Items tagged with 360
An Xbox Live customer has filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging that the company has been renewing subscriptions and double-billing customers without their consent. The suit was filed by Ryan Graves, an Indiana resident that claims Microsoft's pre-paid subscriptions are "governed by vague and onerous terms of use." Graves claims that he let his automatically-renewing Xbox Live subscription expire by declining to update his credit card information, and that when he renewed the account several months later with a new card, he was charged for both the new subscription and the previously expired automatic subscription. Microsoft told Graves that the issue was not a mistake, according...
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Lian Li launches PC-XB01: the Xbox 360 Chassis replacementLian Li shows Microsoft how it’s done! 14 August 2008, Keelung, Taiwan – Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd will launch the PC-XB01 chassis for the Xbox 360 today. The XB01 is a chassis replacement for the XBox 360 chassis, which alleviates heating issues from hot components and reduces noise from vibrating optical drives in the original case design. The PC-XB01 requires DIY knowledge for the transfer of components, but once completed, heat will no longer be a factor in dampening your XBox 360 gaming experience. Lian Li is an executive upper-class aluminum PC chassis manufacturer, well renowned as the ultimate brand for modding and stylish designs....
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Rumors have been circulating of a possible $50 price cut for the Xbox 360 Pro, the 20 GB model. While still a rumor, more evidence has arisen which seems to not just point to a $50 price cut, but also to the day: this coming Sunday.Below is an image scanned from a Target flier. Not only is the price cut by $50, Target is throwing in a $25 gift card as well.To the right, you can see a scanned image from a Best Buy flier. They're not throwing in a gift card, so Target has the better deal, for those of you who are frugal.The last such price cut for the Xbox 360 Pro came in August 2007, when it was cut from $399 to $349.This does leave the Xbox 360 Core in an awkward price point, at only $20 less...
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Microsoft had all sorts of trouble with the reliability of its XBox 360. Tales of the "Red Ring of Death" gave potential buyers pause, and Microsoft spend a small fortune replacing defective units. One of the main reasons the game console was so fragile is that the 90nm scale GPU ran very hot. 65nm chips to the rescue!Microsoft will make available its Jasper version of XBox360 game consoles in August this year and has contracted dedicated chipmakers to build chips for the latest machine. Contracts for manufacturing, packaging and testing the 65nm Xenon microprocessors have gone to International Business Machines (IBM).TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) is chosen to make the 65nm...
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Remember the father who sold his pot-smoking son's Guitar Hero III game on eBay as punishment? The father netted $9K in that auction. The mom here won't get that much, but at least she's teaching her kid a lesson.A 13-year-old kid in Virginia has backtalked to his mom for the last time. When he was told to do his chores instead of play Xbox 360, he went and intentionally broke the vacuum cleaner to get out of it. What'd his mom do? Well, she's selling his Xbox and all his games on eBay. And that was before she found out he was surfing porn sites by checking out his browser's cookies.Porn on a teenage boy's PC? No! Let's hope she gets enough for a new vacuum. eBay needs a new...
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The rumor keeps circulating that Microsoft is indeed going to include a Blu-ray player in future Xbox 360s. Microsoft continually denies the rumors, such as the one started by DigiTimes regarding a deal with Lite-On to manufacture said drive.Microsoft's PR department had this say:“No. Lite-On is not manufacturing Blu-ray drives for Xbox 360. As we have stated, games are what are driving consumers to purchase game consoles and we remain focused on providing the largest library of blockbuster game available.“For our customers who want a premium movie experience we offer the largest library of on-demand HD content available and the ability to play back DVDs in high definition.“Microsoft seems...
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Some say Microsoft chose poorly when they backed Toshiba's HD DVD standard, and that had Microsoft backed Blu-ray instead, there wouldn't have been much of a format war. There's another group, including Michael Bay, that thinks Microsoft intentionally chose a standard that they didn't think would win in an attempt to undermine consumer confidence in disc formats altogether. Why?So they could build up their HD content on their digital distribution service:"Microsoft has been expanding the HD video capabilities of both Vista Media Center and Xbox Live Marketplace. The Marketplace's HD content library is modest today, but the software giant clearly has plans to change that.So, let's put everything...
