If your after a cheap Extender for Windows Media Center and can put up with a bit of fan noise then the Xbox 360 Arcade is now a very attractive. Digital Spy are reporting that Tesco and other UK retails have started offering the Arcade for £149 and for use as an Extender the Arcade is ideal. The other low cost alternative is Linksys’ DMA2100 at £184 so it depends your own preferences as to which is better for you, and just to clarify the common misconception: You do not need a hard disk on the 360 to use it as an Extender
You are right when you say that you won’t need a storage device for the extender session, but if you are going to playback divx/xvid/h.264 files you will need a either a memory card or a hard-drive attached.
In the interests of fairness many retailers are offering the Arcade for the same price following the official price reduction by Microsoft the week before Easter.
Up until two weeks ago, I was dead set against the XBox 360 solely because of the noise it made. I had converted all of my dvds to WMV8 and was streaming those across the internet with WebGuide. At the same time, I had a D-Link DSM-510 to stream in the house. The DSM-510 will only do WMV9. I bought a Linksys DMA2200 thinking it would extend WMV8 media. It would not. Sent that back and bought an XBox 360 Arcade Edition. The Xbox 360 does stream WMV8 very nicely, but there are two noises you’ll have to live with: whinning (I assume it is coming from the internal cooling fans) and the dvd driver. The dvd drive can get ridiculously loud while loading the game…fairly quiet during dvd movie playback. I must say, after owning it for a couple weeks, it is the best extender out of all the extenders and it a game system to boot. I actually forgot how fun it was a play a video game. I’ve come to accept the fan noise. I still notice it, but what are you going to do about it. It is what it is.
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I would be interested to know how much quieter this is than the original XBox 360 which keeps me awake if I don’t unplug it from the mains.
I can’t see it being much diffrent, in your case I would look at a Linksys extender
You are right when you say that you won’t need a storage device for the extender session, but if you are going to playback divx/xvid/h.264 files you will need a either a memory card or a hard-drive attached.
In the interests of fairness many retailers are offering the Arcade for the same price following the official price reduction by Microsoft the week before Easter.
Ooops, I misread the original blog you did in fact mention that other shops are also pricing the arcade at the same price. My bad.
and you can get the devices from TheDigitallifestlye.com store 🙂
All posts from my blog on Thedigitallifestyle.com and if your on Twitter follow me! Installing…
Up until two weeks ago, I was dead set against the XBox 360 solely because of the noise it made. I had converted all of my dvds to WMV8 and was streaming those across the internet with WebGuide. At the same time, I had a D-Link DSM-510 to stream in the house. The DSM-510 will only do WMV9. I bought a Linksys DMA2200 thinking it would extend WMV8 media. It would not. Sent that back and bought an XBox 360 Arcade Edition. The Xbox 360 does stream WMV8 very nicely, but there are two noises you’ll have to live with: whinning (I assume it is coming from the internal cooling fans) and the dvd driver. The dvd drive can get ridiculously loud while loading the game…fairly quiet during dvd movie playback. I must say, after owning it for a couple weeks, it is the best extender out of all the extenders and it a game system to boot. I actually forgot how fun it was a play a video game. I’ve come to accept the fan noise. I still notice it, but what are you going to do about it. It is what it is.
is their memory in the xbox 360 arcade besides the memory cars…………..or can u buy better memory cards for it or can u even buy another memory card