Microsoft released the long awaited Xbox 360 Spring 2007 update today. The update brings MSN chat, background downloading, a dedicated Marketplace blade, enhanced game information, inline achievement notifications, and H.264 / MPEG-4 video support. I eagerly downloaded the update this morning and formed my opinions on the new features.
MSN Support
Microsoft pushed MSN chat support as the biggest feature of the Spring 2007 update. While I feel otherwise, I have to admit integrated MSN support is a welcome enhancement. Since not everyone will be a huge fan of messages popping up mid-game, Microsoft thankfully made MSN chatting an opt-in feature. Users have to confirm their MSN account before they can chat with their MSN friends. I have yet to enable MSN chat because I’m not looking forward to typing with the controller. Once the controller keyboard attachment is released, I’ll be all over MSN chat. Until then, I’m leaving the feature disabled.
The 360 prompts for MSN details before enabling MSN chat.
The Marketplace Blade
The most surprisingly useful feature is the new Marketplace blade. Instead of dealing with the Marketplace on multiple blades, everything has been moved to one blade. Well, almost everything. The media blade still features a Video Marketplace button, but it’s more of a shortcut than a separate Marketplace. In addition to the new blade, Microsoft streamlined the Marketplace interface. Instead of clicking what used to seem like an endless chain of folders, users now only have a few clicks to receive the content desired.
The new Marketplace blade.
Bringing the new Marketplace blade to the 360 altered the Dashboard interface slightly. Users on 4:3 aspect ratio TVs will notice the blade tabs are now noticeably smaller. The smaller tabs are still legible and do not make the interface feel cluttered.
Background Downloading
There is not much to say about background downloading other than it works. Background downloading is disabled by default and can be enabled in the system blade. There is no user interface for background downloading, just shut off the 360 and the download will continue.
The background downloading option is hidden in the system blade.
Dashboard Enhancements
The update managed to bring three insanely simple and useful enhancements to the Dashboard UI. First up, instead of displaying Play Game, the 360 now shows the game currently in the drive. Since I share a 360 with my brother, I’m always wondering what game is in the drive. Now I don’t have to wonder. Next, hovering over the game title will display a brief summery of achievements in the right hand section of the Dashboard. Finally, instead of displaying Achievement Unlocked on new achievements, the 360 now reports what achievement was unlocked and how many points it was worth. All welcome additions in my opinion.
Hovering over game titles displays their achievements.
H.264 / MPEG-4 Support
While the other features are certainly worthwhile, my most anticipated feature of the Spring 2007 update had to be H.264 / MPEG-4 support. I covered my opinion of the additional support in a previous post, so I’ll stick mainly to the features.
For the time being, H.264 / MPEG-4 streaming is limited to the Zune Media Player. That’s not the fault of the 360, just applications not being updated for the new codecs. In the coming weeks streaming applications should be updated, offering better steaming support.
With that said, I tested the new codecs using a flash drive. Upon connecting my flash drive, the first thing I noticed is folder support. Folder support will certainly be helpful is organizing media files. After clicking on my first H.264 file, I was prompted to download a media update. Once the media update downloaded, my file played wonderfully. I tried to test a wide variety of H.264 files to see if I would run into any problems. Everything I threw at the 360 worked wonders:
- Ask a Ninja, MPEG-4, MOV Container
- Diggnation, H.264, MOV Container
- MacBreak, H.264 720p, MOV Container
- Converted Videos for Apple TV, H.264, MP4 Container
A media update is required before H.264 videos will play.
I was surprised by the quality of everything I played. All my videos looked much better than their Windows Media counterparts, even the small 320×240 Ask a Ninja episode. Seeing how the 360 handled H.264 files, I have no doubt H.264 will be the upcoming standard codec for nearly all devices.
Conclusion
The Spring 2007 update is most certainly an excellent enhancement to the 360. With MSN chat, background downloading, a dedicated Marketplace blade, enhanced game information, inline achievement notifications, and H.264 / MPEG-4 video support, I can’t see why anyone wouldn’t want this update. Besides, Microsoft forces the update on all Live users, so there really is not an option. If you own a 360, be sure to connect to Live or burn a CD and receive perhaps the best 360 update to date.
