'Gears of War 2' Poised to Be Top Entertainment Premiere This Holiday Season

Xbox 360 exclusive juggernaut launches worldwide on Nov. 7 at an astounding 20,000 retailers, leads the best and broadest portfolio of blockbuster games and entertainment for all this holiday season. REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 5




REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Rivaling the media
spectacle and fan anticipation of a blockbuster movie's opening weekend, the
Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system is set to launch its exclusive
title, "Gears of War 2," worldwide at 12:01 a.m. local time this Friday, Nov.
7. A total of 20,000 retail locations in 20 countries will open their doors to
the crowds waiting to get their hands on this must-have entertainment
experience. Fans and critics around the world are predicting that "Gears of
War 2," available only on Xbox 360, will be the biggest blockbuster of holiday
2008.



"Each holiday season in this current console generation, Xbox 360 has led
the industry with the best lineup of blockbuster video games, and we are
poised to lead the charge again in 2008 with 'Gears of War 2,'" said Phil
Spencer, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios. "Holding the title of
fastest-selling video game of 2006, 'Gears of War' has sold more than 5
million units to date, and this next chapter in the franchise will raise the
bar yet again."




Under the creative leadership of Cliff Bleszinski, the team at Epic Games
Inc. has pushed the franchise into bold new territory, greatly expanding upon
the game's themes of hope, survival and loss. In "Gears of War 2," the last
cities on Sera are sinking, swallowed by a new Locust threat from below. As
Marcus Fenix and Delta Squad pursue the Locust, the mission turns deeply
personal for Dominic Santiago as he uncovers clues in the search for his
missing wife, Maria.




"Epic's goal was to create an emotionally engaging experience that will
not only satisfy core gamers, but also attract new players who want to
experience something akin to watching a heart-pounding movie that draws you in
and doesn't let you go until the very end," said Bleszinski, design director
at Epic Games. "With 'Gears of War 2,' we're taking storytelling in the Gears
universe to places it's never been before, and we hope it'll deeply connect
with everyone playing the game alone or with friends."



To usher in the much-anticipated launch of "Gears of War 2" in the United
States, more than 10,000 retail stores will open their doors at 12:01 a.m.
local time on Nov. 7. At Midnight Mayhem flagship events in Los Angeles, New
York City and Bellevue, Wash., attendees will have the opportunity to win
limited edition "Gears of War 2" Xbox 360 consoles and other prizes, receive
autographed copies of the game, and meet the creators from Epic Games. In
addition, fans who purchase "Gears of War 2" at any participating retailer
during Midnight Mayhem will receive an exclusive Xbox LIVE token to download
an in-game, gold-plated Hammerburst for use during multiplayer gameplay. A
full list of scheduled events, retail locations and exclusives can be found at
http://www.gearsofwar.com.






"Gears of War 2" is available as a Standard Edition with an estimated
retail price (ERP) of $59.99 (U.S.), as well a Limited Edition with an ERP of
$69.99 (U.S.). The Limited Edition is packaged in a collectible SteelBook DVD
case and includes a 48-page hardbound book titled "Beneath the Surface: An
Inside Look at 'Gears of War 2,'" which is filled with character profiles and
exclusive concept art. The Limited Edition also includes a bonus DVD
containing the making-of documentary, a keepsake photo of Dominic and Maria
Santiago, and a coveted Xbox LIVE token to unlock a gold-plated Lancer for
online play.




In addition, all copies of the game come with an Xbox LIVE token to
download the Flashback Map Pack for free. The Flashback Map Pack will be
available immediately at launch and consists of five popular maps from the
original "Gears of War," including Canals, Gridlock, Mansion, Subway and Tyro
Station. Each map has been specially updated with new graphics for "Gears of
War 2."


