I decided to really explore the 360 today since I had most of the day to myself. For starters I registered my system online (don' t forget).

Then I decided to play some Amped 3. It' s pretty fun so far, I' m still learning all the ins and outs. After playing for a little bit I finally got some Gamerscore points!

I never really explored Live marketplace, and since I had some points to blow I figured now was a great time. I was checking out some of the downloadable trailers when I realized you can download movie trailers too! So I downloaded the trailer for Aeon Flux.... looks weak. Still cool I can download it.

Then I downloaded a trailer for PGR3 and NBA26 just cause. I remembered I still had those pre-loaded trailers on my hard drive and decided to delete them.

So I go to delete the trailers when I realize my hard drive is only reading 13gigs! As it turns out the hard drives are 20 gigs, but 7 gigs is partitioned off. :mad:

Granted 13 gigs is still a lot of space (because I never got close to filling up my Xbox and I had some 300+ songs and maps). Regardless, 7 gigs is a lot to lose.

Afterwards I decide to download some more trailers. I see NBA Live 06 and decide to download the trailer for that. However, it wasn' t the trailer - IT WAS THE FULL DEMO!

The file is almost 500MB and takes a bit of time to download, but I had no idea you could download demos! Live 06 looks and plays pretty good..... but it ain' t no 2k6

I still have more time to blow before I head over to meet family so I call up Hollywood video to see if they have PD0 available to rent - they do! So I dash over there and pick it up real quick.

Afterwards I head over to my grandma' s WITH my 360. The family is there and they' re all asking about the 360. I hook it up in my nieces room because the family was watching a DVD in the other room.

The first game we pop in is PD0 and I play split screen with my brother. Lol I noticed a huge difference going from my 26 HDTV to my nieces 19 inch composite dinosaur!

Also decided to rip one of my brother' s burned cd' s to the drive, and as its ripping my bro touches the PSU to check it out and unplugs the system mid burn!! :mad:

I quickly turn it back on and check everything out. Everything was fine. We popped PD0 back in and amazingly a couple of the songs we started ripping was available to play. So we' re playing PD0 while listening to Common' s new CD. It was awesome!

Then my uncle comes in and gives my brother a burnt DVD (geez my family has a lot of burnt stuff ). I never tried a burnt DVD so I was like, " pop it in!" Worked flawlessly.

After watching that and letting him play Live 06 I headed back home. Well, and I had some food too!

When I got home I got to thinking exactly how my 360 would look using the regular AV slots on my hdtv. So I hook it back up using just the AV wires -- IT WAS UGLY! Woo boy! Not doing that again. I noticed a HUGE drop in quality.

So then I decided to hook it up using the component wires only this time I left the component wire set to " TV" . Again there was a pretty noticeable drop in quality. So I had enough of that and switched HD back on!

While playing Amped 3 I noticed the left side is cropped Part of the left side of the screen just cannot be seen. I looked online to find some answers and apparently other gamers have noticed certain games are cropped when using widescreen. I played Halo 2 and that wasn' t cropped but Amped 3 is.

Also, played some Half Life 2 as well! I don' t know why but apparently the game goes into a 4:3 mode. I have black bars on the left and right side. It' s weird.

Anyway, that' s what I learnt of the 360 today. Now I got a party to go to. I just hope people show up!

at least u have a hdtv, i don' t . it' s good to hear u can play burnt cds and dvds, since i have sooo many of them. :D

I agree with pretty much everything you said lottuson. I have amped, and like it quite a bit, I really appreciate the absurdness of the presentation. Haven' t noticed the cropping, I' ll look. Have you been playing Perfect Dark online?? If so, what' s your gametag, maybe we can hook up and play. I got my ass wasted today. Some people have really learned the system well already, so I reccomend playing the custom matches before jumping into a ladder match. my tag is RaKier ifyou wanna look me up for a game.

Also, played some Half Life 2 as well! I don' t know why but apparently the game goes into a 4:3 mode. I have black bars on the left and right side. It' s weird.

Is Half Life 2 an Xbox 1 game? If so, then the game does not support 16:9 and is therefore letterboxed on the sides. I imagine a lot of Xbox 1 games will do this.

Yes, HL2 is a Xbox 1 game. I thought since Halo 2 had added widescreen support HL2 would as well. Or at the very least give me the black bars on the top and bottom instead.

Hey mxpx182, my gamertag is FIGURE 8 DASH

Halo 2 has always had widescreen support.

I have worms 4: mayhem(i love it, so much better than worms 3D) and it aw well has the black bars. It' s as Joe sais, no 16:9 support. I' ll add you to my contacts lottuson, and maybe we can hook up and play. I had a much better time online last night in the custom matches with some very funny guys.

Has anyone played COD2 because I' m thinking of getting it today. Also if you have how' s the single player(cause I don' t have Xbox Live yet). Right now I' m not all to satisfied with PD0(the game would' ve been better had it been like the training level) however, Kameo was pretty fun(for a free game{don' t know if I would' ve liked it if I had payed for it}). So far the 360 has been a love/hate relationship and it' s games aren' t giving me any pleasure. I hope the games get better.

Also PD0 was the first FPS that I' ve owned and I hope not all of the have single player like this.

As I said in another thread, the Call of Duty 2 demo I played looked like an Xbox 1 game with a higher framerate. The textures were very low-res and everything looked Xbox 1-ish except for the smooth framerate. But I hear the real game supposedly looks a bit better than the demo. If you like first person shooter war games, then this will probably fit the bill. If instead you like good games, you may want to rent it instead.

Call of Duty is very imersive. great dolby sound, and the graphics are pretty solid I thought. On the multiplayer side, only xbox live, because there are no bots if you want to play split screen.

I just got this game today and it' s pretty fun. From what I played it' s a lot better than PDZ(which is growing on me a little). The graphics to me look great(comoared to any Game Cube or PS2 game I' ve played). I hope the game keeps on getting better and doesn' t disapoint me.

it makes me laugh when some people say the graphics are great compared to current consoles .... well duuuuh .... a next gen cannot allow such comparaison and when people start comparing the xbox360 to game cube or x box , it' s scary ....