Xbox 360 Spring Update Adds Messenger, Improvements

[Dark Star]

New Xbox 360 Dashboard adds a plethora of new features

The biannual Xbox 360 dashboard update is finally upon us, and new in this Spring edition are a plethora of new features. The one that Microsoft seems to be most proud to advertise is the integration of Windows Live Messenger into the Xbox 360 Dashboard, allowing gamers to text chat while gaming, listening to music, or watching videos.

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Xbox 360 users can chat with up to 20 contacts in a single conversation, and have up to six different conversations at the same time with people on PCs, mobile phones and other Xbox 360 consoles. Current relationships on Windows Live Messenger and Xbox Live are now unified on Xbox 360 and users can see at a glance if their existing friends on Windows Live Messenger have gamertags.

“Bringing the largest IM community in the world, Windows Live Messenger, to Xbox 360 makes sense, as Xbox Live has really become the largest social network on television," said Jerry Johnson, product unit manager of Xbox Live at Microsoft. "For our growing community of 6 million on Xbox Live, using Xbox 360 is a very social, connected experience. They are using Xbox 360 to play games, music and movies while simultaneously communicating with one another through video, voice and text chat. With this announcement we are simultaneously expanding the access of Xbox Live users to existing friends and family while introducing Windows Live Messenger users to the benefits of Xbox 360."

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To further facilitate easier text entry on the Xbox 360, Microsoft will release sometime in the summer a QWERTY keypad attachment for the Xbox 360 controller. Perhaps the most effective solution is to plug a USB keyboard into the console, which is now an officially supported feature of the Xbox 360. Those without USB keyboards or the keypad attachment will have to enter text using a virtual on-screen keyboard.

Chatty features aside, gamers will be happy to know that the Achievement system is now more informative. Achievements will now pop-up, notifying the gamer of the name of the achievement and the value, without the need to manually check the list. Also, now the Dashboard will identify which game is in the DVD-ROM drive, rather than simply displaying the “Play Game†text it previously did.

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A new Xbox Live Marketplace “blade†has been added to better focus on downloadable game content, TV shows and movies. Great news for those who frequent the Xbox Live Video Marketplace is progressive download control letting people fast-forward, rewind, pause and resume as their video is downloaded. Furthermore, extension of the background download functionality will allow owners to set their Xbox 360 console to turn off automatically after downloads are complete.

Updates to Xbox Live Arcade allow owners to quickly see which games their friends are playing and join in the fun. Xbox Live members can also compare progress of leaderboard scores and Achievements directly with all friends on their friends list. A new option in Auto Downloads will provide faster access to the entire collection of free, trial-version Xbox Live Arcade games.

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New on the side of Xbox 360’s video playback is support for H.264 and MPEG-4 codecs, though unfortunately for DivX downloaders, the Xbox 360 will only natively support the WMV and MP4 containers—not AVI or MKV.

The Spring Update is now available to every Xbox 360 owner through Xbox Live or on Xbox.com.

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Source: Daily Tech

 

[Quad Master]

Support for H.264 and Divx is one thing which i was waiting for.

 

[Ck Nish]

Now if only Xbox live would actually come to India so this could be of some use.

 

[Alias]

Check this out..

Xbox 360 Spring Update Improves VGA Image Quality

Xbox 360 games now look better than ever in VGA

Although the new Windows Live Messenger integration and improved Achievements system are the more widely advertised new features of the Spring Update, a little known new feature has crept its way into the latest Dashboard version – improved image quality when using the Xbox 360 VGA output.

A long-standing complaint of the VGA output on the Xbox 360 is its “washed out†picture quality, where colors on the screen would not appear as bright and vibrant as compared to running the console to the TV using component cables.

The culprit for this problem is the difference between how HDTV and PC displays interpret black levels. A correctly calibrated HDTV typically expects a black level to be at 7.5 IRE (with anything below that to be “blacker than blackâ€), while a PC display has its black set to zero. The Xbox 360, which is tweaked for televisions, has its IRE tuned for the HDTV norm of 7.5 IRE.

