News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

[Phil]

I think he means when you play a Bluray on the Xbox One (and I'd be very interested to hear this as well). 24Hz through the device that's being passed through is not supported.

I would assume when watching a Bluray on the Xbox One and then opening Snap, that everything stays at 24Hz. However if you go "Xbox Home" - then it would switch back to its default 60Hz. Switching back and between video modes is highly annoying because it usually causes a blackout and a audio cut-off momentarely as the two devices synchronize signals and handshake. It also highlights the inherent problems when dealing with various devices and signals - something where there is no optimal solution unless we suddenly have 600Hz capable sets and hardware (everything divisible by 24/25/30/60).

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I think he means when you play a Bluray on the Xbox One (and I'd be very interested to hear this as well). 24Hz through the device that's being passed through is not supported.

I would assume when watching a Bluray on the Xbox One and then opening Snap, that everything stays at 24Hz. However if you go "Xbox Home" - then it would switch back to its default 60Hz. Switching back and between video modes is highly annoying because it usually causes a blackout and a audio cut-off momentarely as the two devices synchronize signals and handshake. It also highlights the inherent problems when dealing with various devices and signals - something where there is no optimal solution unless we suddenly have 600Hz capable sets and hardware (everything divisible by 24/25/30/60).

I'm not sure why it couldn't handle it in the same was as Video players on PC. You can get judder free video playback on 24 hz video streams even while the OS is displayed at 60 hz. It basically comes down to the GPU, GPU driver and video player supporting it. AMD GPUs have been able to do this for multiple generations now.

Regards,
SB

 

[Phil]

That's a good point - and would only re-inforce my own experience running my XBMC with a forced 60Hz output and viewing 24Hz content without any judders. Then again, I'm not sure how this is exactly possible, given that logic dictates that a 24Hz or 25Hz source can not run smoothly in a 60hz update-interval... :S

 

[Gubbi]

That's a good point - and would only re-inforce my own experience running my XBMC with a forced 60Hz output and viewing 24Hz content without any judders. Then again, I'm not sure how this is exactly possible, given that logic dictates that a 24Hz or 25Hz source can not run smoothly in a 60hz update-interval... :S

It uses 3:2 pull down.

Your TV recognises this and reassemble the 60Hz 3:2 interlace stream into a 24Hz progressive one.

Standard fare for the past 6-10 years (depepent on TV brand).

Cheers

 

[-tkf-]

I think he means when you play a Bluray on the Xbox One (and I'd be very interested to hear this as well). 24Hz through the device that's being passed through is not supported.

I would assume when watching a Bluray on the Xbox One and then opening Snap, that everything stays at 24Hz. However if you go "Xbox Home" - then it would switch back to its default 60Hz. Switching back and between video modes is highly annoying because it usually causes a blackout and a audio cut-off momentarely as the two devices synchronize signals and handshake. It also highlights the inherent problems when dealing with various devices and signals - something where there is no optimal solution unless we suddenly have 600Hz capable sets and hardware (everything divisible by 24/25/30/60).

For me the most important thing would be the 24hz and we have that confirmed, but not tested afaik.
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1810007&postcount=8240

Of course with the added complexity of the HDMI IN real life tests would have to be done to see how it actually works.

 

[Billy Idol]

Is it possible to gift games from Xbox Live market, similar to Steam?

 

[Jwm]

Is it possible to gift games from Xbox Live market, similar to Steam?

Not any more, the old DRM system would have allowed you to transfer it once if I remember it right. I do hope they bring back the family plan (if you use a windows phone you can actually still purchase it oddly).

 

[dlm]

I think he means when you play a Bluray on the Xbox One (and I'd be very interested to hear this as well). 24Hz through the device that's being passed through is not supported.

I would assume when watching a Bluray on the Xbox One and then opening Snap, that everything stays at 24Hz. However if you go "Xbox Home" - then it would switch back to its default 60Hz. Switching back and between video modes is highly annoying because it usually causes a blackout and a audio cut-off momentarely as the two devices synchronize signals and handshake. It also highlights the inherent problems when dealing with various devices and signals - something where there is no optimal solution unless we suddenly have 600Hz capable sets and hardware (everything divisible by 24/25/30/60).

You only need a 120Hz refresh to get all of those numbers. It's 50Hz that messes it all up.

Edit: Nvm, missed the 25. What's that used for?

 

[AlphaWolf]

You only need a 120Hz refresh to get all of those numbers. It's 50Hz that messes it all up.

Edit: Nvm, missed the 25. What's that used for?

25 is PAL again.

 

[dlm]

25 is PAL again.

So basically, everything except PAL is fine on 120Hz, but you need 600Hz to support PAL.

Well... at current rate we should be there in what? 15 years?

 

[Cyan]

Wow, I played like the 10 first minutes of CoD: Ghosts and I am impressed, totally impressed. It might be 720p -shame the aliasing though, no AA, afaik- but the game looks out of this world sometimes, and runs like a dream. Give me more 720p like that -haven't tried Ryse yet, but this, along with Forza, looks incredible in general-

My feedback on the UI so they can improve it, which is perfectly normal, compare the initial Xbox 360 UI with its interface nowadays:

- Games will not pause while you do something else or if for example you get an achievement and press the Guide button to see that achievement .

I missed part of an introduction sequence in a game because I held the guide button to see an achievement just because the games do not stop after exiting to another application ( I understand that it doesn't have to stop if you go to the main menu and still see the game in the medium sized central window ).

- The console loves to upload clips on its own, and some are somewhat silly. The activity feed (fine feature) said a friend of mine had uploaded a couple of FIFA 14 clips. I decided to watch both, and can you imagine what they were about? Both featured his goalkeeper clearing the ball with his fists. Not very exciting.

