The Fall update to the Xbox 360 Dashboard is coming next week....Here's a rundown on the major changes....

The Xbox 360 firmware sees two major updates a year—in the Spring and the Fall. This year's Fall update is just about upon us. On Tuesday December 4th, Microsoft will unleash a flurry of new features and small tweaks to the way the Xbox 360 operates. Here are the highlights.

AVI Support—The Xbox 360 can now play files in an AVI container (or .divx container) that uses the MPEG-4 Part 2, Simple & Advanced Simple Profile. The max bitrate for these files is 5 Mbps with resolutions up to 1280x720 up to 30fps. Audio in AVI files must be either Dolby Digital 2 or 5.1 channel or MP3. In layman's terms—most of the DivX or Xvid files users have should fit under these conditions and play back. Hurray! DivX support (mostly)!

Parental Timer—You've always been able to lock out games of a certain rating on a "child account" on the Xbox 360, and limit who they can speak to and hear in online chat. Now you can limit play time as well.

Xbox Originals—A game download store to download original Xbox 1 games, sort of like you download Xbox Live Arcade titles. The first ones available will be Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, Halo, Fable, Fuzion Frenzy, and Psychonauts. Each costs 1200 MS Points ($15 in the U.S.). More will be added over time. If you don't have Psychonauts, now is the time.

XBLA Greatest Hits—This is sort of like the Platinum games in retail…they're best-selling Xbox Live Arcade games that will be singled out for permanent discount. The list will start off with Bankshot Billiards and Lumines Live (800 points), as well as Marble Blast Ultra, Small Arms, and Zuma Deluxe (400 points). Lumines is a steal at $10.

Enhanced Online Profiles—You'll be able to look up friends of friends now, in sort of a social-networking-way. You can also now put your real name in your profile (so people don't get confused by your clever gamertag) and write an expanded bio about yourself.

Inside Xbox—It's sort of an RSS news feed from Xbox Central Headquarters on your Xbox 360 dashboard. It'll tell you about what's new in Xbox land, promotions, game updates, whatever Microsoft wants to push out to the masses.

New Dashboard Layout—The "twist" navigation so loved on the Zune will make its way to many parts of the Xbox 360. You'll change video categories or game categories in areas like the Video Marketplace or Xbox Live Arcade by pressing left or right.

Those are the big ones, but there are lots of little things. The Xbox team has a blog post detailing exactly which video formats work, it's definitely worth checking out. If you just want a huge list of every little change coming next week, you'll want this other blog post by the team. There's a ton of stuff listed there, like "Improve transition speed of blades", several HDMI improvements, "Added support for Album/Video artwork larger than 500KB" and dozens of other minute details.

Of course, 1Up has lots of Fall Dashboard Details including video and screenshots.

Thanks to Extreme Tech