Our Day One Edition arrived right on schedule a week ago and was easily installed in the entertainment center. We were both impressed when the system was compatible with our audio receiver which is at least seven years old. So, it honestly started off on a very good foot.
The system was also compatible with our cable provider, Cox. The Xbox One now seamlessly controls the television, cable box, audio receiver, and the console. The various remotes that used to clutter the sofa and family room tables have all been consigned to a drawer.
The overall picture quality of our Plasma Samsung television has increased as well because the Xbox One is handling the 1080p upscale of television programs much smoother than the cable box ever did. The shimmering has disappeared from television programs, although it does return for poorly optimized games on the One (forthcoming review of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag will discuss this).
The biggest complaint either of us has is that the One sometimes can’t hear us We have tall ceilings, fifteen feet plus high, in a large room with stone flooring. Voices can easily got lost in our family room and it appears that the Kinect doesn’t quite know how to deal with large family rooms. The voice issue is most irritating when turning on the system, after that voice commands are rarely lost in our cavernous family room.
The Kinect is vastly improved over the Xbox 360 version. It has no trouble picking up hand motions in games like Dead Rising 3, even when comfortably lounging on the sofa in the reclining position a good ten feet plus from the television. True, facial recognition isn’t stellar when reclining but as soon as you sit up straight the Kinect has no issues with facial recognition. Having owned both versions of the Kinect, the new version is miles ahead of where the technology started several years ago.
The system is whisper quiet, runs cool (even in an enclosed media cabinet with other devices running), and seamlessly integrated into our lives. It was well worth the purchase price for the endless hours of entertainment it will provide in the years to come and personally, I don’t miss chasing remotes.
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