A Tale of (3) 360's!

For the first year of the Xbox 360's lifespan I ignored it, didn't see a reason to own it, I was happy with my current Xbox. Actually at some point I bought a second Xbox to use as a Media Center extender. For the original Xbox there was a rarely sold disc that you put in the Xbox and it played the Media Center extender software and connected to your computer. For the longest time I didnt update my computer anyway so I couldn't use the actual Media Center software included with the 360.

But time would pass and I would update my computer (the whole daylight savings time issue kinda forced me to do it) and eventually I'd add a 360. As time passed though the 360 dashboard sort of made the Media Center portion of the dash obsolete. The dashboard was easier to get to and it finally would support Divx and Xvid as well as many other codecs for video.

I really enjoyed using the 360 as a media player so much that I really wanted a second for the upstairs parlour. Turns out a friend would get the red lights and couldn't wait for his return so he bought a new one, when his old one arrived I traded a PDA for the 360 and just like that I had a second 360. Then as time would pass I would start to need yet another for the toy/computer room and as would have it my brother in law would get ther red lights (for like the 3rd time) and he didnt wait either. So $60 and two weeks later just like that I have a 3rd.

My 2nd 360 gets used all the time to stream movies that my kid loves to watch, its great to not have to constantly pull out DVD's all the time. The 3rd location gets used the same way and even more as a DVD player. I use the 2nd sometimes for games for the family but the 3rd hasn't been used yet. Ironically the 1st gets used little for media streaming as I tend to use the PS3 for that in the main location.

Its kind of weird that I have 3 gaming systems and 2 in particular that don't even play games to use as media streaming devices but they work and they work very well. If you said I'd have 3 360's at one point I'd say you were crazy, but its kind of really cool to have them now and that's not crazy at all!