Articles - The best way to upgrade your Xbox 360 hardware

[HEXUS]

Thinking of upgrading from your Xbox 360 core or 20GB premium? Read on...

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[pauldarkside]

120GB Xbox 360 hard drive for £72.99 from Scan. Complete with migration kit - took about an hour and a half to transfer data from an almost full 20GB drive to the new 120GB drive.

£34.99 for a HDMI cable? Monsterous! (pun intended) Shouldn't have to pay anything like that - around a tenner from Scan also.

PS I'm not picking on you for your prices honest ... yes I know it's two threads in one day

[xenos]

A couple of things...

Firstly you don't NEED to buy an HDMI cable if u upgrade, the new consoles have the old style port on them too and there is still a video cable included, even if it isn't an HDMI one.

Secondly you can definately get an HDMI cable cheaper than £34.99, as its a fully digital cable it either works OR it doesn't, so unlike an analogue cable such as a SCART lead, you can buy a cheap one and it won't affect the picture one bit. Obviously there is still something to be said for buying the cheapest, and I would try and pick one out thats about £12 just to make sure it lasts.

Thirdly the HDMI cable doesn't have a 5.1 sound breakout, so you will need a passthrough output on your TV in the form of an optical tos or digital coax to your sound system. (The official one does but its £30).

Search Amazon for 'Microsoft HDMI'

For data transfer between consoles, i'd just use a USB memory stick or HDD and copy everything you can across.

There may be some files that you can't move such as games and for that i'd get a third party memory stick, the biggest you can find..

There are products like the XSATA and XPORT but those only work for backup up a SINGLE console. If you try to use them to transfer files to another console HDD they will brick it!

The Blockbuster deal isn't actually that bad from a 20GB premium trade in to a 60GB with HDMI, as long as you don't have to spend out a ton of money on the HDMI cable etc.

PS. When is this price drop you mention coming? And how much can we expect to save?

Xenos

[dave87]

The whole point of the official Microsoft HDMI pack is it does have the Optical (TOSLINK) port by virtue of the breakout box it includes. Hence the rather ludicrous price of £35.

Those who know better will probably be going for HDMI equipped amps, which will do the signal processing for them.

[pauldarkside]

The whole point of the official Microsoft HDMI pack is it does have the Optical (TOSLINK) port by virtue of the breakout box it includes. Hence the rather ludicrous price of £35.

Those who know better will probably be going for HDMI equipped amps, which will do the signal processing for them.

Actually that's a good point and something which could have been mentioned in the article when referencing that price tag.

(I guess I ought to flog my breakout box now - had the Onkyo 606 delivered a few weeks ago )

[Steven W]

120GB Xbox 360 hard drive for £72.99 from Scan. Complete with migration kit - took about an hour and a half to transfer data from an almost full 20GB drive to the new 120GB drive.

£34.99 for a HDMI cable? Monsterous! (pun intended) Shouldn't have to pay anything like that - around a tenner from Scan also.

PS I'm not picking on you for your prices honest ... yes I know it's two threads in one day

Yep the HDMI cable price is for the official one. If you have a Computer Exchange near to you they're doing good deals on trade ins.

[Pyrii]

I have an elite and I'm barely using 20-30gb myself. And that's mainly because I realised I don't need to delete stuff when I'm finished with it, if you took stuff off when you're finished playing the demo etc, 20Gb should be fine, of course for HDMI then you'll probably have to upgrade.

So I think it's a matter of "do you NEED to upgrade", because at the end of the day you're going to lose money in the upgrade regardless.

[pauldarkside]

I have an elite and I'm barely using 20-30gb myself. And that's mainly because I realised I don't need to delete stuff when I'm finished with it, if you took stuff off when you're finished playing the demo etc, 20Gb should be fine, of course for HDMI then you'll probably have to upgrade.

So I think it's a matter of "do you NEED to upgrade", because at the end of the day you're going to lose money in the upgrade regardless.

With the install to hard drive option in the upcoming update (around November) I'll certainly be making the use of the additional space. Having the likes of Fable 2, etc, running much more quietly (no more hair-dryer disc spinning please) is the main reason for my upgrade.

[alexp999]

I'm holding out for the Jasper Elite.

I have a launch Premium console atm. Still going strong

But I want to upgrade for several reasons:

-less power
-less heat
-less likelyhood of failure
-120gb HDD for Games from HDD feature this Autumn
-HDMI
-Sexy Black, who wouldnt!!

Was really pleased when I saw you could trade in for good values. but I think to keep my data, I'll get the new one first, transfer data then sell on the old one, or like has been said here, part-ex and buy some games.

[Trevulate]

Why don't Gamestation and Game offer a service for people to transfer there saved data across to a new console. I think I would prefer to pay 5 quid for them to transfer my data than have a £100 credit note which I could have used to buy the new console!

I too have a launch premium which hasn't given me much hassle (fingers crossed) but every so often (and usually the same games) tend to freeze/crash on me (sometime when i have pressed the Xbox button instead of pausing, causing disk read message to show). But that's not to say the Elite doesn't have its fair share of problems, a mate bought his about 6 months ago, and 4 months in he had Red Ring of Death (which i was under the impression was impossible!)

[Parm]

The HDMI cable is the problem for me. I was thinking of upgrading to a new 60GB premium, but it doesn't come with the MS HDMI cable.

Granted, you don't need to use HDMI and I use Component at the mo. However, I can't upscale to 1080p via Component so the HDMI would come in handy.

I could buy a cheaper HDMI cable elsewhere, but that wouldn't give me optical out for the sound. Only the MS HDMI cable provides that functionality.

The well laid out tables are very much appreciated though Steven, makes it easy to identify which places are best to go to for upgrade deals! Cheers

[G4Z]

Why do you need an MS HDMI cable?

I bought one from Ebuyer for like £6 and it works perfectly, sound goes into my TV and then out over analogue RCA to my stereo amp.

[Hicks12]

Afaik game and gamestation match trade ins so get blockbuster to print out a trade in price then match at game(works out £5 cheaper then?). I think CEX buy in for alot more, i know they do with the wii (£130 trade in iirc, was like £90 at game), so u could match with them if you got a local one then buy from game brand new.

Good article, shame i dont ahve a 360 dont need to upgrade that luckily.

Just waiting till the new xbox releasing in 2009/10.

[beanbandit]

Why do you need an MS HDMI cable?

I bought one from Ebuyer for like £6 and it works perfectly, sound goes into my TV and then out over analogue RCA to my stereo amp.

Because it comes with the Optical out dongle for 5.1 surround (As posted a couple of posts above) MS in their infinite wisdom only supplied the dongle with the Elite 360 when it should have been included with all HDMI equipped 360's. Even better, it should have been thought of from the very beginning and been on the console itself.

More idiotic design issues from MS.

[beanbandit]

I have an elite and I'm barely using 20-30gb myself. And that's mainly because I realised I don't need to delete stuff when I'm finished with it, if you took stuff off when you're finished playing the demo etc, 20Gb should be fine, of course for HDMI then you'll probably have to upgrade

Would be fine, but the 20gb is only 13gb due to backward computability issues, so you lose 7gb for when (if ever) you want to play original Xbox games.

[beanbandit]

We’d assume that the RROD issue that plagued the 20GB premium will be a distant memory that we can all finally try to forget about.

Steven all 360's have been, and will continue imo, to be effected by the RROD.

Personally i would have posted something about being cautious if people are thinking of buying a 360 second hand. As one Hexite has found out, if its been registered before you will not get that free RROD repair.