To celebrate the launch, Xbox LIVE is hosting the "Gears of War 2" Xbox
LIVE Weekend Assault, sponsored by the movie "Transporter 3" and delivering 48
hours of special events beginning at 12:01 a.m. EST on Friday, Nov. 7. Xbox
LIVE Gold members will have the chance to download videos, participate in a
Game with Fame with Epic Games, and play in online tournaments to win
exclusive "Gears of War 2" prizes. More information about the Xbox LIVE
Weekend Assault activities can be found at http://www.gearsofwar.com.




"Gears of War 2" is leading a blockbuster lineup of the best and broadest
games that the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system has to offer this
holiday season. Whether you are a fan of music, movies, sports,
action-adventure, role-playing or games that the entire family can enjoy, Xbox
360 has the most anticipated games and exclusive content including highly
anticipated music games such as "Lips," "Rock Band 2," "Guitar Hero World
Tour" and "DanceDanceRevolution UNIVERSE3"; movie-themed titles "You're in the
Movies" and "Scene It? Box Office Smash"; sports titles such as "Madden NFL
09"; games for the family such as "Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts"; and
role-playing games such as "Fable II" and "Fallout 3." The Xbox 360 Arcade
console is available for $199.99 ERP (U.S.), the most affordable
next-generation console on the market today.







Additional press materials as well as art and video assets are available
at http://gearsofwar.xbox.com/presskit.htm.







About Epic Games


Epic Games, Inc., based in Cary, NC and established in 1991, develops
cutting-edge games and cross-platform game engine technology. The company has
created multiple million-selling, award-winning titles in its Unreal series,
most recently shipping "Unreal Tournament 3" for PC, PLAYSTATION(R)3 and Xbox
360. Epic's breakthrough game, "Gears of War," sold five million copies and
won over 30 Game of the Year awards. The highly anticipated sequel, "Gears of
War 2," releases November 7, 2008. Epic's Unreal Engine 3 is the current
holder and three-time consecutive winner of Game Developer magazine's Best
Engine Front Line Award. Additional information about Epic can be obtained
through the Epic Games Web site at http://www.epicgames.com.



About Microsoft Game Studios


Microsoft Game Studios is a leading worldwide publisher and developer of
games for the Xbox and Xbox 360 video game systems, the Windows operating
system and online platforms. Comprising a network of top developers, Microsoft
Game Studios is committed to creating innovative and diverse games for Windows
(http://www.microsoft.com/games), including such franchises as "Age of
Empires," "Flight Simulator" and "Zoo Tycoon"; Xbox and Xbox 360
(http://www.xbox.com), including such games as "Gears of War" and franchises
such as "Halo," "Fable," "Project Gotham Racing" and "Forza Motorsport"; and
MSN Games (http://www.games.msn.com), the official games channel for the MSN
network and home to such hits as "Bejeweled" and "Hexic."



About Xbox 360


Xbox 360 is a premier video game and entertainment system. It is home to
the best and broadest games plus more standard and high-definition movies and
TV shows on demand than any other device connected to the TV. The digital
center of the living room, Xbox 360 blends unbeatable content, including
personal pictures and music, with a unified online social network to create a
limitless entertainment experience that can be shared at home or across the
globe. More information can be found online at http://www.xbox.com/xbox360.



About Microsoft


Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in
software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their
full potential.



Prices herein are estimated retail prices. Actual retail prices may vary.



Epic, Epic Games, Unreal, Unreal Engine, Unreal Tournament, Gears of War,
Gears of War 2 and Marcus Fenix are trademarks or registered trademarks of
Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of America and elsewhere. The names of
actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners.

SOURCE Microsoft Corp.

Bigger TVs not always better in small rooms

By Peter Familari November 05, 2008 02:00am

HUGE 55-inch widescreen. Check. High-definition tuner built-in. Check. Top sound system. Check. Connections? Four HDMI and a bundle of others. Tick them off.

So what's not to like about the just released Sony top-of-the line KDL55XBR45 LCD TV?

Not much. But buyers with the hots for such a huge screen should think carefully about the size of their living room.

The seating distance required for this fine example of an LCD TV is a minimum of 5m.

Get closer and any imperfection in the program signal, whether Blu-ray, DVD or high-definition TV program, becomes glaringly obvious.

