HDMI Could Be Coming To Xbox 360?

[Brendan Goetz]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.hdbeat.com/2006/08/15/xbox-360-hdmi-cable-still-a-possibility/' target='_blank'>http://www.hdbeat.com/2006/08/15/xbox-360-hdmi-cable-still-a-possibility/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Just when we were getting used to the reality of no digital video outputs for our Xbox 360s, a hardware manager for Microsoft has re-stoked the rumor fires. Despite the claims of some that such a cable may not technically be possible, the FiringSquad quoted Microsoft's Rob Walker as stating that the company is "still discussing" what to do if movie companies begin to restrict high definition playback to digital outputs only, that they are "looking into" making an HDMI cable for the Xbox 360, and of course another no comment on the price of the HD DVD add-on. The remarks came during a panel discussion at the Gamefest conference where Microsoft also announced tools to allow users to make their own games. At this point we don't know what seems more (or less) plausible, that Microsoft is willing to sell a device even if by their own admission they don't know if copy protection could soon render it useless -- a potential weakness for the cheaper Playstation 3 variant as well -- or they have an agreement in place to guarantee analog outputs will continue to work for some time and this is all just subterfuge."</i><br /><br />I’d be really interested in seeing how they implement this. I don’t think that the component cable connections are too shabby, but digital is always nice. I never understood why they left this off in the first place, what with the plan to do HD-DVD and the DRM issues that go along with that. I still plan on adding an HD-DVD drive to my media PC as soon as that becomes possible/practical. Looks like the Xbox 360 HD-DVD solution will be a legit contender, especially for people who already own 360s.

[Felix Torres]

I never understood why they left this off ion the first place.

That's easy: cost.
All HD sets have component, not all have HDMI.
(Plus component switch boxes are dirt cheap, if necessary.)
So the added value from the added *cost* of adding HDMI/HDCP was deemed minimal. All you need to remember is that at the time the decision to do without HDMI was made, MS was format agnostic in the blue laser war. Sony hadn't ticked them off yet, so MS was willing to do without either and just stay on the sidelines.

As for how MS could do an HDMI add-on, well, theoretically they could bit-blast the video out the USB and then use an external converter to format the data into proper HDMI.

There is one thing, though: I've seen several reports of the rumored HDMI cable/adapter/whatever and most are tied to the similarly rumored Media Jukebox/Media Center sidecar for 360. So the HDMI solution could come in that form. Or, it might not come at all: the MS folks haven't actually said they were doing HDMI--the one direct quote I saw referred instead to 1080p output. And 1080p can, in fact, be delivered via a VGA cable. So there is no telling what approach, if any, they choose to take, since component is really the lowest common denominator and there is no verified need for anything else. HDMI might be theoretically better but my experience has been that the 360 component video is very very high quality and has little if anything to envy DVI or HDMI. Anybody have a different experience out there?

It fun to speculate, though.

Me, I'm hoping the Media add-on shows up sooner rather than later and that it shows up as a bigger hard drive with extra software, not as a (likekely) more expensive sidecar option. Realistically all the 360 needs to to be a Media Center is the software to play video from a non-MCE source. Anything else can be devivered via USB...

[Doug Johnson]

Component should actually look better than HDMI. HDMI has some limitations in the specification that limit its potential for high quality video, the most notable of which is that uses only 8 bits per subpixel. The human eye and most good displays can render a wider range than that, as can component video connections. Video should really be 10-bit, not 8-bit. If you see banding in areas of solid color, the 8-bit limitation is where its coming from. Component video, being analog, has no such limitation.

And USB, even 2.0, isn't even close to fast enough to transfer high definition video. It isn't even fast enough to do uncompressed standard definition video. If HDMI were to be added to the 360 it would have to be added directly on the mainboard.

[Felix Torres]

Component should actually look better than HDMI. HDMI has some limitations in the specification that limit its potential for high quality video, the most notable of which is that uses only 8 bits per subpixel. The human eye and most good displays can render a wider range than that, as can component video connections. Video should really be 10-bit, not 8-bit. If you see banding in areas of solid color, the 8-bit limitation is where its coming from. Component video, being analog, has no such limitation.

And USB, even 2.0, isn't even close to fast enough to transfer high definition video. It isn't even fast enough to do uncompressed standard definition video. If HDMI were to be added to the 360 it would have to be added directly on the mainboard.

1- HDMI 1.3 features deeper bit sub-pixel channels (10, 12, and 16) bits and that is what the PS3 is going to use. XBOX HDMI would have to support that. The chips to do that only recently became avilable, hence the PS3 delay from spring to XMAS release.

2- Yes, USB bandwidth can't support uncompressed video but you don't *have* to bit-blast uncompressed data streams to an external HDMI video adapter; MS does own the WMV/VC-1 codecs and there are cheap chips from Sigma that decode WMV HD on the fly so MS could (theoretically) encode video onboard with the lightly-loaded dashboard core without impacting gameplay. But as I said, I suspect the 1080p solution is not likely to be HDMI-based. If I had to bet, I would bet on VGA.