THAT’S RIGHT KIDS!!!1!!ONE!!!

It’s a massive overhaul of the current dashboard…actually no…it’s a totally new dashboard I’ve had a poke and a prod around various sites, and it does look quite funky (and yes - the Wii style avatar things are true, but they don’t look that bad actually).

I’m really quite looking forward to it, hopefully it won’t be ridiculously slow when it’s finally released (I can think of a certain (read: current) release that can be painfully slow at times…)

I also found a link to what looks like a genuine (if somewhat small) gallery of images for the new dashboard.

ShackNews Gallery: http://www.shacknews.com/screenshots.x?gallery=10254&id=122358
Wired Blog Post: http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/07/pics-xbox-360s.html

Official Xbox.com Announcement: http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/E3-2008/nxe.htm

I upgraded my Windows Vista install last night, I went from Home Premium to Ultimate (I have a cool DreamScene background now ;)) I’ll have to reinstall GRUB at some point, because the upgrade means I can’t boot into Ubuntu…though this is a good thing at the minute, because it means I can’t fiddle with it (I always end up doing something like that :p)

Also I think I’ll be buying an Xbox 360 Elite sometime in the next 3-5 weeks my brother want’s his own Xbox 360, so I figured I might buy an Elite (bigger hard drive + HDMI = happy Joe ;)) But I’m definitely waiting a little while, because just today, Microsoft announced a price drop in the Europe & UK Xbox 360 SKU’s so that’s good news for me!

UPDATE: I just noticed that when I have DreamScene running, if I unplug the laptop from charge, it pauses the video to conserve battery life! I think that’s a clever little feature Especially because the background still looks good when paused.

Somewhat annoyingly only a week and a half after I bought an HD DVD player…Blu-Ray emerges the victor of the High-Def Format “War”.

I’m not bothered though, as there’s still many films available for HD DVD I read the rumors as I’m sure a lot of other people did over the weekend that Toshiba were pulling out of the HD DVD production, but I read the final news on the BBC News website earlier this morning.

So it’s been good, and in the end the superior (albeit more expensive) format won. Congrat’s, it’s just a shame it’s a Sony Corp technology.

I bought one I’ve been wondering whether to get one for ages. Even though the format looks somewhat doomed, I figured if I could get one cheap then it’d be worth it, seeing as there’s still 400+ titles out for the format

So I bought the add-on for my Xbox 360, for £50 ($97 US) which is around half the retail price everywhere I’ve seen. The HD-DVD I got with it was The Kingdom. I’ve also got the following ordered though a couple are out of stock on Play.com:

• Apollo 13
• The Last Samurai
• Music And Lyrics
• The Bourne Supremacy

I’m looking forward to getting them, as so far the picture has been brilliant (though I’ve seen Full Metal Jacket in “HD” and it was worse than the normal DVD) as my TV supports 1080p input I may post short reviews of the films when I’ve watched them.

I seem to be having issues with Xbox Live again…very similar to those I was having just after Christmas and around New Year.

Also they seem to be relating to Call Of Duty 4 again which seems more than a coincidence to me. If it carries on I’ll be phoning Microsoft to see what I can get out of them for it, because I know that I’m not the only person that has been experiencing this problem.

I have to say, since I bought my new tv, and went back to using the component cable to connect my Xbox 360 (at 1080p as well :D) instead of the VGA Cable, I’ve noticed a significant increase in the picture quality of my DVD’s.

Now, I’ve watched movie’s on an HD DVD player at 1080p (full HD) before, and the image quality and sound is brilliant, I can’t say much for Blu Ray, as I’ve never watched a Blu Ray film as of yet. However, while my normal DVD’s are nowhere near the same quality as a proper HD source, the image quality is certainly FAR better than that of a normal DVD player.

I’m very impressed…I’m currently watching the Star Wars films on here - in what I call “Semi-HD”

Found out last Thursday, that the free Xbox Live Arcade Game all members are meant to receive as compensation for the completely abysmal performance of Xbox Live over the Christmas period.

The game we’ll all be receiving is Undertow which normally sells for 800 MS Points, though there isn’t yet a word on whether Microsoft will be refunding those people who have already bought the game. Quite why they didn’t just release a new game for free is beyond me, it’d be a lot easier. Never mind.

From what I’ve found out, Undertow is some sort of “Aquatic Shooter” now - whether that means under water, or based on water, I’ve got to wait until morning to find out. Plus, if I get bored, you might find a review on here as well soon

So it’s back to normal for most people and we’re all back at work/college/university and all can’t be bothered (me especially!!) so I figured I’d make a post in the 3 hours I’m free today.

I noticed last night that the Xbox Live issues everybody has been experiencing over the Christmas season still haven’t gone completely, which is annoying…and there’s still no news on that free arcade game.

Also there’s been a lot of people on the Ubuntu Forums posting in “Internet Speak” e.g. lyk this n its hard 2 read sumtimes LoL!!1!  I’ll be honest, and I’m sure I speak for most…it’s annoying…don’t do it I’ve been doing my bit to help all the newcomers that we’ve had over Christmas, so try to help us, and make the posts’ readable

I just read a post on Major Nelson’s website (it’s also on the official website) that there will be a free XBLA game for all Xbox Live users (Gold & Silver), as a sort of apology for the, frankly, appalling performance of Xbox Live over the Christmas Period.

I’ll put up another post when I find out what it is and when you can get it Until then, I’m just hoping it doesn’t go down (again), because I’ll be very annoyed, along with a lot of others I’d imagine.

After almost a week of Xbox Live being down, and just generally not working, it seems that the problems are almost all fixed. I had trouble signing in to the Xbox website last night, and in finding a game of Call Of Duty 4, but in the end perseverance paid off, and I managed to do both

Trouble is that it was still slow, so I’m hoping that it’ll all be sorted by the weekend!