XBOX 360 version differences?

Serendipity

Dangit. I guess the price drop only applies to the Premium then.

Serendipity

One more question,

With regards to the online multiplayer games -

Do you need some kind of a paid subscription to be able to play?

Face

Don't buy the arcade version, you'll be kicking yourself later.

Serendipity

Face wrote: »

Don't buy the arcade version, you'll be kicking yourself later.

Can't afford the higher end (and higher priced) models...

Face

Save up and do it right the first time.

Serendipity

Argh, I've stopped mowing lawns since 2 years ago, but I guess I need to save up for the Premium model

avelanchefan

kuntasensei wrote: »

...and if you know where to look, you can get 1080p rips of Blu-Ray movies in WMV-HD format that stream nicely to the 360 across a home network.

Uhm... just saying. Not advocating it.

LOL, yep sensei that is really a joy to watch. I actually found the Cowboys (old John Wayne Movie) Blu Ray or HDDVD rip not sure but it was great fun to watch again. I have gotten quite a few others. And surprisingly all of them have been fantastic.

Serendipity

I was thinking about the following -

If I go with the Premium version, and use the "Arcade" disc from one of the Arcade 360's (someone else's), will it work on my Premium just like on the Arcade console?

Reason being I like 2-3 of the games that come bundled with the Arcade console.

kuntasensei

avelanchefan wrote: »

LOL, yep sensei that is really a joy to watch. I actually found the Cowboys (old John Wayne Movie) Blu Ray or HDDVD rip not sure but it was great fun to watch again. I have gotten quite a few others. And surprisingly all of them have been fantastic.

Yup. I ran Bee Movie in 1080p on my Sanyo Z2000 projector the other night... and I have no urge to buy a Blu-Ray player. It looked AMAZING.

Xbox 360 + 1080p projector + 100" screen + 7.1 surround + SVS sub + Buttkicker LFE =

mutelight

Haha, why buy Blu-ray for its superior bit rate in both audio and video when you can illegally download them for free?

Blu-ray or HD DVD are the only way I will watch a HD movie, full non transcoded audio and video > any download.

kuntasensei

mutelight wrote: »

Haha, why buy Blu-ray for its superior bit rate in both audio and video when you can illegally download them for free?

Blu-ray or HD DVD are the only way I will watch a HD movie, full non transcoded audio and video > any download.

Again, I'm not advocating piracy... but I guarantee that a 1080p rip encoded in VC1 with 768kbps/48kHz/24-bit audio isn't noticeably different, even on my 100" screen. And for those who either can't afford Blu-Ray or just don't want to get stuck with another failed media format, at least there are options.

But I think $25 a movie vs. free in a very similar quality pretty much answers your question as to why people do it, doesn't it?

mutelight

Haha, I never once questioned why people pirate media. I am just highly against it.

djlogix

mutelight wrote: »

People rip Blu-ray movies and then compress them way down to make them about about 10GB a movie in WMV format. They also take the vanilla AC3 stream and include that.

As far as music on the 360 it is alright I suppose. But it does transcode any music you are streaming (at least from the dashboard) to AC3 which is too bad. One of the reason I stream all my media to my PS3.

I won't say what you're stating is neccesarily completely false, as there is some truth to it concerning the methods of the music streaming function. I will say however that a bit ago it was remedied and going to be even further with a nice update (not the Spring update that came and went).

Streaming to the PS3 imo is just as if not in some cases worse than the Xbox 360 concerning the different enviroments you get with the music. It's also highly dependent on the formats the source are in.

avelanchefan

djlogix wrote: »

I won't say what you're stating is neccesarily completely false, as there is some truth to it concerning the methods of the music streaming function. I will say however that a bit ago it was remedied and going to be even further with a nice update (not the Spring update that came and went).

Streaming to the PS3 imo is just as if not in some cases worse than the Xbox 360 concerning the different enviroments you get with the music. It's also highly dependent on the formats the source are in.

Well lets put it this way. I have some mp4 videos of the X-Files, and I can say for certain that the Xbox streams it much better than the ps3. Overall clarity, and sound are much improved with the Xbox. Not sure why that is, but for some reason I get a ton of patchiness with the ps3, and the blacks are horrid.

Serendipity

After having a brief conversation with Mike (Face), I think I'm going to go with the 360 Premium.

Now when is that price drop coming?

Face

Sunday.
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/14753.cfm

Sherardp

appadv wrote: »

After having a brief conversation with Mike (Face), I think I'm going to go with the 360 Premium.

Now when is that price drop coming?

Excellent choice, now dont forget Call of Duty 4

mmadden28

mutelight wrote: »

They are saying that they are dropping the price of the Premium $50 so it will be $299.

Scan from a K-mart ad.

Damn and I had the opportunity to get the Premium brand new from Sharper Image in ther Bankruptcy sell off for $250. I decided I was going to wait to get the Elite rather than another Premium (which I have now)-Main reason-I want an HDMI connector. It was in my hands---crap.

You can't get full 1080p output from the Xbox via the component cable-only 1080i. The Xbox HD-DVD is capable of providing 1080P, but if your Xbox output is only 1080i....You have to have the HDMI cable (and I believe you can also use the VGA cable if you're TV supports it). Same goes for any other 1080p content.

In my opinion, don't go less than the Premium. I am not a big gamer, but I love playing them-Just don't have time (kids). I am at my max (20GB) almost all the time-conatantly shuffling which demos to keep and get rid of. The thing wouyld seriously be crippled without one.
Can you even recover a Gamer tag without a hard drive? If you're freinds will be using it, then it's a necessity.

