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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?
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.
beefing up the hardware so it lasts more than six months without getting the 3 rings of death!
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!
I'd tend to agree with the suggestions that improvement of the console is required to maintain interest, that a larger hard-drive, or allowing the use of any, generic, hard drive would be a vast improvement, particularly for games developers (if they could count on a hard drive being present then I suspect games might stream slightly better without so many obvious, and sometimes painful, loading screens. The use of a generic hard drive would also have the benefit of reduced manufacturing costs for Microsoft (though potentially also reduced profits) and also a reduced purchase cost for the consumer.
As for the 'better games' that's a problem that's not entirely limited to MS' X-Box, every console, from the NES onwards has had more than its share of paltry games, but so long as sufficient people purchase those games they'll continue to be made and sold, sadly.
May I ask what was your research methodology? While I believe that this would benefit MS, by encouraging people to participate in the X-Box Live! environment it'd be more likely that people would pursue that environment to other platforms (PC, older X-Box and whatever others MS might introduce). It'd also help to increase any potential advertising revenue, which might not off-set the lost income from charging, but would have far more potential viewers which should increase the value to MS and its customers (obviously in this sense 'customers' would refer to the advertisers, not the X-Box purchasers). I also, despite that last, feel that free membership to the Gold service would be valued by the customers but, among others, I don't feel it's at the top of the list. I'd hazard a guess that cheaper consoles, improved reliability, reduced noise levels and improved networking features would be further up the list, as you already noted.
I'd suggest that the success and popularity of Myth TV, HTPCs, Media Center and X-Box Media Center show that there is quite a high level of interest in the HTPC and HD TV tuner addition. If nothing else I'd like to be able to control my TV, Sky, DVD and music from one place without having to get up to change channels, turn on and turn off equipment and then find the right remote for whatever appliance I'm currently wanting to use. I confess that this is 'lazy' but that's part of the innovation and improved convenience to the consumer; and if I get bored with TV or whatever and want to play a game then, with the apathy of boredom, it'd be easier if the X-Box was already plugged in, turned on and ready to go.
And even better if I was able to store game images on the console or network, so I don't have to do the getting-up to change discs. But that might be just too damn lazy...;-)
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.
Imagine this Microsoft Real World: You use Windows at work, hear about a cool new show, but can't look up anything about it, because your browser been locked down by the domain administrator to stop you visiting personal websites in office hours. You try to schedule the recording via your Windows Mobile smartphone, but there's no cell signal and the battery dies shortly after from the power drain of trying to use it with your work encryption on the wireless.
You come home to your XBox, which has tried to record all of your previous TV shows, but silently stopped working because it couldn't update the guide data, same as MCE. You spend some time trying to force it to download the guide data from your perfectly good home internet connection, but only a reboot fixes it, for no good reason. Except there's now no list of the failed to record shows so no information to try to manually reschedule a repeat broadcast with. You finally manually schedule that cool new show you wanted, and then you find out the broadcaster has flagged it with the do-not-record marker, and your xbox won't even allow you to record it. You decide to try and watch one of your previously recorded shows, only to find the last 5 minutes has been lost because it screwed up the clock. Again.
You finally decide to download that cool new show via bittorrent, made harder by the artificial TCP connections limit imposed by microsoft on windows and your ISPs packet throttling. You'd save it to your Windows Home Server in the closet, but the mofo died from overheating in your poorly ventilated closet, and when you try to reinstall you've hit your activation limit. You'd fire up your Windows Media Center computer and watch it from there, but MCE sucks at sharing media with other MCE boxes, and besides, you don't have the codec installed. You try watching it off the Xbox, but it just red-ringed of death from overheating because you left it running all day.
You give up on TV, and go to check your email, only to find out you've just had your account cancelled by the only ISP in your area for going over your 1GB a day limit on your unlimited super-amazing mega-expensive account, and you've just been sued by viacom for copyright infringement for downloading a show you could have watched on TV if you didn't have to work 14 hours a day to pay for your bandwidth bill and windows licences.
Welcome to the modern world of digital media.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
I think some clarity is needed on this.
Linux on the PS3 has access to six of the seven SPEs. The guest OS exists on top of a virtualization layer that restricts access to the RSX (Nvidia's graphic chip) on purpose. You won't get native 3D graphics, because by definition it can't access the RSX.
What you can do is create a faster software OpenGL implementation by offloading the calculations to an SPE instead of relying on the PowerPC core which is the out of box behavior of MesaGL. Of course, since most computers don't have such a thing as an SPE this would be new functionality for MesaGL.