Official Xbox 360 Thread

Cheaper than cable. I'm in.

In a bizarre change, it seems like Microsoft unbanned every Xbox 360 that was previously banned for piracy reasons. The source is sketchy but I've been told by more than one person I know that this is fact the case, so it seems legit.

WTF??? I struggle to come up with a reason why Microsoft would do that. Are they that confident in the next security update? Did someone accidentally wipe the ban list? Are they looking to entrap people for the hell of it? Tomatos? It's interesting to me because it's so goddamn weird.

Positive psn PR attack?

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Originally Posted by Dipstick

In a bizarre change, it seems like Microsoft unbanned every Xbox 360 that was previously banned for piracy reasons. The source is sketchy but I've been told by more than one person I know that this is fact the case, so it seems legit.

WTF??? I struggle to come up with a reason why Microsoft would do that. Are they that confident in the next security update? Did someone accidentally wipe the ban list? Are they looking to entrap people for the hell of it? Tomatos? It's interesting to me because it's so goddamn weird.

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yes

the way I figure it: unban all banned consoles, users with modified drive firmwares connect, get new dashboard, and their drives get flashed back to stock firmware

Sounds like they rebanned them anyways

I'm glad to hear about Hulu, my wife is annoyed that we can't access it on the PS3 right now.

I hacked my G-Tablet so it could access Hulu.

I hacked the planet so it could access hulu.

Your only crime was curiosity.

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Originally Posted by bbobb

I hacked the planet so it could access hulu.

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So that's what caused that earthquake.

Major Nelson confirmed Hulu tomorrow. Free week courtesy of Jack Links Butt Jerky for all gold members.

No gold required according to the press release.

Free month for Live Subscribers.

http://www.hulu.com/plus/xbox

So Hulu is Netflix with commercials... how does this business model work again?

Something about TV shows the day after they air instead of when on DVD I think?

Also some full runs of TV shows that aren't on DVD, I believe.

We can watch the episode of parks and rec from last night, tonight, instead of like 3 years from now when Netflix Instant gets it.

Torrents, son.

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Originally Posted by Chux

Cheaper than cable. I'm in.

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Originally Posted by Chux

We can watch the episode of parks and rec from last night, tonight, instead of like 3 years from now when Netflix Instant gets it.

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Um... you know that NBC isn't a cable channel, right?

Sure. It also has Cable Networks though.

Edit: Also in my boony ass island that I live in, there is barely any OTA signal, so in order to get NBC without setting up some tinfoil hat satellite hd antenna bullshit on my roof, I'd need cable.

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Originally Posted by Josh

Torrents, son.

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How well does that torrent work when you're watching it over live with a party?

Basically. Tonight I'm going to start watching fist of the north star with people on live and laughing when mother fuckers heads get exploded.

I don't give a fuck about Hulu on my 360.

Hulu is good for watching missed shows quickly without fucking with torrents, along with having a few complete series for some older shows.

The wife loves it, I never get around to torrenting her stuff in a reasonable amount of time.

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Originally Posted by Chux

How well does that torrent work when you're watching it over live with a party?

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Fuck y'all. That's how.

I really can't think of a single show I give a fuck about nowadays. If I lived by myself I would cancel cable for sure, and I'm not even sure I would bother with Netflix/Hulu etc.

Breaking Bad. Watch it

Nah

I'd consider Netflix to be a suitable TV replacement. I never resubscribed to Cable TV when I moved and that's pretty much why. I can fill in the occasional gaps with torrents.

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Originally Posted by dave is ok

Breaking Bad. Watch it

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not on hulu -_-

My wife insists on having cable and I watch a few shows cause it's there.

Before we were together I hadn't had a tv that got channels in at least 6 years.

Make your wife pay for the waste of money.

Didn't it used to be like 10 or 12 bucks a month for Hulu Plus? Eight bucks seems doable, I can easily scale Netflix back to online only and end up paying the same every month to have both. The only thing I really, really hate is the commercials. If I'm gonna pay for a streaming service, you can shove your Jack Link's and Sprint 4g ads up your ass.