That brings us to the question: "What is the correct seating distance for a TV?"
Measuring up

In the days of the cathode-ray tube (CRT) the correct seating distance was based on a distance of three to four times the diagonal measurement of the screen. So if the diagonal was say, a metre, the best viewing was 3m to 4m away.

The definition of a CRT TV was so low compared with today's batch of high-definition TVs that if you sat too close you could see the individual pixels of the video image.

The pixels are much finer on the modern LCD and plasma TVs. And there's a heap more of them.

The older CRT viewing distance formula doesn't always work with flat-panel TVs because the picture quality varies wildly between makes and models.

So most people watch their new TVs at whatever distance they feel comfortable.

Crate expectations

The other issue consumers need to factor in with sets this size is the physical dimensions of the shipping crate.

The Sony's crate was big enough for an adult to lie in comfortably and so heavy it required two men to cart it around.

Anyone buying this big unit beware: it won't fit in the back of the station wagon.

Unpacked and wired up to show high-definition TV programs and Blu-ray movies, the picture quality was laced with detail and a solid range of colours.

Consumers can test the quality of the picture in store simply by picking up the remote and flicking through several TV channels.

It will become clear that the new Sony Bravia will show up minute differences between TV programs.

Watch a lot of US sitcoms and daytime shows recorded using the NTSC broadcast system and converted to Australia's PAL system and don't be surprised to see the Sony highlighting their horrible orange tint.

Move to Blu-ray and well-produced 1080i high-definition TV programs and the viewing quality is top-notch for an LCD screen.

But it is still not as natural as a top 50 or 60-inch plasma TV.

Is it the best LCD TV we've seen this year? No. That prize goes to the the top sets in the current Philips 9000 series.

The Sony is the next best thing.

At a glance

Sony
Model: Bravia KDL55XBR45
Price: RRP $9999
In the top rank of LCD TVs, the Sony demands a large room and top-rank video sources.
www.sony.com.au

Rival buy
Pioneer
Model: PDP-LX609
Price: RRP $10,999
A thousand dollars dearer but with a sceen five inches larger than the Sony, the new Pioneer plasma due out this month handles motion more adeptly.
www.pioneer.com.au

MTV Networks International chooses GlobeCast to deliver first international High Definition channel General Press Releases November 5th, 2008

London, 4 November 2008 – GlobeCast announces that it was chosen by MTV Networks International (MTVNI) for the recent launch of its first international High Definition service dedicated to music and kids, MTVNHD.

MTVNHD carries music based and kids’ programming that is original, acquired and from MTVNI’s multi-branded library. Over 300 hours of bespoke programming has been commissioned over two years, providing viewers with an enhanced music and kids’ entertainment experience. The 24-hour English-language HD service will initially be available in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Poland and Sweden, with plans to expand to France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, the UK, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela in the coming months.

GlobeCast receives MTVNI’s HD channel, along with five MTV channels in SD, via fibre at its Brookmans Park Technical Operations Centre. From there, it is uplinked to Eutelsat’s HOT BIRD 6 satellite.

A number of channels have been switched from HOT BIRD 6 to create capacity for MTVNI’s HD offering, including MTV Portugal which is now managed on GlobeCast’s new transponder on EUROBIRD 9, located at 9° East.

GlobeCast (www.globecast.com): a subsidiary of France Telecom, is the leading global provider of content management and worldwide transmission services for professional broadcast delivery. The company operates a secure global satellite and fibre network to manage and transport 10 million hours of video and other rich media each year, providing ingest, aggregation, transmission and repurposing of content for delivery to direct-to-home satellite platforms; cable, IPTV, mobile and broadband headends; as well as corporate and digital signage networks. GlobeCast’s fleet of SNG trucks deploys globally to support coverage of the biggest news and sporting events each year in SD and HDTV formats. Borders are non-existent when it comes to GlobeCast’s services, thanks to the company’s 12 teleports and technical operations centres as well as its 18 offices in Europe, North and Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Australia.

