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Xbox One closer to becoming hub
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The Xbox One won’t quite replace your TV set-top box, but it comes awfully close.
The latest game console from Microsoft takes a big leap toward being the main entertainment hub in your living room. It gives you a program guide for browsing what’s on TV and what’s highlighted in apps such as Netflix and Amazon. You can listen to music and view photos stored on Microsoft’s SkyDrive service. You can make Skype video calls.
And yeah, you can even play games.
Some of the updates to the Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4 help turn them into multi-function devices that make them more attractive to non-gamers. The Xbox goes further than the PlayStation, mainly because it integrates regular live TV. Slick new operating systems and voice controls on both consoles can make navigating the offerings part of the fun.
The Xbox still requires a regular TV set-top box to feed it TV signals using what’s called “HDMI pass-through.” And you need subscriptions for TV and streaming services. The Xbox One acts like a traffic cop and weaves it all together elegantly. It doesn’t pull up on-demand shows or programs saved on a digital video recorder; you have to use the traditional remote control with the Xbox still powered on to do that. But Microsoft is looking at adding that feature in a future software update.
The US$500 Xbox One comes with an updated Kinect device for motion and voice detection, while the US$400 PlayStation 4 has a voice-command camera system for the first time, sold separately for US$60. Both systems are good at facial recognition and will sign you in automatically.
The Xbox adds a few neat tricks: Using your voice, you can power it on, adjust the TV volume, find shows and channels and start photo slideshows. That’s much easier than searching my couch cushions for the TV remote control, even though my wife found it odd that I kept talking to the machine.
A nifty “snap” function unique to the Xbox makes it possible to do two things at once. This way, I could play “Need for Speed: Rivals” in a large window and watch the British TV show “Sherlock” on Netflix in a smaller one. I simply tell the machine, “Xbox snap Netflix,” after firing up a game and the show separately. Because snap also works for TV, it’s a great way to keep tabs on a game, listen to a talk show or see when a commercial ended.
I did notice some quirks, though. Using snap, I found the image stuttered when the console was starting a game or doing some other intense computing. In some cases, I found the audio lagged people’s lips moving, even when I went back to full-screen mode. In troubleshooting with Xbox support, I was told to restart the set-top box and console and make sure I had the highest-rated HDMI cables. That didn’t resolve the issue, but the hiccup isn’t a deal-breaker. When I’m doing two things, I’m not zeroing in on every detail anyway.
At this point, the PlayStation’s new user interfaces are more rudimentary, but they seem capable of improving over time.
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