Microsoft

Xbox 360 DVD Player Still Sucks After Update, HD DVD Not Great Either [Updated]

We’ve known that the Xbox 360 DVD player was asstastic for a while, but surely this latest fall update would have improved things at least a little. No such luck, as the player still only got a 40 out of 130 on the HQV DVD test—which is a non-improvement from before the update. Are things…

Tech News Jason Chen

Stream DivX/XviD to Xbox 360 From Your Mac

Remember Connect360, the app that let you stream music and video from your Mac to your Xbox 360? It’s just been updated to support XviD and DivX functionality to match the fall upgrade you installed earlier this week. It still costs $20 if you haven’t purchased it before, but you can try it for free…

Tech News Jason Chen

The State of HD DVD

Where Blu-ray is a freight train of unrivaled weight and marketing might, backed by 13 of the world’s most well known electronics and computer makers, HD DVD is a Little Engine That Could, the product of a much smaller group of collaborators that has gotten over each obstacle by simply thinking it can. Judging from…

Tech News Wilson Rothman

Just How White Does Tide Get Your Consoles?

Our friends over at Kotaku did an interesting whiteness comparison between the Wii, 360 and the newest PS3. Reminding us of one of those teeth-whitening before and afters you see around midnight on every channel, the PS3 dominates the (competition?) with absolutely stunning, pearly whiteness. The Wii holds its own with a solid, “standard” white.…

Tech News Mark Wilson

Microsoft’s Special Windows XP for OLPC Runs Directly off of an SD Card

Addressing one of the major reasons OLPC’s XO Laptop is being shunned by some countries—the lack of a Windows operating system—Microsoft is developing a version of Windows XP and Office that’s run directly off of a 2GB SD card. (They convinced OLPC to add an SD slot to the mobo for this very project.) It’ll…

Tech News Matt Buchanan

Gigantic Xbox 360 Cabinet Eats Smaller Xbox 360s, Poops Game Boys

Gemaga (Japanese for giant things that should not be giant) had a video up on this huge Xbox 360 that doubles as a cabinet. The video’s not there, but you can still tell from the screencap that it’s large enough to fit 10 regular sized Xbox 360s, 3 PlayStation 3s, and one Xbox 1. And…

Tech News Jason Chen

More Windows Mobile 6.1 Details

BGR has an update to the Windows Mobile 6.1 details we showed you earlier in the week, showing off some more improvements that make us excited for WinMo again. Besides the Vista-esque home screen that you saw last time, there’s a new font, zooming, and copy/paste in IE, process list and CPU usage in the…

Tech News Jason Chen

Michael Bay Says HD DVD Is a Big Microsoft-Funded Conspiracy

Michael Bay, acclaimed director of smash hits Pearl Harbor and The Island, has never had love for HD DVD, (though it seemed like he got reasonable). Now he says HD DVD is all a giant conspiracy being bankrolled by $100 million checks from Microsoft to slowly kill both HD formats: “Microsoft [officials] want both formats…

Tech News Matt Buchanan

Rumor Smashed: No IPTV on Xbox 360 in Fall Update

Although the Fall Xbox 360 Update brings a lot (most notably spectacular DivX and XviD support), what it doesn’t bring is IPTV. A few sites picked up the rumor that IPTV came with this update, but needs provider support to work. However, we contacted Microsoft and they told us in no uncertain terms that there…

Tech News Jason Chen

Dealzmodo: Xbox 360 HD DVD Player $129

Toys “R” Us has the XBox 360 HD DVD player on sale for $129, quite a good deal when ou see that the normal price is $170ish on Google Products. It still comes with King Kong, like it did when the drive first came out, and still qualifies you for those five free movies with…

Tech News Jason Chen

Microsoft Kills Santa

After Santa the IM bot’s supposed obscenities came to light, Microsoft tried very hard to fix the fat bastard so he wouldn’t curse up a storm at children. Programmers weren’t completely satisfied with what came out the other end, so they threw up their hands in defeat and said, “screw it” to the whole thing…

Tech News Jason Chen

Xbox Live Video Marketplace Coming to Europe on December 11

European Xbox 360 owners don’t just get the Dashboard update with DivX and XviD playback, they’re finally getting Xbox Live Video Marketplace as well! They’ve been asking for it forever (seriously, they ask almost every time there’s Video Marketplace news), but come December 11, they’ll be able to pay 380 points for 720p HD video…

