2 posts tagged “christmas”

So, my Xbox 360 red ringed today, and I thought my widely unused Vox blog would be a great place to document my attempts to get it fixed, hopefully via Microsoft.

So, a little backstory. I got this 360 for Christmas 2006. Ran great, loved the thing. No problems what so ever. While my friends who have had theirs at launch are on their second or third 360's, I'm loving mine.

Yesterday, I boot up MLB 2k7, and it tells me there is an update. I download the update, everything goes well. Go back to playing the baseball, and then everything goes to hell.

There are these bizarre graphical artifacts all over the screen. I escape to the dashboard, and its the same there. Rebooting fixes the problem, but it happens everytime in MLB 2k7, about 15 minutes in.

I assume its the recent update, so I clear the cache and try to backdate the updates. Works good. I play some Hitman Blood Money. No problems, back to the good Xbox 360. Then, I get the same graphical artifacts, albeit, a little differently, in Hitman.

Since this is now a 360 problem, not a MLB 2k7 problem, I turn to my unlimited research library (aka google) and start searching for problems. I quickly discover, that this problem is semi-to-less common, and its usually caused by the heatsink on the GPU overheating. Since the GPU isn't 'critical' thats why it can spazzz out and the little red ring finder doesn't trip for it.

The most common cause seems to be too much dust in the bottom air intake. So, people exchange stories of using compressed air or small vaccums to clear the dust off the heatsink. I decide to do this, but since its late, I wait for today.

I wake up this morning, decide to try it, and uh noes, I get a red ring. Lower right quadrant. E74 error, which is...

A) Bad AV Cables (not true, I tried them with my two sets of cables. Same Problem)
B) Scaler Chip Error
C) GPU Error

Considering I don't want to void my warranty by opening up my Xbox 360 to try to install some cheap Chinese GPU or Scaler Chip, I'm forced to try to call Microsoft.

Its June 30th, 2007. Has of now, my Xbox 360 is dead, with the red rings. I am going to contact Microsoft later today, and hopefully they'll give me a free-shipping-free-repair deal, since mine is under warranty, and I didn't put mayo in the DVD drive or anything.

(Thats my little journal thing that will hopefully make up the majority of the Xbox is Dead things. Notice how I bloded the text, right? Nice, I know.)

Well, let me just make a short note, ATI and AMD announced they're working on a CPU/GPU hyrid, called Fusion. Fusion, is one of my favorite words. For English class, we had to do a creative writing thing, and I wrote this 100-page SAGA where I was the CEO of a video game/internet property/media company called Fusion. I think AMD should pay me royalties.

Yeah, right. Well, I have no idea how this Fusion thing will work, they'll have to have some special chipset on the motherboard, or have their own motherboard. If they have the GPU PCI based or something, then they'll need some kind of chipset, if its integrated into the motherboard, they'll need their own motherboard which AMD isn't into. It'll be interesting to see what they'll do. I'm a bit of a NVIDA and Intel fanboy, so I hope these AMD and ATI... or AMD/ATI... or just AMD goes bankrupt, but whatever, the unbiased part of me wants to see how, technically, they pull this "Fusion" off.

This wasn't the point of my post. The point is, Sony's Playstation 3, Microsoft Vista Home Premium or Apple's iTV? Which will become THE way to watch computer based content on the television?

Faults? The Playstation 3 will only stream off of the PSP, if I'm right, and thats bad. For Vista, you need a whole computer set up to your TV, which isn't a good deal. iTV? Well, no one knows how it'll work at this point. Steve Jobs' keynote, while it was "revolutionary" because Apple announced it this far out (very un-Apple), was very cryptic.

My pick? Well, the Media Center will do the most, basically because its a whole PC connected to your TV. The one that'll do it the easiest simplest? The iTV? The one that most people will have in their homes and most likely use in this fashion? The Playstation 3.

Now, I'm a Xbox fanboy, so I dislike the PS3, but the Playstation brand is insanely popular. The name "Playstation" is what "Nintendo" was in the 90's. My grandma doesn't say "Do you want a new Nintendo game for Christmas?" like she did with my cousins, she says , "Do you want a new Playstation game for Christmas?". The odd thing is, my cousins didn't own a Nintendo (Sega Genesis all the way) and I don't own a Playstation.

The two names are buzzwords with a generic gaming console with non-gamers. Not to mention the following that the PS brand has. I remember when the PS2 came out. Friends of my dad, who weren't really big gamers, they had Madden and few other games on their PS1, but were excited for the PS2.

Despite all its flaws, the high-price, the janky controller, the blu-ray format (which WILL fail, mark my words. I'd promise a future blog on the subject, but I don't seem to be keeping up on those promises.), the PS3 will sell like hot cakes, and some people will use their PS3 in a media... convergence... thing?

Me? Why would you want to watch YouTube clips on a TV? Sure, if you buy a movie, then it'll be cool, but I don't... and if I did, I'd settle for my 21" Samsung LCD monitor. Sigh, I don't understand people.

Robert Heron over at Ziff-Davis predicted that one day, we won't have a PC, we'll have 10 computers, in various different household items, including a car. I don't like the idea. Don't get me wrong, I like having little computers in TV's, Cars, whatever, but no base computer? How will you surf the net? Through your TV? On a tablet on your nightstand or near your sofa? Meh, we'll have to see.

Nevertheless, today, we are enjoying technology today that was not even being DREAMED up 20 years ago. I'm not fond of the "free thinkers" who say we're living in the second Renaissance, but honestly, aren't we? The first Renaissance brought about new ideas in modern science, medicine, architecture, art and music. In 500 years, will my relatives talk about how this era brought in new ideas in computing? Will they look upon men like Jobs, Gates, Laporte, Ellison and Kildall in the same light has da Vinci, Shakespeare, Copernicus, Clouet and others?

Its a radical idea, but I think we're there.

Congratulations, my friends. We're Renaissance men.

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2006