Xbox 360 HDMI Capable

[expletive]

Why would I want a A/D converted HDMI cable? It's a waste of time and defeats the whole purpose anyway. If I'm going have analog signals in my path, I may as well just use the component cable.

Face it, there is no HDMI cable nor will there be. An A?D converter would be a stupendous hack, expensive, and inferior quality. Practically worthless unless your TV ONLY has an HDMI input.

No, the "whole purpose" is to pass an HDCP enabled signal to your display device. Many people happily live with more A/D/A conversions than what we are discussing here, as ive already explained.

Face it? THere's nothing to face. When you understand the purpose of why an HDMI cable would be required youll understand why there is nothing to 'face'.

Without knowing the intimate details of what is in the the 360 you, or me, is in any position to claim anything as a 'stupendous hack'.

 

[one]

Youre making the assumption that the video coming out of the port in the back is analog. Just becuase it isnt HDMI, does not mean that the digital signal from the scaler chip cant be passed on directly as a 'raw' digital signal to an HDMI cable/converter.

Then you should use search function in this forum to dig up past discussions on this matter and Xenos /shrug

 

[jvd]

I thought it was said that the output chip from the web tv guys could only output analog ?


Anyway i don't see the problem . 99% of users wouldn't see the diffrence between a good pair of components and a good digital cable.


Thier tvs will be on the presets and look like crap

 

[Ty]

There lots of people that have multiple AD/DA conversions in their video strem today and dont even know about it.

Sure. Of course many people don't have the high end AV equipment to notice it. Those that do are the more likely candidates to notice things like, ringing, etc.

When you input a signal via component to a CRT that is not in its native resolution (which is usually the case),

I didn't know CRTs had a "native resolution".

it must convert it from Digital to analog in your cable box (or wahtever) for the component out,

Isn't SD cable analog?

analog to digital to scale it, scale it, then back to analog again for the CRTs. Its not unheard of and i bet a majority of the people with HD are doing this.

I didn't know scaling within CRTs required the signal to be in the digital domain.

"A chip IN the cable" sounds much worse than what i had in mind ( ) which is a small plastic box that would plug into the A/V port in the back. In that box would be the necessary chips to output HDMI. Then the cable would extend directly from there.

Ok. Clunky..but ok.

Also there is no guarentee there would have to be another A/D conversion. If there is no TDMS, thats fine but it doesnt mean that the 360 cant pass the raw digital output data to that port. No one said that the output signal cant bypass the final D/A conversion...

Well that's the root issue we're at. We don't know what kind of signal can be passed out of the 360 though as some have mentioned, there is talk of it only be analog.

 

[jvd]

Ty would it be possible to put a new output / scaler chip capable of of bypasing the chip in the console and just use the digital out ?

I don't see it being crazy expensive .

 

[aaaaa00]

My speculation. Either:

1. There will be a new SKU when HDMI is actually needed. The output chip is physically seperate from the GPU, so swapping it out doesn't require MS to respin the GPU, just substitute a different chip on the motherboard.

or

2. There is some programmable mode for the output chip where instead of generating analog signals, it just bypasses its DACs and spews the framebuffer bytes out the AV port over some proprietary digital protocol. Then you hook an HDMI cable pack (which contains a TMDS transmitter) to the AV port, and it translates the proprietary digital protocol to HDMI.

There are a lot of pins on the AV interface. From that picture I count at least 30 pins. HDMI only has 19. Single-link DVI only has 18.

The original xbox AV connector reused its pins for various purposes. Component, PAL, NTSC, S-Video, all were output via the same pins depending on the mode selected by the cable connector. I wouldn't be suprised if the xbox 360 connector has a similar design.

Both solutions offer the nice advantage of MS not having to paying for a TMDS transmitter or patent royalties for every single xbox 360, especially since the vast majority of HDTVs don't have HDMI anyway.

 

[Guden Oden]

Face it? THere's nothing to face. When you understand the purpose of why an HDMI cable would be required youll understand why there is nothing to 'face'.

Unless the x360 can supply HDCP-enabled video out through the back of the console without the need of any external connector/box/whatever, it's unlikely it'd be HDDVD or bluray certified, as else those eeeevil digital pirates could just stick in a video cable without the HDCP chip and pipe the data straight to some kind of framegrabbing equipment to steal the precious intellectual property of all the big-money movie companies in Hollywood...

So that's the big dilemma here, really.

 

[aaaaa00]

Unless the x360 can supply HDCP-enabled video out through the back of the console without the need of any external connector/box/whatever, it's unlikely it'd be HDDVD or bluray certified, as else those eeeevil digital pirates could just stick in a video cable without the HDCP chip and pipe the data straight to some kind of framegrabbing equipment to steal the precious intellectual property of all the big-money movie companies in Hollywood...

HDCP is independent of having HDMI. I don't see why you can't have a HDCP cipher block in your output chip without having a TMDS transmitter.

But then again, maybe this is way too much effort to go to to avoid HDMI on every box.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I thought it was said that the output chip from the web tv guys could only output analog ?

