Nintendo still deciding on HD support for Revolution?

[Powderkeg]

No no, I don't think I was being specific enough. I'm talking about the scaler. I don't know if it can be combined with a digital signal that's been processed through a TSMC. More over, I'm not sure if a scaler can supprt HDCP. Assuming I'm not crazy and i'm right, then MS would have the whole proprietary dongle thing solely for analog signals and have the HDMI out be for digital signals. As such, you could just buy a cheap little 10-20 dollar 3ft HDMI cable and be done with it.

But it wouldn't have the proper input plug on the 360 side.

And remember, it is the cable that tells the system what kind of connection you have. There is a single plug on the back of the 360. Regardless of if you use RF, Composite, S-Video, VGA, or Component, it plugs into the exact same port. It is the dongle in the cable that tells the 360 which one you are using.

Also, where did you read that the dongle can output HDMI audio, and optical audio? I imagine that's what the optical audio out on the Xbox is for. Basically, how do you know the dongle can do all that? Also, on a purely technical note, what point is there to putting the audio converter in the dongle, that doesn't make sense to me. ZIt should be a part of the hardware.

Have you seen the pictures of the other cables? The S-Video and Component cables have both analog and Optical Digital outputs on the dongle.

See the plug on the left side? Notice how all of the cables come out of the bottom half, and there seems to be a hole in the top half? That hole is the Optical output, and the analog connections are the top 2 plugs on the left side.

And, fair enough, the dongle... I'm starting to hate that word... isn't some generic off the shelf cable, so their isn't any competition to drive the price down, but what makes you think that makes it expensive? As A6 noted, cables are pretty overpriced as it is. More likely a high price would be MS trying to profit, no?

I dunno, it seems like all of this would have been much easier if MS just went with stander outputs. Sometimes all in one isn't the best answer.

As I said, the expense comes from the limited production run. If you're making a million cables, one is pretty cheap. If you are custom manufacturing only 1,000 cables, each one costs quite a bit more. How many HDMI cables do you really think MS would need for launch? Would every store need at least one? If not, how do you decide which stores get them, and which don't? How do you determine the necessary supply?

Because the last thing you want to do is flood the market with expensive cables that don't sell. Also, expensive is a relative term. If you can get generic HDMI cables for $10 then 360 HDMI cables that would cost $50 would be very expensive.

 

[Powderkeg]

Oops, up above I said the optical out was on the plug on th left side, I meant the right.

 

[Reznor007]

The Xbox connector just has something to ground certain pins to tell the system what extra things are available. On US Xbox 1 there were mainly 3 settings, NTSC mono, NTSC stereo, and component. The cable doesn't have any digital audio processing, just a SPDIF to optical converter, the analog output comes directly from the console. The original Xbox doesn't know if you are using RF, composite, or Svideo, the only difference it knows is if you use component(to enable HD modes). I assume Xbox360 will be the same way. Probably the same connector too.

The Gamecube component cable actually receives a digital video feed and has an IC in the cable that converts it to component. With a few mods you can get VGA from it. It is also possible to get digital audio from it too.

 

[PC-Engine]

Please explain...

Basically you render at 640x540p then scale it to 1920x540p or something like that.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Basically you render at 640x540p then scale it to 1920x540p or something like that.

Only when you upscale you interlace render fields to take a 60 fps 540p image and turn it into a '30 fps' 1080i image. The effct is to double the visible verticle resolution (which does have a pronounced effect) but at the cost of losing progressive scan. Which Europe wouldn't mind so much as we don't have progressive scan and are used to interlace, but they removed this feature for us anyway

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Only when you upscale you interlace render fields to take a 60 fps 540p image and turn it into a '30 fps' 1080i image. The effct is to double the visible verticle resolution (which does have a pronounced effect) but at the cost of losing progressive scan. Which Europe wouldn't mind so much as we don't have progressive scan and are used to interlace, but they removed this feature for us anyway

The 1080i mode in GT4 looks noticeable better than 480p, but it doesn't look nearly as good as 720p. More and more tv's in Europe are hdtv-cabable, if you go to a store here in Finland there are lot's of lcd's on sale, so naturally they are becoming more common here fast.

 

[Li Mu Bai]

Only when you upscale you interlace render fields to take a 60 fps 540p image and turn it into a '30 fps' 1080i image. The effct is to double the visible verticle resolution (which does have a pronounced effect) but at the cost of losing progressive scan. Which Europe wouldn't mind so much as we don't have progressive scan and are used to interlace, but they removed this feature for us anyway

I would assume that the Revolution has more than enough "power" to duplicate such a rendering stretch technique.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Of course. It's doesn't really increase power requirements but just uses a trick of the output signal. For clarification GT4 doesn't 'stretch' the 640 horizontal resolution up to 1920 with any interpolation, or in any way at all. It just outputs the 640 pixels resolution to a 1920 screen. Indeed Revolution possibly could upscale the horizontal output for slightly improved 1080i output, but I doubt it'd be worth the consumption of resources for a slightly blurry but not as jaggie display.

 

[Ooh-videogames]

Didn't take long for this thread to go off topic.

 

[Li Mu Bai]

I'll bring it back on topic. The Revolution is launching even later than the PS3, (though not by a significant margin) so there remains plenty of time to implement changes on Broadway. The cost is not what Nintendo views as "prohibitive," but the R&D expenses on producing so much internally developed software that supports these resolutions & runs smoothly is the hurdle. I've heard that they do not want any Nintendo developed titles refreshing below 60fps. 480p would allow them to accomplish this, they could of course reserve 720p solely for their "big budget" titles like Mario, MK, LOZ, etc. which is still a definite possibility, but the final word is not yet out. At the same time they're seriously courting 3rd parties that will be supporting these resolutions. I could get nothing further out of my brother-in-law (NST/NDA) other than it's still an issue that was seriously being considered, & even that was some time ago. I am unsure of what Matt C's "work around" comment listed here means exactly:

Both IBM and ATI, the makers of Revolution's CPU and GPU respectively, have allegedly been asked to try and find a work-around the lack of HD support.

http://cube.ign.com/articles/522/522559p2.html

As I cannot foresee an applicable alternative.

 

[PC-Engine]

I could get nothing further out of my brother-in-law (NST/NDA)

Hehe..nice. :smile:

 

[Teasy]

The Revolution is launching even later than the PS3, (though not by a significant margin) so there remains plenty of time to implement changes on Broadway. The cost is not what Nintendo views as "prohibitive," but the R&D expenses on producing so much internally developed software that supports these resolutions & runs smoothly is the hurdle. I've heard that they do not want any Nintendo developed titles refreshing below 60fps. 480p would allow them to accomplish this, they could of course reserve 720p solely for their "big budget" titles like Mario, MK, LOZ, etc. which is still a definite possibility, but the final word is not yet out.

I'm hearing that 720p support will be one of the things announced for Revolution in tomorrows TGS keynote speech.

EDIT: Removed that pic since there is now a thread about it anyway.

 

[BlueTsunami]

I'm hearing that 720p support will be one of the things announced for Revolution in tomorrows TGS keynote speech.

YES! Thats all I ask for from Nintendo. I will allow them to commence their normal operations now.