Slashdot Mirror
XBox Adding HD Tuners Next Year
iloveCarla writes "Microsoft is partnering with Toshiba to turn the Xbox into a full fledged HTPC. With built-in HD DVD, a larger hard drive, revamped "MCE" interface, and possibly HDTV tuners, the Xbox would be in a better position to compete against the PS3 in the race to serve as the defacto entertainment hub for couch potatoes. According to the article "The new device is expected to be released late in 2008 or at the 2009 CES show in Las Vegas."
Even if I had a screen big enough to enjoy the real benefit of HD, why the fuck would I want a locked down platform that goes out of its way to restrict my usage?
Nice, as usual around here, the headline isn't fully supported by the story, let alone the summary. In case Taco couldn't comprehend the first sentence he read, it says that they "might" add HD tuners. All the other stuff is a go, but the HD tuners may not make it.
The real question is: Will they start making the 360s reliable enough to reduce the failure rate down to something reasonable? I don't really care about HD tuners and stuff like that, what I really care about is will it keep running long enough for me to finish a game before having to send it back to the shop?
I read the internet for the articles.
Adding new features to consoles just makes people who bought 360 early upset. If the HD-DVD had been included since the beginning, I would be buying HD-DVD movies, and I really enjoy my high-def 360 playing when I'm home from school. Well, since my Xbox is off at the repair center for red-ringing, back to my Wii.
.. they'd better also do something about the terrible noise the 360 is producing. There is no way I would use my 360 as an HTPC as long as it produces so much noise. I can live with it when playing games, but when watching a movie I want the silent scenes to be just that: silent.
Unbelievable - "better position to compete"? Are they so incredibly afraid of Sony, then, despite their enormous lead? Or are things not quite as rosy for the XBox as various sources would have us believe?
They need to make an Xbox 360 that sells for no more than $300, and includes at least a 40GB hard drive. Then they need to get more and better games. They also need to make Xbox Live! Gold memberships free for the first year. That's what people actually WANT.
This HTPC crap is a waste of time. Both MS and Sony keep trying to turn their console into a "media center", which while a nice idea, isn't something that the mass-market really cares about.
I swear both MS and Sony have lost their minds.
I think Microsoft is spreading itself thin and not focusing on the clear goal of just delivering fun games. If they think Sony went wrong, why are they trying to get into that territory? They're trying to be everything to everyone but may not end up being anything to anyone. They don't have a clear portable strategy. On one hand they say Live Arcade will deliver what would-be Wii owners crave, but on the other hand there's not a lot of good original content. They've got a movie download service which may end up competing with the added DVR capabilities, but either way there is no clear way to burn your videos to keep a hard copy. They've got a HD-DVD add-on, but have no plans to support Blu-Ray if it gains enough popularity. Microsoft Game Studios has a lot less developers under its umbrella but they say they can overtake Nintendo and keep Sony at bay. I think they're just blowing whatever direction the wind is going, and it smells a lot like their idea of how to compete with the iPod or how to make a good desktop OS.
From the 3rd page:
"Currently most iPods incorporate a Toshiba drive. "
The one feature that would make the 360 into a descent media centre would be support for SMB (aka Window's) shares, so you can easily access all the media from your PC or NAS. It's the thing that makes XBOX Media Centre rock. No-one wants to be forced to use Media Player 11's crappy media streaming when they could just as easily browse their network shares.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yet another Xbox model? Might as well get a PC that isn't locked down and 100% controlled by Microsoft.
revamped "MCE" Oh great, just what I needed more machine check exceptions. I just replaced the CPU in mom's computer!
beefing up the hardware so it lasts more than six months without getting the 3 rings of death!
I sure am glad I rushed out and stood in line to buy the original $460 version, spent another $179 to add an HD-DVD player, and now I get to buy one all over again if I want the extra sexy-ness in a single box version?
I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
I actually really dislike the way this new console generation has gone, and am glad I have held off buying so far. There is way too much SKU shifting, with new better versions constantly being released to one up the other guy and keep the console "relevant". Its all well and good if you don't care and are sitting on the fence, but as a person actually interested in a next generation console instead of dropping a grand on a gaming PC it is really aggravating. Kudos to the Wii for avoiding this, but its not really what I'm looking for.
Examples of this abound. The one that pisses me off the most is Dual Shock 3. Some of the upgrades have been less than necessary, such as the Elite Xbox SKU, but rumble is a novel game input that you're completely missing out on for no reason if you bought or will buy a PS3 in the next six months. Some weren't even able to make the choice to wait because Sony lied about it.
