QuickJump QuickPeek has already reached more than half a year old. We've had thirty three issues, not including the special editions that cropped up from time to time. Here's the latest, and probably the greatest - it's our token of appreciation from us to all of you, it's Valentine's after all. Judging from the title alone, you probably know what to expect: every single Comment of the Week, all compiled and neatly packed in one huge compendium! Ever wondered who won the first ever Comment of the Week? You'll be very much surprised indeed...

In case you haven't heard, the Xbox 360 Dashboard will be getting a major overhaul on December 4. So what's in store for your console? GameVideos gives us the details, including a Live demonstration (pun intended). Watch the video in the full article for all the details.

A lot of us here don't know jack squat about transcoding videos for various devices, especially if your a technophobe. Hey, what with a mother-load of codecs that are out there (DivX and XviD just to name two of the most often confused codecs), ripping the hair off your scalp seems like a better idea than going through the whole complicated process of transcoding.

So, for the newbies out there who are thinking of giving this whole gig one more chance, here's an informative benchmarking experiment done by Happy Beggar. If you're not a newbie though, you still might find this worth your while. They reviewed three of the most popular transcoding software out there that lets you bring content into your 360. Their test subjects:

• VLC and my optimized vlcwmv-v2.bat file (WMV8 VBR at 100% quality with 96kbps WMA)
• WinAvi 7.7 (WMV8 VBR at 100% quality with 64kbps WMA 9.2)
• Windows Media Encoder (WMV8 VBR at 100% quality with 96kbps WMA 9.2)

With these three programs, they used the same file to transcode a video, all with a time of one minute. The results are as follows:

• VLC: 3min 33sec of content (transcode rate of 85.1 fps)
• WinAvi: 1min 40sec of content (transcode rate of 39.96 fps)
• WME: 1min 27sec of content (transcode rate of 34.76 fps)

From that alone, you can see a considerable advantage with the VLC. It was able to complete three and a half minutes of video content with a higher frame rate as well. How about the quality of the converted material? Here's a snapshot of the original video:

To save bandwith, we've put the other pics behind the "Full Article" link. Click below to see the comparison in full detail. Who's the winner? You'll see after the jump...

Tim Buckley from CTRL+ALT+DEL sure is funny. So funny, in fact, that we had to "filter" the two other panels of the comic strip above. Anyways, yes, Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 does have its assets (literally, true, but let's take it academically here). Assets: anything of material value or usefulness.

So, what assets do this game have? For one thing, the graphics and physics are highly realistic. Team Ninja really maximized the potential of the game engine. There's a back-story to how the girls arrived in the island as well. And one more thing: despite popular opinion, there is actual gameplay involved. It's a game after all, and not just eye candy.

Below, we have proof of that. It's a gameplay video of the girls playing beach volleyball. There's also a short segment towards the end when the girls get wet after falling into the pool while playing tug-of-war. See? Gameplay!

*note: the vid requires an XviD codec, if you do not have this, you can just click on the "Read" link below to watch the steaming streaming version*

Download: [DOAX2 gameplay trailer]

Pre-order: [Dead or Alive Xtreme 2]

Now even though it's generally pointless to talk about rumors, more so when it's something completely unexpected, this was one of those for which we would actually pray for it to be true. Many of you might not know the fact that Microsoft regularly keeps seminars for the retailer staff so that they can get more familiar with their products. It's good for Microsoft because they can talk to the people who will be at the desk selling them Xbox 360s. And for the staff, it's great because they can get early news and tips from the folks at Microsoft.

And it is at one of these seminars that the guys over at Xlife.nl were able to get a huge scoop. Now our dutch is a bit rough, so we'll let the guys over at Xboxic handle the translation. This, by the way, is one of the Xlife employees narrating the incident.

"After the event I had a short talk with the host and asked him whether there’d ever be support for DivX and Xvid playback. Much to my surprise he started telling me that Microsoft is working hard to implement this and a firmware update is expected within 2 months allowing you to play DivX and Xvid directly on the 360."

Now there's three probabilities.

• The host simply spilled the beans on one of the biggest news in the last few months regarding the Xbox 360.
• He simply didn't know what he was talking about. Hey! It has happened before.
• Or Microsoft wanted to let the news spread virally through the Internet.

Now all three are very real probabilities. My guess is the second though. The fact that he was so up-front about it makes me feel that he either didn't know of Microsoft's strategy, or maybe, the guys over at Xlife simply misheard him. Either way, this is one of those things which we really hope were true. Until now, there has been no proper solution for viewing DivX or Xvid movies on the Xbox 360. I personally use Transcode 360, and even though it does its job properly, it doesn't work properly on Windows Vista. Lets just hope that Microsoft can do this. Stay tuned for the latest updates!