Xbox Live update details announced, includes Games on Demand support, Netflix Movie Parties, game ratings
By Nilay Patel 
posted Jul 16th 2009 8:44PM
posted Jul 16th 2009 8:44PM
What does this Xbox LIVE Update include?
Netflix Updates
Now you can watch movies with your friends no matter where they are and manage your queue from the comfort of your couch.
- Movie Parties – Xbox LIVE Gold members can sit together in a virtual theater with up to seven friends no matter where they are while your Avatars watch a movie, flirt or even throw popcorn at each other.
- Manage Your Queue – Browse the Netflix Instant Watch video catalogue, choose from the most popular movies and genres and add to your queue all from the comfort of your couch – no computer required.
- Enhanced Playback Experience – Enjoy a smooth viewing experience when your internet bandwidth fluctuates.
- Friends Info – Richer information is now displayed in the Friends channel and in the Guide showing what you and your friends are doing.
Express yourself! Deck your Avatar out with the latest clothing and props from the top brands and game franchises. Please note that only limited content is currently available in the preview.
Clothing
Download premium items, including branded apparel from your favorite fashion labels and Xbox 360 games such as "Halo."
- Props – You can now equip your avatar with animated items they can carry around and interact with.
- Awardables – The ability to earn Avatar clothing and props as rewards within games has been added. Please stay tuned for an update on supporting titles.
Enjoy 24 x 7 access to a growing online library of popular full game titles on Xbox LIVE whenever you want them, in the comfort of your living room.
- Purchase Options – Browse and download a great selection of full Xbox 360 games using Microsoft Points, direct debit, or credit card.
- Game Manuals – Game manuals for Games on Demand titles can be viewed, downloaded or printed on Xbox.com.
- It's Yours Forever! – As with other Xbox LIVE content, Games on Demand titles are linked to your Xbox LIVE account, so you can delete and re-download anything you have already purchased to the same console or another console.
User ratings help you find games that other people think are awesome!
- Rate it – You can now rate every game on the Xbox LIVE Games Marketplace using a 5-star system.
- Sort and Find it – Now you can easily find the games that everyone's been raving about by visiting the Top Rated games in the Browse All category of Xbox LIVE Games Marketplace.
Everyone loves to Party! Check out the new and improved Xbox LIVE Party features.
- Party Reconnections – If you are accidently disconnected from your party, Xbox LIVE will automatically reconnect you.
- Streamlined Party Invites – Invites are now just one click away! No need to click through multiple screens to get all your friends together.
We've made it easier for you to see your entertainment in the highest resolution possible on your TV using an HDMI connection.
- Display Discovery – Make sure you can see and hear your entertainment in the highest resolution and sound quality possible with the option to override and select audio and video formats independent of the information your television sends to your Xbox 360 console.
We're always listening to you for feedback, and this Xbox LIVE update will include numerous dashboard updates.
- Gold Member Veterans – Xbox LIVE Gold members get to show it off with a stamp on your Gamer Card that tells people how long you've been a Gold member.
- Indie Games – Xbox LIVE Community Games has been renamed Xbox LIVE Indie Games. We feel this new name better represents the independent spirit of these titles.
- Achievement Browser – We've revamped the Achievements browser so it's now easier to read through all the achievements while playing a game. You can now also launch a game directly from the browser.
- Achievements Tracking – A new view inside the profile panel which includes a summary of Achievements earned across all the games played, and shows of all your completed games.
- Streamlined Navigation - Streamlined navigation, including new entry points in the dashboard for Active Downloads, redeeming codes, recovering Gamertags and more.
- Voice Messages – No more blank voice messages! When recording a voice message, a warning will pop up if no audio is detected.
- Friends List Sorting – It's now easier to find your friends! Find and sort your friends by activity, Gamertag or online status by pressing the Y button while viewing the friends list in the Guide.
- Memory – Time stamps now appear in the memory area, which particular handy when managing saved games.
We've made some changes to make your life easier.
- Subscription Notification – If your Xbox LIVE subscription is about to run out, you will now be notified when you sign into Xbox LIVE.
- Updates for Invalid Windows Live IDs – If the Windows Live ID you provided has expired, you will now be prompted to update it the next time you sign into Xbox LIVE.
- Account recovery – We've enhanced the account recovery process to make it faster and more reliable.
The following features will be coming in future Xbox LIVE updates, which we'll be sure to let you know about.
