Posted October 23, 2009
As the title said, I just got the preview update for the new dashboard that has the facebook, twitter, last fm & zune movie marketplace addons. Anyone got any questions about them that I can answer? It seems that the new features are part of a new channel called My Community that also houses those upcoming events that apparently don't really do anything but suggest you play a certain game on a certain day.
Preferrably not questions about Twitter because I don't use it so all I could do is critique the sign in page.
FACEBOOK
From the little i've used so far, facebook seems pretty good. In fact I prefer it to the proper one. it functions as a seperate application, much like running an arcade game so there's no worries about being signed in when you don't realise it. The interface, whilst a bit slow (presumably because it's downloading the information on access rather than on application load) is nice and clean, galleries are automatically separated into their own window.
The home channel seems to cycle through the latest entries in the first window (which can be expanded to show more entries, I have 25 entries but there's then an option to view older posts) whilst you're sitting there doing nothing, your status is displayed in the next window and your photos in the the third and final one.
There's seperate channels for photos, broken down into yours and friends, each opening galleries which can be browsed as if they were locally stored images (same interface and everything) and there's the option to view comments and captions for pictures where applicable.
The friends display gives you access to pretty much everything you'd get in the normal web facebook, profile, photos, status lists and there's an option for connecting to facebook friends who are on xbox live so presumably you can send friend requests to your ex girlfriends sisters brother who you only added because facebook suggested him and you didn't have the willpower to resist a command.
The profile channel gives you access to pretty much everything you'd need to use facebook, status updates, photos, profile info and basic settings but the latter seems to be only for online awareness on the 360.
No sign of facebook chat, perhaps it was even more dodgy and unreliable on the 360 than it is on the website or perhaps they thought there has to be a limit to controller based text entry.
ZUNE VIDEO MARKETPLACE
OH MY GOD! The Zune video marketplace has the Masters Of The Universe Movie!!! Roll on payday, I've not seen that train wreck of a film for decades!
Much like facebook (and probably twitter & lastFM), the zune video marketplace is a seperate application that launches as an exclusive process. There's either 102 or 103 films available for australians (I lost count right at the end but its over 100), For older movies, SD seems to have a standard price of 240 points and HD for 300 so its not TOO expensive. The new Friday The 13th costs more, 360 for SD and 420 for HD, not sure why but it gives a LITTLE bit of hope that the movies might come down in price as they age. They seem to be all rentals rather than purchases sadly but the 360 isn't the type of machine for storing a long term video library anyway. Sadly I only have 200 points at the moment so I can't download any movies at all, the previews seem to stream very nicely, fast and in good detail. The friday 13th preview is in lovely clear detail, starts almost instantly and stream speed shits all over youtube running perfectly without pauses (I'm on adsl2+ with a downstream rate of 14013 kbps). Its so good that you could almost feel the film grain in the preview of Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Kahn!
The library was clearly built by a star trek fan, They have every GOOD star trek movie, 2, 3, 4, 6 & 8, no 90 minute special effects show with 20 minutes of story from The Motion Picture, no Kirk beats up god in The Final Frontier and no Kirk steals way too much time from Picard in Generations.
No Star Wars, it seems to be mostly Paramount films so far, dunno if thats a preview limitation or if noone gets universal, warners etc
Preferrably not questions about Twitter because I don't use it so all I could do is critique the sign in page.
From the little i've used so far, facebook seems pretty good. In fact I prefer it to the proper one. it functions as a seperate application, much like running an arcade game so there's no worries about being signed in when you don't realise it. The interface, whilst a bit slow (presumably because it's downloading the information on access rather than on application load) is nice and clean, galleries are automatically separated into their own window.
The home channel seems to cycle through the latest entries in the first window (which can be expanded to show more entries, I have 25 entries but there's then an option to view older posts) whilst you're sitting there doing nothing, your status is displayed in the next window and your photos in the the third and final one.
There's seperate channels for photos, broken down into yours and friends, each opening galleries which can be browsed as if they were locally stored images (same interface and everything) and there's the option to view comments and captions for pictures where applicable.
The friends display gives you access to pretty much everything you'd get in the normal web facebook, profile, photos, status lists and there's an option for connecting to facebook friends who are on xbox live so presumably you can send friend requests to your ex girlfriends sisters brother who you only added because facebook suggested him and you didn't have the willpower to resist a command.
The profile channel gives you access to pretty much everything you'd need to use facebook, status updates, photos, profile info and basic settings but the latter seems to be only for online awareness on the 360.
No sign of facebook chat, perhaps it was even more dodgy and unreliable on the 360 than it is on the website or perhaps they thought there has to be a limit to controller based text entry.
ZUNE VIDEO MARKETPLACE
OH MY GOD! The Zune video marketplace has the Masters Of The Universe Movie!!! Roll on payday, I've not seen that train wreck of a film for decades!
Much like facebook (and probably twitter & lastFM), the zune video marketplace is a seperate application that launches as an exclusive process. There's either 102 or 103 films available for australians (I lost count right at the end but its over 100), For older movies, SD seems to have a standard price of 240 points and HD for 300 so its not TOO expensive. The new Friday The 13th costs more, 360 for SD and 420 for HD, not sure why but it gives a LITTLE bit of hope that the movies might come down in price as they age. They seem to be all rentals rather than purchases sadly but the 360 isn't the type of machine for storing a long term video library anyway. Sadly I only have 200 points at the moment so I can't download any movies at all, the previews seem to stream very nicely, fast and in good detail. The friday 13th preview is in lovely clear detail, starts almost instantly and stream speed shits all over youtube running perfectly without pauses (I'm on adsl2+ with a downstream rate of 14013 kbps). Its so good that you could almost feel the film grain in the preview of Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Kahn!
The library was clearly built by a star trek fan, They have every GOOD star trek movie, 2, 3, 4, 6 & 8, no 90 minute special effects show with 20 minutes of story from The Motion Picture, no Kirk beats up god in The Final Frontier and no Kirk steals way too much time from Picard in Generations.
No Star Wars, it seems to be mostly Paramount films so far, dunno if thats a preview limitation or if noone gets universal, warners etc
