• Setting up your new Xbox 360
• First games on Xbox LIVE
• Using PC USB keyboards on your Xbox 360
• Using Xbox 360 memory cards
• Wireless controllers & the Play & Charge Kit
• 360 & it's many video ouputs/connections
• True Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound
• 360 Webcam for personal gamercard pictures
• Need more USB ports on your Xbox 360?
• Removing your Xbox 360 faceplate
• My arcade games are demos on my replacement Xbox 360
• Alerts getting annoying while watching movies?
• Blank screen after appling wrong video settings with VGA cable
• Clearing the Xbox 360's cache
• Creating your own Xbox 360 dashboard backgrounds

You want your first online games to be rewarding and fun, and it's all about the people you play with and against online that makes the whole experience great. If you already have mates that you can add to your Xbox 360s Friends List, that is good, and you can start to have great online games straight away.

If you are new to Xbox LIVE and do not fully understand how to make online friends to play with... search out the many Ambassadors in the US forums.

CLICK HERE FOR A FULL LIST OF AMBASSADORS

They will add you to their Friends List, and take you through the whole online LIVE experience, and you will be in good hands.

Once you get to know people in the US forums and start to make new friends, you can add them to your friends List and also join in on many of the now ongoing Forum game nights.

If you find it a pain typing in text in messages and in games that require input from the 360's controller based onscreen keyboard, then maybe a USB Keyboard for your Xbox 360 would be a good idea. Most USB 2 keyboards will work with the Xbox 360. Simply plug it into one of the front USB ports on the 360 and it will work straight away.

Now when you are sending text messages, you can just use the keyboard for quick easy text input.

Now you have your nice new shiny Xbox 360 Premium and your thinking, glad I bought the Premium over the core as it has a hard drive for all my save games etc.

Well that's true... but! maybe you should also be thinking of buying a memory card also, not only does it allow you to back up all your save games, and keep them in a save place in case your original save game becomes corrupt or deleted.

You can also use it as a secondary game save slot for the many games that only allow you to save to one slot on your hard drive. Using a memory card along with your hard drive, will give you two game save slots, and can save your bacon in some games if you make a mistake.

Not only can you charge your controller using the "Play & Charge Kit" in the Xbox 360 while playing games. If you have a PC, you can plug the "Play & Charge Kit" into your PCs USB port and charge it in there also. You may not have access to your 360 at all times if others are using it etc.

One you have your Xbox 360, you will most likely be using the Composite SCART adapter that attaches to the HD Component cable. There are a few options that can greatly improve you 360 gaming experience as far as image quality goes:

For Standard TV's:

The Composite SCART adapter is by far the worst quality connection to use. You can replace the cable with:

• Official Microsoft Advanced AV RGB cable, this will improve the vividness of the colours and also sharpen the image also.

If you have a HDTV or intend to purchase one:

• You can either use the Official Microsoft HD Component cable that comes with your 360 Premium, this plugs into the Component inputs on the back of the HD READY HDTV.
• Or you can use the Official Microsoft VGA cable (this also upscale normal DVD movies to HD screen size) and this plugs into the back of your HDTVs VGA/PC port (if it has one).

Both the above two cables on HDTVs will give you the best gaming/video output from the 360.

Note: There are also third party cable available, but for quality, extras and assurence, it's best sticking to the official cables.

You need a decoder/amp with at least one optical input to get true Dolby Digital 5.1 (if you want to use DTS, the decoder/amp needs to be capable of DTS also).

Here is a list of Xbox 360 5.1. systems so far (best at the top):

• Samsung HTAS710 - Digital 6.1 Home Cinema System Great for Home Cinema and the 360 - ACTIVE Subwoofer (a separate mono amp dedicated and built into the subwoofer and specifically to handle the lower tone frequency range) (2 x Optical Inputs) (around £260)
• Logitech Z-5500  Digital 5.1 Speaker System  (2 x Optical Inputs) (around £200)
• Logitech Z-5450 Digital 5.1 Speaker System (wireless rear speakers) (2 x Optical Inputs) (around £200)
• Pioneer HTPGS1 Xbox 360 Speaker System  (2 x Optical Inputs) (between £250 - £299)
• Acoustic Solutions DS533 Home Cinema System (This system is the low range budget system, only buy this one if you cannot afford anything better. This should be classified as the entry point into 5.1 systems.) (1 x Optical Inputs) (around £90 from Argos)

All based on experience, specs and quality.

Note: Try and use good quality Optical Cables also, but don't go over the top, around £20 max is all you need to pay for a good quality Optical Cable, with good quality connections, cladding (stops light escaping from the fibre optic) and outer casing (protects the delicate fibre optic cable within). 

 The "BELKIN AV20000-06 DIGITAL AUDIO 1.8M CABLE" for around £18 at PCWorld, is superb quality and works great with the Xbox 360's optical output and it's optical output connection.

This might save you a few pound here and there. If you have a webcam on your 360 and want your friends to see a personal gamercard pic like no other.

Just find something you want as you personal gamercard pic i.e. a pic, painting, cat, dog, or even sketch a drawing in pen or pencil and take a pic of it with the camera. Then use that as you personal Gamercard pic. Remember, only people on your Friends List will see this image.

Have fun, and remember, you are only limited by your own imagination.

To remove the Xbox360 faceplate, the easiest way it to put your fingers under the front bottom of the faceplate, and pull outwards hard!... it will sound like you have snapped something, but don't worry, it will be fine.