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After Toshiba pulled the plug on HD DVD the rumor was that Microsoft was going to offer support for the Blu-ray devices both in Windows and on the Xbox 360. Now Microsoft is claiming that they're not presently working on such a device for the Xbox 360:"Xbox is not currently in talks with Sony or the Blu-ray Association to integrate Blu-ray into the Xbox experience," (Xbox group product manage Aaron) Greenberg told Reuters in an interview.One possible reason why Microsoft isn't developing a Blu-ray player just yet is that they might be planning on pushing their Xbox Live video rental service harder. Why back a competitor's technology when you can vertically integrate?...
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According to a report in the Financial Times, Sony is in talks with Microsoft about offering a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360. As many of you know, until recently Sony has touted Blu-ray as an advantage the PlayStation 3 holds over the Xbox 360. Microsoft had backed Toshiba’s HD-DVD format and offered an affordable, external HD-DVD drive for the 360, but by now we all know how that worked out... "A Blu-ray drive in a 360 would make Microsoft more competitive with the PS3, but it would also mean extra revenues for Sony’s electronics division. It would also add further cost to the 360, meaning a premium edition of the console could be necessary. A Blu-ray drive could be incorporated...
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If you're a professional looking for a laptop/mobile workstation, NVIDIA has a new graphics chip you may want to consider before making you're purchasing decision. Here's the scoop on the Quadro FX 3600M:“Engineered to deliver high performance and visualization of extensive datasets with extremely high image quality in an ISV-certified, notebook platform, the Quadro FX 3600M is available as a fully qualified MXM v2.1A type-III form factor mobile workstation graphics board with: 512 MB G-DDR3 memory 256-bit memory interface 51.2 GBps graphic memory bandwidth OpenGL 2.1, Shader Model 4.0, and DirectX 10 PowerMizer™ adaptive power management toolsThe complete line of NVIDIA Quadro FX...
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There seems to be one last detail we need to take care of before we put the fork in the HD DVD format: The hard drive for the Xbox 360. It appears Microsoft is preparing to offer an Xbox360 with a stand-alone Blu-ray drive as early as May of 2008.Michael Ephraim the Managing Director of Sony Computer Entertainment said: "We would welcome Microsoft to the Blu-ray stable. In fact it is quite logical for them as the PS3 has been very succesful in driving consumers to Blu-ray. In fact we believe that it has done more to win the format war than traditional Blu-ray player".When asked whether Sony would grant Microsoft a Blu-ray licence he said: "That is up to Sony Corporate but I see no reason...
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Call this a rumor, but a particularly cool one.Netflix may consider extending its Watch Instantly movie streaming feature to game consoles, says one customer presented with a survey by the company. Polling its subscriber base, the rental outlet asks households if they would like to watch both movies and TV shows through either the PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 360 and suggests a custom software implementation that would allow the feature.No confirmation yet, and only one report of this survey, which makes this report very questionable yet. It would indeed be a cool feature, however....
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Just in case you didn't catch the new link at the top of the page, we’re writing to let you all know that we’ve just posted a mid-range workstation-class GPU round-up at HotHardware. We look at three cards in particular – two from ATI and one from Nvidia. From ATI, we’ve got the new FireGL V5600 512 MB card along with the low-end FireGL V3600 256 MB card. And in the Nvidia camp, we’ve got the popular QuadroFX 1700 512 MB card. All three of these cards are very tolerable in terms of size, power consumption, noise, and (most of all) price . While one shouldn't expect top of the line performance from them, in our tests we found performance in many applications to be impressively...
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Just a few weeks ago, we took a look at the two fastest workstation class graphics cards currently on the market, the FireGL V8650 from ATI/AMD and the QuadroFX 5600 from Nvidia. We found both products to be quite powerful and thought either one would be a solid choice for a high-end workstation. However, the one comment which was repeated over and over again when looking at those cards was that unless you worked for a major studio or production firm, they were simply not very affordable. At nearly $3,000 a piece, the FireGL V8650 and QuadroFX 5600 require large investments. However, don’t think that just because a graphics card is targeted for workstation use that...
