2nd Xbox in the same house

[ckessel]

So, our Xbox is used pretty heavily at this point by the kids. Not just games, but heavily with Netflix as well. Even when they aren't using it, the TV attached to it is in use.

I've got games I want to play though and I'm considering just getting a 2nd Xbox. The problem is, how does DLC stuff transfer? Particularly, Rock Band songs. If I've bought a song on one XBox, can I also get transfer it to my 2nd box? Can I log into both with the same XBox live id at the same time?

[Rock8man]

You cannot log in to both boxes with the same profile. One profile can only be logged in at one spot. So if you're using one to watch Netflix, you can't use the same profile to play games on the other profile.

I have 3 boxes in the house, one in the basement, one in the living room, one in the computer room. Depending on circumstances at various points of the year, one gets much heavier use than others. But only one gets used at a time, unless my brother comes with his profile.

I use a memory card to transfer my profile easily one place to another. You can also use a USB stick if you have a newer Xbox, since the new ones don't support the old memory cards anymore. That's the easiest way. Especially if you've played more than a hundred games.

DLC: Like with anything you buy on your Xbox, the license is transferred to two things: 1) Your profile, 2) The Xbox you bought it on.

What that means is that for the Xbox you bought it on, anyone can log in with any profile and use that content. So if you bought Battlefield 1943 on your living room Xbox, anyone can log into that Xbox and play that game. But it's also tied to your profile, so if you log into your other Xbox and are online, then you can also play Battlefield 1943 on any Xbox as long as you're logged in. If you lose your internet connection on that box, then you can't play it. Also to any profile other than yours that copy of Battlefield 1943 will look like a trial version.

So the trick is to only buy content on the box where you're likely to have other profiles playing the content. So if you have kids with their own accounts who want to play certain games in the living room, always buy content in the living room Xbox. And then make sure your other Xbox can always be online when you use it, so that you can also use that box to access the same content.

[ckessel]

Hmm. Well, I'm most likely to use the 2nd XBox if the first one is actively in used and logged in, so it sounds like that won't work very well. Well, I suppose I could get a 2nd XBox live Silver ID since I don't think I need Gold access just to buy DLC and I don't personally play multiplayer games or use Netflix on the XBox.

I suppose, a decent chunk of the time, it's the TV and not the Xbox in use, so if I could route it's video to my PC screen in the other room...ah, no, that won't work. The controllers would be too far from the XBox anyway to work and I doubt the HDMI signal could hold up over that distance.

So, sounds like I'm mostly hosed. There's only one XBox Live Gold account, mine, that we all use for Netflix and multiplayer games. If I get a 2nd XBox, I'd need to use a different ID in which case I'd lose all the DLC that's been bought with the primary ID. Just standard single player stuff with no DLC, I'd be fine. My main purpose at this instant is using it for Rockband on either system, but that has tons of DLC songs which, if I'm understanding things correctly, wouldn't work since I couldn't be logged into the old XBox (for, say, Netflix) and my new XBox (for Rockband) at the same time.

[Lizard_King]

You could be, you would just have to clone the tag and have one offline while it's being used simultaneously. I did it back in the day with this (http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-360-XPLODER-Cheats-System-Update/dp/B002ZNJ8QW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1294107458&sr=1-1) thing, and it ended up being pretty workable with the cheapest memory card (or I guess nowadays thumb drive) available since you want the cloned partition to be small. If they both log in simultaneously by accident, the second one just logs you out.

You basically connect the card/usb stick to your computer, clone it with the software, and then you have two identical copies of your gamertag.

It's how I handled being booted to 360 number 2 in times of great stress, like a new Mass Effect DLC or what have you. In fact, in those cases on the "Original" xbox I purchased it on, my wife would have no problem using the dlc with her gamertag (despite it being bought on my gamertag) while I did the same on my gamertag on xbox number 2, and both were connected to XBL.

All of that is way more complicated to explain than to actually do, and I haven't needed it in a while so there may have been something I missed. May be worth considering (http://www.xploder.net/), though I haven't used any of the cheat stuff so I can't vouch for that.

[slantz]

You might want to look at the family memberships. You get 4 gold accounts for less than the price of 2 full gold accounts. I think they also let the master account set restrictions for the lesser accounts -- great for parents with kids.

The DLC is still locked to the purchasing xbox OR the purchasing account, but if you had this family membership it honestly doesn't sound like it'd be as limiting for you as you may think.

