Excuse me while I run around like Kermit the Frog at the end of The Muppets Show (I used to love that show), but the 360 spring update is out today, you can see the full feature list here. I'm quite looking forward to see the improved media interface etc and the active download option is a welcome addition. It'll also be interesting to see if any of my videos on the PC now work with the 360. I'm still unsure about msn messenger (if only it supported voice chat!)
Here's the story on Eurogamer, I'll be downloading this when I get home!
3 comments:
Thats great news. Brilliant timing too! We have just got a Decent widescreen LCD for the bedroom and have moved the 360 there for watching DVD's and TV through the Media Centre. DVD playback quality wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped so hopefully this patch should improve things.
I've been talking about the update with my friend @ MS, this is the email I sent him regarding my thoughts on the upgrade.
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I really like the interface, but last night was some frustrating sh*t. I don't have any of these new formats, I can see all my videos pretty much. The Xbox indexes your video library a lot quicker now and I love seeing folders etc (Soprano's Season 1 etc) HOWEVER I get to see thumbnails on files I can't play for some reason. You select them and it just "hangs" nothing happens. I went through all my vids and most of the stuff I got off Bittorrent doesn't work. Its a really clean interface (bar the new 2 column marketplace one which is more annoying than anything else). I had to switch off the MSN autosign in cause it kept signing me out on the PC when the xbox signed in (which it seemed to do randomly), using MSN on a joypad is crappy. I really need them to release the keypad to make it even worth considering, better still, voice chat. and not just one on one, group voice chat would be great, same way you can be playing a game and speaking cross title, why not extend that so I can talk to 5 or 6 of my friends on different games or even MSN all at once? I did like the way it checked my MSN friends list to see if anyone had gamertags and asked if I wanted to add them to my friends list
I have mixed feelings about the update, there are some things that seem to of worked well (the streamlining of the non Marketplace blades), but it could of been a lot better (greater video support, video picture scaling, better integration of MSN etc)
If MS are smart, they'll embrace xvid and divx soon and give another good reason to invest in a 360. Unless they can ever provide Europe with a real video Marketplace it seems like thats the only way you're really going to push it as a media device as well as gaming.
upgrade went fine, shame about the marketplace which has nothing of interest in it, its a waste of a blade for european users (apart from the game demos)
Ill have to try my appletv stuff and see if it plays on it (h.264 encoded mp4's)
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