Just downloaded the new dashboard... not impressed

[JamesD]

Frankly, it doesn't make sense to to require gold for things that would have more people turning on the XBOX and seeing their adds.

[Lord Helmet]

I just wish that once you went gold the ads would go away.

[keilbaca]

I just wish that once you went gold the ads would go away.

 

I agree. I mean... I seen a World of Warcraft ad on the big square. That's a PC game... has nothing to do with Xbox whatsoever.

[Metal Ghost]

 

And a side note, I don't think the new dash was what was crashing my 360; I happened to re-download Game Room, which I used to love dearly and which basically got me back into retro gaming. Now it is a toxic, broken application which _will_ crash and freeze your 360 if you download it... _even when not playing it_. Just having it downloaded will somehow cause other apps to freeze and crash. It's _real_ bad news.

 

Game Room freezes the 360 since the new dash? I haven't actually used it since the update, but I know that it's still on my hard drive. Anyone else have any issues? I haven't seen anything about such an issue anywhere else, but am very curious as I tend to go on Game Room 'kicks' from time to time.

[moycon]

I was playing Game Room a few days ago....no issues.

[Mayhem]

I get a crash on Gears 3 most evenings since the new dash, so something's up...

[Austin]

I haven't had any crashes, but then again, I've just been playing random XBLA games and the occasional backwards-compatible XBOX title.

[moycon]

I get a crash on Gears 3 most evenings since the new dash, so something's up...

 

The game Defense Grid was screwing up my new 360 slim. Basically it would freeze suddenly while I was playing. I had installed an old school 20GB HDD in it and was playing the game save off that HDD so I thought that might be part of the isssue. I've since moved the save to the cloud and haven't had any freezing issues on the slim since.Maybe the old 20GB drive wasn't the issue, maybe just playing game saves off any HDD causes freezing. (Is that was you mean by crashing? It just freezes?) If so...That REALLY sucks ass.

[Hydro Thunder]

Obviously, YMMV, but....

Defense Grid never crashed for me until I installed Game Room back on my 360. And it would completely freeze everything, had to manually power off the system and restart.

Game Room also does nothing but freeze for me anymore, as of the newest update. I can get one, maybe two short games of Space Duel or Amidar or Crackpots in, and everything completely locks up. And until I deleted Game Room, every other game I had would freeze after about 5 minutes, stuff that never has frozen before. Castle Crashers, Halo Wars, whatever I played. Once Game Room was deleted, Defense Grid no longer freezes, nor anything else.

Thus my comments on Game Room being a serious problem. Not scientific to be sure, but with some cause.

[Metal Ghost]

I get a crash on Gears 3 most evenings since the new dash, so something's up...

 

The game Defense Grid was screwing up my new 360 slim. Basically it would freeze suddenly while I was playing. I had installed an old school 20GB HDD in it and was playing the game save off that HDD so I thought that might be part of the isssue. I've since moved the save to the cloud and haven't had any freezing issues on the slim since.Maybe the old 20GB drive wasn't the issue, maybe just playing game saves off any HDD causes freezing. (Is that was you mean by crashing? It just freezes?) If so...That REALLY sucks ass.

 

I'm not so sure about that....at least from my experience. I've played multiple games from HDD saves since the new dash with no freezing issues:

• Ms. 'Splosion Man
  
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
  
• Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster (kids, thank you very much!)
  
• Fruit Ninja Kinect
  
• Viva Piniata
  

Gosh, I may have played more, but I'm in the beta and can't remember which games I've played under the new dash and which I was playing under the old one. And Gears 2 and Lego Star Wars Clone Wars I have actually been using Cloud Saves, so I guess those wouldn't count.

[Metal Ghost]

Obviously, YMMV, but....

Defense Grid never crashed for me until I installed Game Room back on my 360. And it would completely freeze everything, had to manually power off the system and restart.

Game Room also does nothing but freeze for me anymore, as of the newest update. I can get one, maybe two short games of Space Duel or Amidar or Crackpots in, and everything completely locks up. And until I deleted Game Room, every other game I had would freeze after about 5 minutes, stuff that never has frozen before. Castle Crashers, Halo Wars, whatever I played. Once Game Room was deleted, Defense Grid no longer freezes, nor anything else.

Thus my comments on Game Room being a serious problem. Not scientific to be sure, but with some cause.

 

And hey, not that you're wrong....obviously something's going on. I'm just thinking that based on other's comments that Game Room doesn't have that effect, then it may be an interaction between both Game Room and something else particular to your setup (perhaps another game save, app installed....who knows).

 

Not that they're gong to be able to fix it immediately or anything, but as a courtesy I would inform the Xbox team of what's going on for you. If it's happening for you it's more than likely affecting others as well.

[moycon]

I'm not so sure about that....at least from my experience. I've played multiple games from HDD saves since the new dash with no freezing issues:

 

Ok nice to hear.

I'll have to boot up Game Room today and play it for a bit and just leave it up and running for awhile, I have around a dozen titles purchased and in my arcade along with the max number of mascots populating it. Should be a good candidate for freezing.

[Metal Ghost]

I'm not so sure about that....at least from my experience. I've played multiple games from HDD saves since the new dash with no freezing issues:

 

Ok nice to hear.

I'll have to boot up Game Room today and play it for a bit and just leave it up and running for awhile, I have around a dozen titles purchased and in my arcade along with the max number of mascots populating it. Should be a good candidate for freezing.

 

I would definitely do that, keep good mental notes about exactly what happened, and then like I said to Curious let the Xbox team know what's going on. Maybe it's the particular combination of games you have within Game Room, maybe that in conjunction with specific apps or saves you have on HDD....who knows. But I think Microsoft would want to know.

