I have a BT HomeHub (V1) which I…modified…to use the firmware for the router it was originally (a SpeedTouch 7G) so I could use it with a different ISP. This was back in June/July, and I’ve been having to boot into Vista (sad I know) to get internet access to play on Xbox Live, etc.

So I finally gave up today, and got around to trying to configure another HomeHub – this one with the BT Firmware as the repeater. After a lot of tweaking, I found the solution to be quite simple, and I found it here.

Now, I have 2 ethernet ports in my room, and my laptop hovers at around 95% all the time now, which is nice, better than the 40-68% I was getting before anyway. It also means I can have my Xbox 360 online without paying out for either a really long eth cable, or a wireless adapter for the 360 (they retail at around £60 here in the UK).

Either way, I’m happy with it, so I won’t complain

Edit: I forgot to mention, I experimented a little after setting it up (and nearly broke it!) and I configured the 2 routers to broadcast the same (E)SSID, which seemed to be ok, and caused a little confusion initially on my laptop, but it seems to work just fine now, and my laptop automatically switches to whichever has the strongest signal

Well…it’s been dated & confirmed by Microsoft. Mark a date on your calendar for the 19th of November I read it this morning over on TrustedReviews. I’m really looking forward to it, but unfortunately I’m out all day on the 19th (at least until 16:00 GMT) so that’s a bit of a bummer. Nevermind

I thought I’d put it out there for everybody

It’s a massive overhaul of the current dashboard…actually no…it’s a totally new dashboard I’ve had a poke and a prod around various sites, and it does look quite funky (and yes – the Wii style avatar things are true, but they don’t look that bad actually).

I’m really quite looking forward to it, hopefully it won’t be ridiculously slow when it’s finally released (I can think of a certain (read: current) release that can be painfully slow at times…)

I also found a link to what looks like a genuine (if somewhat small) gallery of images for the new dashboard.

ShackNews Gallery: http://www.shacknews.com/screenshots.x?gallery=10254&id=122358
Wired Blog Post: http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/07/pics-xbox-360s.html

Official Xbox.com Announcement: http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/E3-2008/nxe.htm

Also I think I’ll be buying an Xbox 360 Elite sometime in the next 3-5 weeks my brother want’s his own Xbox 360, so I figured I might buy an Elite (bigger hard drive + HDMI = happy Joe ) But I’m definitely waiting a little while, because just today, Microsoft announced a price drop in the Europe & UK Xbox 360 SKU’s so that’s good news for me!

UPDATE: I just noticed that when I have DreamScene running, if I unplug the laptop from charge, it pauses the video to conserve battery life! I think that’s a clever little feature Especially because the background still looks good when paused.

I’m not bothered though, as there’s still many films available for HD DVD I read the rumors as I’m sure a lot of other people did over the weekend that Toshiba were pulling out of the HD DVD production, but I read the final news on the BBC News website earlier this morning.

So it’s been good, and in the end the superior (albeit more expensive) format won. Congrat’s, it’s just a shame it’s a Sony Corp technology.

So I bought the add-on for my Xbox 360, for £50 ($97 US) which is around half the retail price everywhere I’ve seen. The HD-DVD I got with it was The Kingdom. I’ve also got the following ordered though a couple are out of stock on Play.com:

• Apollo 13
• The Last Samurai
• Music And Lyrics
• The Bourne Supremacy

I’m looking forward to getting them, as so far the picture has been brilliant (though I’ve seen Full Metal Jacket in “HD” and it was worse than the normal DVD) as my TV supports 1080p input I may post short reviews of the films when I’ve watched them.

Also they seem to be relating to Call Of Duty 4 again which seems more than a coincidence to me. If it carries on I’ll be phoning Microsoft to see what I can get out of them for it, because I know that I’m not the only person that has been experiencing this problem.

Now, I’ve watched movie’s on an HD DVD player at 1080p (full HD) before, and the image quality and sound is brilliant, I can’t say much for Blu Ray, as I’ve never watched a Blu Ray film as of yet. However, while my normal DVD’s are nowhere near the same quality as a proper HD source, the image quality is certainly FAR better than that of a normal DVD player.

I’m very impressed…I’m currently watching the Star Wars films on here – in what I call “Semi-HD”

The game we’ll all be receiving is Undertow which normally sells for 800 MS Points, though there isn’t yet a word on whether Microsoft will be refunding those people who have already bought the game. Quite why they didn’t just release a new game for free is beyond me, it’d be a lot easier. Never mind.

From what I’ve found out, Undertow is some sort of “Aquatic Shooter” now – whether that means under water, or based on water, I’ve got to wait until morning to find out. Plus, if I get bored, you might find a review on here as well soon

I noticed last night that the Xbox Live issues everybody has been experiencing over the Christmas season still haven’t gone completely, which is annoying…and there’s still no news on that free arcade game.

Also there’s been a lot of people on the Ubuntu Forums posting in “Internet Speak” e.g. lyk this n its hard 2 read sumtimes LoL!!1!  I’ll be honest, and I’m sure I speak for most…it’s annoying…don’t do it I’ve been doing my bit to help all the newcomers that we’ve had over Christmas, so try to help us, and make the posts’ readable