Recently in Xbox Category

"Can I use a laptop webcam to video chat with someone using a Xbox 360 webcam?"

Windows Live Messenger support for the Xbox 360 is currently limited to text chats only. To video chat with someone on an Xbox 360, both you and the person you want to chat with must be signed in to Xbox Live and have the Xbox Live Vision camera connected to your Xbox 360. The steps for enabling Windows Live Messenger text chats are fairly straighforward.

"I am trying to get music from my PC to my Xbox 360. The problem is that my PC is an older model so it doesn't have an Ethernet port. Is there any way to do this?"

There are basically two ways to get music files from your PC to your Xbox 360. Option one is to use your home network. If your computer doesn't have an Ethernet port, this option is out unless you feel comfortable adding an Ethernet port. Option two is to use physically transport the files from your PC to your Xbox 360 using some kind of storage media.

"How can I share media from my PC to my Xbox 360? I have a bunch of videos on my PC and I'd like to play them on my Xbox without having to copy the files."

There are two similar solutions for sharing both videos and music from a PC to your Xbox 360. Both require some basic configuration on your computer. One option is to download and install the Zune software from Zune.net. The other option is to use Windows Media Player 11 to stream movies and music to your computer. Older versions of Windows Media Player will not work, so you may need to use Windows Update in order to update your WMP software to the latest version. I went through the basics of this in an article on streaming DivX to your Xbox 360, but I'll also cover it here as a solution for all media types.

"What kind of modem do I need to connect my Xbox 360 to Xbox Live?"

The modem you will need to connect your Xbox 360 to Xbox Live is an external modem provided by your broadband ISP. Typically you will want to purchase a router to connect to the modem provided by your ISP, with your Xbox 360 connecting to the router. If you plan to use a wired connection to connect your Xbox 360 to the router, you need to connect the Ethernet port on the back of the Xbox 360 to one of the Ethernet ports on the router. If you want to connect your Xbox 360 using wireless, you will need a wireless router and the Xbox 360 Wireless Network Adapter.

Ryan writes, "OK, so I'm going to buy an Xbox pretty soon but I do not want to spend $100 dollars connecting it to Xbox Live, so my question is, can I hook up my Ethernet cable to a normal router, then connect the router to my my cable Internet source through just a normal cable wall outlet?"

I'm going to assume the $100 you want to avoid spending is for the Xbox 360 Wireless Network Adapter. If you want the Xbox Live Gold membership, you still need to pay the required subscription fee regardless of what type of connection you use. You do not need to connect your Xbox 360 using a wireless connection. In general, I recommend using a wired connection either by simply connecting your Xbox 360 directly to a router using an Ethernet cable or by using Ethernet over Powerline adapters. In my experience, things like streaming audio and video wirelessly to your Xbox 360 work just fine, but online gaming is very likely to lag using wireless and you get a far better experience with a wired connection.

Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Conspiracy isn't nearly as free-form as the marketing suggests. You can't interact with the world during hand-to-hand the way the game suggests, it decides for you. Still it's a fairly engaging game based on the Matt Damon interpretation of Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne character. Here are walk-through strategies and cheats that should help you beat Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Conspiracy:

Bourne Conspiracy Tips

Fighting bosses - When fighting boss battles wait for the boss to perform a take down, counter the take down, and then launch you attack. This is consistently the most vulnerable point for all bosses. If you block until they perform a take down, Bourne is virtually invulnerable using this method.

Car Chase - Drive through the glass window on the left when the bus blocks your way, this is one of two key components (along with the cafe) to getting the Civic Menace Acheivment. You also need to destroy a ton of environmental stuff, but without those you'll have to do the car chase twice.

Hand-to-hand Combos - When fighting hand to hand, the easiest way to rack up bigger hits is to do 3 button patterns like X-X-Y, X-Y-X, Y-Y-X or Y-X-Y. Holding down the X or Y button gives you a bigger kick, but opponents often don't provide time to do this.

Bourne Conspiracy Cheat Codes

The most useful cheats are the first two, the rest unlock stuff that is useful if you replay the game, but won't help you in beating it.

ALWAYSANOBJECTIVE replaces the assault shotgun with an automatic shotgun.

WHATTHEYMAKEYOUGIVE replaces the light machine gun with a silenced light machine gun.

LASTCHANCEMARIE unlocks concept art extras.

JASONBOURNEISDEAD unlocks boss battle with Manheim. Unlocks music track extras Manheim Suite and Treadstone Appointment.

IVEMADECONTACT unlocks O'Connor boss battle.

THENTHEHEATGOESAWAY unlocks additional concept art.

WHATHAPPENEDONTHEDOCKSISMYPROBLEM unlocks Solomon boss battle and Solomon's Wrath music extra.

OPENTHETAIL unlocks Divandelen boss battle and Divandelen's Escape music track.

REDBAGSTOPRIGHTTHERE unlocks additional Cinematics.

