Uh, oh. Power-cycled, seems to be working. Start game. Console freezes. Try different game. Console freezes. Rinse, recycle, repeat. Eventually the RRD reappears.
Call Microsoft. The friendly overseas call-center person actually lets me deviate from the script, accepts my debugging skills are perhaps being adequate, and puts me down for repair. The timeframe of up to a month is a killer, though – guessing there’s a bit of volume at the service center. Nice gesture of a month credit on Live, though.
This was a launch 360, and while it doesn’t get a ton of use (free time? Ha, ha!), it did take quite a while to die. Credit to Microsoft for owning up to the issue, and especially for extending the warranty without hassle. A $1B charge is nothing to sneeze at.
Now, if they want to send me an updated unit with HDMI output, I’m OK with that..