New Xbox 360 Dashboard Update Should Now be Available

Microsoft said on Tuesday that the new dashboard update for Xbox 360 was being released. The new update which was in beta testing earlier this year, will reach about three million people at the start with additional users being added over the coming weeks.

New Dashboard Update (from Microsoft):

• Refreshed Xbox 360 Dashboard:
  Updated the UI with a few things, including an updated layout with more tiles, a combined TV & Movies channel and, in the US, a Sports destination.
• Internet Explorer for Xbox:
  With Internet Explorer on Xbox, you can easily find and view internet content on the biggest screen in the house, including HTML5 videos.
• Recommendations and Ratings:
  Recommendations will allow you to discover new favorites, generated based on a number of variables including the content you previously viewed, what your friends are consuming and what is most relevant and popular with our Xbox community. You can now rate content yourself and see Rotten Tomatoes ratings.
• Pinning:
  Pinning lets you personalize the dashboard by saving your favorite movies, TV shows, games, music, videos and websites right to the home screen. It’s as easy as opening an app or a favorite movie and clicking “pin.”
• Xbox Video:
  Formerly called Zune Video Marketplace, Xbox Video offers hundreds of thousands of TV shows and movies for buying or renting in instant HD streaming.
• Recent:
  Previously called Quick Play, the Recent view gives you a list of movies, games, apps or other types of content that you most recently accessed on the console.
• Enhanced Search:
  The last Xbox LIVE update brought Bing voice search to Xbox so you could use voice to search for movies, TV shows, actors, directors and artists. This year we added genre search to the list, so now you can search for action, comedy, romance, drama or sci-fi. Bing voice search now includes results for video across the Web, including YouTube.
• International Expansion of Voice Search:
  We’ve expanded our Kinect voice search capabilities to 9 new countries – Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Ireland.

Microsoft have said that SmartGlass is being added once Windows 8 launches on the 26th October.

I haven’t checked out the new features yet so I am not sure if I have the new update but I will be by the time I next play my Xbox 360. The only thing from the list that stands out is the Internet Explorer application which should always be added to modern consoles (PSP and the Nintendo DS had it). However I don’t know if its any good.

My other Xbox 360 dashboard posts:

• Internet Explorer Finally Coming To Xbox 360.