DIDNTTRAINYOUTOHAILACAB unlocks Assasinate Ruik and Car Chase music.

THERESSOMEONEELSEHERE unlocks additional music and cinematics.

GETTHEHEADACHES unlocks the Professor boss battle and additional music extras.

"Can i use any other cameras instead of the Xbox 360 Live Vision camera? I have a Logitech webcam that I'd like to use instead."

As of this writing, the only camera supported by the Xbox 360 is the official Live Vision camera from Microsoft. It seems silly that they wouldn't enable any webcam to work with the video chat for the Xbox 360, but so far, the Live Vision is the only option. Presumably this is because Microsoft didn't want to test hundreds of cameras and store Webcam drivers on the reserved hard disk space available for updates to the system.

"I want to use my Xbox with my computer, but I don't want to use the TV screen. I want to use the computer screen instead. Is there anything that I need to get to enable this?"

As long as your computer monitor has at least one VGA connection, you'll need to things to have a great Xbox 360 gaming experience. First you need an Xbox 360 VGA cable. Microsoft makes the Xbox 360 VGA HD AV Cable, which sells for about $40. There are also 3rd-party Xbox VGA cables for about $20. Ideally if your computer screen has two inputs, you can leave your computer connected to one, connect the Xbox 360 to the other, and then simply switch to the one you need.

"My Xbox 360 is on the 1st floor and my router is upstairs on the 2nd floor of my house. What are my options for connecting my Xbox 360 to my network?"

If your router is wireless, you could simply get the Xbox 360 Wireless Network Adapter and connect (assuming you have a decent wireless network signal between floors). I'm in a similar situation. My Xbox 360 is upstairs and my router is downstairs. For a long time, I've used the Xbox 360 Wireless Network Adapter to play games and stream video to my Xbox. Sometime recently (possibly after my wife got her iPhone), the wireless network seemed to hit a point where too much traffic was causing hiccups in streaming video. I recently switched to using an Ethernet over Powerline solution, which has solved all the problems with my video streaming. Here's a video showing how Ethernet over Powerline works:

I'm currently getting enough interference on the wireless connection in my house that I wanted a better solution for connecting my Xbox 360 to my network. Corinex sent me one of their GameNet units to review and so far I'm reasonably impressed. You basically connect one of them to a wall outlet near your game console, with the other connected to a power outlet near your router. Ethernet cable connects the hardware to your network and you're in business routing network traffic over the power lines in your house. Since connecting the GameNet hardware, video clips that used to occasionally buffer over wireless now consistently play smoothly, even when streaming them from a wirelessly connected computer. If your broadband modem and any of the computers or game consoles you want to network are on separate floors of the house, this is a highly effective way to get your network connection to the places you need it most without any rewiring or fighting wireless signal drop out. At $169.99 for the 2-outlet, 2-cable package, I think you might have better luck buying a competing Ethernet over Powerline solution from ebay. That said, I'm giving a strong recommend to this type of solution for anyone who has several PCs or game consoles spread out throughout their house. Watch the video below to see how it all works:

"Can a generic USB network adapter be used, or is the Xbox 360 Wireless Network Adapter required to connect the Xbox 360 to a wireless network?"

The short answer is you need the Xbox 360 Wireless Network Adapter to connect your Xbox 360 to your wireless network. None of the generic USB network adapters work with the Xbox 360. There are a couple of other options for getting connected without re-wiring your house or buying the official Xbox 360 wireless adapter by using some alternative hardware.

"Can I watch Amazon Unbox movies on my Xbox 360?"

Amazon Unbox videos will playback on your Xbox 360 by streaming them from any Windows computer with Windows Media Player 11 installed. This is a really convenient way to get a larger selection of downloadable movies than what's currently offered by Xbox Live Video Marketplace. Unlike streaming DivX AVI movies, which also works with the Zune software, you need to use Windows Media Player 11 to make the following steps work. Older versions of Windows Media Player will also not work.

First configure your computer to share video, music and photos with your Xbox 360. Make sure your Xbox 360 is turned on and connected to your home network before beginning.

Click the Now Playing button at the top of the Windows Media Player 11 interface and choose More Options. On the Library tab of the Options, click Configure Sharing.

Check the box next to Share my media to, then select your Xbox 360 and click Allow, so that there's a check mark on the Xbox 360 icon instead of a warning sign. Note: If you get an error message about your network, follow steps to set your network from Public to Private.

On the Media blade on your Xbox 360, choose Videos, then hit the X button to Change Video Source. Select your computer from the list of choices. You can now browse the complete library of videos on your PC, from the Xbox interface, including any Amazon Unbox downloads you have.

"Can I use the Xbox 360 Live Vision camera as a Webcam with my Windows computer?"

