official Xbox One Launch Thread

[spudtrooper]

I find the ui amazingly simple and intuitive. Obviously everything has a new home and you have to get used to layout, but it's easy. Also, with talking how can you get lost?

[jerzdawg]

I'm not using the TV feature either, so I can't test pass through.I do know that audio will pass through when the X1 is off. There are settings for that, so I would suggest looking through that section for anything related to pass through.

Where did you see the pass through setting?

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

I ran into a bug last night, the Store doesn't have a proper "back" functionality in certain situations. I put an audio CD in and it loaded the store to install the player support, then when I opened the store from the dashboard it was stuck on the audio player page, couldn't leave, couldn't search, etc.

I had to go back to the dash and re-open the store from the "Games" tile to get it back to the listing.

[jerzdawg]

Ok, I found this on ign

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/xbox-one-will-not-passthrough-hdmi-while-in-standby.453537997/

So this is complete garbage. If I have no intentions of using the tv features or gaming at a certain time then I should be able to watch tv without having the xbox on. If the xbox is in standby mode there is no reason why passthrough would not be supported.

Is there a splitter that exists that would allow me to use the tv features as well as use just my cable box?

On the plus side, the play to feature works great in windows 8.1. Tested a mp4 and avi. Mkv files are not giving me the option of play to. Has anyone had success with streaming an mkv yet?

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Can you play MKV files in WMP? You need a "splitter" installed so that it can open the files to get to the video data.

[jerzdawg]

Can you play MKV files in WMP? You need a "splitter" installed so that it can open the files to get to the video data.

Can you be more specific on a splitter?

And WMp can play the files on PC, when I choose play to it says unexpected device error

[Jeston Veteran]

Ok, I found this on ign

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/xbox-one-will-not-passthrough-hdmi-while-in-standby.453537997/

So this is complete garbage. If I have no intentions of using the tv features or gaming at a certain time then I should be able to watch tv without having the xbox on. If the xbox is in standby mode there is no reason why passthrough would not be supported.

Is there a splitter that exists that would allow me to use the tv features as well as use just my cable box?

On the plus side, the play to feature works great in windows 8.1. Tested a mp4 and avi. Mkv files are not giving me the option of play to. Has anyone had success with streaming an mkv yet?

You should be able to use an HDMI splitter like this one: http://www.amazon.com/HD-102-Powered-Splitter-Certified-Support/dp/B005HXFARS/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1385255735&sr=8-4&keywords=hdmi+splitter

 

Also, MKV files are not supported to be played on the One.

[jerzdawg]

You should be able to use an HDMI splitter like this one: http://www.amazon.com/HD-102-Powered-Splitter-Certified-Support/dp/B005HXFARS/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1385255735&sr=8-4&keywords=hdmi+splitter

 

Also, MKV files are not supported to be played on the One.

Thx, going to order it and hope ms can add passthrough via firmware (doubtful). Thx sux about the mkv files...

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Can you be more specific on a splitter?

And WMp can play the files on PC, when I choose play to it says unexpected device error

The splitter turns the MKV file into something the underlying software (MediaFoundation) sees as a logical collection of streams (Audio, video, subtitles, etc.)

DivX make a fairly good one (Which I know works with the 360), and I think the official Haali one also works.

[Martog]

Ok, I found this on ign

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/xbox-one-will-not-passthrough-hdmi-while-in-standby.453537997/

So this is complete garbage. If I have no intentions of using the tv features or gaming at a certain time then I should be able to watch tv without having the xbox on. If the xbox is in standby mode there is no reason why passthrough would not be supported.

Is there a splitter that exists that would allow me to use the tv features as well as use just my cable box?

On the plus side, the play to feature works great in windows 8.1. Tested a mp4 and avi. Mkv files are not giving me the option of play to. Has anyone had success with streaming an mkv yet?

 

The whole idea was to use the Xbox to control watching TV using the Xbox.  Otherwise hooked it up to another HDMI port or get a splitter.  I don't think Microsoft ever stated once that you could watch TV while the Xbox was turned off if you were using the pass through.

[jerzdawg]

The whole idea was to use the Xbox to control watching TV using the Xbox.  Otherwise hooked it up to another HDMI port or get a splitter.  I don't think Microsoft ever stated once that you could watch TV while the Xbox was turned off if you were using the pass through.

Ok, but they also should have known that an xbox hooked up to the main tv in the house was not going to be used by the gamers wife or whatever. On Sunday my tv is on watching football from 1 pm until 11 pm.. I don't want my xbox for 10+ hours..

[trooper11]

Ok, but they also should have known that an xbox hooked up to the main tv in the house was not going to be used by the gamers wife or whatever. On Sunday my tv is on watching football from 1 pm until 11 pm.. I don't want my xbox for 10+ hours..