For Netflix, just have someone log into their own gold account to watch on any TV. And you get to use any DLC you've bought as long as you're logged in, no matter where it is. So that scenario seems covered, regardless of who's logged in where.

For DLC, buy it on the most commonly used box. When you go to the other room, take your profile with you. The DLC can be used on both xboxes, even at the same time, under that scenario. I've done a similar arrangement to play full-screen Serious Sam with my wife in different rooms on our own Xboxes. She plays in the front room where I buy all the DLC and XBLA games, and I go into the other room where I can play the game on my profile.

The only scenario not supported is when someone other than you wants to play DLC or an XBLA game on the 'secondary' xbox. And yeah, that's unfortunate, but it seems like something you could probably work around with all other scenarios being covered.

[ckessel]

For DLC, buy it on the most commonly used box. When you go to the other room, take your profile with you. The DLC can be used on both xboxes, even at the same time, under that scenario.
Presumably you redownload the DLC on the 2nd xbox after logging in with the profile you took with you? I wouldn't think all the DLC (particularly hundreds of RB songs) would fit on a thumb drive. Well, maybe a biggish thumb drive.

[slantz]

Presumably you redownload the DLC on the 2nd xbox after logging in with the profile you took with you? I wouldn't think all the DLC (particularly hundreds of RB songs) would fit on a thumb drive. Well, maybe a biggish thumb drive.
Yeah, you can either re-download it while logged in, or put it on the thumb drive. I think the xbox will only support up to 16 GB on a thumb drive (even if it can hold more), but I think all you'd have to do is copy your stuff over once each.

Peering behind the curtain a bit, all DLC can actually be ported around (and in some cases, even downlaoded) regardless of ownership. That's because the DLC's DRM token is verified at runtime to see if either the xbox or account has permissions to run it. In the case of XBLA games, for example, the game just defaults to trial mode if the conditions aren't met. In the case of Rock Band songs, presumably it just won't load it if the conditions aren't met.

The only potentially dangerous caveat I can think of is that I recall some weirdness around Rock Band DLC DRM where it had some exception to the normal rules. But assuming I'm not making this up, I think it may have pertained to the DRM transfer tool, which shouldn't be a factor in all this. Still though, might want to do a bit of research to make sure there's nothing funky about Rock Band DLC DRM across machines.

[rhinohelix]

Much like LK, I have a "family" account we keep on the Xbox in the living room for things like Rock Band and party games and I have my own in my office. I got mine first as a birthday present. When there was enough stuff that my son/family wanted to play, we got another specifically for Netflix/Rock Band/etc. There hasn't been a case yet where I wanted something DLC for both Xboxes.

[Dave Weinstein]

I'm using PlayOn as the streaming service for the second (actually original) Xbox.

The machine hosting PlayOn is more than capable of doing other things and streaming, but it really doesn't need to worry about it because if one of the Xboxes is running, it's probably idle anyway.

[Skipper]

Good luck with this, the best advice already given above is to make your core gaming account portable, via either a portable drive or USB stick. As it stands though, there will be times when you want Netflix or game time on the other device at the same time, and that's when you'll need your second XBL ID.

I love my Xbox's but I cannot stand their method of DRM and the prevention of simultaneous use.

[slantz]

I love my Xbox's but I cannot stand their method of DRM and the prevention of simultaneous use.
I don't understand. You can simultaniously use it in different places -- one on the xbox you bought it on, and one where the buying account is logged in.

What exactly is it you object to? Not being able to spread paid items to the wind and have them work everywhere at any time in parallel? Or not being able to log in with the same account in multiple locations?

Because I think most people would recognize that the limitations around both of those things are pretty reasonable... Try dealing with the Wii or DS, for example, where you can't move anything around at all, period. If your machine breaks, you have to send your old and new hardware to Nintendo and hope they feel like transferring your DRM. Now *that's* unreasonable.

[Rock8man]

It is true that it is much better than Nintendo's system Slantz, but Sony's system is even more lenient than Microsoft's. It's just like Microsoft's except you can have up to 3 or 4 different PS3s on which the content is DRM free.

But I believe that even on Sony's system you can't log in with one account simultaneously on two systems. I'm not sure how one would get around that. Again, Sony's solution is a good one in that they don't require a gold account in order to access Netflix, so that's one less reason for someone to want to log in at two places at once.