New XBOX Experience - General Discussion

I just grabbed a 120GB HDD (WD1200BEVS) for $57 shipped (brand new, 3 year warranty). I plan on doing the swap as soon as it gets here. If all goes well, i'll have saved $100+.
 
[quote name='SynGamer']I just grabbed a 120GB HDD (WD1200BEVS) for $57 shipped (brand new, 3 year warranty). I plan on doing the swap as soon as it gets here. If all goes well, i'll have saved $100+.[/quote]

Care to explain that deal? It sounds too good to be true.
 
[quote name='ArthurDigbySellers']Care to explain that deal? It sounds too good to be true.[/QUOTE]

I don't think he's referring to the official Microsoft 120 drive. :)
 
[quote name='SynGamer']I just grabbed a 120GB HDD (WD1200BEVS) for $57 shipped (brand new, 3 year warranty). I plan on doing the swap as soon as it gets here. If all goes well, i'll have saved $100+.[/quote]

If you don't mind, could you let us know what website you ordered from? And how fast the shipping is and if everything goes well? I've also been planning on doing the swap for my 360, but there's not exactly a lot of online sites that sell that specific model.
 
[quote name='WhipSmartBanky']I know Microsoft is requiring a hard drive or memory card...anyone know what happens if a system is booted without either after the NXE is installed?[/quote]


Hey, a new question that has not been asked or answered.
I actually wondered and did this yesterday.
I booted up the NXE 360 without the hard drive and
without the memory card that holds my gamertag.
Guess what?




Still NXE!
Put in my memory card with gamertag to play Far Cry 2.

But I've been swapping my memory card between
my NXE offline 360 and my old Blades online 360.
The memory card doesn't hold the update
and didn't ask if the other 360 wants to update either.
I originally put the NXE folder on a flash drive to update.

Okay, so what happens if I put my 120GB HDD on the NXE
because I want to install more than one game at a time,
I put the NXE on the old 20GB HDD.

I think it's the avatars and their creation that take at least 128MB,
hence the need for a save device.
Unless you got the invite, you can't make an avatar yet.
 
[quote name='Redrazorback']If you don't mind, could you let us know what website you ordered from? And how fast the shipping is and if everything goes well? I've also been planning on doing the swap for my 360, but there's not exactly a lot of online sites that sell that specific model.[/quote]
I ordered from TigerDirect.com but it's now out of stock. My drive will arrive on Thursday though according to UPS. You can get the drive for $60 shipped through J&R.com or Amazon.com (other sellers).
 
[quote name='gordojones88']Hey, a new question that has not been asked or answered.
I actually wondered and did this yesterday.
I booted up the NXE 360 without the hard drive and
without the memory card that holds my gamertag.
Guess what?




Still NXE!
Put in my memory card with gamertag to play Far Cry 2.

But I've been swapping my memory card between
my NXE offline 360 and my old Blades online 360.
The memory card doesn't hold the update
and didn't ask if the other 360 wants to update either.
I originally put the NXE folder on a flash drive to update.

Okay, so what happens if I put my 120GB HDD on the NXE
because I want to install more than one game at a time,
I put the NXE on the old 20GB HDD.

I think it's the avatars and their creation that take at least 128MB,
hence the need for a save device.
Unless you got the invite, you can't make an avatar yet.[/QUOTE]

You are right. The core OS of the 360 (Whatever it is) resides on a ROM chip on the motherboard (not sure how big it is, but I think I heard 64MB somewhere).

I don't know for sure, but the 128 megs needed of storage most likely is for Avatar and various caching. But the NXE itself has to almost entirely reside on the ROM chip every 360 has.
 
[quote name='SynGamer']I just grabbed a 120GB HDD (WD1200BEVS) for $57 shipped (brand new, 3 year warranty). I plan on doing the swap as soon as it gets here. If all goes well, i'll have saved $100+.[/quote]


Well, some of us on here have grabbed a used Xbox 360 120GB HDD from Gamestop for $70.
$100 used - %20 coupon - %10 Edge = $70

This is without fear of getting console and gamertag banned from LIVE.
I've seen the 120GB HDD in every Gamestop I've been to the last month.
You can do this right now for $80 with the current %10-off email coupon and Edge card.