Well the idea is that the system is built to be dynamic power wise. Meaning, when your just using the system to watch TV, it shuts down parts of the cpu/gpu that are not in use, drawing less power and of course running quiet.

So even someone not wanting to game would just jump into TV from the dash. You can set up the home dash screen to show the TV tile as the large tile you see first. That way when someone walks up to watch TV can just be logged in and say 'watch TV' or use a universal remote like a harmony to choose that big tile.

I do agree that a pass through option would be good for those that prefer that.

[Martog]

Ok, but they also should have known that an xbox hooked up to the main tv in the house was not going to be used by the gamers wife or whatever. On Sunday my tv is on watching football from 1 pm until 11 pm.. I don't want my xbox for 10+ hours..

 

So what would you have done if you bought a PS4? Got a splitter? The HDMI in port is specifically touted using the Xbox One to watch TV.

 

I see your point, but I don't think they're going to do a pass through, it may not be possible the way the console is designed.  Just because it's in standby mode, doesn't mean the hardware was engineered for that.

 

Also I have no idea how trooper11's was able to pass Audio while off, I have my X1 off right now and my Cable Box is on, no audio.

[jerzdawg]

So what would you have done if you bought a PS4? Got a splitter? The HDMI in port is specifically touted using the Xbox One to watch TV.

I see your point, but I don't think they're going to do a pass through, it may not be possible the way the console is designed. Just because it's in standby mode, doesn't mean the hardware was engineered for that.

Also I have no idea how trooper11's was able to pass Audio while off, I have my X1 off right now and my Cable Box is on, no audio.

I have a receiver so my ps4 would go into its own input. I'm going to get the splitter so I can use the tv features when I want and turn the xbox off when I want as well.

[George P Global Moderator]

If you think of the XB1 as a set-top box when it comes to tv/media then it makes sense that you can't watch TV when it's off.   I think that's the idea behind it, they'd rather you use it as a cable box/set-top box when TV comes into play.  If you're in the US and your cable provider is supported via the guide and so on and you can use the OneGuide to jump from tv channels to media streaming services and so on then as is often the case it'd be on most of the time.

 

I don't know if anyone has done detailed tests for this but I'm pretty sure that even if you left it on when you watch tv if you have it set to turn the TV off as well as itself then when it is on and not playing a game etc it's probably at it's idle levels power wise and hardly doing much.   It really depends on how you think of it in the end.  You still think and want to use it as a separate part of your system and keep using your cable box when watching TV, that's fine, but it doesn't really fit with how they designed it.   Who knows in the future though?

[spenser.d]

I stopped in the Microsoft Store at Mall of America yesterday and it was packed. They were doing a promo where if you played two Xbox One games, you could get in line to play a Kinect game against someone from the Minnesota Twins (looked like a wave racer game). They had that placed right at the storefront window which was attracting a bunch of attention in and outside the store. I didn't wait in line to do any playing but it was pretty cool to see.

As an aside, pretty much every table of windows phones, surfaces, and other windows machines were full of people which must be a welcome departure for them from previous years (this is my third year in a row going around this time of year) where there was always clearly far more people in the Apple store across the hall than in their store, so that was cool to see as well.

[George P Global Moderator]

I stopped in the Microsoft Store at Mall of America yesterday and it was packed. They were doing a promo where if you played two Xbox One games, you could get in line to play a Kinect game against someone from the Minnesota Twins (looked like a wave racer game). They had that placed right at the storefront window which was attracting a bunch of attention in and outside the store. I didn't wait in line to do any playing but it was pretty cool to see.

As an aside, pretty much every table of windows phones, surfaces, and other windows machines were full of people which must be a welcome departure for them from previous years (this is my third year in a row going around this time of year) where there was always clearly far more people in the Apple store across the hall than in their store, so that was cool to see as well.

 

Definitely the right move, it draws attention to all the other stuff they have for sale while people wait.

[IceBreakerG]

After messing around with the game dvr some more, I've come to the conclusion that the quality kind of sucks (probably because of the video compression).  It makes the games look pretty bad.  It's cool that works and everything, but the overall video quality of the clips is bad.  I also wish that we could record more than 5mins too.  Sometimes what I'm doing requires more than 5mins of record time.  Another thing is the automatic clip recording needs work too.  I'm playing Ryse now (about halfway through the game) and it's auto-recorded a bunch of clips, but it they're all about 1min long and it always stops right in the middle of some action or right before a kill is finished.

 

On another note, I "finally" saw an achievement notification earlier, but I still think it's a big problem that they don't show up most of the time.

