Forums | MacLife

MacZiMiZer wrote:

Believe me, they'll find plenty of crap you can pay $1 to add to your avatar.

And as to Bat's Halo 3 NXE update....   

You didn't bother to read, eh? That's what the links are for.

The Xbox 360 HDD has a section for games to use called the utility partition. Games can use this section for whatever they want to; Halo 3 uses the utility partition to cache maps as they will load faster off the HDD than off the DVD. As a side note, the utility partition can be deleted when other games are played. This is why maps can take longer to load when you play another game in between various Halo 3 sessions. (As was the case with Halo 1 and Halo 2.)
..

..And as a result, it means that even if Halo 3 is already installed to the HDD, it will still copy maps to the utility partition.

So then the real question is why is copying from HDD to HDD slower than copying from DVD to HDD? In the first case, you are reading from one I/O device (HDD) and writing to the same I/O device (HDD). In the second case, you are reading from one I/O device (DVD) and writing to a different I/O device (HDD). In the first case, because we are reading and writing to the same device, the total copy time is the amount of time it takes to read the map plus the time it takes to write the map. Ultimately this is because for the HDD, you read and write through the same mechanism, i.e., the hard drive read/write head, and those reads and writes cannot occur simultaneously through a single mechanism. (If they could, it would be awesome, and I wouldn’t have to document any of this. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to do for other reasons.) For the second case, because we are reading and writing from different devices, the total copy time is the larger of the total time to read the map and the total time to write the map. This is because we can read from one device (DVD) at the same time we are writing to another device (HDD). There is some overhead because you can’t start writing data until you read it, but it is dwarfed by the time to copy a map. (About 128k vs. 500 MB or a ratio of 4000:1.)

H3 loads pretty fast as is. This feature was just introduced, and H3 shipped over a year ago. There aren't any PS3 exclusives I need, and H3 will load and play as well as any other PC game down the line (better than any PS3 game).

Aqua OS X wrote:

Anyone else notice that you can't change your old avatar, which is now dubbed something akin to a "Profile Picture," without signing onto Live.... despite the fact that your old avatar pictures are -still- saved on your HDD?

Bug.

Feature.

Actually there's a lot you can't do without being online to authenticate. Want your kids changing things without you knowing?

Deadguy wrote:

But go ahead, call it a conspiracy. One can't expect a 360 owner to think critically.

He didn't call it a conspiracy, and I'd damp the trolling if I were you.

Which movie?  I noticed some problems with No Country for Old Men when I tried to watch it during prime time on Sunday, but didnt have any problems with some more obscure documentaries.

LLEVIATHANN wrote:

Well hell! Due to licensing issues Columbia Pictures (AKA Sony) won't allow Netflix to stream their movies to the 360. WTF Sony! Streaming to a Windows (AKA M$) machine is ok but not a 360 (AKA M$).

There was a problem last week when the New Xbox Experience rolled out - and Netflix support rolled out along with it - yet Sony's movies were unavailable. Boneheads made conspiratorial mutterings. Netflix were more sensible.

The online movie company issued a statement last week saying "we hope they’ll be licensed for Xbox 360 shortly". When Netflix say "shortly", they mean "shortly", as (most of) Sony's movies are now up and available for download. Least, the important ones are. Go knock yourselves out.

http://kotaku.com/5099053/sony-movies-n … 0s-netflix

I recall seeing something in print about the video quality of Netflix on 360, but haven't found it in a quick search. Back to the holiday for now.

Issue has been resolved. Sony is happy on 360s.

One more request. Can I haz sum DD 5.1 stream too? To date everything I've streamed unless it was tagged HD has only been in plain Jane stereo. Doesn't matter if it's been PPV or free. Used to not be that way. PPV at least came across as DD 5.1 back on DishNet.

Last edited by LLEVIATHANN (2008-12-01 2:51 pm)

I'm finding it a lot harder to get to anything that's not in the "My XBox" section.
For instance: checking for new game demos or add-ons.
It's like 10 steps to get to it now versus 3 on the old dashboard.
And if your intarweb pipes are clogged like mine generally are, you have to sit there waiting for the box art to load before you find out what game the content is even for.

Earendil the Mariner wrote:

I'm finding it a lot harder to get to anything that's not in the "My XBox" section.
For instance: checking for new game demos or add-ons.
It's like 10 steps to get to it now versus 3 on the old dashboard.
And if your intarweb pipes are clogged like mine generally are, you have to sit there waiting for the box art to load before you find out what game the content is even for.

What- MS make an unintuitive GUI? It's a first.

The old one was OK by me, but I guess they thought they should go for the Wii crowd with avatars and the like. Confuses me, too.

Just looking at the screen shots I'd say it looks aesthetically superior but organizationally inferior.

Well i'm sure theres going to be another update in time. Cleaned up, with optional avatars instead of mandatory, and other organizational improvements...could be a decent setup.

Yeah but it's hardly unexpected.