The General 360 Owners/Buyers FAQ Thread (Updated 1/15/10)

[quote name='AshesofWake']i believe that's a hard drive error?[/quote]

I tried taking off the Harddrive and play xbox 360 games like that and it still gives me that error when I try to play Online in games, single player im fine, but only when I try to play online do I get this error
 
I got the same and was happy to have the best buy replacement plan... I just walked in and got a new one, sweet. Have had no problems since.
 
It's a disk drive error, not a hard drive error. I had this same error on my son's Xbox. MS sent me a refurbed 360 within two weeks. Haven't had a problem with this one.

Call them now because there's nothing you can do for it.
 
[quote name='Malik112099']i got that..call CS and tell them it is RRoD[/quote]


If it's a dash board update corruption then that's Microsoft's fault and yea they would have to fix it for free. Remember when one of the updates a long while ago Bricked people's 360's and they had to send it in for repairs?
 
If I use the cables, will my 360 play PAL DVDs? I can watch them on my laptop when i hook it up to my television, but then I lose things like Dolby Digital and DTS since I don't have a digital out on my laptop. Any help or direction to help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
If your 360 won't play PAL DVDs normally, then it will not when you hook it up via VGA. Why would changing the video cable change what it can play?
 
I haven't tried PAL DVDs yet because my 360 RR'd when I got back from Europe. The reason DVD players won't play PAL DVDs is because of the television itself, but if you have an LCD or DLP TV then you should be able to hook your computer up to the TV and watch your DVDs in that manner whether they are NTSC or PAL. The DVDs are region 0 anyways so they are supposed to work worldwide on any DVD player, but it's the TV itself that's preventing the playback because of the refresh rate. Does anyone know if it works? I need to know ASAP so that I can get the VGA cables on clearance from TRU before they're gone.
 
Hi, i finally decided to buy a x360 since some of my fav. games are comming there anyway.
But not sure if i should be going cheap like to buy a used or refurbished system.
If i do, which is better? Used or refurbished? Haven't found a thread for that.
Or should i just get it new and have no troubles. Its just i hear all the time that the systems breaks. :(:whistle2:|
Anyway, i am just curious and hope someone can help. Thanks already.:cool:
 
Honestly? Considering the amount of damaged, modded then banned, or little Johnny trying to fix the RRoD himself, I'd go ahead and buy it new. The pro just had a price drop anyways but I'd try and hold off till the 60GB which is due soon, since it's suppose to have a new chipset that fixes these problems.
 
[quote name='Aku']The pro just had a price drop anyways but I'd try and hold off till the 60GB which is due soon, since it's suppose to have a new chipset that fixes these problems.[/quote]


I'll believe it when I see it. That's exactly what people thought with the falcon's/elite's but they Red Ringed anyways.
 
is it known when the 60gb version will be out? i might follow your advice and get it new. makes me feel saver too :)
 
[quote name='equest943']If I use the cables, will my 360 play PAL DVDs? I can watch them on my laptop when i hook it up to my television, but then I lose things like Dolby Digital and DTS since I don't have a digital out on my laptop. Any help or direction to help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.[/QUOTE]It should play PAL discs already through standard cables, I've played lots of those on my setup without issue. The problem is that it isn't region free so they have to be R1 or R0. If I had a lot of legitimate R2 PAL discs and wanted to play them back on the 360 I'd just use something like DVD Shrink to strip the region encoding and shrink it down to 1 DVD-R.
 
This will be my 3rd 360, due to microsoft's unreliable hardware. I;ve called mircosoft more than 15 times and each time they never send me a box or something comes up. My last resort was trying to fix it myself with the help of youtube, but it didnt help. They do have great games, so that's why I'm going to get another one. My question is, is if gamestop still offers warranties on their used 360s and for how long? Thanks
 
Maybe a dumb question, if you let your Gold subscription run out, and you get downgraded to Silver, is there any possibility that in that time frame someone else could use my gamer tag? I.e. does my gamertag get released as an "available" tag? Or is there no danger of that happening?
 
