Xbox 360 Dashboard Update

June 13, 2006

I’ve only experienced one strange crash since it was applied, but that was the one and only time my XBox has crashed so I’m not too worried. I like the new dashboard features – especially the boot-to-dash option. What would be cool is if, having booted-to-dash, my XBox would show me somewhere (on the Play Game bar, perhaps?) what disc was in the tray.

Anyway, I digress – my favorite new feature is one that I haven’t seen talked about too much, and that is the way that picture slideshows are displayed. Not long after getting my XBox, I installed Media Center Extender on my media server and shared out two folders: My Music and My Pictures. Prior to the dashboard update, my XBox would display all the folders that it found when I went into the Pictures menu to run a slideshow. This was a huge pain in the arse, because it would show me all of the album art that it found in My Music too. The new update displays my MCE shared folders separately, which allows me to choose which parent folder I want to browse before running a slideshow.

Even though its a really small thing, its actually a huge improvement in end-user experience. It goes a long way to demonstrate not only how Microsoft foresee the XBox as being the media hub in the home, but also, how they seem to understand they way people want to use their XBox for more than just playing games.

Posted in xbox