Space Considerations
I couldn’t bring a monitor with me on the airplane. Most hotel rooms don’t allow you to hook your own devices up to them, so the screen is a bit of a dilemma. However, I was bringing my laptop with me which has a screen. If only my laptop had Video-In as well as Video-Out. I did find a very cheap solution to that problem: the Adaptec GameBridge.The GameBridge is a stand alone device that connects to your computer via USB 2.0. There’s a piece of software to install on your XP computer and it’s then you're good to go. The downside is this device is standard definition only, to be honest, at laptop screen sizes there’s not much difference. So you’ll need to bring your Xbox 360 video cable with you and flip the switch on the plug from HD to SD. Then you just match the red, white, yellow cables on the Xbox 360 video cable to the ones that are on the GameBridge and you're ready to game.
The only issue being the laptop display ratio. My laptop is widescreen but standard definition ratio is square. The game runs in widescreen so you'll end up with a lot of unused black space. To fix this issue I went into the video dashboard and tinkered with the video display options and resolutions. I was able to get the game to run on three-quarters of my screen after some tweaking and window resizing - it looked pretty nice. The GameBidge was doing realtime video, no lag, ghosting or distortion.
The GameBridge handles sound as well. You use your laptop speakers or plug a stereo headset into your laptop if the built in speakers aren’t loud enough. If you absolutely can’t get along without surround sound, you can pick up a set of Tritton Dolby certified 5.1 headphones. They plug into your Xbox 360 audio/video cable via fiber optic cable and deliver skull crushing surround sound.
For Safety: Horizontal Is The Key
When you’re on the road with your Xbox 360, you should use it in the horizontal configuration. Since the DVD drive will chew up the disc if Xbox 360 is on and gets bumped, it’s just safer away from home if you don’t have it up in the vertical orientation.Case In Point: Get A Case
To keep your Xbox 360 safe from damage while traveling, you’ll need some type of transport case. If you’re going by motor vehicle, Mad Catz has a number of hard carry boxes available for around USD $50. These boxes are designed specifically for your Xbox 360 to keep it safe during travel and have slots for the power supply, controllers, games and cables.These Mad Catz case, however, won’t work if you’re going on an airplane. Airline travel is very restrictive today; you usually get one carry-on and one personal item. The Xbox 360 will count as your one alloted carry-on piece. Since the Mad Catz boxes are too big, you will need a back pack to carry your Xbox 360 in since checking it is totally out of the question. Pelican makes a very nice Xbox 360 backpack specifically designed for this console. It will fit up in the overhead bin with no problem, keeping your Xbox 360 pressurized, at room temp and out of the checked baggage handler’s hands.
Surprisingly the Xbox 360 went through the security scanner without them questioning it. I didn’t need to take it out since it doesn’t have a battery, unlike my laptop. I also had two memory cards and they went through the X-Ray machine without data loss, same with the hard drive, which also it came through the ordeal unscathed.
Filling The Internet Tubes
The only thing hard to deal with on the road is the all important Internet access. Getting into the specifics of working around this problem is beyond the scope of this article. There’s no easy solution unless you get on a truly free WiFi network. If you want to tinker with it, bring a network cable, Wifi adapter and mini-switch with you.The hard part is dealing with the connectivity procedures. Many require you to log in with a PC and provide a username / password and credit card number. If this is the case you can do internet connection sharing via your laptop. You’ll need to plug your Xbox 360, laptop and provided broadband device into your mini-switch. You then must get your laptop up and running on the internet and setup the internet connection sharing. On your Xbox 360, you need to set your TCP/IP network information and use the laptop as your default gateway. This all may be well beyond what the average gamer can deal with, so if you’re not skilled in computer networking, you should probably just accept that you won’t be gaming on Live.
