Disk Inserted

Bing, Microsoft’s “decision engine,” is wading into the entertainment realm today with the revelation that searches for music, lyrics, games, TV shows, and movies will get a new special sauce treatment from here on out. You’ll now be able to play 100 basic games right in your search results, along with full-length streaming of songs (first time only, 30 seconds thereafter) from a 5 million-strong catalog. The latter is augmented with “one-click” purchases from the Zune Marketplace (directly through the web, no need to launch the app), Amazon, or iTunes music libraries. Movie tickets are promised to be similarly easy to buy, though the biggest new feature might well be the Bing.com/entertainment page, which acts as a portal into your media consumption with a selection of the most popular content in each category. It doesn’t look terribly different from the iTunes storefront, but given its partnership with Apple’s digital music shop, we doubt Bing’s Entertainment section is perceived as much of a threat — not yet, anyway. As to that other search giant, Google’s been said to already be putting together a music store of its own. Man, all this integration and interconnectedness — just where will it end?

Continue reading Bing Entertainment integrates Zune Marketplace purchases, improves Microsoft’s media swagger

Bing Entertainment integrates Zune Marketplace purchases, improves Microsoft’s media swagger originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Jun 2010 03:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just got a look at the new Kinect Dashboard-lite for the Xbox 360. In some ways, it’s pretty charming, with fun, jazzed up icons (when you hover over them they tilt and show off depth), a simplistic layout, and some great voice controls. The downside is this all comes at the cost of a brand new, fairly redundant interface for accessing functions that are already available with your Xbox 360 controller in the regular Dashboard. Still, there’s no denying the joy of waving a hand to log in, hovering over icons to select channels (though the wait-to-click mechanism strikes us as eventually frustrating), and scrubbing through media with very intuitive gestures.

The best part is the voice control, however, allowing you to speak “Xbox” and then a command like play, pause, back, forward, stop, Zune, etc. It’s ripe for abuse (pausing your S.O.’s seventh Netflix screening of The Constant Gardner ad nauseam), but Microsoft says it’s working on eliminating random commands that might seep into conversation. Our biggest worry is that we’re going to see confusion and fragmentation of functionality with the divergent UI requirements that Kinect apps and regular Dashboard apps require — we can’t imagine the Facebook or Last.fm folks being super thrilled at creating an all-new app just to support Microsoft’s whims, but we’re told just such apps are in the works. Is the existing Dashboard really so complicated that Kinect couldn’t control it? Check out a video of this puzzling Kinectasticness after the break.

Continue reading Kinect-optimized Xbox 360 Dashboard preview

Kinect-optimized Xbox 360 Dashboard preview originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Jun 2010 08:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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My, what big showing you have there, Microsoft. We’re still recovering from today and yesterday’s big Xbox 360 Kinect unveiling party, but let’s take a brief trip down short-term memory lane. First, Project Natal became Kinect, unveiled a handful of interesting / guaranteed-to-embarrass uses, and solidified its November release date. Then ESPN3 made an impressive debut on Xbox Live. Finally, the piece de resistance, a slimmed down Xbox 360 250GB that came (almost) out of nowhere and hits retail as soon as physically possible. Everywhere Microsoft was this past 24 hours, so were we:

Liveblog

• Live from Microsoft’s E3 2010 keynote!

The new, slim Xbox 360

• Xbox 360 250GB first unboxing!
• Xbox 360 naming guide: the new Xbox 360 vs. the Xbox 360 Original
• New Xbox 360 gets official at $299, shipping today, looks angular and ominous (video hands-on!)
• New Xbox 360 250GB now available for preorder at GameStop, Newegg and Amazon
• Xbox 360 Arcade to eventually be replaced by $199 new Xbox 360; data transfer cable will be $20

Kinect

• The new Xbox 360 Kinect port, up close
• Kinect priced at GameStop: $149, $399 for Elite bundle
• Microsoft Kinect for Xbox 360 launches on November 4
• Microsoft Kinect to go on sale in November, somewhere
• Microsoft Kinect gets official, Video Chat announced
• Video Kinect: video chat and stream sharing over Xbox Live and Live Messenger
• Kinect in the flesh!
• Microsoft demos new Kinect dashboard and voice contro

Other news of import

• Zune music heads to Xbox 360
• ESPN3 comes exclusively to Xbox 360
• Netflix for Xbox 360 adds search in November

