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3. 10
2006

The Tale of 3 Xbox 360s

Written by: Alec Peden - Posted in: games

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I had Friday off so I decided it would be a good time to pack up my xbox and say goodbye. Gamestop was offering a $80 trade-in that i couldn’t pass up. So i removed my modchip and installed the original hard drive and off I went to Gamestop to buy a new Xbox 360. When i get to Gamestop I go through my trade-in and some other accessories I had and pick up a new 360 Premium and a used copy of Dead Rising.

I get home that night and unpack everything, hook everything up and start setting up my Xbox. Made a gamertag, linked it to my live.com account, even purchased a 3 month Gold membership. After setting everything up I threw in Dead Rising and played for a good 30 minutes getting past all the intro movies and whatnot. Next I downloaded some game demos and some Xbox Live Demos. I didn’t want to mess around too much because my girlfriend was staying with me so figured it would be a good time to check out the DVD playback. Popped in the classic Better off Dead and watched that with her before going to bed that night.

Get up the next day and I was going to watch a movie through Front Row only to find out that it keeps crashing when I select certain movie files(thats another blog post altogether). So instead of messing around I remembered you can stream xvid/divx using the 360s Media Center extender. I have a copy of Media Center running in parallels so I figured it would only be a matter of setting up some software. I start up my Xbxo 360 and press the Green Button on my Media Center remote(which btw works great with the 360) so I could get the URL to download the software. While I’m downloading the software from Microsoft, i hear my fan in the 360 getting loader then finally die as the 360 turned off. I look over and see a half Red ring of death. Great. I turn it off and try to turn it on. Same thing. Unplugged everything, reseated cables, took the hard drive off. Nothing worked. *sigh* Back to Gamestop.

Packed up everything and back off to Gamestop. Returned it for a new one with no problem. Actually the girl who rung me up started telling me her own horror stories. Since I returned it on my way to work, I had to wait until that night to hook up the new one. After work I started to unpack the new one and I noticed something looks wrong. I take it out of the plastic and see the USB door is pushed in. Then i notice its jut not pushed it but the case is cracked right below it. WTF. Back in the box it goes ready for another trip to Gamestop tomorrow.

Its now Sunday and I’m on my way back to pickup my 3rd Xbox 360 in 3 days. This time I get the guy who rung me up the first time. I tell him about the cracked case and he checks it out and proceeds to get me my 3rd 360 from the back. This time I leave and go directly home to drop it off then i head to work. After work I again start unpacking making sure I go over this baby with it was a fuckin’ CSI investigation. Everything looks good. Hook everything up once again and power up. The splash screen takes alittle longer than normal. Uh oh. Then it happens. SYSTEM ERROR E67. You have GOT to be kidding me.

At this point I’m no longer pissed because its just that funny. I was about to pack it back up but decided to check online first to see what the E76 message was. Found a page on Xbox Scene that listed all know error codes and what they mean. Apparently E67 is a hard drive problem. Unplugged the Hard drive and it booted up fine. Replugged in the hard drive and it booted again.

Its now Tuesday and I haven’t had any other problems yet tho I’m watching this thing like a hawk. I have 3 more days to return it and after that its back to Microsoft. I’ll keep you posted.


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30. 09
2006

TGIF: Something to digg this weekend

Written by: Alec Peden - Posted in: links, web

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28. 09
2006

Well, I’m officially sold on the Xbox 360…

Written by: Alec Peden - Posted in: games

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With yesterdays official announcement of Guitar Hero II coming to the Xbox 360 with a new controller, it pretty much decided I was going to be getting a Xbox 360. Since GH2 isn’t going to be released until next year, I was just going to wait until after the holidays to pick one up. Well lo an’ behold, sitting in my inbox today was a email from Gamestop saying they are currently running a promotion that will give you $80 trade in for your Xbox towards a Xbox 360. $319.99 for a Xbox 360 Premium. And on top of it they are give a $10 credit for trading in 3 games and I just happen to have 3 DS games I was going to trade in. Woohoo. So I should be picking up a Xbox 360 Premium for under $299.

The announcements of the HD DVD for $199 and the Marvel MMO pretty much solidified it for me. I’ll be picking it up tomorrow if I get paid, if not its going to have to wait until next weekend. I play on picking up Dead Rising as it seems like the only game worth playing for the 360 right now.

I’m going to miss my Xbox and XBMC but I’m going to take out my chip and HDD and maybe pickup another down the road if the Apple iTV disappoints. I just wish Microsoft would just enable streaming mpeg4 video. No one gives a shit about Media Center!! I mean people might if it was more like XBMC but its not and probably never will be.

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6. 06
2006

MC360 Released

Written by: Alec Peden - Posted in: games, software

Skin Direct Download Link - http://www.blackbolt.x-scene.com/downloads/mc360/mc360_xbmc9666beta.zip

Full T3CH release with skin - http://rapidshare.de/files/22384449/XBMC-CVS_666-T3CH.rar.html

More to come soon…


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5. 06
2006

MC360 Trailer 2 released

Written by: Alec Peden - Posted in: games, software

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Team Blackbolt and ActioncorpTV have released the 2nd and final trailer showing off the XBMC skin MC360. View it over at Blackbolt’s site. The video is kinda poorly put together but you still get a sense of what the skin will be when its released on June 6th. Looks impressive and I’ve personally been waiting along time for this skin to be released.


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1. 06
2006

Newest beta Foxytunes supports controlling XBMC from Firefox

Written by: Alec Peden - Posted in: software

Foxytunes is a Firefox extension that supports controlling many different mediaplayers from inside Firefox. The newest beta 1.3.5 adds support for controlling XBMC. 1.3.5 beta adds the following:

  • Xbox Media Center support
  • Go to Player > Options > Custom and enter “-ip YOUR_XBOX_IP” to get started
  • Thanks to LiquidIce for helping make this happen
  • Pandora/Last.fm mashup support
    Notification button for when new FoxyTunes version is available
    Keyboard shortcuts are now disabled by default
    Minor tweaks

Download here - http://www.foxytunes.com/firefox/download/xbmc.html#latest-preview
This is hawt. I use XBMC for everything media and Firefox for everything web. Will be nice to not have to keep turning around and looking for the remote to skip songs. First thing I’m going to do when i get home(at work now) is install the new Firefox 1.5.0.4 and Foxytunes.


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16. 04
2006

SharePoints 3.5.4 Released

Written by: Alec Peden - Posted in: software

SharePoints, a great little app for Mac OS X was finally made universal today with the release of version 3.5.4. SharePoints allows you to easily make shares from any folder, and change properties with ease.� Supports both SMB and AFS and can be run as an app or a Preference Pane. I find it a great way to set up SMB shares for Xbox Media Center without having to either share your entire home folder or mess with the smb.conf file. The program is donation-ware so if you find this useful, please consider making a donation to the author.

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About Me

My name is Alec Peden and I’m 29 years old. I’m currently living in Connecticut and work as a Mac Genius for . I'm a gamer, comic reader, movie buff and all around tech geek.

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