Altering your 360 this way is against your contract with Microsoft.
They have the right to brick your console permanently.
How do you know the new NXE update won't be able to detect this?
Read other forum posts and you'll see people not being able to play their
Arcade games from their "new" HDD even after using the DRM licensing tool.
Imagine losing all your console, hard drive, gamesaves, and gamertag to save $20.
 
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[quote name='gordojones88']Well, some of us on here have grabbed a used 120GB HDD from Gamestop for $70.
$100 used - %20 coupon - %10 Edge = $70

This is without fear of getting console and gamertag banned from LIVE.
I've seen the 120GB HDD in every Gamestop I've been to the last month.
You can do this right now for $80 with the current %10-off email coupon and Edge card.

Altering your 360 this way is against your contract with Microsoft.
They have the right to brick your console permanently.
How do you know the new NXE update won't be able to detect this?
Read other forum posts and you'll see people not being able to play their
Arcade games from their "new" HDD even after using the DRM licensing tool.
Imagine losing all your console, hard drive, gamesaves, and gamertag to save $20.[/quote]
There shouldn't be any fear of being banned. You're taking the official files on the MS 120GB HDD and putting them onto another (Western Digital) 120GB HDD. You're basically flashing the HDD. You ARE NOT touching anything on the console itself, hence why it's safe. And in my case, i have a 3 year warranty on my drive (brand new).
 
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[quote name='gordojones88']Well, some of us on here have grabbed a used MS 360 120GB HDD from Gamestop for $70.
$100 used - %20 coupon - %10 Edge = $70

This is without fear of getting console and gamertag banned from LIVE.
I've seen the 120GB HDD in every Gamestop I've been to the last month.
You can do this right now for $80 with the current %10 off coupon and Edge card.
Altering your 360 this way is against your contract with Microsoft.
They have the right to brick your console permanently.[/quote]

Oh goodness. Not even Microsoft can peer into your 360 hard drive to see if it's modded or not, and they certainly wouldn't ban you from Live. That would be silly since Live is a cashcow and they love all the money we toss at them buying stuff that requires no packaging, shipping or store fees.
 
Yeah, it would be impossible for MS to detect anything in this case, because there is no modded firmware or game back-ups present. Done correctly, it would come up as the same, exact thing as the official MS drive.
 
[quote name='bigdaddybruce44']Yeah, it would be impossible for MS to detect anything in this case, because there is no modded firmware or game back-ups present. Done correctly, it would come up as the same, exact thing as the official MS drive.[/quote]

And what would they do anyway, take away our warranty? Not let us buy their stuff anymore? Pardon my vitriol. I just get annoyed at Microsoft sometimes.

Of course if one were pirating games, that would be another story.

[quote name='gordojones88']
They have the right to brick your console permanently.
How do you know the new NXE update won't be able to detect this?
Read other forum posts and you'll see people not being able to play their
Arcade games from their "new" HDD even after using the DRM licensing tool.
Imagine losing all your console, hard drive, gamesaves, and gamertag to save $20.[/quote]

Microsoft dislikes used hard drives being sold just as much as they dislike users swapping their official hard drives, too, though, mind you. How do you know the NXE can't detect that your used drive hasn't been used in someone else's system? Be careful! They have the right to brick your system and ban your gamercard, all because you bought a used drive instead of a new one!

:) I'm giving you a hard time, obviously. They most certainly do not have the right to brick anyone's system! You're paranoid, my friend. And no one is looking down upon you for buying an official drive anyway. I bought the official 120gb drive myself, on clearance. The only thing I hate more than overpriced official system accessories is buying used from CrookStop! :) That's my own beef, though.
 
