying WinAVI right now in a conversion for Smallville AVI to WMV to see how that does. I have used WinAVI for a while and the quality of the videos that I have been able to burn to DVD is superb. A regular WMV made in WinMovieMaker looked excellent when I converted to MPEG2 and used Nero to burn DVD-Video. So I'm hoping this will work as this would save me bundles of time over converting to MPEG2 and burning to DVD. Lets hope.

I really need to use this MACBOOK more to type. This Keyboard is incredible

 

[Ramy]

Anyone else notice that the free space on the hard drive went up? Mine went from 5 gig to 7.5 gig after the update.

 

[hpman247]

Anyone else notice that the free space on the hard drive went up? Mine went from 5 gig to 7.5 gig after the update.

Acutally I think mine did too. I had 9.9 GB last night and I download ALOT of stuff today and a few minutes ago it was at 9.8, so maybe they did do somehting. I definietley d/l over 1.5 gigs of stuff last night

 

[joverstr2]

None of my WMV files show up for some reason.all my music and pics do, but no WMV. It makes no sense to me. I have them all in my library, and i told WMP 11 to share all video, so this now seems like a useless feature

Are they in your "My Videos" folder? That's where mine are and all are playing fine.