Xbox 360's Seriously Flawed DVD Playback - no 1080p

[joepic]

"The Xbox 360 is a terrible DVD player. Yeah, we know it's primarily a game console. We know DVD movie playback is essentially a "free" feature. But it is a feature nonetheless, and an important one. After all, many of our TVs only have so many inputs, and we only have so much room for boxes in our TV cabinets or stands. If you have an Xbox 360, you have no reason to believe that you shouldn't be able to use it as your primary DVD player. Except that you can't, because it's awful."

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2088531,00.asp

There are no digital video outputs on the Xbox 360 such as DVI or HDMI; instead, HD-quality output can only be produced over VGA or component video connection to your TV. Therefore you are getting 480p resolution instead of 1080p for HD DVD's.

If you want to watch HD DVD's build an HTPC and buy an Xbox 360 HD DVD drive for $200 and connect it to you HTPC via USB 2.0. Connect your HTPC to your TV via DVI/HDMI. This is what I did!

[edDV]

...
There are no digital video outputs on the Xbox 360 such as DVI or HDMI; instead, HD-quality output can only be produced over VGA or component video connection to your TV. Therefore you are getting 480p resolution instead of 1080p for HD DVD's.

This has come up before. You need to wait for a new model Xbox360 in the future with the HDMI output. It will also need to support HDCP handshake with your monitor to play all commercial HD DVD. Where are you getting 480p as a limit?

The current Xbox has analog component at 480i/480p/720p/1080i or VGA
that supports up to 1360x768. See http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/xbox360/highdefdetails.htm

If you want to watch HD DVD's build an HTPC and buy an Xbox 360 HD DVD drive for $200 and connect it to you HTPC via USB 2.0. Connect your HTPC to your TV via DVI/HDMI. This is what I did!

This may work so long as you play non-copy protected discs. Most current display cards are not HDCP compliant. Most likely the Xbox HD DVD drive will never be HDCP capable over USB2.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Why is this "news"?

I don't understand how a review on another site of existing hardware with known features is news.

Shouldn't this be posted under DVD players or such like?

This recent rush of "news" items from joepic seems nothing more that loosely-veiled MS bashing.

[RLT69]

From the article:

"We chose to use component cables to hook up the Xbox 360, since that is by far the most common connection for it. Because Microsoft values compliance with the DVD Forum's rules, component cable output of DVDs is limited to 480p resolution."

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2088533,00.asp

According to the Xbox site [ http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/xbox360/highdefdetails.htm ]
The high def resolutions are for gaming. No where does it state they are viewing movies. So yes for game playing you get get 720p/1080i over component but not for movie viewing.

However, this article does point out a flaw in the Xbox's support of 1080p. Without an HDMI connection you are not going to get 1080p gaming nor movie viewing.

Pointing out flaws in a system is not bashing. No more than bashing:

Anything Sony
Anything Linux
Anything Apple
Anything <insert the company you hate>

gotta love the microsoft fanboys

[edDV]

Didn't MS talk about the future model that does have HDMI? What about 1360x768 over VGA? Is that limited as well?

I went through the article and it wasn't clear they are testing the HD DVD option, just standard DVD. I want to see the HD Drive tested.

Didn't the HD DVD group say they would limit HD DVD to 960x720P for protected analog/digital component? What happened to that? What about unprotected content?

[kilik777]

Yes it does display 1080p thorough VGA. Maybe its just for games only? I thought it would work for movies too. Almost all 1080p tvs support vga. The Xbox 360 is a great non upconverting dvd player. If you have a standard television then it is perfectly fine. If you have a hd tv then an upconvert player through hdmi is the way to go.

http://tinurl.com/pv8do

[edDV]

Yes it does display 1080p thorough VGA. Maybe its just for games only? I thought it would work for movies too. Almost all 1080p tvs support vga. The Xbox 360 is a great non upconverting dvd player. If you have a standard television then it is perfectly fine. If you have a hd tv then an upconvert player through hdmi is the way to go.

According to the Xbox360 site, VGA max is 1360x768. Has this changed? Where is your reference for 1080p?

BTW: Xbox360 games max at 1280x720p. Anything larger is scaled.