Press Contacts:
Alexandra Weber alexandra.weber {at} globecast(.)com +33 1 5595 2604
Seamus O’Keeffe seamus {at} ing-media(.)com +44 20 7392 1987

Vanessa Ching
Senior Manager, Marketing Communications - Asia

GlobeCast Asia
600 North Bridge Road #13-02/05 Parkview Square
188778 Singapore

T : 65.6325.4222
F : 65.6227.9782

vanessa.ching {at} globecast(.)com
www.globecast.com

HIS Radeon HD 4850 Ice Q4 Video Card

Product: Radeon HD 4850 ICEQ4 TurboX
Manufacturer: HIS technology
SKU code: H485QX512P
Information: HIS website
Street price: $199

HIS Radeon HD 4850 ICEQ4 TurboXIt is rare in the history of the graphics card industry, that a manufacturer introduces that all new pro-active gaming device, and then procedes to have so much success. The strategy behind the Radeon 4800 series is simple, high performance, at a fair price. I mean face it, you drop 175-199 USD and bam... you receive a card allowing you to play the very latest games at a good screen resolution and great image quality.



For the manufacturers, a little bit of a downside is to be able to do such a thing at a very affordable price, you need to cut away stuff and save money to offer the product as cheap as possible. On the Radeon HD 4850 the problem is very clear, it can get really hot, and it could be a bit more silent yet the biggest downside, thanks to it's cooling, is that the residual heat is dumped inside the PC.

Luckily for us there are always a couple of manufacturers out there who are willing to do things slightly different. HIS technology always has been such a company. Surely they'll sell the regular versions just as well, yet typically a month after the original reference products are unleashed onto the market, HIS comes up with a slightly customized design. Those intrested in the industry all know about the ICEQ concept, that dual-slot cooler based series of graphics cards from which we tested so much in the past already.

It was therefore no surprise to see HIS launch the Radeon HD 4850 512MB with a customized cooler, the new ICEQ4 model. Again very silent, again very good cooling performance and again, great looks. Next to that HIS decided to overclock the card a bit for you as well. Suffice to say, how can it not be a winner ?



As you guys know by now ATI's Radeon HD 4850/4870 are both using the same GPU (graphics processor unit). The codename for these chips is RV770. AMD put nearly a billion transistors into that GPU, which is now built upon a 55-nm (260 mm2 Die size) production. The chip literally is 16 mm wide and high. Which for AMD still is quite large, for a 55nm product. The number of transistors for a midrange product like this is extreme and typically it's best to directly relate that to the number of shader processors to get a better understanding. But first let's look at some nice examples of Die sizes of current architectures.

The Radeon 4850/4870 series graphics processor have 800 scalar processors (320 on the HD 3800 series) and now have a significant forty texture units (was 16 in last-gen architecture). The stream/compute/shader processors (can we please just name them all shader processors?) definitely had a good number of changes; if you are into this geek talk, you'll spot 10 SIMD clusters each carrying 80 32-bit Shader processors (this accumulates to 800). If I remember correctly, one SIMD unit can handle double precision.

Much like we recently noticed in the NVIDIA GTX 200 architecture, the 80 scalar stream processors per SIMD unit have 16KB of local data cache/buffer that is shared among the shader processors. Next to the hefty shader processor increase you probably already notice the massive amount of texture units. In the last generation product we noticed 16 units, the 4800 series has 40 units.



When you do some quick math, that's 2.5x the number of shader processors over the last-gen product, and 2.5x the number of texture units. That's a pretty grand change folks. Since the GPU has 800 shader processors it can produce the raw power of 1000 to 1200 GFlops in simple precision. It's a bit lame and inaccurate to do but divide the number of ATI's scalar shader processors with the number 5 and you'll roughly equal the performance to NVIDIA's stream processor. You could (in an abstract way) say that the 4800 series have 160 Shader units, if that helps you compare it towards NVIDIA's scaling. Again there's nothing scientific or objective about that explanation.

