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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?!
Is that 1080p/24, 1080p/30, or 1080p/60? Because 1080p/30 has the same bandwidth requirements as 1080i/60 (duh). I haven't seen from either Sony or MS any technical specs which indicate real 1080p/60 support, even over hdmi.
I have my 360 hooked up to my 50" Grand Vega 1080p. I honestly haven't experienced anything where I can compare 720p to 1080p when it comes to games, but if the difference is as good as it is with Video, i'll be happy!
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
I have a 60" 1080p capable plasma, and let me tell you it cost a huge amount of money, probably more money then many Slashdotters earn in a year! But I also want to make this clear: I earn *lots* of money, probably more then the vast majority of slashdotters. I don't buy things this expensive very often (although the Aston Martin I bought last week set me back a few hundred k), but I like to splash out occasionally.
Me. Just as soon as I can find one without Digital Compatibility Prevention.
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 recently bought a 50" Samsung DLP TV that has full 1080p support (no upconversion cheating etc). However, I have my 360 set on 720p instead of 1080i even because the 360 is NOT very good at upconverting signals into 1080 anything. I suspect their 1080p upconversion will be the same. My tv is much better at upconverting 720p to 1080p than the 360 is at upconverting from 720p to 1080i. This is especially noticeable on my NBA 2k6 game where the 360 upconversion is much more grainy and aliased looking than the one my TV does. I'm guessing that those of us with 1080p TVs will have to wait 4-5 years until the "next-generation" of consoles comes out that actually fully support it. Many of the games don't look really nice on my TV because it is large enough to magnify any flaws in the graphics and makes most games look more aliased since there just isnt enough resolution being pushed to the TV to look smooth.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
1080 lines of resolution, progressive scan (shows every line in every frame). You can thank me later.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
I have a CRT HDTV. It's big, bright and clear and fun but a little fuzzy if you want to do PC stuff on it. Playing movies and games though is a fucking dream.
:(
It supports a bewildering choice of resolutions; not because it's got them all, but because it's so few. 480i. 480p. 1080i. It was sooo cheap (less than $300 at Thanksgiving last year)
I don't see why I would want 1080p; the 1080i mode is rock solid stable and has nice contrast. What I want is 720i or 720p support on my fucking TV, so I can buy a games console that runs in there or knock my PC resolution down to a readable level
No-one in Australia transmits anything at 1080p. ABC and SBS "HD" are 576p, although they have almost no "real" HD content - most all of it is upsampled SD. Seven is also 576p, although I think their "HD" broadcasts actually have 1080i sources. Both Nine and Ten broadcast in 1080i (even sport, which kind of sucks).
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!
Translation: I work at McDonalds and wish I could afford cool stuff, but I can't so I make up stories about how rich I am online to satisfy my desires.
err, you do realise 1080p is 1920x1080 right?
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
Errr....they did....in the last dashboard update.
My Site, My Life
Matt
Now there's one hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is!
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.
Actually, if you really want 1080p on the cheap (like I did) you can get it for a bit over $1000 by building your own LCD projector. Just use a laptop WUXGA screen. I've done this and am very happy with the results. When comparing it to a commercial projector there are downsides: size of the projector, light distribution isn't totally even (or as bright), colors aren't perfectly reproduced, contrast isn't as great. However, for the price it can't be beat IMHO. Those drawbacks aren't anything I actually notice when watching a movie, it feels just like I'm in a theater . I learned how to do it at the lumenlab forums: www.lumenlab.com
Are you sure you didn't mean:
ps3 blue ray
some shite ms thing
ps3 1080p
some shite ms thing
ipod
some shite ms thing
google
some shite ms thing
(I kid, I kid!)
People that spend tens of thousands of dollars on these things are generally not spending a year's pay on it, because they make a whole lot more than that per year. Larry Ellison's yacht may seem like a worthless extravagance to me, but if I had as much money as he does, I might be tempted to buy one.
Now, if you literally are spending an entire year's pay on a TV, then your debt structure must be astounding, because that's probably not the only large purchase you've gone into debt for. However, going into massive debt still doesn't mean someone has no life, it just means they suck at money management.
Both have the same amount of detail, as they have the same resolution. But the interlaced version will feel smoother, because it's updating the screen twice as often.
Except it's updating half the lines, meaning any object moving will have the jagged edges of interlaced content. That fucks a lot more with your mind than a smooth line moving at 30fps. Try playing any video game (probably the most intense need for "smooth" you'll have) in interlaced. What's that? Every monitor you've had in the last 10 years is progressive? I can't imagine why that would be...
The only good thing about 60i content is that you can restore movies shot in 24p back to 24p through 3:2 pulldown, which would have been a lot harder with 30p but I'd take 1080p30 over 1080i60 on a progressive (NB: Not interlaced!!!) screen any day. Now, 1080i60 vs 720p60 is tougher, because you lose detail in low-motion screens, but gain smoothness in high-motion screens. 1080p60 would be king of the hill, no doubt about that.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Just FYI, 1280x1024 is a bad choice because, while it's supported by Microsoft, a lot of game developers don't correctly adapt to the strange 1.25:1 aspect ratio and so games will have a tendency to either have black bars or be squished strangely. The dashboard, and all Microsoft-developed games will work correctly, as they test for that, but anything else is kind of a gamble.
Comment of the year
Ummmm, when are we going to see some 1080p porn?
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.
Not over component. The last update added upconversion for VGA only.
According to High-Def Digest, the photos of the HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 does not have an HDMI output. 1080p over component only is problematic - particularly if the movie studios turn on content protection. So, having 1080p output without the digital path to the display is not such bit thunder, IMHO.... See http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Microsoft/X box_360/High-Def_DVD_Gaming/No_HDMI_for_Xbox_360_H D_DVD_Add-On/248
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.
I'm well aware that media that can take advantage of 1080p is slowly coming out. However, my comment was written in response to pjr.cc's claim that he is using a 1080p plasma (very few exist) to receive 1080p signals in Australia (where there are no 1080p signals). Claiming that you are actively using something to receive signals that don't exist is very different from claiming that you intend to use something down the road.
This guy's the limit!