Xbox360 Picture Quality

[I am Reid]

HDMI-Audio is much more versatile than Digital Optical. Both are digital, so what gets sent down the cable depends on what's plugged into it (and whether it works or not depends on what's receiving it). And it has far more bandwidth available for audio than Digital optical does, I found this out a few months ago when researching sound systems. Put it this way, you cannot do Dolby TrueHD down an Optical cable, but you can via HDMI. The 360 doesn't do TrueHD sound, but it does output Dolby Digital via HDMI if you want it to.

According to Wiki, HDMI (Audio) supports the following formats:

LPCM

Dolby Digital

DTS

DVD-Audio

Super Audio CD

Dolby TrueHD

DTS-HD Master Audio

MPCM

Digital Optical (AKA TOSLINK) supports...

"Originally limited to 48 kHz at 20 bits. Extended to support all modern formats, except Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD and DTS HD audio streams."

and whats your point? optical can output the same things on an xbox as HDMI

just accept it, nobody is even arguing with you here if you havnt noticed, it is widely accepted that HDMI is not going to offer any quality advantage over component or optical, its just a different method of of delivering the signal.

Edited January 6, 2009 by reidtheweed01

[Kushan]

and whats your point? optical can output the same things on an xbox as HDMI

just accept it, nobody is even arguing with you here if you havnt noticed, it is widely accepted that HDMI is not going to offer any quality advantage over component or optical, its just a different method of of delivering the signal.

Apparently you didn't read the post I was replying to, which outright said that Optical was better than HDMI-audio. Was is relevant to this topic? Maybe not, but it was still incorrect so I corrected them.

And the "Quality advantage" is debatable, it comes down to the hardware involved and the cables used.

[DELTETHISACCOUNT]

Steering away from the audio argument...

Personally, I've found X360 VGA connection to be far more superior than Component/HDMI, espicially on a Samsung set. The colors don't bleed as much and every pixel is pristine and perfect. No grain, no artifacts, just pure pixels. It's like PC gaming without the PC.

EDIT Oh, and no display lag. I understand that some configurations have some lag when using Component/HDMI, but none appears present when using VGA.

[goji]

I know that HDMI sports all the above stated codecs and resolutions but you just stated my point... If my cable company can support bandwidth for NTSC signal cable, phone, data, and an HD ATSC signal, then why would HDMI be superior if it was not just a ploy to make some sort of industry standard.

HDMI doesn't sport any codecs period. It allows for the transfer of data similar to network cable which is just as capable of transferring current HD signal or higher if need be (obviously).

Keep things in perspective. When the HD formats were being discussed not to long ago, piracy was a huge issue facing the studios, who were losing theoretical dollars daily to pirated content. In order to thwart these pirates the concept of larger, flagged data came into existence. Sure the larger data allowed for higher audio and video quality but would also ensure that in order to playback the data you would have to have registered (read: licensed) HD tech that would read the ICT flag, and decode it. If not the signal would be degraded to regular SD content.

Of course it didn't come to pass, though the issue raised its head numerous times throughout the HD wars, particularly when HD-DVD security was cracked. The industry wanted a way to lock people out despite the fact other options existed for transferring large amounts of data quickly (ethernet). HDMI was there ticket (literally; read: Monster Cable) along with the ICT flag which has yet to be introduced.