- Zune video and 1080p Instant On
- Last.fm
Netflix Movie Parties sounds fun... especially for doing MST3K-ish digs at some of the junk that is available on Netflix streaming.
queue management and browsing would be good too... sometimes there is a movie on streaming i want to rewatch... but i've already taken it out of my queue.
normally i have to quit out of Netflix and then add it on my computer then come back to the 360 to watch it. kinda annoying.
Queue management and browsing are coming. They've already been announced.
@Dave
Wow, you read the article too?
so on movie parties, does one person pay or does everyone watching the movie pay?
Everyone watching the movie pays. Well they haven't said that specifically but it's pretty obvious.
@010111
If you add a movie to your queue from your PC you don't have to exit out of Netflix to see it on your Xbox. It will show up immediately.
All these great features sound so sweet but I just can't get over the fact my 360 sounds like a Harley =(
"If you add a movie to your queue from your PC you don't have to exit out of Netflix to see it on your Xbox. It will show up immediately."
yeah... i guess you are right. just sometimes i would have the whole Netflix interface appear to get confused when i reordered / added on a computer.
i wish there was an easy way to group stuff (TV / Movies or by genre or expiring soon or whatever) on my queue. that'd be nice... or a browsing method similar to the Xbox stores... where you can go into a A B C D pane to find something. frequently i have a movie in there i want to see that i forgot where exactly in the 300+ item queue it is.
I agree they also need to start concentrating on Audio quality when talking online, they need to make adjustments to the voice quality and the voice volume settings so instead of it being at number 10 can goto 20 or 30 this is for people who dont have mics with onboard volume adjusters
And 1?
and1?
Movie parrtyyyy woooo!
wow :) makes me want to play my 360 agian
Games on ... downloading please wait ... Demand
Really cool and smart that MS is doing this. They are getting creative with trying to rethink social networking.
How about being able to play a bittorrented .avi without choking 20 minutes in and blacking out the video, but still playing audio?
ive never had that problem with any of my video files that were compatible. Torrents? People stuill use that? Try using megauploadforum. same stuff, just alot faster.
Megaupload forum? I use warez-bb, is it as similar and as trustworthy?
I never have any problems playing .avi's from my computer through the xbox. I use hardwired cat5, had some media center choking over wifi. 12 bucks for 100 feet at amazon with free shipping. never looked back.
heh, i get the same issue on some specific shows, but 2 minsutes instead of twenty
I've been watching a lot of downloaded avi's streamed from my computer (XP, Windows Media Player 11, Cat5 cable), only 1 o 2 didn't play on my Xbox360. Flawless playback for all the other files.
Oh God I'm crossing my fingers for MKV h.264 support someday :(
I watch h.264 on Xbox - maybe you just need to pull the file out of the mkv container.
@JC What do you use to do this?
Hmmm... I have a less than 1% failure rate for avis.
As for H264 MKVs, there's a great free program that will rip them apart and make an Xbox 360 (or PS3) compatible MP4. called GotSent. On my old Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.87GHz) it does a 1 hr show (well 55 minute show) in just under 10 minutes.
That being said, the combination of Windows 7 and DivX 7 Tech Preview is allowing MKVs to be played directly to the 360. I've tested it, and it works about 50% of the time. Other times I get either only audio or only video. Of course, these are both pre-release, but DivX makes use of Windows 7's Media Foundation and it's own native MKV Demux to send the video to the 360 (apparently it'll work with the PS3 as well, but I haven't had a chance to see that in action yet).
http://labs.divx.com/mkvwin7preview
I just started noticing this recently.
My .avis work great on the 360. Once in awhile, i'll get an avi torrent that has a bad encode and it stops playing about 1:15 minutes in but that is a very rare case and is probably less then 1% of the time.
TopGear episodes encoded by RIVER. The will only play for 15 minutes on xbox, but play fine on the computer. I have had to quit downloading RIVER encodes and get them from other groups.
For you guys having issues with AVIs getting cut off (I had the same issue with some Top Gear and Final Gear eppisodes), check out a free program called DivFix++ (divfixpp.sourceforge.net). I ran the bad files though this (very fast) and works like a charm!
I'm jealous of that virtual movie thing, I hope Sony steals it ..... I can't afford another console plus all that other stuff to get an Xbox online..
Xbox Live=win ?
You don't have to do much more than the PS3 to get an Xbox online.. Silver memberships allow you to do a lot still, and I don't even notice the 60 dollars come off my Visa once a year.
@ Anthony
You really wouldn't notice it if you bought the live membership for 30 dollars when it goes on sale every other week.
xbox live is not that expensive.
i got 13 months on amazon for 33 bucks.
and i got 4000 points for 34 dollars on ebay.
you can save money.
ya just got to look.
