- Joined
- Apr 25, 2004
- Messages
- 4,176
- Age
- 42
- Location
- Toledo ohio
- Website
- www.sector7paranormal.com
- Main Job
- Secondary Job
- Third Job
- Linkshell
- Rise
- FFXIV
- Chasym Toloren
Well i dont know if anyone here got into the beta for this, but i have had it for over a week now.
Gotta say, the biggest lackluster and most useless update i have ever seen hit the box.
Once you update there will be a new channel on the dashboard called "My Community" and within you will find links to download the facebook app, the twitter app doesnt seem to need a download.
In your video section you will fine the Zune HD marketplace, which you also can opt to download, sadly you need to download this or you will lose a basic feature on the system. More on that later.
In the Music market place you will find a link for the Last.fm application.
So lets talk about each feature and what you can expect.
Facebook. The entire addition of this is really pointless especially if you, and most will, use facebook on your PC. After downloading the 6.5MB file you will launch it and enter your login info. This will log you into the xbl facebook app.
On your home page you will find a rotating news feed that displays your friends status updates in rotation, yawn.
You will find your avatar standing next to your status update, which you can update from there. You can view the photo albums of yourself and your friends.
If your friends have XBL and have logged into facebook from it, you can see their XBL profile and it will show a picture of them and an XBL logo next to them with their gamertag.
Guess what, thats ALL you can do. Post on peoples pages, update your status, view photos. The end. No apps, nothing else.
Not only that, but when scrolling through your friends status updates i get a HEADACHE, its so choppy and laggy that it hurts to look at, not smooth at all!
Pointless add ons:1
Moving on to twitter, an app that not only do i really never use on a regular PC, but an app i will most likely never use on xbox because of its limitations, and trust me it could have worked well if they added some simple features.
once you log in you will be presented with a menu that shows your avatar and all of your friends/followings that they have posted.(dont add kevin smith if you dont want 95% of those status updates to be taken up by him haha) but what can you do here? You can post what you are doing/status update. You can search, and you can see trending topics, view other tweet pages and...well thats it. An app that pretty much allows you to do what facebook already has and with less features!
Now this might not have been so bad had they allowed you to update your tweet outside of the twitter app. For instance, in a game you get an awesome headshot on someone, match ends and in intermission you pull up the guide and tweet "JUST GOT THIS AWESOME FUCKING HEADSHOT!!!" But alas, you have to log into the twitter app just to update your status.
How many people are going to be sitting there and just decide, hey i wanna write a sentence about what im doing, so lets log into this app! Might as well put the same thing in facebook while your at it!
Pointless add ons:2
So lets move onto ZuneHD marketplace.
So basically this app, is the same thing as video marketplace, infact, it has replaced it.
So whats it got now?
Instant On HD viewing, if your connection is right.
You can browse movies, music videos, independent videos and your video library, just like the old market place. You pay to view them with MS points just like before, except now you no longer have to download them, its an instant stream, like netflix, with HD, like netflix. So basically they took what netflix already did, and applied it to marketplace and still chrage you per video. sounds like MS.
but it smells like MS too, you will now notice when you go to your video library in the Myxbox menu on the dashboard, something is missing! The Hard drive option to view the videos and trailers you have downloaded.
You must now enter the Zune HD app every time you want to watch a trailer or video you have downloaded!
You still must download any trailers and game vids, and any free episode content from tv shows and whatnot, not instant streams for those.
You can also now watch videos in a party...like netflix!
Its cool you can instant stream now, but thats all thats really new to it besides the party mode, netflix is still the better offer.
Pointless add ons:3
Last.fm
The nearly saving grace of this update.
What can be better than having 100s of radio stations of your favorite bands at your fingertips? Having that with better option and user control!
Upon making your account, if you dont already have one, and logging in.
You will see a list of channels and options, that looks the same as the dashboard and every other add on thus far, you will find a plethora of music instantly available for listening.
If you dont see the band you want, dont worry, you can search for it!
There are gamer stations that play game music and game related music
You can find stations based on genre and a few other ways.
But once you start listening is where you will get annoyed a bit.
Before you can start streaming a station, you must watch a small advertisement, then its all music from then on, until you switch stations and have to watch the advertisement again.
Once you start streaming a station of the band of your choice, you will begin listening to a song by them. But once it ends, youll find that this station isnt dedicated to one band, infact none of them are. You will be forced to listen to bands that are in the same genre or are alot like the band you wanted to listen to, it may say linkin park channel, but it certainly isnt just linkin park.
You can skip any song at any time and move on to the next, but you cannot view a playlist of what songs are on this station.