If you are unlucky enough to have had your Xbox 360 replaced, then this information may help:

Arcade games downloaded from our old Xbox360 are locked to that console. It is a security feature implemented by Microsoft to stop anyone downloading content they have bought onto anyone else’s console as many times as they want.

You can re download you bought content again to your new Xbox 360... BUT! the Arcade games will only appear as full versions when you are connected to LIVE, offline they will appear as demos only.

The only thing you can do is ring Microsoft Customer Services, and demand all your Points back for everything you have bought. Ask them to escalate this matter, otherwise they won't look into it. Then they will ring you back with details of how you can get all your points back to rebuy all your content again on your new Xbox 360 using a temp Silver account( the full process will be explained to you via the Microsoft Customer Services person).

Be warned though, it's a long process and you will have to provide proof of your newly bought console and all the arcade games etc also.

If you don't want to be disturbed by notifications of friends coming online, or invites to games you can turn off all notifications while watching  films in the Guide,

Open your Guide, go to personnel settings, then Notifications.

Using the VGA cable and "somehow" set the resolution to one "Not Supported" by your TV / Monitor?

Rather than playing the guessing game with the pad trying to find the settings screen with no picture.. reset the 360 to 640x480 with these simple steps: 

When you play a game, use the Xbox Dashboard or the Xbox Guide, or wait for the console to start, the screen may freeze. You do not receive an error message. No lights flash on the console to indicate a problem. Then try clearing the Xbox 360 cache as a last resort.

With the Xbox 360 Hard Drive attached to the console, follow these steps:

I thought it was about time that I wrote a quick FAQ on designing and implementing your own Xbox 360 dashboard backgrounds. I will keep it brief, to the point and in an easy to understand format without any techno babble. Let’s get started shall we…

What software do I need?

You can use almost any bitmap drawing package to edit and create your backgrounds.

Two of the most popular are:

• Photoshop
• Paint Shop Pro X

These are great packages for creating backgrounds and for all your other artistic need you may have. Photoshop of course being the king, it is used through out the graphics industry, although it might me a little expensive for most people.

Of course there are many more and cheaper packages on the market that can do the job at hand, so don’t feel restricted to the two packages I mention above.

Common TV Screen sizes

First of all I will explain the two most commonly used screen sizes as used by the 360 on both SDTV’s (Standard UK PAL) and HDTV’s.

• PAL - This screen is 720 X 576 pixels in size
• HDTV - This screen is 1280 X 720 pixels in size

I have created a set of templates for you to download and use to create your own backgrounds depending on which TV you own. They include some guidelines and suggestions on where to keep the main focus of your image, as the 360 blades can interfere with extreme left and right sections of the background image.

I have produced these templates in various formats, depending on which you wish to use.

PAL templates:

• Click here to download the PAL template (JPEG) >>>
• Click here to download the PAL template (PNG) >>>

HDTV templates:

• Click here to download the HDTV template (JPEG) >>>
• Click here to download the HDTV template (PNG) >>>

Example created backgrounds:

• Click here for an example PAL background (JPEG) >>>
• Click here for an example HDTV background (JPEG) >>>

For most people, just use the relevant PAL/HDTV JPEG or PNG guide template.

Note for PAL TV users: Sometimes the background or image you create can appear off the edge of the screen of CRT PAL based displays, this is known as “Over scan” where the CRT tube goes behind the front facia of the TV etc. Use the guides and suggestions on the PAL template to create your backgrounds and keep your image centralised as much as possible to avoid these issues.

Using and converting images

If you are going to create a background based on game screenshots or any other image, you really need to find the highest quality image you can in the first instance, this will give you the best looking background once placed on your 360 and also would allow you to manipulate the images more without them getting worse in quality. Scaling an image down is always the way to go, rather than trying to scale an image up and as you would be scaling up any artefacts and pixels within the image.

Once you have found your chosen image or images, you then have to layer them over the template you chose earlier, be that PAL or HDTV. Take into consideration were the main focus of your chosen images are and try to keep that centralised within the background template.

If your chosen software package allows, try keeping everything on separate layers, this will allow your to move the images around, add text and effects as much as your want, until you are happy with the final image, then you can flatten all of the layers into the finished image, ready for saying.

Saving your background image

Once you are happy with your image. You need to save it to a location on your PC, ready to transfer to your 360.

You can save the image in two formats:

• JPEG
• PNG

Either will do, but if you can, try and save it as PNG as you will get slightly less compression artefacts showing up.

When saving as JPEG format, make sure you save the image as the highest quality JPEG you can. This will use the least compression on the image and minimise JPEG compression artefacts also.

Transferring the image to your 360

There are a few options available for you to transfer the image to your 360. These include:

• Windows Media Connect (See here for more details >>)
• An MP3 player (Can me used in a similar way to a USB Memory stick, see here for a list of compatible MP3 players >>)
• A USB Memory stick 

For simplicity I will focus on the use of a USB Memory Stick.

Connect your USB Memory Stick to your PC and copy across the image or images you created on your PC.

Connect your USB Memory Stick to your Xbox 360 via one of it’s USB ports. Once your Xbox 360 recognises the Memory stick complete the following within your 360’s Dashboard:

• Media Blade
• Pictures
• USB Memory Stick (or whatever name is displayed for your storage device)
• Find your image your created
• Press “X” on your controller to apply as your 360 background

You should now see your newly created image as your 360 backdrop across all of the Dashboard blades. I hope this has been useful to you and you can now create with ease any background you wish for your 360, good luck and have fun.