F(*&%%^& MS for making the damn HDD proprietary (in some way). 20GB for $100? fricken scam! You can buy a 500GB HDD for less than $100 for your PC. Its like Apple and the need for a headphone adapter for the iPhone (orig). :mad:

mutelight

mmadden28 wrote: »

Damn and I had the opportunity to get the Premium brand new from Sharper Image in ther Bankruptcy sell off for $250. I decided I was going to wait to get the Elite rather than another Premium (which I have now)-Main reason-I want an HDMI connector. It was in my hands---crap.

You can't get full 1080p output from the Xbox via the component cable-only 1080i. The Xbox HD-DVD is capable of providing 1080P, but if your Xbox output is only 1080i....You have to have the HDMI cable (and I believe you can also use the VGA cable if you're TV supports it). Same goes for any other 1080p content.

I am running 1080p on my launch (well repaired 6 times but still HDMI-less) 360 over component no problem. (Both on my projector and LCD TV) The ANA chip upscales all the games beautifully over component, it is just my HD DVDs which are restricted to 1080i only over component. Then again there is very little content that is 1080p native on the 360.

All SKUs of the 360 now include HDMI. (Arcade, Premium, and Elite)

kuntasensei

I'm running 1080p over component to my Sanyo PLV-Z2000 projector with no problems. Playing 1080p videos from my PC across the network works nicely with this setup.

mutelight

djlogix wrote: »

I won't say what you're stating is neccesarily completely false, as there is some truth to it concerning the methods of the music streaming function. I will say however that a bit ago it was remedied and going to be even further with a nice update (not the Spring update that came and went).

Streaming to the PS3 imo is just as if not in some cases worse than the Xbox 360 concerning the different enviroments you get with the music. It's also highly dependent on the formats the source are in.

What I am saying is regardless of what supported format your music is in, if you play it back on a 5.1 setup with DD5.1 enabled the console will transcode and put the file in that container. i.e. an unnecessary transcode degrading the audio fidelity

The PS3 will take the source material and output it directly via PCM.

djlogix

mutelight wrote: »

What I am saying is regardless of what supported format your music is in, if you play it back on a 5.1 setup with DD5.1 enabled the console will transcode and put the file in that container. i.e. an unnecessary transcode degrading the audio fidelity

The PS3 will take the source material and output it directly via PCM.

I thought I had responded earlier, brief power outtage at E3. I won't say you're completely wrong, but I can't say you're completely right either. Again, there are reasons the audio quality varies on streams. The biggest of all being an early stack used in the Dashboard's core. It has since been remedied and will further be remedied this fall (E3 announcement). I know you're only guaging from personal experiences or outlets near or around you. I'm giving you what I can from mine and more often then not, the quality is the same on each concerning streaming. The difference between consoles is that the 360's quality completely depends on the network and hardware used, while the PS3's doesn't take anything into account and more often then not will botch a stream instead of lowering the quality to keep it consistent.

Again, one of the best steps taken was the integration of HDMI in F2, Jasper and future revisions.

mutelight

djlogix wrote: »

I thought I had responded earlier, brief power outtage at E3. I won't say you're completely wrong, but I can't say you're completely right either. Again, there are reasons the audio quality varies on streams. The biggest of all being an early stack used in the Dashboard's core. It has since been remedied and will further be remedied this fall (E3 announcement). I know you're only guaging from personal experiences or outlets near or around you. I'm giving you what I can from mine and more often then not, the quality is the same on each concerning streaming. The difference between consoles is that the 360's quality completely depends on the network and hardware used, while the PS3's doesn't take anything into account and more often then not will botch a stream instead of lowering the quality to keep it consistent.

Again, one of the best steps taken was the integration of HDMI in F2, Jasper and future revisions.

Alright, but what I am saying is, no matter what, if you are running 5.1 out of the console, whether it be via HDMI or TOSLINK, your audio is being transcoded into an AC3 container. That is a superfluous transcode being done before it hits your AVR. Whether the audio quality is subjectively better or worse, on paper that is one more conversion your music goes through before it hits your system on the 360.

kuntasensei

Mute's right. Stereo audio from music files is encoded to the left and right channels of the AC3 bitstream via hardware mixing to maintain compatibility with the 360's custom soundtracks and allow for mixing of system and game sounds on top of this. The quality has clearly improved with updates, 'cause the launch systems made music sound very tinny, but either way the sound is being sent out via AC3. Even if you're running stereo only, via digital or analog, you face this with the 360 because it's running through the hardware mixer so it can overlay system/game audio.

And though the PS3 passes 7.1 channel PCM via HDMI, music is still passed through its mixer first. It's not just passing through wholly unaltered PCM. Now that they've added custom soundtracks in-game, that's especially true.

Regardless, if you're expecting audiophile grade anything from streaming media on either system, you're kinda' kidding yourself. Both consoles work well for general music listening, but take critical listening to another source.

Serendipity

So - if I run optical out from my 360 to the Onkyo, what kind of signal will appear on the Onkyo's display? PCM?

mmadden28

appadv wrote: »

So - if I run optical out from my 360 to the Onkyo, what kind of signal will appear on the Onkyo's display? PCM?

I believe you will see Dolby Digital, if I remember correctly.

mutelight

mmadden28 wrote: »

I believe you will see Dolby Digital, if I remember correctly.

That is correct. It will also output DTS for DVDs with that format.

Serendipity

Dangit, no uncompressed PCM? That sucks