5769

No, it’s not a DVR at all. Can’t watch your liveTV or do trick play live either.

5770

So for 24 hours starting 12:01 AM this Saturday Xbox Live Gold members can play Sunset Overdrive as much as possible till the clock strikes Sunday. Interesting idea for a demo.

5771

Ok, that was a pre-release gem of a zinger.

And having re-read the first 41pages of this thread, all the grousing was directly on point, MS had to abandon half of their big ideas and the other half aren’t the value-add they thought it would be. Seriously, fantasy football?

5772

I ended up getting a PS4, but I gotta say… Sony’s network is utter trash compared to XBox live. I don’t have an XBox One yet, but I really do miss the functionality of XBL compared to Sony’s offerings. Sony’s much better than it used to be in this regard, but it’s still miles beyond what Microsoft offered even on the 360.

5773

Yup. Reading through long threads, sometimes you’re struck by how wrong everyone was at the beginning. People assume too much, or they just thought about things in the wrong ways, etc. But in this case, just about everyone but Microsoft could see what was going to happen. They were spectacularly blind about their early policies and how they’d be received. Used game license permissions? Always online hardware requirement? Kinect mandatory? Madness!

5774

What are the differences?

5775

Plex is a pretty poor substitute, unfortunately. From what I understand, while you can play back based on file names, you can’t schedule recordings, review your library (other than browsing the directory), etc. (it’s been a while since I messed with Plex, but I have it built into my Google TV and it’ was far cry from the interface and functions of MCE). I’ve also been using MCE for a long time (back since the Windows XP days!) I know MS is planning on dumping it (or has dumped it already). It makes me sad, since it was the best DVR interface (with the possible exception of Tivo) married to the ability to use it over a network. My 360s have seen many hours of use playing games, but that pales in comparison to the number of hours they’ve been used to watch TV. If the Xbox One incorporated MCE capabilities, I’d buy one tomorrow.

5776

I love my plex. Nice interface, pulls info from internet, organises tv shows by series and best of all, it’s voice activated so I can just bellow at my tv to make things happen. If you want just the folder based interface, Xbox one gives you that via the media browser app that plugs into dlna servers. Plex costs a few bucks depending on what option you get (maybe it’s free now)

5777

I do like Plex, and got the first month for $4.99, but I probably don’t like it enough to pay that much every month. I think per year is it was $32.99? I can’t remember anymore. And there was a one-time payment option that was ridiculously high ($200+). The XB1 media player is nowhere near as pretty and convenient as Plex, but at least it’s free. Plex is just too expensive.

5778

Yeah, I paid 40 bucks for the year. The voice control is what tips it over the edge for me. I love not having to reach for the remote to pause, rewind and change the volume. It’s one of the few things that makes the experience feel next gen. Maybe Kinect lite would be a cool peripheral, with voice only. Of course right now, Kinect 2s are pretty cheap second hand, and it’s well worth getting, imho.

5779

Yeah, I do love the voice control. Speaking of voice control, it’s sooooo nice to have HBO Go on Xbox One finally. I hated using it through my phone on the chromecast, especially when I got a phone call in the middle of a show. What a pain in the ass. Now if I get a phone call: “Xbox Pause”, without finding the controller or turning it on.

The XB1 HBO Go app does need some work though. First of all, just like Netflix, it doesn’t work in snap mode, so I can’t play Destiny while watching Bill Maher or John Oliver. Hopefully they can get it working as a snappable app. Secondly, unlike HBO Go on the 360, and android, this one doesn’t seem to have my Watchlist. Unless I just missed it somewhere in all the other menu options? I looked for a while though, it doesn’t seem to be there.

5780

Shit that don’t work in Snap mode is really annoying.

— Alan

5781

Plex is completely free.

They will be releasing a free Plex for XBone soon that doesn’t require the plex pass subscription.

5782

I tried using Plex to playback recordings off my WMC box via my Chromecast at it was pretty intolerable. The playback was choppy and the thing would just hang forever when trying to skip forward or backwards. I don’t have the best wifi in the world, but I play HD stuff from Youtube/Netflix just fine through it, so I’m laying at least part of the blame on Plex.

If the Xbox One incorporated MCE capabilities, I’d buy one tomorrow.

