Consoles and HDTV's

[Rockster]

Anyone who tried to take advantage of the HD titles available for the original XBox is certainly appreciative of Microsoft's position this generation to use an outboard video display chip with its' scaling capabilities. It's inclusion had some definite trade-off's. I wanted to get a pulse from the techies / videophiles in the room to get a sense if it was the right decision.

XBox 1 supported 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i, from which developers were free to choose what they wanted to target / support. The problem is obvious. Each game is different, and may not be compatible with your TV. For example some titles, only supported 480i, which looked terrible on progressive sets. Most of the HD games, only supported 720p, while most TV's only supported 1080i as an HD input; meaning even if you had a HDTV and an HD game, you would likely only be able to play it at 480p. Such was the case for me and many others. And there were other issues not as apparent. Even with TV's that support all resolutions, many don't have a different screen position memory for each input rate. So as you switch between a 720p game and a 1080i game and a 480p game, you may be forced to reposition, center, and size your TV each time. Or the TV might not re-sync properly and you have to power the TV off and on. While I have no idea how many support calls and disappointed customers this created, it certainly factored in to the 360 design. The 360 simply scales any developer defined frame-buffer size to any consumer selected output resolution.

This design decision seems to have taken many hits. I'm assuming in it's current implementation the scaling chip works in the analog domain which prevents digital output support in the form of DVI or HDMI, and currently lacks the ability to run at 1080p. The output of the chip is good, better than the encoder in XBox1 or PS2. Because the PS3 appears to be going the XBox 1 route, giving developers the control (perhaps with a minimum spec of 720P, anyone know?), do you guys think Microsoft made a bad choice?

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

Confused here..

First you talk about what a clusterfudge HD was on the Xbox, and then you say Sony is using that same tactic with the PS3, and then finish up with the question of whether or not MS's new requirements for the X360 are a bad choice.

HUH?

It seems from the bulk of your message that your question would be did Sony make a bad choice by leaving it up to the developers, not MS.

HD on the Xbox was virtually worthless. I'm sure glad I bought those HD cables and moved my Xbox to my HDTV so I could see exactly how flawed each and every game was. There's something to be said about the nice blur cause from low resolution gaming on SDTVs.

(The PS2 on an HDTV was usually even worse.. I finally gave up and just moved both of my PS2s to SDTVs)

 

[Rockster]

Sorry for being so confusing. But I did mean if Microsoft made a mistake. They now lack HDMI/DVI and 1080p as bullet points on their spec sheets, something which has come under a lot of criticism, and one of many factors that lead to the general impression that the PS3 is more powerful. There have also been many comments from developers stating that they don't want to be mandated to support specific resolutions, and would rather have the freedom to choose. Some indicating they would prefer to use 480p, allowing them to do more work per pixel.

Another thing I have been wondering is if there is some lack of syncronization between the GPU and the display chip that has lead to the tearing visible in many of the initial XBox 360 titles.

 

[Nick Laslett]

HD on the Xbox was virtually worthless. I'm sure glad I bought those HD cables and moved my Xbox to my HDTV so I could see exactly how flawed each and every game was. There's something to be said about the nice blur cause from low resolution gaming on SDTVs.

(The PS2 on an HDTV was usually even worse.. I finally gave up and just moved both of my PS2s to SDTVs)

480p gaming on the Xbox, GC and PS2 is excellent, as long as you are using a 480p display.

The 1:1 pixel mapping provides a sharp, vibrant, stable image.

It sounds like your display device was not suited to this kind of output.

 

[rashly]

I play Amped2 in 720p on Xbox1 and it looks a million times better than any 480p out there.

Here is a list of the display capabilities of Xbox1 games: http://www.hdtvarcade.com/xboxlist.htm

 

[c0_re]

The models and colors were much much in cleaner with 480p and component cables on Xbox I could care aless about "jaggies". I still think that unless it's truly free FSAA(satill not buying the "free" FSAA on 360) is a waste of resources.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I think MS made the right choice in this. There aren't going to be almost any games on PS3 that support 1080p anyway and only a fraction of TVs (far less than 1%) support this mode to begin with. I love the 720p/1080i w/4XAA stanrdard that MS has set for X360.

 

[c0_re]

I think MS made the right choice in this. There aren't going to be almost any games on PS3 that support 1080p anyway and only a fraction of TVs (far less than 1%) support this mode to begin with. I love the 720p/1080i w/4XAA stanrdard that MS has set for X360.

I think they made the right short term choice, VGA\Component now is the right option since only about 30% of HDTV's currently in homes have DVI\HDMI. I'd like to see a 2nd version of the 360 with DVI\HDMI though since in the long run digital connections are the way to go. Yea 1080p is a pipe dream on any of the new consoles you'll see as many 1080p games on PS3 as you saw 1080i and 720p games on xbox just not enough memory or memory bandwidth, it can be done but what a waste.

 

[London Geezer]

I love the 720p/1080i w/4XAA stanrdard that MS has set for X360.

It's not a standard at all, as we've seen so far. Especially when it comes to AA.

 

[c0_re]

It's not a standard at all, as we've seen so far. Especially when it comes to AA.

While I would agree it's a long way from "standard" I only know of one game not rendered in 720p(PDR3, is there one more?) and every game I've played had atleast 2xFSAA if not 4X or higher. So I'd say 90% of the games fall into that catagory and thats not to bad concidering the 360 and it's games are at such an early point in their life cycle.

With Oblivion and GRAW both out and kicking ass(in the stores and reviewers)it's doing better than I expected, I mean I know of 2 poeple alone that went out and bought a 360 soely becasue Oblivion was out.

 

[London Geezer]

While I would agree it's a long way from "standard" I only know of one game not rendered in 720p(PDR3, is there one more?) and every game I've played had atleast 2xFSAA if not 4X or higher. So I'd say 90% of the games fall into that catagory and thats not to bad concidering the 360 and it's games are at such an early point in their life cycle.

Well it has been discussed here many times that a lot more than one game had no AA. COD2, Kameo etc did not have AA.
Again, 90% of the games means it's not a standard.

 

[c0_re]

Well it has been discussed here many times that a lot more than one game had no AA. COD2, Kameo etc did not have AA.
Again, 90% of the games means it's not a standard.

I'm not arguing LB I'm just saying for it being so early(Especially rushed launch games) their not doin to bad. I'll be pretty impressed with Sony if every PS3 game has 4xAA and is rendered in 720p at launch.

I don't care what anyone at Microsoft says I still don't buy the free 4x aa deal