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Microsoft has strongly hinted that the IllumiRoom augmented reality peripheral projector is linked to the next-generation Xbox 720, in much the same way that Project Natal (Kinect) was eventually linked to the Xbox 360. To celebrate, Microsoft has released a new video that showcases the awesome potential of IllumiRoom, and also a ton of details on how IllumiRoom actually works. If you missed the original IllumiRoom unveil, let me bring you up to speed. IllumiRoom is a wide-angle projector that’s (ideally) situated on your coffee table, pointed at your big-screen TV. The current prototype has a Kinect strapped to the projector, but the final version will have a Kinect sensor built in. The built-in Kinect uses an automatic calibration process to captures the color and geometry (shape, depth) of the wall behind and furniture around your TV. Then you hook the IllumiRoom up to your next-generation Xbox (wirelessly), and watch in awe as peripheral projection takes you to new levels of game immersion. It isn’t until you watch the video that you begin to understand just how awesome peripheral projection is. The video above was captured in real-time, and hasn’t been edited or composited in any way. What you see is really what you will get, with the Xbox 720 and IllumiRoom projector. Using its knowledge of your living room’s colors and geometry, IllumiRoom can create a huge range of visually stunning effects. As you see in the video, IllumiRoom can boost the color saturation of your furniture (by projecting red light on a mahogany cupboard), turn your furniture black and white (by projecting desaturated colors), or outline every edge, creating a cartoony effect. IllumiRoom can also project a star field, snowflakes that gather on your shelves, or a futuristic Tron-like grid. One of the weirdest effects, called radial wobble, takes a photo of your living room, distorts it, and then projects the distorted image — so it looks like your living room is wobbling around. IllumiRoom, turned off IllumiRoom, increased saturation IllumiRoom, desaturated (black and white, kinda) The real magic takes place when games are programmed to take advantage of IllumiRoom, though. At its most basic, IllumiRoom projects the game world onto the wall/furniture, expanding your field of view; imagine sitting on the couch and having the world of Skyrim take up your entire field of view. Another option is to have IllumiRoom only display important features, such as projectiles and explosions — so instead of a shot missing you, you might see the bullet fly off to your left. Taking this one step further, IllumiRoom also makes it possible for objects — such as grenades — to roll out of the TV and onto the floor in front of your coffee table. All of these effects can be combined — so the next Halo game might have rockets that fly into your peripheral vision, grenades that roll towards you, rain that puddles on the floor, and furniture that ripples whenever you’re struck by a plasma rifle. The same effects can also be used with non-game content; Peter Jackson could release a new version of Lord of the Rings that makes use of IllumiRoom, for example. The current IllumiRoom prototype, which now needs to be productized All told, the Microsoft Research team that developed IllumiRoom has created 11 different effects (detailed in their research paper), and they say that a lot more are possible. They have shown IllumiRoom to 10 gamers and 15 game designers, with both groups providing “very positive feedback.” Moving forward, IllumiRoom now has to be productized — it has to be turned into a single unit, encapsulating both a projector and Kinect sensor. “Ideally, IllumiRoom would be directly integrated into a next generation console and new games would be designed for IllumiRoom from the ground up,” the research paper says. Considering Microsoft originally unveiled IllumiRoom at Samsung’s CES keynote, we’re fairly certain that Microsoft is working with Samsung to bring IllumiRoom to market. As for whether IllumiRoom will be ready for the Xbox 720′s launch this winter, who knows. Price-wise, going by the current price of wide-angle LED projectors, we’re probably talking about a few hundred dollars, too.

This is my build log of an HTPC in the case from an original Xbox. I started this project with the plan on having a way to watch movies and series on my TV. The build started a while ago, and this system has been running ever since. I will be writing a bit about the struggles of fitting a system in a Xbox-case, the solutions I call ghetto mod and the pure luck involved in this Youtube-beast. Partslist: Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333MHz 8GB CL9 Intel Pentium G850 2.9 GHz Shuttle XPC PC61J 300W Gigabyte GA-H61MA-D3V Samsung SSD 830 64G ASUS Xonar DGX Here you can see the case itself. The Xbox was not working when I got it, so I decided I should build a little system in it. You can see the lockingmechanism on this picture. Yup, one tiny woodscrew on each side of the case. Just enough to hold everything together. The switch on the front to release the drives are wired as the ON-button with green powerlight around it. The old powerbutton is now a reset switch. This is just a frontview of the system. Here you can see the two USB-ports on the front. The wiring from those USB-ports are quite ghetto rigged, it's just two CAT5 cables. Since this system didn't have room for a DVD-drive, I decided to just take of the cover from the original drive on the Xbox, and superglue it to the top of the case. You can see a crack as to where the case meets. This is not that obvious when it's on the TV-bench. This is the back of the case. You can see that I had to just cut everything out. The plan was to add a backplate that I'd cut from a metal sidepanel from another old rig. You can also see on the motherboard tray on the back where I've sanded down all of the plastic pieces from the case. Front-to-back view. This is where the guts of the beast are. Here you can see a couple of things: mainly how lucky I was! I forgot to measure up the dimensions of the inside before I bought the motherboard and the PSU. There was 1 mm of space between the motherboard and the PSU after I fitted everything. The PSU is held in place using a little screw coming from the outside of the case, same with the SSD. I am planning on making a bracket for the sound card so that it isn't just sitting in the pci-slot. Also, check out that cable management! It was a living hell trying to figure out how to run everything. I decided to cut off all of the cables coming from the power supply that I didn't need. Sideview of the case. Just a little picture showing how the cables are managed in the front and also how the SSD is placed. The holes on the side of the PSU is from when I had 3.5-inch drive in there. This was fitted by just placing the drive over the CPU-fan with rubber-insulators and two screws coming from the inside of the PSU. This was taken out because the CPU wouldn't get enough air. Thank you for taking your time to check out my HTPC.