Effectively combined with the clock speed and memory this product can poop out 1000/1200 GigaFLOPs of performance. Depending on how that is measured of course. But still, with an entry product at 199 USD for the 4850 and 299 USD for the 4870 that's just an awful lot of computing power.

Next to internal efficiency improvements we also stumble into an updated UVD engine (HD video decoder/accelerator/enhancer).

HIS submitted their Radeon HD 4850 with some customizations. The UV reflective dual-slot ICEQ4 cooler is obviously present, and next to that this is the TurboX version, which boils down to the fact that the card is overclocked for you. Normally the Radeon HD 4850 would have a 625 MHz core and shader frequency, this model is clocked at 675 at standard for you. next to that you'll also gain some extra memory bandwidth as the GDDR3 clock is set at 2200 MHz, which is 200 MHz higher than the reference clock. Not at all dramatic higher clocks bit every tiny little bit surely helps.

When we look at the PCB of the card, we immediately spot that the layout is different, this is a customized blue colored PCB, hopefully that will yield some good overclocking results as well.

You can expect roughly a 110-120 Watt peak watt power consumption. At a 199 USD introduction price, we expect this to be a very competitive product on the market. Last thing I need to mention, included in the box are:

Bundled we see the following:

* DVI to VGA Dongle x 1
* DVI to HDMI Dongle x 1
* S-Video to Composite adapter
* Crossfire™ bridge x 1
* Manual
* Driver CD
* Multi-purpose magnetic screwdriver with LED.

Multi-purpose magnetic screwdriver with LED included in the bundle


The bundle is okay. No additional software in the form of full games though. You do get a small gadget, see the photo above; the new included multi-purpose screwdriver it's funny and handy.

Installation

Its the standard anno 2008. Graphics cards are pretty easy to install. This card was no different. Slide the card into a free PCIe 8x / 16x slot and connect a monitor. Connect the 6-pin PCIe power cable. You can now power up the PC. Once Windows boots up, install the latest Catalyst drivers and make sure your operating system is fully patched up, especially DirectX. After driver installation, reboot the PC and you are ready to go.
Power consumption

It's time to do some actual testing with these cards. We'll start off by showing you some tests we have done on overall power consumption
of the PC. Looking at it from a performance versus wattage point of view, the power consumption is really good with the new 55nm products. Our single card test system is a Core 2 Duo E8400 (3GHz) Processor, the nForce 680i SLI mainboard, a passive water-cooling solution on the CPU, 2GB memory, DVD-ROM and WD Raptor drive. Have a look:

Videocard

A single Radeon HD 4850/4870 series requires you to have a 450-500 Watt power supply unit at minimum if you use it in a high-end system, and I think that's barely on the safe side. Also recommended is 32 AMP's on the 12 volts rails for stable power distribution (in a single card configuration).



Crossfire is something else, you add another 130-150 Watts plus 8 AMPs on the 12V rails during gaming. I recommend a PSU of, at the very least, 750-800 Watts. Make sure you have some reserves folks. It's not that your PC will consume that much power, it's just that you want to make sure your PSU can deal with the hefty load and will stay stable during you entire gaming experience.

With three cards obviously 800+ Watt power supplies are recommended, and in fact even needed to be able to even supply something as simple as enough PCIe graphics power connectors.

There are many good PSU's available, over the years we reviewed a lot of them and have loads of recommended PSU's for you to check out in there, have a look. Things that can happen if your PSU can't cope with the load?:

* bad 3D performance
* crashing games
* spontaneous reset or imminent shutdown of the PC
* freezes during gameplay
* PSU overload can cause it to break down

The thermal envelope

We measure at a room temperature of 21-22 Degrees C, look at idle temperature and then load the GPU 100% for a couple of minutes and measure the temperature once a second and follow the temperature delta.

Typically the standard Radeon 4850 products come with a bit of an average cooler. Temperatures can rise up-to 95 Degrees C on these products. So I was quite thrilled to see a much better cooling solution mounted to this product.

