New Xbox 360 Dashboard Launches Today, App Schedule Revealed

Microsoft are finally introducing the new Xbox 360 dashboard to the world today, and Kinect users will finally have a fully integrated experience with nearly every screen allowing full voice and gesture navigation.

Of course this dashboard isn't just bringing a new look, it is introducing the new TV and Media applications, with over 40 coming worldwide over the next few months. Today's launch will see 10 new apps available to certain regions, and you can check out the full list of upcoming applications and their region availability below:

Dec. 6:
• EPIX. United States
• ESPN on Xbox LIVE. United States
• Hulu. Japan
• Hulu Plus. United States
• LOVEFiLM. United Kingdom
• Netflix. Canada, United States
• Premium Play by (MediaSet). Italy
• Sky Go (SkyDE). Austria, Germany
• Telefónica España – Movistar Imagenio. Spain
• TODAY (MSNBC). United States

Later in December:
• 4 on Demand (C4). United Kingdom
• ABC iView (Australian Broadcasting Corp.). Australia
• AlloCiné. France
• Filmstarts. Germany
• Sensacine. Spain
• Screenrush. United Kingdom
• Astral Media’s Disney XD (Astral Media). Canada
• blinkbox (Blinkbox). United Kingdom
• Crackle (Sony Pictures). Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, United States
• Dailymotion. Available in 32 countries globally
• Demand 5 (Five). United Kingdom
• DIGI+ (CANAL+). Spain
• GolTV (Mediapro). Spain
• iHeartRadio (Clear Channel). United States
• Mediathek/ZDF (ZDF). Germany
• MSN. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, United Kingdom
• MSNBC.com. United States
• MUZU.TV. Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom
• ninemsn. Australia
• Real Sports (Maple Leaf Sports). Canada
• Rogers On Demand Online (Rogers Media). Canada
• SBS ON DEMAND. Australia
• TMZ (Warner Bros.). Canada, United States
• TVE (RTVE.es). Spain
• UFC on Xbox LIVE (UFC). Canada, United States
• Verizon FiOS TV. United States
• VEVO. Canada, Ireland, United Kingdom, United States
• Vudu (Wal-Mart). United States
• YouTube. Available in 24 countries globally

Early 2012:
• Antena 3 (Antena 3 de Televisión). Spain
• BBC (BBC). United Kingdom
• CinemaNow (Best Buy). United States
• HBO GO (HBO). United States
• MLB.TV (MLB Advanced Media). Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States
• Telenovelas/Sports (Televisa). Brazil, Chile, Colombia, France, Italy, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom
• Xfinity On Demand (Comcast). United States

All of the new apps, and updates to current apps such as Netflix, will be fully compatible with Kinect. Best of all they will be integrated with the dashboard's new Bing search, allowing users to search for media throughout all of Xbox 360's available applications and marketplaces using voice.

Voice itself will no longer be restricted to a paltry few regions, with a total of 13 different countries having access to voice control with the new update, including Australia and New Zealand.

And Windows Phone 7 owners will have access to the new companion app, which will let users control their Xbox with their phone as well as looks up complimentary data for the media streaming on their Xbox 360, such as information about a cast member in a movie.

The update should be available around 3pm GMT (10am US Eastern) (Update: Major Nelson has announced that there will be a slight delay). Check out the video walkthrough below!

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New Xbox 360 Dashboard Launching December 6

If you're jealous of all those beta users with early access to the new Xbox 360 dashboard, you don't have much longer to wait. Microsoft have announced that the dashboard update will launch for all Xbox 360 users on December 6th.

The new dashboard gets rid of the Kinect Hub, creating one unified interface for both controller and Kinect. Unlike the current dashboard, users will be able to access virtually anything, from their games library to the marketplace, using gestures and voice control.

The update will also introduce the new media apps such as YouTube, BBC iPlayer and HBO GO, something even beta users don't yet have access to.

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Kinect For Windows SDK Update Released

The software development kit allowing developers to create Kinect applications for the PC using Microsoft's tools was released earlier this year, and Microsoft have kicked off a brand new website introducing the newest release of the SDK.

New features include:

• Faster and Improved Skeletal Tracking
With updates to the multi-core exemplar, Kinect for Windows is now 20% faster than it was in the last release. Also, the accuracy rate of skeletal tracking and joint recognition has been substantially improved. 

• Status Change Support
You can now plug and unplug your Kinect without losing work/productivity. 

• Improved Joint Tracking
Substantially improve the accuracy rate of joint recognition and tracking.

And it of course still comes with all of the documentation, raw sensor stream access, voice recognition and a whole host of features that help developers to get Kinect to do what they want it to do.

The commercial SDK, letting businesses and developers create software to work in and potentially revolutionize entire industries, is still scheduled for an early 2012 release.

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Kinect for Windows SDK Beta Available Now!

As expected, Microsoft have unveiled the Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit, allowing anyone to create software utilizing Kinect on their PC. The current SDK is a non-commercial beta, and can be download by anyone for free here. Check out the full details below!

The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a programming toolkit for application developers. It enables the academic and enthusiast communities easy access to the capabilities offered by the Microsoft Kinect device connected to computers running the Windows 7 operating system.

The Kinect for Windows SDK beta includes drivers, rich APIs for raw sensor streams and human motion tracking, installation documents, and resource materials. It provides Kinect capabilities to developers who build applications with C++, C#, or Visual Basic by using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

This SDK includes the following features:

• Raw sensor streams - Access to raw data streams from the depth sensor, color camera sensor, and four-element microphone array enables developers to build upon the low-level streams that are generated by the Kinect sensor.
• Skeletal tracking - The capability to track the skeleton image of one or two people moving within the Kinect field of view make it easy to create gesture-driven applications.
• Advanced audio capabilities - Audio processing capabilities include sophisticated acoustic noise suppression and echo cancellation, beam formation to identify the current sound source, and integration with the Windows speech recognition API.
• Sample code and documentation - The SDK includes more than 100 pages of technical documentation. In addition to built-in help files, the documentation includes detailed walkthroughs for most samples provided with the SDK.
• Easy installation - The SDK installs quickly, requires no complex configuration, and the complete installer size is less than 100 MB. Developers can get up and running in just a few minutes with a standard standalone Kinect sensor unit (widely available at retail outlets).

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