Xbox.com (in the UK) still says coming soon, but I can now order from the console itself. Again, this is in the UK.
Xbox Live Fall Update 2010 *rename*
- Thread starter RobertR1
- Start date
Xbox.com (in the UK) still says coming soon, but I can now order from the console itself. Again, this is in the UK.
Ehh, it's like website redesigns. Every so often major websites like IGN or Anandtech do changes, these changes are neither better or worse (though the website always claims it's much improved), they're just for the sake of it, the staff feeling like they're doing something. Often in a later redesign, they'll go back to the same original elements they started with again, professing again that these are great improvements, when theyre simply returning to how they were in the first place.
Actually, it is pretty well integrated with WP7.
After a few of the "...shouldn't have happened..." error messages I was able to purchase Gold Family. My son was automatically added since he is tied to my account, my wife I will need to do from the 360. So far though, the Family Center from xbox.com is rather nice.
Aah, alright, if at least _someone_ uses it, I won't hate it as much.I actually do this. A movie or an actor will trigger another movie (mostly TV shows) in my head and I insta-search. Blame me.
There's no problem, it's designed that way, I have my profile on a memory stick, and it works pretty well.
Glad you like it. I'm still trying to see if we'll get an emplyee discount like we get on the live gold membership, at the moment it's not economically smart for me to switch since I can buy 4 gold memberships for less.
Aah, alright, if at least _someone_ uses it, I won't hate it as much.
There's no problem, it's designed that way, I have my profile on a memory stick, and it works pretty well.
Glad you like it. I'm still trying to see if we'll get an emplyee discount like we get on the live gold membership, at the moment it's not economically smart for me to switch since I can buy 4 gold memberships for less.
To be honest, (I know you get a great deal) but the featureset of Family Center I want to say is "worth it" for me. I mean my wife was pretty happy to just get 800 MS Points gifted to her and now I can finally dole out points as I have always wanted between myself, my wife, and my son. It's also nice to know that in my long PM that someone there had a similar thought processes going on about separating console from gamertag with the family settings not to mention FINALLY being able to input the passcode with my Harmony remote.
So now we have my console parental controls turned on and then my gamertag set at Standard Programming with custom settings, my son and my wife are set to Family Programming and custom settings. I have really just started to look around but I definitely like the Family Center tile that shows all of us, nice touch.
Netflix still isn't as smart as it should be though regarding passcode entering I still have to enter my code twice before viewing. Went to watch Die Hard 2 I pressed play, 360 asked me for my passcode which was fine but then the movie didn't play it simply went from the parental lock icon to displaying the cover art and I had to press play again and was then AGAIN prompted for my passcode. These are the things that I wish someone would take a seriously keen interest in from MSFT. I mean I'm still livid that video marketplace went from being integrated in xbox.com to zune.net but there are still a slew of usability issues I have with both zune marketplace from the dash and zune marketplace from zune.net AND (because clearly there aren't enough) the zune software (PC Only...understandable, but then make zune.net better for us non-win users).
Which brings me to Season Pass...holy fucking shit...this is about as bad as how my political party got its ass handed to it last night, well, its worse than that. Talk about all over the place for pricing, wow, season pass so far gets zero stars from me.
The current season of Sanctuary they want to charge me 4560 points whereas the current season of Sherlock they want to charge me 1260(1280?) points the kicker is the audacity to have "Best Value" labeled on the Season Pass button. I say audacious because one would think that, "hey I bought the first episode of a series to see if I like it" and that somehow maybe one would be credited some slight amount of points. No. There is even a warning that pops up (they knew I would complain) that says essentially "Sucker, looks like you bought an episode already, well guess what, if you continue we are still charging you for it so BOHICA. Would you like to continue?" So I say yes to purchasing the Season Pass for Sherlock because I'm thinking this is a not as awful a deal as Sanctuary. Now mind you I had already bought the first episode for 240 points and now I'm buying the Season Pass for 1260 or 80, whatever, points. My thinking was such that, "well, most other BBC shows I have watched have been a minimum of 6 episodes, so this isn't bad even being RECHARGED for the first episode".
I'm not sure why I did it AFTER I had purchased the season pass but I went to look on imdb or google or bing to see how many episodes had been ordered for the season (my wife and I have a nasty habit of liking shows that get cancelled).............THREE. THREE! So while it is great that season pass will auto add all the new episodes into your streaming queue (can't think of a better phrase at the moment) the prices more than anything else people normally bitch about regarding pseudo dollars and DLC and a host of other things, well, this my good friends, you can point to this here as absolute highway robbery!
Not to mention Season Pass isn't even offered for everything but this is a GOOD THING!!!Yah, about the only thing I do with the zune thing is stream the occasional movie. The pricing is completely stupid. Unfortunately, I believe we're not in control of the pricing, or the terms. They're controlled by an agreement with the cable providers that goes back to the 80's when they first introduced "On Demand" (Remember? You paid with your cable box connected to your phone line, and then you got access to the channel showing the movie repeatedly for 24 hours).Which brings me to Season Pass...holy fucking shit...this is about as bad as how my political party got its ass handed to it last night, well, its worse than that. Talk about all over the place for pricing, wow, season pass so far gets zero stars from me.
