The Xbox 360 dashboard replacement is a week old, and problems such as lengthy access times for Marketplace seem to be fading.
There is one noteworthy wrinkle if you have more than one hard drive and try to use Netflix. Swapping drives seems to require you to resync since the connection data is stored on the drive when you first set it up. If you get connection errors, this may be the cause. It's not clear if blessing a second drive on the same console counts toward your four device quota. With two consoles, I've already used half my quota and I'm loathe to test this in case I have another console failure. I just need to remember which hard drive to use for each.
It's worth noting that upgrading my DSL from 1.5Mbps to 3Mbps greatly improved Netflix video quality. To max out for HD video, I expect I'll need to go 6Mbps (beyond my current line quality, though I may be able to remedy this next year with some phone line rewiring and/or a dedicated DSL circuit).
One more Netflix note that no one seems to be reporting: In addition to Sony movies being inaccessible on Xbox 360 due to petty politics between console makers (UPDATE: Some of them are back, but not Spider-Man 3, Ghost Rider, Reign Over Me or The Water Horse), some titles (notably from Starz) have begun expiring from the instant play queue. So check your queue for movies and shows that are about to disappear and watch them first! If a movie does expire while you're watching it, you can continue as long as you pause but don't quit - this happened last night with They Live! As soon as it finished, I exited the movie and then tried to return but was blocked.
If you're wondering how many games you can fit on a hard drive, Stripesonfire.com has a helpful install chart that compiles the sizes so you determine how much space to free up. Games known to have huge speed improvements when run from the hard drive include:
Smackdown vs RAW 2009
Soul Calibur IV
Tales of Vesperia
Alas, some games seem to suffer. As reported last week, Halo 3 was designed to cache data on the drive, so you actually lose 10 seconds on load times. Other games with reported issues include:
There is one noteworthy wrinkle if you have more than one hard drive and try to use Netflix. Swapping drives seems to require you to resync since the connection data is stored on the drive when you first set it up. If you get connection errors, this may be the cause. It's not clear if blessing a second drive on the same console counts toward your four device quota. With two consoles, I've already used half my quota and I'm loathe to test this in case I have another console failure. I just need to remember which hard drive to use for each.
It's worth noting that upgrading my DSL from 1.5Mbps to 3Mbps greatly improved Netflix video quality. To max out for HD video, I expect I'll need to go 6Mbps (beyond my current line quality, though I may be able to remedy this next year with some phone line rewiring and/or a dedicated DSL circuit).
One more Netflix note that no one seems to be reporting: In addition to Sony movies being inaccessible on Xbox 360 due to petty politics between console makers (UPDATE: Some of them are back, but not Spider-Man 3, Ghost Rider, Reign Over Me or The Water Horse), some titles (notably from Starz) have begun expiring from the instant play queue. So check your queue for movies and shows that are about to disappear and watch them first! If a movie does expire while you're watching it, you can continue as long as you pause but don't quit - this happened last night with They Live! As soon as it finished, I exited the movie and then tried to return but was blocked.
If you're wondering how many games you can fit on a hard drive, Stripesonfire.com has a helpful install chart that compiles the sizes so you determine how much space to free up. Games known to have huge speed improvements when run from the hard drive include:
- Assassin's Creed
- BioShock
- Burnout Revenge
- Dead Rising
- Dead Space
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
- Fallout 3
- Grand Theft Auto IV
- Lost Odyssey
- Mass Effect
- Mirror's Edge
- NBA 2K9
- Ninja Gaiden II
- The Orange Box
- Gears of War 2 (small savings on load times, but adds stuttering during saves)
- NBA Live 09 (stuttering)
- Project Gotham Racing 4 (audio pops)
Comments (2)
A connection in the Gbps range would be too good for any residence. I'm thinking you mean Mbps. There is a big difference between megabits/second and gigabits/second.
Posted by LucrativeFuture | December 5, 2008 5:23 PM
Posted on December 5, 2008 17:23
Yeah, I know the difference but was pretty tired when I wrote this.
Corrected. Thanks for the eagle eye!
Posted by Gamewatcher | December 5, 2008 8:30 PM
Posted on December 5, 2008 20:30