[quote name='mav451']Maybe a dumb question, if you let your Gold subscription run out, and you get downgraded to Silver, is there any possibility that in that time frame someone else could use my gamer tag? I.e. does my gamertag get released as an "available" tag? Or is there no danger of that happening?[/QUOTE]

As long as it's at least a silver membership (meaning it's tied to microsofts servers and they know about you, and not just a local tag) it should be eternally safe.
 
Ohh hmm. Well when I first turned on the 360, I entered my handle (offline). The second time I did it, I'm presuming it was for Gold (not Silver) b/c of that confirmation email. But since MS will downgrade to Silver automatically, I should be ok then?

*And...actually I was hoping NOT to sign up for Gold just yet, cuz I literally just opened GTAIV (and bought Gears and ME this afternoon). I.e. I haven't even started to play yet - so no real need for multi-player yet. Hrmph. I wonder if there's a way to deactivate my trial and save it for later?
 
I upgraded my HD to a 120GB and I want to e-bay or trade my 20GB what should I delete from it and is there anything I should not delele from it?
 
OK, I had a 360, sold it the first of this year, then regretted it due to some of the upcoming exclusives & ended up buying another one this past weekend. I got it from Target to take advantage of their $25 gift card deal. Anyway, they offer a $30/3 year warranty that I was looking at, but decided to wait & think about it. It says I can bring in my receipt & get it up to 90 days after my purchase.

So are the new 360's still imploding? Worth it to get the warranty for peace of mind?
 
[quote name='argyle']OK, I had a 360, sold it the first of this year, then regretted it due to some of the upcoming exclusives & ended up buying another one this past weekend. I got it from Target to take advantage of their $25 gift card deal. Anyway, they offer a $30/3 year warranty that I was looking at, but decided to wait & think about it. It says I can bring in my receipt & get it up to 90 days after my purchase.

So are the new 360's still imploding? Worth it to get the warranty for peace of mind?[/quote]

I'd go for $30/3 years with no questions asked. The MS warranty is good though; one year fully covered and 3 years RROD.
 
$30 isn't too bad for 3 years of piece of mind.

Do we have any official release date for the Jasper chip sets? I'm holding off on purchasing a 360 until the Jaspers come out but I couldn't find any hard dates after some moderate web crawling.
 
Hey all. I've had my 360 a while, and enjoy playing with friends. It just so happens that most of the games I have are either single player only, or their online modes only support one person (*cough* CoD4 *cough*). I was wondering, are there any good online shooters (similar to Halo, multiple people on one console going online) that are out, or coming out soon?

I should be able to think of some... but nothing is coming to mind. I have gears of war, and I'm not sure if that works with two people on one console, but it's not really my style for online play.

Thanks for the help!
 
I'm not sure if this has been asked already, but...

I currently have a year of Live, and I've recently acquired some 1-month codes that I don't want to waste. If I redeem these now they'll just stack on top of all the time I've already got, right?
 
I just set up Windows Media Center (using my Vista PC & 360)

What are some useful features you would recommend?

What programs would you recommend I download?

What radio program works good for Windows Media Center?

Anything inportant I need to know?

Thanks
 
[quote name='daschrier']Anyone know if Elites are getting upgraded to Jasper, or is it "safe" to buy one now?[/quote]

From what i've read they should be sticking around after the 60gb releases. They'll either convert to Jasper or go with the other new chipset (was it Valhalla?). Whichever one it was where they are still 65/90 but on the same board. I'd wait around till there's further info... I figure two weeks tops until we have hard answers. I'm crossing my fingers for the Jasper.
 