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I'm sure you've heard about the price drop that was just announced for the Xbox 360; the Xbox 360 Premium model has dropped from $400 to $350. However, more quietly, Microsoft has also added a freebie into the mix - a hardware refresh that includes an HDMI port, previously available only on the Elite model. This was rumored at first, and now has been confirmed. Microsoft confirmed late Wednesday the existence of newly updated Xbox 360 units that include HDMI support. The news comes amid reports that new machines are now available in stores coinciding with today's price drops. The company denied comment on the port addition to cheaper Core models not to mention the rumored cooler running processors....
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If you’re an Xbox 360 owner and you’re looking for a place to download more of your favorite shows and movies, then you may want to look into CinemaNow. A recent update to their software package has enabled more than 7000 videos to be downloaded and viewed by Xbox 360 owners: “CinemaNow Inc., the premier online destination for downloadable Hollywood movies and TV shows, today released an upgraded version of its 'Media Manager', a proprietary software application enabling the download, management and playback of video content. CinemaNow video downloads are now directly accessible by networked Xbox 360 users, and its Burn-to-DVD service is now compatible with Windows Vista users worldwide. This...
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Yes, literally speaking, Microsoft has made an announcement to deal with the Xbox 360’s chronic overheating problems by enhancing the level of cooling in the Xbox 360. Microsoft has installed a new heatpipe and heatsink to cool the AMD Xenon chipset in the console. The new heatpipe and heatsink will reduce overall case temperature and prevent the dreaded, so called “red ring of death,” an indicator that one’s system has croaked from heat stroke. However, it’s unclear whether Microsoft will include such cooling solutions in new units, or just in units that have been shipped to them for repair. The Xbox 360 has been notorious for its high rate of failure due to heat, especially those that...
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The Folding@Home team is constantly striving to add support for more devices to join the good fight against diseases ranging from Parkinson's to Alzheimer's. First they added support for alternative OSes, then video cards, and now a second gaming console, the Xbox 360, looks like it has a fair chance at showing its processing muscles off. The PS3’s in the distributed computing project has Xbox 360 owners curious if and how well their consoles would work on Folding@home. Peter Moore, VP of Microsoft’s entertainment division, recently addressed that issue saying, “We continue to look at this and see whether there’s real value,” adding that Bill Gates “quite frankly has had a conversation about...
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The Inquirer is reporting that the Xbox 360 is about to get a web camera, and that it will be initially used for instant messaging: "Microsoft will provide the Xbox 360 spring update access to Windows Live Messenger with people able to console themselves by chatting to up to six folk at once while playing games or watching movies. The software will allow people to use existing relationships on Windows Live Messenger. The chat function will work by using either the Xbox 360's virtual keyboard or a USB keyboard connectde (sic) to the console." While chatting is great, there would seem to be other...
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Starting the week of May 7th, Xbox 360 users will have access to Windows Live Messenger features, and be able to taunt their friends seamlessly. Here's a pic of the QWERTY beast you can do it with: Members of the six-million-strong Xbox Live community currently send more than two million text and voice messages a day and can now use Windows Live Messenger to text chat with up to six people on their contact list at one time, while playing games, listening to music, or watching movies. Text chat adds to the variety of options friends and families already have to communicate with on Xbox Live, including voice and video chat....
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So, does the popular gaming magazine confirm the rumors of a new Xbox 360 version? According to some leaked scans, yes it does. The new Xbox 360 Elite is expected to come in black, with a 120GB Hard Drive, HDMI output, and a $479 price tag. It's also rumored that once the new Elite's sell out, the hardware will replace current Premium systems, minus the black case. "Considering the number of corroborating rumors it seems likely that at least a few of the details, like price and HDMI inclusion, will indeed become reality. Until an official announcement is made, however, nothing can be confirmed, and Microsoft once again declined to comment on the speculation of an Elite edition."...
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Harcoreware.net has an interesting article on-line today that details the power consumption characteristics of today's top three new consoles while playing back video and playing games. And for the sake of comparison they also built a mid-range gaming PC to see how it stacked up. "Today's video game console war is taking an interesting twist, as we fire up our trusty power meter to look at power consumption levels of the 3 newest video game consoles. We tested power consumption during video game play, DVD playback, HD video, standby mode, and other console functions. We also added in a PC and a dedicated DVD player to make things interesting....
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