Mattazuma's Revenge

New XBox Experience - First Impressions

Downloaded the "New XBox Experience" tonight.  Microsoft finally did it, the 360 is now more than just a video game machine.  Yeah, they had pay per view movies before, but they weren't a very good deal and they have the 24 hour playback window that plagues all online PPV services.

The Microsoft-Netflix partnership changes everything.  There is lots and lots of stuff you can instantly stream through the 360.  And there are a handful of movies & shows available in HD.

The picture quality of the Netflix streaming is amazing.  We watched an episode of 30 Rock from last year that was HD, and the quality wasn't as good as the HD over DirecTV, but it was really good.  We also watched the Heroes pilot in HD, and it looked great as well.  We are currently watching an old movie that isn't in HD, but it looks identical to a DVD as far as I can tell, much better than SD TV.

The only problem people may have with the Netflix streaming is the heavy bandwidth requirements for HD.  You need some seriously big tubes for the highest quality HD stream.  We have a 6Mb/sec DSL line and we only got 3 out of 4 "quality bars" for the HD streams.  Like I said above, it still looked great.

It's not a free feature, though.  You have to have an XBox live Gold subscription to stream Netflix, which costs $50/year.  You also need to have a Netflix subscription, which is $15-20/month.

It's funny, when we set up the Wii on Monday, I thought the 360 wouldn't get used much.  Now I think we are going to use the 360 now more than ever.

Netflix's original business model was groundbreaking, movie rentals with no late fees and "infinite" selection.  This is going to be bigger, now that their streaming capability is available on 360s, HD Tivos and their $100 Roku boxes.  I wouldn't be too surprised if streaming shows up on the PS3 sometime in 2009.

For the other new stuff, the avatars are somewhat nicer looking versions of Nintendo Miis, but it's obviously a response to them.

Being able to download games to the hard drive is great, but since I have the original 20GB drive, there isn't room to install more than one game on it.  It really sucks that, unlike Sony's PS3, you cannot upgrade the hard drive yourself.  The only option is to buy Microsoft's 120GB drive, but at $140 it is a huge ripoff.

Finally have the Wii

Jonnell bought a Nintendo Wii last week.  She got the Wii Fit as well.  For a number of reasons we didn't get it set up until Monday, so I haven't messed with it too much, but I am amazed by the Wii Fit.

It really does make exercise fun.  It pesters you to work out and gets on your case if you don't improve.  The balance games are also a lot of fun, too.  I can't believe how well the balance board works.  It knows were your center of gravity is.  This is used in most of the exercises, for example, your score in the yoga training is based on how well you stay balanced during the poses.

I got Mario Kart, but I haven't played it much yet either.  Jonnell seems to really like it, she spent 2 hours this afternoon playing it.  I can't wait to play it online.

Not sure what other games to get for it.

Amazon Packaging Excesses

So, from the picture of this box, can you tell what I bought from Amazon?

On the bottom of the box it says the dimensions are 18" X 15" X 11". 

No idea? Here's what was in the box:

Yes! Another box plus a bunch of bubble bag fill.  This box is 16" X 12" X 6" and there is around 10 feet of the bubble stuff. 

Still can't guess what I bought?

It is a $9.99, 10" bread knife.  After I made my loaf of bread, I realized I didn't have a long enough knife to cut it with.

Amazon is a little crazy with their boxes.  I can't figure out why they didn't just ship the inner box.  It isn't like it is going to cut its way out of the box.  Also, since I have Amazon Prime, they shipped it to me with 2 day delivery.

Loaf!

Well, I've been very domestic this weekend.  I'm currently finishing off my 7th load of laundry, yeah I got a bit behind on that.  The fun thing I did this weekend was make a loaf of bread.  I got the baking jones a month ago and have made a couple of batches of chocolate chip cookies.  My cookie recommendation is to use Ghirardelli 60% cacao chips, they make very simple cookies really awesome.

So I spend today making bread.  We don't have a stand mixer so I got to knead the bread by hand, which wasn't that bad but if I want to make bread on a regular basis I'm going to have to get a Kitchen Aid mixer with a bread hook.  There was probably 30 minutes of preparation, half of which was kneading, 3 hours of rising and dough resting and 40 minutes of baking.  So, it isn't that awful a thing to do while watching football.

Here are a few pictures of my bread.  I used a simple recipe from the Joy of Cooking.  It tastes pretty good, too.

The loaf is pretty heavy, almost two pounds.