If you find a song you like, you can favorite it and it will add it to your library, but dont be content with that. It doesnt add that song to your library, it adds a station for that band, which when you go to it, it may not even play the song you favorited, and can play another song by that band followed by music from other bands just like any other station.
And no, you cannot choose to listen to individual songs, you must listen to songs in station rotation. You cant just say, i feel like hearing The Beatles Hey Jude and go listen to it, because you would have to sift through like bands and skipping countless songs before you may find it, if you can.
Last Fm pays attention to what you listen to and starts to recommend bands and stations to you, ive noticed that it does a good job of finding what i like, but what i havent checked yet is what if i just want to hear what a certain rapper sounds like because someone told me they are good, and i check, will it start recommending rap crap to me because i listened to it once? thats something i have to test still.
You can create your own radio station, but its not as simple as you think. You basically type in a bands name and it instant creates a station for you and preselects all the songs for you based on that genre and band, and becomes like any other station on the app.
While listening you will be shown pictures of the band and related photos. You can even get info on the band.
So yeah, lets rock this shit, hop into a game and stream a station while im poppin heads in call of duty...oh wait...you cant? what the hell! So i have to log into last.fm app in order to listen to the music, unless im playin that GTA type MMO coming out later this year that incorporates last.fm into your car stereo.
So i would have to stop gaming and dedicate my xbox to this app to play music? Dont got time for that, sorry.
While the features are limited, its still the best add on in this update.
Pointless add ons : still at 3
Recently added, the Halo Waypoint.
Its your hub for all things halo.
You win merits depending on your gamerscore acrossed all halo games, it maxes out at 40 currently, and upon opening it i jumped right up to 35, only need two other achievements in ODST to max it out, and what does this give you? Avatar awards.
Yep, this update enables them, so if you have splosion man, load it up and get your awards!
I received an halo hoodie, an ODST shirt and an ODST helmet for my awards in the way point.
The waypoint keeps all current news on halo and upcoming games will add to it, it shows fan pictures, in game photos and a bit more but its not all available yet.
Its pretty decent for a feature dedicated to one game series.
Pointless add ons : still at 3.
So we got 3 apps that really serve no purpose to being added, the zune stream feature im sure could have just been added somehow without introducing the app. Last.fm is limited but nice.
And although the menu for avatar awards has been there for ages, its finally useable and i cant wait to see what other games will use this.
all in all, dont get excited for this update, you probly wont use most of it.
Gotta say, the biggest lackluster and most useless update i have ever seen hit the box.
Once you update there will be a new channel on the dashboard called "My Community" and within you will find links to download the facebook app, the twitter app doesnt seem to need a download.
In your video section you will fine the Zune HD marketplace, which you also can opt to download, sadly you need to download this or you will lose a basic feature on the system. More on that later.
In the Music market place you will find a link for the Last.fm application.
So lets talk about each feature and what you can expect.
Facebook. The entire addition of this is really pointless especially if you, and most will, use facebook on your PC. After downloading the 6.5MB file you will launch it and enter your login info. This will log you into the xbl facebook app.
On your home page you will find a rotating news feed that displays your friends status updates in rotation, yawn.
You will find your avatar standing next to your status update, which you can update from there. You can view the photo albums of yourself and your friends.
If your friends have XBL and have logged into facebook from it, you can see their XBL profile and it will show a picture of them and an XBL logo next to them with their gamertag.
Guess what, thats ALL you can do. Post on peoples pages, update your status, view photos. The end. No apps, nothing else.
Not only that, but when scrolling through your friends status updates i get a HEADACHE, its so choppy and laggy that it hurts to look at, not smooth at all!
Pointless add ons:1
Moving on to twitter, an app that not only do i really never use on a regular PC, but an app i will most likely never use on xbox because of its limitations, and trust me it could have worked well if they added some simple features.
once you log in you will be presented with a menu that shows your avatar and all of your friends/followings that they have posted.(dont add kevin smith if you dont want 95% of those status updates to be taken up by him haha) but what can you do here? You can post what you are doing/status update. You can search, and you can see trending topics, view other tweet pages and...well thats it. An app that pretty much allows you to do what facebook already has and with less features!
Now this might not have been so bad had they allowed you to update your tweet outside of the twitter app. For instance, in a game you get an awesome headshot on someone, match ends and in intermission you pull up the guide and tweet "JUST GOT THIS AWESOME FUCKING HEADSHOT!!!" But alas, you have to log into the twitter app just to update your status.
