Here is another gameplay video of Stuntman: Ignition, this time it's a whole level of the Aftershock movie, Lavaflow. It's one of the easier levels to string, too bad the driver in this clip couldn't pull it off. I'm pretty sensitive to framerate issues within the game, but the slowdowns you may see here are video latency, not framerate within the game. Enjoy the lava goodness!
I've got a 100Mbps wired home and the Media Extender of the 360 continually tells me:
Session Terminated. Another user or application on the windows media center-based PC has disconnected this device.
It makes me reconnect and everything is really slow. Very frustrating, especially since I just spent a lot of time and effort wiring the house to eliminate wireless slugishness.
I stumbled on this knowledge base article from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/911123.
Everything on my end was go, except I did have an error in the Application event viewer using Method 4. The application listed was not very helpful. It pointed to the Visual Studio Just-in-time debugger which was trying to catch the problem in a different application. The error in the event viewer said:
Unauthorized window was detect while running the Media Center Experience, 'Visual Studio Just-In-Time Debugger', with file name '.
I removed Visual Studio 2005 hoping it would directly name the problematic application or driver, but apparently removing VS2005 doesn't remove the JIT debugger. I also saw an article describing a DirectX filter that could cause problems and crash the Media Remote Manager throwing up Dr. Watson which has the same result as what I was seeing for those that don't have Visual Studio installed.
A few weeks ago, there was recorded TV show that I couldn't delete. After deleting it finally, the extender from the 360 worked fine. In a couple of days, the problem came back. This time I moved all the recorded shows away and it didn't help.
A bunch of speculation is floating online as to what the problem could be: drivers, firewalls, virus protection, directx filters, FAT32, switches, routers, driver settings, etc. I tried a lot of stuff and finally got it working let me tell you what did and didn't work:
Didn't work:
This is were it gets a little sketchy because I'm not sure extactly which of these solved the problem.
Bottom line is that it's working fine now. It had to be an application or an application's driver, but unfortunately I can't tell you exactly which one. Hopefully this will be a good starting point for you. Let me know what your experience was like.
UPDATE (4/24/07) - Fixed it. See other blog entry: Vista and Xbox 360 Slow Wired Network Performance
UPDATE (11/15/07) - Just to be clear, remove all of these apps didn't help. The network duplexing was the issue. With Vista, the broadcom network drivers settings weren't being retained after reboot. See other blog entry for details: Vista and Xbox 360 Slow Wired Network Performance
After trying to use Movielink to stream movies to the XBox360 and failing miserably, I thought I'd give their competitor a shot. At first look, their interface through MCE seemed better, less pixelated and it fit better in the screen, but their content wasn't nearly as extensive as Movielink's. They have a very limited selection and absolutely no free samples to test out the technology. Since there were no free samples, I passed trying it from my MCE2005 server to the XBox360.
Result, not enough content to bother.
Unbelievable that Movielink doesn't work with XBox extenders. After seeing how this is a company that Intel supports with Viiv (MCE + special hardware), I can't see how they can get away with it. I recently downloaded a sample movie of theirs to test streaming through my XBox360. I got in a loop where the Movielink Manager wouldn't complete it's install, it kept failing. Since they offered with the Live Chat (I guess they expected problems, huh?), I tried it out. Here is the transcript.
Katie S.: Hello Shawn
Katie S.: Do you have your pop up blocker enabled?
Shawn: i disabled it.
Shawn: that's what happened though
Katie S.: Ok, now click the following link
The agent is sending you to http://4077.movielink.com/moviemanager/CleanWMPDRM.exe
Katie S.: Follow the link above. We will need to delete your DRM component, which may also delete licenses from other music/movie rentals that you have in windows media format. If this is ok, proceed to click "Yes."
Katie S.: Let me know when the clean up is successful
Shawn: ok
Shawn: ok meaning its done
Katie S.: Good, now click the following link
The agent is sending you to http://drmlicense.one.microsoft.com/Indivsite/en/indivit.asp .
Katie S.: Click upgrade when enabled
Katie S.: and let me know when it is complete
Shawn: it's done
Katie S.: Click Start -> Programs -> movielink -> Relaunch Movielink Manager and let me know if you are able to open the Movielink Manager
Shawn: that did it.
Shawn: thanks
Ok, that's fine, got it to work on my MCE2005 desktop. Now I want to stream it to my XBox360 as a Media Center Extender. Didn't work. Unfortunately I get this error while trying to play the sample movie:
Security Error.
Unable to validate security of your media center extender. As a result, the extender will not play protected media content.
Now I contact "Live Chat" again to see what the problem is:
Fred C: Hello
Shawn: hi
Fred C: Shawn, unfortunately I cannot offer support for Media Center Extenders
Shawn: ok thanks.
Slam! Result, Movielink + Xbox360 = Waste of time. Now time to try CinemaNow.
It arrived! On time! Actually pretty early. I ordered pizza for lunch wanting to snack a little bit because I expected UPS Saturday delivery to be a little late and I could have pizza for dinner while I played, but the 360 arrived before the pizza at 11am.
It didn't have Madden '06, instead it had Kameo which is a pretty good game. Taking out the mini-camps for the 360 version of Madden really stinks, that was THE best part of the game. Anyways, I played Kameo for about 6 hours and when I finally went to bed my ribs where hurting from laying on the couch for so long.
The wireless controllers are great! No lag at all, very responsive and the AA batteries have lasted for over a month, I could never go back to wired controllers.
It also streams music, tv and recorded tv from my Media Center Edition 2005 computer in the other room. I recently used Movielink to download a movie online to watch on the 360 and had problems initially but finally got it to work. Hint: turn off Xbox while installing Movielink, get it to work on the computer with a free sample first.
The MCE2005 experience is so great I convinced my Dad to get one as well. Of course he can't find one anywhere...
Got the Mt.Dew/XBox360 party in the box last night. Too bad all the T-Shirts are XL and say that "I won". Makes it hard to give them away. The hats are a little too big as well, they barely fit me. I guess they assume most people that drink Mt.Dew and play video games are obese with big heads.
We're getting hit quite a bit with spam, I'll try and fix it by upgrading to MT3.2 this weekend. Until fixed, I'm disabling comments.
I am the proud winner of an XBox 360 from the Mountain Dew sweepstakes at www.every10minutes.com! It will be shipped to us the Saturday before it's released to the public with Madden '06 and a box full of t-shirts, hats, and Mt. Dew!!!
This is the first time that I've ever won a sweepstakes, check it out at the 10/6 4:10pm slot! I only won it with two entries! Since they didn't put the initials with the winner, only the city, I didn't know for sure until they contacted me about a week after. Talk about the suspense!
