Peek at the 360 roadmap...

[scooby_dooby]

According to hardocp they have seen a tentative roadmap for the X360. This is probably the source of the digitimes articles about the $200 pricepoint as well. Some good stuff here:

1. A holiday HD-DVD Xbox360 add-on that will be very inexpensive (around the $200 mark) and is rumored to only require component inputs. No HDMI in sight. This would of course point the finger to no HDCP being used on initial HD-DVD movie disks as expected.


2. For you folks that are buying the new 1080P panels that are now on the market, have no fear, as the Xbox360 looks to already support 1080P resolutions. All that will need to be changed is the connecting cable. Little more information is known on this or if there will be a gaming performance impact.


3. Xbox360 meets Media Center for next year? While the details on this product are certainly few, the concept is a project that is moving forward at Microsoft. The next Xbox360 facelift will be a product that really blurs the lines between HTPC and gaming console. While this is not a term that Microsoft used, the Xbox360 will be seeing an added on "media jukebox" for handling tons of movies, video, pictures, and music.

http://www.hardocp.com/news.html?news=MjA2ODgsLCxobmV3cywsLDE=

 

[Acert93]

That Xbox PC rumor just wont die. A year before the 360 launched there was the 3 SKU rumor: A Core version, a version with a HDD, and a "PC" version. We have seen that the first 2 SKUs were dead on and devs knew about this with substantial lead time. Kind of getting the feeling we will be seeing an Xbox 360 Media something or another at some point.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Why would it be anything other than a dashboard update? I don't see what MS has to gain by not putting this functionality on all the systems.

The article implies as much:

It will be interesting to see just how powerful these new PC features are but they will surely be welcomed in my living room. Using Windows Media Connect for streaming content from your computer is great, but keeping it native would be better many times

 

[J_Saint]

1 and 2 seem to contradict each other. If the 360 supports 1080p but there are no plans for HDMI then whats the point? Most of the new displays will not accept 1080p over component and if it's strictly for HD DVD then AACS will only allow 1080p over HDMI anyways.

 

[Mmmkay]

1 and 2 seem to contradict each other. If the 360 supports 1080p but there are no plans for HDMI then whats the point? Most of the new displays will not accept 1080p over component and if it's strictly for HD DVD then AACS will only allow 1080p over HDMI anyways.

If I were to take a random swing at number 2, I'd guess it's similar to how Sony is pimping 1080p for their HDMI'less SKU. The 'connecting cable' there being the analog Japanese D-Terminals. Apparently the Japanese Xbox 360 manual lists D5 as a supported connector, which is required for 1080p. Doesn't have any relevance to Western markets, but that didn't stop Sony either. Jus sayin'.

Other theories include an ADC+HDCP external cable solution, but that's cheating imho

 

[Kryton]

1 and 2 seem to contradict each other. If the 360 supports 1080p but there are no plans for HDMI then whats the point? Most of the new displays will not accept 1080p over component and if it's strictly for HD DVD then AACS will only allow 1080p over HDMI anyways.

I don't know which is the better contradiction, the cabling issue or this.