[edDV]

PS: The Extreme Tech article never mentions the HD DVD option. What they are saying is the internal standard DVD player has poor performance. Nothing in the article speaks to the HD DVD option. Nor do they speak to the future HDMI ouput version of the Xbox360. It was probably written before the HD DVD intro.

[RLT69]

The article was about DVD playback on Xbox and the poor quality. Which is weird when they commented about 1080p since that's high def. Perhaps they were hoping for future versions to support upconverting. But their point is well taken that without HDMI you are screwed when it comes to 1080p. Unless there's an article to the contrary, VGA is not an accepted connection for 1080p movie content. As I understand it, it's HDMI or you will have crippled playback.

As far as gaming, that should be fine.

It sounds like Microsoft will be supporting HDMI but information is coming second hand. As of right now it does not look like the Xbox has HDMI suppport. Score one for the PS3.

MS should just repackage the Xbox with an HD-DVD player (internal) and HDMI connection and be done with it. They could scoop Sony by offering a external bluray player that you can connect to your Xbox - sort of what they are doing now with HD-DVD player.

[edDV]

The article was about DVD playback on Xbox and the poor quality. Which is weird when they commented about 1080p since that's high def. Perhaps they were hoping for future versions to support upconverting. But their point is well taken that without HDMI you are screwed when it comes to 1080p. Unless there's an article to the contrary, VGA is not an accepted connection for 1080p movie content. As I understand it, it's HDMI or you will have crippled playback.

As far as gaming, that should be fine.

It sounds like Microsoft will be supporting HDMI but information is coming second hand. As of right now it does not look like the Xbox has HDMI suppport. Score one for the PS3.

MS should just repackage the Xbox with an HD-DVD player (internal) and HDMI connection and be done with it. They could scoop Sony by offering a external bluray player that you can connect to your Xbox - sort of what they are doing now with HD-DVD player.

Several issues.

1. The original Xbox360 has never claimed any upscale for DVD. The drive is mainly there to load games and as the article points out, no money was spent to optimize DVD playback especially for interlace DVD which is the hard case (e.g. no inverse telecine or fancy deinterlacing).

2. The intro of the HD DVD option pre Christmas seems to be a stunt because nowhere do they explain the drives preformace with the current Xbox360. They imply it will output as 720p or 1080i over analog component but don't adequately explain resolution restrictions which should be 960x720p or 960x1080i per the HD DVD Forum.

3. When pressed (and not by the "press" it seems) they hint at a new Xbox with HDMI out. HDCP support and 1080p HD DVD playback are just speculation.

I may be out of date on this but I did search a couple of weeks ago.

[RLT69]

1. The original Xbox360 has never claimed any upscale for DVD. The drive is mainly there to load games and as the article points out, no money was spent to optimize DVD playback especially for interlace DVD which is the hard case (e.g. no inverse telecine or fancy deinterlacing).

Nor was the article claiming that it did. The article ran some DVD playback tests and found the Xbox player lacking in quality. The author asks is it much to ask to have a several hundred dollar device have good DVD playback, comparable to a $100 dvd player. The fact that Microsoft markets it as a DVD playback device, people should be able to expect that it would have good DVD playback quality. From these tests, it appears that the Xbox falls short.

Here's an interesting article on the need, or lack of, for HDMI. Granted it's from June of 2006 but it has an interesting take - that you don't need HDMI for 1080p with the Xbox or PS3.

http://editorials.teamxbox.com/xbox/1608/Editorial-The-Secret-HDMI-Pact/p1/

[edDV]

The response I got from Microsoft at a Christmas demo was similar. They wouldn't acknowledge that HDMI+HDCP was actually a requirement for HD DVD 1080i/720p when the spec clearly says otherwise. They wouldn't or couldn't talk to the 960 issue. When I pressed them on 1080p they hinted at a future model that will have HDMI.

As for quality DVD playback from the basic model, you need to understand that adding inverse telecine and advanced deinterlacing would add up to ~$100 at retail now and Xbox clearly wants to be the low cost supplier this time. MS is putting all the money into game play.

Try to catch the PBS Charlie Rose Show with Gates at Stanford (recorded 11/06). Gates said the XBox360 is replacing the PS2 where the PS3 is taking the place of the higher cost original Xbox. It may have higher features, but it won't make money. Meanwhile Xbox360 will add video features over time as costs come down and the market demands it.