The current season of Sanctuary they want to charge me 4560 points whereas the current season of Sherlock they want to charge me 1260(1280?) points the kicker is the audacity to have "Best Value" labeled on the Season Pass button. I say audacious because one would think that, "hey I bought the first episode of a series to see if I like it" and that somehow maybe one would be credited some slight amount of points. No. There is even a warning that pops up (they knew I would complain) that says essentially "Sucker, looks like you bought an episode already, well guess what, if you continue we are still charging you for it so BOHICA. Would you like to continue?" So I say yes to purchasing the Season Pass for Sherlock because I'm thinking this is a not as awful a deal as Sanctuary. Now mind you I had already bought the first episode for 240 points and now I'm buying the Season Pass for 1260 or 80, whatever, points. My thinking was such that, "well, most other BBC shows I have watched have been a minimum of 6 episodes, so this isn't bad even being RECHARGED for the first episode".
I'm not sure why I did it AFTER I had purchased the season pass but I went to look on imdb or google or bing to see how many episodes had been ordered for the season (my wife and I have a nasty habit of liking shows that get cancelled).............THREE. THREE! So while it is great that season pass will auto add all the new episodes into your streaming queue (can't think of a better phrase at the moment) the prices more than anything else people normally bitch about regarding pseudo dollars and DLC and a host of other things, well, this my good friends, you can point to this here as absolute highway robbery!
The TV show prices are even more ridiculous because the content providers don't want to "cannibalise" their DVD sales, and don't get me started on music videos. I'm angry enough that I have to pay the same amount for a 42 minute TV episode as a 21 minute TV episode, but they expect me to pay the same for a 3 minute music video??? It's highway robbery. If I paid the same per minute for a movie as for a music video, I'd be paying $60 for a 90 minute movie.
For those interested in Xbox Live Family Pack let me give you a step-by-step tutorial to upgrading to it & finding out how much it will cost you.
Go to the My Xbox channel
Next, click on your personal tile with your Gamertag & Avatar showing(is there a specific name for this?)
Go to the "Account Management" tile(2nd one from the left) & select "Manage Account"
Got to the "Xbox Live Gold Family Pack" tile(4th one from the left) & select "View Purchase Details"
A dialog box pops up and gives you a single option: "Gold Family - 12 Months $99.99", select it
At this point you'll get another dialog box that says the following...
"Xbox Live Family Gold Pack
When your purchase this subscription, the
price will include a credit for the unused
balance of your current membership.
Offer price: $99.99
Credit applied: ($X.XX)
Adjusted price: $XX.XX"
You can press 'B' if you want to cancel the transaction. Anyway, on my system the credit I got applied was only $5, but that's because my own Gold account expires at the end of the month. Plus, it doesn't seem to take into account that your existing child accounts might already have Gold accounts with a balance left either. I decided to wait on upgrading. It's not that I don't want it, I do. It's just that with money already spent on Kinect I'm strapped for cash. LOL I'll probably get it at Xmas. Son's account expires at the end of December & I'm sure the wife will want Gold by then too.
Tommy McClain
Go to the My Xbox channel
Next, click on your personal tile with your Gamertag & Avatar showing(is there a specific name for this?)
Go to the "Account Management" tile(2nd one from the left) & select "Manage Account"
Got to the "Xbox Live Gold Family Pack" tile(4th one from the left) & select "View Purchase Details"
A dialog box pops up and gives you a single option: "Gold Family - 12 Months $99.99", select it
At this point you'll get another dialog box that says the following...
"Xbox Live Family Gold Pack
When your purchase this subscription, the
price will include a credit for the unused
balance of your current membership.
Offer price: $99.99
Credit applied: ($X.XX)
Adjusted price: $XX.XX"
You can press 'B' if you want to cancel the transaction. Anyway, on my system the credit I got applied was only $5, but that's because my own Gold account expires at the end of the month. Plus, it doesn't seem to take into account that your existing child accounts might already have Gold accounts with a balance left either. I decided to wait on upgrading. It's not that I don't want it, I do. It's just that with money already spent on Kinect I'm strapped for cash. LOL I'll probably get it at Xmas. Son's account expires at the end of December & I'm sure the wife will want Gold by then too.
Tommy McClain
So let me be clear, I don't actually mind paying the $3/episode. I've explained it before, I get the complete HD version of a TV series which at times comes close to the pricing of a blu-ray since the only reason we get cable tv is because it is clear qam I don't consider us actually having cable tv. I won't get into bitrate comparisons versus pressed discs but it is clearly better than the SD versions or pressed DVDs and can look quite good and this is on a 65" screen. I also get to download the items (whenever I boot to bootcamp on my laptop). I would actually buy more HD movies but it looks like about a month or two ago HD movie purchases seemingly disappeared and items that previously had HD purchases no longer have it.