Yeah, it was 10 bucks a month when Plus was in beta. Also, there are less commercials in Plus, although it still pisses me off that I'm paying and they are still there.

I can't imagine ever needing to see a show so desperately I'd go back to watching commercials.

I was at Enterprise the other day, and I had to wait a bit for them to get my car. They had a radio playing in the office that was just blaring commercials what felt like non-stop (but was probably more like ten minutes). I felt accosted.

Commercials are fucking offensive. You really notice it when you've been removed from it for a while. I was watching TV with my dad yesterday, and every 6 minutes commercials showed up to fuck my ear and eye holes. Shit was wack.

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Originally Posted by Compass

I was at Enterprise the other day, and I had to wait a bit for them to get my car. They had a radio playing in the office that was just blaring commercials what felt like non-stop (but was probably more like ten minutes). I felt accosted.

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Commercial breaks on radio are out of control for sure. Luckily there's basically no reason to listen to terrestrial radio in the iPod age.

Got a question for anyone running their 360 through HDMI; do you have an off brand cable or an official Xbox HDMI cable? I cannot get the off brand one that works perfectly on my PS3 to even recognize on the 360. Someone told me I might have to get an official one, which just sounds silly to me. Whats the deal?

No, you definitely don't need to use the official cable. Honestly, it might just be a bad cable. Buy another one, I hear Opaque's the expert on that.

It's busted or stupid crazy old and you're trying to output at a higher bandwidth than it can handle. Odds are better than not it's just crap.

Buy some cheap five dollar cable and tell us if it works.

I thought that HDMI was universal as an input, which is why I didn't have any issue getting the generic one. It works perfect and has never had a problem 12 inches away in the PS3. I don't get it.

Edit: purchased like 1.5 yrs ago from SSJN's store.

I've used two different off-brand cables for the 360 and my primary one is made by Amazon. Did you try resetting the 360 video settings to see if that did anything (hold down Y+right trigger while it powers on)?

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Originally Posted by Pineapple

I thought that HDMI was universal as an input, which is why I didn't have any issue getting the generic one.

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It is, though there are technically different versions to support stuff that wouldn't apply to this situation.

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Originally Posted by MechDeus

though there are technically different versions to support stuff that wouldn't apply to this situation.

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This. Any cable bought in the past 2-3 years should be fine for general 360 use.

Try resetting the AV settings. Then buy a new cable on monoprice for $5

Thanks guys I'll give it a shot.

Tried resetting the settings the way Mech (and 2 Xbox support people) told me, nothing happened any of the 10 or so times I did it...
Bought another cable, works fine on the PS3 again but same no result on 360. They want me to send the system in for repairs. Fucking a.

Check video settings and hope you're not dumb.

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Originally Posted by Pineapple

Tried resetting the settings the way Mech (and 2 Xbox support people) told me, nothing happened any of the 10 or so times I did it...
Bought another cable, works fine on the PS3 again but same no result on 360. They want me to send the system in for repairs. Fucking a.

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Does it work over component?

If so I'd just use that.

Yeah checked that as well, but I've been known to be dumb before. I'm gunna try it out on the new tv I got and if it doesn't work then fuck it I'll just grab some component cables.

So I got a pair of skullcandy headphones/mic for free. I have my shit hooked up as VGA to tv and optical for audio, and I have the rca jacks for the headphones. Sound comes in fine, but I'm not able to get them to play nice with the mic, anybody have any experience with this?

Shouldn't the mic have a separate cord that just goes into the controller?

Yep, and it does. I tried it on my computer and it works fine, I suspect the adapter that it came with to fit in the controller is busted and am making a trip to radio shack.

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Originally Posted by Dipstick

In a bizarre change, it seems like Microsoft unbanned every Xbox 360 that was previously banned for piracy reasons. The source is sketchy but I've been told by more than one person I know that this is fact the case, so it seems legit.

WTF??? I struggle to come up with a reason why Microsoft would do that. Are they that confident in the next security update? Did someone accidentally wipe the ban list? Are they looking to entrap people for the hell of it? Tomatos? It's interesting to me because it's so goddamn weird.