Gates has observed how Jobs gets away with obsoleting the base to add new features. I conclude this will be the Xbox strategy to add new models without backwards support.

[shelbyGT]

Um... where are you all getting this information? I have the 360 set to 1920x1080 through VGA. All materials (games, dvd, hd-dvd) come in at this resolution. Yes, the 360 is doing scaling (but it has a darn good scaler built in, so why use the TV's?)

Through component you get 1080p only for games, 1080i for hd-dvd and 480p for DVD.

Through VGA it is 1920x1080 at 60hz for it all.


(I stand by this with 99% confidence.)

[edDV]

What is your monitor that accepts 1920x1080 over VGA?

Is there a 1080p selection in the Xbox360 VGA menu? Can you screen cap the selections you see?

The XBox360 did better for DVD playback in the HomeTheaterHiFi tests than Extreme Tech. It scored average.
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/shootout.cgi?function=search&articles=all#Microsof tXbox%20360%20(Component)\

They also tested the HD DVD player option for standard DVD playback
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/shootout.cgi?function=search&articles=all#Micro...20DVD%20Add-On

[RLT69]

Um... where are you all getting this information? I have the 360 set to 1920x1080 through VGA. All materials (games, dvd, hd-dvd) come in at this resolution. Yes, the 360 is doing scaling (but it has a darn good scaler built in, so why use the TV's?)

Through component you get 1080p only for games, 1080i for hd-dvd and 480p for DVD.

Through VGA it is 1920x1080 at 60hz for it all.

It's alittle thing called HDCP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection

"High Definition content is required to be protected by this scheme. Only DVI or HDMI is allowed to display 1080p content for movies. All other connections, especially component video, will not be allowed to display 1080p content. It will be crippled.

Content providers for HD-DVD and Blu-ray media can set an Image Constraint Token (ICT) flag that will only output full-resolution digital signals using a digital HDCP connection. If a HDCP enabled player is connected to a non-HDCP-enabled television set with a non-HDCP-compliant analog connection (VGA or Component), and the content is flagged, the player will output a downsampled 960x540 pixel signal."

If you are getting 1080p via VGA for HD-DVD movies then Microsoft is NOT employing HDCP.

Bottom line DV or HDMI are the only approved connection for 1080p movies.

[shelbyGT]

What is your monitor that accepts 1920x1080 over VGA?

Is there a 1080p selection in the Xbox360 VGA menu? Can you screen cap the selections you see?

The XBox360 did better for DVD playback in the HomeTheaterHiFi tests than Extreme Tech. It scored average.
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/shootout.cgi?function=search&articles=all#Microsof tXbox%20360%20(Component)\

They also tested the HD DVD player option for standard DVD playback
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/shootout.cgi?function=search&articles=all#Micro...20DVD%20Add-On

Samsung 40" 1080p LCD. Don't have dashboard thumbnails, but yes 1080 is a selectable resolution.

[shelbyGT]

Um... where are you all getting this information? I have the 360 set to 1920x1080 through VGA. All materials (games, dvd, hd-dvd) come in at this resolution. Yes, the 360 is doing scaling (but it has a darn good scaler built in, so why use the TV's?)

Through component you get 1080p only for games, 1080i for hd-dvd and 480p for DVD.

Through VGA it is 1920x1080 at 60hz for it all.

It's alittle thing called HDCP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection

"High Definition content is required to be protected by this scheme. Only DVI or HDMI is allowed to display 1080p content for movies. All other connections, especially component video, will not be allowed to display 1080p content. It will be crippled.

Content providers for HD-DVD and Blu-ray media can set an Image Constraint Token (ICT) flag that will only output full-resolution digital signals using a digital HDCP connection. If a HDCP enabled player is connected to a non-HDCP-enabled television set with a non-HDCP-compliant analog connection (VGA or Component), and the content is flagged, the player will output a downsampled 960x540 pixel signal."

If you are getting 1080p via VGA for HD-DVD movies then Microsoft is NOT employing HDCP.

Bottom line DV or HDMI are the only approved connection for 1080p movies.

No HD-DVD currently implements HDCP. Should they begin to in the future things may change, but currently nothing has been released or slated that employs HDCP.