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.

Have you ever been tempted to buy an Xbox 360 Dashboard theme but was unsure of what the theme would look like? Given The Marketplace’s lack of a preview and Xbox.com barely showing you how it looks, this is a common problem. I know on several occasions I’ve wanted to spruce up my interface, but didn’t want to waste 150 Marketplace points on something which looked like crap.

Thankfully, there is now a solution. Fellow 9ruler Matt Brett and Andrew McTeer have just launched DashboardThemes.com, a site devoted to Dashboard theme previews. Since DashboardThemes.com purchases and takes screen shots of themes for you, they eliminate the guesswork of theme previewing. They even allow users to comment on themes, giving you the full picture before you shell out the dough on an interface tweak.