Hi All,

Targets black friday deal might be the incentive I need to get another XBOX. But I have some basic questions I need to think about:

1) LAN party - my daughter loves Halo3, and playing with me offline would be a lot of fun. Is the XBOX easy to set up locally over my router, or is there some complicated procedure?

2) Swapping HDDs - Until I run permanent ethernet wire between room, I might want to swap out HDDs to get DLC from XBL. Is this a fairly seamless function, can I just pop it off-and-on without any complicated issues?

3) Loading Games onto HDD - If I copy Halo3 to my main X360 HDD, can I use the same game disc on my daughters X360?

4) Playing Games from HDD - What advantages does this give, other than less noise from the Game Disc Spinning?

Thanks in advance!

Hi All,

Targets black friday deal might be the incentive I need to get another XBOX. But I have some basic questions I need to think about:

1) LAN party - my daughter loves Halo3, and playing with me offline would be a lot of fun. Is the XBOX easy to set up locally over my router, or is there some complicated procedure?

2) Swapping HDDs - Until I run permanent ethernet wire between room, I might want to swap out HDDs to get DLC from XBL. Is this a fairly seamless function, can I just pop it off-and-on without any complicated issues?

3) Loading Games onto HDD - If I copy Halo3 to my main X360 HDD, can I use the same game disc on my daughters X360?

4) Playing Games from HDD - What advantages does this give, other than less noise from the Game Disc Spinning?

Thanks in advance!

1) The xbox is very easy to set up. You have to portforward a few ports but googling it will tell you exactly what you need. Now with Halo 3 you can play two on the same screen. I'm not quite sure how the two xboxes would work without 2 different copies of the game or two different xboxes

2) You can pop off the HD for each system. Keep this in mind though. When you download arcade games, add-ons etc it tags it to THAT PARTICULAR console and the gamertag that bought the stuff. That means if you swap your HD to go to the other xbox you need to be connected to live to access these things or you run into DRM problems. My advice is to have one account with points and do all the purchasing with it.

3) Not sure to tell you the truth. You need the disc to run the game once on the HD. Now I'm not sure you could just pop the disc out and plug it into the other xbox.

4) From what we've seen so far not alot. Loading times are decreased slightly, the noise is obviously quieter. In some cases (halo 3) it makes it worse as the game was designed to utilize different parts of the HD and when its copied to the HD, it just makes it look of two places.

Hope this helped some.

Don't know 1 and 2, although I can't believe it's an issue or that hard.

3) Yes, but you need the disc in to play off the HDD (for verification), so you wouldn't be able to play on both consoles at the same time without 2 discs. Honmestly, I'm not sure what happens if you boot up the game from the HDD and then eject the disc once you are in the game. My guess is it does periodic checks, but maybe it only does one check when you start the game? Anyone know?

4) That's about it. I've heard faster load times, but honestly any improvements have not been that noticeable to me. I also get less read-errors than I was. And of course there is obviously less wear-and-tear on the drive. As mentioned H3 actually runs worse because it was optimized for the disc. I assume the degradation in performance is because the placement of data is put on the disc in specific places, and once on other HDD, I imagine it becomes more fragmented, which means more seek-time.

I just set up my 2nd Xbox360 yesterday. From what I have read, the main accessory we need is the overpriced memory card. It seems to be the best way to move Live accounts and game saves between systems.
Steve

These are all good questions and pop up from time to time.

There's some cool things that can be done with the Xbox hardware, yet its often confusing and take some investigation. Maybe an active AVSer should maintain a "Xbox hardware FAQ" post with basic info and links to various threads on such topics as: multiple consoles on same network (hard drive and gamertag swapping), LAN, wireless, HDMI black levels, VGA, streaming media, etc..

I would petition for a sticky.

i just started Fallout 3 from the HDD, and the once my game was loaded, hit the eject button on my 360..

I was immediately dumped to the Dashboard.



Once i put the game back in it restarted..

Oh, OK, having to have a Disc in to play a HDD game makes sense; Afterall Micro$oft gotsta get paid, beeeaaaatch.

Eh, no biggie, I am sure I could pick up a 2nd disc used at GS cheap soon...

ran a test yesterday.

ran game from HDD with dvd cover removed.

i was able to remove the disc and still play, forever, until i turned the console off or went to dashboard.

Hi All,

Targets black friday deal might be the incentive I need to get another XBOX. But I have some basic questions I need to think about:

1) LAN party - my daughter loves Halo3, and playing with me offline would be a lot of fun. Is the XBOX easy to set up locally over my router, or is there some complicated procedure?

2) Swapping HDDs - Until I run permanent ethernet wire between room, I might want to swap out HDDs to get DLC from XBL. Is this a fairly seamless function, can I just pop it off-and-on without any complicated issues?

3) Loading Games onto HDD - If I copy Halo3 to my main X360 HDD, can I use the same game disc on my daughters X360?

4) Playing Games from HDD - What advantages does this give, other than less noise from the Game Disc Spinning?

