360 soon to be 1080p capable

[ReNo]

Found an interesting snippet of news on Eurogamer today - the August dashboard update to the 360 will enable 1080p output from games and movies (obviously to tie in with the new HD-DVD drive). Not a big deal for, well, anybody, to be honest, but its interesting to see MS just "throw it in there" while Sony are making such a big song and dance about them being the only "true HD" system. Of course, whether MS or 3rd party developers actually put out any content to 1080p, or instead it just remains as upscaling and HD-DVD option, is still to be seen. But then given most dev's seem to be saying 1080p isn't gonna be happening for their games on the PS3, perhaps both of the consoles are in the same boat.

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=67753

[Ginger Lord]

Yeah, considering Sony can't get any 1080p games to run at acceptable speeds on the PS3, I hold little hope for the 360 to be able to do it.

More of a "we can do this too" thing.

[General Vivi]

this is becoming more of a childish battle then a "lets get the coolest stuff out there"

now its like " all we have to do is be one step ahead of the other guy "

kind of annoying

[KungFuSquirrel]

Heaven forbid they improve the system as time goes on! Microsoft at least seems to be doing things intelligently, the external drive and 1080p support could mean they could in theory get a blu-ray external player up and going should that take off instead... though I still don't think either will be that successful yet, and the multi-layer HD-DVD proposal sounds really enticing..

I can't help but wonder if it's GPU or CPU that's holding back 1080p games. If it's GPU, we probably won't see anything other than the next geometry wars and various live arcade games support it. But if it's CPU, we could see progress in that realm as people start getting stronger and stronger with the multiple cores.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually the latter.

[Izuno]

The real question is, will the average consumer derive enough value from going from current DVDs to HD or BluRay DVDs? How does the jump compare to going from VHS to DVD? I haven't seen HD-DVD or BluRay content myself, but I'd like to see all 3 side by side.

Oh, and will my current HD plasma screen even display HD DVD or BluRay DVD output?

Hello? Somebody at Sony / Toshiba answer me!!!

[Sa74n]

maybe you should try the toshiba or sony support sites if you need an answer

[Izuno]

maybe you should try the toshiba or sony support sites if you need an answer

lol. Exactly. Actually I have looked.

http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/bluray/

Sony's site doesn't really talk about what TV you'll need, though obviously it would have to be capable of 1080p. That said, if you don't have 1080p, is there any point in getting a bluray machine? Further, what will be visual quality of PS3 games on non 1080p HD TVs? (not prerendered footage, i mean gameplay :roll: )

Toshiba's site doesn't give a clear answer yet, either.

I think in time it will all be clear and the proper consumer education will rollout. I would still like to see the same movie playing on all possible combinations of DVD type, DVD player tpe, HD TV type in one place just so I can really compare and judge for myself.

Back on topic....

Well simply, 1080p is a lot more screen pixels to push then 720p, so there has to be some kind of taxing on the GPU, right? I think if you are fully using all 3 CPUs, you could probably take significant load of the GPU but it might only be effective on a game by game basis. If any "big time" game is going to do it I would suspect Halo3?