Xbox360 Extender stops work when internet is down, WTF

[dynamphorous]

I live in the North Eastern US, and that huge snowstorm knocked out our power / internet etc for the weekend. We have a large generator which powers the whole house in cases like this, but of course that did us no good for the Internet. This however left me with a rather confounding and infuriating problem. Without the ability to log into Xbox Live, I couldn't watch any of my TV which had been recorded on any of my extenders. (Requires the "optional media update" to play any of my content, as its HD DirecTV receivers tied to a windows 7 MC recording in HD cant play otherwise). Does ANYONE know if there is any way around this infuriating problem? I feel like the ability to handle H.264 content requiring some optional update which wont work unless you can reach the internet is a MAJOR design flaw. There have been numerous updates to the Xboxes in the last few years, how is it that these have not added native support for these media types? We have the internet back, but it is not an acceptable situation to require internet access to watch non internet based TV, especially when the internet being down meant we had no internet for alternative entertainment. Ironically I had to use my PS3 to watch some content I had on my systems because of this. Strange design decisions were made to force me to use my PS3 instead of my Xbox. Very strange indeed.

[adam1991]

Your question actually takes me a different direction: how do you have multiple XBoxen all with XBox Live? Do you have a separate Live account for each one? Because that's the only way I can figure it out...and I refuse to pay $50/year PER extender for the privilege...

[dynamphorous]

I have Xbox live silver accounts. The media update does not require a gold account. I just have silver for the other 6 XBoxes in the house , and one gold one that I can use to play games online on my main TV. And the media center and satellite receivers all live in the basement with my servers and huge RAID storage system for recorded TV. But yes, I agree with you $50/year per extender would be EXTREMELY excessive just to watch TV on extenders. But this brings me to the most vexing element of this to me. you don't need to PAY them to use the "optional media update" but you do need an internet connection. Which I hate to be so blunt, but it just sounds flat out like bad planning and a stupid design. I'm an engineer and software developer, and I know that its not a technological limitation. Just nobody has bothered to incorporate this update into the Xbox software update, unless there is some clever workaround which I am hoping someone has come up with for next time we loose the internet (As if this exceedingly early storm is any indication winter this year is poised to be BRUTAL).

[adam1991]

My understanding is, this is a legal/accounting mechanism due to licensing of the codec. It all has to be accounted for. And the mechanism they use to control the costs is your user account. They can't just give out the codec; they're paying less by giving it out only to people who specifically want it.

You'd think they wouldn't require validation of that EVERY time you use the codec, but apparently they do. Me, I'd think they could go a couple of weeks before shutting it down and throwing up a nag screen...

[dynamphorous]

So did Sony pay for the codec to distribute it to everyone? Or is it just because they are already paying for the codec due to the BluRay playing capabilities of the system? All seems VERY weird to me. And even based on your point, if that were the case, you still specifically have to request to download it, so why wouldn't that ONE request to download it not qualify as your "licensing event?"... Lawyers are weird creatures in the way they create these opaque and nonsensical contracts.