Digital Home Thoughts: Microsoft's Xbox 360: A Maturing Multimedia Marvel

"An Xbox 360 has inhabited Chez Dipert for just under a year now, and it's been quite a harmonious affair so far. Admittedly, I don't have the time and attention span (along with, probably, the aptitude) to master the complex titles (and their equally-complex controller button sequences) now available for the console. But both my wife and I have greatly enjoyed the simpler (and cheaper) Live Arcade titles... we're equally enthralled with the console's multimedia capabilities. Lil's enthusiasm for techie tricks, shall we say, is not the match of her mate's. But once I showed her how to fire up Windows Media Connect on her XP Pro-powered laptop and access its stored pictures and music tracks (including Yahoo Music Unlimited subscription content), she's taken to it like a fish in water. Courtesy of the TwonkyMedia addin, I'm also able to access content stored on my Infrant ReadyNAS (neither the ReadyNAS's built-in UPnP capabilities nor those of my Buffalo TeraStation seem to be Xbox 360-cogniscent)."

While the PS3's woes continue, the XBox 360's popularity is only growing. It is not only hot for this holiday season available in all kinds of deals (earlier we had posted that it was for $100 on Amazon), it's multimedia capabilities are also living up to most people's expectations. Microsoft has been able to work out most of the glitches and this article is a perfect example of how someone has used the 360 to make it something that can fulfil all all of their multimedia needs. This is a great article with a ton of links about the various services available that you can use to improve your multimedia experience with the XBox 360.