Anyway i don't see the problem . 99% of users wouldn't see the diffrence between a good pair of components and a good digital cable.

Thier tvs will be on the presets and look like crap

The point isn't one of IQ. The point is XB360 being used as a MCE extender to watch HD movies off your HDDVD/BluRay equipped MCE PC. Without HDCP it can't do that, unless the MCE PC can strip away the HDCP and output HD movies anyway, which is likely to 'upset' a few movie companies without other adequate alternatives.

The key points are:

1) If XB360 hasn't got digital output on it's video out connector, it can't get a straight-forward HDMI cable.

2) If it's only got analogue, you could stick a box on the video out to grab the analogue signal, digitize it, do the HDCP thing, and send it down an HDMI cable.

3) If the MCE PC can read HDCP movies and stream them to non-HDCP enabled MCE extended devices, XB360 won't need HDCP. I think if you connected this to HDMI without HDCP in effect you only get SD resolutions, but I guess you could go through older DVI without HDCP. If this is possible it gives pirates (and geeks) an easy way to bypass HDCP, capture the digital source for HD movies and print them off, totally bypassing the point of HDCP. But pirated data caught this way with the HDCP implemented won't play on people's HDCP hardware.

TBH I imagine hard-core pirates will find ways to just copy the disk image, and the only difference tothe consumer will be a need for HDCP enabled devices which, if they bought early, they haven't got and their lovelly HDTV is incapable of showing HD movies. Nice!

 

[Guden Oden]

I don't see why you can't have a HDCP cipher block in your output chip without having a TMDS transmitter.

Um, you can't have it if your video encoder chip can't output digital signals; there is no real content protection crap (yet) for analog standards. Well, macrovision, but that's easily defeatable and only ever stopped VHS recorders (and only sometimes), and which is a format that can't handle 720P anyway.

 

[MfA]

No, HDCP compliance is part of the HDMI spec.

How do the digital DVI->HDMI converters work then?

 

[expletive]

How do the digital DVI->HDMI converters work then?

Thats only a DVI out which converts a DVI-D signal to the same pinout as HDMI. It doesnt 'upgrade' a DVI-D signal to HDCP if it doesnt have it already. In that instance youre essentially using the HDMI cable to transport an DVI signal. However, if you have a native HDMI port, it will alwys have HDCP.

 

[MfA]

Meh, same difference ... hdmi can carry an unencrypted digital HD signal, is all I wanted to know.

 

[expletive]

Meh, same difference ... hdmi can carry an unencrypted digital HD signal, is all I wanted to know.

The cable can carry it because its backward compatible, and is just acting as the physical layer for what is a non-HDCP DVI-D signal, yes. If you have a signal that comes from an HDMI port it will always have HDCP for the content that requires it. Apologies if i misunderstood your statement.

 

[wco81]

Put it this way, if the encoder chip is capable of outputting digital and they could make a simple HDMI cable for it, they would be doing it now and pricing it high like other X360 accessories.:smile:

It's not simple so they won't bother unless one of the HD movie disc formats catch fire and HD movie playback becomes a big deal on consoles.

 

[expletive]

Put it this way, if the encoder chip is capable of outputting digital and they could make a simple HDMI cable for it, they would be doing it now and pricing it high like other X360 accessories.:smile:

It's not simple so they won't bother unless one of the HD movie disc formats catch fire and HD movie playback becomes a big deal on consoles.

Again, I still dont understand why we keep going back to the "since MS isnt doing it now, so they cant or never will with this SKU" argument...

 

[aaaaa00]

Um, you can't have it if your video encoder chip can't output digital signals; there is no real content protection crap (yet) for analog standards. Well, macrovision, but that's easily defeatable and only ever stopped VHS recorders (and only sometimes), and which is a format that can't handle 720P anyway.

I never said that it would be in use for analog signals, just that an HDCP crypto block would be incorporated into the output chip, and inactive until you plug an HDMI capable output pack in.

But yeah, it seems unlikely to me they'd go to all that trouble and NOT make an HDMI cable at launch.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Put it this way, if the encoder chip is capable of outputting digital and they could make a simple HDMI cable for it, they would be doing it now and pricing it high like other X360 accessories.:smile:

So your belief is that MS will never release any other peripherals than the ones they launch with? Following your logic, they will never release a keyboard, mouse, camera, 40GB HD, or bigger memory cards.

There are lots of plausible reasons for a delay:
a) maybe the cable is still undergoing QA?
b) maybe they feel that they could confuse ths customer with so many connectors available at launch
c) maybe they prioritized their accessories for launch and DVI cable didn't make the cut, they can only do so much at one time

MS's goal to compete with BR has always been to allow streaming HD-DVD, this requires a DVI output, otherwise it's pointless. In addition, holmdahl promised it will come, and numerous stores are already listing it in their inventories. Does this really deserve any more discussion?

 

[MfA]

DVI output would be nice for games, but for BR/HD-DVD content they need HDCP.

 

[scooby_dooby]

HDCP enabled DVI? That's what my TV has.