XBox live is still not worth it. Even at $2.50 month. I'll be damned if I pay a premium for stuff I don't use.
Now you can watch movies with your friends no matter where they are
including outside the us?
yep
so netflix support is going outside the US ? :D lets hope so...
The streaming movies thing isn't netflix. It's microsoft's own video store thing, in 18 countries.
@Fred
You obviously didn't ready the article. Yes Microsoft does have it's own video rentals, but this article specifically discusses Netflix.
And all of this will still be useless until MS releases an affordable HDD upgrade. Seriously, without even buying XBLA games my 20GB drive is constantly struggling for free space. The 120GB upgrade is way too expensive. Cut the 120GB price down by half, or release a 250GB drive at the same price, or both. Preferably the latter.
Games on Demand will suck until you can keep a fair number of full games on your HDD at once.
i believe there a hack on buying a cheap hard drive and u can use for the xbox 360 google it.
I agree, no to mention they are still selling 360s without HDDs which is ridiculous. They should also start shipping the arcade with at least a 20GB HDD, better yet make the three 60/120/250GB.
CHECK IT, i found the article. Its from PC World, so i assume its reliable.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/150970/upgrade_your_xbox_360s_hard_drive_on_the_cheap.html
yeah ive done that dont use those instructions though, they dont tell everything oyu need to do. u need to be comfortable opening your computer and xbox hdd (wont void your xbox warranty, just for the accessory). ran me 50$ to get a 120gb hdd from newegg, used the same case and all now ive got a halo edition with 120gb!
Saying, "on the cheap", is the most stupdiest and crappish fad phrase. Anyone who say that should be slapped with bulldozer. except me. Seroisusly im starting to hear this phrase more often. What the heck does it suppose to mean? On the cheap? What's with "the". "cheap " is an object? what's on the cheap? cheese?!?!?! Who started this? It's stupid. If I'm ever king of the word, I would destroy anyoe who say that. That would be swell.
They need to just remove restrictions on hard drives entirely. Allow external USB drives, allow people to put whatever sized laptop drive they can buy into the HD enclosure. Remove all restrictions and stop selling their jacked up price drives. I would love to just connect a 750GB drive or something via USB and have it just recognize it and work for storage.
This is good.
Ok so no one is commenting on "full release after the break"?
No?
Ok, just checking.
I think its cuz the mature crowd is here. Not people like Paul Chapel or w/e his name is.
lol squid damn paul chapel...
hello again!!!
Games on Demand is going to be awesome.
I'm gonna eBay all my games on disc and re-buy them as a download. That way I can flip between games without even getting up and changing the disc! I'll probably end up doing the same thing with my books once the Kindle comes out in the UK too.
Any word about whether this update includes the 'Sky Player' update for Sky TV users in the UK?
Hi,
...Ok, there is a big update what what about the Sky TV package Microsoft said was coming soon, it says nothing in the update notes and still says nothing on other sites, where is the info on sky TV for the (UK) and when is it coming, if it is still coming that is.
Thanks
so pissed i got the RROD and am forced to play ps3. I'd rather buy another xbox lol.
What about improved dashboard speed?!?! It takes about 30 seconds to load the marketplace and an additional 30 seconds to load every item you pull up. These new features are decent, but fix what you already have first. By the time these "Games on Demand" 6.4 GB files actually download, I could easily have gone to the store and bought a disc which I can resell when I'm done with it. I'm going to stick to physical copies until they boost the hard drive space for a reasonable price and allow the resale of downloaded content (sure this will never happen).
You are bashing MS, unecessarily. My marketplace loads in 5 seconds. It seems your internet speed is slow so try considering a upgrade. Then you can download games faster then going to a store. I agree with you on the HDD issue.
@starsfan ---- AHEM BROTHER!
@I Squid I ---- The dashboard has known issues of being really slow regardless of your connection speed. MS on (Major Nelson's Blog) has acknowled this. This seems to happen most to people with a lot of friends.
my friend has 512kbps internet, and we often play xbox at each other's house.
though his speed is very noticible whenever we want to download a demo or an arcade game
the marketplaces, spotlight and video marketplace loads almost instantly as the xbox starts
infact, (it starts at normal speed) when the spotlight comes up, its usually fully loaded.
as for the dashboard, the only thing that takes time is the primtime chanels,
or waiting for everything to load before you can click "get trial" or "buy"
i really think the problem is with your internet,
maybe too many neighbours on the same one, or too far from equpiment?
check it out with you ISP. or run a bandwidth test online and post results.
sorry for the double post, but i cant believe i didnt mention the friend's chanel
that one takes a good 15 seconds.
well ive got over 75 friends, and when my friends comes over his acc has the limit (99 or 100), all the items load really fast. but i have a 10,000kbps (10mbit) and a 120gb modded hdd that i spent 50$ on. i noticed a huge performance increase when upgrading my hdd, because now almost everything is stored in the cache instead of loading it from other spots. but when ingame and i open the guide, it freezes for about 30 sec a lot, they should work on that
I have Time Warner Road Runner Turbo and have used it on multiple connections all which have been slow. I'd love to make mine that fast.
