Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Xbox 360 Elite doesn't support HDMI 1.3

Remember this snippet from my previous post about the Xbox 360 Elite?
"... I don't know that the Xbox 360 Elite is going to be compliant with the newest revision of the high-bandwidth digital-content protection (HDCP) ..."
(Of coure you remember; you hang on my every word.)

Turns out it the Xbox 360 Elite supports HDMI 1.2 -- but not 1.3.

What does this mean? Not much, other than it's a bit behind the curve, since the PlayStation 3 supports the 1.3 spec. Other features in the 1.3 spec, absent from the 1.2:
  • Support for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio streams
  • Audio / lip sync technology
  • Greater transfer speed (I think this is only for stuff over 1080p, which is the current maximum)
  • Support for Deep Color (probably no impact in current TVs)

I don't know that these are deal breakers, but the audio stream is probably the "biggest" today impact -- but I suspect a lot of audio- / videophile folks (PS3 and Xbox) are attaching their consoles optically to their surround sound system.

But this is arguably a hefty conceptual shortcoming -- Microsoft is coming out with a product that is downspec from the market.

I don't know enough about HDMI to know if this is update able via download over Xbox Live (the PS3 has been receiving a steady stream of updates since launch).

Anyone know?

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