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Look here. And here. There are only five 1080i games released for the Xbox, and all of them are simplistic.

What you're seeing is simply 480p upscaled. A little better than NTSC, agreed, but a far cry from "true high-definition". The extra detail you're seeing is likely just the larger screen making it easier on your eyes.

First let's look here

Next let's look here

I count 4 games.

Wow. 4.

Not exactly a huge list, is it? Capable of and reality of are two different things. I think I'll stick with the PC where petty much every game made in the last few years can do high resolutions.

"And if you have one of them Fancy HDTV's that are all over now (and will be all over the place in less than 3 years), you will want a console that can take advantage of those 480,720i modes (XBox)"

Holy crap man, get your facts right. Sure, the Xbox SUPPORTS upto 1080i. There are a HANDFUL (read, four) games which support 1080i. The reason being is because to run at this rate the game engine has to be really simple or the developer really, really stupid. Heres a quick rason why.

At launch, Luigi's mansion supported 480p. Halo supported exactly jack shit. Of all the gamecube games i've owned in fact, the only 2, out of nearly 20 which do not support 480p. The only drawback to HD-ifying the gamecube is the fact that you have to buy the 30$ cable from nintendo and that monster won't make one.

A good site for any HDTV people out there who want to know what will and will not display :Is this. Just ignore the stupid comments

Now If I could just log in...sigh.

Yeah hdgames.net has a lot of information, but I like the way that this site is structured better and the search is nice. This is a link to the xbox HD games, but to dropdown contains the other consoles.

You must buy the HD A/V kit for the xbox to even get 480p. You have to order the component cables for the gamecube directly from nintendo to get 480p but the ps2 component cables are available everywhere.

I wouldn't say its quite worth it yet to get an HDTV just for gaming. Although a lot of games are starting to support 16:9 mode which is nice. Tony Hawk Underground, SSX3, Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando and Rogue Squadron III are all recent games that support 480p and 16:9 mode. I'm sure the next generation of consoles will have much more HDTV support. Most games look just fine stretched to 16:9 if they are native 4:3 though. I play all the games stretched and on most you can't really tell except during cut scenes.

4:3 programming doesn't have to have black bars on the side if you are worried about burn in. The sony/zenith directv HD receivers have a very good panorama mode that stretches the edges of the screen and you can barely tell its 4:3 stretched to 16:9. My sony HDTV also has wide zoom and zoom modes but it distorts the picture much more than panorama mode. I have been gaming on my big screen rear projection Sony HDTV for nearly 3 years and I have had nothing burn in.

Most game review sites do not list if a game supports HDTV or 16:9. I wish they would have a side bar on reviews listing which features it supports. However there are some websites that track which games support 480p and higher along with which have a 16:9 mode:

HdtvArcade
HdtvPub
HDGames (the best one in IMO)

Greg

I can't really recommend 16:9 televisions, even though I love mine. You'll find with a 16:9, you can't just "watch" television anymore. Everything has it's own format, and the screen must be adjusted to fit that format.

For DVD's, it's typically standard mode, but if they aren't anamorphic (and many movies aren't), you'll have to use expand mode. If the DVD is 4:3 (many old movies, much animae, television shows, Pan and Scan), you'll either have to watch it in 'narrow', which leaves large bars on the side, or you'll have to use one of several stretch modes, any one of which can look fine or utterly horrible depending on what you watch.

You run into the same problem with games. X-Box is the best about this, as it has the preferences for 16:9 and various display modes in the box. Set all the resolutions your television supports, and the XBox will automatically pick the best one supported by the game. However, there's still a lot of games that don't support high resolution or 16:9. Here's the HDTV list for X-Box, GameCube, and PS2. If you want to search for specific games, including non-HDTV games in 16:9, go here.

