Jason Dunn
11-24-2005, 01:40 AM
Yesterday I took a series of video clips with my Casio S500 digital camera showing various aspects of the Xbox 360, mostly focused on it's capabilities as a digital media playback device and a Media Center Extender for my MCE 2005 PC. The videos are all 640 x 480, and 30fps, so they're on the large side and will take a bit to download. The should play in Windows Media Player 10 on the PC without any extra codecs. They're also a bit rough around the edges since I didn't have a tripod and didn't edit them, but I think you'll find them interesting because they show the Xbox 360 in a very real-world environment. Please note that this is a Core system running over composite cables, so it's not in high-definition (boo! hiss!).<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/xbox360core.jpg" /><br /><br /><i><b>Initial Setup</b></i>: This is what I saw when I first powered the Xbox on. The setup consisted of selecting a language, a storage device (in my case, none), and that's it. It was very fast and painless to get started. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/xbox360-initial-setup.AVI"><b>[View Video - 14.6 MB]</b></a><br /><br /><b><i>Audio File Access:</i></b> I was impressed at how quickly the Xbox 360 accessed my music (after I did the Windows Media Connect setup), but when I started to scroll down I saw why: it seemed to be downloading only parts of the list, and when you got to the end it would download the next chunk. I don't know if this is because I don't have a hard drive in the unit, but the end result is a faster experience. What I don't like, however, is that you can't scroll up to jump to the end of the list. I was trying to play an artist in the "W" section and it took quite a while to scroll down. They even could have implemented a left/right function to jump to a specific letter. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/xbox360-audio-file-scanning.AVI"><b>[View Video - 6.2 MB]</b></a><!><br /><br /><b><i>Visualization Rotation:</i></b> Visualizations on the Xbox 360 are simply mind-boggling. Even on a high end PC with a great graphics card, I've never seen music visualizations that are so buttery-smooth. In this video I demonstrate that by using the right thumb-stick you can rotate the angle of the visualization for extra cool-factor. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/xbox360-viz-rotation.AVI"><b>[View Video - 24.9 MB]</b></a><br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><b><i>Visualization Selection:</i></b> 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. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/xbox360-viz-selection.AVI"><b>[View Video - 14.5 MB]</b></a><br /><br /><b><i>Photo Browsing:</i></b> 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. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/xbox360-photo-browsing.AVI"><b>[View Video - 32.2 MB]</b></a><br /><br /><b><i>Media Center Extender Mode:</i></b> 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 <i>every time</i> 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. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/xbox360-media-center-extender.AVI"><b>[View Video - 28.3 MB]</b></a><br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><b><i>Profile Overlay in MCE Mode:</i></b> A quick video that shows how the green Xbox button on the controller pulls up the gamer profile while watching TV in MCE mode. Presumably this allows you to go from watching TV to a deathmatch in a few clicks. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/xbox360-tv-overlay.AVI"><b>[View Video - 5.6 MB]</b></a><br /><br /><b><i>Blade Switching Performance:</i></b> The interface of the Xbox 360 is made up of "blades", each one contains specific user-interface elements to interact with the Xbox 360. This video shows the power of the GPU in the Xbox 360 as I flip rapidly through each blade. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/xbox360-blade-speed-switching.AVI"><b>[View Video - 4.6 MB]</b></a><br /><br /><b><i>Xbox 360 Noise Levels:</i></b> After reading early reviews commenting on how noisy the Xbox 360 was, I was quite concerned. Thankfully, it's not as noisy as I had feared, but it is noisier than I thought it was going to be when I first start reading about it. It was common to read reports that the Xbox 360 was water-cooled, and since the power supply is external, that's one less fan. My expectation was that it would be a nearly silent device. That's definitely not the case - I believe there's some water cooling that happens on the CPU, but there are still fans inside for other parts, likely the GPU. So how loud is it? Well, I booted up my original Xbox and compared it to the Xbox 360 and the original Xbox is about 20% louder...with no optical media inserted. When you put in a disc, the Xbox 360 is easily 50% louder than the original Xbox. So this is good news for people who are interested in using it as a Media Center Extender, but bad news for people wanting to use it as a DVD player. Most games are fairly noisy, so it's likely less of an issue when you're playing a game. The video demonstrates the Xbox 360 in idle mode and what happens with a disc is inserted. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/xbox360-noise-level-with-optical-disc.AVI"><b>[View Video - 12.9 MB]</b></a><br /><br /><b><i>Xbox 360 Browsing External Media:</i></b> One of the features that the Xbox 360 has over the original Xbox is its ability to browser external media connected to the USB port on the back. In this video I connect a 1 GB USB Flashdrive and browse the contents. The USB port is very poorly positioned on the back (<i>UPDATE: I've since discovered the two on the front</i>), and it's surprisingly frustrating to get a USB device connected to it. I had to carefully line up the flashdrive before it would insert properly. Once in, it was easy to access and flip through photos. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/xbox360-browsing-flashdrive.AVI"><b>[View Video - 20.9 MB]</b></a><br /><br /><i>Jason Dunn owns and operates <a href="http://www.thoughtsmedia.com">Thoughts Media Inc.</a>, a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Alberta, Canada.</i>