My 360 just Red ringed

[InternalPrimate]

Console has been received, and repair is in progress.

I spent my Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncles house. Around 3pm my cousin's Xbox froze. We turned it off and on three times, and each time it froze in the dashboard. The fourth time... THREE RED LIGHTS!!! Dun Dun DUUUUUN!!!

How can a company get away with such shoddy work?

[MrMatthews]

My XBox keeps freezing up, but I'm pretty sure it's just the game disc. Every time I have to restart it I just tense up and wait for those red lights.

[JFLY]

I just got my return box so I'm going to bring it to work so I can drop it off at the UPS customer counter on way home from work. I might sell the replacement they send back and buy an Elite. Anyone know if the Elites have a lower chance of red-ringing?

[gamevet]

Gamevet, I work in that very industry. I have installed projection booths and maintain a projection position just for fun. Some of my best friends are trained and certified by Dolby for installation of digital cinema.

Want to learn more? Come on over to www.film-tech.com and snoop around our forums. Register and ask these questions there, but I have a feeling you won't need to since they've already been answered a million times.

Cool site. I've been to the flagship Cinemark Legacy theater in Plano, listed at the top of theater page. It really is one of the best theaters in the country. I'd watched Revenge of the Sith (DLP) there and the picture was just amazing.

[gamevet]

I just got my return box so I'm going to bring it to work so I can drop it off at the UPS customer counter on way home from work. I might sell the replacement they send back and buy an Elite. Anyone know if the Elites have a lower chance of red-ringing?

Maybe the early models made in 2007, but the new ones have the same motherboard as that of the 60gig and Arcade models.

[17daysolderthannes]

I spent my Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncles house. Around 3pm my cousin's Xbox froze. We turned it off and on three times, and each time it froze in the dashboard. The fourth time... THREE RED LIGHTS!!! Dun Dun DUUUUUN!!!

How can a company get away with such shoddy work?

They aren't, they've already spent like $1 billion fixing these things (and they still haven't really fixed ANYTHING). I doubt the engineers responsible wanted it designed like it is, but they probably had pressure from accounting/management and a strict time deadline and they just couldn't do better in the time allotted. Accounting for every possibility in engineering is damn near impossible, and extremely expensive. Almost everything you buy can only have a minimal amount of stress/longevity testing in key areas. I mean, how can you do 2 years worth the testing in 1 month...if that?

My XBox keeps freezing up, but I'm pretty sure it's just the game disc. Every time I have to restart it I just tense up and wait for those red lights.

or worse, your drive is dying.

I just got my return box so I'm going to bring it to work so I can drop it off at the UPS customer counter on way home from work. I might sell the replacement they send back and buy an Elite. Anyone know if the Elites have a lower chance of red-ringing?

nope. It's all the same shit. As far as I know, all new XBOX 360s have the newer heatsinks, but still use x-clamps and as long as they use that garbage it is still red ring-able (I've already fixed 2 post-recall systems w/ RROD). Your only option is to do what you should've done in the first place: thrown the XBOX 360 out the window and buy a PS3 so Sony finally has the user base to get some goddamn developers for their much superior system (especially from a reliability standpoint).

Maybe the early models made in 2007, but the new ones have the same motherboard as that of the 60gig and Arcade models.

I think what you're referring to is that the early Elite models were the first to use the revised heatsinks (not positive, someone run a fact check on that). Nevertheless, no XBOX was ever made in a substantially different way except for the initial terrible heat sinks and the newer, slightly better heat sinks, but they all still have the shitty, useless x-clamps.

[Melf]

A merry Christmas from Microsoft!

[gamevet]

Your only option is to do what you should've done in the first place: thrown the XBOX 360 out the window and buy a PS3 so Sony finally has the user base to get some goddamn developers for their much superior system (especially from a reliability standpoint).

I started out with the PS3 (still have it), but ended up getting a 360 because of games like Bioshock and Mass Effect. The 360 probably could have been the greatest console ever, but the RROD could be the one thing that keeps many gamers from buying the console; I know it was enough to sway me towards a PS3 first.

I think what you're referring to is that the early Elite models were the first to use the revised heatsinks (not positive, someone run a fact check on that). Nevertheless, no XBOX was ever made in a substantially different way except for the initial terrible heat sinks and the newer, slightly better heat sinks, but they all still have the shitty, useless x-clamps.

Yeah, I have the early Elite, with the raised heatsink. It was manufactured in August of 2007. I'd bought it in November of that year and I could only find a couple of stores that had Elites in stock. The revised model came out in November of 2007, with the 65nm CPU and 175w power supply.

The fan turns on with the system. I've heard that the earlier models of the 360 didn't turn the fan on, until the system started heating up. Is this true?