Idle temps are roughly 45 Degrees C, yet when the GPU is fully utilized we measured 65 Degrees C, which is far better than the reference cooler. Also bare in mind that this product is pre-overclocked, typically that results into a slightly higher GPU temperature. But yeah, lovely.



Noise Levels coming from the graphics card

When graphics cards produce a lot of heat, that heat usually needs to be transported away from the hot core as fast as possible. Often you'll see massive active fan solutions that can indeed get rid of the heat, yet all the fans these days make the PC a noisy son of a gun. I'm doing a little try-out today with noise monitoring, so basically the test we do is extremely subjective. We bought a certified dBA meter and will start measuring how many dBA originate from the PC. Why is this subjective, you ask? Well, there is always noise in the background, from the streets, from the HD, PSU fan etc etc, so this is by a mile or two not a precise measurement. You could only achieve objective measurement in a sound test chamber.

The human hearing system has different sensitivities at different frequencies. This means that the perception of noise is not at all equal at every frequency. Noise with significant measured levels (in dB) at high or low frequencies will not be as annoying as it would be when its energy is concentrated in the middle frequencies. In other words, the measured noise levels in dB will not reflect the actual human perception of the loudness of the noise. That's why we measure the dBa level. A specific circuit is added to the sound level meter to correct its reading in regard to this concept. This reading is the noise level in dBA. The letter A is added to indicate the correction that was made in the measurement. Frequencies below 1kHz and above 6kHz are attenuated, where as frequencies between 1kHz and 6kHz are amplified by the A weighting.

We start up a benchmark and leave it running for a while. The fan rotational speed remains constant. We take the dBA meter, move away 75 CM and then aim the device at the active fan on the graphics card.

With the ICEQ4 cooler you can expect roughly 40-41 dBa at peak GPU usage (fan RPM will be higher when GPU is hotter).

The New Xbox Experience

I was privileged to get a sneak peek at the latest revision of the Xbox dashboard, dramatically entitled ‘New Xbox Experience’. The old Xbox 360 blade system has served the system well over the last few years, but you can’t help but get the feeling that the massive jumps in functionality since the 360 launched have crowded the existing front-end, leading to an unsatisfactory, cluttered user-experience.
The new dash backs away from the clean, premium-look of the PlayStation 3’s XMB and instead focuses in an unashamedly Apple-style interface, perked up with Nintendo-style use of clean, bright colours and cuddly, casual-friendly (dare I say child-friendly?) imagery.


Loading up the dash update is only the first phase of the procedure. Once it’s installed, you have an Avatar-less experience. You can still access all your games and demos, but before connecting to Live you need to download the Avatar creation tool – Live downloads have been cripplingly slow for me of late; I'd expect you to be downloading the secondary update a lot more swiftly than I did.

By the way, if you get blank boxes here instead of video players, press F5 on your browser to reload the page...


This cheery intro movie kicks off the proceedings. Yup, chances are that most of that download consisted of this HD introduction...


First things first. It’s time to kick off Avatar creation. It’s Mii-HD to all intents and purposes. Even the backing music has that Nintendo feel. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the inclusion of Avatars can only really be judged once software starts to take advantage of it. Note that gamerpics are still retained; they’re just not as prominent as once they were.


In the meantime, the Friends List certainly looks a great deal more attractive than it used to… a party function has been added, which I couldn’t use as nobody else on my Friends List has NXE...


My Xbox is the hub of the new interface. It’s basically the vast majority of the old dashboard built into one user-friendly system. Note the game artwork for Oblivion (the disc in the drive). That’s being downloaded from Microsoft HQ, iTunes-style.


The welcome panel is a new addition that spells out all the new feature of NXE so even the most mentally challenged will be encouraged to check them out. You can turn this off if you get bored of it.


The somewhat decrepit in-game OS feature has been substantially revamped and is far, far more responsive than it was.


Aha, so here’s the feature that everyone’s been waiting for: the hard disk installation. Yes it works, and yes it’s excellent. Yes I have edited the video as I'm not sure any one could stomach watching 11 minutes of progress bar action.

