Zune Movie Download on XBox 360: Don’t!

Microsoft charges money for nothing then denies it’s their problem. What’s new?

Zune offers movies for download via the XBox 360 and it used to work fine for me about three years ago but recently I’ve tried to download two movies which have both failed spectacularly, resulting in me paying money for nothing.

Firstly the download speed is INCREDIBLY slow. I mean dial up modem slow: for a 7.3GB file it took 2.5 hours to get 16%. So basically you need to know about a day in advance when you’re going to want a movie. I tried:

• Testing my ISP broadband speed. It’s fine at 9.93 mbs.
• Turning off my router, leaving it for a while then turning it back on.
• Clearing the XBox 360 system cache
• Leaving the download running overnight.

But it still failed. Twice.

Once or twice I managed to get a partial download: The download just stops mid-way through for no apparent reason and says “Partial Download”. The official XBox answer is… wait for it: to delete and re-download it… WHAT?! Which usability guru thought that was a good idea? I’ve just spent a day downloading part of it, I don’t want to start again!

So anyway after I'd tried and failed to download the first movie I just thought “oh well, it’s probably just my ISP being busy on a Saturday night, but after the second failed as well, even after taking the steps above I’ve concluded it just doesn’t work.

I did a few searches on the subject and found many posts from people with the same problem. The result is always the same: Microsoft said it was nothing to do with them, pointing at the Zune team, who said it was the ISP, who blamed router setup. Anyone for a game of pass the buck? I decided life is too short.

Of course I could (spend hours on the) phone to XBox support (speaking to someone who just doesn’t care) but when I’ve contacted them in the past about other issues they have always utterly failed to give me anything but the most basic ‘help’. It always feels like they are just reading from their own website… which I’m capable of doing myself without it making me want to tear my own hair out and eat it.

In conclusion: DO NOT BUY FROM ZUNE MARKETPLACE ON XBOX 360.

[Update] It looks like Zune might get what it deserves by being wiped off the face of the earth, at least according to one Paul Thurrott in a post on 16th Feb 2011: ”About Zune. Yes, Microsoft is killing it”. I just hope he’s right.

Moving the Android VMs in Eclipse

How to move the Android virtual machines when using the eclipse development environment in Windows.

1. Setup a new Environment variable:
• Click start, right click on My Computer and select Properties
• Select “Advanced System Settings” on the left hand side
• Click “Environment Variables”
• Select New and Enter the name: ANDROID_SDK_HOME and value: [path to SDK home] e.g. K:\Users\[username]
2. Move the files to the new location e.g. K:\Users\[username]\.android
3. Open each .ini file (under avd\[VM name]\*.ini and edit the path to reflect the new path.
   

Eclipse and Roaming Profiles

How to setup the eclipse development platform to work with a Roaming Profile with Folder Redirects.

Eclipse is a great tool but in Windows by default it sets up a folder in your User folder called .eclipse to hold user specific data like plugins etc. This does not work well if you are using folder redirection for your User folder to a network share: the lag is too much and the program hangs a lot.

To change this behaviour you can use a switch on the command line:

1. Navigate to eclipse.exe in Windows Explorer (e.g. C:\Program Files\Eclipse), right click and use Create Shortcut on the content menu.
2. Select the shortcut and edit its Properties. In the Target field append the command line argument –configuration e.g.:
   eclipse.exe –configuration “K:\Users\[username]\.eclipse\[platform]\configuration”
   Ensure the “Start In” is set to the eclipse location e.g. “C:\Program Files\Eclipse\”

Note however I found this didn’t work when selecting ‘restart’ from the File menu from within the program it just reverted to the default setting, so instead I altered the configuration file at: C:\Program Files\Eclipse\configutaion\config.ini and added the line:
osgi.configuration.area=F:\Users/[username]/.eclipse/org.eclipse.platform_[platform number]/configuration
However, this has a few downsides:

• It is user specific i.e. if there is more than one user on the machine.
• It will need updating with the platform number on the next eclipse release.

So in truth I haven’t found the answer to this one yet. Anyone who has please leave a comment. For now I’m just stuck with the lag.

References:
Eclipse multi-user installs