Xbox 360

Last August (2006) I received a third-year anniversary gift certificate from work. Debating what to purchase with it, I decided to buy an Xbox 360. One reason was that I wanted to get into gaming, another was that it would put a DVD player in our second family room. I bought the $399 version, with a hard drive, wireless controller, and headset. The $299 option doesn't include these items.

Xbox offers two version of its online service: Silver (free) and Gold (requires a monthly subscription). They offer free downloads of movie trailers, game demos and game trailers. For a small fee per download, usually $3, you can also download and watch movies and TV shows. I don't play games against other people online, so the Silver membership suits me just fine.

Since buying this console, it gets used about every day, either for games or watching pre-recorded TV shows. My wife and three-year-old daughter spend as much time on it as I do. My three-year-old likes to hold the controller, but her hands aren't big enough to move the analog sticks, pull the trigger buttons, and press the thumb buttons that most games require.

Another feature provided through the Xbox Live online service is Xbox Live Arcade. Live Arcade offers trial versions of both old and new games. If you like the game, you can buy the game online for between $5 and $30. Live Arcade games are downloaded from the Internet, whereas other games can be purchased or rented DVD-sized discs.

One feature that I like about the Xbox 360 is that it supports wireless controllers. We use two controllers, and, because there aren't any wires between the controller and the Xbox, other people can walk in front of you without tripping over the wires. Another benefit of wireless controllers is that you don't need to trace the wires to see which is controller #1. The controller that is turned on first is controller #1.

Another feature that I like is that I have it hooked up to a 19" CRT monitor through a VGA connection. The picture is sharper on this monitor than a standard-definition TV (SDTV). I don't yet have a high-definition TV (HDTV), so this will suffice until I upgrade one of my TVs to HDTV.

The Xbox 360 is backward compatible with a large number of original Xbox games. See http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibilitygameslist.htm for more info.

Here's a list of our favorite games:

1. Legos Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (Xbox 360)
2. Star Wars: The Video Game (Xbox)
3. Disney Pixar Cars (Xbox 360)
4. Viva Pinata (Xbox 360)
5. Fight Night Round 3 (Xbox 360)
6. PGR 3 (Xbox 360)

If you're looking for next-generation gaming and HDTV-quality video, I highly recommend purchasing an Xbox 360.

UPDATE:
If you are in the market to buy an XBox 360, I recommend that you buy it from a store that offers an extended replacement warranty. The XBox 360 is a great machine, but early shipments have experienced a large number of hardware failures.

Just about one year after the purchase date, my 360 started displaying an error code when I tried to connect to XBox Live. I contacted XBox Support, and they said it was a hardware failure, and that I would need to send it in for repairs. When I bought it, I knew about the high percentage of hardware failures for the 360, and decided to add an extended warranty for $39 when I bought it from my local GameCrazy store.

The extended warranty just paid for itself. On 8/22/07, I took my broken 360 back to the store, explained the problem, gave them my receipt and warranty sheet, and they offered a replacement. With the recent price drops, I opted to upgrade to the XBox 360 Elite. The Elite has an HDMI cable for high definition televisions, and a 120 GB hard drive. I paid $50 for the upgrade, and of course, another $59 for a two-year extended warranty. I hardly ever buy extended warranties, but in this case, I'm glad I did.

Console DVD Recorders

With VCRs going the way of the dodo, a couple of products have appeared to replace the VCR for recording television. One of them is the PVR (such as TiVo) which records television shows to a hard drive, and console-based recorders which work like VCRs but record to blank DVDs instead of VHS tapes.

About May of 2006 our cheap ($35 about 3 years ago) DVD player stopped reading DVDs. Not that the lens was dirty, but the motor that spins the DVDs had burned out.

Soon afterward, we started looking for a replacement. A friend at work recommended a recorder. Intrigued by the thought of recording TV to DVD, I picked one up for $99 at my local Best Buy. I took it home, hooked it up, and set the timer to record Saturday cartoons for my kids.

I use DVD-R discs for recording, because the other DVD player in my house won't play back DVD+R discs.

Here are some of the benefits and problems we've had with it:

Benefits:

• Record TV
• Record movies
• Unlimited storage (just buy new blank DVDs)
• Watch recorded TV shows and movies on any other device in the house that plays DVDs (computers and DVD players)
• Automatically creates a menu of recorded shows for easy navigation and playback
• Blank DVDs are cheap, even brand-name 50-packs can be found on sale for $15

Problems:

• Occasionally a TV show starts one minute early, and so I always set it to record a minute or two before the time slot
• Just about every 50-pack of DVDs has one or more bad discs that won't play back after recording (brand name discs, like TDK and Memorex, have fewer bad discs, no-name brands usually have more)
• I have to clean the lens in the DVD recorder about once every three months

Overall, it has been handy to have a recorder that directly saves TV to DVD. With the recorder, my kids usually watch TV on demand, and are unaware that Saturday morning is when their cartoons are broadcast over the air. I keep up on my TV shows by recording them when they air. I usually end up watching them late Friday or Saturday night in another room, or on my laptop.

Here's the DVD recorder that I own: LiteOn LVW-1107HC1.