Now with the HD tuner incorporated HD DVD Player MP3 jack extravaganda, why buy now? You know there will be a new SKU and it will make your box look like a chump. And this isn't like Apple releasing something new and you're paying opportunity cost (forgetting about the iPhone for a second), because most of these upgrades already exist and are minor. The only difference is if you buy them now you're paying probably twice as much for something that's half as well integrated with the box.
Maybe I should just buy a Dreamcast...now there's a stable SKU!
...to own one of these new 360's you'll need to buy a tv license as if you own any equipment capable of receiving TV signals you need to own a license. That's an extra £130/year (unless of course you have a license anyway).
Flibberdy
OK, no trolling, I am a happy XBOX owner and play on live.
... OK ... if I have HDTV I have a tuner already. If it is for recording: I doubt MS is going to give questionable cool features like ad skip with it, so better a TIVO.
....
BUT: first they should take care of the noise the 360 produces. For me TV/Video watching is completely ruined when you have such a loud fan noise.
It is an incredible gaming machine, but I better use my 5+ year old DVD player than the 360 because the noise concerns.
And before you tell me to crank up the volume: every movie has silent/low volume scenes, and usually the ones when there is important conversation or other dramatic parts..... now that is when I do not want to hear a changing pitch of fan noise.
Other question a HDTV tuner
Dunno, maybe this game machine as an entertainment center idea does not get to me. I would better shove a minimac/mini pc into the hifi stand and than I have all the freedom to burn, record, show pix, etc
The rumor comes from Toshiba and I don't buy it. Why would Microsoft do this? They make money off movie downloads to the Xbox. Unless Toshiba is going to give MS a huge stake in the HD-DVD platform, I don't really see an upside for Redmond. I can see Toshiba making a media center extender, but I don't see MS letting them put an Xbox into it.
The one thing they could do to interest me is offer the ability to interoperate with third party software.
- Define a set of acceptable video formats that the unit will play, starting with ATSC HDTV formats.
- Create a simple networking protocol to interact with PCs/Servers. Maybe UPnP is good enough, maybe not. It needs to stream the video and allow for flexible playback (FF/REW, Jump n seconds, jump to this point in time, pause, etc.)
An HD-DVD player, which could also play games, and can interact with my MythTV backend and Mac OS X iLife Apps (view photos, play movies, play unencrypted music) would be a no-brainer.
A game unit which also connects to Windows Media Center is not interesting.. Doesn't it already do that?? I'm not interested in a Windows-based media server, with all the related costs and limitations.
Looks to me like we'll be seeing XBOX and PC gaming being synonymous in the next year or two. They've already got the hardware rating system in Vista as well as USB adapters for their wireless 360 controlers. It's just a matter of adding direct game support for XBOX titles on the PC.
Considering how fast PC hardware advances in comparison to consoles there is no reason not too. The only thing they'll have to watch out for is letting the software developers get too far head of the average customer's hardware, the very reason many gamers have abandoned PC gaming in the first place.
Personally I would love to see this since I have already distilled my living room entertainment package down to a PC and a 40" LCD HD TV, and don't care spoil that with the noisy, anemic, unreliable, one trick pony, 360, just to be able to play the few console titles I'm interested in.
Cable cards? Last time I checked, besides over the air or unencrypted HD, the only way devices that can record HD content from your cable or satellite provider is with a cable card. If there is anything that's had more hardware problems than the xbox, without any of the popularity, its cable cards. Until that whole situation gets figured out I don't see anyone providing a good HD DVR.
Like, yeah, I'd use one of these as my living room hub of choice, if it didn't blow or suck quite as much. ;-) The noise these things put out is phenomenal, and then there's the noise from the DVD drive. I have multi-core boxes running serious number cruching apps that are quieter.
Nah, living room entertainment centre? Don't think so somehow.
threadeds blog
Hmm, well you have a few choices here on how this device will interface with cable:
1) Classic Analog
2) Unencrypted QAM
3) Encrypted QAM*
4) Cablecard device
5) IPTV
As far as I know, HD content is not offered over classic Analog, and cannot be relied upon to be supplied
over unencrypted QAM. So now you are into connection options that require an authentication scheme
and some sort of trusted / authenticated relationship between the device and the cable company.
So far the closest analog (ignoring TVs with cablecard slots) is the HD-TIVO. One only has to scan the
threads on avsforum to see the good and bad experiences people have had trying to activate what cable
companies essentially consider a third party device on their network.
For your average slashdot reader the integration issues are likely something we would spend time working
through and could in fact navigate to a successful conclusion. But for the average consumer this could
prove a frustrating and potentially hopeless experience unless Microsoft's 360/MCE is an "officially"
supported device. And I don't see that happening without an investment from MS of some kind.
