Xbox 360 Dashboard Update - December 6th

[[SS]Grifter]

The New Xbox 360 Software: It’s Not About the Games


On December 6th, Microsoft will officially release a new Xbox 360 dashboard update to all Xbox users. We've played around with it for a while now and can say that the Xbox has never looked so good.

And it's all thanks to Metro. What's Metro? It's the design language that's giving Microsoft software a gorgeous sheen. Heavy on typography and flat squares and live tiles and swiping, Metro lives in Xbox, Windows Phone 7 and the upcoming Windows 8. It's a fresh yet familiar take on UI; Metro looks so good because you already know how to use it even if you've never used it before.

What's New
The looks. The UI. It's better. It's Metrofied. And that's a very good thing. With Metro on Xbox, Microsoft can elegantly pack more content onto one screen. A horizontal menu details the various categories on your Xbox (Games, Video, Music, Apps, etc.) with each category getting its own hub organized neatly with independent tiles of content. For example, the Apps tab will show a Netflix tile, an ESPN tile, Zune tile, etc. Games will show tiles for games. And so on. It makes complete sense. You shift over to a tab and you'll see exactly what you want to see, all in one hub. Metro keeps everything tidy and up front, there isn't much stuff hidden beyond what's on your TV screen which means you're no longer scrolling for days anymore. Even better, there's a new Quickplay tile on the home screen that can launch recently used apps (like Netflix). So even less scrolls! There are a lot of ads though.

All Kinect Everything
The new Xbox 360 dashboard places a huge emphasis on Kinect. From gestures to voice to design, Kinect has become front and center in controlling the Xbox. Or I guess, you are now front and center in controlling the Xbox (without a controller). Just wave your hand and you can swipe screens and access any tile you want without having to jump into the separate Kinect-only screen of yore. Kinect is integrated nearly system-wide now so you can Minority Report your Xbox to your hand's desire. Very cool.

What's most impressive about the Kinect controls is how well voice controls are implemented now. You can actually talk to your Xbox and it'll do things for you. And though the initial startup phrases are inelegant, it's easily the best way to navigate around the system. You initiate voice control by saying 'Xbox...' and then you can say Videos or Games or Apps etc. to navigate to that specific tab. Useful!

On top of that, you can search on your Xbox too. Not actual Bing search because that would be silly but search for movies and music and other content accessible via Xbox. Start with 'Xbox Bing...' and say something like 'Batman' and the Xbox will show you all the Batman content you can get on your Xbox (movies, shows, games) from all the various sources you can get it from. It's absolutely lovely and most importantly, fast and intuitive. I'm not touching a controller again.

Games? What Games? Say Hello to Apps
What's perhaps the boldest change in the new Xbox software update is something that's been building for a long time: the Xbox is not all about the games anymore. Seriously, in the hierarchy of categories, Games comes after Social and Video. That's purposeful. Along with the new software update, there'll be a ton of great looking, Metro-inspired new 'apps' from different content partners too. From HBO Go to UFC to FiOS to Crackle to YouTube, VEVO, TMZ, MLB.tv and more, you don't even have to buy one video game to enjoy an Xbox anymore. Combine those new apps with what's already on the Xbox like Netflix and Hulu Plus and the Xbox 360 is realizing and embracing its potential as much more than a game console.

For gamers, that may be annoying. For the rest of us, say hello to the cable box of the future.


Here's the full list of content partners:

Dec. 6:
• EPIX. United States
• ESPN on Xbox LIVE. United States
• Hulu. Japan
• Hulu Plus. United States
• LOVEFiLM. United Kingdom
• Netflix. Canada, United States
• Premium Play by (MediaSet). Italy
• Sky Go (SkyDE). Austria, Germany
• Telefónica España – Movistar Imagenio. Spain
• TODAY (MSNBC). United States

