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Xbox 360 adds 1080p Support
jayintune writes "2old2play has received news from the TGS (Tokyo Game Show) that Microsoft plans on releasing an update that will enable 1080p support on their Xbox 360 console. From the article, "users can expect 1080p upscaling immediately on current games and DVDs while native 1080p on compatible HD DVD titles." What could this mean for Sony now that MS has 1080p as well?" Now honestly, show of hands: who has their console (not PC!) connected to a display device capable of 1080p? Who plans on buying a device capable of 1080p?
Why wasn't this turned on by default?!
The primary problems is that games for consoles usually are only made for that console for about 3~4 years. So the price drop on 1080p displays has to drop in that time frame to give me a bit of time to enjoy it.
A secondary problem I see is that consoles are consoles. They're supposed to be a standardized unit in which I can assure myself that everyone is having the same playing experience. This seems to no longer be true with the different models of Xbox360 or PS3 they are planning. And, frankly, it turns me off a bit. Is it a good thing that consoles are becoming more like computers? And if it is, why aren't we just buying a special USB controller from these companies and running everything on our computers?
My work here is dung.
While I do think that 1080p is a great thing, I doubt it is going to make people go crazy about it simply because 1080p is still a few years away from major distribution.
Some people will already be on 1080p and a few already are, but any sane company would go for the masses, not the less than 1 percent cake of people who are looking for top notch hardware.
I am definitely waiting for 1080p as my next TV replacement, but anything above $2,000 is just not gonna do it for me, so I'll wait a little longer and stick to 720p, which is also very nice.
Full Tilt
The next TV I buy, when the dinky current one gives up the ghost whenever, WILL be 1080p.
Why? Because the true 1080p, rear projection, 50" TVs are not much more expensive than a 1080i TV, but I plan on hooking up a Mac Mini or similar computer output, thus I'd want all the pixels when displaying text etc on the big screen.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Show of hands? Sure, I'll bite, I'm on of em. I have a 1080p set on it's way, and so do a lot of other people. Although a little pricey (but coming down all the time), every one of the highend Sony Bravia LCD's (40", 46", and soon-to-be 52") all support it. Lots of other manufacturers are chugging them out too. Don't be so quick to think Microsoft wasted their time on this. This is quite possibly the best reason for people who are buying new TV's now to get the XBOX360 instead of waiting for the PS3.
This is all great from Microsoft, but the TV's really need to start catching up. In the UK there are barely any true HD units out, the rest just replicate it even when branded as HD, which means that not only will this not help our gaming, but it will be pretty much redundant for most of the life of the console thanks to the saturation of HDTV in the UK being so slow. I think Microsoft definitely need to think about their target markets more and how technology is improving there, because it is all well and good making the console excellent for those who can run it on top-notch hardware - but that is bound to be a small percentage of those who buy the console.
Business Voyeur
I have a nice big plasma hooked up to a digital tuner..
Please state the make and model of your 1080p capable plasma set.
On top of that alot of progs are 1080p
Australia must be waaaaay ahead of the curve, I didn't think anyone had the bandwidth to broadcast in 1080p? I don't see why they would anyway since the number of people who can actually watch anything in 1080p can probably be counted on your hands.
I call BS on this one. I have no doubt that the op could have a 1080i, that's very common. And broadcasting in either 720p or 1080i is already estabished, his claims seem to be a wee bit over the top.
I suspect we won't hear anymore from pjr.cc now that he's actually looked up the specs of his TV and looked at the specs of the broadcast signals he's receiving.
This guy's the limit!
I'm like reading the summary and it's being positive about adding 1800p on Microsoft X360 adding 1800p no fuzz and no special requirements. Whaaa? Is this Slashdot or what?
And then this tagged on comment: "Now honestly, show of hands: who has their console (not PC!) connected to a display device capable of 1080p? Who plans on buying a device capable of 1080p?"
Yeaa! Let's laugh at Microsoft for adding 1800p and we don't have any! Muhaha!
I have serious doubts that true 1080p is really practical in this generation of consoles. The reason being, the more resolution you push the higher the bandwidth and the higher the memory cost. I think developers that produce 1080p games will really be producing 720p games and letting the console up-sample. And that ultimately does little for quality. Lets look as some numbers
On a console running at 1080p you have 1920x1080 pixels x8 bits (for non floating point HDR) That means 15.8 meg per frame buffer. A game typically has multiple buffers it renders to (especially for post processing effects) so there is almost 32meg consumed just so you can display an image. If you are using true floating point HDR one of those buffers would be 32meg.
If you are rendering at 720p a frame buffer is 7 meg for 8bit and 14 for 32bit float HDR.
There is also an impact on fill rate. The 1080p requires more than twice the fill rate. That means (when fill-rate bound) the frame rate must be cut in half or the effects being used must be reduces.