* I intentionally separated encrypted QAM from cablecard as cablecard's replacement is ostensible
on the horizon.
The problem with upgrading consoles is that you suddenly have two hardware platforms. Do game designers design for the old platform, and limit their features, or do they design for the new platform and limit their audience? They will almost invariably choose the first. Therefore uptake on the new console is low, and consumers feel ripped off -- both the consumers who buy a useless new console, and the consumers who spent their money on the inferior old console.
With the Xbox 360, however, it's a different deal. None of the upgrades are going to effect the gaming capabilities of the Xbox. Even the hard-drive limitation won't stop you from playing any games. What you get with an upgraded Xbox is a more capable box for movies and general home entertainment.
On the other hand, despite this being a good technical idea, Microsoft is most likely going to flub it like they did with 6 editions of Vista. If Microsoft does flub it, people will worry about which edition of the Xbox they should buy, and hold off purchasing altogether.
Eh? Sony dose not have a cellphone? What planet are you from? Zune?
why don't you pop over to
http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?cc=global&lc=en&ver=4001&template=pg1&zone=pg
And quite possibly you may at some time in the future, change your mind...
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Microsoft is adding more and more features to have poeple use their (noisy) console for things it was never designed for. With this, they hope to sell the machine to more people that were still in doubt about buying a console. Maybe they will even make a few sales to people that simply want a TV tuner with a decent programme listing, like the way people bought PlayStation2's as a DVD player.
I'm perfectly happy with my Playstation as a Game Console and BD-ROM player.
It's quiet and has all the outputs I need to make that perfect connection to my Home Cinema equipment.
Yes, I have Linux on there so I can use it to watch 'downloaded' media content, but it's not the reason I bought it.
(An XboX can't even do that without a PC with Windows Media Player 11 on a networking doing all the hard work.)
With Linux, a PS3 can already use any linux-supported (HD)TV receiver, or any other (Linux supported) USB device.
Because of HDTV and ever-more-powerful processors, one machine will someday sit in the living room, recording your TV shows, string your music, doubling as Internet Appliance for browsing an e-mail.
At the very least.
If people will still have hard-wired phones, the machine will answer the phone for you.
Home Automation will also be interesting (toggling lights when you're on vacation, climate control, remote alarm check-up/signaling, providing access to the networked webcam in the baby room).
The possible privacy issues are just as endless.
Any machine successful enough gets the attention of 'the power that be' and will be used for things people will not like. Just as phone companies log your calls, ISP's keep track of all your sent and received e-mail and cars with LoJack are already monitored (Did I mention Cell Phone tracing?), every bit of information will be monitored, logged and, if you're unlucky, scanned and reported.
Everything automated can also be controlled.
Just like TiVO's deleting shows at the broadcaster's command and digital music becoming suddenly unplayable , someone will always be annoyed at the endless possibilities and will want to keep the possibilities within limits.
What will -really- make the device sell is something I don't know yet.
It's 'killer feature' maybe has not even been invented yet.
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
Is the x-box not expensive enough already? I can have the option of buying an xbox or a new computer. This is getting stupid. I always tell people there are no good games for the xbox -I am baiting them for the obvious answer: "no, halo is a good game!" Yes, Halo is a good game. And Halo 2. And Halo 3. Microsoft admits they are keeping afloat on the Halo franchise. Which is why they should stop calling the system the xbox and call it what it is -the Halo Gaming Platform, or alternately, the H-Box. The H-box is the system of choice for suckers for advertising, and those people who can't identify a quality product.
The PS3 needs help developing native X drivers that work on the Cell's SPEs. Linux currently runs on the PS3 Cell's PPC core, but that doesn't even have the accelerated graphics that cheap PCs have on their videocards (the PS3 RSX is locked out to Linux). The SPEs are so much more powerful, and designed for exactly the pixel pushing that X needs. Once they're running instead of sitting there, the PS3 will be by far the best $600 HD terminal out there. Especially with home theater/automation systems on it like LinuxMCE. But it needs help across that basic milestone.
--
make install -not war
Just ask sega about how well console "upgrades" sell - eg MegaCD, 32X, etc.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Are you ignoring the fact that the Wii is the best selling console?
There is some evidence to the contrary. If the problem has been fixed for so long, how come there are still tons of people returning their 360s for repairs?
What they would have said in a less politically correct world would be:
"We intend this to be the death blow to the PS3 - an overpriced and poorly supported system, that despite our inability to provide a reliable and quiet home theater experience we're going to shove down America's throat and they'll like it."
Well the "... and they'll like it." part is from actually from Sony but maybe MS will pic it up so that they are "in a better position to compete."