Tech News Jason Chen

Pirates Stealing XP Twice as Much as Vista, Microsoft Doesn’t Know How to Feel

So here’s a good news/bad news situation for Microsoft. The good news is that people aren’t pirating Vista as much as XP. The bad news is that people are pirating XP twice as much, meaning that even when given a choice between each for free, people are sticking with trusty old XP. They can’t even…

Tech News Adam Frucci

Xbox 360 DivX/XviD Playback Tested (Verdict: It’s Almost Perfect)

Click to viewThe Xbox 360 supports DivX and XviD as of today, which may make some of you with big file collections (like us) as giddy as a kid in store with puppies made of candy. We threw our entire collection of movies, TV shows and random clips at it and found that the 360…

Tech News Jason Chen

Xbox 360 Dashboard Update Available Now

The oh-so-hotly anticipated dashboard (“fall”) update for the Xbox 360 is fresh out of the oven and ready for you to download. If you only caught the headlines that it’d come with DivX and XviD hotness, have a look back at what else is baked inside. [via Destructoid] https://gizmodo.com/xbox-360-fall-update-full-details-divx-xvid-328563

Tech News Matt Buchanan

Microsoft Kills Off Vista Anti-Piracy Kill Switch

For the purposes of combating Windows counterfeiting, Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage program has been checking copies of Vista and locking up any systems it deems to be fakes. Turns out that the kill switch has been killing off legit copies of Vista, too. Does Microsoft fix the tool? Nope, instead, as part of Service Pack…

Tech News Wilson Rothman

Limited Edition Zune 2 in Gold

Only 10 of these gold-colored Zune 2s will be sold, in both 80 and 8GB sizes. Microsoft teamed up with the Goods to make these screen printed designs. I like the cross pattern. They’re available next Saturday, in Seattle, if you feel the need to splurge. (No price listed but “Gold” plus “Limited Edition” plus…

Tech News Brian Lam

iPhone Browser Marketshare Nears .1 Percent, Windows Mobile Trails By a Third

The iPhone’s browsing marketshare stands at .09 percent five months after launch, coming close to being one out of every thousand pageviews on the internet. More interestingly, Windows CE—all Windows mobile platforms combined—has only 66 percent of that. Discuss. [CW]

Tech News Matt Buchanan

Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop Keyboards Cracked for Coworker Espionage

The crackers at Dreamlab have busted open the wireless encryption on Microsoft’s Optical Desktops 1000 and 2000, as well as any others using the same simplistic scheme: There’s only about 256 possible encryption keys, making it like pie to crack after sniffing a few tens of keystrokes. So easy, in their demo they nail three…

Tech News Matt Buchanan

Afternoon News: Microsoft Shares, BMW Networks, Feet Smell Heavenly and More

• God-Cleaner foot bath claims to draw toxins out of your body through your feet. Cleanliness may be next to Godliness, but in this case it’s pretty darn close to Rip-off-iness. [BBG] • Internet Explorer has fewer security vulnerabilities than Firefox, according to security analyst Jeffery Jones. In other news, Mr. Jones probably knows your…

Tech News Benny Goldman

Xbox 360 DVD Player Still Sucks After Update, HD DVD Not Great Either [Updated]

Stream DivX/XviD to Xbox 360 From Your Mac

The State of HD DVD

Just How White Does Tide Get Your Consoles?

Microsoft’s Special Windows XP for OLPC Runs Directly off of an SD Card

Gigantic Xbox 360 Cabinet Eats Smaller Xbox 360s, Poops Game Boys

More Windows Mobile 6.1 Details

Michael Bay Says HD DVD Is a Big Microsoft-Funded Conspiracy

Rumor Smashed: No IPTV on Xbox 360 in Fall Update

Dealzmodo: Xbox 360 HD DVD Player $129

Microsoft Kills Santa

Xbox Live Video Marketplace Coming to Europe on December 11

Pirates Stealing XP Twice as Much as Vista, Microsoft Doesn’t Know How to Feel

Xbox 360 DivX/XviD Playback Tested (Verdict: It’s Almost Perfect)

Xbox 360 Dashboard Update Available Now

Microsoft Kills Off Vista Anti-Piracy Kill Switch

Limited Edition Zune 2 in Gold

iPhone Browser Marketshare Nears .1 Percent, Windows Mobile Trails By a Third

Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop Keyboards Cracked for Coworker Espionage

Afternoon News: Microsoft Shares, BMW Networks, Feet Smell Heavenly and More

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