Not sure if they had this before the switch, but I like the fact that you can now have a party set up in the dashboard, AND a party set up in a game.
I like the feature that can send a game invite to the entire dashboard party all at once without having to send individual invites.
Also, when in the game, you can just speak with your dashboard party, without having to talk over everyone else, even when some of your party is on the other team (say, if your’re playing COD5:WaW).
Oh, and the Netflix thing is cool, but it only lists certain Instant Plays for the primary account holder, which for me is Mrs Labtrash. Her tastes in movies differ GREATLY from mine. I don’t think you can pick them out - can you?
Eh, the only feature I care about is the ability to play a game from the hard drive. Fable II just got a helluva lot quieter.
Netflix would be cool if I didn’t have to pay for an otherwise useless (to me) Gold membership on top of a Netflix fee, so I’m forgoing that.
And all the buddy list/chat features mean little to me, since I’m one of those nutters who doesn’t play online (save for games like LBP and MMOs like WoW).
I dont have an Xbox360, but seeing as I have a nice 53 inch HD TV, I am very curious about what you just wrote. How does one achieve such transfer goodness?
The new Xbox experience doesn’t do much for me. As far as I can tell it’s just “window” dressing but I’m not exactly a Xbox power user. I am however happy about being able to stream Netflix. As an Apple user, this allows me to take advantage of instant viewing which is yet unavailable for the Mac.
I don’t do this myself but one of my friends does. Basically you need a Windows PC and you enable sharing within Windows media player. You cannot stream protected media that you have bought thru (for example) iTunes. But you can stream unprotected media. More info here. Of course, you can stream protected .wmv files.
One advantage to this is Xbox360 natively supports HD. Additionally, there is media galore available on the xbox marketplace and now if you’re a netflix member you can stream your ‘instant’ queue.
It turns out there is quite a market for old xboxs. For cheap you can mod them to run XBMC although typically this is a lot of work and I’m unsure if this supports HD.
I tried out the streaming Netflix last night for an episode of Jericho. I like it so far. It hiccuped once (a pause, and it had to rebuffer), but I have to admit, one minor pause is nothing compared to broken/scratched discs. Watching another episode tonight.