Later in December:
• 4 on Demand (C4). United Kingdom
• ABC iView (Australian Broadcasting Corp.). Australia
• AlloCiné. France (AlloCiné), Germany (Filmstarts), Spain (Sensacine), United Kingdom (Screenrush)
• Astral Media's Disney XD (Astral Media). Canada
• blinkbox (Blinkbox). United Kingdom
• Crackle (Sony Pictures). Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, United States
• Dailymotion. Available in 32 countries globally
• Demand 5 (Five). United Kingdom
• DIGI+ (CANAL+). Spain
• GolTV (Mediapro). Spain
• iHeartRadio (Clear Channel). United States
• Mediathek/ZDF (ZDF). Germany
• MSN. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, United Kingdom
• MSNBC.com. United States
• MUZU.TV. Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom
• ninemsn. Australia
• Real Sports (Maple Leaf Sports). Canada
• Rogers On Demand Online. Canada
• SBS ON DEMAND. Australia
• Syfy. United States
• TMZ. Canada, United States
• TVE (RTVE.es). Spain
• UFC on Xbox LIVE. Canada, United States
• Verizon FiOS TV. United States
• VEVO. Canada, Ireland, United Kingdom, United States
• Vudu. United States
• YouTube. Available in 24 countries globally

Early 2012:
• Antena 3 (Antena 3 de Televisión). Spain
• BBC. United Kingdom
• CinemaNow. United States
• HBO GO. United States
• MLB.TV. Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States
• Telenovelas/Sports. Brazil, Chile, Colombia, France, Italy, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom
• Xfinity On Demand (Comcast). United States


LINKY with pictures and video

[S10Draven]

update can lick my balls....i dl'd it and played a few matchs on mw3 then got booted and cant sign into live now. my wife and boy can though :|

[AEJustin1]

I've been testing this dashboard for the last month, it's actually pretty cool. I love the cloud storage option.

[[SS]Chief]

Just watched ESPN and ESPN is on steroids!! I have to say, I’m a step away from dumping my cable box. I usually watch NETFLIX and now with XBOX I can watch Sports so the only thing that I’m watching on cable is really just morning news, which is now available via XBOX (Today show). But they’re only showing the magazine parts...I’m sure CNN will jump on this XBOX bandwagon....so far, me likey.

[[SS]Midnight]

The biggest thing that I like is that I can fully navagate every corner of the dashboard as well as into furring and back from watching Netflix. Sure I can also wave my arms around mimicing Minority Report, and that has a very cool yet short lived fun experience, but I end up preferring a remote to that. The voice commands are king though.

Here is a fairly recent review I found HERE:

Xbox 360 gets another round of video apps: FiOS, YouTube and SyFy hands-on
By Peter Smith*
December 14, 2011, 8:34 AM — The new Xbox 360 UI received a few more apps yesterday including two biggies: FiOS TV and YouTube, as well as some channel-specific apps like SyFy and TMZ. Always willing to spend time lounging on the couch in the name of research, I dove right in.
Let's start with YouTube. As soon as you download the app and fire it up, you can dive into "Feature" videos under headings like "YouTube trends," "most liked," and "most popular." Don't ask me how YouTube figures out what goes where in those buckets. You can also "Discover" content via categories like "animation," "celebrities and gossip," and "gaming."
Playing these videos worked great (quality depended on the source material, of course). Tapping the A button while a video is playing brings up a menu bar with pause, play, fast forward, etc. and from that bar you can choose More Actions which will reveal features such as Like, Dislike, Flag, Watch Later as well as Info about the video. I'm glad these functions are there, but they're kind of buried; at first I didn't think they existed.
Searching is done with the controller or gestures (with Kinect) via an row of letters on screen. Voice search isn't supported. Voice is supported for browsing/navigating and playback, plus you can access that hidden "Like/Dislike" menu easier via Kinect than you can with a controller. Just saying "Xbox" brings it up. Nice.
You can link your YouTube account to your Xbox Live account by entering a code from the Xbox app into a page at http://www.youtube.com/activate. Once you do that, you can see your Favorites, play lists, Watch Later list and get recommendations. Subscriptions are hidden away under "View All" which seemed like a curious decision, given that Google is pushing original content via channels these days, but at least they're there. "View All" is also where you'll find your own videos.
Performance in the "my YouTube" section was really sketchy. When I tried to load a channel I was subscribed to I'd get the message "Loading content approved for your device." Some times the app just hung there. Backing out and trying again might give better results, or might not. Hopefully these problems will be addressed. Of course I have problems with YouTube generally during prime time, so maybe the fault doesn't lie with the Xbox. I started testing at about 5:30 pm local time and performance got worse and worse as the evening wore on; that's consistent with my experience with YouTube on a PC, too.
All in all, YouTube is a really nice addition to the Xbox 360 experience if you're bored and just want to poke around watching popular videos and catching up on memes, though perhaps I'm biased because I don't have YouTube on either the PS3 or the Roku, so this is 'new' for me. If you have a smart TV with a YouTube app this might not be such a big deal. I'd like it a lot more if the "my YouTube" stuff worked more consistently.
On to FiOS. Once again, you'll start your adventure by downloading an app. That seems to be all you have to do. I didn't have to cal FiOS to get the service activated (as suggested in some earlier coverage) or even log in via my FiOS account. It just worked. Or at least, it just worked once. When I later went back to do more testing the Xbox couldn't authenticate against the FiOS servers. Hopefully a launch-day glitch.
FiOS gets its own entry on the Xbox 360 dashboard; it isn't under Video, it's under TV. I mention that because I went right to Video and started looking for it; I'm that dense at times and maybe someone else is, too.
Twenty-six channels are available for now, including HBO HD, HBO2 HD, and MAX HD. These are only available if you're subscribed to them, of course. The other channels are: CNN HL, DIY, MTV2, TCM, HALLMRK, TVLAND, Nick Jr., CARTOON, BOOM, TNT HD, TBS HD, SPIKE HD, ESPNewsHD, CNN HD, FOOD HD, HGTV HD, Travel HD, truTV HD, COMEDY HD, MTV HD, VH1 HD, NICK HD, BET HD. Whew. A real smattering of channels; something for everyone but conversely there are probably going to be some that you're not interested in. I guess it's hard pleasing everyone.
What I found kind of strange is that the home screen for FiOS has a big teaser block in the center (typical of the Metro UI) but it didn't reflect what was actually on. For example, a teaser for Thundercats on the Cartoon Network was one of the things rotating through this big teaser slot, but when I clicked on it I got a "Thundercats" branded page, but I couldn't actually watch the Thundercats. I could watch whatever was on the Cartoon Network at the moment. This is, after all, live TV.
I think FiOS is going to be useful to a particular niche of gamers; mostly people with an Xbox in their bedrooms or office. Otherwise, well, there's nothing I can see on Xbox FiOS that I can't see through the cable box sitting next to my TV. Bing Search should be one real strength but my initial experience wasn't great. I was watching Bonanza on TV Land (slim pickings on TV when I was testing) and then decided to test the search. Jumping out to the Dashboard of the Xbox and saying "Bing Bonanza" first gave me search results of 'manza'. I tried again, articulating carefully, and got results...but they were Netflix results. Bonanza is pretty obscure, so I tried again with Despicable Me, which was playing on HBO while I was testing. Again, Bing didn't find it on FiOS. I don't think Bing knows what's on TV right now, which is a big disappointment.
Last up, I checked out the SyFy app. At SyFy.com I can watch some full episodes of various shows and I was looking forward to getting them on the big screen via the Xbox SyFy app. No joy. Video clips only.
There are episode guides, and SyFy does produce a few web series and those you can see, but mostly the SyFy app is just a marketing vehicle, and not very interesting.
I have to say, the big winner in today's handful of apps is YouTube. Still to come: Crackle, Vudu, DailyMotion, MLB.TV, UFC, Veo, HBO Go and of course Xfinity (Comcast). Hopefully some of those will offer better content than what we're seeing in apps like the one SyFy has given us.
As to live FiOS TV on the Xbox, as I said, for FiOS subscribers with an Xbox that isn't located near a cable box it'll probably be interesting, as well as for the hyper-social who want to chat via Xbox Live with their fellow FiOS-subscribering friends while watching TV (I assume that works; in truth I didn't test it). For most households where the Xbox is in the living room next to the big screen and the cable box, it's more a curiosity than anything.

Posted from my iPhone.

[DatGuy]

after using it now...this dashboard update is terrible.

it seems centered around kinect and doesnt really display relevant information properly for the tab you are on...I give it 2 thumbs down

[AEJustin1]

FREE UFC 141 PPV on the dashboard! WOOOOO