However, due to the fact that most HDTVs manufacturers expect that VGA inputs are for use with PCs rather than the Xbox 360, most televisions have its IRE for VGA at zero to accommodate a PC video card’s output. The result of this is that while the Xbox 360 is sending out a 7.5 IRE for calling for black, the HDTV is interpreting that as a call for something less than black, like a pleasant shade of grey.

The Spring Update adds a new feature allowing users to tweak the IRE setting that the Xbox 360 sends out to the television. “Both Xbox 360 Elite and current Xbox 360 units will have a spring (console) update which adds support for different video levels for VGA output (“7.5 IRE vs 0â€) ... using this setting you should be able to use computer monitors in addition to TVs with resolutions all the way up to 1080p with high fidelity and no issues with HDCP handshaking,†explained Amir Majidimehr, VP of Microsoft’s Consumer Media Technology Group. “So for current users, I highly recommend trying this update with your VGA connection to see if it does the job for you. Note that this is a console update and will work for both games and of course, HD DVD.â€

Surprisingly, instead of giving the user direct control of the IRE setting, the Spring Update added three non-descriptive options to the Xbox 360 display settings – standard, intermediate and expanded – with no indication of which setting represents what level of blackness. DailyTech decided to put each of the three levels to the test. Presented in the images to the right is a comparison of each of the three reference levels using Need for Speed Carbon as the test game and King Kong as the test HD DVD. “Standard†appears to retain the same black level setting (7.5 IRE) as it was before the update, and the “expanded†setting looks to present the blackest blacks (0 IRE), with the “intermediate†setting being somewhere in between.

While the increased richness and color in Need for Speed Carbon is noticeable, the more appreciable difference of the new IRE settings comes when watching movies. In all parts of King Kong, but especially the dark scenes where accurate black levels are essential, the new “expanded†reference level produced images that were far richer and less washed out, providing a significantly improved picture.

Source: DailyTech
This is good news for those using a PC Lcd screen as output as before the colour were pretty washed out..

Bahh.. If they had come out with this 1 month bac I would taken the Xbox 360 with a 20.1 LCD monitor..

 

[thexfactor]

Although the new Windows Live Messenger integration and improved Achievements system are the more widely advertised new features of the Spring Update, a little known new feature has crept its way into the latest Dashboard version – improved image quality when using the Xbox 360 VGA output.

A long-standing complaint of the VGA output on the Xbox 360 is its “washed out” picture quality, where colors on the screen would not appear as bright and vibrant as compared to running the console to the TV using component cables.

The culprit for this problem is the difference between how HDTV and PC displays interpret black levels. A correctly calibrated HDTV typically expects a black level to be at 7.5 IRE (with anything below that to be “blacker than black”), while a PC display has its black set to zero. The Xbox 360, which is tweaked for televisions, has its IRE tuned for the HDTV norm of 7.5 IRE.

However, due to the fact that most HDTVs manufacturers expect that VGA inputs are for use with PCs rather than the Xbox 360, most televisions have its IRE for VGA at zero to accommodate a PC video card’s output. The result of this is that while the Xbox 360 is sending out a 7.5 IRE for calling for black, the HDTV is interpreting that as a call for something less than black, like a pleasant shade of grey.

The Spring Update adds a new feature allowing users to tweak the IRE setting that the Xbox 360 sends out to the television. “Both Xbox 360 Elite and current Xbox 360 units will have a spring (console) update which adds support for different video levels for VGA output (“7.5 IRE vs 0”) ... using this setting you should be able to use computer monitors in addition to TVs with resolutions all the way up to 1080p with high fidelity and no issues with HDCP handshaking,” explained Amir Majidimehr, VP of Microsoft’s Consumer Media Technology Group. “So for current users, I highly recommend trying this update with your VGA connection to see if it does the job for you. Note that this is a console update and will work for both games and of course, HD DVD.”

DailyTech - Xbox 360 Spring Update Improves VGA Image Quality