In a word, yes. You can use the Xbox Live Vision camera as a webcam with Windows XP or Windows Vista. After you connect the Live Vision camera to a USB port on your computer, the Found New Hardware Wizard should launch automatically. Choose the option to let Windows Update find the driver automatically. Once the driver is installed, the Live Vision camera should work with any software that supports USB cameras, like Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, etc.

Note: The Xbox Live Vision camera does not have a built-in microphone like many webcams. If you want to use it to chat with both audio and video, you will need to connect a microphone to your computer as well.

Matt writes, "I'm trying to connect my Xbox 360 to my computer using the Zune software that Microsoft told me to download. I am having trouble finding out how to physically connect my Xbox 360 to my computer. When I try to use my Ethernet cord directly from my Xbox 360 to my computer without using a router it keeps telling me my IP address has failed. Am I using the wrong cord or do I need absolutely need a router?"

You need a crossover cable to directly connect the Xbox 360 to a PC without a router or hub between the two devices. This isn't an ideal scenario for a variety of reasons, most importantly that you can't connect to the Internet from either your PC or Xbox 360 while connect the two in a wired configuration like this.

" I want to play games on my PC with an Xbox 360 controller, but I need a driver compatible with my Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit."

Both Windows Vista 32-bit and Windows Vista 64-bit are supposed to find the Xbox 360 controller drivers and install them automatically when you connect the controller for the first time. This doesn't always work flawlessly, so if this isn't an automatic process, the Microsoft Gaming site offers versions of the Xbox 360 controller drivers for all versions of Windows Vista as well as Windows XP.

I'm always looking for an easy way to run up my Xbox 360 Achievements while playing games I like. Guitar Hero 2 for Xbox 360 offers an easy 60 Achievement points with very minimal effort required.

Long Road Ahead - This is the easiest achievement in Guitar Hero. Start a song in easy mode and walk away till the song ends. You'll lose the song but you get 10 points. Combine this with Lefty Flip or the 8x multiplier described below to get maximum achievements with minimal effort.

Extra Credit Award - Viewing the credits might be easier than losing an Easy song. Browse to the credits, open them up and play through until the end for 10 points. Just don't turn off the credits until the Achievement toast pops up or you will have to start over at the beginning.

Hendrix Award - play any song in Easy mode with the Lefty Flip turned on. Go to the Video Options and turn on lefty flip. Play a song on easy with the flip turned on for a quick 10 points.

Rock School Grad - Tutorials suck, but they might help you beat other parts of the game and you get 10 points for playing through all of them. The hammer on trick is actually good for running up your score a bit later in the game.

Teacher's Pet Award - Practice 3 songs for 10 points. You don't have to be good at them and you can choose a very short section of each song. This one might take about 60 seconds per song.

Scoremonger Award - this one requires you to play a song, but if you do it on easy and play Surrender, getting the 8x multiplier is a piece of cake. You'll cruise through these 10 points with no problem. If you want to stack points in a single song, play until you get 8x multiplier to unlock this and then just skip the notes to get booed off the stage to score the Long Road Ahead.

For another 1000 points, go rent a copy of Madden 06 and crank through the entire game quickly by following my steps for more easy Xbox 360 achievements.

Joe asks, "What about wireless-n for Xbox 360. Will the routers work?"

There's a bunch of 802.11n hardware on the market, even though the standard hasn't been fully ratified as of this writing. It is faster than 802.11b and 802.11g, which makes it interesting for passing data around the house. There are currently no wireless adapters with 802.11n support for the Xbox 360, but 802.11n is backward compatible with 802.11g and 802.11b, so if you have an 802.11n router, you will be able to connect to Xbox Live using the newer and not fully ratified standard. One of the places I frequently play Xbox 360 games uses a 802.11n router and the gaming experience seems no different than playing over other wireless gear. I'm still of the opinion that if you can play wired you should, because there are gaming latency issues every once in awhile while playing over 802.11b or 802.11g, but if wireless is your only option, future proofing with 802.11n gear likely can't hurt.

How to make an HD-DVD using standard 4.7GB DVD media or 8.5GB dual layer disks.

After shooting numerous hours of high definition video footage, I've been itching for a way to create some HD-DVDs. There are no HD-DVD burners on the market at the moment. And media seems to be in scarce supply. Sure, I could shell out $700 for a Blu-ray burner, but then I'd need to spend another $600 for a player that conveniently connects to my television (like a PS3, for instance). At least I can use the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player with Windows Vista or my 360, and there's now an HP HD-DVD player in the wild as well. When I found out Pinnacle added support for HD-DVD burning to Pinnacle Studio Plus, I was thrilled. Better yet, they do it by burning to standard 4.7GB DVDs or to 8.5GB dual layer disks.

The HD-DVD burning feature is a $50 upgrade to the existing Pinnacle Studio Plus package and works well for authoring in either Windows XP or Windows Vista. The first time you go to the Make Movie menu and choose HD DVD from the Disc Type menu, Pinnacle opens a window asking you if you want to activate the feature. You can also add it to an existing copy of Pinnacle Studio Plus directly from Pinnacle's site.

