well the update happened at 5:32 AM EST for me it kicked me off XBL and when I tried to sigh in it told me there was a update

I did it and it now has a marketplace Blade



what time did it happen for anyone else

05:03am est

So what does the new options in the video settings mean? The standard, intermediate and the other one...?

2:00 Am Pst

i've been trying to look online and i can find no word on what refrence levels mean in the display area, i changed mine to expanded but see no difference...
ne1 find anything?

So what does the new options in the video settings mean? The standard, intermediate and the other one...?

VGA black level.
Apparently "expanded" is the one similar to PC (0-255) to fix the issue with washed out colors on VGA connection.

05:03am est

So what does the new options in the video settings mean? The standard, intermediate and the other one...?


I would guess it has to do with the fix so the 360 can put out a 0ire black not 7.5 ire like before

but the 360 still sucks and I mean sucks really bad at dvd playback I got the Eliete as well and it is not any better and yes I use HDMI

2:02 PST

marketplace tab is nice, i guess, i dont care for chat, and my set accepts any configuration of VGA reference levels, so that doesnt apply to me either.

i only stayed up hoping for forza 2 demo, no dice.

it's so much FASTER!!!

Anybody test out the new codec support? I wanna know whats up with the h264 support. I have some hd x264 files and wanna know if they work.

Yes, navigating through the windows is much faster. The update that I hoped they would add but they didn't was enabling the user to private chat more than one person at a time. Is microsoft just plain stupid or are they just trying to piss people off. Is it just too hard to make a private chat with 3 or 4 people talking at the same time.-I don't understand

it's so much FASTER!!!

whats faster? navigating due to the new tab?

Anybody test out the new codec support? I wanna know whats up with the h264 support. I have some hd x264 files and wanna know if they work.

i'd like to test, but i dont have anything organized by codec or bitrate, and it's late, too late to sift through videos looking for something compatible.

Yep things do seem a bit zippier than before :) .

I would swear that my image looks better now (via Component , not tried VGA yet) , not sure why though since the black level settings are only supposed to apply to 480p and dvd playback . I know it's probably just an illusion but I was playing the exact same video before and after the update ;) .


----- Jason

Faster as in switching from slide to slide, pressing the xbox logo and checking out your presonal settings, navigating slides as in opening slides within slides-especially when looking at a long list of items such as the movie list-used to take awhile to load, now it's almost instant. There's also no more loading times when you scroll down a list to see the extra content that can't fit on ur screen-although, the little icon picture doesn't show up instantly but the words for the titles are always there

There's also an info bar when playing video media to let you know how much of the video is left or that you have watched when you fast forward or rewind.

Can somebody explain what's the difference between those settings? IRE 0, 3.7 or 7.5? Or what?
http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/2867/image229xv4.jpg

dont know

where did you get thoes numbers from 0, 3.7, 7.5

So with the reference levels on a TV that is using VGA mode... would using the PC levels be the correct setting to alleviate the washed out colors? I think that expanded looks a tad bit darker and colors are a bit deeper. I like it.

My favorite thing about it right now is that you're automatically signed into your default account when as you enter the dash. No more waiting for it to log in later!

Anybody test out the new codec support? I wanna know whats up with the h264 support. I have some hd x264 files and wanna know if they work.

I just tested two files I have and they didn't play. I put them in my shared video file .
They were encoded with Nero7.

1st file.

Video #0
Codec : H.264
Codec/Info : H.264 (3GPP)
PlayTime : 1h 17mn
Bit rate : 4005 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Aspect ratio : 16/9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Standard : NTSC
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.263
StreamSize : 2.18 GiB
Encoded date : UTC 2007-01-25 21:43:20
Tagged date : UTC 2007-01-26 01:54:11

Audio #0
Codec : AAC
Codec/Family : AAC
PlayTime : 2h 20mn
Bit rate : 470 Kbps
Bit rate mode : VBR
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Sampling rate : 48 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
StreamSize : 471 MiB


2nd file was just the same but 3mbps.

The reference levels are essentially a saturation setting.
On PC displays or TVs that don't allow color tweaking on the VGA port the three settings are supposed to get rid of the infamous "washed-out colors".
On my set I had enough leeway to calibrate the VGA port nicely but I do see very slight jumps in saturation and blacks with intermediate and Extended.
Beyond that, the interface seams snappier, you can force a boot to the Media Center Interface instead of the dash, and the anamorphic 1440x1080 demo videos from the Windows Media web site play properly now.
I didn't have any MP4 videos handy but I was surprised to the video player accept .MOV extension files.
Need to do some testing and digging around to see what exactly it supports anbd what it doesn't (aside from DiVX, which they never promised to support, anyway).

I like the ability to set the downloads now that when you turn off the 360 it will still actually continue to do the download until it is done and then turn off the 360. Pretty nice.

Anybody test out the new codec support? I wanna know whats up with the h264 support. I have some hd x264 files and wanna know if they work.

What format are your files (extension)?

I threw a few different file son a pendrive this morning (mpg,mpeg,avi,ts,mp4), and the only file it recognized was the mp4 which it also played after downloading another 'media update'.

So now that it will play mp4 will it play videos off an ipod?