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This has a resolution.

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Originally Posted by Digital Foundry

According to news from Kotaku, the new Xbox 360 firmware upgrade arriving imminently is incompatible with "a very small number" of consoles, and will prevent certain games from running on the console. The good news is that the platform holder will replace these machines with a brand new Xbox 360 S with 250GB hard drive.

It's a remarkable story, with Kotaku inferring that the new XGD3 disc standard - which adds 1GB of useable data to 360 DVDs - may not be compatible with a certain percentage of Xbox 360 DVD drives. However, the truth behind this incompatibility appears to be somewhat more involved. Since the arrival of the beta version of the new dashboard, hackers have been reverse-engineering it and finding a number of surprising additions never seen before in previous upgrades.

Firstly, this new release is the first that will actually see the drive firmware being rewritten by the Xbox 360 itself. Any one using a current hacked DVD drive will find that updating to the new dash instantly kills their ability to run pirate software, with the hacked code completely expunged from the DVD drive. Microsoft has employed a wide range of DVD drives in its machines from launch - the best guess is that not all of them can be flashed directly, necessitating a swapped console.

This new firmware doesn't just open up the additional 1GB of space previously set aside for the outdated, compromised security scheme - it features a completely brand new anti-piracy mechanism. In the past, previous attempts to foil piracy (such as AP 2.5) only worked on certain drives, with the feature disabled if you had older hardware. With the new system, it seems that the anti-piracy measures are so deeply embedded that they cannot simply be skipped in the same way.

We've also heard a number of reports that the new security protocols go beyond simply updating the dash. Multiple developer sources have told us that Microsoft has upped its game here significantly, and is now calling on studios to help get involved in combating Xbox 360 game piracy. According to this information, new APIs are being worked on that programmers can add to their titles which perform additional scans of the DVD during gameplay, not just when the game is booted as is currently the case.

Burned copies of Xbox 360 games are not 100 per cent identical to the originals, so hacked DVD drive firmware masks the differences with on-the-fly patching. Microsoft's hope is that in-game checks will be far harder to isolate and patch, and with control of these features in the developer's hands, pirate copies of games could even be "downgraded" into playable demos - for example, they could become non-functional after a couple of levels' play.

XDG3 is clearly a big deal for Microsoft - as evidenced by the company effectively giving away free Xboxes to ensure compatibility for all its userbase - but whether its new anti-piracy measures will be enough remains to be seen. The firm's last effort - AP2.5 - was dispensed with in a matter of days, and already drive firmware hacker "commodore4eva" is claiming that he has defeated the new countermeasures introduced in the beta dash...

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So this is what started Digital Foundry's investigation.

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Originally Posted by Joystiq

Microsoft has confirmed that some Xbox 360 consoles won't be happy with the upcoming, mandatory firmware update. The console manufacturer will replace consoles that become unable to read retail game discs -- once anti-piracy measures are enabled -- with a new Xbox 360 S with 250 GB hard drive.

"Following a recent update to our system software, we have become aware of an issue that is preventing a very small number of Xbox 360 owners from playing retail game discs," a Microsoft statement provided to Eurogamer reads. "This issue manifests itself a as a unique 'disc unreadable' or 'disc unsupported' error on the screen. We are also able to detect this issue over Xbox Live and are proactively reaching out to customers that may be impacted to replace their console."

The firmware update implements new anti-piracy measures (along with a 1GB bump in disc storage capacity) that apparently don't play nice with certain DVD drives. Given that the Xbox 360 has had several revisions to its guts over the years, this is the reason why only certain models will be affected.

We've contacted Microsoft to find out what North American consumers should do if their console is incompatible with the update. European consumers have been told to go to Microsoft's general support page.

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I hope my 360 is one of those that can't update. It hasn't read discs right for a while and I can use a new one.

I think it's only for some certain older models with Samsung/Hitachi drives or something. Probably the same ones that bypassed the AP2.5 checks because they just couldn't read them.

