When I turned on my XBOX and I wasn’t automatically signed into Live I already had a feeling that I was banned, when I tried to manually connect my feeling was validated.  So as I sat there looking at the message, which I had made every effort to avoid through stealth checking, not playing games before release etc. , a feeling of calm came over me and a smile formed.  I can now play Modern Warefare 2 without fear of being banned!  Since then I’ve been able to play both L4D2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 without worrying about release dates or being banned.

The obvious downfall with my banned console is absolutely no Live game upadates or mulitplayer available.  This limitation, plus since my live account is prepaid, makes me want to buy a new XBOX 360.  Playing a game like Modern Warfare 2 online and owning your budies is too much fun to not buy a new xbox.  The plan is to keep the banned console for all predominantly single player games and buy the games I gotta play on Live for the non-modded console.

If you’ve recently been affected by the ban wave, what’s your plan?

Disney’s newest game is the first game that has the Wave 4 formatting.  This includes the newest NXE and its dash updates.

Here is what Kushan has to say about Wave 4 games…

2009/10/16

Looks like we were wrong in assuming that iXtreme v1.51 was fully compatible with 4th Wave PFI/Video. Turns out that only Hitachi iXtreme v1.51 will boot 4th Wave backups, and BenQ/LiteOn/Samsung iXtreme v1.51 will NOT boot 4th Wave. It would have been fully compatible if only the Video data had changed but not with the change in PFI (capacity). So currently the only safe option for booting 4th Wave backups on a BenQ/LiteOn/Samsung drive is to use iXtreme v1.6 and the one shot boot disc.

2009/10/15 (Updated 2009/10/16):

==============================
Wave 4 and YOU v1.2 by Kushan
==============================

A n00b’s guide to everything Wave4

================
What IS “Wave 4″?
================

A regular, retail Xbox 360 disk is split into several sections or “partitions”. One of these partitions is known as the “video partition”. Before March 2009, this partition simply contained a video that would play if you inserted the disk into a regular DVD player, the video would basically tell you that you were an idiot and need to put it into an Xbox 360 to play it.

One of the ways Microsoft can detect you being a dirty, filthy pirate is to scan this video to make sure it matches with what is supposed to be on the disk, so to protect you, the firmware itself does a quick checksum of it and if it doesn’t match with known video data, it wont boot. Every now and then, this video changed, with each change being called a “wave”.

Normally, system updates (dashboard updates) are stored on a different part of the disk, taking up about 8Mb of space, however in November 2008 Microsoft launched the “NXE”, a completely new Dashboard for the system. Along with the new dash came Avatars, making the whole update substantially larger (somewhere in the region of 130MB). This meant the update wouldn’t fit on the disk in the same partition that previous updates were located and so instead the update was placed within the video partition. This was known as “wave 3″ and hit around March 2009.

As Microsoft now distributes new Dashboard updates in the same partition, each time the 360 gets a software update, we will see a new “wave” a few months later. There was a Dashboard update in August 2009 and that is now being distributed with the latest games. This is known as Wave4. Its identical to Wave3, except the video partition now contains the August 09 Dash update. The first known game to have this was Cars Race-o-rama.

Now, its important to remember that iXtreme was designed to PROTECT you and part of that protection is the “video partition” check. When this video partition changes, the firmware doesn’t know if its just a new “wave” or if its a bad rip and thus opts to not boot it.

When wave 3 hit, iXtreme 1.51 was quickly released to tackle the problem. This was a temporary fix only, the firmware simply does not do the video partition check and thus boots was supposed to boot ANY wave, up to wave 4 and beyond.

However, this in itself is “unsafe”. If the disk is fine, then you’ll be fine, but if the video partition is in any way corrupt, iXtreme 1.51 will still boot it and thus you could be detected by Microsoft and banned. This also is not helped by the fact that some impatient, idiotic people decided to “patch” Wave3 games with Wave2 data in order to get iXtreme 1.5 or below to boot it. This is a great way to get yourself banned and thus iXtreme 1.6 was created.

ix1.6 will only boot games that have the CORRECT video partition, up to and including wave 3. This means that if you have a Wave 3 game that was patched with a Wave 2 video partition (aka a great big bullseye for Microsoft to target), iXtreme 1.6 will not boot it but ix1.51 will.

================
Will I need a new firmware to play Wave 4 games?
================

IF you are on iXtreme 1.5 or below, Wave3 games will not boot for you and thus Wave4 games will not either. In this case, YES you need to update your firmware!

IF you are on iXtreme 1.51 (Hitachi), then ANY wave will boot fine, including Wave4 however you must be EXTRA careful as you are not protected against corrupt or incorrect video partitions. This is one of the many reasons to always use abgx360. If a game is fully verified, playing it on iXtreme 1.51 is just as safe as playing it on iXtreme 1.6 – this includes Wave4 games.

IF you are on iXtreme 1.51 (BenQ/LiteOn/Samsung), then YES you need to update your firmware!