Galleries

Eyes-on	More eyes-on	Press shots	Unboxing
Kinect in the flesh!	Kinect press shots	Liveblog highlights

Continue reading Kinect, the new Xbox 360, and ESPN: highlights from Microsoft at E3 2010

Kinect, the new Xbox 360, and ESPN: highlights from Microsoft at E3 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Jun 2010 22:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Zune music heads to Xbox 360 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s already shown with the Xbox 360 and Kin that it’s looking to take its Zune platform beyond Zune-branded hardware, but we can’t say we expected it to go quite this far — Microsoft has now teamed up with United Airlines to offer “Zune inflight audio” to passengers. That apparently won’t involve any new hardware in the planes — Microsoft or otherwise — but it will give passengers 21 new playlists “programmed by Zune” to choose from, including options like Classic Rock, Contemporary Pop, Opera and Piano Jazz. Not many more details than that, unfortunately, with United only saying that it looks forward to “working with Zune and Microsoft to create new onboard experiences.” Sure, it might not sound like much, but it should at least go some ways towards improving the Zune’s name recognition. Full press release is after the break.

Continue reading United Airlines offers up ‘Zune inflight audio,’ no actual Zunes

United Airlines offers up ‘Zune inflight audio,’ no actual Zunes originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Zune Pass already felt like a pretty sweet deal for music buffs — $15 per month for unlimited streaming and 10 DRM-free MP3s — and now Microsoft might be lowering the subscription price even further. Or so says Senior Product Manager Terry Farrell, who added, “it’s a very definitely a challenging business.” No indication what that new price might be, but just this past April, RealNetwork dropped Rhapsody’s monthly fee from $15 to $10. If it does come to fruition, the new price would surely be a welcome boon to an already-promising Windows Phone 7 launch — and maybe even Kin. Maybe.

Microsoft considers a Zune Pass price drop originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 May 2010 19:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Been wondering how that LG proto unit debuted on The Engadget Show is doing? Pocket-lint got to see the QWERTY slider up close and personal in London yesterday, and their takeaway from the meetup was that the device and OS are well on their way to stardom. Calling it the LG Panther, they delve into its deep Facebook integration, which throws up status updates when you hit on a contact in your address book, ability to recognize addresses and provide relevant links to Bing maps, as well as its quick and clear Zune media player. The latter was accompanied by confirmation that the Zune Store will be hitting the UK in time for Windows Phone 7’s release, which could happen as early as September — it all depends on who you talk to. Hit the source for more imagery and impressions.

LG’s Windows Phone 7 phone caught in the wild, looking good originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 May 2010 04:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Once hacked, the Zune HD’s rabid fanbase wasted no time in ensuring the device could play Doom. Now, the ZuneBoards want to give it Zelda, too. User BackAtIt has taken the wrappings off the first working emulator for Zune, which is currently capable of playing Game Boy and Game Boy Color ROMs, but little else — though this “Visual Boy Zune” app is ported from the same VisualBoyAdvance code that’s enabled handheld emulation since 2004, it’s in early alpha with quite a bit of work left to do. A recent update enabled state save emulation and a ROM selector, but there’s no audio output, let alone Game Boy Advance support; BackAtIt says he’ll need to rewrite much of the codebase to take advantage of the Zune HD’s Tegra architecture. Still, it’s never too early for a proof of concept video, and you’ll find two blurry ones after the break — unless you’d rather try it out for yourself at the source link.

[Thanks, MK1000]

Continue reading Visual Boy Zune brings Game Boy emulation to Zune HD (video)

Visual Boy Zune brings Game Boy emulation to Zune HD (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 May 2010 06:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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No matter how weak or powerful the gadget, one brave soul will always broach the all-important question: can it play Doom? Just four days after hacking the Zune HD and unleashing the OpenZDK, the Zune community has received its answer. ZuneBoards forumgoer Netrix has opened the portal to the familiar alien hell, where gamers will writhe in agony as they struggle with tilt and touchscreen controls. Those who persevere regardless will find the app runs any of the original Doom WAD files. Full installer available at the source link; see OpenZDK’s power in action after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Zune HD: yes, it plays Doom

Zune HD: yes, it plays Doom originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Apr 2010 22:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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