Red Ring O' Death

I am probably not the first person to write a post bitching about the red ring of death(RROD) and I certainly won’t be the last. I am currently on my second Xbox360. My first one, as those of you who where at Thanksgiving know, over heats if you try to play games on it.

My original 360 was a first generation Xbox and had all the problems that went along with that. I had some preliminary problems with overheating which I solved by placing it somewhere that had better air flow. That solved the problem for about a year. Unfortunately when it did get the RROD it was well out of warranty territory which sucked but is one of the risks of being on the cutting edge of console gaming.

When it finally died I went out and purchased a new one. This one had HDMI which my new TV could use and the new cooling system that is supposed to help with the RROD. I have had it for just over a year and it even survived the 18 hour Guitar Hero Marathon.

The new one was being used primarily as a movie machine. Since I don’t play games during school we used it to watch Netflix and other movies. It was during just such a time last week that it died. I was settling in to watch a kung-fu movie and do some homework when it got the RROD.

At first I was sure that it was just a bad connection. I check the AV cables and the power cable, nothing. I even shut it down for a while and let it cool down, just in case that is what caused the problem. When that didn’t help I realized that it was toast. I hopped onto my new laptop (thanks Harper) and cruised over to Xbox.com.

Luckily Microsoft has realized the error in their console building abilities and have extended the warranty covering the RROD to three years. This means that instead of having to pay $99 to get it fixed it is free including the shipping. Nice.

The downside to this is that now Sarah and I lack any way to play movies on our TV. I haven’t looked to hard at the WiiVideo hack, which might be a solution, and not having an Xbox kills the current love fest we were having with Netflix. Without the ability to stream movies to our TV what is the point of having Netflix. On top of that, how are we going to finish season three of Heros.

My experience thus far with Microsoft and repair has been similar to the experience that I had with Apple when Sarah’s Laptop got sad. The only advantage is that I didn’t have to talk to an actual person to get my Xbox taken care of. The ability to send your Xbox in for repairs without having to speak to a person is a nice touch.

Though it is all good now, this experience could change. I will keep updates coming as the process continues. I figure I should get the box soon and I will send off my Xbox.

Get well my little sick Xbox friend.