I know Sony gets royalties from DVD players; the xbox 1 DVD playback kit existed to prevent Sony from profiting off every xbox sold; but I believe they get royalties for the movies as well. It would make it a no-brainer for Sony to include a DVD player in the PS2, even at little to no profit. Encouraging DVD sales means more money with little to no effort.
Microsoft, however, gets nothing from HD-DVD sales. It needs to be hit a price point where they can profit or at least minimize their losses.
It's amusing to hear people that bashed the Bluray addon for PS3 now claim how brilliant this idea is. Give Sony credit for realizing the future was in HD. MS will have problems due to capacity restrictions w/ DVD's (see Assassin's Creed). W/ 10 mil. + consoles, they are married to DVD to deliver gaming content for this generation and that will eventually lead to the demise of the 360.
Maybe we miss games where you could do this (slightly exaggerated):
~
alias rapid "toggleauto; bind t single"
alias single "togglesingle; bind t rapid"
rapid
Is this going to be another SKU? It's getting to be too confusing to keep track of the different versions of the XBOX, and the capabilities of each. It just doesn't make sense to get one if they're going to change it every few months. I'll just stick with my Nintendo.
Here is one example: The big game recorded off-air in pristine digital HD. Looks damn good in large screen projection - better than DVD video - even with the constraint token enabled.
No MythBox to assemble. 2-Way CableCard support. Begin the build-up to the match with a good console sports game.
In this beer and pizza border town that is not a tough sell.
You only need a licence to actually receive signals. If you have a TV, not tuned into anything with no arial plugged into it when the inpector calls, that's fine.
I keep my 360 in a cabinet under the TV to dull the noise of its massive fans. And since it raises the temperature in there high enough to bake a small cake, I can't imagine having it sitting out so I can actually use the IR remote. Anybody actually have a good experience keeping these things in the living room? Much less trying to watch a movie/show with dialog?
Social media and technology thoughts: http://jasonkinner.wordpress.com
With their crapulent MCE OS offerrings MS has just about convinced Intel there is no market for HTPC. Now we find that MS wants the whole market with its non-Intel XBox.
Will Intel respond with some non-Microsoft developments, or will they surrender another market to the Beast of Redmond?
Ultimately Microsoft has to take ownership of the entire PC hardware market if they are to sustain growth. They are already an OEM of desktop PCs in India. If they take the consumer electronics space also there's nothing left but servers. How long before they're drooling over that high margin business?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Maybe because by fixing all new 360s on the shelves it doesn't magically fix all the old 360s that are already out there or have been in some shops storage for a while?
Doesn't exactly take a genius to answer that one. There's people who's original 360s are working fine so it's not as if it was a major issue and hence not as if it was ever going to be hard to fix. For everyone that has a failed 360 nowadays theres hundreds that don't which puts the 360 back on track with the industry average for faulty electronic goods which is something you can never really improve on no matter how hard you try.
The lack of a high capacity optical drive is on feature that's kept me from buying a 360. Even if they add one though I'm not very likely to buy a 360 just because it's stamped with Microsoft's brand and I've had to many bad consumer experiences with them. Money really isn't much of a factor though as I only expect to buy the console once and a couple hundred dollars as a one time cost isn't very important.
Of course the real deciding factor in consoles is the games. I've yet to see any game in this generation, for any console, that is really exciting enough to buy a new console for. GTA4 might get me to buy a PS3. I've been highly disppointed that the PS3 has yet to have any games really making it worth buying. Wii looks interesting but not enough to really buy one yet - maybe when they get cheap they'll be worth the few hours I'd actually spend playing it. That's what I did with the GameCube - bought it when they got cheap, played through a couple games, and then gave it to my little sisters. The HD-DVD does apply to this metric though as I like deeply involved games so the extra storage space could make games more appealing to me.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
The article I provided is from today. There is no mention of the return rate falling off after fixed units are on shelves or after they started replacing returned units with properly fixed units.
The article also says that the town has a population of 95,000. The US has a population of 300 million and nearly 8 million 360s have been sold in the US. If the town follows the national average of Xbox 360 ownership then there should be 2500 Xbox 360 owners in the town. The article also says the UPS store sees between 4 and 10 returned 360s each day. We'll assume the average is 5 per business day to err on the conservative side. This gives us an estimate of the rate of failures per year as 5*250/2500=0.5. Even if we assume that 360 ownership in this town greatly exceeds the national average this means the Xbox 360 failure rate is huge. This is also assuming that all returned 360s in this town pass through this one UPS store.