How many people are going to be sitting there and just decide, hey i wanna write a sentence about what im doing, so lets log into this app! Might as well put the same thing in facebook while your at it!
Pointless add ons:2
So lets move onto ZuneHD marketplace.
So basically this app, is the same thing as video marketplace, infact, it has replaced it.
So whats it got now?
Instant On HD viewing, if your connection is right.
You can browse movies, music videos, independent videos and your video library, just like the old market place. You pay to view them with MS points just like before, except now you no longer have to download them, its an instant stream, like netflix, with HD, like netflix. So basically they took what netflix already did, and applied it to marketplace and still chrage you per video. sounds like MS.
but it smells like MS too, you will now notice when you go to your video library in the Myxbox menu on the dashboard, something is missing! The Hard drive option to view the videos and trailers you have downloaded.
You must now enter the Zune HD app every time you want to watch a trailer or video you have downloaded!
You still must download any trailers and game vids, and any free episode content from tv shows and whatnot, not instant streams for those.
You can also now watch videos in a party...like netflix!
Its cool you can instant stream now, but thats all thats really new to it besides the party mode, netflix is still the better offer.
Pointless add ons:3
Last.fm
The nearly saving grace of this update.
What can be better than having 100s of radio stations of your favorite bands at your fingertips? Having that with better option and user control!
Upon making your account, if you dont already have one, and logging in.
You will see a list of channels and options, that looks the same as the dashboard and every other add on thus far, you will find a plethora of music instantly available for listening.
If you dont see the band you want, dont worry, you can search for it!
There are gamer stations that play game music and game related music
You can find stations based on genre and a few other ways.
But once you start listening is where you will get annoyed a bit.
Before you can start streaming a station, you must watch a small advertisement, then its all music from then on, until you switch stations and have to watch the advertisement again.
Once you start streaming a station of the band of your choice, you will begin listening to a song by them. But once it ends, youll find that this station isnt dedicated to one band, infact none of them are. You will be forced to listen to bands that are in the same genre or are alot like the band you wanted to listen to, it may say linkin park channel, but it certainly isnt just linkin park.
You can skip any song at any time and move on to the next, but you cannot view a playlist of what songs are on this station.
If you find a song you like, you can favorite it and it will add it to your library, but dont be content with that. It doesnt add that song to your library, it adds a station for that band, which when you go to it, it may not even play the song you favorited, and can play another song by that band followed by music from other bands just like any other station.
And no, you cannot choose to listen to individual songs, you must listen to songs in station rotation. You cant just say, i feel like hearing The Beatles Hey Jude and go listen to it, because you would have to sift through like bands and skipping countless songs before you may find it, if you can.
Last Fm pays attention to what you listen to and starts to recommend bands and stations to you, ive noticed that it does a good job of finding what i like, but what i havent checked yet is what if i just want to hear what a certain rapper sounds like because someone told me they are good, and i check, will it start recommending rap crap to me because i listened to it once? thats something i have to test still.
You can create your own radio station, but its not as simple as you think. You basically type in a bands name and it instant creates a station for you and preselects all the songs for you based on that genre and band, and becomes like any other station on the app.
While listening you will be shown pictures of the band and related photos. You can even get info on the band.
So yeah, lets rock this shit, hop into a game and stream a station while im poppin heads in call of duty...oh wait...you cant? what the hell! So i have to log into last.fm app in order to listen to the music, unless im playin that GTA type MMO coming out later this year that incorporates last.fm into your car stereo.
So i would have to stop gaming and dedicate my xbox to this app to play music? Dont got time for that, sorry.
While the features are limited, its still the best add on in this update.
Pointless add ons : still at 3
Recently added, the Halo Waypoint.
Its your hub for all things halo.
You win merits depending on your gamerscore acrossed all halo games, it maxes out at 40 currently, and upon opening it i jumped right up to 35, only need two other achievements in ODST to max it out, and what does this give you? Avatar awards.
Yep, this update enables them, so if you have splosion man, load it up and get your awards!
I received an halo hoodie, an ODST shirt and an ODST helmet for my awards in the way point.
The waypoint keeps all current news on halo and upcoming games will add to it, it shows fan pictures, in game photos and a bit more but its not all available yet.
Its pretty decent for a feature dedicated to one game series.
Pointless add ons : still at 3.
So we got 3 apps that really serve no purpose to being added, the zune stream feature im sure could have just been added somehow without introducing the app. Last.fm is limited but nice.
And although the menu for avatar awards has been there for ages, its finally useable and i cant wait to see what other games will use this.
all in all, dont get excited for this update, you probly wont use most of it.