How to Make an HD-DVD with Pinnacle Studio

Once you have the HD-DVD portion of Pinnacle Studio Plus activated, it's relatively easy to make an HD-DVD. Click the Make Movie button and choose the Disc tab. Select HD DVD from the Disk Type drop down and choose a Video Quality. Based on my testing, you want to stick with Best Quality, which gives you 23 minutes of movie time on a 4.7GB disk and 42 minutes on a 8.5GB disk. There is an option to maximize movie on the disk and anther one that dynamically adjusts based on how much footage you have, but if you want your video to look great on disk, stick with Best Quality and edit accordingly.

The Settings page is where you might need to make a few changes. It's here you can set a custom bit rate for your video content, convert the video to progressive scan content as the disk is authored and choose whether to burn to disk directly or create a file on your hard drive and then burn.

The only time you want to use progressive encoding is if your content is already progressive (like if your camera shoots in 720p rather than 1080i).

Based on the test DVDs I burned, I highly recommend choosing the Safe mode for Burn Options. I made several coasters and had to go back and re-render my project, which made the whole process of burning disks take several times longer.

Menus and HD-DVD Authoring in Pinnacle

In my tests of adding menus to HD-DVD projects, the final DVD would not play. In each test, the video launched to the menu screen and selecting a chapter caused the video to error out. This leads me to believe that the menuing in Pinnacle Studio Plus is a standard def only feature. This isn't a show stopper for me, but at some point it would be nice to have a working menu structure for HD-DVDs.

Some tips on HD-DVD Authoring with Pinnacle Studio:

• Pinnacle labels the disk the same name as your video project, so if you want a meaningful disk name, choose your project name accordingly.
• The software does not automatically adjust based on the type of disk you put in the drive. If you're using a dual layer disk, make sure you set the software to dual layer or you'll still only get 23 minutes of recording time when burning the project.
• Don't check the box to re-encode your content. The software will re-encode as necessary and it's almost never better to re-encode your files without reason.
• Know your format and playback options before authoring - in general, HDV cameras record interlaced content. You should master your disk with the interlacing intact under most circumstances.
• If you recorded your video at 59.94, you need to decimate the video to 29.97 with something like VirtualDub or Pinnacle won't recognize the video footage

While this isn't the perfect solution of having an HD-DVD burner and actual HD-DVD blank media, Pinnacle's $50 add-on for HD-DVD authoring is worth the investment. The disks play in the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player both connected to a PC and to an Xbox 360 console. They are also compatible with the Toshiba HD-DVD players. One especially nice feature is support for playback in Vista even without connecting to an HDCP compliant display, which makes for a more compelling story for those of us who don't have HDCP compliant monitors yet. You can acquire both Pinnacle Studio Plus and the HD-DVD add-on direct from Pinnacle.

We're back with another installment of xyHD.tv. Continuing with the extreme Xbox 360 theme, we decided to get creative with the Custom Character feature in Rainbow Six. It's common knowledge that you can create a custom character in the game by mapping your face to your in game character using the Xbox Live Vision camera, but I haven't seen anyone show off the ability to map anyone's face to your custom character. All you need is the Live Vision camera and a couple of photos of your favorite celebrity from Google images. We demonstrated the concept using President George W. Bush as our celebrity terrorist hunter as we show you How to Play Rainbow Six as George W. Bush. If you download the WMV version, you can see the whole thing in a pretty amazing 720p HD resolution.

Watch the Video on xyHD.tv

There are dozens of ways to hook up DVD players for in car viewing. A few of them even have recommended configurations for playing video games from passenger seating. None of the in car entertainment solutions offer a way to connect to online gaming services like Xbox Live. Brandon Wirtz and I decided to fix that by building the ultimate in-car Xbox Live gaming experience. With Brandon driving his Jeep and me in the back with a video camera, we captured the whole experience of Brandon's roommate, Rose, playing Rainbow 6 Las Vegas and Uno (with Xbox Live Vision) while driving around Mountain View.

Joe writes, "We have a wireless hub for our computers, and my laptop... is there a way to directly hook up Xbox 360 to my laptop in order to get a connection? I'm looking to avoid buying the wireless adapter for 360, so if there is any way to get a connection for Xbox Live without the adapter, I would appreciate the help."

While the wireless connection is convenient, wired network performance is much more reliable. If your wireless hub is close enough to the Xbox 360 to making a wired connection between the hub and the Xbox 360 console is your ideal scenario. If wireless is your only option, I'll walk you through the process of using your laptop to provide a connection to Xbox Live for your Xbox 360.

