Digital Home Thoughts: The Xbox 360 in Videos

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Wednesday, November 23, 2005

The Xbox 360 in Videos

Posted by Jason Dunn in "HARDWARE" @ 05:40 PM


Visualization Selection: I'm not sure how many visualizations there are on the Xbox 360, but you can go through them by pressing left and right on the left control pad. Some of them are jaw-dropping. [View Video - 14.5 MB]

Photo Browsing: In this video, I access photos off a PC across my network via Windows Media Connect. It's workable, but it doesn't show thumbnails of the folders, and only shows fifteen characters of the folder name. I would have preferred to see more of the screen used up, folder image previews, and more space for text. Basically, more elements to help the user find and select the photo folder they want to access. This video also shows the basic functions that you can do with photos: next, previous, rotate, toggle repeat/shuffle, etc. The slideshows have a basic zoom in/zoom out, but it's not nearly as impressive as what the Media Center slideshows can do. This feature-limiting may have been on purpose so as to not cannibalize the functionality of Media Center PCs. It also shows what's missing: no videos. Windows Media Connect allows the Xbox 360 to access photos and music, but not videos off the connected PC. You can only watch videos that are on the Xbox 360 hard drive, so presumably game trailers. I have a sneaking suspicion this feature was left out because it would have generated tremendous complaints when it coughed up an error while trying to play XVID, DIVX, or pretty much anything other than WMV files. [View Video - 32.2 MB]

Media Center Extender Mode: In my home we've been using a gen-1 Xbox with the Media Center Extender add-on for some time, and it's functional, but not overly impressive when compared to the real MCE in my office. Things are very different with the Xbox 360: full special effects, smooth transitions, and an experience that's virtually identical to the "real" MCE interface on a PC. You'll notice that because I have no hard drive for the Xbox 360, it has to download the software in order to connect to the Media Center PC. It has to do this every time you start it up in this mode, so I strongly recommend a hard drive for anyone that plans on using the Xbox 360 in this way. It's nearly impossible to control the TV functions with the Xbox 360 controller, but the good news is that any Media Center Edition remote will work with the Xbox 360. I tested an old remote I had and it worked nicely. [View Video - 28.3 MB]

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