raining ktula » xbox 360

Why i am still glad not having to drive to work

ktula — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:56:36 +0000

Seattle traffic as captured on my iPhone as i was traveling on the Metro bus.

Sure, it takes me more than one hour to get to work by commuting via a Metro bus and follow by a company-provided shuttle bus but looking at the Monday morning Seattle traffic provided by WSDOT, i am real glad i do not have to do any driving. In the one hour and 10 minutes of commute, i managed to do the following:

Read a six-page article on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console defects woes.
Walked three healthy blocks to catch the shuttle bus.
Took a 20-min Power nap while i was on the shuttle bus.

No more mucking around with Vista

ktula — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:46:14 +0000

I was pretty excited when i found out that it was possible to stream Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” movies to Xbox 360 and have them played on the TV. The catch is a unfortunate requirement for Windows Vista. After picking up a copy of Windows Vista Home Premium edition purchased courtesy of my sis’s employee discount, i installed it as a VMWare Fusion’s virtual machine, running under Mac OS X Leopard. I had little difficulty streaming Netflix’s WatchNow movies to the virtualized Vista environment though at full screen, the playback was anything but smooth. The biggest problem was Windows Media Center refused to play any video media. It does not seem to support VMWare’s virtual video adapter. So after spending close to two days trying to set it up and also troubleshooting it, i gave up.

This morning, i read an announcement made at E3 that some time this fall, it will be possible to watch some Netflix movies on demand on Xbox 360, without the need for Windows Vista! Yes!!! Adios Vista!

Halo 3 moments

ktula — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:49:45 +0000

Halo 3 comes with the ability to re-play the entire battle that you have just finished and screenshots can be taken from multiple angles during the replay.

Oh you want a facial? Here you go, courtesy of my shotgun pellets!

Assault rifle (back by popular demand after going AWOL in Halo 2) in action – third person view

Exact same situation as above but from the first person view.

Brute shot in action. One of the rare moments when i actually managed to get a kill with it.

Xbox 360 is back

ktula — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 01:58:50 +0000

I got my Xbox 360 back today. Pretty decent turn around time. I shipped it via UPS on January 2nd and it is now back in my possession after 8 days.

Looks like instead of replacing the noisy DVD drive, Microsoft just gave me a replacement console. After connecting it to the power outlet and my receiver, i turned it on. The console fan seemed a little louder than my old replacement console. The good thing is, the DVD drive no longer gives a crunching scratching noise. One thing i noticed about my Perfect Dark Zero game disc is that on the outer edge, it appeared that the DVD drive in my old 360 console had pretty much scratched off the coating!

I tested connecting the Toshiba gigabeat S to the USB port on the Xbox 360. Xbox 360 recognized it immediately and it shows up under music as “Portable Media Device”. Even though i could see four folders – playlists, music, videos and photos – only the songs in the music folder were usable.

Microsoft Xbox 360 support

ktula — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 21:11:56 +0000

Why can’t i find out the status of my Xbox 360 repair online? Why do i have to call the support number and talk to a live person to do that? I assume, most likely correctly, that most Xbox 360 owners have internet access. By enabling Xbox 360 owners the ability to check the status of their console online, it will actually save Microsoft a lot of money by freeing up the phone support personnel to deal just with troubleshooting issues. I expect the following things that you should be able to find online about your console:

To track the delivery of the console to and from the repair center. Since the UPS shipping label, including the tracking number, for shiping the console back to Microsoft is included in the box, this tracking number is already known to MS. Why do i have to provide this tracking number to the support personnel when obviously it is already known to them?
To check the status of the repair. Has the console arrived at the repair center? Has the problem identified by the console owner been replicated? What repair work is done to the console? When is the ETA for the completion of the repair? When is the console expected to be shipped back to its owner?

As recent as 6 months ago, the Xbox 360 support website contained a live online support via a chat window. The number of things that chat support could do was very limited. Other than giving out some basic troubleshooting steps, it was not able to do much except referring the users to contact the Xbox support via phone. Why not expand on the live chat support? For some unknown reason, the support website no longer has the option for a live chat support.

Update 1/7/2006
If you provide your email address to Xbox support, they do send you an email when they are shipping your console back to you.

Update 8/6/2007
After more than one and a half years since i contacted Microsoft support for my Xbox 360, Microsoft has finally set up a website to do what i told them that they should have long ago.

This is what my Xbox 360 sounds like

ktula — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 06:48:39 +0000

Ever since i received my replacement Xbox 360 console from Microsoft, the noise from using the DVD drive has been unbearable. Unless i turn up the volume when playing a game, the noisy drive is extremely distracting. Watching a DVD using Xbox 360? With the amount of noise coming out of that piece of crap, you can forget it.

Compare the ambient noise with the one when the Xbox 360 DVD drive is engaged:

Ambient noise:
Ambient noise

Xbox 360 DVD drive:
DVD drive on Xbox 360

Because of this noisy drive, my Xbox 360 has been collecting dust for the last few 5 months. I didn’t want to send my Xbox 360 back to Microsoft because it’s past its 90-day warranty period. So this recent announcement from Microsoft in extending the warranty from 90 days to a year is a welcome news for me. Needless to say, the first thing i did after reading this news was to contact Microsoft. My Xbox 360 is going back to Microsoft.