its a youtube video to garner attention and perhaps drive traffic to a website or forum, or earn props of some sort. Not sure I can understand their motivations.

BUT if I really wanted to fake a RROD on the new top of the line xbox, I could fake it in an afternoon with some supplies from the walgreens decoration department. The faceplate comes off easily--wont even harm the xbox.

I just thought of something too. He focuses the camera on just the system. Never pans up to show the television which would show that the console messing up the screen upon booting up.

What do you guys think about this 250 gig HDD? It's not MSFT, but is compatible with Xbox. Has anyone used one of these or similar? Also I wonder if I will be able to transfer all my data over to this new HDD since its not MSFT brand. This $100 price tag seems too good to be true


http://www.amazon.com/250GB-Hard-Dri.../dp/B002W3G2ZK

Too good to be true.

If it's not approved by Microsoft you are risking that they disable it in a future firmware release. That's if it's even recognized by your Xbox right now.

MS pretty much warned everyone about third party drives last month. Purchase at your own risk.

It is going to use the public hddss.bin that was taken from a MW2 360 HD. If MS ever decides to ban hard drives with that hddss.bin, then at a minimum, you won't be able to use the drive and at worst, your console will be banned.

From SD, 360 starter kit w/ 20GB hard drive, headset, and 3 months of Live Gold for $43.99

http://www.buy.com/prod/xbox-360-sta...211965314.html

Seems like a pretty good deal for anyone with just an Arcade unit

And pair it up with the other offer they have going on now, $10 off purchase:

http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthr...readid=1733687

would be $33.99 out the door

Holiday items for your avatar. http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/av...14052&sb=1&p=1

"server not found"

Sorry, fixed the link.

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/av...14052&sb=1&p=1

Thanks!

ugly sweaters? Seriously? Would anyone here buy an ugly sweater for your avatar?

That's part of the Christmas tradition...

The Noisemaker, Gingerbread Man and Dreidel join the Halloween basket as the rare avatar props that are more expensive than the real product they depict.

I caved and bought a Santa hat. I mean, how can you not buy a Santa hat? It was 80 points, any more than that and I would have scoffed as usual. The suit is sold separately, of course.

Still haven't got a hard drive, but may be soon.

Is $50 for a 120gb a good deal? I'll be buying it in person, so hopefully I don't have to worry about being scammed.

it is a good deal, but I'd be skeptical. There are 3rd party or refurbished hard drives out there.

Yeah, I specifically asked if it's an official Xbox hard drive. The answer was yes. Should I be able to tell the difference between a MS and 3rd party hd quite easily? What's the deal with the refurbished hds?

I'm not sure it is that easy to tell. I thought they had a method of opening the official HDD casing and putting in a certain brand of laptop drive. I suppose the casing would be obviously opened? I know typically they were putting in much large drives versus replacing a 20 gig with a 120 gig (which could just be purchased).

will they let you try to log on live with the new drive--thats pretty much the only way to tell if its a legit drive. Though i supposed it could take a day or two for MS to detect the third party drive using live.

Are they having you meet them at your bank so they can witness you withdraw the money from your account? That is another important safety measure.

The only sure way to tell if it is fake would be if you have a transfer cable, it would be possible to hook it up to your computer, extract the hddss.bin file, then make sure it is different from the publically-available hddss.bin. The steps to do that, though, are similar to the steps to make an unofficial drive, so they can't be given here.

Some tips to keep you safer, but not 100% safe:

The drive should say "120GB HDD" on it. Lots of fake ones don't. It should look like this:



(the casing can be black or gray, depending on whether it was taken from an Elite or from a separate kit)

On the back, it should have the shiny official "do not remove this sticker or it voids your warranty" sticker.

And as further warning, I got an unofficial drive that matched all those qualifications. It wasn't until I tried to install an original Xbox game that I discovered it wasn't legit. The deal on ebay was in fact too good to be true.

However, I got a transfer cable, was able to fix the problem, and so far for a year, haven't had any trouble playing on Live or anything. So, knock on wood, I remain in the clear.

Thanks for all the help guys! Still waiting to hear back from the guy.

Sort of Xbox related:

Here's a really random question, but does anybody remember ordering MS Points for a really good deal off ebay last december and the points showing up in a Zappos box?

Because I did that.

And I just tried to order some shoes from Zappos and they told me my household was banned because the guy from whom I purchased the points had ordered them from Zappos, sent to my house, and then claimed they were never delivered and did a chargeback.

So, if anybody ordered from vern0090km8 you're f'd at zappos.

Any ideas how to get around this?

Deliver it to a neighbor?