Same, but my reason is because I'm cheap and still using my launch 20GB drive.

i'd be happy if mine bricked and I got a new console out of it.

Guess I better plug in my old one, and see if I can get a new one out of it. Has the update happened yet?

Nope. It's still in beta.

I think they are rolling it out starting tomorrow, May 19, through the 31.

My 360 is from launch and it still works. It's the Jesus system. I don't want to replace it.

Too bad.

Mine is one of the HDMI consoles, this won't apply to mine anyway, right?

I was thinking about grabbing a new 360 anyway. C'mon crippling update!

Major Nelson says that the changes that could cause errors happened in a previous update.

Basically, if your console hasn't shit the bed due to this issue yet, it's not going to when the new update arrives.

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Originally Posted by Nash

My 360 is from launch and it still works. It's the Jesus system.

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That means it'll RROD and then rise 3 days later in the form of a refurbished console!

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Originally Posted by bVork

Major Nelson says that the changes that could cause errors happened in a previous update.

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Which previous update? I actually do have a 360 that just stopped reading discs one day for no apparent reason next to my desk, but that was about a year or so ago.

Probably the AP2.5 stuff that hit back in the fall? I don't think anyone knows exactly which update they're talking about yet.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ement-xbox-360

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"This issue manifests itself a as a unique 'disc unreadable' or 'disc unsupported' error on the screen. We are also able to detect this issue over Xbox Live and are proactively reaching out to customers that may be impacted to replace their console."

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MS can detect the problem over Live and the email that was sent to customers is an automated one. So if your console has this particular issue they should've sent an email to you, and if you're getting the disc read error messages and haven't gotten an email then you can also call Xbox support to verify.

Quick question: am I remembering correctly, or is the last run of old Elite 360s more reliable than the new ones? I was thinking of buying a new one (I have a 20gb non HDMI model) and found a site selling the black 120 GB Elites with two (worthless) games for $179.99.

Or, I could just wait for the inevitable price drop on the current systems, i'd imagine after E3 the prices will go down a bit. Can't stand glossy black, but the matte black retard pack + hard drive would be doable.

Yeah I still have an old 20 GB non-HDMI model with the fan that sounds like a vacuum cleaner.

Brick me, MS!

They are supposed to be better, but they still suck.
I was elated when Sony redesigned the PS3 and got rid of that glossy finish. You breath on the system and it scratches it.
So of course, Microsoft has to adopt the glossy shit for their redesign.
Idiots.

Yup, hate glossy. My fucking 3ds has never looked new because of fingerprints even though I take excellent care of it. I take pretty good care of my systems too but one slipup and ARGH OCD NERD RAGE!!!

Relax, man.

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Originally Posted by Some Stupid Japanese Name

They are supposed to be better, but they still suck.
I was elated when Sony redesigned the PS3 and got rid of that glossy finish. You breath on the system and it scratches it.
So of course, Microsoft has to adopt the glossy shit for their redesign.
Idiots.

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Originally Posted by GohanX

Yup, hate glossy. My fucking 3ds has never looked new because of fingerprints even though I take excellent care of it. I take pretty good care of my systems too but one slipup and ARGH OCD NERD RAGE!!!

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I love the look of my OG PS3 until I actually have to touch it. It's also a dust magnet (or rather the dust is more visible) because of the finish. I hate the way the slims looks though. They look cheap to me.

Not just to you.

I used to really want a slim PS3, until I actually repaired a few of them and saw what a mess they are internally. If I ever decide to pick up a PS3, it'll be a fatty.

But the ps3 slim is so quiet!

I agree that the new 360's are hideous, but supposedly they are quieter, have built in wireless N, and are smaller which are all plusses to me. The black Elites look 50x better though, but I ended up missing the sale.

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Originally Posted by kedawa

I used to really want a slim PS3, until I actually repaired a few of them and saw what a mess they are internally. If I ever decide to pick up a PS3, it'll be a fatty.

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A mess compared to the original design, or just generally? What did you need to repair in the ones you fixed? I thought the slims were supposed to be much more reliable.

