I have an older 480p / 1080i HDTV (Mitsubishi 46807). With the Xbox how will it output a 720p video? Will it be forced to downscale it to 480p?

You select 1080i on the 360 and it scales everything to 1080i.

I have an older 480p / 1080i HDTV (Mitsubishi 46807). With the Xbox how will it output a 720p video? Will it be forced to downscale it to 480p?

It will upscale it and output it as 1080i.

The 360 has a scaler that works in all circumstances, unlike the PS3. :) Everything will be scaled to the resolution you select in the system settings.

Will it upscale via component? I don't have a HDMI input. Also, does it upscale MPG4 videos? I'd like to playback some HD home video which are 720p.

I was really interested in a PS3 and read several reviews where people in my situation were out of luck, saying the PS3 downscales 720p to 480p... ironically they had Sony TVs! However, the posts were older so they may have had a firmware update by now.

yeap component upscaling works till 1080i for movies

Will it upscale via component? I don't have a HDMI input. Also, does it upscale MPG4 videos? I'd like to playback some HD home video which are 720p.



The 360 rescales everything (except DVDs over component; its a licensing restriction, the hardware can do it to but the software doesn't allow it) over all ports; for games and video, downloaded or local.
The way it works is you pick a resolution that your display supports and then you forget about it. The 360 handles everything automatically within the screen frame of reference.

Also, the 360 supports VGA at most any resolution. So if your display has a VGA port it may be a better match. (And it would upscale DVDs at that point.)

For 720p videos, you have a choice of upscaling it to 1080 or displaying it as native 720p matte'ed in a 1080 screen.

As the MS folks would say; its about giving you choices. ;)

Sounds like I'm in luck with my old 1080i TV!

Another side question -- 4GB. Is there in fact a 4GB limit to local files and can you play them on an external drive or only the internal? ...guess that's 2 questions.

The way to view files on the 360 is via streaming, not plugging anything in locally...if you are takling about Streaming DVD's you'll need some form of media center from microsoft running on a PC. If you are talking about other types of files, it depends on the format....HD for example, H264..has a 2 channel audio and 4gb file size limit when streaming...the way around that is to re-encode to WMVHD with Pro audio.....

Sounds like I'm in luck with my old 1080i TV!

Another side question -- 4GB. Is there in fact a 4GB limit to local files and can you play them on an external drive or only the internal? ...guess that's 2 questions.

The 360 will play media off Data Disks, USB-connected storage, or DAPs.
It will also stream off PCs via UPnP or the Media Center Extender interface.

Technically speaking, the 360 does *not* have a file size limit; but if you format the external drive with FAT32 you do have a file size limit. The answer, surprisingly, is to format the external drive to HFS+ rather than FAT32 or NTFS. Streaming limits would be afunction of the server software and your bandwidth.

Which of the two ways is up for debate; some folks like the extra flexibility of streaming, some prefer locally-attached storage so they can turn off the PC. Do whatever bets suits your needs.