xbox live?

Huggins

i'm interested in the concept of online gaming (sad i know!) but don't know whats the best package/system to buy without blowing a fortune! anyone in the know on live gaming?

danmed

It depends what you like. At the minute, i'd say the most well developed and consistently growing environment for yout o experience this would be through Xbox live on an Xbox 360.

However you can do it alot cheaper on your PC. Xbox is pretty much a no brainer when it comes to setting itup. It depends what you want.

Huggins

ok thanks - i will look into this

145dude

Huggins wrote:

i'm interested in the concept of online gaming (sad i know!) but don't know whats the best package/system to buy without blowing a fortune! anyone in the know on live gaming?

Don't be so down on yourself, it's not sad! There are plenty of worse ways to spend your time! :T

Personally, I prefer Xbox Live for driving games and such like and the PC for first person shooters, best of both worlds if you like. As per the previous poster, Xbox Live really is very very easy to use though.

You don't say if you already have an Xbox/Xbox 360, PC, etc or not?

mrmilo69

To be fair, A PC that will play the latest games will cost more than a console, however with games costing less, it takes less to upkeep, shouldn't have any memory issues like a console, however console gaming is good if you want to spend less money in a lump sum. It's also quite good, because many shops don't like to take back PC games if you don't like them, however GAME have a 9 day return policy, or going online to buy console games works out cheaper. To play the best PC games, you'll find you'll have to do an overhaul every 18 months, when a console can happily last 5 years.

an internet ready xbox 360 will cost about £250 if you can shop about, you may need to buy a router also, or do internet connection sharing, which i don't recommend. 1 Year of xbox live will cost £40 with a game and a headset, providing you buy an xbox starter kit, instead of an xbox 360 subscription, which costs the same for just the access.

volks400

i had been playing ps and ps2 for the past 7 years and this year in Jan i got xbox not xbox 360 with starter kit and the usual suspect games like pgr2 etc. xbox live is amazing comparing to ps2 online difference i really found in battlefiled 2 modern combat with their patches and new maps. i play battlefield 2 everynite its so addictive. what i need to know is that if 360 looks good on a normal widescreen flat tv or do i really need a lcd hd tele. i saw some clips of battlefield on mypspace.com and they tempted me a lot. also anyone guide me what else besides using it as a console, what else can i use a xbox for;as a media centre which i read somewhere and didnt undrestand a word. dont know if it were for a modded xbox. my xbox is not modded and dont intend to get it done.

any advice or websites for info on the above stuff.

ta

mrmilo69

The xbox 360 looks very good on a standard definition TV, i'd say it's more than good enough, unless you want an HD TV. As for using it as a media centre, i'm not sure you can do that with the xbox, but if you can, you'd need windows media center 2005 operating system, and a router to connect it up, but as far as i know, it's only on 360

Mr_C_10

I'm not tech wizard so find xbox live easy to use, the set up was easy enough as well. I use internet connection sharing as I don't have a router and it works no bother.

BT have an offer on at the moment where if you sign up for their broadband you can get 12 months live subscription for free. There's some infor here http://www.game.co.uk/lowdown.aspx?lid=6301

Also scour Shops and Ebay for 12 month packs with a game, you can normally pick these up for 25 pound or so.

danmed

In order to use the original xbox as a media center it needs ot be modded.

Either with a chip or using a software mod.

XBMC is then copied to your xboxes hard drive and replaces the microsoft dashboard. It adds divx playback, mp3 playback, u can launch your "backed up" games from the hard drive. you can download film trailers from the internet amongst hundreds of other functions.

This is the sole reason i bought the xbox. However to copy things o the hard drive you need to use FTP from your PC.

The new 360 currently needs a pc running windows media center or windows Vista to play video over the network. There are rumours that this will also work with the new media player that is coming out but no idea. You can only play WMV files which are not protected. Not nearly as much functionality as the original xbox running xbmc.. but then.. that wasn't made by microsoft.

personally, the 360 is wasted without at least a plasma or lce screen. It doesn't need to be HD but u can still use the HD cables and get a better picture. Playing it on a standard crt it makes some games very difficult to play as the colours are alot darker.

I currently run mine on a standard 19" tft monitor with an extra cable. looks great and certainly alot better than a normal TV.

Mr_C_10

danmed wrote:

by microsoft.

personally, the 360 is wasted without at least a plasma or lce screen. It doesn't need to be HD but u can still use the HD cables and get a better picture. Playing it on a standard crt it makes some games very difficult to play as the colours are alot darker.

I currently run mine on a standard 19" tft monitor with an extra cable. looks great and certainly alot better than a normal TV.

I don't have problems using a regular TV, some games sometimes do look dark (certain maps on Battlefield 2) but when I mentioned this on line my mates using HD TV also said they had the same problem.

I would recomend the Xbox or 360 for online play, although the 360 has still got to get some quality titles on the shelves, still too many average games out their at the moment.

volks400

thanks all for rplies