ALL discussion that isn't Xbox Series X has been moved to the Tifa thread: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/xbox-lockhart-general-rumors-and-speculation-spawn.61679/
Xbox Series X [XBSX] [Release November 10 2020]
- Thread starter Megadrive1988
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Isn't bandwidth of those optical connections pretty limited also?
At most probably only get up to dts and none of the HD formats.
Maybe ok for headphones, but hooking up to amp? If you've got an old amp that your more than happy with, it's a shame, but xbox is probably one of the last devices to support it anyway.
Obviously prior to next gen
there are modern amps that don't support HDMI as well. Depends on the type of amp you are buying. Some people only listen to stereo, like my Peachtree I have upstairs, and it only supports USB, analog and optical, whereas some home theatre amps will be supporting anywhere between 1-6 HDMI connections as well as others.
So I guess it depends. Xbox can do everything over optical AFAIK. Just set it to bitstream.
Guess I'm wrong, I thought there was an inherently low protocol bandwidth that the optical cable used, so that even bitstreaming you wouldn't get HD audio through it.
You're not wrong.
Not all codecs can be piped over optical. Some must be HDMI.
And we can 'compromise' the HDMI signal over optical for instance.
So we can have atmos over optical, but it's not true atmos.
It is a bandwidth issue.
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So if Dolby Atmos is just metadata, what am I listening to?
As we said, Dolby Atmos isn’t sound, it’s information about sound. That information piggybacks on top of existing surround sound signals. At the moment, Dolby Atmos can only do this with two types of surround sound:
- Dolby TrueHD
- Dolby Digital Plus
Dolby Digital Plus is a compressed, lower-bandwidth format that has been optimized for use with streaming services and features like B-D Live. It’s currently supported by a wide range of devices, including laptops, tablets, smartphones, and streaming boxes like Apple TV and Roku. Dolby Atmos over Dolby Digital Plus will be the way most people experience Atmos.
Not only is it the format used by Netflix and Amazon, but it’s also the only version of Atmos that is
compatible with HDMI ARC (more on this later).
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Here are a few examples where you will not get Dolby Atmos sound:
- Playing an Atmos-encoded Netflix movie on an Apple TV HD (4th gen, non-4K) connected to an Atmos-capable A/V receiver. In this scenario, the Apple TV is the weakest link: It doesn’t support Dolby Atmos. You’ll be limited to 5.1 Dolby Digital Plus surround sound.
- Playing any Dolby Atmos-encoded content on a Roku Streaming Stick+ that’s attached to a Dolby Atmos capable TV, with an Atmos soundbar connected via optical cable. The obstacle here is the optical connection to the soundbar. You’ve got Atmos content on a device that can support Atmos, on a TV that can pass through Atmos, but because you’re using an optical cable instead of HDMI-ARC, the TV has to down-convert the audio to Dolby Digital 5.1 (otherwise known as EAC), because optical connections cannot cope with the higher bandwidth requirements of Dolby Digital Plus.
- Using the built-in Plex client on an LG OLED TV to play a movie encoded with Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Atmos, with an Atmos soundbar connected via HDMI-ARC. This is a really frustrating one — all of the sources and components are Atmos-capable, but because the Plex client on the LG TV isn’t yet optimized to handle TrueHD/Atmos, it down-converts the audio to Dolby 5.1 — even though both the TV itself and the connected soundbar could have easily handled the TrueHD/Atmos track.
Get a dirt cheap HDMI audio extractor box off amazon. Job done
Indeed you need an Apple TV 4K (with tvOS 12 and above) to do so ~
That's weird, as ddp still runs under 1mbps, and optical cable can deliver DTS that have more than 1mbps
Netflix for example, use 768K for their DDP Atmos
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Yeah, and that's the easiest upgrade the can do, though it remains to be seen what the OS reserve is on the PS5. Might be more than the XSX, might be less.
Nextgen is going to be very interesting to see for MS. Then having the strongest console and seeing their investment of the new studios will make a very healthy competition for gaming. I can’t personally wait to see games like the next Forza horizon using those 12TF to the fullest
Hmm.
For me the most exciting thing is that managed to baseline DX12U equally across the PC and console space as a new beginning point for graphics. That step in baselining features is much more significant than raw power.
Yeah. Their past two consoles have launched out of step with DX. 360 with DX 9.5 just before DX10 showed up, and X1 with DX11 only for DX12 to show up later. This is the first time they are in lockstep with a DX revision. The console is looking good. Just want to see what the games look like.
Xbox One does support DX12 features.
Not at launch, it had a bloated dx11 based driver.
This was improved to something called Mono I believe. That was actually console grade with better draw call performance, Dx 12 came after that.
Some history I found.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-evolution-of-xbox-one-as-told-by-sdk-leak
DX12 was not released untill after the launch of XB1.
That's the point.....This will be the first time an Xbox is launching in lockstep with a major DX version.
the oh xbox is just halo and forza meme is going to die off really fast this gen. MS has been building up their studios a lot and so far what we have seen are just projects that were near completion when studios were bought. But a lot of stuff will be announced this year and early next year
My point was that the XB1 was not stuck with an older version of DX. It was built to have hardware support for DX12 so when it was released on PC it was available on XB1 as well, at the same time.
hmmm...
Well a lot of GPUs that are older support DX12. The mono driver and DX12 is where they wanted to head, but XBO was just so delayed, everything was just so delayed. You can really see how MS turned it around with this coming generation. APIs, feature set, hardware, Targets being hit etc, marketing that makes sense, services moving forward, all sorts of compatibility etc, all of it coming together in a very strong cadence.
On this case when on the topic of XBO hardware feature support, XBO only supported features up to 12_0. There was some specific xbox only features that they supported, in particular, some additional microcode around the executeIndirect function. But outside of that, we didn't see any specific hardware support outside what GCN had already supported in both tier or feature levels.
A _sharp_ contrast to what we have coming.
I expect XSX to continue it's development on the command processor to incorporate the additional work they've been doing there since XBO, X1X, and now to XSX. They have a different Tier version of VRS that is not covered by DX12U (if our patent understanding is correct), both AMD and Nvidia implementations differ in what is offered in this case. Not sure if MS has more up it's sleeve. But as a baseline, yes all 3 should have VRS.
For some reason I thought I remembered XB1 being a higher version than DX12.0. Thanks for the clarification and additional info. I've always been curious if the launch of the XB1 would've looked different if they didn't have such a backlash against DRM and the always online policy. From an outside view these policy changes seem to really set them back.
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