If the failure rate is really this high, we could expect that about 25% or more of the launch 360 buyers haven't had a problem. This seems reasonable given that online we see a non-negligible number of people proudly proclaiming they haven't had a problem while a non-negligible number of others say they've gone through several of them.
Agree with most comments so far. One basic requirement for me in a media center is that it has to play all formats and encoding schemes. The 360 is way too picky about the video it can stream. If the 360 and PS3 intend to be a contenders in this space then they have to at least match the functionality in XBMC. The original Xbox with XBMC trumps both these so-called "next-gen" consoles at the moment in media centre functionality.
The Xbox 360 failure rate in Australia during the initial launch period was about 30%, according to retailers, so your numbers sound about right.
You might also enjoy this "enlightening" interview with Todd Holmdahl, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Gaming and Xbox Products Group.
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2007/06/a_qa_with_todd_holmdahl_the_hardware_guy_at_microsoft_about_xbox_360_failures.html
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
(Posting Anon because I'm also moderating)
This doesn't divide or hurt the 360 and the technology that needs to go into this is minor and most of it is in place with Xbox live/MCE already.
This doesn't set a precedent as the most popular home console of all time had a similar sibling The PSX which was $700 U.S. when I saw it at the Sony building in 2003 and didn't have any impact in the states.
Did anybody keep in mind that Toshiba is one of the backers of the CELL Processor? They just renewed and extended their Joint-Venture with Sony. They also developed a "reduced" CELL Processor called SpursEngine.
They should be working on a PS3 version, not a XBOX360 Version...
This is a neat idea. Too bad I already own an Xbox though. If you got me with HDDVD and all that from th ebeginning then maybe my 360 would be more than a games and DVD player. But that's what it is, and I've got better things to spend money on than more xbox 360 consoles. I'm not buying another one.
then mine must have been faulty. I've had it and played it regularly since it came out. It never overheats, occasionally freezes up if I leave it on for a day or so, and hasn't scratched a single game. I haven't known a single person who actually had to send theirs in and I know a lot of gamers. I admit my old roomate's copy of Tiger Woods 07 got scratched up when the 360 got knocked over while we were playing it. I keep hearing how most of them don't work and how horrible they are, but I've seen no evidence of it myself. The few instances I have seen are something I'd expect such as freezing after being on a day or two, or the game getting scratched when the console was knocked on it's side. I'm starting to think it's just exageration due to hatered of Microsoft.
Someone save me from this sanity.
I almost bought a 360 elite, but if they keep putting out better versions I may as well wait a few years for the 100th different version, it will surely be the best ever.
This seems reasonable given that online we see a non-negligible number of people proudly proclaiming they haven't had a problem while a non-negligible number of others say they've gone through several of them.
Yes, because those without problems are clearly as likely to post that they have fine XBoxes as people who have been plagued with problems.
My 360 was periodically overheating (not a full red ring, but a partial ring that forced me to shut it off for a while). The problem was solved by moving my 360 out of my cozy entertainment center and putting it around the corner, free standing by itself.
It seems pretty clear to me that the problem is with the spec of the 360s. We see over & over again people bitching that "I'm on my [n::n > 4]th 360!!" - it should be obvious to these guys that perhaps the problem is with the way they're using their 360s, and not a manufacturing quality issue. Maybe after their third failure they'd figure out that they need to keep the thing a little cooler.
This doesn't absolve MS from failing to account in their specification for the fact that many people are using their 360s in hot/poorly ventilated environments; they should have realized that there would be people who had been running their previous-gen systems in environments that were already at the borderline, heat-wise, for those systems. But it's also stupid as a customer to keep doing the same thing over & over and expecting a different result.
-BbT
We're sorry, gaming has been disabled because XBOX is currently recording "Everybody loves Raymond". Press "X" to watch live now. Or, press "A" to dim screen and read a book instead.
Gaming will be enabled when recording completes, in: 28 minutes
Basically copying all the PS3 features available today, in a package perhaps 18 months away. In all likelyhood HD DVD will be dead by then anyway..
Regardless, can all the PS3 owners now start ranting about Microsoft bundling the trojan horse HD DVD drive?
You know the one that was not required, because DVD9 was sufficient... (just like HDMI was not required, and nor was HDD)...
Unbelievable how people have been fooled by Microsoft. spending $1000 on a console bit by bit, and ending up with something that is basically obsolete...
Lets quickly put out a system. It doesn't need to be real fancy, just have lots of games. In a year we will have a new system with some new hardware and all those suckers that bought one will sell it and buy another one. Then a year from then put out another system with some more small upgrades to start the cycle over again. This is better then putting out one great system to start that is ahead of its time.
</sarcasm>