You all know the score by now – the game disc needs to be kept in the drive, but it’s only accessed once – everything else is accessed from the hard disk. The result is that the Xbox 360 is much, much quieter during gameplay. Play a demo from the Live Marketplace and that’s exactly the same level of noise you’ll be getting. The question is, what other benefits are there? Most Xbox 360 games are already optimised to cache to the hard disk – it’s the main reason why there’s only 12GB available on the original 20GB hard disk.
Although I’ll need to look at this a bit more scientifically (ie checking in stuff like pop-in on Gears of War or GTAIV), there’s no doubt that spooling to hard disk results in a welcome speed bump. Here are a few games I checked out:



And Finally...
Media. As far as I can tell, nothing has been changed in this regard from the last revision of the dashboard. It’ll still play WMV files (even Blu-ray and HD-DVD rips, with all the VC-1 codec extensions in use), it’ll handle XviD files just fine and its h264 playback is the same as it was too. PS3 has upped the bar when it comes to HD playback with its unofficial support for 1080p60, and it would’ve been nice for the 360 to least be able to handle HD h264 content over 12mbps in throughput levels, but clearly that’s just not going to happen. Those looking for support for the Matroska container (.mkv) are also shit out of luck.
On the plus side, Microsoft’s association with NetFlix yields instant dividends in NXE. If you’re in the US, you’re able to stream both SD and HD content. HD content is 5mbps 720p – basically the same as most of the 720p Blu-ray rips seen out and about, but encoded into WMV instead. Great quality, and it’s all legal. You’ll just need to have a whopping great pipe to the internet to enjoy the HD content.
What is disappointing though is that the picture viewer is still rubbish. It takes quite a lot of effort to make a bad JPEG viewer, but Microsoft has done just that with the 360. It’s always been awful, but you’d have thought it would’ve been improved this time around. Support for TIFF, BMPs and other uncompressed formats would’ve been useful too...


On the left is a Digital Foundry HD screenshot from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. The picture on the right shows the shot being displayed with the JPEG viewer in the 360. I’m curious as to how you can decompress a JPEG and actually add blur.

Overall, the New Xbox Experience is a welcome lick of paint with a very nice range of functionality. There’s something for everyone here, with just those using their 360s as media players let down a touch by the lack of innovation in this area (though you have to admit that the Netflix tie-in is excellent – if you can get it). The install-to-hard disk feature is certainly a worthy addition in its own right, and my tests were done with a heavily used 20GB launch drive. The newer 120GB drive is most likely faster (being a newer variation) and obviously allows you to cache more of your games. I somehow doubt that it’s going to yield any additional performance over and above better loading times and quieter gameplay, but that in itself is a major boon.
Also worthy of note is the inclusion of 1440x900 and 1650x1080 resolutions for users of VGA and DVI displays. Content here is letterboxed to avoid the annoying stretching seen on most 16:10 displays.

Update: The Verdict
As a core gamer, I like NXE and what it does for me, and I can see that the iTunes-style interface is going to make the system initially more attractive and sophisticated-looking than the old-style blades. The only problem I have with it concerns who the interface is actually targeted at. Practically all this new functionality is clearly geared towards the enthusiast user, and yet the Avatar system is obviously aimed at the Wii market and I'm struggling to understand how it will be accepted or used by the 360's established userbase.
As it is, the new interface is initially quite daunting - not casual friendly at all, despite looking a lot nicer than it did. More than that, if Microsoft is looking to branch out and attract the Wii audience, it's going to need to do more. It's all about the games. Virtually all of Nintendo's output is geared towards a different user. Even its core games like Mario Galaxy include wand-waving bits so the non-gamer can join in while the enthusiast gets his Mazzer fix.
Releases like Viva Pinata are completely the wrong direction in my opinion. Nintendo's genius has been in getting back to basics and supplying software that everyone can identify with - titles like Pinata don't do that. More than a new dashboard, Microsoft Games Studios basically needs to completely change its focus, and I'm not sure I see this happening...