360 purchase advice needed

Y

yager

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Hey guys, i am inexperienced in the ways of the xbox and thus am looking to you guys for advise.

Using HSDPA and ADSL for connectivity, (uncapped ADSL).
Got my ADSL router (dg834?) with my home pc (vista) and home servers (xp & linux) wired in on a 8 port switch. Got my laptop with HSDPA and using wireless to connect back to my home server PCI wireless card. All works 100%.

I have decided its time to buy a console, essentially for gaming, but also to stream movies and music through to the (standard non high def)tv in the lounge.

My question:
Is the xbox360 the thing for me?
I want a console, i just want to know i will be able to stream to the xbox.
Additionally is the quality acceptable to play xbox on my standard TV?
Which should i be getting (core/elite/standard?)
Hard Disk space - will this be important (my home server has over 1400Gb)

oh - any specials i should be aware of - im thinking of buying this weekend...?

Any advise to help me...please.
Thanks
Y
 
Get the 360 Pro. The core sucks, and the Elite's not out yet (and not really worth the extra money anyway IMO).

You can stream media off your PC via the 360 to your TV, and setting it up's not a big deal. The only caveat is that movies need to be in WMV format, or transcoded in order to play via the 360.

WRT HD space... I don't think that you really need more than 20gig on your 360, unless you're going to be making many downloads direct to the xbox itself.
 
Adding to what BlueCollar said, the Xbox 360 still looks good on a SDTV.

Get a Premium, HDD space is not important, you can connect to Live! through HSDPA but you will struggle to play twitchy games like Dead or Alive... Gears works well for small games.

Since you don't sound like a hardcore gamer but you want to stream movies I think it is quiet obvious that the Xbox 360 is your best choice....

You want some more information check out my website www.lazygamer.co.za
 
I'll just add my agreement to exactly what Gav and BC have said. The 360 pro sounds to be exactly what you're looking for.

Listening to your set-up, have you seen the video interviews about "Microsoft Home Server"? basically taking Home networking to the next level and that includes 360 integration. In the mean time you can use something like TVersity to transcode your movies on the fly if necessary.

As far as online gaming goes, use your ADSL connection for live, the latency is just better, and wrt the telly, I play on an SDTV and it looks Great. (If your home layout suites it, you can also use a PC monitor to do "Poor mans HD")
 
Damn I missed that he had ADSL, ADSL is much better for Live!...

You need to get onto Live! as well, that is 50% of the fun of gaming now
 
Get the pro, i got a core and regretted it, altho u can build it up to a pro eventually.

With the SDTV i think some games are fine (NFS, GOW), and some unplayable Dead Rising for example i didn know what the hell was goin on, couldn read any of the in game text. Having said that my eyesight isnt the best and the tv is a bit old, but if it becomes a problem jus get the vga cable and run the xbox off your pc monitor.
 
Guess its time to start pricing a xbox pro for myself....

Thanks for the advise,
Y
 
As far as I know Musica is still running the R4000 special, which is a Pro, an Extra wireless controller, and WWE '07.

HiFi Corp also usually has a special or two.
 
Surprised there haven't been any real price drops yet. Gavin, any hints any soon?
 
Fudzy said:
Surprised there haven't been any real price drops yet. Gavin, any hints any soon?
Click to expand...

There where large rumours of a price drop for May but then the PS3 launch was not as good as expected (this is the rumour again) so they are now planning on a price drop around October probably...

Which would be just in time for Halo and Christmas.... Currently Microsoft are making +- $75 profit per premium so they have the ability to drop the price but since the PS3 is so much more expensive and still trailing in the sales they don't see the need to drop the price at the moment.

Obviously all of the above is pure rumour but in October the Xbox would have been around for coming on 18 - 24 months which is the generally expected time for a price drop.
 
I suspect the real driver for a price drop will be the introduction of the 65nm chips - they'll be cheaper to manufacture, and probably cooler, making them a bit more reliable, which is what you want before you start pushing into the mass market.
 
Yeah the chips are expected in September this year which fits nicely into the October price drop rumours as well....
 
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