I just had the most amazing gaming experience that I've had since I played Halo with Bluerunner for the first time in 2001.

I downloaded and installed my Win10 upgrade this evening. It was a 2.5G update and took about 30 min on 20M download cable internet connection. After the download, it took about an hour to run the setup, which is almost entirely automatic. There are only 2, maybe 3 questions for setup. When it was done my laptop was almost identical to before I started (had Win7). The only visual diff was the new taskbar. Everything worked, except my touchpad setting were off. I reset them no problem, but after I restarted later, they reverted back to default. I really like the new OS so far.

Now to the good part, but first my tech setup.

1 Xbone wired to Netgear b/g router. 1 HP g series plain ass laptop (this thing was 350 bones purchased 2-3 years ago) with no aftermarket upgrades connected WIRELESSLY to network. 1 Xbone wireless controller. 1 full micro usb cable (i say full because this one has power and data, some only power). 1 xbone stereo adapter ($25). 1 set of cheap ass maxwell earbuds w mic from Walmart (10$) No tv connected to my XBone. 1 awesome gaming experience PRICELESS.

I got to Xbox support to see how all this works. Its simple. Start Xbox app on Win10 (its already installed by default). Start Xbone, and if you haven't changed the defaults, streaming is already setup.

Look familiar.

Down on the bottom left you'll see connect (mine says connected). It'll search for the bone and if your options are setup for streaming on the console, it'll show the console name.

Once you are connect it looks like this

Now to play a game you click stream and suddenly on your mutha flippin cheap ass laptop screen is your xbone home screen. To connect a controller simply hook the usb cable to the controller, no downloading driver. The file is already there. It doesn't even run a setup. You can have the controller connected before you stream too.

First experience was flawless. There are three connection qualities. Mine defaulted to medium but I didn't even know it because it played as smooth as on the xbone. There was a hint of delay in the controls, and I mean like less than you can even really feel. I may even be imagining it. I loaded up MCC and chose the Pillar of Autumn. It played without a hitch, burp, or bump. Sound through my cheap headset is great, controller vibrates. Easily 50-60fps. I am truly amazed at what MS has accomplished here.

Now the glitches. I'm having an issue exiting the stream and coming back to it. It loads the audio and dims the screen out, but no video even though I can here the controller moving through the tiles. I'm having to restart my laptop to reconnect. Also when it loads the first time, the home screen video is garbled, but if I move the controller to left or right and page over, it will bring up the xbone home screen clearly. The first bug will probably be fixed with a patch, the second one may be due to my older router.

I'm in love :) I'll report back with more info, but right now I gotta play some more Halo.

I have a desktop connected to a wireless N router about 15 feet away. It's got some kind of ATI card in it and it's mid-range for 2012.

Anyway, mine defaulted to high quality. Stuttery. Moved it to low. Looked like I was playing on the 360. Still stuttery, but I finished a daily heroic. There is a built in DVR function to the application where you can record up to 2 hours of footage. This is good for lets players, I think.

Except that didn't work either. Couldn't get a single video clip to record.

I'll try again with Halo, I guess.

It's still not a replacement for Theater mode, but it's a start.

I was able to get it to work. Note that it isn't as simple as playing a video file for your computer. Running my tablet, I was not able to do it very well, but on my desktop at 3.6 GHz it did fine. Desktop on power saver mode was still stuttery. Furthermore, you can't really have much else running on your computer, probably unless it's some kind of insane power computer with a billion cores, which honestly is something I imagine a lot of us here have.

On my computer, I don't have an SSD or anything, I only have 4 GB of RAM, and a mid range AMD processor from 2013. So, while I was normally able to play on high to medium bandwidth settings on Halo, though for some reason not Destiny, if I wanted to record, I had to put it down to low. I got audio and visual hiccups. I put these in the beginning of the video.

