*** Official *** XBox 360 Hardware DISCUSSION Thread - Page 10

The fight night demo is awesome, true next gen graphics!


HD-Drive: im not concerned the dvd player on the consoles are always a little lacking IMHO. The 360 playback has some issues with certain dvd's as it uses software for dvd playback the first xbox had bad digital sound imo, the 360 has really good dvd sound but like i said there are some issues with the playback of "some" DVD's.


Toshiba is looking nice at 400.00 (HD-DVD PLAYER)

Yeah, I was certainly not talking about gaming here. Simply what next generation "DVD" would be supported by what console. And I would not count out HD-DVD yet.

I just found it interesting to see this battle being extended to the consoles.

You mean the mockup?

Or the non-working $799 one. Microsoft tried to demo it. Nothing happened (shades of the infamous Win98 USB scanner BSOD).

Stay away from HD DVD. Blu-ray is the TRUE next gen disc format. This is coming from a die-hard MS team member.

No i mean the price of the unit.

o think HD-DVD could make it, it has a name that people can recognize and associate with and the price is cheaper at the moment. and not only that, i have never been a real sony fan.

By mockup I meant the $499 version was NOT a real unit at CES, but a mockup of what it will look like. Toshiba has yet to build the thing. At this time it remains to be seen whether they can actually DO that.

McDonald's is cheaper than a good steak. Makes it better?



Then you don't like:
Panasonic
JVC
Philips/Magnavox
Samsung
Hitachi
LG/Zenith
Sharp
Pioneer
Yamaha
Mitsubishi
Thomson/RCA

Now, I challenge you to name beyond 5 HD DVD supporters who make actual players. Currently there's only:

Toshiba
Thomson/RCA
Samsung
NEC
Sanyo

Of these ONLY Toshiba had a player to show for it. Thomson/RCA offered Toshiba to act as an OEM (they rebrand a Toshiba player with theirs). Samsung is offering a combo unit at "some time in the future" but DID show their Blu-ray only player.

HD DVD is the DIVX of the 21st Century.

OK, I just searched the thread, and I haven't seen an answer to the question of whether or not people prefer 1080i or 720p for their 360 games. I've seen Robert's excellent explanation of the difference between the two, but I've also seen a couple of posts advocating 1080i. I haven't really tried using both for any significant amount of time, and settled on 720p based on Robert's recommendation, and the fact that I knew that was the native resolution of the games. If the 360 does upconvert though, would 1080i look better, or are we getting into "music only dogs can hear" territory?

I'll have to give 1080i a try for a while and see if I can tell the difference.

When we first hooked up our unit, it was set on tv(480)since my daughter hooked it up. I have since then changed to hd/1080 and have not looked back. IMHO, an entire different looking picture. Awesome. Although, I confess, I have not tried the other settings...

Has anyone seen this video?

This is a 9 year kid on Xbox Live arguing with his mother.

My girl keeps bugging me about having a baby and I'm not sure if I'd be a good parent. But, listening to this, I don't think I'd be the worst either.

Project Gotham 3 demo on the Marketplace. 1.25 Gig download. Still downloading so I can't comment. I haven't tried this game yet. And, now that my 4805's bulb is close to 3000 hours, I'm going to have to buy a new one. Looks like no games for awhile!

I realize that this has little to do with hardware, but I'm going to add it anyway - last night I played through the first level of the American campaign on Call of Duty 2 (the D-Day landing where you climb up the hill). That is the most visceral experience I have ever played in my 20+ years of gaming. Absolutely incredible.

Good to hear, I have not opened my C.O.D. 2 yet and I can't wait to play it.

Todd,

Be sure to turn your volume up. Awesome game. It's aggravating me on Veteran though. I'm just not that skilled.

Woo hoo I managed to score myself a 360 today off of Walmart.com of all places. I got two games with it, C.O.D. 2 and PDZ. No HDTV for me yet but maybe this summer. I should have my new 360 next week.

If your trying to complete veteran have a bottle of Advil ready, it took me a week, remember no run and gun, use your team and use your smoke grenades.

Hello again,I have a question for you 360 owners.

How do you connect the 360 to your 5.1 surround system? is it like the XBox where you have to buy a seperate add-on to do it or is it built in to the system automatically? also, what kind of cable does it use?

Thanks!

nope, its built on to the cable, its the large peice that connects to the system(optical) input.

