X-BOX Live and Broadband - a few Q's

brian_ire

i think this has been slightly touched upon on this fourm but i think it deserves a bit more attention. X-Box live (the online gaming service for your xbox, in case you were an eircom boss, ie asleep for the last few years) is going to be launched sometime in the Autumn. i emailed xbox's tech support and they said that the amount downloaded was "minimal" when i asked him about the 3GB download cap. the thing is i failed to say 3GB cap a month cuz i have a feeling he thought per day, cuz surely if i was a gaming addict, of which i'm sure there is plenty in this country, and spent say, 6hrs a day online playing Xbox games which is broadband dependent, i must be downloading a lot more than 3GB. anywho i'm gonna email them again to clarify that. but my questions to you are this:

1) is it just me or did anyone else see Game in Grafton St.'s sign up advertising X-Box live "released on the 17th March" and inside the Xbox live starter kits that you could pre-order before March 17th

2) and alot more importantly, when Mr Bill Gates does show up in the autunm with his lil' gaming device, do you think he'll pressure Eircom into providing an affordable, good quailty with no cap broadband service

3) do you think eircom will just ignore bill and keep the cap and the poor service, because sure people in this country are still playing with the old nintendo (ps do you remember that machine, where it all began, gimme a bit of teenage mutant ninja turtles anyday)

4) will xbox live be the light at the end of that horrible tunnel that is broadband in ireland or am i getting so desperate now that i'm actually believing Microsoft are going to save the day

just some food for thought people, your respones would be gratefully appreciated

BKtje

1) tbh i've no idea.
2)Not a chance.
3)Eircom will do what they want to do as always.
4)You (and the rest of us) are quite desperate. Tbh microsoft wont bother about irelands lack of broadband. Ireland is a tiny market for its xbox and therefore not worth the effort.

sceptre

Originally posted by brian_ire
1) is it just me or did anyone else see Game in Grafton St.'s sign up advertising X-Box live "released on the 17th March" and inside the Xbox live starter kits that you could pre-order before March 17th

Not just you. I saw them in HMV in Limerick as well

Snowbat

Originally posted by brian_ire
the old nintendo (ps do you remember that machine, where it all began, gimme a bit of teenage mutant ninja turtles anyday)

What, you don't remember the Atari VCS/2600, or the original pong consoles? Sheesh, the youth of today

Anyway, depending on the game, it may not actually require that much bandwidth to play online. If it needed say 40kbit, that's 18MB/hour - 166 hours of online play per month (5.3 hours per day every day for 31 days). Of course you're rightly fscked if you do want to play a game that requires higher bandwidth, or actually do anything else online on top of that.

Dustaz

I cant see caps being much of a problem. I doubt the xbox sends and recieves much more data than a normal online game and pc gamers have had no problems with game-related caps

ceejay

Re the Live kits being available for sale here:

I was told by an xbox.com customer service rep some time ago that if you could get a kit from the UK, it would work here even though it would connect to the UK servers. The only problem might be latency.

Game, Virgin, and others who are selling it here are probably just selling the same stock as they have in UK stores. As with many companies, Ireland is often lumped in with UK. For a lot of companies we're just too small to warrant our own local representatives, and many of them handle Irish stuff from the UK. It's a shame that this happens, but in these cost-cutting times, you can understand it somewhat - as long as they remember that we're not just another region of the UK.

I'm personally looking forward to using XBox Live, just as soon as IBB get their Guiness transmitter working - and assuming the trees on our road don't completely block the LOS

Mr. Fancypants

I heard somewhere that you could only use a credit card that was registered to an English address to subscribe to Xbox live. is that true?

Giblet

Originally posted by Snowbat
What, you don't remember the Atari VCS/2600, or the original pong consoles? Sheesh, the youth of today

The Oric-1 bejaysus, still have mine.

If I understood correctly, Uploads don't count in the cap.
So lets put it to practice here.
1:30 - 2:00 hours of QuakeWorld puts under 20 MB's on my connect on isdn with qizmo (rate 10k a sec max)
So lets say for broadband 50k/sec max would put 50MB's an hour average with intense gaming like a 16 player game, and considering that the games might not use all your bandwidth.
Taking away for times not downloading data between bouts etc etc. I would say to run down the cap you would need to play for 60 hours constantly, and thats all, no internet browsing too.
Thats 2 hours a day.

Dangger

I'm personally looking forward to using XBox Live

I've been using X-Box Connect for a while now and running around Halo with a load of Germans (they're always playing). :rolleyes: I know there are extra features with the official product, but I'm still waiting to get my mits on a starter kit. You need about 64mbps upstream for each person you have playing on your machine for decent speeds. So for example the current ADSL offering is only good for 2 on one box to play on a server, and not the best for hosting.

Son of Blam

Dangger, what ISP are you using? What's the speed of your connection?