Thanks in advance!


1. Setting up the LAN wasn't that bad. I had trouble with the 2nd 360 having an open NAT. I tried assigning IPs for each device with MAC filtering in both the router and 360's with no luck. I finally tried the obvious of auto settings in the 360 and turned on UPNP in the router and the NAT issue was resolved. Both open NAT. I wasn't sure what would be the side effect of one moderate NAT in relation to LAN gaming, but I found it a worthy issue to try and resolve.

Since the fix I've had friends over to LAN game and we even tried playing COD WAW on live with the same modem/router and it seemed to work well also.

2. I prefer to swap HDD to avoid having to recover my gamertag info on my spare machine every time I swap locations. I've always had my 2nd 360 on Live so I don't have an issue with DRM and DLC on the spare 360. I'll give the DRM vs Live a try when I get home.

3 and 4 nothing to add.

If you're looking for a 2nd 360 I saw a deal at FYE... Any 360 gets a $30 mail in rebate. That makes an arcade $169.00. That's a pretty strong deal for the holidays if you ask me. I didn't inquire about the terms of the rebate nor the extended warranty. I checked their website and it wasn't there so it must be in store only.

Hi All,

Targets black friday deal might be the incentive I need to get another XBOX. But I have some basic questions I need to think about:

1) LAN party - my daughter loves Halo3, and playing with me offline would be a lot of fun. Is the XBOX easy to set up locally over my router, or is there some complicated procedure?

2) Swapping HDDs - Until I run permanent ethernet wire between room, I might want to swap out HDDs to get DLC from XBL. Is this a fairly seamless function, can I just pop it off-and-on without any complicated issues?

3) Loading Games onto HDD - If I copy Halo3 to my main X360 HDD, can I use the same game disc on my daughters X360?

4) Playing Games from HDD - What advantages does this give, other than less noise from the Game Disc Spinning?

Thanks in advance!


1) I hosted several parties and it's not very hard. And all 3 of my 360's are wireless. You'll just setup one 360 to host the party. The other 360 will be set to find a party. Since it's just 2 360's you'll only see the other 360 and you'll join. The person/people from the 2nd 360 will appear in your party just like you were online. One problem you will have however is that you will need 2 accounts to play on the DLC on both 360's at the same time. That second account has to also purchase the DLC even though it's been bought and installed on the existing HDD. This is extremely annoying.

2) You can just swap out HDD's. I do it all the time because of the custom games I have on one particular HDD. But I would just swap the memory card with your gamertag on it and redownload the DLC onto the new 360. It's free. But if you can't hook up one of the 360's to the internet the swap is just fine. I'm sure you already know to make sure the 360 is off for safety's sake.

3) Yes you can. You can use that disc on any 360 regardless if you've installed the game on a hundred other 360's. All those 360's will NOT play the game however unless there is an actual Halo3 disc in the tray. So if you were thinking of installing the game on console and sticking the disc in another console and playing on both at the same time, it won't work.

4) I have seen none in so far as Halo 3 was concerned. Halo 3 actually supposedly plays better without the install. To be fair I have noticed no difference either way and haven't had a reason to uninstall the game from the HDD.

Hope this helps.

Good luck with re-downloading dlc - I am working my way through all of the GH/RB DLC. "Re-download" all or "group" would be great. (maybe swapping HD doesn't seem that bad an idea after all :))

FYI, you need to go into settings, "move" your gamertag to the card, then load it up on the other machine. Rinse and repeat to go back to the original - you can't just pop the card in and have be xbox find everything (or can u?).

FYI, you need to go into settings, "move" your gamertag to the card, then load it up on the other machine. Rinse and repeat to go back to the original - you can't just pop the card in and have be xbox find everything (or can u?).

The gamertag can stay on the memory card (MU). This avoids going into the menus and moving it to the hard drive when bouncing between machines.

The gamertag can stay on the memory card (MU). This avoids going into the menus and moving it to the hard drive when bouncing between machines.

If done this way, will achievements be transferable from 1 console to the next? I also just picked-up a new system. Moved the old-1 to the bedroom but instead of doing the MU profile move I did a direct GT Recovery to the new system.(Didn't research before doing it... :o) I ended up losing my HEXIC HD (had 2 call Microsoft 2 get a CODE to re-download it)

Also do I have 2 delete my profile every time I switch my gaming from 1 console to another?

Thanks

If done this way, will achievements be transferable from 1 console to the next? I also just picked-up a new system. Moved the old-1 to the bedroom but instead of doing the MU profile move I did a direct GT Recovery to the new system.(Didn't research before doing it... :o) I ended up losing my HEXIC HD (had 2 call Microsoft 2 get a CODE to re-download it)

Also do I have 2 delete my profile every time I switch my gaming from 1 console to another?