Here we go.

With all the things going around about the X1 I thought I might post this. "Under the heading, game device 'Microsoft pushes a monitoring device in the market. The Xbox continuously records all sorts of personal information about me. Reaction rates, my learning or emotional states. The are then processed on an external server, and possibly even passed on to third parties. Whether they will ever deleted, the person can not influence". http://tweaktown.com/news/30610/german-government-says-the-xbox-one-is-a-monitoring-device/index.html#Bhm1xzBCPxHGKJD0.99 What would you guys think if they banned the Xbox One? I

i just noticed that the two are a bit similar :) what do we know so far ?

Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-may-require-game-installs-close-out-used-game-market/

As the new Xbox is dubbed the 'one' by Microsoft's team of talented naming individuals, likely hosted by a monkey as staff head. Combining the great interactive tv watching experience! A groundbreaking 15 exclusive titles and a whole load more! System specs include. 8 core CPU 8GB ram 500GB hdd blu-ray 802.11n wireless built in! hdmi USB 3.0 With the Halo TV show, it's undoubtedly clear that Microsoft is trying to appeal to the more casual gamer, who likes to watch console games on tv. You never know! It might turn out just as good as Machinima's short film of Halo. With the new generation of consoles just around the corner, and the new aesthetics of the XBOX one, the world's gaming eyes turn once again towards Sony, to provide a glimpse at their console. Sources : Quote one : http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/05/xbox-one/ Quote two : http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/xbox-one-vs-sony-ps4 More sources : http://kotaku.com/you-will-be-able-to-trade-xbox-one-games-online-micros-509140825 http://kotaku.com/xbox-one-does-require-internet-connection-cant-play-o-509164109 http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/05/21/xbox-one-will-not-function-without-kinect-attached http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/05/21/xbox-one-live-tv-only-available-in-the-us-at-launch?+main+twitter Thanks to user/gjrud for the links!

I'm sure many of you will be extremely excited to hear this, but the new Kinect will be coming as a separate device to work with windows. The most terrifying part of this is: http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4353868/microsofts-new-kinect-will-be-coming-to-windows?utm_source=feedly Let's hope out PCs can still work and Windows 8.1 does not require this to be plugged in...

Don't know what to say, but here the questions about the Xbox One, answered by Microsoft, that everyone wanted to know the answers!!! Source:http://news.xbox.com/2013/05/qa

http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/23/4358396/xbox-one-and-ps4-are-a-generation-ahead-of-the-best-pc-says-ea-cto

Hello I will be soon selling my Xbox 360 to purchase a new computer case. I'm thinking about purchasing the Corsair 900D because with that case I'll never be limited by what hardware I want to put into my case however I was wondering if there is any other cases which fit into the same criteria for a better deal. I'm yet to find one so if you guys could help it would mean a lot. Thank You!!!

First I just want to say sorry if this thread has been covered before if so feel free to delete it went through search and didn't get back anything. So yes, with the Xbox One being unveiled and now certain for to be running an AMD APU solution what is next for AMD? It got me thinking, it is undeniable AMD has its collection of haters and their is a history of driver complaints from consumers. But from a hardware background AMD have struck gold, they won't need to much more R&D into the platforms unless they decide to change something for the xbox one slim ect. But for the most part it should stay the same, it'll also leave AMD with feedback from across the globe and multiple developers from different systems. Will this extra cash and security allow AMD to invest more into future research for PC. Will this x86 generation of consoles help them improving their processors in general or perhaps they could use this new feedback to optimise their drivers for better performance across the board or maybe this safety net could signal a loss of interest from AMD in developing for the PC(highly unlikely). Just some thoughts I've been having wondering what everyone else thinks AMD will do now that there future would seem to be a new dawn after the recent troubles.