Sloth

I'm going to get the xbox live kit just as soon as IBB reaches the greater Blanchardstown area. I plan to get the 1mb service so I'm hoping this will reduce (what will probably only be minimal anyway) lag. You need an ethernet connection for all 3 consoles to go online and as far as I know Eircom only allows USB modems. Just sit tight and wait a month or two for IBB to come in and swoop down to rescue us.

tommyboy

Don't bother buying X-box live yet as I bought it last week and after much messing about and phone calls to Xbox tech support it seems that the service will not work in Ireland because.....

1.Microsoft Ireland haven't officially launched because of lack of broadband here ( they're testing it on a Lan in Sandyford ???? )

2.As a result of this no broadband ISPs have activated it on their networks

3.The bloody thing won't connect anyways.

4.If you do connect it will be to U.K servers and the registration process needs a valid address in the country ( U.K ) for the credit card used to connect.

My advice is to stick with gamespy tunnel or XBConnect until the official launch

Sloth

The broadband provider doesn't need to be officially supported by microsoft for it to work, it just needs to have the right set of protocols etc. Basically if it doesn't work on one that hasn't been cleared then your screwed but you should at least give it a shot. As for the credit card and address bit an uncle of mine lives there so I'll just use his address along with my own credit card and since they don't check the card for a year minimum it should hopefully have been launched here by then.
Do you know if it works on IBB specifically?

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Sloth
The broadband provider doesn't need to be officially supported by microsoft for it to work, it just needs to have the right set of protocols etc. Basically if it doesn't work on one that hasn't been cleared then your screwed but you should at least give it a shot.

Does X box use non-IP based protocols?

Sloth

To be honest I don't know. Does IBB not use standard protocols then? I kind of presumed they did. Theres some connection configuration screen on xbox live if it doesn't work straight away so maybe you could fix any problem there.

MagicBusDriver

Give them a valid UK address and your Irish CC. Irish Credit Cards cannot be verified with a address. The Irsh banks do not support this. Does transact online (AIB) allow you to give an address?

Sloth

Oh it's not paying for the service that worries me it's just getting it up and running in the first place. Since Ireland isn't supported theres no way of knowing whether or not it will actually work until you try it. I'm really hoping it does though and I don't think IBB use any weird protocols so hopefully we should be ok.

ceejay

I contacted XBox support via email about when XBox Live would be available, and about using the Live kits available now. The response was that the Live kits should work, but that they couldn't support them here since Live wouldn't be available until "Autumn 2003". I then emailed back to ask if this was an official date for the launch of Live here, and got this response:

Hello,
Thanks for contacting the Xbox Customer Care Team with your query.
Autumn is the date provided by the powers that be within Microsoft
If you require further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us.
Regards,
Willy,
Xbox Customer Care Team

So, it looks like it will be Autumn all right. Now, that could mean the end of October, but it does seem to indicate that Microsoft feels that there will be at least one broadband provider here by then that they can use to provide the service.

Ciarán.

ozpass

Surely the Communicator (headset thingy) which you use to talk with other players eats the bandwidth though? I'm guessing it's this device alone that requires a broadband connection over something more mundane like ISDN.....

Sloth

Yes, you have to have a broadband connection to use it.
This is the response I got from them when I asked them about whether or not I could play here:

Dear Mr O'Connor!

You are correct in that Xbox Live is not yet supported in Ireland. The Beta
Test will probably start in the autumn, but we have no official launch date for
XBL in Ireland yet.

You are certainly free to try connection if you can obtain a Starter Kit, but
please note that at present we do not yet provide technical support for Xbox
Live in the Republic of Ireland.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further queries.

Regards,
Lisa
Xbox Customer Care

Ok well now that pretty much means that you can go ahead and try to get it working but if you can't get it working then they can't help you. Read the Via thread for what looks like an Xbox Live compatible adsl connection (although of course not officially). I'm off to have a look at prices on Amazon.co.uk for the starter kit. Hopefully once I get my bb connection off Via Xbox Live should work with no hitches, I mean people in England got it working on their machines before it was launched there so they could play on the American services.
Just makes sure if you do decide to import it that you get the english version so you'll be as close as possible to the servers and that your able to provide an english address (fake or otherwise since by the time they actually get around to billing you for the first time live should be available here).
So basically the response from Microsoft is that they cannot officially condone you getting a kit but try it on the sly anyway and see if it works.

Dustaz

Originally posted by ozpass
Surely the Communicator (headset thingy) which you use to talk with other players eats the bandwidth though? I'm guessing it's this device alone that requires a broadband connection over something more mundane like ISDN.....

Not unless they cant code very well. The Voice Communications that are built into Half Life work reasonably well on 56k and perfectly on ISDN. I doubt it would each much more bandwith than that.

Sloth

Sure people who have had their phone lines split and can only connect to the internet at 14.4kpbs can make normal phone calls perfectly suggesting you only need a tiny bit of bandwidth for voice comms.

NóMur

I'm no expert but basically voice calls made from your phone are anologue calls, hence they reduce the bandwidth of your split line.

However XBox live is not done in this manner, I presume the voice stream is just converted to data packets and sent over the internet.

It would be just the same as using software like www.rogerwilco.com ,which doesn't use loads of bandwidth.