controlling your 360 through Xbox Companion in Windows 8

[onlysublime]

here's Xbox Companion running on my ancient (4 year old) HP TX2000 laptop...

 

There are no video drivers for the HP TX2000 notebook since it's 4 years old. You can use the Vista driver (there's not even a Windows 7 driver for this notebook, thanks, HP) but it's flaky since Windows 8 uses a new foundation. So this video is showing the default Microsoft VGA driver (that's why the desktop is stretched 1024x768 and has bad animation performance). Also my Tablet PC has a resistive screen with an active digitizer so it's not ideal for finger touch.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx6yCiLbe94

 

I'm testing out the consumer preview version of Windows 8 on my HP TX2000 (a convertible Tablet PC) and the Xbox Companion app works! I'm controlling my 360 through my notebook.

 

Right now, I can't really use the TX2000 well with Windows 8 because there's no video driver (it's using the default Microsoft VGA driver) so I'm stuck at an ugly 1024x768 and it's stretched horizontally.

 

But the touch interface is working and it's like having a big 12.1" remote control. But it's not a replica of the 360 dashboard.

 

You have the bing search, quickplay, videos, games, and music categories. So let's say you see the Puss in Boots trailer. You can either play it on the notebook or you can play it on the Xbox.

 

If you go to launch a game from your games list or quickplay, it'll bring up the page of the game.

 

You can even bring up Xbox controls on the notebook and it's like using the D-pad with the A, B, X, and Y buttons.

 

I'm totally unfamiliar with Windows 8 so navigating is a bit daunting. Like I was playing the Puss in Boots trailer on the notebook. I then hit the home button in the upper left corner of the screen which brought me home to the Xbox Companion app. I could hear the video still playing but couldn't see it (at the main page of Xbox Companion). I then had no idea how to get back to the video. I went back to the Start page for Windows and couldn't hear the audio anymore. But I switch back to the Xbox Companion app and the audio resumed at where I left it. So I'm not understanding how multitasking is working or how to manage apps under Windows 8.

 

And because it's lacking drivers for a lot of my notebook hardware (old hardware), the performance is not optimal, but it's pretty cool!