NXE update preview program

Umm.. has that been confirmed? Clearly, I'd imagine that everyone in the party would need to have a gold membership. But does everybody need the streaming netflix account?

So far the Netflix is the biggest change for me, and it's very much welcomed. Now I only have to log onto Netflix to change my DVD by mail queue and I rarely use that. I also found this new 360 interface far easier to use than the website for seeing whats available to stream.

I haven't played with the avatar section so I guess I'm missing out on the remote control warthog! LOL!

I'll have to see if the recovering of gamertags is easier and fixes my problem. Like, saving gamertags to be recovered or email addresses and just making you put in a password would be great.

The speed is also a great bonus as well.

 

I read " I don't remember where" that they may be improvements in regard to hard drive installation, is there any truth to those statements ?

 

Yeah, read that too. Seems like in the new update they remove duplicate data on the disk, which was put there for improvements in latency while reading from the optical drive. Game installs are quite a bit smaller.

 

Delete

 

Ymmv

 

Fable II is a large world with probably no data duplication on disk as the capacity is needed for assets. This perhaps supports the idea that the HDD size reduction is due to removal of redundant data. That is, it's no longer a full DVD ISO, but more of a 'per file' copy.

Are existing installs reduced in size, or do you need to uninstall and reinstall to get the benefit?

 

You need to uninstall and then re-install.

It's pretty clear that it is redundant data that is being removed since the new install sizes for many games are matching those that I have in debug code form, which the minimalist 360 debug dashboard tells you the size for.

Pretty much any game that used to be 3.4GB should be a lot smaller now. So the likes of Battle Fantasia for example should be closer to the 1.25GB it occupies in its debug guise.

 

I'm wondering what effect this has on disk seek times then... Better than DVD, of course, but worse speed than before? And then there's wear and tear on the HDD (with the more random seeks), but maybe I'm just being paranoid. :s

 

Duplication of data should only have an effect if you can control the physical placement on the disk (i.e. for two-times duplication on a DVD on opposite sides of the disk). I would think that copying it to a HDD would remove any benefit of duplication anyway, since it wouldn't be optimally aligned to the drive layout.

 

This also explains a question I posed in another thread here: why do 360 games always have a minimum size of 3.4GB? I guess all games that are of smaller size use duplication to improve loading times.

 

In that case I am assuming that it is something to do with padding bytes added to games as part of the copy protection system. I think it was ShiftyGeezer who pointed out that 3.4GB is half of the 6.8GB top-end capacity of the 360 DVD.

Battle Fantasia had no duplicate files.

 

Here's the Games On Demand launch list...

No Crackdown. Also, no pricing either. Probably get that at launch.

Tommy McClain

 

Cool, I registered my other gamertag/360 Monday and got the Preview update today! Is anybody who registered not getting in?

Both my consoles are updated....I guess I can try a Netflix party with myself

 

I want a second opinion

 

I can not even get registered the link takes me to a page error... not sure what I'm doing wrong. i'm registered at connect just can't find the NXE registration

 

It did that to me like three times in a row, I had to keep reloading and trying again and then it finally went through.

I also never got a confirmation email that I was accepted, but when I went back into connect it showed I was and then I got the three updates and two reboots

tcrews - are you able to use one netflix account on two gamertags? And is that one netflix account with two gold gamertags? I can't get netflix to work on two 360s without recovering my gamertag each time.

 

Two Gold accounts, one Netflix account. I just went to www.netflix.com and activated the second console (you can have up to 6 devices active on 1 Netflix account.....combo of laptop/pc's/360s/etc...)

 

Yeah, I see that snuck that in after I posted. Looks like the prices will range from $20 & $30. Also, according to that press release MS will be adding PayPal as a payment option on the web Marketplace.

Tommy McClain

 

thanks kept trying many times in several browsers and I can get logged into connect.Microsoft with my account and get to dash but it tells me I so not have access to the linked page nor is there any mention of NXE on any connect program for me.

also from GAF

 

That pricing is utterly random. I'm sure the UK population will pleasantly accept being stiffed 33%. I was just checking the price of Cakewalk products and they're doing the same, charging UK citizens 33% or more for the same download software. It's high time the UK, united as one, completely boycotted the rest of the world!