Let me clarify a little...I installed Fable 2 to the hard-drive AFTER I noticed the disc drive's sporadic loading which was causing my xbox to crash. Since installing to the hard-drive I have also had no problems and have enjoyed the significantly shorter load times. Unfortunately installing Fable 2 has left me with only 2gb left on my paltry 20gb drive. Off to Bestbuy to purchase a 120gb HD tomorrow I guess! And a follow up, has anyone experienced a fatal loss of data when transfering saves/etc to the new hard-drive? I have at least 1000 hours on my Oblivion character, I don't think I could deal with loosing that game save!
Perhaps this should be on the Fable 2 board...but after the recent update Fable 2 has been hard-crashing my system. Anyone who has played Fable 2 is probably aware that this game has annoying constant loads from the all too audible disc drive. I am now installing the game to my extremely limited space original 20gb harddrive. My two-week old 360's (oh I had an early build of the console, its in Texas right now being repaired) disc drive apparently couldn't handle the sporadic loads from the drive?! Anyhow, I was wondering if anyone else had experienced this issue?
If you were wondering why I bought a new 360 instead of wait for the repair, i blame gears of war 2. My 360 died the day before the launch. Just couldn't miss that games launch.
Just wanted to add my RROD story to the ever growing pile: Bought my console in October of '06 (then called the xbox 360 premium), realizing it was an early build of the console, I added an intercooler (yeah, I know, I'm crazy! I like to live on the edge like that). Now I baby-ed this thing. I took it out of the box gently, put it in place behind my hi-def TV and never moved it (vertically oriented). Figured I was playing it safe with the intercooler (everyone knows about the graphics chipset overheating) and I don't blame the intercooler for having any effect on the consoles failure. I can say one thing, that thing is frickin' loud! That intercooler let off a roar like the turbine in a A-10 Thunderbolt II, which annoyed me. I use my 360 as a DVD player often, with a nice 5.1 Dolby Digital/DTS setup and it would stand out in quiet passages of movies, for that matter, it could be heard during the loud passages too! About a month ago there was a bad car accident on the street I live on. Someone wiped out a power pole in my neighborhood which happen to coincide with one of my gaming sessions. POW! A rather hard shutdown. I didn't think much of it at the time, but when I went to re-boot my 360 after power had been restored I got the RROD! #$%*&! Called 18004MYXBOX which recommended unplugging the console for a while and trying again. Happily, my machine came back to life, until today. After a light morning session of Fable 2, I shut the console down normally via the guide button. When I decide to continue gaming later in the afternoon, you know the story. Those three evil red lights. What cruel a-hat at Micro$oft came up with the "hey your console is dead sucker indicator"!?! Long story short, I ran to the nearest Wal-Mart (what can I say, I'm addicted to supporting EVIL corporations) and picked up an (ugh!) Arcade version, with hopefully a Falcon chipset, sans Intercooler this time 'round. Hey, Cliffy B's new game comes out tomorrow, and there's no way i'm missing that! Stay tooned for the next exciting episode of trying to sell my refurb'ed xbox360 pro on ebay after it eventually comes back from M$! BTW, this one dies and I'm never buying an ms console again! Best of luck on your 360 woes to the rest of my fellow gamers!
The benefits of 7.1 systems varies greatly depending upon room size, speaker placement and room acoustics. If its an all out home theater (you know, those incredible projection rigs with the movie theater sized popcorn machine in the corner) and the room is treated acoustically, 7.1 can be beyond immersive. For most rooms and especially for gaming, I think 5.1 (provided it is set up properly with the rear speakers behind or to the side of the listener) gets the job done nicely. I currently have a 5.1 rig in a small room and 7.1 would not change the imaging or spacial dispersion much. Besides, I have enough damn wires running everywhere already.
You should give us a budget/price range you are looking for. I take it you need a whole system, or what the industry calls HTiB (home theater in a box). Most gamers and people looking for a good all-in-one-box home theater sollution go for the Onkyo line and I don't blame them. Pretty good quality there, though the speakers can be a tad lacking. For a low price HTiB sollution at 7.1 channels, I would recommend the Onkyo HT-S5100S. I'm not sure if it can handle linear PCM over HDMI, so check it out at Onkyo's website. Good luck.
If your TV features RCA outputs (white and red connectors - make sure they are OUTputs not INputs), you may be able to buy a connector that will sum these into a "mini-plug" or headphone output. Though I would recommend feeding this to a headphone amp, the output level of RCA output is usually pretty bad.
Having some troubles setting up the PS3 to an older Sony CRT based HD projection set that supports 720p & 1080i. The Sony TV does not support HDMI so it was necessary to switch to the component video cable (the Sony brand component cable). It would seem that the PS3 (which has not been updated to the 1.3 firmware upgrade as of yet) is defaulting to 1080p when the component cable is in use. The TV is not displaying/not capable of displaying this image. It was necessaryto switch to the standard composite cable to verify the machine was even working. Can someone direct me to a basic setup for the PS3 page? It looks like I will need to update the firmware, using the composite cable to go in & switch the settings to 1080i, replace the composite jack with the component and cross my fingers...will this work? Update to 1.3/switch the settings to 1080i/turn off machine/replace composite cable with component/restart/hurrah hi-def display?
As you well know HD-DVD has died and Blu-ray is the victor. I'm a 360 owner and really haven't given the PS3 much thought until now (yes, bring the flames! BRING IT!). Honestly, I just don't have enough time to parse between two consoles. I was going to buy just a Blu-Ray player, but the 40gb machine is about the same price as any blu-ray player. The only game I'm currently interested in for PS3 is Heavenly Sword, which is apparently a very short game. Don't care for any of the shooters/fps' on the PS3 yet. My favorite game genre is RPG's (not JRPGs, which the PS3 corners the market in). Besides being my primary blu-ray player...why should I buy this machine? Honestly? What do you do with your PS3? 'Home' just sound pathetic to me, browsing the internet on my television? Meh. I don't use the video download on the 360 much and doubt I would use it on the PS3 net. It would be nice to hear from those who own both a 360 & PS3...find out the + of each console...
The model number will be on the back somewhere on the tag. I've never heard of any television displaying 720i. Is this a tube? Or LCD? Or plasma? If your xbox 360 is set to 1080i output, the HD-DVD will scale to 1080i.
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