It was almost a year ago when I did my Xbox 360 giveaway. Since that time, Xbox 360 consoles became less scarce and might be the best consumer buy this holiday season - but not because of the games. There's a whole lot of effort in the entertainment industry and in the consumer electronics marketplace to make it harder for people to use their digital media however they see fit. The Xbox 360 consoles of the current generation might be the last consumer set top devices we see that don't encumber our media consumption from a million different angles.

The Toshiba set top HD-DVD player offers HDMI output with HDCP content protection on the signal for delivering digital video to your screen. Using the HDMI output, you get full resolution video of either 1920x1080 or 1280x720, depending on what your television screen supports. It also has component outputs, but those won't display full HD resolution, instead forcing the picture to 480p. If you happen to have an HDTV with no HDMI in, you're stuck with a lower resolution picture. In general, this will become the norm as hardware ships with support for an Image Constraint Token which forces content to a maximum resolution of 960x540. The Xbox 360 currently either lacks this restriction or doesn't have any content with Image Constraint Token support turned on, as demonstrated by my recent tutorial on copying HD-DVD with an Xbox as the source.

The Xbox 360 is the exception in this case. Hampered devices are about to become the norm. Blu-ray players and the new Sony PlayStation 3 also have HDMI with HDCP content protection. Using component connections with either also hampers your experience. The Xbox continues to output the maximum resolution available without hampering the signal.

In general, this is good news if you want to maintain some level of access to your media. Granted, my method for capturing HD from the Xbox is neither affordable nor practical from a time standpoint, but I like knowing I can do it. I specifically wanted to compare some video from the Xbox and would not have been able to do so without this option. Xbox also makes streaming audio and video to your home theater easier with the new software Zune Player (no Zune hardware required) and while the experience isn't perfect, the two combined make it largely unnecessary to have a Media Center PC to enjoy watching movies from your computer in your home theater.

Before you write off the Xbox as just for kids or only for gamers, take a look at what may be the last device in the HD space with what we consider the analog hole in its unhampered format. There's no guarantee that future versions of Xbox 360 consoles will continue to allow this freedom, but in the meantime this seems to be the norm.

I started out with a plan to write an article about how HD-DVD is visually superior to downloads available in Xbox Video Marketplace. After all, how could a 6.1GB HD 720p download possible look as rich as the 1080p content on an HD-DVD? As it turns out, Xbox Video Marketplace does an outstanding job of delivering great looking video that is almost indistinguishable from HD-DVD. Here's how I came to this conclusion.

With the current limited selection of movies available in both HD-DVD and the WMV HD format used by Xbox Video Marketplace, I used V for Vendetta as my movie of comparison. Watching each movie independently, I could find no artifacts in either video file, no macro blocks during motion sequences, and a great range of colors in both cases. The Xbox Video Marketplace file looked just slightly brighter than the HD-DVD, but overall I couldn't tell any real difference.

Since my reasonably well-trained eye couldn't see a difference, I decided to go a step further and compare the videos using software tools. At the moment the HD options on Xbox Video Marketplace are limited, so I choose V for Vendetta as the title available in both HD-DVD and the Video Marketplace for a test. I captured the 20 second segment of V for Vendetta on the rooftop where the explosions happen during the 1812 Overture. You can read more about how to capture HD video from an Xbox here. I captured both versions of the movie at 1280x720 and left the VBI data, which represents 20 pixels at the top of a movie file, as a reference color for true black.

After capturing the videos, I created an AVISynth script to play the two clips side-by-side to look for obvious differences in each frame. To my eye, the only difference is a very slight color variation.

Full-size comparison

For deeper analysis, I enlisted my friend and colleague, Brandon Wirtz, who is among the smartest minds in video compression. Brandon does a very detailed analysis of each video, with the net result that both look great. You can read his video analysis methodology for more details.

The one thing I'll point out about the slight difference in color variation is the HD-DVD authoring tools must use a different encoding solution to get their output than the Windows Media Encoder used to create the Xbox Video Marketplace files. By pulling the two files in side-by-side in VirtualDub, applying a level filter that drops the Gamma of the video to 10, and looking at the result you can see that the color in the two files does not match. Setting the Gamma of the video to 10 has the net effect of moving colors darker than the exact middle of the spectrum closer to black and colors lighter than the exact middle of the spectrum closer to white.

You can see that the HD-DVD file on the left has blacks that match the VBI data in the top 20 pixels of the file, while the black levels in the Xbox Video Marketplace file are effectively shades of grey. This exposes an existing limitation of Windows Media Encoder and the newer Studio Encoder from Microsoft, which both apply the NTSC color space to all video encoded rather than the ATSC standard HD color space when encoding video that's meant for HD.

For the end viewer, this comes across as looking similar to running the contrast and brightness up a little on your screen and gives the image a marginally flatter feel. Considering most people don't calibrate their television correctly in the first place, this is likely a non-issue, although it might throw off one of those dynamic filtering options found on many HD screens. There's no artifacting in either the Video Marketplace file or the HD-DVD. Both have smooth motion. Both give you a great looking movie.

