I can't dispute someone's feelings towards ads and I in fact can understand how it could be annoying. What I'm wondering is who here that's so pissed about the ads feels like the ads will work? Are you going to buy this shit just because you see it on the dashboard? Doesn't it feel good to recognize that it's bullshit and ignore it?

I very rarely noticed the ads but some people have such a bee in their bonnets about ads it is hardly suprising they will not like any advertising on the 360.

I think providing they are not intrusive I really find it hard to get emotional. I did actually notice an ad on my Xbox and that was the same TV ad that John Lewis a department store in the UK have been running. I only really noticed it because the ad itself is pretty good with a kid counting down to christmas but with a twist.

Its like watching Sky but because I pay for it not expecting any ads. I actually know people who never watch live programs, only record them to they can fast forwards through the ads. Personally lifes to short to worry about shit like that or you are watching way to much telly your live is shortened already.

Ive not had a chance to look at it yet but ads would be annoying, and why the feck do people think its acceptable comapring it to Android and iPhone, ive never had an android so i dont know, But iPhone does not have 1 single advert anywhere in its UI, NOT ONE! It may have some inside some of the FREE games, but thats it.

Being plastered with adverts 24/7 by your electronics is not 21st century. Its just MS.

I finally gave it a reach a round last night (Some kids told me using the phrase "reach around" would make me cool.). It was pretty sweet. I haven't downloaded all of the apps yet but it was quite well organized and exciting to look at. I'm the kind of guy that buys A LOT of content. I can't wait for my weekly Marketplace update. It's cool to see content that I'm interested in being shown on the pages.

I don't see a problem with ads like many here. I own a PS3 and I don't complain when the "ticker" on the top of the screen shows me what's new on the PS3/PSN. I actually like it. I don't mind when I see an ad for the new Ford Fusion tucked away at the bottom of that spotlight (can't remember the name of it, really) tab. I don't get the hate for one ad in the bottom right corner of the XBL Dashboard. Everything else is just showing available content and things you can do with your 360.

Go to the music tab and it shows you available videos and artists. Go to movies and it shows youu the available movies. Go to games and it will show you new games you can try. I don't see the problem. I go to a site like Gametrilers or VGChartz to see what's new--but when it's right there on my Dash, it's a bad thing?

All in all, I give it a positive. Gotta give Netflix, Twitter, and some of the others a shot, soon. Also, I played on my game room 360 instead of my living room 360 w/Kinect so, aside from a few awesome minutes on Tuesday, I can't comment on how well Kinect works just yet (Though 1st impression is VERY positive).

That's all I got for now.

if my game was on the harddrive it would always play from the hard drive and not the disk, when i clicked to play it.  i never had to go searching for an option to get it to do that.

This. It took me way longer than it should have to realize this too. I would always go to Games, select it, then select play from hdd....what a noob.

Hate it I HATE IT

damn really?  Because previously, I watched the xbox 101 video of this that said opposite.  If the little icon that looked like a CD appeared, it was to be played from the cd, not hdd.  And when the little flash drive/hdd looking icon appeared, ie: when you went to games, it would play from the hdd if you had it installed.  how did you find out it always played from the hdd if you installed it?  just wondering since the xbox 101 vid said opposite

Just the amount of noise coming from the box, try it yourself and see.

I'm not impressed. It looks nice when you first start it up but I don't find it very functional.

I tried Bing search, "new demos", "demos", "new games" Nothing relevant came up. Today it's not working at all, it's just showing the busy icon and nothing comes up.

The UI feels very limited. Why are there only 2 rows, why not a grid of icons that expands downwards, like a folder with thumbnails that I can customize. Sorry, I'm not a fan of this limited metro UI design.
It takes way too many button presses to get to the list with new demos only to be greeted by 90% kinect only stuff, in the same long horizontal list.
Browsing content is almost as unwieldy as the psn store now. Although that at least has a grid for a quick overlook.

My other pet peeves also still haven't been improved. Only jpg image support, no gif or bmp or any other lossless formats. The picture viewer still doesn't zoom or even show full 1080p pictures correctly. My background picture is still white from half way down.

Video controls and formats have also not been improved. The Zune video marketplace still launches a separate app, I hoped that that would be integrated. And I don't know if this has anything to do with the update, but black levels from the zune video marketplace are screwed up making all the previews look washed out. It looks like it's reducing the hdmi reference levels twice, squeezing the color range to 32-215 instead of 16-240.