I would likely as well. I was really disappointed when they announced all these TV features for XBO, but no DVR, network tuner, or even OTA capability. In fact I probably voiced that opinion in this thread somewhere.

5783

Aleck, I’m with you on MCE. I have a Win 7 PC hooked to our main TV that’s our DVR/music server (and it’s equipped for gaming, but I never use it for that due to not having enough time for the Xbox/PS games already). Love it as a DVR, and love the ability to use Handbrake to take recordings on the road on my Surface Pro 3 or phone when traveling. (I’m recording all over-the-air broadcasts, so none of that stupid DRM.) I wish MS was still enhancing/pushing it, but I guess the adoption was never high enough to justify it. Sadly, it was a pain to set up/maintain in the XP MCE days, but by the time it got to Win 7, with plug-and-play hardware like HDHomeRun, it was pretty easy, and there were little cheap PCs that made great servers. But the market feels like a niche of us hardcore MCE fans, for the most part, from what I see on forums, etc.

But while I’d like to see native MCE support on the One, it’s not a big deal to me to keep the 360 around for that in addition to the One. I still have a ton of 360 games to finish, and the trade-in/resale value isn’t exactly enormous on them anyway.

As for Plex, it’s not a full MCE solution, but it works for how we use it. Generally the little live TV watching we do (football) is on the big TV, so having to wait for things to be recorded to watch on the extenders wouldn’t be a big deal.

5784

Yeah, I don’t mean to harp on it Denny. For me, it was an annoyance earlier this year when one of my two functional 360s RROD’d, meaning that now I don’t have an extender on one of the TVs in my house. I’m having trouble with the idea of buying another 360 just to be an extender – I don’t have a lot of 360 games in my unplayed library – and would love to get an Xbox One, but can’t/won’t justify it when it has less of a media-based value proposition than the box it’s replacing.

If it had DVR functionality, or network tuning, or OTA, or any one of a number of features that could have made it a useful media box (to me) I would probably have one already. Hell, I might even consider resubscribing to cable TV if it had cable card built in. It seems like it was designed specifically to turn me off, which is obviously an irrational response.

I get that Media Center never took off the way MS wanted it to. However, looking at Sony launching Vue, I think of Media Center as a really lost opportunity. It was one of the few technologies where I think Microsoft unequivocally got it right, but it was never marketed well, never really extended beyond the initial functionality, and was essentially allowed to wither and die. If Microsoft really wanted the Xbox One to be the centerpiece of folks’ home theaters, they should have built off Media Center. Instead, we have a device where the media functions – which was the big focus, pre-launch – are now widely recognized as something of a flop. Maybe it would have been the same if they’d come from a Media Center focus, but I guess we’ll never know.

5785

Well, on my 360, all the stuff actually worked… and worked well.

With PSN, stuff just doesn’t work that well.

As an example… if you send a message to another person, it’ll send it to them… but they won’t get it for sometimes HOURS after you send it. Or you’ll send it, and then an hour later, you’ll get a notification of a message from the person you sent it to. But it won’t be an actual message from them, it’ll just be you getting notified of your OWN message that you sent to them. Or sometimes you’ll get notified that they replied, but you can’t actually see their reply for a long while.

The whole PSN thing just seems real far behind XBox live in terms of basic functionality.

Now, bear in mind, I don’t have an XBox One… but I can’t imagine that it somehow got worse than it was on the 360, where everything functioned pretty much flawlessly all the time.

5786

I’m glad that PSN messaging problem isn’t just me. I almost started a thread about it last week and then I closed the wrong browser tab and didn’t feel like retyping my rant. It’s maddening.

5787

Ya, it’s really amateur hour compared to XBL…

Don’t get me wrong, overall the PS4 is an awesome console. And there are other aspects of the networking which are crazy good. For instance, I got a vita and can play ANY game on my PS4 remotely, and required no special configuration at all. Which doesn’t even seem like it should be possible. But it is, and it works pretty much flawlessly.

But then basic stuff like simply sending messages gets fucked up somehow? Crazy.

5788

I have yet to dive into MP on my ps4 (pack in headset is awful for my ear shape, it just falls out) but that is one area where I am a little nervous about everything working well.