If you own a 1080p screen, HD-DVD is definitely the way to go, since the disks provide the full 1920x1080 video. If your screen is either 720p or 1080i, Xbox Video Marketplace movies give you a great way to sample HD movies and ultimately look better than anything I've ever rented from Comcast's HD On Demand.

It seems a number of sites are following my lead in giving away an Xbox 360. I did it back in January when I probably could have sold the console for its weight in gold (okay, maybe only half its weight). At the moment there are several dozen sites offering legitimate opportunities to score an Xbox 360. Paul Mooney at DotNetJunkies is offering one of the more interesting contests. You need to improve a card game he developed with his coding skills in order to qualify. That counts me out, but I'm sure there are plenty of coders up to the challenge. Gear Live was still offering an Xbox 360 to the winning fan site, but it looks like they are announcing the winner shortly.

We scored a semi-exclusive interview with Peter Moore, the Xbox VP at Microsoft. In a small room Chris Pirillo, Ryan Block from Engadget, Andru Edwards from Gear Live and Vladmir Cole from Joystiq and myself all peppered Peter Moore with questions about E3 Xbox announcements, which were largely deflected with the panache of an expert of gaming industry press announcements. So far, I haven't seen the interview appear on any of the other sites, which is why I'm calling it semi-exclusive. If you want to hear more about the HD-DVD drive for Xbox 360, the Xbox 360 strategy in Japan, the sudden interest in PC gaming at Microsoft or the truth about Mr. Moore's latest tattoo, you can get the audio from The Chris Pirillo Show.

Phillip writes, I just got a Panasonic TH-42PX500U Plasma TV that can be used as PC Monitor. How can I play games & stream music through the new Plasma? I currently have a Wireless Network set up with a Linksys Wireless-G Router. Any help greatly appreciated.

The entire Panasonic line of plasma screens will support 1024x768 resolution output from any computer. The simple solution is to connect the standard VGA output on your computer's video card to the VGA connector on the plasma screen, which will give you all the advantages of a massive screen with minimal hassle. Most electronics stores offer a variety of cable lengths depending on how close your screen and PC sit in proximity. If the computer video card has a DVI output connector, a number of options exist for cabling between DVI out on the PC and HDMI in on the back of the TV. However, it sounds like you're hoping for a solution that will connect your PC to the television remotely, which means you ultimately need a go-between to get your computer content tied into your home theater.

If you don't want to have the computer and plasma screen in the same room, the single best purchase you can make is an Xbox 360 console. For either $300 or $400 you get an interface optimized for navigating PC content connected over your home network for playback on an HD screen. In this scenario, you're connecting the Xbox to your home network either wired or wirelessly and using either Windows Media Connect or Windows Media Center Edition to manage music, movies and photos on screen. Even if you're not interested in ever purchasing an Xbox 360 game, the user experience for getting content from your computer to the Xbox is actively being improved by Microsoft and will become more seamless once Windows Vista finally ships.

The second option would be to purchase a third party media controller box. Linksys and D-Link both make models priced around $200, which integrate with your home theater and handle all the browsing of movies, music and photos across your home network. I personally don't like this experience as well as what Xbox 360 delivers, but it is cheaper and offers most of the same advantages.

A third and more complicated option is to get a second computer that's connected directly to the plasma screen via one of the methods above. Share your movies and music with this computer and use Windows XP as the control interface for playback. Without investing in some kind of media management software, you're going to be mousing around the interface instead of comfortably selecting content from an interface optimized for browsing via remote, but it will get the job done.

Most of the Xbox 360 sites tell you it's easy to get 1000 points from Madden 06. I blew this off for a long time because I'm not a huge football fan and I didn't plan to drop $50 on the game. Passing through the Xbox 360 section of Hollywood Video, I noticed Madden was in stock, so I figured the $8 5-day rental was worth a shot. What none of the sites tell you is a 5-day rental is overkill. You can add 1000 points to your gamer score in about 6 hours by playing only 4 games.

Here's how to do it:

Step 1: Pick a team

Step 2: Select Franchise and pick New Franchise

Step 3: Confirm your team and Start Franchise

Step 4: Hit B and scroll down to the History Book and view at least 1 NFL record.

With the December 4, 2007 update, Xbox 360 now directly supports streaming DivX AVI movies from your desktop. All you need is Windows Media Player 11 or the Zune software. I personally prefer Windows Media Player 11, because it also supports playing back Amazon Unbox videos on the Xbox 360.

Here's what you need to do to configure your computer to share video, music and photos with your Xbox 360. Make sure your Xbox 360 is turned on and connected to your home network before beginning.