Nothing is GameStop shopper proof.

I scrolled through my friends list to see what people were playing, and I find the attached trifecta of fail.

And, no, I am not talking about my awesome Castlevania theme.

Lemme guess, Korly?

His consistency is to be commended, even if his taste is not.

If you see me playing Halo 3 rest assured, I'm not enjoying it. I'm trying to figure out why people are so nuts about it.

We've all played lousy games. Korly has simply perfected the art.

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Originally Posted by Compass

A mess compared to the original design, or just generally? What did you need to repair in the ones you fixed? I thought the slims were supposed to be much more reliable.

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Lasers mostly, which is a five minute job on the old models. The layout and cable routing is atrocious compared to the original design. In order to remove the optical drive, you have to remove the power supply and a bunch of random cables that are stuck to the drive using fucking stick on paper labels. It's just an ugly mess to work with, especially if you want to test it before reassembly. They do run cooler, but they also have less ventilation, so I'm not sure how much of an improvement they are with overheating issues. I like the matte finish and shape of the slim PS3, but the fats are actually built like $500 game consoles and are much easier to clean and repair. It's kind of moot since you can't buy a new fat ps3, but if I were buying used, I'd avoid the slim.

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

I scrolled through my friends list to see what people were playing, and I find the attached trifecta of fail.

And, no, I am not talking about my awesome Castlevania theme.

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Originally Posted by GohanX

Lemme guess, Korly?

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I love this.

Edit: I still use that Castlevania theme.

First 10,000 gold Live accounts get in the Ms Splosion Man beta: https://connect.microsoft.com/site1241

I still need to beat Splosion Man, though I'm still really looking forward to Ms Splosion Man. Thanks ep!

Registered. Fingers Crossed :)

If you got into the Preview Program you are now the proud owner of a free flaming recon helmet for your avatar.

I didn't get in.

Anyone who joined the May Dash Beta, got a free reward.

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Originally Posted by XBox

THANK YOU!

The latest Xbox LIVE Update has now released to the entire Xbox community World Wide!!!
Check it out

We are now bringing to a close the latest round of the Xbox LIVE Update Program for our Preview audience. Your participation in the program over the last few months has been absolutely critical to releasing this latest update and we appreciate your involvement. Look for future opportunities posted on Major Nelson to join in the next round of the program slated for Fall 2011-We have some exciting updates planned!

As a token of our gratitude, we would like to provide you with an Avatar Award representative of this program. You can claim your reward by logging onto the Connect site, using the left-hand navigation to select "Product Keys"à then select "Request New Product Key"à then select "Get Key".

Use the Xbox LIVE Code displayed to redeem your reward: Halo Reach - Mark V Flaming Avatar Helmet

Go to xbox.com for instructions on how to redeem an Xbox LIVE code:
http://support.xbox.com/en-us/pages/...aid-codes.aspx

DEADLINE: You have until June 10th2011, to retrieve your reward code from the Connect Site. After that we will remove access to the program and you will not be able to redeem the reward.

Thank you again for your support & participation.

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You are so stupid.

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Originally Posted by Chux

If you got into the Preview Program you are now the proud owner of a free flaming recon helmet for your avatar.

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Really? REALLY?!

What? WHAT?

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Originally Posted by Chux

If you got into the Preview Program you are now the proud owner of a free flaming recon helmet for your avatar.

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That sounds pretty flaming.

My OG 360 survived the update.

Boo!

So is this a silent update, or like the OG dash -> NXE style downloadable update? If its the latter, I still haven't updated yet.

On a side note, got my first RROD scare yesterday on an arcade unit with HDMI (Jasper, I believe). Unplugged it for like two minutes and now it works fine. Yay?

You're xbox is living on borrowed time.

I'm ok with that. I'm fairly certain its still under warranty if I were to call up Microsoft and want to send it in.

I hear if you were in the beta you get an avatar award. Confirm or deny?

So what you're saying is that if you got into the beta program you got some kind of item that alters your avatars appearance?