[17daysolderthannes]

The fan turns on with the system. I've heard that the earlier models of the 360 didn't turn the fan on, until the system started heating up. Is this true?

none that I've seen, every system I have worked on turns the fans on with the system. The failure has nothing to do with the fans, those fans can adjust speed to the point you would think they were making a wind tunnel. When you do the RROD fix (the non-Microsoft fix) you place the fan on top of the CPU to keep it from overheating, well, a couple of times I put it too much too the left/right/front/back/wherever and the thing seriously had enough power to almost levitate itself. The problem is that the heat isn't being conducted from the processor to the heat sink in the first place, it has nothing to do with air flow. Also, the GPU won't trigger an overheating 2 light RROD or even speed up the fans, and since it runs hotter than the CPU because of the tiny heatsink, it is almost inevitable that it will overheat. How can you say a system is the best system ever when the hardware is a steaming pile of shit? PS3 is better in every way, it just needs developers and consumers to see that. If PS3 had all the games the 360 had, no one would even be touching the 360 right now.

[Megadragon15]

Yeah. The PS3 is better in every way .................................................. ............... except price and that wll always be the PS3's ploblem.

[jesus.arnold]

you don't need any hi-def to see how awful DVD looks... my 15year old 21" Philips CRT has so sharp image you can see every single compression artifact there is... and Sharpness setting won't work for RGB, only for composhit/s-vid so no way to blur the image to reduce the effect in my setup... ugh.

Huh, what are you even on about? even I know that CRT puts a massive cap on the quality of DVD, we used to have a 40 inch CRT and everything looked like complete shit, blocky as hell, as soon as we got the 40 inch hi-def TV, and HDMI cable for the DVD player all the blockiness completely dissapeared and the picture became excellent.

If you ask me, its not worth the money unless you have a TV bigger than 42'in.

I agree, it's about here that you start to really notice the difference

blu-ray is a bigger improvement over DVD than DVD was over VHS. convenience factor is basically the same (that was a big selling point for DVD) but the blu-ray discs are much more scratch-resistant.
The big deal is the huge increase in picture and sound quality.

Blu Ray is nowhere near as much of an upgrade to DVD as DVD was to VHS.

DVD had -

1 Much better picture detail and sound quality than VHS
2 Had a much more stable picture than VHS (no more rolling thank god)
2 Didn't need to be re-wound
3 you could choose what scene you wanted specifically
4 took up less shelf space
5 was more durable
6 much more space for extra features and such

Blu-Ray has -

1 Better Picture Detail and sound Quality than DVD
2 much more space available

they'll look back on DVDs and say... "Ewww. How did I ever watch that? Am I some kind of asshole?" At least the majority will. I know I do. I want to go back in time and murder myself.

There's only one person here who sounds like an arsehole and i'll give you three guesses who it is, I'm going to give you some advice here, I think you really need to take a long look at your life and start to re-think your priorities, instead of sitting 5 inches away from your TV everyday shouting "MY GOD LOOK AT THE DETAIL, I CAN'T FOR THE LIFE OF ME UNDERSTAND HOW I EVER ENJOYED WATCHING A MOVIE AT SLIGHTLY LOWER QUALITY" maybe you should get out more. I bet you hate books don't you, you shout things like "MY GOD THIS BOOK HAS ZERO PICTURE QUALITY, IT'S COMPLETELY WORTHLESS, I FEEL LIKE AN ARSEHOLE READING THIS"

Am I completely crazy here when I say that the important thing about a movie is possibly the story and not the exact level of detail in the picture? If you're enjoying a movie you shouldn't even notice how god-damn good the detail level in the picture is.

Constantly being anal retentive and pedantic is not the way to make friends in the real world, it's the way to bore people out of their brains

Oh and by the way I still watch VHS on a very frequent basis, I go down the local market and buy 4 for a £1 when I've got some spare time to kill, what an arsehole I must feel like.

[InternalPrimate]

There's only one person here who sounds like an arsehole and i'll give you three guesses who it is, I'm going to give you some advice here, I think you really need to take a long look at your life and start to re-think your priorities, instead of sitting 5 inches away from your TV everyday shouting "MY GOD LOOK AT THE DETAIL, I CAN'T FOR THE LIFE OF ME UNDERSTAND HOW I EVER ENJOYED WATCHING A MOVIE AT SLIGHTLY LOWER QUALITY" maybe you should get out more. I bet you hate books don't you, you shout things like "MY GOD THIS BOOK HAS ZERO PICTURE QUALITY, IT'S COMPLETELY WORTHLESS, I FEEL LIKE AN ARSEHOLE READING THIS"

I'm still amazed at how many times Joe's misunderstood.

[jesus.arnold]

I'm still amazed at how many times Joe's misunderstood.

Are you saying he's being ironic? I guess it's a possibilty as irony completely doesn't work in writing and is pretty impossible to discern unless you have a prior experience of the persons personality, if this is the case then I'm sorry

Though I have had experience of people talking like this seriously in the real world so it's pretty hard to tell

[InternalPrimate]

I'm assuming it's irony, I could always be wrong though... I remember first posting on this site a few years back, not understanding what the hell Joe's problem was

[jesus.arnold]

I'm assuming it's irony, I could always be wrong though... I remember first posting on this site a few years back, not understanding what the hell Joe's problem was

Using irony or sarcasm is usually a bad idea on forums, I used to do this a lot but I stopped after I realised that only about 1 out of 4 people were actually getting the joke and the rest thought I was taking the opposite opinion to the one I was, and this had been going on for nearly a year before I realised what was happening