*** Official "X-BOX" Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Ike]

Man,

You guys are tempting me. My X-Box didn't have a power cord, and apparently it's a wholly unique cord. Finally, EB Games shipped me one yesterday, and I should get it here Monday. It's sort of sad, because I walk in, and see it hooked up to the HD pack, and I just sort of groan. (And I'm moving my new HT system to the TV it's hooked up on. So, 480p, and DD 5.1 gaming here I come-at least, hopefully by Monday!)

BTW, do I have to select something in game-ala Metal Gear Solid 2-or do I just turn 5.1 and Progressive on in the Dashboard and that's it? (Also, will it automatically be in Progressive, or will I have to select it on my TV or Dashboard, or whatever. Sorry, I've never messed with progressive...)

 

[Bill Gato]

Ike,

Re: the power cord for the XBox.

If yours did not come with a AC power cord and you don't mind spending $9.99, you may want to check your local Toys R Us for an aftermarket AC adapter.

Since I hooked up my XBox to my receiver in my entertainment center, it is impossible for me to unhook the power cord each time I want to take my XBox to my classroom. The solution for me was to use the video cord that came with the system and the aftermarket AC adapter to put in my XBox suitcase.

Perfect solution to my problem. I did have to pay $19.99 plus shipping for a replacement AC adapter for my GameCube. That sucked.

 

[Ike]

What?!? I was told by the MS guy there was no other XBox power cords, and when I informed him that in fact there was an Interact cable on Amazon, he told me it could mess my system up, and they wouldn't be responsible. Dammit, I could've been playing X-Box on Christmas!

Just Monday, just wait till Monday.

Also, along with the prog. scan question, is a really dumb question:

Are the 5.1 soundtracks on the games really that good? I mean, I've heard Halo's got a good soundtrack, but what about DOA3 or PGR? Does the surfing game (I forgot it's name) have 5.1? Is there a list of X-Box games that do and don't include a DD 5.1 soundtrack? Is the X-Box capable of doing DTS?

Wow, that's a lot of questions.

 

[Sean Oneil]

Ike, On the Video: In the dashboard there are options for enabling 480p, 720p, 1080i, and selecting from 4:3 letterboxed, 4:3 full frame, or 16x9 widescreen. On my setup, I enabled 480p, 1080i, and 16x9 widescreen and when you insert a game that supports those options, it will automatically take advantage of them. So far, all X-Box games are progressive scan, and a few like DOA 3 and Madden 2002 are full fledged 16x9 widescreen capable.
On the Audio: So far, I have only heard Halo and DOA3. Both rock IMHO as far as sound is concerned, although only Halo has clear 'directional effects' of the two ...meaning that it tends to employ the surround channels to a greater extent with discreet effects. Still not up to par with the best DVD DD tracks like Episode 1, but hopefully the potential is there.
The X-Box does have an option in the dashboard to enable DTS audio output, although that may be just for DVD playback. Perhaps in the future some games will have that option ...but with DD at 640k, a 754k DTS track kind of becomes moot. Now if they went full rate DTS, then.... well, I 'll leave that for another thread.
I want to hear Nascar Thunder because that one is supposed to have some heavy use of discreet sound effects.
I don't care how ugly the X-Box is ...I love it! After all, It's what's on the inside that counts, right

 

[Gary King]

Xbox can pass a DTS stream from a DVD movie, but the MCP hardware won't encode games in DTS... in fact, I haven't seen any options to encode in anything other than 640kbps 5.1. The hardware may have some hidden flags for 320kbps or 448kbps 1, 2, and 4-channel output, but the APIs don't expose them.

DoA3 has a good song or two, but it's not a terribly good soundtrack. As another strike against it, it only uses the main channels - no surround, sub, or center channel activity.

Project Gotham uses all 6 channels.

Every Xbox game I've seen outputs a 5.1 stream, but the actual surround-ness of the mix varies from game to game. Some are excellent (Halo, Starfighter SE), some make infrequent use of the surrounds (Munch), and some are plain old stereo (DoA3).

To enable progressive scan (and Dolby Digital bitstream output), just plug in the HD AV pack, and go to the video (sound) options in the Dashboard. You should see a list of video modes (480P/720P/1080i) - just answer "Yes" for the modes that your TV supports. Some games have widescreen/aspect ratio options in their menus (Project Gotham, DoA3), but you won't need to toggle between 480i and 480p output in a game.

 

[Dan B]

I just got my first CD writer the other day, so I'm interested to hear more people's success/failure with CD-Rs, CD-RWs, & VCDs with the Xbox. So far, I've tried:

-Maxell CD-RW 74 minute 4-10x #630025 - burned music works great

-Memorex CD-R 80 minute 24x #3203 4560 - not recognized by Xbox

-tried burning a VCD on both disc types & they were not recognized by Xbox (the VCD on CD-RW worked on my Sony DVD player)

I used Nero Burning Rom 5.5 (latest version) for most of the work

Anyone else?

-Dan

hasn't played Halo in 2 days...must be sick

 

[Rodrick]

From what I've played on it, the controlls were good but the games were very hard to master. Ive been a computer gamer and portable gaming owner for yrs.

Peeps complain too much on the size of the controlls I think. But agree the games look the best, with own hardrive which I agree Sony doesn't have built in. And only option of buying a memory stick.