Dash Update deets revealed: DivX support, child account and Live ID problem fixed

by Richard Mitchell on Nov 30th 2007 12:30PM

This is it folks, the complete and official reveal of the new features contained in Tuesday's Fall Dashboard Update. All the things we've discussed before are in there obviously, but there are a few new and scrumptious nuggets to digest as well. Here's everything in a nutshell.

Xbox Originals: download original Xbox titles directly to your Xbox 360. The first games available will be Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, Halo, Fable, Fuzion Frenzy, and Psychonauts for 1200 points each.
Xbox Live Arcade Greatest Hits: best selling Arcade titles will be available for permanently reduced prices. The first games available are Bankshot Billiards and Lumines Live for 800 points, and Marble Blast Ultra, Small Arms, and Zuma Deluxe for 400 points.
Inside Xbox: a direct feed of news directly from Xbox.com to your 360
Enhanced online profile: share info with Live members using a new bio feature which can be made available to everyone or locked to friends only. Also, you can include your real name in your profile
Friends of Friends: browse the friends lists of your friends and other Live members
New Family Timer that lets parents (or wives) limit game time
New navigation system for the Dashboard with the Game Store and Video Store buttons
New codec support including DivX and Xvid (yes, you read that correctly)

Finally, Major Nelson informs us of another new feature not mentioned in the press release: the Xbox Live child account problem has been fixed. For those unfamiliar with the problem, many Live members are stuck with a child account even though they turned 18 long ago. After the Fall Update, the account management section of the dash will have a "Promote Child Account" option. Yes, it does exactly what it says it does. Finally, as thank God effing finally!, the Fall update brings with it the ability to change the Windows Live ID associated with your Xbox Live Account. Have you been saddled with a crappy Hotmail address you don't use anymore just because your Live account is stuck to it? Not anymore. So there you have it kids, cheaper Arcade games, more networking, DivX, and some much needed problem fixes.

Head over to Joystiq for some more details.

Mini-update: find a comprehensive list of updates at the Xbox Team Blog.

Source

Tags: fall-update

Reader Comments (62)

Well, hot-diggity-damn, that's a nice looking update.

no wai....

like xvid hd? or just sd res...

DivX works up to 1080p go check the new gamesvideo video on the update.

Woot XVID and DIVX confirmed :) Excellent update.

DIVX!!! Yes!!!

Is it better to still use Tversity to stream Divx/Xvid or should I start using Windows Media Player 11 ?

I think TVersity pushes WMV through better than WMP11, but neither does a perfect job at displaying 8x FF so that when you hit Play again after say 5 minutes the scene being displayed is what plays. Reverse stinks for both due, I guess, to buffering first then playing.

What with 16x FF in this update, I hope somebody looks at performance issues...

I did notice this in the Update details, which if it works will make life easier:

Removed potential 9 second delay when rewinding WMV video files

Man your article is much more informative than the crappy gamerscore blog post. You might want to imbed that movie they have on their post btw, its nice too see things in action :)

It's kinda like dating a cute chick who lets herself go a bit but decides to go and work out, get a makeover and new porcelain veneers... and comes home to you. Yum.

You can also make a silver account and get them to credit all your spent MS Points to that account to then re buy the arcade games. Since the games are console locked and account shared everyone on the console including your main account will be able to use the games now.

I don't know what I'm more excited about, XviD/Divx support or that I'm finally becoming a Xbox Live adult.

That is a nice update but, I still want to be able to play the arcade games I bought before my 360 crashed offline. Redownloading them dosn't work I've tried it. MS told me there was no way to fix it but that they where working on an answer with the fall update.

Checkout the wishlist & feedback forum on the xbox.com forums... there you'll find a 3,000+ reply thread detailing this issue. There *IS* a fix for this... it just requires them to manually swap serial numbers for you on their end.

It also (according to the many many stories on the thread) requires you to bug and bug and bug them relentlessly until finally they cave and help you out.

Not that this is a best solution or anything... but the answer isn't quite as simple as "can't happen".

Nice update. Still no sleep timer or four way chat.

I'd rather have those than divX personally, but I'm glad MS is giving us the option.

That is what I want the most is 4-way Chat!! I heard that the original Xbox had it. Is that true?

Couldn't you use the parent timer thing as a sleep timer??

this is a great update,, mostly tweaks of things that were already there but stil,...
the only thing I didnt get from Xbox this christmas will be CLAN support. :(
If they wont make it in the dashboard, can you tell me why games are shipping without it ?

This is great, we no longer have to hear people whining about 1) divx and 2) persisting child accounts

I totally forgot about 4 way chat.
considering Halo 3 limits you to chatting with more than 4 players during game play, I'm assuming this is probably the same reason they haven't done the 4 way yet.... just incase your playing online and talking with 3 other people?
and maybe to prevent collussion?

as for Divx... is this done through streaming from Windows? or can we put in a DVD filled with divx goodness?

Four way chat was what I was looking for! I would like to be able to talk with a few friends and not be forced to be playing the same game! Oh well, some day. Nice price cuts on arcade games!