Thanks

Yes, your GS is tied to your GT; if you have it on a MU it will transfer around with you, the only thing that won't is your game progress unless you also save the game data to the MU. I have a MU just to hold profiles so I can easily transfer it to another box without too much effort. The only time I've had problems is when I want to be running from my system and my GF wants to play on the other system. In that event I just transfer my GT from the MU to HD and she takes the card. It beats the socks off of having to do a recovery every time. Also, it's worth noting that you can pick up a 64mb or 256mb card from ebay for like ~$15/shipped without too much searching...well worth it in my opinion

If done this way, will achievements be transferable from 1 console to the next? I also just picked-up a new system. Moved the old-1 to the bedroom but instead of doing the MU profile move I did a direct GT Recovery to the new system.(Didn't research before doing it... :o) I ended up losing my HEXIC HD (had 2 call Microsoft 2 get a CODE to re-download it)

Also do I have 2 delete my profile every time I switch my gaming from 1 console to another?

Thanks

munkyxtc gave a good answer, but just the clarify the bolded -- you do not delete your profile ("GamerTag") from the hard drive when putting it on a memory card -- you move your GamerTag from the hard drive to the MU.

It sounds like semantics, but I think its an important distinction.

Yes, your GS is tied to your GT; if you have it on a MU it will transfer around with you, the only thing that won't is your game progress unless you also save the game data to the MU. I have a MU just to hold profiles so I can easily transfer it to another box without too much effort. The only time I've had problems is when I want to be running from my system and my GF wants to play on the other system. In that event I just transfer my GT from the MU to HD and she takes the card. It beats the socks off of having to do a recovery every time. Also, it's worth noting that you can pick up a 64mb or 256mb card from ebay for like ~$15/shipped without too much searching...well worth it in my opinion

So when you switch from 1 console to another do you have to delete that profile before you switch or do you leave it.

I tried this & it kept telling me I had an invalid profile everytime I tried to sign in to XBL :confused:

ran a test yesterday.

ran game from HDD with dvd cover removed.

i was able to remove the disc and still play, forever, until i turned the console off or went to dashboard.

Interesting...How hard is it to remove the dvd cover (and is that permanent or does it snap back on?) just curious what game did you try this with (tempted to try this for left 4 dead - love to have 2 screens instead of split screen) - quite a few co-op games I'd love to play but don't feel like buying 2 copies and having 2 gold live accounts - I bought 2 360's and at least 1 copy of the game - be nice if this works to save buying 2 copies of any co-op game

Wait for games to drop in price or when they are used. Multi screen co op rocks.

as other posters have said:

!) Very easy.

2) Removing HD is easy, but the content is linked to the box and gamertag. You would have to redownload files twice for both machines.

3) Normally, you will need two copies of games to play multi screen co op. You don't need two gold accounts for lan, but you will if you want online matches. I always patch all games.

4) Less load times and quieter operation.


Have fun!!!

Whats the DVD cover? The entire top of the Xbox? or just the chrome strip and slip the disc out somehow....

So now I'm just loading gamertags off a mem card - yes, it IS that easy. Now, onto stage II - gamesaves....

Luckily, I can load up a MP COD W@W with all of the same stats with just the gamertag.

Very timely thread for me and some great comments since I just got my second box. I just have a silver account with no plans to go gold and no purchased downloads.

1. Is there a best way to set up my account and the content on the hard drives? Do I sign up for another Live account?

2. Should I get the transfer cable and move everything to the new Elite which will be in the main gaming area or do I just move my game saves and GT over with an MU?

Then it sounds like if my son wants to play on the old box, out of our hair in the rec room, with his friends using the latest game saves, he just loads those from the MU?

Very timely thread for me and some great comments since I just got my second box. I just have a silver account with no plans to go gold and no purchased downloads.

1. Is there a best way to set up my account and the content on the hard drives? Do I sign up for another Live account?

2. Should I get the transfer cable and move everything to the new Elite which will be in the main gaming area or do I just move my game saves and GT over with an MU?

Then it sounds like if my son wants to play on the old box, out of our hair in the rec room, with his friends using the latest game saves, he just loads those from the MU?
I just started using the streaming Netflix. Gold is required. I think it may be worth it.

I just started using the streaming Netflix. Gold is required. I think it may be worth it.

Silver members can stream Netflix (including the Sony movies blocked on the 360) with "PlayOn (http://www.themediamall.com/playon)"... see this thread for more discussion (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1077508).

Although there is a one-time $30 purchase after the 15-day trial is up.

Interesting. I am also using PlayOn I havent messed with it all enough yet..

Very timely thread for me and some great comments since I just got my second box. I just have a silver account with no plans to go gold and no purchased downloads.

1. Is there a best way to set up my account and the content on the hard drives? Do I sign up for another Live account?

2. Should I get the transfer cable and move everything to the new Elite which will be in the main gaming area or do I just move my game saves and GT over with an MU?

Then it sounds like if my son wants to play on the old box, out of our hair in the rec room, with his friends using the latest game saves, he just loads those from the MU?

Came across this thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=15132557#post15132557) which answers my question fairly well.:)