Gadgetory

hey this is Ross with the verge and we are checking out the new fall 2011 Xbox Live dashboard update it should be launching to all Xbox 360 consoles in the week of December 4th so the first thing you will notice with the new update this is actually the second big visual revision after the blades that are launched within the new Xbox experience that came out a couple years ago in fact mirrors very similar to the Metro UI design you've seen in Windows Phone devices in the upcoming Windows 8 panel and even the Kinect hub that we saw a preview of back about a year ago and to connect launched now speaking of the Kinect there's actually a lot of improved Kinect functionality first and foremost being the being search that you can actually access with your voice if you go all the way to the left panel you'll see being searched for apps search whatever you can do it as a text thing but it's actually the biggest pain better yet from anywhere in the menu you can just go ahead and scream Xbox being the gun stringer so here goes just thinking the Sphynx search only works when you're connected on live and what it will do it lets you search for games movies TV is anything that microsoft offers and can let you download and/or purchase so as you see here we have a couple toys for the gun stringer the game itself a launch trailer as a few ads is always there let's go ahead and take a look at this we can also do it by search by voice Xbox the gun stringer item - it loads up and we don't have the game yet but it is a free download so we can go ahead and just say download only once begin to the internal menu we can use connect to way but voice controls pretty much gone at this point go ahead and tap wave finds it and confirming download so in addition to games you can also use being to search for the movies TV and music that Xbox offers for example let's give this a shot Xbox Bing Modern Family okay as you see we'll have modern family which is available in multiple episodes and for some reason the Sonic Generations demo American Idol encore dental music oppositeday and the like let's go ahead and look at what we wanted in Modern Family xbox Xbox there you go Modern Family Season 2 good cop bad dog alright and then let's you purchase through Zune music it is still finicky service but it is nice that unlike last version of this you can actually use more natural language you can actually say the episodes you want you don't just have to go panel one panel - and it does have that latent search function so with this new update Microsoft is making a much bigger push toward video and including that they're going to be updating the Netflix app and adding in a YouTube app which is not here yet but should be there launch week they've overhauled the ESPN app they've added sci-fi epics dailymotion Bebo should be coming up there's a lot more apps verizon fios will be adding live TV as well comcast to various aspects basically Microsoft's ultimate goal is to keep your Xbox on at all times and kind of watch video through the console itself with some added functionality let's go ahead and take a look at the SyFy which is offering some on-demand options okay so after something of a elongated load time you get this sci-fi menu is has the exact same metro UI is everything else on the new dashboard update and you can search through and look through the new show content you can look at some of the game trailers that sci-fi offers but as with everything else we're most interested in the more natural language connect voice options let's go ahead and give that a shot Xbox being human and you can use this to go through the entire system video cast and crew episode guides there goes the neighborhood part 1 and from here you can take a look at some the information about the episode you can get more video options or if you want you can share the other big thing Microsoft is touting with this update is the ability to share items through Facebook and even the most inane things like an episode of being human so we can go ahead and do the share function and what this will do is will bring up my Facebook account I've already got that tied in from earlier and you can just add a wall post that says exactly it just says you're interested in being human episode there's not a lot of functionality for this one but they do have some cool Facebook features elsewhere in the new dashboard let's go out of here so now again there will be integration with Verizon FiOS live TV and on-demand comcast video on-demand and it will have some new apps like HBO GO and a new Netflix and of course most excited of all the YouTube app unfortunately we don't have that in the preview but it should be rolling out sometime this week now some of the other big features that Microsoft is rolling out with a new update includes beacons and cloud storage let's go ahead and show beacons the idea behind this is that there are times when I want to play a game like Call of Duty but I do not want to wait I want to go ahead and say I want to play the game wait for my friends to get on and at the same time I'm gonna go ahead and watch Netflix Hulu whatever so to get there you go from the friends the social tab go to your friends and then go down to beacons and activity now what we can do here is we can create a beacon and this will basically say it will tell me when my friends are playing this game and if I want I can add messages so other people can see my beacons so I'm gonna go ahead and I'm going to select modern warfare 3 the comment that's default is I want to play this game with friends I'm gonna go ahead and leave that but you can modify it if you want you can also choose to share social networks and you can tell everyone on Facebook yes I want to play this right now anyone who's seeing this please come on and play with me so let me go ahead and set the beacon and that's it and I have a chit if I don't have a change of heart about sharing this on Facebook I can do that and I can also further modify the message so I'm gonna cancel I don't want Facebook to see that but all the same i beacon is still there and I every time one of my friends starts playing modern warfare 3 I'll get an alert on the bottom anyone who wants to see you know go through their friends beacon should be able to see this as well so that's it the other big new feature if you go over settings is cloud storage now this one's a you have to enable at least in this one you have to enable yourself or if you go over to system you'll see storage options from storage options you'll see your all devices you'll see hard drive and you'll see cloud save games it actually shows up just like the memory card and hard drive does now Microsoft is offering you 511 Meg's of storage in the cloud and from there if you aren't on someone else's Xbox you can go ahead and bring in your safe files provided you've already saved them to the cloud now we've already had call duty saved here I'm gonna go ahead and move it off just to show you how easy it is and that's that but if I want to move it back I can do that and then if I want to sign on someone else's Xbox all my save files where I left last left off in the campaign that will all show up and this works for any game just like a memory card so that's kind of a it's kind of a general overview of what we're gonna see for the new dashboard update there's plenty more in store a lot of video content to come including the YouTube app a much improved Netflix app we've seen a preview but we don't have it here unfortunately now again all that should be arriving the week of this number for through a role to anyone that has an Xbox 360 and that's it now if you don't mind me I'm gonna start placed on Call of Duty come here you what go on be off the set good boy