ATI to supply the Xbox 360 HD DVD decoder
by Matt Burns 
posted Jul 12th 2006 at 12:07PM
Nothing real exciting here; at least to most of you. ATI was selected to supply the decoder for the upcoming (hopefully soon) HD DVD drive add-on. The process does involve using the massive video processing power of the XBOX 360 but the decoder is there for H.264 and MPEG-4 AVC media. We wonder if this decision to utilize ATI for the decoder had anything to do with the fact that the Xbox's graphics are powered by ATI hardware.
Filed under: Industry
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mike S @ Jul 12th 2006 12:52PM
Be interesting to see what the price on these are. How are they connected to the 360? Will they release games that use 15GB or 30GB?
Zach @ Jul 12th 2006 1:17PM
"We wonder if this decision to utilize ATI for the decoder had anything to do with the fact that the XBOX's graphics is powered by an ATI card."
Would you hire a plumber to fix an electrical switch? Provided the strong relationship between ATI and Microsoft, and the fact that the 360 uses the Xenos ATI GPU its quite obvious to see why ATI was chosen to supply the decoder.
What I'd like to know is whether the HD DVD and the 360 be able to display a picture at a 1080P resolution? I can already stream 1080P content, (or atleast I *have* seen it) from a Windows Media Centre PC. So this drive should be no different.
BMW68 @ Jul 12th 2006 1:20PM
I have seen with the use of a P3 500 Media Center streaming HD WMV9 content to the 360 works flawless (this was a proof of concept test). This content will not play back on the actual BOX were the media resides but plays perfectly on the 360 via Media Center interface (MC Serves up content No processing). So my conclusion is that the 360 can def handle the HD WMV content without issue, and I bet its very accurate to say that "the decoder is there for H.264 and MPEG-4 AVC media.".
codyL @ Jul 12th 2006 1:32PM
I am SO anxious for this thing to come out. I figure if it's cheap enough, it will be the way for the xbox user to demo the high def movie arena without invest an arm and a leg. Come soon and come for $100 :).
cL
John @ Jul 12th 2006 2:29PM
Your Computer just serves the HD files to your Xbox 360 which then acutally decodes and plays the files. You can use any computer for that because all it really is doing is just reading the file and shooting it over the network to the 360. However what is a nice proof of concept is my old P3 1 gigahert PC playing 1080i HD content. No the computer is not powerful enough to play the 1080i media files, but a combination of Pure Video, and a 5950FX graphics card does give that old PC enough power to allow HD playback without dropping any frames, or using a bunch of CPU power. But yeh the 360 should have more than enough power to playback ALL HD content even HD-DVDs.
Zach @ Jul 12th 2006 3:00PM
@ Mike #1.
Microsoft have said again and again, the HD DVD drive will be used for Video Playback only. Just Google "HD DVD 360 Movies Only" and you'll see what I mean.
And the drive will be connected to the 360 via a USB cable.
Mkaz @ Jul 12th 2006 3:22PM
Any chance we'll see DTS with this drive, or is that impossible since the 360 doesn't output it?
zombieflanders @ Jul 12th 2006 8:38PM
#7: Without a DTS decoder, HDMI, or a 6/8-channel analog output, there's no way the box will put out more than regular, compressed Dolby Digital. In other words, barring HDMI 1.3 being included, only video will be high-def. Having heard the full 6-channel soundtracks on both HD DVD and Blu-ray, I can say there's definitely a difference if you've got a halfway decent sound system.
Zach @ Jul 12th 2006 9:04PM
@ Zombieflanders. #7
The 360 supports various audio formats through an optical output (TOSLink) Dolby 5.1, DTS, LPCM, DPLII to name a few. Games offer 5.1 audio only as DTS and othr codecs would require to much processing power.
Movies on the other hand would offer DTS or DPLII. Because movies do not require as much processing, the use of higher quality audio codecs can be used.
And most people seem to forget, the 360 will handle all of the processing regarding HD DVD. The drive its self will stream the content to the 360, which processes it and then audio and video are delivered to your TV set and Audio reciever.
Cheers.
BolderX @ Jul 13th 2006 11:01AM
My question is if this will actually output 1080p? Zach mentioned streaming 1080p to the 360 but the 360 only outputs video in 720p or 1080i, not 1080p. I still have my doubts that this will give the full video resolution that would be possible with a standalone player.
ZeroCorpse @ Jul 15th 2006 7:30PM
BolderX--- Fewer than 2% of the people who own HDTVs right now (which is also around 2%) are capable of displaying in 1080p. Unless your HDTV is HUUUUGE (larger than 60" AT THE VERY LEAST) you will see NO DIFFERENCE from 720p to 1080p.
If you're one of that lucky .01% of the population who have a 1080p HDTV that is the size of a movie screen, then congratulations. You're elite. You are not, however, the target audience for this device. Go buy a stand-alone player.
The rest of us in HDTV land, with our 27" - 32" screens are perfectly happy with 720p movies. The other 99 percent of the population who DON'T have an HDTV yet are not going to care one way or the other, as they're still watching FULL SCREEN movies in 480i, and probably won't be jumping to HD-DVD or Blu-Ray any time soon.
It's just not cost effective to do 1080p. No broadcaster bothers with it, either. Even Sony is dropping their promise that all their games will be 1080p (So developers are saying, anyway). So few people have the capability to display 1080p that it's just not worth having the technology in there.