The optical output port is built onto the main A/V cable connector. HOWEVER, you do need to get a digital optical cable and connect it to a Dolby Digital ready receiver. Be sure to doublecheck the sound options on the Dashboard setup menus.

I second George's point regarding turning the sound up on COD 2. In addition, I HIGHLY recommend using your surround sound set-up (assuming you have one). I played a few levels at my buddy's place (who currently doesn't have his system hooked up) and it was a completely different experience running it on my own. I am very much looking forward to playing through the game again in a few months when I get an HDTV!

Thanks for the response about the optical cable and how to set up the 360 with a surround system. I guess it is very similar to how the current XBox is, where you need to have one of the seperate AV connectors (i.e., HD AV or S-Video) to get the surround capabilities. I'll perobably end up using the optical cable from my current XBox rig to set up my new 360. Hopefully my order will ship in the next few days and I'll have my mitts on my new 360.

I was playing mine last night on Bankshot Billiards and the sound started cutting out, I checked the back of the 360 and it was putting out some major heat, went back to the dashboard, went back to the game and it worked fine?

Anyone else run across this?

I have played mine for long stretches, like 4 hours and I have never noticed any heat problems.

Since I never noticed any heat problems I was going to post a poll question in this thread to see how many people are actually having heating problems.

So who has experienced heat problems and who hasn’t?

No problems here and I play for many hours at a time. I've been off work for a month so I had plenty of time.
Going back to work Monday, so my playing time will be a lot less.

For those of you even considering an HD DVD drive:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multime...112231012.html

Blu-ray WILL be the winner in the HD disc wars. MS isn't dumb. They secretly know it.

never had heat problems - and have played for hours at a time.

I was finally able to place an order for a Premium unit on walmart.com. In anticipation of good times to come, I'm going to get some stuff to properly hook it up. Since it's a Premium unit, it'll come with the component hd cable. I've checked my HDTV and I've got a free Component jack so the video portion is all set.

How about the audio?? How do I hook it for 5.1? Does it come with the cable for that?? If not, what should I get-coax or optical??

I need to connect wirelessly for Live. Will a wireless bridge work or does it have to be a game adapter???

Anything else I should know about??

It uses optical only.


You will have to use the wireless adaptor (99.99) or run cat5 through your walls wich I prefer, but live in a two story now and I don’t have the means to run cat 5 on the bottom floors, so I bought the wireless adaptor. Works really good and it was as simple as plugging it in, turning the system on, entering my encryption code, and I was done.

Why do you need to use the MS adapter? As far as I know, as long as you have something that can plug into a regular RJ45 jack that can translate an 802.11 signal, then you should be fine-the 360 shouldn't know the difference. For my money though, you can buy a lot of cable for the $100 that they're asking for the "official" wi-fi adapter.

No heat problems here, and I played for a long time yesterday.

Maybe Im just paranoid.

It may be nothing more than just the regular heat from playing but I notice on Bankshot Billiards after playing awhile on breaks the screen acts funny and I eventually lose sound but on the Xbox forum others are having problems with the same game, so maybe thats all it is.

No, one doesn't absolutely need the MS 360 Wireless Adapter for 360 wireless connectivity--one could just buy a supported wireless bridge which I assume can typically be had for less money than that for the 360 wireless product. But I do like the fact that the 360 adapter attaches very cleanly to the back of the 360...and that it was very easy to configure my 360 to connect wirelessly to my Netgear wireless router using the 360 adapter. Sure--going the wired route is the most affordable solution but not all of us w/ multiple-story homes where the 360, router, and/or cable/dsl modem are on different floors have pre-wired in-wall ethernet cabling in place or have a floor layout where running in-wall cabling won't require too much effort. My 360 and wireless router not only are on separate floors...but are also located in almost opposite ends in my house, so for me to run ethernet cabling I'd have to temporarily cut out some drywall not only in the walls, but in the ceiling as well--way more time and effort just to save $100 (actually less, when you factor in the cost of the cable and drywall repair kit in my situation).

As far as the heat issue is concerned--no I don't have heat problems--at least not yet...but yeah the 360 puts out (radiates?) quite a bit of heat out the back.

If you plan on using an optical cable w/ your 360, make sure that the connector on the optical cable "snaps" snugly into place into the 360 HD cable. I mention this because not all optical cable connectors are exactly alike; the Radio Shack optical cable I bought would not snap snugly into place into the port on the 360 HD connector to the point where it could almost just fall out...but the Acoustic Research optical cable did so just fine.