Tuesday's XBox360 Dashboard Update

On Tuesday a new version of the 360's dashboard is going to be released. In this release the big new features are "Friends of Friends" where you can view who your Friends have as Friends on their Friends list. A timer so that parents can dictate how long their offspring can play games for. And the much requested DivX and XviD video codex support is being added so that you can brows and stream AVI video from a PC to whatever large television you might have connected to your 360. If you want to see the complete list of changes Click Here.

GamerScoreBlog (which is run by Microsoft PR) has put together a rather good video preview of the whole thing.

XBox360 Spring 2.0.5759.0 Dashboard Update is Here

Ring the church bells the new dashboard update is here ready to download. Below is a short list of things that have been updated.

• Users are signed into XBox Live quicker.


• Achievement notifications now include the Achievement's name and it's gamerpoint value.


• A new marketplace dashboard blade (lots of enhancements there).


• Instant messaging support between XBox360 and MSN Messenger.


• A new option to auto download all Arcade games is on the Auto Download option in Arcade.


• New low power mode for downloading so if you are downloading when you turns the 360 off it will go into a low power mode and finish downloading before it turns off.


• The name of the game that is the the DVD drive is displayed on the dashboard's game launch button. As well as Achievement and gamerscore information being displayed at the same time in the dashboard's ad space.


• Support added for the new Mini-keyboard.


• Users can now fast forward, stop and rewind video as it is downloading.


• Download progress of a video that is currently being watched and view progress through the video can now be seen on the new progress bar which is accessible by selecting the Info Pane while watching a video.


• Users can now change video aspect ratio while a video is playing.


• H.264 and MPEG4 codex support added.


• Every video now remembers where you where last time you played it so when you select it you can choose to wither resume playback or go from the start.


• Videos without chapters are now automatically assigned ten points that users can skip through.


• Windows media protected content is now streamable from a Windows PC.


• If a user buys content from Marketplace without the space to store that content, Microsoft Points are now not deducted from the user's account.


• The screensaver is now automatically disabled when a photo slideshow is playing.