News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

[loekf]

EG's review. Pretty good breakdown of the hardware. Looks like its similar to PS4 in power consumption and heat.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-xbox-one-hardware-test

Then why the heck still an external power brick ? The XB1 casing feels a bit like a regular consumer electronics box... a big empty casing with lots of air...

 

[RenegadeRocks]

In one of the setups I tested, I'd be watching a movie while leaning back, feet in the air. The Kinect would regularly read my feet as my hands, suddenly pausing playback or switching apps.

kotaku review has some funny moments

 

[Bagel seed]

Regarding voice control, it would be fine if there was a controller action to accomplish the same result, but that doesn't always seem to be the case from what I read. eg. to record gameplay with buttons you need to go to snap and end up recording yourself choosing record in the menus. Guess it's on the todo list.

 

[Cyan]

kotaku review has some funny moments

I hope I come back as a bluejay in my next life and test how Kinect recognises me.

Another review, this time it is Anand style, so it's all about the technology:

http://anandtech.com/show/7528/the-xbox-one-mini-review-hardware-analysis

 

[joker454]

Then why the heck still an external power brick ? The XB1 casing feels a bit like a regular consumer electronics box... a big empty casing with lots of air...

Probably to have a quieter machine which was deemed quite important last gen. From the DF link:

We measure a peak of 125W consumed during gameplay and a 49 degrees Celsius case temperature (directly above the processor, so effectively the exhaust), in an ambient 23-degree environment - as close as we could get to our PlayStation 4 testing. That's 15W off our measured PS4 peak and almost the same temperature level. The difference is noise: Xbox One is a remarkably quiet machine - virtually silent during front-end and media tasks and even at maximum load after several hours' worth of Ryse gameplay

 

[RudeCurve]

One thing I noticed that people have brought up is the fact when voice launching a game you have to say the complete name. I don't see what the problem is as how else would you launch a specific game instead of something similar? For example Ryse Son of Rome vs Rise of the Dead? It makes sense that you can't just say "rize" and expect the console to know which game you're talking about.

 

[AlphaWolf]

One thing I noticed that people have brought up is the fact when voice launching a game you have to say the complete name. I don't see what the problem is as how else would you launch a specific game instead of something similar? For example Ryse Son of Rome vs Rise of the Dead? It makes sense that you can't just say "rize" and expect the console to know which game you're talking about.

There are ways they could do it, but I don't know that it would help to have a choice pop up when you say 'play Forza' vs saying 'play Forza X'.

 

[Rurouni]

One thing I noticed that people have brought up is the fact when voice launching a game you have to say the complete name. I don't see what the problem is as how else would you launch a specific game instead of something similar? For example Ryse Son of Rome vs Rise of the Dead? It makes sense that you can't just say "rize" and expect the console to know which game you're talking about.

If you've got 2 or more games with similar name, then yes, you definitely need to give a more detailed command. But when you want to launch Forza and there's only 1 Forza in your library, then there is no reason why it wouldn't work with just Forza. Right now the voice command is too rigid. I was hoping for something a more natural.

 

[dlm]

There are ways they could do it, but I don't know that it would help to have a choice pop up when you say 'play Forza' vs saying 'play Forza X'.

I find this really baffling, as well. Phones have handled this exact problem with calling contacts from your address book for ages. If you call something out and there is only one substring match, then you use that, otherwise you prompt for a more specific request.

They're also really going to have to patch in a confirmation before switching games to avoid data loss. I can't imagine how that managed to make it to ship.


Between the Kotaku and Rev3 reviews, I think we have a pretty good sense of what corners had to be cut to make the ship date. I imagine a lot of these things will be ironed out over time, but it's unfortunate that things like surround passthrough for TV audio, storage management and data loss avoidance during app switching didn't make the bar for the launch.

Maybe the assumption is that early adopters are more likely to be forgiving of stuff like that and that things will improve down the line? I dunno.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

...the o sounds like the o in love, the u sounds like the u in dumb

Both those vowels sound the same short 'u' (under, umbrella, rust) in those words. 'Love' = luv and 'dumb' = dum.

 

[(((interference)))]

The fact that every Dolby Digital audio that goes through the HDMI-in gets downmixed to stereo is kind of stupid. $500 and no royalties to Dolby?

Wow, that is shocking - for a supposedly all in one entertainment device not to support the most common surround format is pathetic.

