X-Boxed

I got my Xbox on Tuesday… as promised. It came at about 1pm. I opened the box just to make sure it was in the box. There was indeed an Xbox 360 in the box… as well as two pieces of paper and a free one month Xbox Live Gold card. I then check the side of the box… You see a part of me was hoping that they could NOT fix my Xbox and would send me a new one. I had hoped this because MY 360 was ‘hdmi READY’ but didn’t have a true hdmi port. When I bought my Xbox I didn’t have a HD TV and I don’t know if the Xbox’s had hdmi port- so that didn’t matter to me… BUT of course, now I have an HD TV… I felt that it would make my life easier because I would then be able to get the $200- HD DVD expansion to the 360… instead of spending way more money for a next gen DVD player. So I was a bit disappointed to notice that the port was the same a/v port as before. My disappoint grows as I check out the two notes one tells me that I got a NEW Xbox as they couldn’t fix my old one and that’s why they gave me the free one month upgrade to Xbox Live Gold. The other explains how to “re program” my controller. Now as it was about 1:30 after I had finished unpacking the box… I left it on the floor, got lunch and ran a few errands. I didn’t want my WHOLE day to be Xbox. I get home at about 6pm, and have a melt down as my “new” Xbox (I put quotes as it was made in ’05) won’t turn on. I call Xbox Support… and end up on hold for a bit, and I’m convinced that the guy on the other end can’t help me. I end up, by mistake, hanging up on the Xbox Representative… and then by myself figure out that the ‘on’ button just needs to be pushed harder then I remember. Not a big deal… AND I’m able to program the controller by myself. So I check that I can play a game (rumble roses) and that I can play movies… and then I go to bed because the day ended up taking a good deal out of me.
So I watch a little TV on Wednesday, but I don’t play any video games. This morning I feel like a bit of Rumble Roses before work… So I turn it on and THIS TIME I notice something. Something that really bugs me.
See along with hearing about the ‘red ring of death’ I had heard that Xbox gets real picky about their download content. As they don’t want you like somehow ‘re downloading’ it at a friend’s house and so s/he can have the dlc… So if you change machines for some reason, you are then required to be LOGGED ON to Xbox Live in order to enjoy your dlc. I didn’t think twice about this- as I had kept MY hard drive… so I assumed that since I wasn’t trying to RE download stuff… I’d be fine. This is not the case. See each time I turn my Xbox on- it basically tells me that I’m not logged onto Xbox live and I have to ‘log on’. And so even though I haven’t changed hard drives… when I looked for my DLC while playing Rumble Roses ‘off line’ it wasn’t there.
I find this very annoying. Currently my modem can be for EITHER my computer OR my Xbox. Both can’t go in at the same time… And so if I want to play my games with the dlc (that I *paid* for) I have to disconnect my computer from the modem and connect my Xbox.
I see two solutions. One, a co-worker suggested I pay for a router. Two is I talk to the cable company. You see when I had them install my ‘phone’ line… since I didn’t have my computer, they could only set up THAT modem for my phone. So if I paid the cable company to send someone to make the phone modem also my computer modem, then I could make my computer modem exclusively my Xbox modem. Either way I’m still not happy as I don’t like the idea that I PAID Xbox for this content and for nothing that was MY fault, I now have to have my Xbox ‘online’ whenever I want to play.
Bleh.