HD movies right there on my Xbox.

For years since the launch of the Xbox 360, Australians have pretty much gotten the shaft when it comes to all of the online features that the console has to offer. Well, some of that is about to change it seems. This November, they'll be rolling out the new Xbox 360 update. Amongst other things, it will add Facebook and Twitter to the main dashboard.

So this is what the damn kids are into now?

But that is not nearly the most exciting part. Australia will now, finally, receive movies on the dashboard. Full-blown high-definition 1080p resolution blockbusters streaming down your internet tube for the whole family to enjoy.

Hopefully, this family favourite will be available for repeated viewing.

The Xbox 360 Video Marketplace will be phased out and replaced with the Zune Marketplace. The Zune being Microsoft's version of the iPod, it looks like they are trying to get that brand name out in front of people worldwide. I don't care what they are shoving in front of me, as long as HD movies come with it. Naturally, with Microsoft being the money-hungry bastards they usually are, this is apparently only for Gold subscribers, so you better pony up some cash if you want to be part of this business. And if it all works right, why wouldn't you?

Say hi to VHS for me, dude.

Paying the cost to be the boss.

In these troubled times of daily stress, uncertainty and general financial concern, you need to know you can shoot dudes in the face at the push of a button. I know I do and recently, I made this endeavour much easier to enjoy.

Toying on and off with upping my Xbox Live membership to Gold status, I just set it up for the next three months (thanks to the pre-paid card that came with my hard drive). But in the past I've had the console in an awkward position as a result of being a slave to the ethernet cord. Well, no more shall I be chained down by the outdated technology of yesteryear, I've gone wireless baby!

BOOMSHAKALAKA!

First things first, I know for a fact I'm getting screwed by Microsoft by shelling out for this wireless network adapter. The thing retails at $129.95 and I can tell you now, there ain't $129.95 worth of parts inside it. Anyway, Big W came to the rescue and had a sale on numerous Xbox 360 accessories and kindly dropped the price of the adapter down to $108. Not a huge saving but to hell with it, Microsoft aren't going to cheapen it any further any time soon.

I got the adapter home but before I could start capping fools around the world with my assault rifle, the console didn't recognise that the adapter was plugged in. After a few calls to Microsoft, it turned out that the adapter was faulty. How about that shit? The only fucking adapter that I ever buy and it's a piece of crap. Unlucky or what?

Yeah Riker, you know what I'm saying.

Anyway, I took it back to Big W and the sales girl very kindly made sure that the new adapter she gave in exchange was from a different batch. I took the new one home and BOOYAH it worked just fine. All I had to do was search for my own wireless network and before you could say 'Eat bullet, motherfucker!', I had plenty of motherfuckers eating my bullets.

DISCLAIMER: While I may talk a lot of talk about my face-shooting skills in the war-torn world of Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, I'm actually not that good. But when I take down some dude with a gamertag of ikilledu16 after he's killed me ten times in a row, you better believe I'm punching the air with my fist. Naturally, I feel the need to relay that type of feeling here.

I am now saved.

After a long wait, the transfer kit finally arrived. And bizarrely it worked fine.

One end of it hooked up to the new hard drive while the other end plugged into a rear USB port on the console with the old hard drive installed. Because of the amount of stuff I had on my drive, the process took about an hour and a half. Weirdly enough, all the crap I deleted from the new drive magically appeared again after the transfer so I had to get rid of that all over again. Oh well, if that was the worst thing to happen, I got off pretty light. It feels pretty awesome to have all this extra space now.

Pretty much this kind of awesome.

Saving myself - Part 3.

While I'm waiting for my transfer kit to arrive in the mail, I had a chance to fire up my new hard drive. Surprisingly, it runs like an absolute dream. I must have had a hell of junk stored on my old hard drive because that one was slow as hell.

Pictured: My old 20g hard drive.

Microsoft in their infinite wisdom stuck a whole bunch of pre-loaded stuff on the new 60g drive, mostly Halo related. Trailers, gamer pictures and the like. All of which I deleted. There was a demo of Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy which I played for a few minutes and then deleted. A bunch of ads for Xbox 360 wireless accessories that I glanced at and then deleted. Seriously, the only thing I kept was a Gears Of War dashboard theme which I'll probably delete seconds after looking at.

But this is how I want it. This new drive is going to be clean as a goddamn whistle. 

Saving myself - Part 2.

Things are looking up. After deciding on a 60gb hard drive, I waltzed into my local JB HiFi and managed to find one on sale - for $119 instead of the listed $149. Not only that, the hard drive isn't the only thing that comes packaged for that amount of kablingy. 

Here's the package...

...and its contents.

As much as I fucking hate the way Microsoft conduct business sometimes, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did I save $30, but I also ended with more stuff that I thought. True, I couldn't give a shit about the extra ethernet cable and the headset will barely see any use, but it's that 3 months of Gold that I'm pretty chuffed about.

Regardless of all that crap, I'm still not back up and running just yet. After purchasing my pack of goodies, I rang the Microsoft robot call centre back and fed them my reference number. After a bit of a security check, they finally agreed to send out a transfer kit to recover all my precious save files. 

"Transfer kit, motherfucker!"

So now I wait. They told me it could take up to ten working days to arrive so I'm looking at next week at the earliest. Everything better work right when it gets here.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Saving myself - Part 1.

Well, it finally happened. My hard drive has completely died.

For the last few months, my 20 gigabyte Xbox 360 hard drive has been playing up. Specifically, it has been busting out an error message called E68.

More harmful than looking at the sun.

I had been trying my best to ignore it. Usually after a quick restart, everything would be okay again and the dashboard would load as normal. When it first happened I lost my mind thinking my Xbox had red-ringed again. But after talking to Microsoft, they told me it was all about the hard drive. 

One light means 'hardware failure'. Four lights means 'AV cable unplugged'. Three lights means 'Oh dude, your Xbox is done.'

That was months ago. This week, my hard drive has finally given up the ghost. Basically saying "Fuck yooooooou!" whenever I fire it up, I have accepted to fact that it's time to upgrade. Now, I have two choices. Since they don't make the 20g model anymore (and that's fine since I need more space anyway), my options come down to the 60g and 120g model. Priced by the minions of Satan, they are $150 and $180 respectively. What a fucking joke.

What choice do I have, though? None. So since I want to save $30 and I don't really need that much space, the 60g model will be fine. Bastards. Apparently because of a relatively constant price drop on the Xbox 360 console itself, Microsoft have stated that they have no plans to reduce the price of the hardware accessories anytime soon. Why? DOLLAR DOLLAR BILL Y'ALL!

"Sup? We at Microsoft got mad duckets up in this bitch!"

Anyway, there's a bit of a catch. How do I transfer my save files and profile to the new hard drive? A transfer kit, that's how. Now, this kit comes bundles with the 120g but not the 60g. I had to make a phonecall to Microsoft to get them to send one out to me. After jumping through a lot of security hoops, they finally told me that because of security reasons (and piracy I assume) I have to purchase the hard drive first and call them back.

So, it begins. Tomorrow I journey to shell out $150 for this fucking thing and then place a call to these bloodsucking bastards. And we'll go from there...

I bet there's probably about ten bucks worth of parts inside this thing.

TO BE CONTINUED.