Interscription

Howdy all!  It’s been a pretty crazy couple of weeks here in Austin, and while I’ve been personally trying to keep up with the NXE news, I haven’t had a moment to share any of my admittedly meager findings with you.

I did have the opportunity to get into the NXE preview program (fourth and final wave, but early is still early, right?), and I’ve been noodling with it for the past couple of days.  Instead of insulting your web browsing skills by rehashing the completely overstated (but still impressive) features of the NXE, I’m going to point you guys here (Joystiq is still one of the best in the biz) for the requisite list of info.

Instead, I thought it might be a refreshing change of pace to talk about the smaller touches that were folded in during the complete software reinvention of the Xbox 360.

- There are now several additional resolutions available to users of PC monitors, including 1440×900 and 1680×1050 .  This was shared with us by Marc Whitten shortly after E3, but it seems those resolutions are indeed available as promised.

- The virtual keyboard available within the dashboard is now configureable to be either alphabetical or QWERTY depending on your preference.  The option is somewhat obscurely placed, though: go to System Settings (now under My Xbox; the end tile), then Console Settings, and then Language.  The option is called “English (QWERTY)”.

- When downloading an item, there is now the almost ubiquitous “thermometer” next to the current download to show the status.  More interesting and useful than that, however, is that when attempting downloading an item, the download confirmation screen also shows the current download and the status thermometer, letting you make an educated decision as to whether or not you’d like to push the new download to the top instead of waiting for the current download.  Thoughtful.

- Some advertisement tiles in the NXE are now fully dynamic.  There was one for The Day The Earth Stood Still yesterday, and it was actually looping the trailer.  When I moved to that tile, the sound began seamlessly playing in sync with the video.  Selecting the tile relaunched the trailer from the beginning in a surprisingly sharp hi-resolution version.  It doesn’t hurt that I’m interested in seeing the movie, but the subtlety and smoothness were really appreciated.

- There were some hiccups/freezes when attempting to surf to my Zune music library over the network, most notably when I first selected the Zune connection.  That seems to have been cleared up, even before the recent Zune 3.1 update.

- Autostart can now be disabled!  I have pined away for this feature since I first messed with a PS3 at TonyB’s house.  Basically you can now change discs out without fear of your console autorunning whatever was just in the tray, possibly kicking you out of a chat or IM session.  Just head over to System Settings > Console Settings > Autostart.

- The Networking section in the Console Settings has been revamped to be more visual and less technical (a more limited version of Vista’s network map).  I generally abhor these sorts of moves, since I think there should always be more technical information available when functionality is changed.  I’m sure this will be less painful for most users, though, so I concede to the cooler marketing and design heads who no doubt drove this change.

I’m collecting a series of gripes/annoyances that I’ll be posting in the next few days; there aren’t many, but I’m really hoping they get fixed in the next round of updates.  Any other little gems you’ve found in the NXE?