Foxtel today launched its Foxtel on Xbox 360 service, which lets you access the pay TV channel via an Xbox 360 console without needing a set-top box. While the basic $20 a month price might sound appealing compared to full-blown pay TV, there’s a big risk involved, as Foxtel doesn’t have any unmetered partnerships with ISPs.
Downloading games is convenient, but the fact that you don’t receive physical media isn’t always reflected in the pricing. Over at our sister site Kotaku, David has revisited the issue of the Xbox Games On Demand platform, to see if downloads for that platform offer better value than they did at launch.
Foxtel Downloads doesn’t really cut it, so will it be up to Microsoft to provide a comprehensive video-on-demand system? Nick over at Gizmodo has been putting the Zune Video Marketplace on Xbox Live through its paces, and he’s pretty impressed with what he sees.
Read over our coverage of XBMC, but not quite sure if you’re ready to take the plunge? XBMC Installer Deluxe makes tinkering with your freshly modded Xbox a breeze.
The new Xbox Live Dashboard for Xbox 360s—known simply as ‘NXE’ (the New Xbox Experience)—is live, so fire up your Xbox and get downloading. The update only took a few minutes on my system, is followed by a bombastic welcome video, and is full of all kinds of promise. If you’ve already updated, let’s hear what you think of the NXE in the comments.
Wired’s How-To Wiki details step-by-step how to set up port forwarding to make sure you’re getting the best experience from your Xbox 360 and Xbox Live game play. Depending on your router you may never have needed to do this, but if you’ve ever experienced long wait-times between games and other suspicious network problems, there’s a fair chance that a quick trip through your router’s settings could make a big difference. While you’re at it, you may be interested in tweaking your router to ensure your Xbox gets the lion’s share of your bandwidth when you need it. Finally, now that you’re gaming is set up for top performance, maybe it’s time you do more than just game on your 360. Set Up Port Forwarding on Your Xbox 360 [Wired How-To Wiki]
Any platform running XBMC: AEON transforms your Xbox Media Centre with a beautiful new and friendly interface. Installing AEON is simply a matter of dragging it into your XBMC’s skins directory and then getting started. Whether your running XBMC on your Mac (a fork of which has just been renamed to Plex), your classic Xbox, or your thumb drive, AEON is an excellent tool to improve the look and feel. If you’d like to try XBMC on your Mac with a more social flair, check out previously mentioned Boxee.
Millions of homes have an Xbox 360 sitting in the living room, but if you’re only using your 360 to game, you’re missing out. With some free tools and a little elbow grease, that compact, networked PC sitting under your television can offer a whole lot of useful media functionality. The fact is, your 360 is capable of so much more than just gaming. Let’s take a look at a few ways you can get more from your Xbox 360. (We covered some of this territory in our recent guide to what to do with your new cheap Xbox 360, but there’s plenty of extra goodness to be had.
One intrepid Ubuntu hacker has written up a little script that allows your Xbox 360 to locate and stream music from any computer running Ubuntu. Downloading, setting up, and activating the script will require a bit of terminal work, but the commands can be easily copied and pasted from the Ubuntu Forums post linked below. Got a better solution for connecting the two systems that normally would never get along? Share your solutions in the comments. Stream music to your Xbox 360 [Ubuntu Forums]