 

With all those games and mascots you've obviously made an investment and it should work for you. Not that they will be able to help immediately, so it's always good to be understanding in these situations, but I'm sure that they'd want to start looking into it and help (not talking necessarily about the customer service phone people....but the true Xbox team always wants things to work right). Who knows, it may even take giving them a detail of everything that's on your HDD, if they ask for it at least, but it'd probably be worth it.

[Hyper_Eye]

Turns out my audio issue is not fixed. It is just intermittent. It seems to be happening less often. Anway, here is a thread where it was discussed on avsforum quite a bit starting with this post: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=13111676#post13111676

 

The general idea presented there is that the AVR is set to send audio to the display and thus the 360 negotiates what the lowest audio setting is with the devices and the display causes it to negotiate stereo. My AVR is not set to send audio as my projector does not have speakers worth using on it. I suppose they are good as far as pj speakers go but the thing is intended to be combined with an audio solution. So that is disabled. Later in the thread they came to the conclusion that display detection should be disabled. That might work but I'm not really satisfied with that answer. I have my pj configured very differently for high-def video than it is for games. With display detection on the 360 switches modes between those two activities so my pj settings are selected automatically. I would hate to lose that. It looks like I will continue to check what was negotiated and perform the correction procedure when stereo is the result. The thing that everyone pretty much agrees on there is that their other devices do not have this issue. This is a handshake issue on the 360 side.

[Hydro Thunder]

I'm not so sure about that....at least from my experience. I've played multiple games from HDD saves since the new dash with no freezing issues:

 

Ok nice to hear.

I'll have to boot up Game Room today and play it for a bit and just leave it up and running for awhile, I have around a dozen titles purchased and in my arcade along with the max number of mascots populating it. Should be a good candidate for freezing.

 

I would definitely do that, keep good mental notes about exactly what happened, and then like I said to Curious let the Xbox team know what's going on. Maybe it's the particular combination of games you have within Game Room, maybe that in conjunction with specific apps or saves you have on HDD....who knows. But I think Microsoft would want to know.

 

With all those games and mascots you've obviously made an investment and it should work for you. Not that they will be able to help immediately, so it's always good to be understanding in these situations, but I'm sure that they'd want to start looking into it and help (not talking necessarily about the customer service phone people....but the true Xbox team always wants things to work right). Who knows, it may even take giving them a detail of everything that's on your HDD, if they ask for it at least, but it'd probably be worth it.

 

I ought to let them know, it's true. It _is_ really upsetting, because I loved Game Room to _pieces_, and was a staunch defender of it in the Xbox forums up until they quit supporting it. But once people started reporting problems like mine, and I then developed said problems, ugh. It could really harm your 360 to have that happening, and I'm just not willing to run various tests or whatever I would have to do with them on the line to get it up to speed. Maybe if I get a new 360 at some point (and have a warranty on it! This one's run out...) I might redownload Game Room, but for the time being it frightens (and frustrates!) me. And thus why my initial post overstated, saying that "it _will_ crash your system". Since, well, it could, and does for me.

So chances are slim I'll let them know, partially due to laziness, and partially for unwillingness to mess around with my 360 and freezing issues out of fear of breakage.

[onlysublime]

Turns out my audio issue is not fixed. It is just intermittent. It seems to be happening less often. Anway, here is a thread where it was discussed on avsforum quite a bit starting with this post: http://www.avsforum....76#post13111676

 

The general idea presented there is that the AVR is set to send audio to the display and thus the 360 negotiates what the lowest audio setting is with the devices and the display causes it to negotiate stereo. My AVR is not set to send audio as my projector does not have speakers worth using on it. I suppose they are good as far as pj speakers go but the thing is intended to be combined with an audio solution. So that is disabled. Later in the thread they came to the conclusion that display detection should be disabled. That might work but I'm not really satisfied with that answer. I have my pj configured very differently for high-def video than it is for games. With display detection on the 360 switches modes between those two activities so my pj settings are selected automatically. I would hate to lose that. It looks like I will continue to check what was negotiated and perform the correction procedure when stereo is the result. The thing that everyone pretty much agrees on there is that their other devices do not have this issue. This is a handshake issue on the 360 side.

 

here's more info on this in that very same thread:

http://www.avsforum....18&postcount=97

 

"It's been covered extensively further back in this thread and many others, that most receivers have an option as to whether to pass through from TV back to source device, what sound capabilities the TV supports. Since precious few TVs actually have 5.1 speakers, they tell the querying device that they only support DD2.1 and compliant source devices dutifully send only DD2.1. Turning off the pass thru in the receiver, causes it to inject it's own audio capabilities into the list of supported audio types. This is generally effective at getting the 360 to send DD5.1.

 

For some small minority, there either isn't an option in the receiver, or it doesn't work properly for some reason. Source devices that ignore the reported audio capabilities, will generally work fine, assuming that the receiver does support DD5.1 itself. The 360 by default does not ignore the reported audio capabilities, unless you disable display discovery."

Edited December 27, 2011 by onlysublime

[Hyper_Eye]

I've had the audio pass-through disabled since I configured the receiver. It does not seem to be a solution in this case. Later in the thread, after people were still having issues, it was found that disabling display discovery resolved it. I haven't really tried but I'm not very interested in that solution regardless. I got a PS3 over the holiday and have it hooked up exactly the same way as the 360 and I have not yet experienced this issue with the PS3. I also have never experienced the issue with the HD satellite receiver that is hooked up the same way. Anyway, the 360 is still king of the modern section of my media room. I just have to make sure 5.1 was properly negotiated and if not the fix is simple. The only reason it frustrates me is that it slips my mind and I will realize I was playing with 2-channel sound.

[Atariboy]

The Game Room app and all the game packs are on my 360. No crashing issues with them present on my hard drive.