Now, the lag. Obviously there is going to be lag. Playing normal Halo I wasn't too hampered, but I did miss a guy at point blank a few times due to overcorrecting. I decided to give it a test to really determine if it was as good as it could be. I needed something that would be unforgiving and objective in terms of controller lag.

I did The Maw run.

Now, I'm not the best speedrunner, but I'm not awful. Visiting Rex and the food nipple grunt on Halo I used to be able to still break 2:20 on easy on the first game, iirc.

When playing, I didn't use all the speedrunning techniques, because there wasn't discernible lag per se, but I felt it in my subconscious. I wasn't as confident as I normally am playing The Maw. I waited a few extra seconds for the exhaust couplings, I didn't even attempt to rocket the beginning warthog for some extra seconds, and a few lines that require fine warthog control, I just knew I couldn't do. Therefore I went the easy route.

While it's been probably 10 years since I have done this run with any degree of regularity, I did prove to my friend I could do it on Legendary with 1:30 left when Halo Anniversary came out, so my instincts aren't entirely lost. And still, in the video, you can see I made a lot of rookie mistakes. These are due to overcompensation.

On the second run, getting used to the lag, I was able to do the 360 jump (5:30) and smoothly get into (4:46) the food nipple shortcut, but the rest of it was still full of issues.

So, here's what's in the video.

Beginning: problems with running on high/medium while computer's doing other stuff.
Middle: me getting an achievable, plus screwing up on the Rex 360.
End: my second Maw run, with an ending time of 1:42.

Bonus: the achievables are in German.

This is odd. I can't play any of your youtube videos on your account. I can go to any other video for other users and it works fine?

Okay, so not as glorious the 2nd and 3rd try, but still pretty good. I ran Halo on Halo CE. I first started with the streaming set to High Quality while wireless, and it wasn't working. Very pixelated with lots of stuttering. Bumped down to Medium and it was much better, rarely stuttered, but the picture became very grainy during fast moving sequences (which is often). Moved to low and had no stutter issues, but video quality really suffers. It looks alot more like old school 1st gen Xbox quality on a small SD tv, but just a tad bit blurry. It's very playable though and the controls still react crisply. I don't feel like I'm ever missing shots or jumps because of a lag issue, only because I suck.

I also ran a little Destiny on the medium quality setting. Went to the tower and then patrolled venus. Video quality is meh. Colors don't seem to be as good and I can really tell the frame rate difference. It also feels like the controls are slower, but not delayed. It is as if my sensitivity setting was bumped down to 1 or 2. I went through a few loading zones with no issues and interacted normally with random guardians. Not perfect, but still much better than what I was expecting.

I am still having the same issue with dropping the stream and then coming back to dimmed out screen with audio but no video. So far the only way to remedy this is to restart the laptop. Also if I unplug the headphones during play, I can't restablish audio on the buds, but I can get the audio through my speakers.

All in all this is a pretty great feature that works very well for launch day availability. I would highly recommend it if you need the mobility. You are probably not going to be doing any hardcore PvP stuff, but just simple campaign gaming is easily available and just a fun as a normal setup. If you are on a budget, its a wonderful option that is easy to use with little to no additional cost to you, assuming you have most of the basic items from my initial review.

Red Robber Rating 7.5/10*

*I expect this to improve as updates/patches increase the quality of the service.

I just watched it on an incognito tab, so it's not secretly private or anything.

This is odd. I can't play any of your youtube videos on your account. I can go to any other video for other users and it works fine?

I search every video on his account and couldn't find any of him eating a sock. Clearly something is wrong.

This is odd. Youtube doesn't work at all on Microsoft Edge browser. So far you are the only user I can't see videos from on Chrome. Dunno.

Edit: Ok now some work, some don't. Also found another rando user that doesn't. WTF?

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This is odd. Youtube doesn't work at all on Microsoft Edge browser. So far you are the only user I can't see videos from on Chrome. Dunno.

Edit: Ok now some work, some don't. Also found another rando user that doesn't. WTF?