IF you are on iXtreme 1.6, you can ALSO play Wave 4 and above games, however you need to use a special activation disk to do so. This was added to the firmware specifically for this eventuality – the disk activates “one-shot-boot” mode, essentially it allows iX1.6 to boot any game you insert into the drive, even if its not properly stealthed. You simply insert the disk into the drive, let it spin up (it will say “play DVD”), then swap in your Wave4 game. You will need to do this each time you want to play a Wave 4 (or above) game. Don’t worry, if the game has all the necessary stealth data, then iX1.6 will still use it, so if you boot a VERIFIED Wave4 game using this method, you should be just as safe as you were booting a verified wave 3 game.

The disk is available here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/5ed5xr and needs to be burned to a DUAL LAYER disk, but entirely on the first layer (do not set a layerbreak and when imgburn prompts, tell it to burn to the first layer only).

A new iXtreme firmware will eventually be released with strict wave4 support (no activation disk needed), however some time needs to pass before this happens. Although Cars: Race-o-Rama was the first game to appear in the wild with Wave 4 video, it was not necessarily the first game to be pressed with it. Also, during a wave transition there are often a few exceptions to the process which also need to be known about. There will be no timeframe for this, so do not ask.

================
What about abgx360? Will that need to be updated?
================

abgx360 v1.0.1 (latest as of time of writing) does not recognise a “wave 4″ image and will report a POSSIBLE corrupt/bad PFI/Video partition, however the program is actually still completely compatible with Wave 4 games. Once a Wave4 title is verified, abgx360 will still download the .ini from the database and fully check out the image. If the image matches and the game is verified, then it has also passed the stealth checks and thus it is as safe to play as any wave3 or wave2 game.

abgx360 v1.0.2 will be released with full Wave4 recognition in a similar manner to the new iXtreme; that is once the transition date is known and any exceptions are noted.

Check out our guide here to create your own custom 3.1.2 firmware for your iphone!

Or if you want, download one of our premade jailbroken firmwares!  The jailbroken firmwares only come with OpenSSH installed and additional Cydia repositories.

2G Jailbroken (activated)

3G Jailbroken (not activated)

3GS Jailbroken (not activated)

3G Jailbroken (activated)

3GS Jailbroken (activated)

If you are going use the firmware on your site, please link to the post, not direct to the ipsw.

Let us know how it works for you, or if you have any requests!

If you have any questions, also please ask us in our forums where our experts can help you out.

Well, as you know, the 3.1 firmware for Apple’s iPhone has been released, and as you should also know, the iPhone Dev Team has yet to disappoint!

This current jailbreak is only for iPhone 3g, 2g and first gen ipod touch users.

They have just released the method for jailbreaking the new 3.1 firmware!

For a complete guide, check out our wiki here!

If you have any questions, please, ask in our forums! Our experts can help out!

Good luck!

If you have any questions, be sure to ask them in our forums!

For a guide on how to flash your drive with Jungle flasher, click here, and then select your drive for the guide.

Jungleflasher v0.1.66

What’s new/fixed:

* Lite-On 83850c support
- added full LO83info extract, OpenKey to Dummy.bin
- checks added to LO83info.bin.key load, blank data aborts
- 140F0F1011B5223D79587717FFD9EC3A from bad LO83info extract will be rejected
- Many thanks to C4eva for this hack…. We wish you well
**** WARNING ****
BUT beware…
you should always try to use a spare drive to check the key

* Lite-On support General
Dump Dummy.bin from lite-On iXtreme file (in target context menu)
Identify Barcode reversal in Dummy.bin
- to detect and fix and use bad identify Barcode info
- extra step to Manual spoofing to avoid bad barcode data

* Hitachi Support Updated
Stabilty success message is bypassed in Moddermode.

* General items Updated
Foreign Language Support
- German
- Portugueuse
- Italian
- French
- Greek
- Spanish (WIP)

download: here

Jungleflasher v0.1.65

*General items Updated
—————————————
KeyDB and Log to Notepad fixed for windows 7 and foreign languages

Lite-On-Erase
—————————————
- Extra check added, Drive Serial is compared to Target f/w
- a mismatch will cause a warning… Just in case user were
- to hook up a new lite-on and forget to do DVDkey32

MtkFlash32
—————————————
- Disable related windows drive letters on Intro
- Windows interfers with read-back verify as it thinks drive is
- still present after into. This occured primarily with benq
- running ix > 1.41. The half tray unlock also give windows
- drive letter. On intro, drive list is refreshed, scanned for
- the drive on the current port and disabled if found..

Lite-On 83850c support
—————————————
- ix 1.6 83850 support added ( cross spoofing of ix revs NOT supported )
- conversion of [barcode].bin.key to dummy.bin
- Autoload dummy, auto-load ix, spoof ix
- extract of [barcode].bin

Download from here

Jungleflasher v0.1.64

* General items Updated
Ctrl + F4 to open iXtreme from firmware folder to Target
Added context menus to Source and target tabs
Source
- open f/w from working folder
- clear source
- update to key data base
Target
- open f/w from working folder
- open f/w from .\firmware folder
- clear target
Removed – not allowing blank serial in for Lite-on Dummy.bin
- previously if serial was blank the iX file serial was left as is
- Warning changed for dummy.bin w/o serial, to mention is possibly ok.