Yep things do seem a bit zippier than before :) .

I would swear that my image looks better now (via Component , not tried VGA yet) , not sure why though since the black level settings are only supposed to apply to 480p and dvd playback . I know it's probably just an illusion but I was playing the exact same video before and after the update ;) .


----- Jason

the black level settings will only apply to the VGA, i believe. component won't really carry that kind of information.

guess I'll go update...

the black level settings will only apply to the VGA, i believe. component won't really carry that kind of information.

I think there's a new black level setting for component as well.

I think there's a new black level setting for component as well.


Yep there is and it says on the dash that it only supports 480p and DVD playback but others are reporting that it changes the 720p/1080i levels as well .

--- Jason

Can't wait to see what the new VGA looks like when I get home... Did the change where you can see what game is in the system before loading it make it in the update?

Can't wait to see what the new VGA looks like when I get home... Did the change where you can see what game is in the system before loading it make it in the update?

Yes.

So now that it will play mp4 will it play videos off an ipod?


Anyone know the answer to this one I haven't made it home yet.

Thanks

the update also mentions something about faster ability to free trials. Whats that mean and how do we set it?

Can't wait to see what the new VGA looks like when I get home... Did the change where you can see what game is in the system before loading it make it in the update?

I did not see a difference between the new vga settings on my Sony FW900 monitor.

I would guess it has to do with the fix so the 360 can put out a 0ire black not 7.5 ire like before

but the 360 still sucks and I mean sucks really bad at dvd playback I got the Eliete as well and it is not any better and yes I use HDMI
um, i've used 2 upconverting dvd player, one being the samsung 960, and a regular progressive scan dvd player and the 360 elite destroys them for dvd playback

There was a nice little touch on the update that allows you to see what games are joinable that ur friends are playing. It's a little arrow on your friends list -->

another little nice touch i didnt see mentioned anywhere yet.... is there is a progress bar now when you are playing video. you can hit your "skip forward" button to skip to the next mark. from what i can tell it divides the show into 10 equal parts to skip to a certain section.

maybe this will mean in the future they will be able to put in chapters in the movies and shows (would be very slick to enhance this further and do something of a bottom overlay with scene screengrabs like the silverlight does and you can select your position that way).

i tested spiderman 2, fifth element, underworld evolution before and after the dashboard update - previously my samsung dvdhd850 looked much better than the Elite, now after the update i say the Elite looks better than the samsung! no artifacting like before and blacks look better

I connect the Elite to a Sony LCD via HDMI, and the new reference settings in the display category do effect the picture. Expanded makes the picture more rich and saturated. I will need to play around some more, but my initial finding was that the extended setting gave me colrs that weren't achievable using standard (even with adjusting the color setting on my LCD).

Anyone have any thoughts on these settings when connecting via HDMI?

so what should it be set for using component for DVD's Standard Intermediate or Extended

what has the best black levels I got a CRT HDTV so it has great blacks so what would it be set to

so what should it be set for using component for DVD's Standard Intermediate or Extended

what has the best black levels I got a CRT HDTV so it has great blacks so what would it be set to

There are two different updates here. One for component and one for vga and hdmi. For component it's labeled Black Level and has the options of standard, intermediate and EXTENDED. For vga/hdmi it's labeled reference labels with options for standard, intermediate and EXPANDED.
For component users, before the update dvd playback and anything 480p was output with a black level setup of 7.5IRE. Anything output at 720/1080 (HD games,HD movies) used a black level setup of 0IRE. This meant that if your dvd player was calibrated properly, games and HD movies would have crushed blacks. If games and HD content looked good and had proper black levels, sd dvd would look washed out and have grey blacks. So the proper setting for component users would be extended. This will output 480p including dvd playback at 0IRE and give you consistent black levels for all your sources. The setting will not affect 720/1080 output. As to your question of what setting has the best blacks. All 3 could look identical once calibrated with a calibration disc. It's just now with extended enabled (0IRE for 480p sources) you get consistent black levels for all of your sources.
For vga it's labeled reference levels. The problem for many vga owners was that the 360 was outputting video levels while most vga ports expect pc levels. Video uses a digital scale of 16 to 235 where black is 16 and white is 235. Most vga ports expect pc levels(0-255) where black is 0 and white is 255. The expanded setting does just what it says. It takes the 16-235 video information and expands it to 0-255.
For hdmi it works the same as vga. Most tvs with hdmi inputs expect video levels so keeping it on standard would probably be best. But lets say you had a dvi monitor. Some dvi inputs expect video levels and some pc levels. If the dvi input expected pc levels you could use a dvi/hdmi adapter and set the reference level to expanded.

sorry to say this but the 360 just plain sucks as a DVD player it has been covered many times before it just sucks period

but that doesent mean people will stop using it for DVD playback but it should be made apparent to M$ that it sucks and how bad it is

maybe they will fix it include a Audio Delay feature PCM out upscale for NON-COPYRIGHTED DVD's there is no reason for this to be dissabaled

correct me if I am wrong but M$ had to stop this upscaling via component and spend time on it what for since I can rip HD-DVD via component in HD WTF

anyways I just bought a oppo 971 and it is way way better than the 360 at DVD playback