I doubt you'll get much response to these types of questions on this forum. I'd suggest you go to A/V related sites. Specifically:

thegreenbutton.com (MCE and VMC specific site)
and
avsforum.com (hardcore A/V nuts there.... look under the HTPC forum specifically)

I have Vista, but I don't use Media Center under Vista. I do use Media Center under Windows Media Center 2005 though. From my general observations after successfully using MCE 2k5 for over 3 yrs as a DVR, I'd recommend NOT installing 3rd party apps, plug-ins, codec packs (besides Xvid & mkv), games, etc on your media center if you want it to run stable. Yeah, it kinda defeats the point of have a multi-use computer as a DVR, but if you want that thing to run stable, I've found you can't treat it like a computer. You have to treat it like an appliance. Therefore, I don't surf the web on my MCE PC. I don't install apps or run anti-virus on it. I don't check mail on it. I don't play games on it. Hell, I don't even run Windows Updates on it... Once you get it running stable, lock it down and don't mess with it any more if you want it run 98.5% trouble free. My MCE 2k5 pc runs 24x7, 365 recording HDTV. Has a lockup or random crash maybe 3-4 times per year? Just my 2 cents.
 
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I don't actually stream videos from MCE, as I found it to be fairly unstable. I've been much happier with the performance from Windows Media Connect through Windows Media Player. The interface may not be as pretty, but it works better.
 
i used windows media center plus transcode 360 before the last update..now i use windows media player for everything...the only use my media center gets now is if i want to listen to xm radio through it....the interface is too slow/laggy while using media player is seamless
 
I'm assuming you have to be an XM subscriber to get that service through the Media Center or is there a "way" around it?

I just installed Vista with Media Center and I barely scrathed the surgace I think.

How do you get RADIO stations on there? Is it Internet Radio or "real" radio? I did get a few channels on there somehow...
 
[quote name='doubledown']
How do you get RADIO stations on there? Is it Internet Radio or "real" radio? I did get a few channels on there somehow...[/quote]


The RADIO menu option Vista Media Center is "real" radio (ie. terrestrial radio). To access this feature, you need a TV Tuner card that has an on-board FM Tuner.... Back when XP Media Center Edition 2005 originally shipped, all certified MCE TV-tuner cards were required to have FM tuners. I don't know if this is still true for all new Vista Media Center hardware, but on 1st glance, it still seems so. Even if it isn't, all the old MCE 2k5 hardware is compatible with Vista, so you can probably pick up an old analog TV/FM tuner like the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150mce for $15-20 on ebay.
 
Oh, and you can get streaming internet radio too. Just save the station's exact URL as a shortcut, then add the shortcut to you FAVORITES under the music library. There are some streaming stations pre-included, but they mostly suck and have stupid ads like every other song.
 
Went to Target and they had the 60G version tagged at $299. It scanned at $349 but the manager said that since it was their mistake, he gave it to me for $299.....:)
 
Is there really any reason NOT to get an Elite if you need an HDMI cable?
For the extra $100 you get twice the HDD space, a cable, and 2 free games...with the HDMI cable costing $50 anyway, it seems to be a pretty decent deal.

Still not sure what to do.
 
[quote name='daschrier']Is there really any reason NOT to get an Elite if you need an HDMI cable?
For the extra $100 you get twice the HDD space, a cable, and 2 free games...with the HDMI cable costing $50 anyway, it seems to be a pretty decent deal.

Still not sure what to do.[/QUOTE]

I forgot where, but there's a online store that sells HDMI cable for about $5......
 
So the Xbox doesn't use a propriatery connector? Any HDMI cable will work? Is the the audio tied to the same port, or is there a seperate optical out port?
 
[quote name='daschrier']So the Xbox doesn't use a propriatery connector? Any HDMI cable will work? Is the the audio tied to the same port, or is there a seperate optical out port?[/QUOTE]
No propitiatory connector but if you need to use optical for audio instead of HDMI you will need to buy the MS connector.
 
[quote name='spoo']No propitiatory connector but if you need to use optical for audio instead of HDMI you will need to buy the MS connector.[/QUOTE]

Thanks!!
 
So Live won't except my new debit card (any ideas there?), and also I can not access my gamertag online because I typed the wrong email and haven't gone through all the hassle to change it.

So does anyone know of a place were I can just use my debit card to order points via email?
 
I would say change your email & go to a B&M store and buy some points. I don't know of any solutions that email you the code instead of ship it. gaminglagoon does it...but thats a reward site not a purchase store.
 
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