Package Away!

Earlier in the week, I popped by the UPS Store and picked up a return box for my defective Xbox 360 and I packaged it all up last night and dropped it off this morning. So realistically, the service centre will receive my defective console sometime this coming week, and I should have a replacement console back in about two to three weeks.

Now as I mentioned last week, I purchased a brand new Xbox 360 Arcade console to act as my primary console, and I must say I'm very impressed with it thus far. Manufactured on March 15, 2010, this console is quieter than my previous 2006 model, specifically the disc drive. It's another BENQ drive, which is great, and what's even better is that the console generates a whole lot less heat; it's quite the noticeable difference.

That's not to say there weren't any snags setting it up. Even though it was manufactured just a few months ago, it looks like Microsoft is using an older version of the Dashboard, as my Wireless Networking Adapter didn't want to recognize the WPA2 encryption on my wireless router. I had to drop it down to WPA to connect, download a System Update, then I was able to readjust it to WPA2.

The other snag is, of course, content licenses for all of my DLC. Xbox Support will automatically transfer my content licenses from my defective console to my replacement console, however since I plan on using the replacement console as a back-up, I need all of my licenses on my Xbox 360 Arcade. I called up Xbox Support and asked if when they do the transfer, if they could simply add them to my brand new console instead. Regrettably, that's not how the process works and they do need to transfer them to my replacement console, however I can still use the Content License Transfer tool myself afterwords.

So, sorting out my content licenses is the only real thing left for me to do with my new console, though it looks like I've lost all of my original Xbox DLC. It's still there, but whenever I load up a game that has any DLC, it states that I have "Damaged Content" and must redownload it. The hitch, of course, is that original Xbox games can no longer connect to Xbox LIVE (though they can still download Title Updates, apparently). I'm going to wait until I do the license transfer before deleting this content just to be safe, but I figure it's gone. At least I still have it all on my original Xbox console.

Oh, and speaking of my original Xbox console, I now have my Xbox 360 Arcade running off an HDMI cable (which looks slick, by the way) and I was able to connect my Xbox to my TV with the Advanced AV Pack. It will only play games up to 480p since the original Xbox can't upscale, but honestly, even that's a huge difference from 480i; Halo 2 looks noticeably crisper and cleaner, and with component cables the colours are more vibrant.

So, so far, so good. More updates as it happens, and I think I'll write up a nice article in a few weeks time about what you can all expect and the process you'll need to go through if you buy a brand new replacement console yourselves.