Initial impressions of the new Xbox Dashboard are good. The new “Metro” interface is a huge improvement over the previous one, which was confusing and boring to look at. Digging down into the new tiled interface reveals that at least some things haven’t changed, the avatar editor being one of those things.<\/p>\n
Microsoft has described this as a media-centric update and with all the additional media services to come, that’s certainly true. Looking at how they’ve achieved this, with the addition of the Apps section and the new App Marketplace, it looks like Microsoft is following the lead of the Apple Store and Android Marketplace, although for now those are all just media-based apps.<\/p>\n
Metro style interface
The first thing you’ll notice about this interface are the new tiles. Each menu item on the dashboard contains large and small rectangular boxes. In general, the larger tiles contain distinct elements and the smaller tiles, the less important elements. The web-style top menu provides a way to quickly skip between menu items and consists of the following items – bing, home, social networks, TV, video, games, music, apps, and settings.<\/p>\n
bing
Microsoft’s Bing search engine is installed with the new update and provides a single place to search all the content on your device and online content within Xbox Live. Initial impressions are good. Text search includes predictive search suggestions that are very useful when you’re trying to type with a standard Xbox controller. You can also filter your results by media type, such as video, music, games, etc.<\/p>\n
house
DVD tray – The main menu item contains a box with the current game, the DVD tray.<\/p>\n
Quickplay – Shows 10 recent games, press X to see game details and reveal another metro style interface.<\/p>\n
Welcome Video – Dan Marr from “Inside Xbox” presents a short welcome video to show you what’s new in the dashboard.<\/p>\n
Advertisement – Microsoft continues to sell ad space on Xbox, and the ad shown today was a large BT Infinity ad featured – containing a rotating ad for various games, Sky and Lovefilm.<\/p>\n
social
There have been some great social media integration updates, especially with Facebook.<\/p>\n
Friends – A small tile displaying your Xbox Live friends.<\/p>\n
Login\/Logout – No surprise here, it only allows you to log in\/out of profiles<\/p>\n
Your Avatar – Takes you to the message center, avatars, and theme settings<\/p>\n
Social Apps – Scroll down to find 3 more apps, Video Kinect, Twitter, and Facebook<\/p>\n
Twitter
There is no download with this one. They used the usual speech bubble-style Twitter presentation, this time with an animated background. Functions include scrolling Twitter feed, tweet feature, free text, and trending searches.<\/p>\n
Facebook
Accessing the new Facebook app results in a small download. Quite a small download considering the changes they’ve made.<\/p>\n
After you are asked to enter a username and password. The privacy screen is displayed. There are two settings; View My Xbox Live information and auto sign in with Live Connect. Selecting the first will display your Xbox Live gamertag along with your Facebook name. This is something you may not want if your Facebook page can be accessed by co-workers. Working from home and having a quick Call of Duty lunch isn’t going to look good all over Facebook.<\/p>\n
The new Facebook interface is not different from the old one, the main change is how the app integrates with games. You can now search for Facebook friends on Xbox Live and Xbox Live friends on Facebook. Sending a friend request to either service is now very easy.<\/p>\n
television
Kinect Games – Small Tiles for Xbox Games Strange place for this, they probably didn’t have something else to fill the void.<\/p>\n
Only on Xbox – Mini Tile Ad exclusive to Xbox titles. Again, strange place to put this.<\/p>\n
Featured Tiles – The highlighted tile contains links to both the new Sky Television app and Lovefilm.<\/p>\n
The new Sky app
This is an impressive app from Sky that is part of the Sky Go app for the online device. Sky subscribers are only allowed to register two devices to Sky Go, such as an iPad and Xbox 360. To start using the Sky app, you must sign in with or register your Sky ID. You can do this with a computer beforehand.<\/p>\n
The Sky app provides both live and on-demand video. Selecting Live video reveals a large number of channels including Sky HD channels. You can also select live video using the built-in Sky Chart.<\/p>\n
Video on demand is where this app really shines. Dive into your favorite TV shows to reveal a list of recent episodes. A Sky Atlantic HD selection and a search for Carnivale reveals 4 recent episodes. Each video has availability associated with it eg. 7 days, duration and data size in megabytes eg. The size of the Carnivale S2 E9 was 496MB, but it started playing almost immediately after a short advertisement of course.<\/p>\n
The app has a new Sky community where you can ‘like’ videos and add a comment via the menu system, or recommend a friend. The 4-layer, multi-word comment list system is a little tricky to use, but it beats typing things with a console. Here’s an example of a caption – “I was glad – the scene – at the end – a great episode!”. It’s not cool.<\/p>\n
You can also search for video content by most recommended, top watched, etc.<\/p>\n
The Sky Action Wheel (press Y) gives you quick access to the main functions, such as the chart, recent activity, and so on. After installing the Sky app, the Live TV panel takes you directly to a live broadcast of Sky TV. The VOD takes you straight to the Sky Go start page.<\/p>\n
LoveFilm App – Another premium downloadable app. I’m not a member and can’t be bothered signing up for the free trial so I don’t have much play with this but from what I’ve seen it looked quite cool with its Metro style interface.<\/p>\n
video
My Video Apps – Dive into your installed video apps, such as Lovefilm, Zune, and Media Center<\/p>\n
Zune Video Marketplace – Zune, but with an improved Metro style interface Four ad tiles – For paid video content, eg from Lovefilm and Zune<\/p>\n
games
My Games – Looks like a full list of installed games, but digging into the filter panel reveals another set of tiles with filter options. For example. Demos, arcades, etc<\/p>\n
Game Market – a new interconnected offering of downloadable games and advertising content2 – containing premium titles.<\/p>\n
music
My Music Apps – Contains a list of your installed music apps, such as Last FM<\/p>\n
Zune Music Marketplace – As usual, you can download music videos here, the new metro-style tiled interface looks good. 3 Billboards – for paid music content<\/p>\n
applications
It contains an equal sized group of tiles with a list of your installed media applications.<\/p>\n
App Market – Lists music, video, social apps, and a preview of each future app. Settings This section has a nice concise tile layout. Much like it used to be.<\/p>\n
beacons
If you are wondering where the new Beacons feature is located, it can be found in the Xbox guide. Press the Xbox Guide button and it will appear on the home screen.<\/p>\n
cloud saves
The cloud appears as a memory device along with your hard drive and memory module. The screenshots indicate that each account is allowed about 500MB of storage.<\/p>\n
Roaming profiles
This gives you the ability to use your live account and profile on any Xbox 360 console. We have yet to look into this feature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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