Xbox 360 Bluetooth Headset

Microsoft did a great job with the wireless controllers for the Xbox 360. The grips are comfortable, the buttons are placed well, but they still require a wired connection for the headset. Industrious Flickr user fateit77 hacked together a solution using Jabra's A210 adapter coupled with the Jabra 250 headset, giving him wireless trash talking for all online gaming. The Jabra headset doesn't support Xbox 360 muting and volume control, so you need to do some manual hacking to set things up, but the solution is certainly a stopgap until Microsoft or a third party vendor comes up with an alternative solution. This is a bit pricy off the shelf, but if you happen to have the gear laying around, you can easily game wire free.

Jabra A210

Jabra 250

Download Connect360

Mac OS X streaming support may never officially live inside Xbox 360 consoles, but that doesn't mean Mac owners must go without. The same smart team behind PSP media conversion app PSPWare is back with MP3 and JPG streaming solution Connect360. The app automatically indexes all MP3s in your iTunes library and JPG photos in iPhoto, making them available to any Xbox 360 over a wired or Airport network. With Connect360 active on your Mac, Xbox 360 consoles will automatically detect your Mac and your Mac will detect your Xbox 360. An Access Control List provides control over which Xbox 360 gets access to your Mac, so no need to worry about streaming tunes to the neighbors. While this isn't quite as full featured as the Windows Media Connect experience or the Media Center Edition experience, it's certainly cheaper than buying a PC. [Mac OS X $10.00]

There's some confusion around the appropriate steps to take in adding an Xbox 360 to a home network with optimal results. In an ideal universe, connecting an Xbox 360 with a wired connection is the best course of action. Wired connections generally guarantee close to 100Mbps per machine across a local area network. Wireless networking is significantly less reliable, with things like cordless phones and microwave ovens operating on the same frequency as the 802.11b and 802.11g standards.

802.11a is the standard Microsoft is recommending, but it's not necessary. My own home network is segmented with an Xbox 360 on one 802.11g access point and all other wireless devices are on a second 802.11g access point. My wired Media Center successfully streams the 1080p HD content available from Microsoft's WMV HD Showcase without any hiccups.

When you finally track down an Xbox 360 console, one of the key aspects of a great gaming experience is networking. If your network isn't optimized for your Xbox 360, game play will suffer. From cordless phones running interference to keeping network traffic separated to protecting yourself with the right security measures, you need to make sure your network settings are optimized. The right settings make it easier to stream video and audio, in addition to playing head-to-head on Xbox Live. You don't necessarily need to throw out your existing networking hardware, but there are a number of changes you will want to make if you already have a home network. In the course of my regular column for InformIT.com, I compiled a hit list of suggestions for making sure your connection doesn't drop at a crucial moment in this handful of Xbox 360 Networking Tips.

You may also want to check out some
Xbox 360 Wireless Adapter Alternatives.

After seeing a set of newly announced Xbox Live features for MSN Spaces, I decided to sign up for an account and see how it works. The new features include gamer tag integration, recent games played listing and 5 themes in the Music and Entertainment section loosely based on Xbox Live themes. You can check out a theme and gamer features in my newly created sync2play MSN Spaces account. So far, the experience is more frustrating than anything because the upgrade including the Xbox features wasn't as smooth as some might hope. BetaNews is reporting a number of hiccups during this transition. I'm getting frequent timeouts and error messages during the config process, which is highly frustrating. The end result is full integration with all available Xbox Live features. I'd love to see the Xbox team release some similar modules for global use in Blogger, MySpace.com and TypePad, but I suppose the competitive advantage for MSN Spaces makes sense.

DivX MCE Hack

One of the big gripes everyone has about using an Xbox 360 as an extender for Windows Media Center edition is lack of DivX support. If you can't live without your DivX movies, one solution is to convert them to WMV, which makes them available as part of your compatible media library. Another solution is to use the Brains N Brawn hack to convert DivX files on the fly and stream them to your Xbox 360 using Media Center Extender.

You need some basic understanding of Windows Media Encoder to make the hack work and there are a handful of installation files required, but if you follow the included directions, you'll be streaming DivX movies to your Xbox 360. With any luck, someone will write a plug-in to do this more automagically in the near future. If you can find the right codecs, this could work for other incompatible formats as well.

Tight network security and network-aware applications like Xbox Live are constantly at odds in our computing universe. While there may be firmware updates for wireless routers to automatically solve Xbox Live connection issues in the long run, using your NAT in one of the more secure modes might lead to audio problems or just plain failure to connect your Xbox 360 to Xbox Live. You can do some troubleshooting with a solution posted over at Xbox360Fanboy and details provided from the Test Xbox Live Connection in the Network Settings portion of the System blade. Depending on your network settings, your connection may fail in a Moderate or Strict protection mode on the router.

The solution is to open the ports listed over at Xbox360Fanboy.

UDP 88, UDP 3074, and TCP 3074 for those too lazy to click-thru.