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I guess it's important that if you're flashing a the 360 hard drive, you need SATA connectors. My computer is a couple years old and only has IDE so I can't do this. Just a thing to keep in mind.*
*I believe there's adapters for SATA to IDE or SATA to USB but that costs extra of course.
 
I just built my computer this past summer so i should have all the connectors necessary. I'll be sure to report how this goes on Thursday when i do the 'mod'. And NO, i am not running pirated games. As i said, that requires flashing your console's firmware and i definitely don't want to mess with that.
 
I don't have the cord in front of me, so I cannot check. But, if you are installing the WD drive, does the Microsoft hard-drive transfer kit still work to move your old stuff to the new drive? Do you need two Microsoft HDD enclosures?
 
[quote name='Rig']I don't have the cord in front of me, so I cannot check. But, if you are installing the WD drive, does the Microsoft hard-drive transfer kit still work to move your old stuff to the new drive? Do you need two Microsoft HDD enclosures?[/quote]
You are basically taking your 20GB HDD out of the enclosure, hooking it up to your computer and dumping files from it. Then you are hooking up the new 120GB HDD and partitioning it along with putting the official 120GB files onto it as well.
 
[quote name='SynGamer']You are basically taking your 20GB HDD out of the enclosure, hooking it up to your computer and dumping files from it. Then you are hooking up the new 120GB HDD and partitioning it along with putting the official 120GB files onto it as well.[/quote]

I see. The article listed above really didn't mention much. This one was more descriptive.
 
[quote name='Rig']I see. The article listed above really didn't mention much. This one was more descriptive.[/quote]
I have the thread at the top of that forum bookmarked, the one about HDDHackr.
 
When you crack open your 20GB HDD and modify the internals in any way,
you are indeed in violation of the terms of your Xbox Live service.

I am not paranoid or concerned or accusatory.
I'm just giving a friendly little shout-out that promoting this mod
might have some unintended risk involved during some later update.
This the NXE experience thread, not "This is how to mod your Xbox" thread.
 
It's already been confirmed that there are no problems for people with a WD/modded 120GB HDD and the NXE. So i thought i would throw it out there.
 
[quote name='greyzieoriental']this video does the trick too, i prefer visuals over reading

[youtube]3WR9inneEkA[/youtube][/quote]
Nice video, but that doesn't explain how you go about flashing the firmware to the drive to allow it to be read properly by the 360 and the software.
 
[quote name='YodaEXE']Nice video, but that doesn't explain how you go about flashing the firmware to the drive to allow it to be read properly by the 360 and the software.[/quote]The files on the USB thumb drive that you're going to use to boot up contain the .bin file which flashes to the new HDD so that the console reads it as an official drive.
 
[quote name='SynGamer']The files on the USB thumb drive that you're going to use to boot up contain the .bin file which flashes to the new HDD so that the console reads it as an official drive.[/quote]
Hmm, I see. I'm really considering doing this now. Sounds like a much better solution than spending $150 on a 120gb drive from Microsoft.
 
[quote name='gordojones88']When you crack open your 20GB HDD and modify the internals in any way,
you are indeed in violation of the terms of your Xbox Live service.

I am not paranoid or concerned or accusatory.
I'm just giving a friendly little shout-out that promoting this mod
might have some unintended risk involved during some later update.
This the NXE experience thread, not "This is how to mod your Xbox" thread.[/quote]

Understood, and I didn't intend to be a turd or anything either. I did just want to assert my personal (maybe too strong) opinion that, at least as was phrased above, there shouldn't be any difficulties. The appropriate non-official 120gb HDD inside the official enclosure should function in the same manner as the official, and while it does void the warranty, at least of the hard drive, they'd have no way of knowing. (And, to beat a dead horse, sorry horsie, if they did know, there's really nothing they could do, in my personal opinion.)
 
I don't think I will install anything cause I'm at the bare minimum after I install any game. Unless the game install dramatically speeds up the load time, then I probably won't install anything.
 
Does anyone happen to have a one month netflix trial if so PM me....

