(And once again we welcome the dawning of a new era... er, QuickPeek issue!)

Game launches, release updates, 10-year plans, hacks, attacks, crackdowns, bomb disposal robots, inter-company business drama, insanely early April Fools' pranks, console-moving games and... magic regenerating powder? All that and more in QuickPeek 40! Let's get it on!

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...

Only a few more days before the the fall update for the Xbox 360 Dashboard. One of the highlights that the update offers is support for Mpeg-4 formats, but wasn't really discussed in detail. But now more info has been released about the new video playback capabilities of the Xbox 360; find out more in the full article.

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.

Just when we thought that Microsoft probably forgot all about the Xbox 360 gamers clamoring for DivX support in their systems, we hear a very promising statement from Kevin Hell himself, the Acting Chief Executive Officer for DivX. While his delivery of the statement made it sound as if it wasn't something that should be mentioned, just reading those words already gives us that warm, fuzzy feeling of hope that someday, we will get to play our favorite videos in the Xbox 360.

In an interview at Davis Freeberg's Digital Connection, DivX CEO Jordan Greenhall talked about the progress of DivX as a company, its history, and what it's plans for the future are. Since we're a gaming blog we'll focus on the pieces of information pertaining to the relationship Between DivX and the next-generation consoles.

This bit from the interview actually follows the part where Greenhall got questioned about the Wii, and the DivX platform making its way to the Nintendo baby. We're posting this first, just so that all the consoles get some coverage, and more importantly, so that you get a decent picture of the situation that DivX is in when it comes to the consoles.

As far as the console strategy goes do you think that if Microsoft were to license DivX for the Xbox 360 that Sony would be under a lot of pressure to license the codec as well or do you see an opportunity where Microsoft could differentiate themselves there?

The pressure would certainly be on and then it’s a matter of the politics of each organization. I would argue that on a pure market competitive basis, if Microsoft stepped up and put DivX on the Xbox, they would have a significant competitive advantage and the onus would be on to reduce that advantage by licensing DivX as well, but that doesn’t imply however the Sony would have the forethought to do it.

Here's the thing, during the "ooh-this-is-hot" days of P2P, a lot of people's so-precious-it-is-best-viewed-in-private videos were in DivX format. Now if you've still got that huge "collection" with you and you somehow want it viewable using you're next gen console, you'd be wishing that your Wii, PS3 or your Xbox 360 could run those files right?

Come on, as the song goes, people who use the Internet for self-gratification is in the thousands, and a lot of those people play with their consoles, don't tell me you do not see the monetary opportunity there. So what has DivX been doing about this?

Now that you know the issue, here's the rest of what Greenhall said about DivX and consoles.

Get the rest of the article after the Jump!

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...

One thing Xbox 360 gamers might notice about their consoles is the inability to play or stream certain files through it. Specifically, there doesn't seem to be a legitimate way for you to stream DivX, Inc.">DivX video from your PC to your 360. While there's probably at least one obvious reason why the movement for DivX on the 360 is taking a while (*coughWindowsMediacough*), it doesn't stop people from making their voices heard.

That's why now would be a good time to make YOUR voice heard. It seems that people have been clamoring for DivX format support so much that they've made an online petition. Now, this petition has been up for a long time, but until Microsoft does something can see on Xbox 360s, instead of simply talking about it, people will still be plugging this and nagging the console maker for this one particular upgrade.

Of course, a workaround's already been made by enterprising programmers, but it doesn't do much to stem the flow of the monopoly of one video format over another. Better to let the people decide by seeing which one suits their needs more than to place a stranglehold on competition. If you agree with that sentiment, then you may just want to sign on it and hope Microsoft takes notice.

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!