PS: I don't know how I'm Microsoft bashing when it is the only console I have and play all the time :/. I just wished the new marketplace would work as fast as the one I had at launch.
Twitter = Win
The 360 needs iPhone support to play music and movies (it only supports pics).
yeah agreed but thats completely apples fault, the iphone and touch, unlike other ipods, are locked for disk use, so they only come up with a camera, windows and xbox both recognize them as that (at least they have that) the xbox could not take the iphones files out unless apple unlocked them
What about Canada?!?! We keep getting the shaft with all the digital downloads. I cant stand it. when are we going to be able to get a netflix account? I hate going to the movie store, and buying physical copies, but Canada is not on the radar apparently. Someone please tell us when!
Although we'll probably never get Netflix here (thanks in part to licensing deals with the likes of Rogers and Bell Express Vu), Zip.ca recently signed a partnership with Cinema Now to bring digital content to Canada...
http://www.rgbfilter.com/?p=1283
Do we have a release date yet?
kotaku.com states next week
Avatar popcorn throwing? I really hope you can turn off the theater and just view the movie full screen.
What's with the extremely high prices for avatar stuff? $2 for a set of clothes? Whatever happened to that micro-transaction stuff they were talking about before the 360 launched? You know, the whole reason for the MS points system? Instead we don't get anything under a dollar and the points system just functions to rip us off. And they "improved" account management but you better bet that you still have to call their support line if you want to cancel your Live subscription or even remove a credit card.
Anyway, I thought the social networking stuff was supposed to be released along with the dashboard update. I guess this kills any hope for Last.fm in-game.
Sony, pay attention!
I can't wait to manage our NetFlix queue right from the Xbox. There's been a couple times where we turned on the Xbox, browsed what was in our queue and decided to find something else, but of course had to step away from the 360 and go use a computer. Sure, it's only a minor inconvenience, but it’ll be so much nicer to just stay at the Xbox and not have to go use a second device.
The rating system is another welcomed addition, in my opinion: especially when it comes to the Community games.
Are they going to fix the fact that it SUCKS to try to play games with your gamertag on a friends console? Everytime you want to use your gamertag on another system you have to recover it... ok I can see that being necessary the first time I go over my friends house, but then when I return home I have to recover my gamertag on my home console?!?!
The system is broken :( I know Microsoft wants us all sitting home playing games a safe distance away from people, but some of us have local friends and want the benefits of our gamertag when we're playing games with them locally.
Just annoyed and was hoping Microsoft might address this flaw in their system.
Well there is another way. Why don't you get a USB memory stick and copy your gamer profile to that when you go to a friends house?
You don't need one of the official memory cards as far as I am aware, just a USB memory stick.
It's much quicker than recovering every time.
I still think it should make better use of the internet, but I was unaware of that solution. I'll have to try it.
Great!
Now let's see them make an XNA shirt for avatars when the player has an XNA CC membership.
And forced letterboxing at the console level for displays that don't have an aspect-preserving scaler.
I have a 20mb down cable connection and the marketplace is slow for me and it is does it every time. The 2 steps needed to download something are always slow. The first step includes choosing a category. It takes forever to load up the items in "Featured Downloads". After it finally loads up and I choose the item I want to download, that too takes way too long. This happens every single time. Sometimes a minute to load, sometimes 25 seconds but it is never instant like it used to be.
Before the blaming it on my connection comes up, I have no other problems with my connection. I can download files/torrents at awesome speeds and I have zero lag in online games. It is only the marketplace that is affected. Hopefully it is fixed soon, Major mentioned it would be.
Michael Jackson me toco... y me gusto!
Sounds awesome, when is this coming?
How about the option to completely get rid of the horrid avatars and bring back the blade? How about that option?... never gonna happen huh? Micro$oft sucks.
I hope they have support for 1366 x 768 via HDMI with the new Video Display Options. Most newer tvs use that resolution now days. including my Samsung.
I want the old dashboard. The one with the page like setup.