 

To get an idea on the video quality, if you haven't messed around with it, here's a few clips I recorded from CoD Ghosts on the Rorke file locations:

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsjGPwfDxsB6p0a5ZUvtqCtW67pe_Qhms

[trooper11]

After messing around with the game dvr some more, I've come to the conclusion that the quality kind of sucks (probably because of the video compression).  It makes the games look pretty bad.  It's cool that works and everything, but the overall video quality of the clips is bad.  I also wish that we could record more than 5mins too.  Sometimes what I'm doing requires more than 5mins of record time.  Another thing is the automatic clip recording needs work too.  I'm playing Ryse now (about halfway through the game) and it's auto-recorded a bunch of clips, but it they're all about 1min long and it always stops right in the middle of some action or right before a kill is finished.

 

On another note, I "finally" saw an achievement notification earlier, but I still think it's a big problem that they don't show up most of the time.

 

To get an idea on the video quality, if you haven't messed around with it, here's a few clips I recorded from CoD Ghosts on the Rorke file locations:

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsjGPwfDxsB6p0a5ZUvtqCtW67pe_Qhms

I do agree that I hope they improve the quality of the recorded clips. I did recordings of KI and I didn't think they looked awful, but it was lacking a little of the 'punch' that is in the original. Also, KI runs at 720p/60, but the recorded video is 720p/30, so that is not ideal. I hope that gets fixed. On a side note, My ps4 recordings are also showing signs of compression.

I will say this though, while the recorded clips have noticeable reductions in quality, they still look great when viewing them on a phone, tablet, or on most pc monitors. I suppose MS was aiming for the fact that we would be sharing these clips and that most people would see them on devices where that bit of compression is not noticeable.

I also get that they probably were trying hard to reduce file sizes so that uploading clips does not take hours. Maybe they can offer users an option of level of compression and let us decide if we want to get a higher quality clip at the expense of upload times and storage space usage.

I think they will eventually remove the time limit or at least adjust it to a much higher number, allowing you to capture clips as large as your hard drive's free space will allow. 5 minutes has been plenty for me so far, but I can see the benefit of longer times eventually.

I'm really wondering why your not seeing achievements. I'm seeing them all the time like I would expect.

[spudtrooper]

On YouTube your game eve looks fine to me, not mind blowing hs but maybe you watched them before yt had high quality published?

[trooper11]

On YouTube your game eve looks fine to me, not mind blowing hs but maybe you watched them before yt had high quality published?

Well remember that recorded clips are always 720p. That means right off the bat, a game like Ryse that runs at 900p, loses some quality. Then you have the framerate question. 30 frames is fine for Ryse, but KI takes a hit by being recorded at 30 frames. I agree that its not bad or terrible, but I think they can do better.

If you upload your clips to skydrive, you can check out the video specs easily enough.

[George P Global Moderator]

The only thing I see them doing is updating it to allow you to adjust the quality settings for the encoding.  Right now it's set at 720p/30f because that's probably the quickest and least resource heavy encode for the system to do.   If you want it to do, say, full 1080p/60f, if that's what the game is running at, then the encoding time will be longer for sure, the file size will be larger as well, take longer to upload which could impact any multiplayer you might be doing.   And let's not forget that it'll have more work to do to encode, unless by limiting the resources it has, like max 2 CPU cores and 1GB RAM etc, it doesn't impact your gaming BUT that just means it'll take longer to encode.

 

I think they settled on the quality because for most it'll look fine and not impact the performance of the system overall.  Encoding video is not something that's lite on hardware.   So maybe we'll get more options but you'll have to keep things in mind, if it's always recording the last 30 seconds and you up the quality who knows how it'll effect things?

[BoDEAN]

i wonder how long til microsoft issues another OS patch for xbox one.

[trooper11]

i wonder how long til microsoft issues another OS patch for xbox one.

Good question. They seem to be eager to get features added, so hopefully that means they are also trying to get any bug fixes or tweaks out quickly.

[IceBreakerG]

Yeah, overall the clips are decent enough.  Would just be nice if they were a little bit higher quality.  On another note, I just finished Ryse (watching the credits now), and I really have no clue why the game got such poor reviews.  I thought it was an awesome experience overall and had a really good story (very similar to Gladiator).  Sure, the combat is repetitive, but what game isn't?  I think most reviewers based their opinion on the game from earlier versions of the game (like E3, Gamescom, etc) instead of looking at the finished product.  I thought the combat fluidity feels similar to how it would in AC or the Batman Arkham series.  I'll probably end up playing it again on the hardest difficulty level (I'm an achievement ######), so we'll see how that goes.  Now it's back to the crappy CoD: Ghosts.

 

Update: Downloaded Kinect Sports Rivals Preseason to try out.  Can't do much trying out.  Stupid game is giving me this error:

 

"The Kinect Sensor needs a clear view of the play space to continue.  Please ensure that the Kinect Sensor is not obstructed, or return Home and run the Kinect Tuner, before continuing."

 

I have about 10ft between me and the kinect and the only thing between us is my glass coffee table.  Guess I really will go back to CoD: Ghosts.