Xbox 360 Elite and TVersity

In preparation for the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 4 tomorrow night (GPStore is open for pickups at midnight) I bought myself another Xbox 360 - this time an Xbox 360 Elite. I dont really need the 120GB HDD, or particularly prefer black over white - I just want the HDMI connection. I'm installing the Elite in my bedroom, and so the HDMI connection means a single cable going across the wall rather than a much bulkier (and shorter) Xbox HDTV cable. I wish I had an Elite in the lounge instead of my original - the HDMI would mean I could get 1080p on the big TV, as opposed to the 1080i I have to put up with through Component connection.

So I got the new console all up and running, using the USB WiFi connection I already had (went wired on the other Xbox a while back). Got connected to my main PC (via TVersity) and was browsing around the music & videos and then tried the 'Internet Videos' link. Low and behold I found YouTube - sweet!, I thought. Stupidly I never realised that TVersity streams and recodes YouTube content too :-) And it works a charm.
So I had a play around with adding more Internet URLs -Video RSS feeds, and got Tekzilla, Mahalo Daily working, and also added the TWiT audio podcast.

Totally stoked. Even though I knew I'd be able to use the new 360 for DVDs and Streamed Videos I never clocked that I'd be able to use it for Podcasts and YouTube too, so thats definitely a big bonus. Now I only need one more thing to make me truly happy - Region 2 (+4) DVD playback!

I've also got to try and find a Black Xbox 360 controller battery pack somehow - it doesn't look like anyone sells the Black ones in NZ!

Wahoo - Stable Internet Again

OK, so I've got one less thing to whinge about now. Thanks to those lovely chaps at Orcon sorting out my repeated connect/disconnect issue my Broadband's humming again as normal with no interruptions.

It was quite funny actually - after I got Duncan's comment on my Blog on Thursday I dropped him an email, then went home from work. Pretty much as soon as I got home (about 7PM-ish ) the Internet died. Wasn't impressed. No Internet at all now! I thought: one of two things might be happening here, either Duncan's not happy with my Blog so Orcon's cut me off :-), or they're trying to resolve the issues that me and presumably other users were facing.

So I waited for an hour or so for it to come back on (but it didn't), then called the helpdesk (I _hate_ calling helpdesks!). I sat on hold for 15 minutes (listening to some rather amping techno music) and got through to a very well-meaning young lady. She said she tried to do a reset on my DSL port, but was unable to as there were people working in the Browns Bay exchange, but when they had finished she would get one of the L2 techs to check again to see if I still had a problem. I thought that was kind of funny, as there probably wouldn't be people in the exchange if there wasn't actually a problem. So she said it I'll probably have to wait until morning before I got reconnected. I turned my router off (first night it's ever been off since I got it I think) and waited till morning.

Come the morning and I switched the router back on, fingers crossed that my link would come back up. It did. Wahoo! I thought. Back online. So I went to work. I logged in from work to the Orcon system, which shows every connect & disconnect, a few times during the day and it looked pretty good. Got home last night & it was all good too. By this afternoon I was quite happy that the problem had gone away, and got a lovely email from Lee@Orcon confirming the fault had been resolved.

Even better though, later on this afternoon I got a call from Orcon explaining that the product/service I had received wasn't up to what they would expect so I'm going to get a full month's credit on my bill. Nice! :-) So thanks to Duncan and the rest of the Orcon crew. Customer happy on that account.

Now all we have to do is sort out this speed issue. Have to get my speed back up to where it should be - can't let my Facebook profile suffer!

Broadband Speed and 'Upgrades' to ADSL2

OK, so I think it's time for another rant. I'm mightily disappointed at the moment with my new 'Local Loop Unbundled' broadband service from Orcon. OK, so it's cheaper than Telecom/Xtra, and the boys are going to get good use out of unlimited national calling, but my Internet access is slower! Having paid for an 'ADSL2+' service (billed as 24Mb/s), and living about 250m up the road from the Telephone Exchange (one of the first to be 'freed') I wasn't that impressed when my link speed only came up at 13Mb/s. But that was just the start.

Not only did my link come up 'slow' but it went down again. And came up again. And went down again... more than a dozen times yesterday (more today)! (My old Xtra connection hardly ever went up/down - definitely nothing noticable like this). I've upgraded my Netgear DG834N DSL Router to version 1.02.08 - the first upgrade available for it in like 18months! Hopefully that will improve things somewhat (there's this in the release notes: "Enabled ITU G.992.5 Annex M which extends the capability of basic ADSL2 by doubling the number of upstream bits").

So I get into some downloading - to test the speed of the International bandwidth - all that I'm really interested in (local access speed is kind of meaningless really). And it's noticably slower than usual. Time for the 'Facebook Broadband Speed Challenge'. Yep definitely slower than my Xtra service.

Lucky I've been compiling some stats over time really. I was interested a while back when I noticed that my Xtra Broadband had increased in local access speed from 7ish Mb to over 10Mb - 'I must be on an ADSL2 access, I thought'.

I ran a few tests and sure enough, even the Facebook Broadband app constantly showed I had a good 10+Mb of Internet access. 'Nice' (I thought).

Then I noticed that my speed would drop down every now and then - back to ADSL speeds. Were Telecom messing with my connection, putting me back on the old gear? Hmmm. But anyway then I 'upgraded' to Orcon. The '10 Day' installation lead actually took 3 weeks. Over which time I never once had an email or a phonecall from them confirming my order (I rang them up and told them what I thought of their rubbish customer care). They said they had sent me a confirmation email (to my new Orcon email address! which of course I had no idea how to access). I logged in, but there was no mail there (rubbish! I thought). So I switched my router settings over anyway to the new username/password. And today I get the 'welcome' email. A bit late, I thought, I've already been using your service for a day!

So today - my second day as a new LLU'd conversion - I run my speed tests. And no matter how fast my access speed is, the Facebook app doesnt lie. I've never had such a low speed result before :-( Disaster. One of my Facebook friends is bound to catch me now! (There can be only one #1)


All I can say is that I hope things better. I hope Orcon's customer service improves. Their self service website is definitely nice (gives me great reporting functionality - like seeing how many times a day my link drops!). I hope their international bandwidth picks up. And I hope the boys enjoy their free calls. Cause I sure don't enjoy life in the slow lane :'-(