Well before this we could play WMVs off of a data DVD/memory stick. So I'd imagine a disc full of divx videos would be able to play.

where is that video again ??

Can someone explain the formats that divx will owrk through, if its merely streaming from your pc i dont see the point, but if i can burn stuff to disc and it will read it then this is awesome!!!

This is still underwhelming. I have no interest in the Divx thing.

Where's my expanded friends list? Where's my gamerpic sorting?

Yawn.

Heh, figures. I just bought myself a cheap(ish) used PS3, and part of the justification I gave myself was that it had native DivX support (for my large collection of DivX-transcoded MythTV recordings). Of course, like *2 days* later this drops.

Thank you, Mr. Murphy.

That'll teach you.

Can you go buy an alarm clock and a speakerphone?

Maybe then we'll get sleep timer and four way.

pwned by the reply system.

Above was supposed to be a response to James.

Divx FTW
Sweet

Will the 360 Media center extender now be able to play DIVX ?

That's what I'm hoping to hear. Certainly the new extenders that are coming out are going to have Divx/Xvid capability and they're enabling this 360 system wide to stay competitive? Please say it's so. MCE extender is half my use!

I hope so also

But there is an alternative i use to play divx/xvid movies from my pc to 360

its called TVersity, google it and its also free

I know .. I use it , but i just want strait up w/out transcoding id also like to be about to play stored copied dvd's on my harddrive w/out converting them to MPG first but thats another story

Yeah and there's transcode 360 which is a beautiful program, just wish it was native. Basically to have it "lady friend" compliant. Getting her to click info->transcode is just not gonna work long term.

Ah well, Dec 4th we'll find out!

damn, I guess 4the ppl that have banned accounts can't update this. Is it possible to change harddrive to reset live account?

Haha No!! you have to buy a new 360 modder...

Referring back to the iPod update the other day, I looked through the changelog and found the new iPods work again. However it clearly states the iPod touch and iPhone are not supported. Oh well, that's what they invented Media Center for.

@10

Hey thanks ALOT. I'll investagate this and get the problem fixed hopefully. If you could throw up a dirrect link to the page that would be great.

As far as updates go, guys, how about the ability to make your own themes? A different picture for each blade.
And what about an update that gives us the ability to fast forward and rewind through songs we are listening to? Whats the deal with that anyways?
Group chat is wanted by many, MS needs to get with it and add cheevos to the xbox original games and for gods sake how about a forum that you can access and post on with your 360 or your pc built into the marketplace somewhere? Ran by X3F ofcoarse:)

Sure... here's the link:

http://forums.xbox.com/1159815/ShowPost.aspx

It started 12-16-2005, but gets multiple comments daily. Just read through a couple pages near the end and you'll see people that have had this worked out (and they had to wait anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months to do so) but it *IS* possible... so don't let them off the hook... its a problem that needs adressing. (I know... my Xbox is on it's way to Texas at the moment :_( )

Good luck!

actually I don't kno if I'm banned. It jus says can't connect and I kno nth wrong with my internet.

I want divx!

This is crap.

Where The F@$% is 16:10 support

and 4-way chat.

I don't give a rats ass about this sh*t...

OMG DIVX DIVX DIVX....i am sold. I can now finally get rid of my MEDIAPORTAL and MCE2005 setup. My xbox is now the center of my media collection. Time to start reorganizing my videos...

And if theyll play from the DVD thats great too.

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA

"the Fall update brings with it the ability to change the Windows Live ID associated with your Xbox Live Account."

Oh yes yes yes thank all the religious deities, about bloody time too...

But yeah as Jon said, 16:10 is sorely needed along with 1680x1050 vga support, it's getting a bit rediculous now.

Ah well, at least the update isn't looking as crap as it did a few days ago, as someone with no purchased Arcade games the Greatest Hits sounds like something that might make me part with my pennies a bit more willingly...

@29

Hey thanks a ton I'll get right on it, oh and sorry for your loss. Hopefully U'll get it back before xmass.

Hrm, nothing for me here. I already have media center eqiupment so why the hell would DivX support matter, plus it's not really any trouble to encode and authorize a dvd to make it playable on any dvd player.

All I wanted is 4+ way chat, weak update. You could make a chatroom with the original Xbox but you can't chat with 3 other people on its successor? Lame...

Some gamerpic organization would have been nice to, takes forever to look through them because everything loads up so slow.

If they are gonna rework dashboard navigation for the marketplace the could atleast make a "Free" tab for those of us who have ads disabled. I never know when there is free shit to enjoy.

It might not be hard for you to burn a DVD with your PC. For me it takes roughly 5 hours to encode and burn a DVD full of Divx files. This update is the best thing that could happen for me.

Cool, I can now watch all my home movies on the Xbox. Perhaps for spring we can get:

1) A fully functional internet browser
2) No autoplay when loading a game disc
3) Better external harddrive support (will NEVER happen)

This already exists. It in your options if you want to boot to dashboard or disc.

Big Orange:
I think he means even when putting a new disc in when the dashboard is already loaded for it to stay on the dashboard.

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Dash Update deets revealed: DivX support, child account and Live ID problem fixed

Reader Comments (62)

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