I really wanna try out the netflix streaming and I know people were handing them out awhile back on this thread but I missed them.....
 
I'll check my account, Goodeye, and see if I have one.

Might be later today before I can get back to you. On my way out to run errands and such.
 
Since I let my Gold account lapse for a bit anyways I went ahead and installed the NXE. It is leaps in bounds ahead of the old system in terms of usability for me. With so many games played, it used to take a good minute to a minute and a half to pull up my ACH list on my 360. Now it pulls up in less than 2 seconds.

Same with the install feature. Fracture for me had huge loads times as I was playing through the campaign. After installing to the hard drive, the loading times are about half as long for that specific game for me. The noise level is infinitely better as well since I have a fairly old system that can be quite noisy.

The rest of the features dont really do much for me, but these two things alone make this a great update.
 
for those in the official test group, how is the selection of streaming movies for netflix? Is there a list available somewhere? I own a shitload of dvd's/hddvd/blu ray but I am leaning more to renting/ streaming movies. I am sure in the future that netflix streaming will have a great library but I wanted to know if it was worth signing up now or when the library is more flushed out.
 
Anyone hooked up through VGA on a 1440x900 monitor? I've got black bars on the sides in NXE and games. :\

edit: nevermind. found out it does that to maintain the aspect ratio
 
In the NXE early, the real NXE not the "non-switch-flipped" one. Kind of goofy, Avatars are dumb (show me software that uses them as well as Miis and I might be down), Netflix is cool but I do that today with other software, and the new interface is smoother than I thought it would be. The HDD installs piss me off, though.

Even though the NXE lets the user install games in full to the XBox 360 hard drive, it still requires the disc for the particular game to be in the drive before starting up so it can check the security info on the disc. This is a move straight out of the PC gaming playbook, where developers have relied upon a disc check authentication step for eons. However, while it peeves me to a degree on the PC where you're usually sitting within arm's reach of the machine, I find that this move in the XBox space really incenses me far more than I expected it would.

While I understand the motivation and the desire to hold to core tenets of hardcore Digital Rights Management, this move violates my first rule of DRM: do not inconvenience your paying customers. We have been over this rule a few times in the past, with Amber's troubles with Steam, and with my own take on the Spore activation saga, but the basic rule remains the same. This has never been a concern in the era of removable console media before because the protection was inherent to the platform design. Games were stored on removable media, and in order to switch games, you needed to swap media. However, now that I've got all these games loaded onto the hard drive of my 360, every time I stand up to swap from Gears of War 2 to Lost Odyssey I know that everything the system needs to play the game is already in the box, and I'm doing a dance to satisfy Microsoft and prove that I own a legal copy of the game. Now, the paying customer is being inconvenienced.
Click to expand...
 
[quote name='KamiNoYadoru']In the NXE early, the real NXE not the "non-switch-flipped" one. Kind of goofy, Avatars are dumb (show me software that uses them as well as Miis and I might be down), Netflix is cool but I do that today with other software, and the new interface is smoother than I thought it would be. The HDD installs piss me off, though.[/QUOTE]

That article is stupid. If there was no disc-check requirement, it wouldn't just be the pirates playing games illegally, it would be almost everyone. Even people that wouldn't know the first thing about pirating a PC game would share with their friends, copy rented games, buy and return used games from Gamestop, etc. If anyone seriously thinks that the 360 software industry could survive with everything being THAT easy to play illegally, they are delusional.
 
[quote name='SynGamer']Well, it was a long day but i finally swapped HDDs. I now have 103GB free :) Downloading the L4D demo as we speak.[/quote]
Any chance of a nice writeup of how to go about it? I've seen a few videos and written things, but it's hard to get everything into one place. How'd you go about formatting the drive? Did you use a flash drive or something to boot into some form of DOS?
 
[quote name='gordojones88']Well, some of us on here have grabbed a used Xbox 360 120GB HDD from Gamestop for $70.
$100 used - %20 coupon - %10 Edge = $70

This is without fear of getting console and gamertag banned from LIVE.
I've seen the 120GB HDD in every Gamestop I've been to the last month.
You can do this right now for $80 with the current %10-off email coupon and Edge card.