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that MS Edges doesn't support the Flash plug-in, right? Which means it'll have to be running in a HTML5 video player - which uses a different format to flash. YouTube doesn't always have a copy of every video, in every format, in every point of presence. Particularly, smaller creators will have poorer presence.

Been searching for help solutions. It seems some folks have been having some video playback issues after the new install. No solution that I've found. Some have also noticed the netflix app doesn't work. I'm also having an issue there too. I've tried to pause popup/adblockers, shut off firewall, and look for video settings I can adjust. No luck so far.

I have a feeling this may end up just being a early release bug that will need to be patched or a driver issue that may have to come from one of my component manufacturers.

Win10 is pretty flaky at the moment.

Today I lost the use of my start menu and there were no context menus when right clicking on any part of the shell.

I tried restarting several times. I tried creating a new account but login failed with a message about a broken start menu button and no Cortana.

The shell then died when I plugged in a USB stick and clicked on it in Windows Explorer. The desktop went black and there was no way out except a hard power down.

On restart the desktop was black and there was noting on the taskbar except a non-functional start menu button, the arrow that should reveal hidden notifications (but didn't) and the new notification msg icon. Nothing worked, there was just a wait cursor over the taskbar.

I gave up in disgust.

I went out and when I came back I restarted Windows (I'm the eternal optimist). I had a desktop background and in the course of ten minutes the lost features came back to life. Nothing I did fixed it and I don't know how long things will remain fixed.

So I'd hold off unless you don't need to use your computer and quite like angst.

The Edge browser is pretty good. The OS is faster than 8. It's better than 8. It makes more sense than 8. I think it's a huge upgrade over Windows 7 as well. Best OS I've used from Microsoft since XP, IMO. Entirely stable.

I have been seeing a few reports like yours with issues though that clear after some restarts. Sometimes, Windows is a mystery to me. The more I get into complex tech stuff, the more I realize turning it off then on again is the single best thing you can do. I love turning it off then on again.

I'm waiting until we figure out all its quirks or its quirks get patched. They don't even need to be patched, really, just figured out how to trigger them is enough for me.

The OS is faster than 8. It's better than 8. It makes more sense than 8. I think it's a huge upgrade over Windows 7 as well.

Just curious about this. I like Win7 a lot and have 8.1 on my laptop that I'm pretty happy with. What about it makes more sense? And you think it really is faster?

You are correct. I have read some help articles since I have had some minor issues, and I do see there are problems cropping up. Normally I would have waited but I really wanted to thy the xbox gaming feature. It is great for campaign/single player stuff. Not reliable enough for multiplayer. Strangely it runs better on wifi than on a wired connection. I cannot explain this at all.

Still the only issues I've run into so far are that some video formats don't play, most noticable MP4. However I have some of my clips I can view in the Xbox app, but some of them I can't.

I also don't like that it will always auto install updates without even notification. I'd like to know what they are fixing before it is installed so that I can see if it specific to my issues.

Mine has been very reliable other than than. The only other issue I'm having is that it still won't load my touchpad settings after restart. I've worked around this by 1. just letting it sleep rather than full off and 2. creating a profile with all the settings I need that I can simply load with one click.

For one, the start menu exists, so that's better than 8. The control panel has sensible options that are easy to use before you go into classic control panel, which has been confusing since Windows 7. Window stacking is more responsive. You hover and then click much quicker than on the previous ones. It also makes more sense starting up a new version of an already open window from the taskbar.

Built in features are simple to use on Windows 10, and they appear to have full power, as opposed to Windows 8, where it was absolutely torture trying to do anything but the most rudimentary of settings changes. Window screen splitting works flawlessly.

The search function is great. For example, if I want to change my power settings, I hit Win, then type "power settings" and that submenu of the control panel pops up, and it's easy to navigate. Not fiddly like Windows 7. It's also easier to navigate with a keyboard.

