Iria

Let the trash talking begin (again)! Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison has some backhanded compliments for the Xbox 360, sprinkled with some marketing speak aimed at stifling interest in the new console.

"The true definition of HD is the three elements of the HD value chain - the display, the content and the hardware to play back that content," he explained, "and PlayStation and Sony is the only organisation that has all three bits of the value chain together," he said.

Harrison here is making hay out of the fact that the Xbox 360 currently has no HD optical drive support, either in the form of an HD DVD or a Blu-ray drive. Microsoft's decision to ship the Xbox 360 without an HD optical drive has been chastised by some, but it has become exceedingly clear with today's news from Toshiba that shipping with Microsoft's preferred HD DVD solution wouldn't have even been possible if they were committed to a holiday 2005 launch. In the long run, the delays with AACS and Toshiba's own cautious attitude towards their launch may work out strongly in Sony's favor.

In July of this year Gates hinted that a future version of the Xbox 360 may sport an HD DVD drive. There is also speculation that the company could even offer an external add-on drive for current Xbox 360 owners. Still, with the next-gen optical format war looking better and better for Blu-ray, one wonders if we'll ever see HD DVD support for the Xbox 360. It may not even make sense by the time a product revision is unleashed.

But Harrison didn't stop there. He made the dubious claim that "1080-progressive... is the true definition of HD," and this, coupled with the lack of an HD optical format, means that Microsoft "doesn't have true HD functionality." The Xbox 360 has a maximum output resolution of 1080i. As a result, Harrison says that "the HD era really only starts when we are on the market."
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Read More / Source: Ars Technica

Necrosis

Gotta love Sony...NOT!!! Just like your latest displays with double the pixels of any other display. Give me a break, 1080p only matters with very large (60" Plus) TVs.

calidan

He's right about the optical format though. I bet the files on the 360 games are heavily compressed or they would need to use multiple discs.

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Steam Community :: ID :: calidan



"Don't try to be like Jackie. There is only one Jackie.... Study computers instead." - Jackie Chan

Tipstaff

Someone should let Harrison know that anything that supports 720p or higher falls within the "true" HD format definition.

I should point out that there is one misleading fact about the 360: while the 360 lists support for 1080i, and games list that same support on their boxes, not all of them are. The 360 upconverts from 720p (which Microsoft said that all 360 games must support) to 1080i, which is why both the game and the system say they support 1080i. Whether or not all the games do this, I can't say, but I do know that with PGR3 it is a 720p game being upconverted to 1080i. Now, to me, having support for 1080i through upconverting is one thing, but displaying native 1080i content is another, and I think Microsoft should come clean on this one.

Oh, and as for DVD playback on the 360: it's a progressive scan player that only outputs to 480p. I still can't figure out why.

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calidan

That's because DVD discs ONLY support 480p. It's limited because of the disc space.

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Steam Community :: ID :: calidan



"Don't try to be like Jackie. There is only one Jackie.... Study computers instead." - Jackie Chan

Zardon

interesting point, on newsgroups ive seen 720p movie rips take around 8-9 gig which would fit on dual layer DVDs. not sure if the quality is lowered when they rip them however .......

dj_stick

but does the DVD standard support more than 480p?

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Zardon

dont think so, but doesnt the xbox 360 support .TS files?

BWX

I got a 1080p movie a while ago that used the Elecard MPEG2 Decoder Package 2.0.
It looked amazing.. It was about 14GB IIRC..

I couldn't stop or pause the movie though or it wouldn't run after that and I had to start it all over.. Rewind or FF didn't work either.

It was truly like being at the movies. It was definitely the highest resolution movie I have ever seen.. Looked awesome on a flat CRT PC monitor.

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brutusmaximus

Yeah I had the same problem, if you get the elecard player and use it to play the TS files it is better. powerdvd stutters like crazy with these files.

People could make TS movies to run on the xbox if it supports the format. (TS). but im guessing it will need modded.

BWX

Yeah I used Media player classic, I guess you can use WMP too.. but I didn't try at the time and that huge file had to be trashed... next time I will try some other things like you mentioned.

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Tipstaff

That's not what I meant. I know the limitations of standard DVD media (only too well).

What I should have said was that the Xbox 360 does not upconvert or scale DVDs from 480p to 720p or 1080i. In all cases one of two things happen: 1) the output image is still 480p, or 2) the television set itself scales the image from 480p to 720p/1080i. THAT is what has me stumped. If the Xbox 360 has the ability to upconvert games, why is it not doing the same for DVD movies?

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