well this christmas we were fortunate enough to get our hands on an xbox 360, after reading all the reviews on the games available, we bought a few that looked like the ones with the best bang for the buck.

my reasoning behind the whole thing is to do something a bit interactive with the kids, build shared interest, ive always been a great fan of good looking games and home theater so adding an HD gaming box (360) to the cabinet makes for lots of creative outlets.

originally purchased to play games, the xbox-360 is much more than a game box, its a media center extender and gaming community (xbox live)

the interfaces are nice, the online integration is seamless, the os perception is that "the games are running on an xbox" (so at any time you can exit the game into the xbox), not the traditional, "the xbox is running a game" (so if you want to configure anything, reset the box and do it before you start the game) . very nice experience.

although we do experience the errors on powerup, (1 out of 6 times) that gives us a fullscreen error message in a few languages. we have had a lot of fun using it.

in our media cabinet, we also have a Media Center PC, xbox-360 allows integration with the MCE, so that you can watch TV on your xbox. that is a neat feature, although since both the MCPC and the XBOX are on wireless (and the tv is streamed) the experience is less than optimal for me (802.11B)... time for an upgrade to G.

anyway...having fun with the kids, care to battle?

If you run into issues with synchronizing your TV program guide in Windows Media Center 2005, and the issue is either a Code 13 or 33 error do the following:
1. Open up the Date/Time control panel.
2. Make sure your date and time are properly set. (if they weren't, try downloading the program guide again).
3. Click on the 3rd tab, which controls network time synchronization.
4. Try sync'ing to time.windows.com or the NIST server.
5a. If this fails, make sure that Port 37 is open on your firewall.
6. Once Port 37 (Network Time Protocol) is open, you should be all set and your program guide should download fine.