There are cases where clips upload automatically for a friend after someone scored a goal, but it was not like my friend scored, no, the clip showed how my friend's opponent scored a goal, LOL. .

- It's great to be able to capture video, of course, but it would be also perfect to take screenshots of a game to share certain specifc moments with friends -say you find a secret or want to share a score-.

- The interface of friends is not bad, their activity feed is especially good (gotta say that I totally love the new interface for messaging), But it's not that easy for me to discern friends from followers at first sight, and I cannot easily see friends of my friends to in turn make new friends -I am loving to make new friends on the Xbox One, especially to test their Drivatar skills in Forza 5 and the future possibilities of the system). :smile2:

- The parties were more straightforward and easy to use on Xbox 360. I think that the option to choose to remain silent or speak even though you're in a party is a great addition, though. But the integration, straightforwardness and parties navigation still needs some work.

- Bio and other options seem to have disappeared. Not that I miss them so much, but you could write funny things sometimes. It is not essential, mind you.

- The categorisation of games and movies could be richer, detail wise. You could have a category for stereoscopic 3D games and the like. The same could be said about movies, categorised as always and a specific category for 3D movies.

 

[Cyan]

Is it possible to gift games from Xbox Live market, similar to Steam?

That is something I would love. But what about not gifting the game but a code which the other person can use to buy the game you purchased the code for?

Navigating the interface there are some impressive things you can achieve. Say you are playing a game and want to know the score of a match your favourite team has played.

You just have to say Snap Internet Explorer and if you had the webpage loaded before you can just see the result in real time.

The same can be said about watching the TV and playing a game, going back to the TV to watch...let's say a football match between Blackburn Rover and Liverpool, for instance. Snap TV, watching a little, returning to the game, Snap TV after a while...

 

[Billy Idol]

I mean gift in the sense of: I'll go to the store, buy it with my money...than I can click: for myself or for a friend, I click 'for a friend' and gift it...friend has it now in his account...you know, like a traditional gift for birthday/X-Mas or whatever day....no need to bring up DRM, just the thing Steam allows.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Got it. Easy to setup. Update downloaded very fast. Voice commands are working fine for me. Got all the apps I wanted installed. UI seems to be easy to navigate. Only thing that I haven't been able to find is my download queue. Where the hell do I see my download progress for my queue?

Other question for settings. How do I know if my tv supports a color bit depth above 24bit? How do I know if I can use the 24Hz setting on my tv? The tv is last years model, and it's true 120Hz.

 

[DrJay24]

Good investigation into XB1 scaler and image quality. It seems you may get better results bypassing the internal scaler and setting it to 720P.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=91025042&postcount=238

 

[loekf]

Good investigation into XB1 scaler and image quality. It seems you may get better results bypassing the internal scaler and setting it to 720P.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=91025042&postcount=238

Oh dear:

A sharpening filter over the UI? That seems unbelievably stupid considering you can upscale the scene before drawing the UI and do the UI at 1080p.

Rule #1 in TV land: never ever apply the same upscaling filter over UI stuff as your video. UI stuff has sharp edges, so any sharpening makes it look worse (high freqs appear even more -> halos etc).

As far as I can remember, XB1 has this video compositioning block with up to 3 layers. Guess they were targeting OS, HDMI in and game. They should have allowed for static video menus, huds etc. as a seperate video layer, rendered at 1080p, then compose it with your upscaled in-game video. However, can imagine that was not a good idea, because you keep your game at a lower resolution than 1080p due bandwidth issues at the first place, so a seperate stream/buffer for menus/hud etc. doesn't fit the budget.

Now, why would you add sharpening on graphics / video in the first place ... about the blacklevels could it be to save BW and resources the scaling is done on subsampled YUV ?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Good investigation into XB1 scaler and image quality. It seems you may get better results bypassing the internal scaler and setting it to 720P.

The screengrab at 720p is not representative of what the average gamer will see on the TV. First of all any 1080p panel will still upscale the native image to 1080 lines using an unknown algorithm; then there are quite possibly a lot of other filters applied by the TV itself, as the average user tends not to touch the controls at all (or even worse, the user may turn sharpening as high as possible).

I wonder if it's possible to grab the actual 1080p image generated by the TV in a lossless format. It should be quite interesting.

 

[DrJay24]

The screengrab at 720p is not representative of what the average gamer will see on the TV. First of all any 1080p panel will still upscale the native image to 1080 lines using an unknown algorithm; then there are quite possibly a lot of other filters applied by the TV itself, as the average user tends not to touch the controls at all (or even worse, the user may turn sharpening as high as possible).

I wonder if it's possible to grab the actual 1080p image generated by the TV in a lossless format. It should be quite interesting.

The first part is true, but the calibration of the TV is a constant, it is true for a 720P or 1080P TV. If someone has the sharpness filter on high for the TV it is still going to apply that to the un-scaled image, thus compounding the issue.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, that is true, but it still doesn't mean you'll automatically get a better result using 720p, and the screenshots in the thread aren't necessarily representative.

MS should, however, definitely open up user settings for sharpening on/off during upscaling. This is atrocious for any A/V enthusiasts, who'd definitely prefer a straight upscale instead...

 

[DrJay24]

Yeah, that is true, but it still doesn't mean you'll automatically get a better result using 720p, and the screenshots in the thread aren't necessarily representative.

Well unless the TV scaler is worse than the XB1 scaler, but most scalers don't actively try to change the image. Worthy of an experiment if you have a few minutes and a game that is scaled (not Ryse, not FM5).

I would not be surprised if people can tell one scaler from another with a blind test. I think even a cheap TV is going to do the job with no noticeable artifacts.