X Barks The Spot!

I'll be the first to admit it. In terms of game consoles, our household has been living in the dark ages. We've had the same Nintendo Gamecube since before either of our children were born. We've been mulling over what to do about it for quite some time, but the options had been somewhat daunting for most of that time. Some consoles had cooling or noise problems, some consoles had only "family" games, etc. After lots of deliberation and putting off the purchase, we took my brother-in-law's advice (Thanks, Brandon!) and bought an XBOX 360.

I had been thinking for some time about the optimal way to add the 360 to our home theater, considering the way things had been connected and set up before. I really wanted to use the HDMI output for the video, rather than using the questionable component cable supplied with the 360, but because our TV doesn't pass through the audio data from HDMI we needed to still have a separate audio connection to the reciever. One solution I had come up with previously was to use seperate HDMI switch, but I have only found a few that I was interested in, and those didn't seem to last long. My idea was to have a 4 or 5 port HDMI switch, with SPDIF or TOSLINK connections to handle all the source switching. Our TV has to toggle through the first HDMI input to access the second input when selecting by remote control, so using more than one digital input on the TV can be a bit of a hassle, hence the search for the outboard switch. Unfortunately it seems rather hard to find one that is both well recommended and less than $100.

The simplest idea for now, was to just replace the DVD player with the XBOX. This kept the console in an area of the TV stand that was open from both the front and back (for better cooling), and made for easier game swapping as well. There was one little problem preventing us from using the same HDMI and TOSLINK cables from the DVD player, which would seem to have been done on purpose by the XBOX 360 designers. The A/V connectors on the back of the 360 were too close together, not allowing the simultaneous use of the HDMI port and the multi-purpose A/V pod that came with our unit. The huge plug on the A/V pod was almost completely blocking the HDMI jack. Luckily the internet came to our rescue. Microsoft offers a $50 solution to this problem, in the form of an HDMI cable kit which has an A/V pod of reduced size (offering only audio connections) and the requisite HDMI cable. From the state of current HDMI cable price gouging, this might not be such a bad deal, but as a customer of Monoprice, I'm not about to settle for that kind of robbery. I found a number of "tutorials" for getting around this small problem. Simply removing the plastic casing from the plug of the A/V pod made enough room for both connections, and we were in business.

The next task was to program the universal remote control. Okay, maybe I should stop here. This was actually done before the I figured out how to get the HDMI connection going on the 360, but for the purposes of our story we are going to pretend that this was done afterward, K? Our remote control, while definitely not glamorous, is a very versatile beast once you have found the right software tools for manipulating it. It is a LONG throw from any Logitech Harmony, but it gets the job done very nicely, thanks. While it has no recharging stand, the batteries last for many months on end with no problem. I've programmed upgrades into it for the TV, TiVo, receiver, old DVD player, and now the XBOX 360, so that we have a 3rd way to control the console (remember that we want to watch DVDs on it, too?) for when a game controller doesn't seem quite right. While this remote control is much older than all of these devices, there are many avid fans who have spent hours of hard work on the programming tools for these remotes, so I could spend $35 a few years ago on the remote and programming cable and not need another remote for a LONG time. Just as with a Harmony, our remote is set up for task based usage, giving you access to the controls you need for the particular media you are enjoying. No, it doesn't have a battery-eating LCD screen, but it still works great and keeps things simple.

Another interesting highlight of getting the new "DVD player" has been Allie's inquisitive side turning its attention to the XBOX. After a friend of hers recommended we get an extra cooling unit for it, and us discussing it at length, she took off and found out which exact components our 360 was built with, any known weaknesses associated with it, and what we needed to look out for in general. I would normally get around to these things, but it was nice to be beaten to the punch. She's pretty awesome that way, when it comes to things she has taken an interest in. It turns out ours is not in very great danger of succumbing to overheating issues.

Today marks the first full day the kids will be able to spend with the XBOX, after Allison and I had it to ourselves for almost a week. I'm glad we didn't have them under foot for the first few days, so we could have a chance to get it all figured out for ourselves. I still have some tweaking to do with the remote control, but other than that, it all works great!!!

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