* Key Database in Registry
Database will be populated automatically from a dump.
Ctrl + F10 to add/update key database from Source tab info
Ctrl + F12 to launch notepad with key database
Ctrl + F11 to create .csv from key database
Added extra item to explorer context to load as source and add key to db
- iX will not autoload to target for this task
- can select mutliple f/w files, these will load in turn

* Hitachi Support Updated
Fixed bug in Rev 36 Ram Upload Dump Code
All dumps are rev checked immediately, a failure to identify will abort sequence
- dumps from other drives and locked 79’s (coming back empty) would proceed to key
- check and fail

* MTKFlash32
Added warning message Yes/No to Flash Erase Button (default is No!)
Added Esc to abort to flash read within auto reads in moddermode
Bypassed Sammy-Un-Lock warning in ModderMode

Download from here

Jungleflasher v0.1.62

A new version of JungleFlasher has been released:
Release for iX 1.6 0800 for Samsung, Benq and Lite-On…

* Hitachi Support Updated:
-Windows drive enum changed
-Successful Classic dump will detect and set correct drive type for pre 78 drives. Inquiry of spoofed drives would select incorrect version.

* DVDKey32 Support Updated
-better support for Maximus USB Xtractor – using FTDI api FTD2XX.dll

* General items Updated
-Improved launch times
Download from here

The companies make insane achievements to try to keep a player long after the game is stale.

How many people completed all 50 of Perfect Dark Zero’s achievements?  Did you get the 1,000 kills? Sure.  1,000 headshots? Maybe.  What about 1,000 melee kills or 1,000 explosive kills? No.  A gamer would have to waste so much time playing the game.  And now good luck finding online players to reach those achievements.

Gears of War 2 is a great multiplayer experience, but I’ll almost certainly never reach the “Seriously 2.0″ achievement, which calls for killing 100,000 enemies.  This is just a ridiculous achievement the developer puts in the game to keep people coming back.

What happened to the achievement styling of Call of Duty 2?  It was nice and simple, you beat a level – get points; complete the game in hardened/veteran – get more points.  That game was very easy to reach the full 1000 pts.

One of the easiest games was NBA 2k6.  In a single game I was able to unlock all the achievements.

I hope developers revert to achievements that made sense and are obtainable and stay away from current ridiculous trend in video games.

Am I just not committed?

There are only a few things that can be more frustrating than shelling out $60 bucks for a game, only to be given an underdeveloped product.

Game Add-ons — more specifically, map packs and essential features to any game that you are required to pay for, are just great ways to piss off loyal fans.

When I purchase a game, I want to know that in two weeks, there isn’t going to be additional content available for the game.  In fact, I’d like to extend that to beyond two weeks. Make it at least a month.  Granted, this might make development one month longer, but I’d rather have the additional content.

Themes, avatar items – any “fluff” like that – I can understand being charged for.  That’s extra; if you want it, go for it.  It’s not required to play the game.  Map packs, on the other hand, can be frustrating.  I want to be able to play all the maps that everyone else is playing online without having to shell out more money than I already had to purchase the game.

Modern Warfare Map Pack

But that’s not how it seems to be.  For example, let’s look at Resident Evil 5.  Yes, I’m pulling out the big one already.  Capcom just really made myself, and probably many other fans, pretty angry over this.  They released Resident Evil 5, without multiplayer, and then had the audacity to charge for it when it was finally developed.

…Does this not piss anyone else off?!?

This is not just some add-on content, some extras that were added in, but what most people would definitely think as being a critical part of any game!  People are missing what many consider as half of the game content!  Granted, Resident Evil is known for its single player, but to develop a multiplayer, not finish it on time, and then charge for additional game functionality is just ridiculous.

I wanted to give some inspirational ending that will charge all gamers into keeping from paying for the content, but lets be real, that will never happen.  Hopefully developers will go back to the old way of giving us all the content we could ever want on the release of the game, and not look for more ways to drag the dollars out of us.

What do you guys think?

This section will be a section where we will give our thoughts on whatever random topic we feel like speaking out about.  You can expect for our discussions to focus mainly on gaming or any tech related stuff, but we might just throw in a wildcard with something off-topic in the future as well.

Anyway, enjoy our take…

A new service has been offered to all internet users – with Bit Torrent users specifically in mind.  It’s called “ItsHidden”.

Check them out at their webpage.

The service is nearly the same as other existing VPN services that are availble for users (such as iPredator).  The way it works, is you will VPN into their server, and all information between you, and their server is encrypted.  They also promote that no logs are kept about the information you are sending or receiving through their service.

It is designed to work with all platforms:

• Windows
• Linux
• Mac
• iPhone

Right now, the service is in a beta testing mode.  See if you can sign up for it.  Additionally, they will offer a $5 account (assuming this is a monthly versus a one-time fee) which enables port forwarding, and other features.  However, the service claims that they will always offer the basic account for free.

It’s definitely worth a look.