Even if they don't want to pay royalties to Dolby and output DD, they should at least output multichannel PCM rather than downmixing to stereo.

 

[joker454]

Wow, that is shocking - for a supposedly all in one entertainment device not to support the most common surround format is pathetic.

Even if they don't want to pay royalties to Dolby and output DD, they should at least output multichannel PCM rather than downmixing to stereo.

Here's the part people aren't quoting from the review for whatever reason:

There’s a beta option to transcode Dolby into DTS or PCM audio, but it didn’t seem to work for me, and Microsoft says it might cause additional video distortion with some cable boxes until it’s out of beta.

So decoding to alternate formats is coming but it's still in beta.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Yep, same info here http://kotaku.com/how-to-get-your-cable-tv-surround-sound-working-on-xbox-1468565797

 

[AlphaWolf]

I find this really baffling, as well. Phones have handled this exact problem with calling contacts from your address book for ages. If you call something out and there is only one substring match, then you use that, otherwise you prompt for a more specific request.

Yes and it can result in false positives which can also be detrimental to the experience.

 

[Betanumerical]

Here's the part people aren't quoting from the review for whatever reason:



So decoding to alternate formats is coming but it's still in beta.

Why would audio decoding / encoding cause video distortion?...

 

[Tap In]

From Albert Panelo just now...

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=90673295&postcount=240

Dolby Digital is coming post launch. This was a SW scheduling issue pure and simple, and I know people are disappointed, but we will have it.

Anyone with an HDMI receiver should be fine, as we pass the uncompressed 5.1 and 7.1 through HDMI as well as DTS. Even if you have a Dolby only HDMI receiver (which I'm not sure exists), you will still get 5.1 or 7.1 sound since those receivers should accept uncompressed surround.

For the Dolby only headsets, my understanding is that these will work but you will only get stereo audio since we only pass Stereo and DTS through the optical port. I have not tested this myself, but I'm told it works. Regardless, I understand this is an inconvenience, but again we're going to have Dolby coming.

This is unrelated to the HDMI-IN "Surround Sound" beta. To clarify, we default HDMI-IN audio to be converted to Stereo. However, we do have a feature you can access in TV settings/Troubleshooting that enables Surround Sound in "beta" form. If you check the box, and you get Surround, you're golden. We found some inconsistencies in STB's during testing and decided to disable it by default to insure a good initial setup experience for people.

 

[whome0]

Here's the part people aren't quoting from the review for whatever reason: So decoding to alternate formats is coming but it's still in beta.

Kotaku article mentiones a Time Warner cable box, I guess its USA user. Do they use some sort of DRM protection like DVB pay channels and/or CI+ conax paired HD channels? Thats what is waiting here in the europe.

This quote is indicating Xbox does mixing of own game audio and hdmi-in audio. Same for video pixels. I sense troubles for CI+/CA conax/VIAccess protected input.

The Xbox One will bump down the audio coming from devices plugged into its HDMI-in port—i.e. cable boxes from surround sound to stereo.
The Surround Sound Beta option will bump that stereo audio to some form of surround.

Anyone tried already do hdmi-in signal passthroughs in standby or poweroff mode?

 

[joker454]

Why would audio decoding / encoding cause video distortion?...

My guess is that cable boxes are so horrifically bad that some have bugs going back years that Microsoft will have to work around. I had a buddy that worked on the software in said cable boxes, and it's fascinating to hear how terrible the code for them really was. They had bugs in the bug database with estimated fix times of not weeks or months, but *years*. It's crazy how bad cable boxes really are. Would be interesting for someone to test the hdmi-in with something more modern like a DirecTV box, etc.

 

[bkilian]

From Albert Panelo just now...

It wasn't _only_ a scheduling issue. I'm amazed they went through with it, I thought for sure they would cave in to dolby's demands.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Yep, same info here http://kotaku.com/how-to-get-your-cable-tv-surround-sound-working-on-xbox-1468565797

That's pretty crappy, according to them:

To be clear about all this:

- The Xbox One will run any of its own stuff—games, videos, movies in surround sound.
- The Xbox One will bump down the audio coming from devices plugged into its HDMI-in port—i.e. cable boxes (we haven't tested it with game consoles)—from surround sound to stereo
- The Surround Sound Beta option will bump that stereo audio to some form of surround

Surround information is lost forever. That "beta surround" is just some form of stereo upmixing.