On the PS3 with a practical fill rate of 15GB/s to local video memory, you can overdraw a 1080p scene at 60fps only 16 times. That has a serious impact on use of particle effects, multi-pass rendering, and post processing. At 720p that overdraw rate increases to 36 times.
On an xbox360 the eDRAM affords a greater fill rate (64GB/s) so it could better handle the demands of 1080p but it has to contend with the 10Meg limit on the eDRAM. This means a 1080p scene would require a 4 pass tiled rendering and a 2 pass for scene post processing.
So basically I don't think we will even see true 1080p games without those games reducing their visuals significantly. I would rather have a slick looking 720p at 60fps than a 1080p that looks last generation.
Do either the Xbox 360 Component HD AV Cable or Xbox 360 VGA HD AV Cable support 1080p ?
My guess is they don't - they certainly don't list it on the product pages in the links - so 360 owners will need to pony up for another cable, one capable of the 124MHz signalling needed to do 1080p/60 (so spec'd at ~350MHz).
Another question is, what about 1080p movies (if Microsoft sell a lot of the HD DVD add-on drives)? There's no HDCP path on the 360, so either the movie studios forget all about their latest copy-protection scheme and don't set the ICT flag on the discs (sh'yeah, right) or 360 owners could have an Xbox HD DVD player that does 1080p but have to watch the movies they buy at 480p. Ouch.
Color me confused, but any TV you buy is free of these draconian measures. HDMI is an interconnect. HDCP is a protocol that may or may not be in use over that link. On top of that, HDMI is DVI.
Check out Westinghouse's selection of 1080p monitors. They have no tuners, which makes them trend-agnostic when it comes to that can of worms. They support all the HD resolutions and they have HDMI and DVI connections in addition to all the component, s-video and composite you could neeed. The digital ports are able to communicate using HDCP, but again, it's not compulsory unless your source device is demanding it.
Sounds to me like your beef is not with the TV's, but with the content providers. Of course, if your point is that you wont buy any device that has the ability to use HDCP, that's a different story.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
The point is that there's no guarantee anyone will design the games to work at 1080p at all (it would be too slow perhaps?). That said, they'll upconvert your 720p or 1080i games to 1080p so they look "right" on a 1080p digital display.
Upconversion is not the same as original content. Digg has an uneducated comment about how upconversion of DVDs makes high definition movie content less attractive (on the future PS3) -- upconverted DVDs don't look anywhere near as good as true HD original content. I watch HDTV television (heavily compressed over satellite) and it looks a whole lot cleaner, crisper and with much better contrast than upconverted DVD content ever will (on my nice new Oppo upconverting DVD player no less).
Sure the upconverted Oppo Digital DVD output is better than having the TV rescale the image but actual HD content is a lot better. I mean, a LOT better.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
HD AV cables support 1080p, the standard is analog your TV just has to know how to sync the signal. Its the digital interfaces which are bandwidth limited.
As for the show of hands:
I have a 54" HD DLP Television and I am enjoying the 360s HD output quite a lot. These TVs are no longer in the 5000 dollar range. I got the most vivid one in it's class for way under $2000. I mean you can get a 40" one with only 2 inputs at walmart for under $800. At this price it costs less than my 35" CRT low def television did. The 1080p thing has just made the previous generation models dirt cheap. You guys have no excuse to keep moaning about HD adoption. It costs less than a pc upgrade.
----- 70% of all statistics are completely made up.
3:2 Pulldown is correct. The way it works is that when you have a 24fps source, and need to get it to traditional video (roughly 30fps/60 fields*), you have to repeate frames.
Here's how it works. Four film frames have to fit into 5 video fields/frames. Let's label these film frames A, B, C, and D. We'll use numbers for the video fields. So what you have is:
1.AA 2.BB 3.BC 4.CD 5.DD
Now for a 60 FRAME output, it's a little easier:
1.A 2.A 3.B 4.B 5.B 6.C 7.C 8.D 9.D 10.D
So, getting a 24fps source to a 30 fps output will require an interlaced signal, while displaying on a 60fps output translates much more directly.
Then there's the whole 3:2 pulldown removal in some TVs. And many DVDs today actually employ a 24fps source, but add the pulldown before sending it out through the composite/S-Video connections.
*Actually, it's 29.97fps. It has to do with the transition to color broadcast signals from B&W. If I'm not mistaken, this actualyl carries over to HD signals as well. They might actually be 23.976fps / 29.97fps / 59.94fps.
Slashdot: where repeating an article in a post is "+5 Insightful"
I think the problem is you consider a $250 DVD player high-end. I am not flaming you by any means my DVD player came in under a cool hundred bucks and it works great for my lil 27 incher. I would assume a higher end dvd player ($500-1k) would do a better job but you really need to appreciate movies to drop green like that.
You are all a bunch of idots.