With 1080p streaming coming in the fall I have to ask, will any new codecs be installed/used.
Now that we have HDMI it could either pass something better the DD to the xbox or decode something like DD+ DT HD MA and pass it as PCM over the HDMI cable the way PS3 does.
Even DTS would be a big step up from DD.

Anyone know? Or hoping for new codecs?

They haven't announced anything about additional audio options for the Xbox. The Smooth Streaming technology can potentially support different codecs but I expect to see VC1 used for the video and DD640 for the audio. The audio stream will still needed to be decoded, mixed and then encoded for output so there's no reason DTS couldn't be used for output. Microsoft put a lot of effort in supporting DTS for HDDVD output so they could just leverage all that work directly.
At E3 they announced all the movies in the Video Marketplace would be 1080p. I wonder if MS is doing all the encodes in house or if this has fallen on its content partners. If the partners are involved then we might see some diversity in the codecs used but I doubt it. And I doubt additional output options even more.

I also wonder who will be doing the encodes/mastering?

It would be great to see the movies with DTS, but somehow I doubt it.

Don't count on it. The 360 has zero support for any of the newer, advanced audio codecs. Good ol' legacy Dolby Digital 5.1 will be the audio choice and it uses up the least amount of bandwidth.

yea, forget DTS, TrueHD or DTS-HD. They will cut corners on bandwidth wherever they can to keep the video looking decent.

for audio, expect DD480 at the max. I think most will be 2.0ch AAC or MP3, though.

As for 1080p...I bet it will be 1080p30...which is basically identical to 1080i60 in any way that matters.

As for 1080p...I bet it will be 1080p30...which is basically identical to 1080i60 in any way that matters.

:confused: :confused: How you think they are basically identical is beyond me...

It will be highly compressed 1080p24. Why would they do 30 fps progressive instead of 24 fps progressive when they are trying to reduce bandwidth?

I sure would like to see support for FLAC. I'm in the process of ripping all my CDs to FLAC, and it's too bad that neither the Xbox or PS3 support it.

Scott

:confused: :confused: How you think they are basically identical is beyond me...

It will be highly compressed 1080p24. Why would they do 30 fps progressive instead of 24 fps progressive when they are trying to reduce bandwidth?

if they just repeat frames the marginal impact on bandwidth is negligible.

With 1080p streaming coming in the fall I have to ask, will any new codecs be installed/used.
Now that we have HDMI it could either pass something better the DD to the xbox or decode something like DD+ DT HD MA and pass it as PCM over the HDMI cable the way PS3 does.
Even DTS would be a big step up from DD.

Anyone know? Or hoping for new codecs?

current bandwidth speeds don't make streaming an uncompressed audio and video stream feasible. you'll need a stable stream of around 40mbps to stream a pure blu-Ray quality movie.

on top of that, the xbox 1.2 hdmi spec the 360 uses does bot support uncompressed audio streams. HD-dvd's played through the 360's HD-DVD drives are unable to pass uncompressed audio tracks either.

for the everage consumer (which Microsoft is marketing this to) none of this will matter. the average person will see that the 360 can stream 1080p and cream his pants, knowing nothing of compression and what not

Such a shame, I hope thet at least use a max DD bitrate ( can't remeber what it is off hand) as that sounds alot better then most DVD's, excluding DTS or DD ES of course. I wonder if your connection starts to choke if there cut out the rear speakers as well as compressing the picture more or there do a stero mix to DD?