Posted by Ub3rG33k on Jan 28, 2012 in
Tech,
XBOX 360 
While playing Call of Duty: MW3 on my old Xbox 360 Elite, I noticed some strange black lines appearing in the background. I switched around cables, ports etc as I assumed it was a cable issue, but the problem stayed.
So ‘google is your friend’, and I found a handful of forum posts suggesting that the Xbox was on it’s way out, and these black lines were early signed of the Red Ring of Death, and I could soon expect to see the E74 error message.
Now Microsoft have given an additional 2 years warranty to cover the RROD, but unfortunately the Elite is nearly 3 and a half years old…..so time to buy a new shiny one !
I spent the evening looking at online deals, and finally decided that I wanted one of the special edition Xbox’s. I currently own the Halo Reach special edition Xbox and know there are currently 2 others on the market, the MW3 edition and the Gears of War 3 edition…..so decided to go with the Gears of War 3 edition.
Same as the Halo Reach special edition Xbox, it comes with a custom paint job, custom sounds and 2 custom controllers, and obviously a copy of Gears of War 3. The guy who served me at Game also threw in a copy of Crisis 2 (via download code), so all in all quite a bargain at considering it has the 320Gb hard drive.
One final thought, the controllers are the new type with the transforming D pad, it’s still early days with it, but WOW what a difference !
As always, the unboxing pics are below.
Tags: cables, crisis, custom controllers, custom paint job, death, Download, elite, error message, final thought, forum, forum posts, Gears, gears of war, google, half, half years, handful, hard drive, issue, mw3, online, ports, Reach, Ring, ring of death, RROD, special edition xbox, thought, time, type, War, war 3, way, WOW, xbox, xbox 360, xbox 360 elite
Posted by Ub3rG33k on Sep 2, 2009 in
PS3 Well, if you’ve got a PS3, and turned it on in the last 24 hours you will be greeted by the happy “Dude…there’s a software update, you know what to do…”
..message.
What do you get I hear you say, well let me tell you.
The first thing I noticed was the new startup screen with the PS3 logo…looks kinda cool, and then was met by the “sparkly” new theme…looks kinda cool.
In the top right hand corner of the desktop you get your icon, number of friends online, date and time (digital and analogue ?)
Each time you start up the PS3, the it defaults to the What’s new icon (which has replaced the Information board), however instead of the feed ticker, you now get 9 rotating images of “What’s new” in the Playstation store.
Being an Xbox live user, I do really like the way your friends list is treated, clear, you know who’s online, and can quickly see which game they were playing last…..so what have Sony done…..well, they’ve but a HUGE border around each one of your friend, which is twice the width of everything else in the column !…not nice ! I wouldn’t mind if it provided you with more information, but it doesn’t it just looks ugly !
For some reason there are now 2 icons for the Playstation Store, one in the games section, and one in the usual Playstation Network “channel”….really? is there any need ? I could understand if there were more than 1% on the PSN Store that wasn’t a game that would be fine, but apart from the sat nav, the Eye Create, and the VidZone everything else in there are games….
1 Addition I did like was the integration of the BBC iPlayer, granted you could goto the website through the browser before and it worked, but now you can do this straight from the XMB. I don’t however like where they’ve positioned it, they’ve given it a channel of it’s own called TV (I’m assuming this is also used for the play TV, but……), I would have personally added it to the Video channel to reduce the size of the bar.
Another addition I do like, is the right thumbstick controller during video playback. If you rotate clockwise or anticlockwise, it will step backwards and forwards with very hight precision.
A “Save Screenshot” option has been added to the web browser, which is pretty cool, but not sure I’d ever use it..
Apart from that, it’s all I’ve noticed, I have read people complaining about the larger fonts…but I’m cool with this, my vision was starting to go anyway 
Tags: 3, Addition, analogue, BBC, browser, channel, cool, Dude, everything, feed ticker, game, games section, icon, images, Information, information board, Iplayer, kinda, message, new icon, online, play tv, Playstation, playstation store, PS3, psn, psn store, screen, software, sony, startup, startup screen, store, Theme, thing, time, time digital, update, Video, video channel, xbox, xbox live, xmb