Can an XBox (original XBox, not 360) ouput 720P video ?

Yes it can , look in the XBMC options (it can do 720p and 1080i) .

- Jason

Yes and no.....

XBMC can do 720p, but the xbox is not powerful enough to do native 720p video. It can upscale 480p video to 720p great, though.

QFT. Anything over 480p native will cause massive stuttering, if it even plays at all.

Xbox can play 720p res vids

How about some proof? I've tired more than I can remember and not a single one has played....

Unfortunately, no. I never quite understood this either. I know the original Xbox had some games that could output a 720p signal, so I assumed you could stream 720p videos to it, but alas, that's not the case. If only it could do WMV-HD.

720p Xvids which are encoded from 720p h264 vids play fine on the Xbox if you use DVDPlayer and Low Quality Pixel Shader setting in XBMC. There can be some frames dropped in scenes containing rain or snow but overall its fine.

You can also playback low bit-rate 720p MPEG2 on XBMC for Xbox. Really though, transcoding for the Xbox is a pain, and most of the time you would be better off with good quality 480p/540p instead of mediocre 720p.

The most perfectly suited videos that I have ever seen for XBMC for Xbox were in vogue for about a year, right before MKVs became popular. They were TV show rips encoded at 960x540 XVID with AC3 audio at 700MB per 43 minute episode. Upscaled to 720p by the Xbox, they looked excellent.

there used to be a company that added ram and swapped out the 733mhz with a 1.4ghz.... but i'm not even sure if that would help.

Didnt soul calibur output at 720p on the original xbox.

"Didnt soul calibur output at 720p on the original xbox."

Yes, there are a handful of original Xbox games that output at 720p/1080i. This fact has nothing to do with the topic at hand though. Please actually read the thread before replying.

"What's your take on MKV's files "

You'll get about 1 frame every 2 seconds... on a good day.

Was that necessary? So smug.

That was more than a few days ago You'd be hard pressed to find a better streaming unit at the $199 price point than the 360 Arcade.

The 360 does work well for streaming, but even when streaming, the 360 can be somewhat noisy. I would imagine that there must be some kind of cheapo set-top box that is specifically designed just to be something one can stream various video formats to. You'd think there would be some box for like $99.99 or something, that wouldn't consume as much power as a PS3 or Xbox 360 does. I kinda feel bad for running my PS3 or 360 while streaming videos. It seems like I'm wasting a ton of horsepower and wattage just to stream a movie to the living room.

Can't you just cut out the middle-man and stream straight from the pc??

Not one device but two! A 360 Arcade for streaming and the best gaming experience around, and a stand alone BR player for your movies.

"Not one device but two! A 360 Arcade for streaming and the best gaming experience around, and a stand alone BR player for your movies."

Terrible advice. Why would anyone want two devices to do the job of one?

Regardless, both the 360 and PS3 are horrible crap compared to an Xbox running XBMC when it comes to streaming. The only advantage that they do have is the ability to decode HD video, but only if you are willing to conform your video to their very strict codec choices. In exchange, you give up a good interface, flexibility, and a very wide range of format support.

If you are going to have to transcode your 720p MKVs anyway to conform to the PS3/360's codec choices, then you may as well just transcode to the 540p xvid/AC3 format that I mentioned earlier. At least with that you get to keep the good interface of XBMC, with no quality loss. Really, there isn't more than 540p's worth of visual information in the common MKVs that you find in the wild.

Because the 360 is the better gaming machine, and stand alone players use a normal remote! Just because its not what YOU would do, doesn't mean its terrible advice.

Have you looked into Popcorn Hour? I've heard good things about it.

I had a popcorn hour, but sold it. I found that it didn't really compare to xbmc and the features set, even though it did play 720/1080p material.. I'm currently looking for something to replace the xbox xbmc but will do HD material.

It's looking more and more like a HTPC with some sort of remote.. I can see some advantages to this as well, seeing that I could put it on standby all the time, as well as quickly change any settings I need to or upgrade any scripts... hmmm.. but now to find something cheap enough.

lencurrie - In the Digital Media Server section of this forum is an XBMC thread going. We have been experimenting with other devices to run XBMC on, such as the AppleTV, Mac Mini, and cheap dual-core PCs. You might want to join us over in that thread.

Personally, I just dropped $200 to build a cheap Athlon X2 system, which I am in the process of getting XBMC Live running on (basically XBMC+embedded Linux).

My PC is located on the other side of the house, compared to where the living room is. I could run a super long VGA cable or something, but I just didn't think that would be practical.