Altering your 360 this way is against your contract with Microsoft.
They have the right to brick your console permanently.
How do you know the new NXE update won't be able to detect this?
Read other forum posts and you'll see people not being able to play their
Arcade games from their "new" HDD even after using the DRM licensing tool.
Imagine losing all your console, hard drive, gamesaves, and gamertag to save $20.[/QUOTE]

If you are buying a used hard drive from Gamestop/eBay/etc, you have absolutely no guarantee that it does not contain a hard drive that someone upgraded themselves.
 
I'm sorry, but this complaining about the disc-check is simply silly, now. Look...here's the deal. Microsoft is offering up something we didn't have before in game installs. And they making them totally optional, unlike the PS3. That's the end of it.

They simply cannot let us NOT verify we own the disc. As an above poster said, every moron who can at least turn the 360 on would realize what they could do with that.
 
As supplied by KamiNoYadoru and this article, http://www.8bithacks.com/2008/11/new-xbox-concerns-in-the-experience.html, the author creates a very poor contrast between the "usual counter-cry". The author goes on to describe why the HD install is a problem, but never addresses the true reason as to why there is an install feature in the first place. A key argument is always to address the task before addressing further issues, which the author fails to state.

The main purpose, like so many others have said, is to prolong the life of the disc drive and also tone down the sound of the drive when running a game. It is essentially helping you prolong the life of your console. The author goes on to explain why it is such a "hassle" considering the whole game is on there but needs a disc to prove that he/she actually owns the game.

No one gives a fucking shit about Microsoft Office. It's a poor fucking comparison, and the person who wrote it is poor at making comparisons in general.

edit: The author fails to state as to why Microsoft Office has been shared over the internet countless times. The main reason is because most PC based discs/programs require a CD Key or something to that extent. As with the case of Microsoft Office, this CD Key could easily be shared and 'cracked'. It is much harder to 'crack' a disc for the 360 because there is no CD key. Seriously, this writer on 8bithacks fails.
 
[quote name='YodaEXE']Any chance of a nice writeup of how to go about it? I've seen a few videos and written things, but it's hard to get everything into one place. How'd you go about formatting the drive? Did you use a flash drive or something to boot into some form of DOS?[/quote]
I'm thinking about combining all the tutorials and tips i found into one master tutorial. Basically, i found a floppy drive (somehow), made a boot disk (on a floppy) and from there...lots of backing-up files and hex editing. So far everything is running well. I was playing the Left 4 Dead demo off the HDD with no problems. And i have 102GB free :D
 
[quote name='KamiNoYadoru']In the NXE early, the real NXE not the "non-switch-flipped" one. Kind of goofy, Avatars are dumb (show me software that uses them as well as Miis and I might be down), Netflix is cool but I do that today with other software, and the new interface is smoother than I thought it would be. The HDD installs piss me off, though.[/quote]


Please paypal me the brain cells I just lost reading that.
 
While I understand the motivation and the desire to hold to core tenets of hardcore Digital Rights Management, this move violates my first rule of DRM: do not inconvenience your paying customers.
Click to expand...

Ummm... okay? Step away from the keyboard and pull your thoughts together before typing. If you want to play Halo 3 today you get up and put the disc in the drive. If you want to play Halo 3 after Nov. 17 you get up and put the disc in the drive. How is that an inconvenience? That's a lateral move. The only benefit is a quieter system, potentially shorter load times and definitely less strain on the system. Were you just unaware of that before getting in the preview?
 
It amazes me that so many people are posting without thinking. The ONLY way Microsoft could eliminate discs is if they 1. offered them online as digital downloads (line Burnout Paradise PS3 on PSN) or 2. have us send in out discs in return for a code to download the games...other than that, the discs need to remain in the drive for verification purposes otherwise piracy will be worse than it is on the DS.
 
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