The xBox 360 could be the best thing that Microsoft has ever built.  I don’t want to be one of those Windoze, M$ guys, but sometimes they make it too easy to be that way.  Danielle made herself the best wife ever by purchasing an xBox 360 for her husband this year.  However, things are not like they were in the good ‘ole days of bachelordom and restraint is needed when playing games.  Once I realized that, I decided to hook up the 360 as an MCE Extender on our living room television.  I had built a stand-alone MCE box (P4 Shuttle barebones system) with some good parts (aside from the crappy Shuttle board), but things were just not working out. I simply don’t think the Shuttle’s mobo is up to the task of working as a high-performance video serving system.  So, I decided to give the xBox a try.

Well, it worked like a champ right out of the gates. The 360 is fast, stable and my only complaint (like many others) is that there is no ability to play DVDs from the remote MCE system. I am not sure who the genius behind this was, but it is something that should really be changed ASAP by Microsoft.  It plays live television (ala Tivo) via one of the tuners installed in the mothership MCE box, videos, recorded tv, etc. The only thing it doesn’t do is the DVD action.  The kicker was that the MCE remote I bought for my stand-alone MCE box works on the xBox 360 without doing a thing.

My only advice to Microsoft would be to make some open forums that MCE users and project managers actively participate in on their website. One where users can get honest answers to what will and will not be included in upcoming releases. I know this sounds silly to suggest that MS should tell everyone including their competition what they are planning on doing in the future, but they should not be afraid.  If anything, it will put everyone on notice how serious they are about this home media / home integration stuff.  Plus it will allow them to build the systems as the end-user really wants them to be…that is what this is all about, right?

[tags]xBox, xBox 360, MCE, Extender, Media PC, Media Center[/tags]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 10:44 am and is filed under HDTV, Media Center, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.