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The Xbox LIVE Update Enhances Netflix, Friends List, and More

Published Aug. 4, 2009

The Xbox LIVE Update enhances your Xbox 360 experience with some great additions and improvements to the Xbox Dashboard and Guide, including updates to Netflix, parties and friends, achievements, your gamer card, console settings, and account management.

Party On with Netflix
Netflix is a great way for Xbox LIVE Gold members to watch movies and TV shows on the Xbox 360, and now it's even better. Netflix now shows you new arrivals, favorite categories, and recently watched shows. The best part? You can browse movies and TV shows without first having to add them to your Instant Queue on your PC! Start watching right away, or add new items to your Instant Queue right from your Xbox 360.

Add new releases to your queue directly from your Xbox 360.

Netflix gets social with the new Party mode, where you can watch movies with your pals no matter where they are. The video you watch together is kept in sync for the whole party, so you can talk to each other on your headset in real time, just like you were sitting next to each other on the couch. (A Gold membership and supported Netflix subscription is required for each member.) Show just how you're feeling about a scene by pressing Y and selecting an avatar emote.

Round out the great Netflix updates with improved playback, to better handle changing network conditions, and video status, to show people looking at your profile the videos you're watching. (And, as always, you can control what shows up in your online status using your privacy settings.)

Connect with Friends
Also improved are parties, your friends list, and communications. If you're disconnected while in a party, you'll be automatically reconnected when you get back. Just one less step to getting back into the game! Speaking of one less step, party invites have been streamlined, too.

You can now sort your Friends list by gamertag, online status, or activity, which is great for quickly finding friends that are playing a specific game. Just press Y in your friends list to change the sort order. And, when you send voice messages, the system will now tell you if your message isn't recording your voice. No more blank voice messages!

The achievements list has seen a number of improvements.

Track Achievements
Your achievements list has been updated so you can browse your achievements a little more easily, plus you can now launch a game from the list. There's also a new achievement summary panel that shows up while viewing your profile in the Xbox Dashboard, so you can see at a glance the achievements you've earned and the games you've completed.

Gold Member Veterans
Been with us for a while? Now you can show it off. The number of years you've been an Xbox LIVE Gold member now shows up in the corner of your gamer card. Just one more thing to add to your gamer cred!

Show off how many years you've been a Gold Member.

Display and Memory
The Display and Memory areas in Console Settings have received some new features, too. Display settings have been updated to include a Display Discovery option to let you override your TV's HDMI settings if you need to, and we've added some more HDMI display resolutions, too.

Over in the Memory area, items now show you when they were first saved, to help you manage items on your hard drive or memory unit.

Account Management
A few things about account management have been touched up. When your Xbox LIVE membership is coming due, or there are credit card problems, you'll get notified when you sign in. We've also fixed an issue with expired Windows Live IDs, and account recovery performance has been improved.

You'll also find that navigation throughout the Xbox Dashboard has been improved, with easier-to-find entry points to frequently-used features. And that's not all. After you've taken in the updates to the Xbox Dashboard, why not take a look at the new features for Avatars, Games, and Marketplace? For more on that, check out our article on new Avatar and Xbox LIVE features.

Article by Elle