I started working with Chris Pirillo at Lockergnome during the summer of 2000 when the company was still based in an Iowa basement. This was before Chris became host of TechTV's Call For Help and launched Gnomedex as one of the most important annual tech gatherings on the planet. On 15 January 2001, Lockergnome's second daily newsletter, Lockergnome Digital Media, launched with writings from both myself and Adam Finley (who currently writes for Weblogs, Inc's Ad Jab). While Digital Media was officially an email newsletter, it was unofficially blogging before anyone really paid attention to blogging. We posted 5 or 6 new things every day and frequently crashed the server's of multimedia freeware apps by sending too much traffic. Five years later, I'm still doing the same thing, although my writing has improved and my tutorials cover a broad range of media topics.

While I'm certain I'd be doing something online today, I wouldn't be where I am right now if I hadn't talked Chris Pirillo into taking a chance on my writing. I've always been something of a media hacker, figuring out how to get audio gear to do stuff it wasn't officially designed to do. I'm a multimedia enthusiast to the extreme. Chris and I don't always see eye-to-eye on everything, but I'm forever thankful that he gave me my "big break".

To celebrate five years of online publishing, I'm giving away my brand new (never opened) Xbox 360. I could sell it on eBay for more than I paid to get it, but I'd rather give it away. As I mentioned earlier, the first issue of the email newsletter currently known as Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle came into digital being in January 2001. Five years later, I'm writing about how to hack your digital audio, digital movies and consumer electronic gadgets on a full-time basis, while sitting in my home office sipping coffee in tradeshow t-shirts and pajama pants avoiding the corporate rat race. In celebration of this five year milestone, I'm giving away an Xbox 360 Core System bundled with a 12-month Xbox Live Gold Subscription to one lucky individual.

I already have the Xbox 360 in my possession, so there's no camping out in line waiting for it to become available. I'm even paying shipping to get the game console from my doorstep to yours.

So how can you get the Xbox 360? Simple. Tell your audience about me. Blog about me. Blog about a problem I helped you solve. Call me names in your public forum, if it helps your ego. On 1 February 2006, I'll assess the server stats for jakeludington.com. If your site referred the most visitors based on my stats you get the Xbox 360. I'll post a daily top 20 list of the leading sites and number of total referrals each day starting on 10 January 2006 and continuing with daily updates thru 31 January 2006. If you place second, third, fourth or fifth, you'll receive a $50 gift certificate from Amazon.com.

For complete details, check out the Xbox 360 Giveaway page, where I layout some simple rules and where the stats will begin appearing on 10 January 2006.

Over at InformIT.com, where I write weekly updates for the Digital Lifestyle Reference Guide, I posted a hit list of 10 things you might not know about Xbox 360, ranging from compatible games from the previous list to compatible peripherals, to alternate ways to connect your PC and Xbox 360 for the ultimate home entertainment experience. If you aren't a gamer, don't count the Xbox 360 out of your house just yet. I'm a binge gamer, as in I don't game for months and then I'll go on a gaming binge where I'll do nothing but game for 2 days straight, so gaming isn't a big part of my life. There are plenty of reasons everyone will want an Xbox 360 in their home, the same way everyone started thinking about having a computer at home back in 1994 when the Internet first hit the public consciousness. This hit list of 10 Things You Didn't Know About Xbox 360 is part practical advice and part list of reasons you should stand in line at Best Buy to get one whether you ever purchase a gaming title or not.

I'm trying to connect my Xbox 360 and computer using Windows Media Connect. I want to listen to my music collection on my PC through the Xbox 360. My computer says Windows Media Connect started properly, but I found an error that says Service WMConnectCDS failed to start correctly, due to InitializeNetworkMonitoring returning error 0x80029c4a. How do I fix this?

Microsoft offers two convenient ways to connect your Xbox 360 and your PC. The best way to connect is to have a Media Center Edition PC, because you get all the functionality of Media Center through your television and Xbox 360. Windows Media Connect is the second method, which simply requires a PC with XP and Windows Media Player 10. While the Media Center connection appears to work almost flawlessly, the Windows Media Connect option appears to have a random connection glitch caused by some a fouled up permission in Windows.

The error you are seeing is caused by a required file, stdole2.tlb, not having appropriate permissions. To repair the problem, you need to be logged in as a user with administrative rights. The repair is done from the command line. Open a Run dialog box from Start > Run. In the Run dialog type in CACLS C:\WINDOWS\system32\stdole2.tlb /E /G NetworkService:F.

CACLS is the tool used by Windows to edit the Access Control Layer, which is what tells the Windows which users have access to which resources in Windows. The /E designation indicates you want to edit the Access Control Layer. /G grants rights to a specific user, in this case NetworkService, which is a system level user. In assigning rights, you have the choice of granting one of the following:

R Read
W Write
C Change (read/write)
F Full control

In this particular instance, NetworkService needs Full Control to make Windows Media Connect work properly.

For more info on Windows Media Connect troubleshooting, make sure you visit the Windows Media Connect Player forums.