While I completely understand distribution rights...Hard Boiled was a bitch....I mean a serious pain in the ass to get in stranglehold so I truly understand but man there should at least be something akin to Netflixs' expiration dates. There still is no way in the dash or from zune.net to search for just HD movies or tv or as of the last zune software 4.3 (I think).
This is by design, since I can decide to keep a child account separate. While you may see your child account that is linked on the screen when you go to the Family Pack they are NOT being added to the gold family pack at that time (which is why you will probably see, "You have 3 more slots" or something like that when you purchase the package even though you see your avatar and the child avatar). Once you are back at your console and an account you add has additional time then you will be credited at that time in additional months.
Last edited by a moderator:
An adult HAS to purchase it and since purchases (according to xbox.com site) can only be done from the console or xbox.com I'm thinking that there must be one adult and then the rest can be whatever. Because remember the account that purchases it is the Primary account and that account has control over the others.
Here is the US FAQ yours may be similar.
I have to say that changing the 360 to Family Programming and having the Family Center tile does wonders for softening the 360s look. One of my major gripes with the 360 and Kinect and the marketing towards families was the number of guns and random "scary" (yes, the Bioshock 2 little sister tile freaked me the hell out!) stuff. Of course I say this and just days ago I'm listening to a mom in my sons capoeira class talk about how much fun her son has playing Modern Warfare 2; he is eight.
I'm going to try this out tonight - hopefully it'll sort me out.
One additional annoyance was trying to use the Xbox with an offline gamertag. Since I'd only be streaming video, having an offline account didn't seem a biggie, but of course as soon as I'd try to access a file it would ask to download the codec from live, which I couldn't do with that (offline) account. Downloading the codecs from other (online) account didn't seem to help as I assume the download is tied to the gamertag somehow. Annoying.
I think it's pretty obvious when you think of it. With the stacked view used before it wouldn't have been as easy to select a panel in the background since the further back it is, the smaller it is. Now all the panels are the same size, outside the one currently selected, and is much easier to use with Kinect.
I'm sure there were many reasons for the new look and design, but I agree that Kinect seems to be a big reason for it.
But according to Eurogamer, Kinect enters a particular Kinect interface, meaning no need to target it with the main interface.
I just got done with playing with Kinect for the first time, I'll have some impressions with it soon. Had to take a breather!
Anyway, yes, Kinect(voice & motion) support is not available in the main dashboard. You can wave at the sensor to log you into the Kinect Hub or you can say "Xbox. Kinect" to do the same thing. Once your in the Kinect Hub, the only apps you interface with voice or motion are Zune, Last.fm, ESPN, Video Kinect & the Avatar Editor can use Kinect. Wished there was support in Video Library & Netflix.Anyway, I agree with you Shifty that there was no need to update the main interface. They could have left it alone. Would I want them to? Not sure, I've already gotten used to the new interface. I guess it wouldn't matter either way. Personally I think they only had marketing reasons for the redesign. 1) They wanted a new coat of paint to go with the relaunch of the Xbox as a more family oriented system. 2) Having 3 full view tiles on the screen at a time increases presence of any ads they have. I bet advertisers were not happy about small obscured advertising tiles in the distance.
Tommy McClain
It should be tied to both the gamertag and the console. If you're having issues, create a new xbl silver account and redownload the codec, that should tie it to that specific console. It ties to the first console that particular gamertag downloaded it with.
So far my only problem with the dash update is the Netflix client not being able to force SD, as far as I can tell. The HD is nice, but sometimes I just want to save my bandwidth. On the PC I can choose if I want to allow HD.
Oh, and the way the windows pop is ok, but it really freaks me out on the avatar friends screen. It almost makes me feel dizzy for some reason.
Oh, and the way the windows pop is ok, but it really freaks me out on the avatar friends screen. It almost makes me feel dizzy for some reason.
I just got done with playing with Kinect for the first time, I'll have some impressions with it soon. Had to take a breather!
Anyway, I agree with you Shifty that there was no need to update the main interface. They could have left it alone. Would I want them to? Not sure, I've already gotten used to the new interface. I guess it wouldn't matter either way. Personally I think they only had marketing reasons for the redesign. 1) They wanted a new coat of paint to go with the relaunch of the Xbox as a more family oriented system. 2) Having 3 full view tiles on the screen at a time increases presence of any ads they have. I bet advertisers were not happy about small obscured advertising tiles in the distance.
Tommy McClain
Oh well never mind then lol I was always under the impression that you can use Kinect anywhere on the dashboard, regardless if you were in the Kinect HUB or not.
So whats the pros and cons of having 4 friends on a family plan ? Was thinking of putting myself , my gf and our two really close friends on a single pass. The girls don't play enough to warrent thier own accounts so we though $100 divided by 4 would be best. My friend and I both have 2 years left in credit for our accounts so it will be an even merger
Similar threads
- Poll