Using a tablet, as I often do, I am using the Windows 8 Metro applications. Using the desktop software is very difficult on a Windows tablet, and because the Metro applications are inherently crippled, sometimes you're forced into the desktop applications. In Windows 10, everything works with both normal mouse interface and touch interface.

Speaking of tablets, I noticed something. I changed my desktop background on my desktop and it changed it on my tablet. When I went on DBO on my PC for the first time ever, it already had my username and password loaded. My history appears to be shared between Windows 8 Internet Explorer and Edge in Windows 10. This kind of stuff was my primary motivation to use Chrome on my computers. That and the Chromebooks. Now, I don't need to.

If Windows 10 isn't faster, and it's possible it's not, it creates the impression it is. I remember someone who does UI for Bungie saying in a Halo 2 weekly update that getting the UI animations correct was a huge deal. It has to have a nice flourish, but not stutter, and it has to complete very quickly. If Windows 10 is slower, it covers it by extremely satisfying split second animations upon hover and selection. Any lag I am getting I perceive to be built in timing in the OS.

Furthermore, when I load web applications like the online version of Word or Google Docs, it loads quicker in Edge. This makes sense, because the engine that thing uses is stupid fast. When I load actual software suites, I don't notice much of a difference.

I haven't noticed any speed-ups but that could be because it has issues on my machine. Hopefully things will improve in time.

One thing I'd like to see in Windows would be to replace the folder picker common control with a 'file open' window that doesn't display files (just folders).

A few iterations back they replaced the custom file open dialog with what is essentially the Windows Explorer window with a file name editbox at the bottom and an OK and Cancel button.

I had wanted that for years. maybe one day the folder picker will get the same treatment.

The OS is faster than 8. It's better than 8. It makes more sense than 8. I think it's a huge upgrade over Windows 7 as well.

Just curious about this. I like Win7 a lot and have 8.1 on my laptop that I'm pretty happy with. What about it makes more sense? And you think it really is faster?

I don't know if the normal operations, such as opening programs and apps, are any faster. I do feel like starting and shutdown are quicker. I also like the new pin login. It's really no different than a password, but when you type it in correctly is just automatically logs in. No need to hit the enter button. That is a really trivial thing though.

The new cortana and search feature is nice to use. You can either just ask her to find something, or type it in. It searches your laptop and the web using bing. I haven't checked to see if I can get her to swap to google.

Still the only issues I've run into so far are that some video formats don't play, most noticable MP4. However I have some of my clips I can view in the Xbox app, but some of them I can't.

This may be related to your youtube problems, since most of the videos are encoded in MP4. I've been able to not only watch MP4, H.264 MP4, DivX AVI, and whatever they use in MKV files, but I've encoded a few using Windows Movie Maker.

Your issues give me pause about suggesting an upgrade to a novice user of PCs. I bet your issues could be fixed with a backup, reformat, reinstall, but that shouldn't be required.

I also don't like that it will always auto install updates without even notification. I'd like to know what they are fixing before it is installed so that I can see if it specific to my issues.

You can press defer upgrades and set it to ask you before installing updates. That should mostly fix your problems.

I haven't checked to see if I can get her to swap to google.

Cortona gets jealous easily.

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My shit is getting ninja fixed. Found out how to check muh updates. Only thing today was a windows defender definition. But not all my browsers are playing videos including the original one you posted in my thread about your Xbox stream experience on the maw. XboxDvr.com now works too. Movie Maker still inop though. Checking into codecs.

So far my experience with Win 10 looks a lot like this:

Outlaw.

i cannot open the xbox app, it says i need to update it in the windows store. The windows store will not open. The splash screen comes up for a millisecond, then disappears. I tried running wsreset.exe from an elevated command prompt, and it says it can't restart it b/c it's not running. Oh, and cortana cannot access my laptop microphone (3 year old dell inspiron laptop)

so i'm not sure what is going on. everything else seems to work great.