As you can see, there aren't many high-def games, and not many widescreen games either. My biggest problem is that although I watch a lot of movies, I watch a lot of 4:3 content because I play a lot of videogames and my wife watches a lot of television. This means my 16:9 set spends a lot of time in narrow mode, which is bad for the television. So, I end up compromising and finding one of the stretch modes that looks 'good enough' for what I'm doing to help offset the damage I"m doing.

I can't really recommend 16:9 televisions, even though I love mine. You'll find with a 16:9, you can't just "watch" television anymore. Everything has it's own format, and the screen must be adjusted to fit that format.

For DVD's, it's typically standard mode, but if they aren't anamorphic (and many movies aren't), you'll have to use expand mode. If the DVD is 4:3 (many old movies, much animae, television shows, Pan and Scan), you'll either have to watch it in 'narrow', which leaves large bars on the side, or you'll have to use one of several stretch modes, any one of which can look fine or utterly horrible depending on what you watch.

You run into the same problem with games. X-Box is the best about this, as it has the preferences for 16:9 and various display modes in the box. Set all the resolutions your television supports, and the XBox will automatically pick the best one supported by the game. However, there's still a lot of games that don't support high resolution or 16:9. Here's the HDTV list for X-Box, GameCube, and PS2. If you want to search for specific games, including non-HDTV games in 16:9, go here.

As you can see, there aren't many high-def games, and not many widescreen games either. My biggest problem is that although I watch a lot of movies, I watch a lot of 4:3 content because I play a lot of videogames and my wife watches a lot of television. This means my 16:9 set spends a lot of time in narrow mode, which is bad for the television. So, I end up compromising and finding one of the stretch modes that looks 'good enough' for what I'm doing to help offset the damage I"m doing.

I can't really recommend 16:9 televisions, even though I love mine. You'll find with a 16:9, you can't just "watch" television anymore. Everything has it's own format, and the screen must be adjusted to fit that format.

For DVD's, it's typically standard mode, but if they aren't anamorphic (and many movies aren't), you'll have to use expand mode. If the DVD is 4:3 (many old movies, much animae, television shows, Pan and Scan), you'll either have to watch it in 'narrow', which leaves large bars on the side, or you'll have to use one of several stretch modes, any one of which can look fine or utterly horrible depending on what you watch.

You run into the same problem with games. X-Box is the best about this, as it has the preferences for 16:9 and various display modes in the box. Set all the resolutions your television supports, and the XBox will automatically pick the best one supported by the game. However, there's still a lot of games that don't support high resolution or 16:9. Here's the HDTV list for X-Box, GameCube, and PS2. If you want to search for specific games, including non-HDTV games in 16:9, go here.

As you can see, there aren't many high-def games, and not many widescreen games either. My biggest problem is that although I watch a lot of movies, I watch a lot of 4:3 content because I play a lot of videogames and my wife watches a lot of television. This means my 16:9 set spends a lot of time in narrow mode, which is bad for the television. So, I end up compromising and finding one of the stretch modes that looks 'good enough' for what I'm doing to help offset the damage I"m doing.

>The satellite transmission is limited to Dolby Pro Logic sound at best (because that can be encoded into a stereo stream), so no Dolby Digital or DTS sound for you.

Actually, the DVB transport stream can support *anything* (raw data included) so the likely reasons they aren't broadcasting DD are that either some older receivers are crap and get confused on private/unknown data streams (wouldn't surprise me) or that they are running out of space on the transponders. Well, there is one more reason: Lack of demand.

In Canada, some broadcasters are already doing HDTV via MPEG-2 on DVB satellite (such as on ExpressVU / Nimiq 2), widescreen of course, 17 mbps (basically 1 HDTV signal + 1 low-quality "regular" signal per transponder), with dolby digital sound. MPEG-4 test streams are in the works for certain higher-end private users, I hear...

It is only 480p, few games use HDTV resolutions.

• CineFX MDP-100
  
• Digital STREAM HiDTV Pro
  
• Hauppauge WinTV-HD
  
• Cellar Cinemas HiPix DTV-200 HDTV Tuner/Recorder Card