15 Comments
this update just screwed up my xbox. it made it where i cant play with five of my favorite friends. i really wish this hadn’t of come out. it has made my xbox 360 gaming experiance worse.
This update really pushed the Xbox 360 above and beyond - not that it wasn’t already there.
I absolutely love the new achievement pop-ups that display the name and value of the achievement you just unlocked, and background downloading is the best thing ever. Which is funny, because it was probably the feature I was least excited about, but has been of great use already.
The WLM integration is alright. I’m not really a fan of it. I don’t want to chat with people while I’m playing games, and I don’t want chat notifications all the time either. Unfortunately, if you disable notifications, you don’t see the achievement pop-ups either. So I haven’t been signing into WLM all that often.
I didn’t realize the media update was separate. Didn’t see that - where’d you find it? Doesn’t do me much good anyway as everything I have is in XVID or DIVX. But at least they’re adding more codecs with every update.
That sucks. Hopefully they’ll address that in the Fall Update along with different MSN accounts and the under 18 issue.
You should be prompted to download the media update when you attempt to play any of the new formats supported.
Thanks for the article. Quick question. I’ve moved into a new apartment and will be without internet access for the next month. Is there a way to burn the media update to a CD in the same way that you would the Dashboard update? I have a ton of H.264 content I’d really like to start playing on the 360.
That’s unknown at the moment. Microsoft has yet to post the Spring Dashboard update in CD form, so perhaps the Media Update will be included on the disc.
Does Xbox 360 support mp4 format?
Yes
Thanks! Ronald
I haven’t played my Xbox in a couple months - went to play the other day, downloaded the new update - and I have the same problem. There are 3 specific people I cannot play with no matter what I do. MSFT better fix this bug quick!
Another question. I was told by friends that MP4 Converter from http://www.mp4converter.net exports excellent mp4 movies, and therefore I’m wondering whether those outputted mp4 movies are playable perfectly on xbox 360.
MS started banning modded xbox 360s from Live at the same time as the update. I would imagine that the reason you can’t play with your friends suddenly, is that they have modded systems and have been banned from Live, not that the update screwed anything up.
I can’t play a single .MOV file!
It comes back with an error code that doesn’t exist on the xbox.com/support page.
Is there a chance the update isn’t on my machine? I just bought an Elite 4 days ago.
Help?
I thought it was great when I read that the Xbox would support H264 in MPEG-4 files! After successfully burning several WMVHD videos to dual layer DVDs (DVD9), as data disks (DVD ROM, UFD) and playing them in an Xbox 360 I tried to do the same with an MPEG-4 video. I extracted the video and audio streams from an .mkv file into separate .h264 and .ac3 files. I transcoded the .ac3 audio into 2ch AAC LC audio with Besweet (see Doom 9), and then muxed the H264 and AAC files into a .mp4 file with YAMB. The result played fine on my PC with a variety of media players, but when burned to a DVD9 the Xbox first prompted for an update, and then said “unsupported content” with an error code that doesn’t exist on the xbox.com/support page. I sent a detailed explanation to the Xbox support team, and asked them why my .mp4 DVD wouldn’t play in the Xbox while .wmv DVDs would play. I got a response that started with, “…so I understand that you are trying to hook an MP4 player to your Xbox…”. Gee, what a sharp bunch of tacks they are!
Can anybody here on this list help me? It’s great to be able to play WMVHD videos from the Xbox’s standard DVD drive to the “big screen”, but it would be even better to be able to play MPEG-4 videos that use H264 video encoding!
-jc
i tried to play call of duty 3 and it wont let me join a game but i can create my own but no one comes in . Can u tell me what is going on ? Grrrrr im steamin mad !!!!
I haven’t played my Xbox in a couple months - went to play the other day, downloaded the new update - and I have the same problem. There are 3 specific people I cannot play with no matter what I do. MSFT better fix this bug quick!
maybe that them people dont have the update i got it and it work fine
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