The Official Xbox 360 Dashboard/Update Thread - Page 25

Received the update last night. The first thing I did was fire up Youtube and played the new Spiderman trailer.

I'm still getting gray bars (not black bars) on the top and bottom. No real blacks equals soft looking picture...not good.

Also from what I'm reading, there currently has not been any fix for the 1080 video that's being played back at 720.

Are these all separate issues that require multiple contacts to resolve these issues?

Do I contact Youtube to ask them to fix the gray/black issue?

Do I contact Youtube to ask them to fix the 1080/720 issue?

Or do I contact Microsoft and ask them to fix it all?

I just got the Update.......

Black is.....Black again at least on the Xbox Video playback.

Better late than.......

Apparently each xbox live app. partner will have to color/black level fix indepedently....

http://majornelson.com/2012/02/16/xb...e-rolling-out/

"This update will increase performance and is part of our continued effort to provide the best possible Xbox LIVE experience. In this update, we are providing a fix to a color issue that some were experiencing, and it will be immediately notable in the dashboard. The fix is also being applied by partners to their apps on Xbox LIVE, which we expect to roll out over the coming months" - Maj. Nelson

It seems the good news about this is, I won't have to contact anyone to get this issue fixed. It's just a matter of waiting.


I'm starting to think this was all Microsoft's fault. Another words, the "development kits" given individually to all the "partners" had the wrong specifications listed. The "partners" all followed and designed their apps correctly with the incorrect specifications as specified.

As a result...when the new major update was released, the wrong black levels and colors were apparent all at the same time.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's "partners" now have to individually fix the specifications originally given to them...with probably another set of "corrected" specifications given to them again by Microsoft in the form of another "kit."



I can tell you with the way this most recent update took place on my Xbox 360 to fix the problem on the Microsoft platforms...it did not seem like an easy fix. As stated by Nelson, it probably will take some months for all the "partners" to fix and get working on something they obviously didn't plan on to do in the first place.

And the resolution problem better be part of the fix. Another words, 1080 should be 1080!

I find it so hard to believe they could develop all these video apps and not a single video professional noticed this and spoke out before it got released. Or have standards slipped so far that AVS is more knowledgeable than the people who make this stuff?

I find it hard to believe that you think these very same video professionals were expected to know that every brand, model and 100s of differen't proccessors in tvs were expected to work the same. How would they know that this would happen to "some" of the consumers displays/setups when it was released after they did a beta push out? You have CRTs, Projos, LED, LCDs and Plasmas of all types and we expect them to know exactly the issue for every single type of tv when this issue didn't affect everyone in the same way?

Why wasn't this caught in beta test? None of the testers noticed the black level problems or that 1080p video file playback resolution was downconverted? (I can believe that the downconversion was on purpose ).

They're quite simply just not adhering to standards. It affects everyone the same. When its set up properly, black isn't black, and 1080p isn't 1080p. It's got nothing to do with anything other than the 360 putting out an incorrect image. Only a bunch of amateurs would miss this.

But people are assuming this is all MS. We have different apps from different vendors with different specs all rolled into one dashboard. Youtube never had a great standard when it comes to picture quality and we are claiming the issue is with MS? We have millions of people using different video capture equipment with multiple settings and we expect the blacks to be black on every single video on Youtube on the dashboard? We don't get that from our Smart TVs or the computers we originally watch Youtube on. This is a problem that is on just about every device from BR players for streaming Netflix to Hulu Plus that someone complains about the quality of picture with their set up. This has been a problem since before AVSForum was ever created.

No one else is offering what MS is on a console level like we have for the options that are given with the apps. None of us can expect these apps to be just perfect when they are not perfect on other devices that offer the same features. I get updats about apps for my Samsung and read notes how they fix color issues to other maintenance. MS stated they are fixing the issues SOME users are having. This isn't affecting them anymore or less than any other product offering the same features dealing with the same issues.

Nonsense. This is cut and dry. Every other piece of video equipment I own, from blu ray players, consoles, htpcs, internal smart TV adhere to the standards fine. None of them exhibit this problem. Its a problem for "some people" because some people (including the bozos who they hired to make this) don't have their gear set up or don't know what to look for.

This is really basic stuff here, stop making excuses for them. If just one app had the prob, it'd be just that one dev. But it's all of them. So clearly the platform holder didn't have their **** together. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that a last minute compiler bug was introduced by MS long after the video app devs submitted their apps. So they probably just need to recompile and resubmit with the fix, because I have a very hard time believing video professionals wouldn't spot this while developing. Their submission process might be so arcane that it takes months to get these updates, and again, that's the platform holder ****ing up.

This is MS's fault through and through.

I agree, it's ridiculous to blame the TV and other equipment.. its beyond obvious that it's the new Dash update that caused it. Somewhere deep in the code the "OVERALL" video codex is borked which all the other apps use.

Speaking of which, this new method of "apps" for everything is driving me nuts. This video issue has exposed the problem with breaking each component down to "apps". I don't watch any more videos and do anything with my dash anymore because I don't like to wait for the 'app' to load before I do anything. What is this OBSESSION with apps all of a sudden?!? Having 20 little programs instead of one MAIN OS is pretty dumb if you ask me. I don't like where this METRO crap is going. I just want a game console MS. Sigh.

There haven't been any applications integrated into the Dashboard for a very long time. The basic music player, basic video player and picture viewer are it, I think, and those are all still integrated. Other than some of the marketplace browsers, pretty much everything else has been programs loaded on request.

What do you think started faster before Metro?

You've got a problem. You're obviously not part of the all new, greatest thing on Earth, social networking craze that's sweeping the nation. This means, of course, that you don't view YOURSELF as the all new, greatest thing on Earth, worthy of having everyone and anyone know exactly what you are doing or thinking every second of every day.

Now, with just 10-20 easy sweeps of the cursor, 2-3 minutes wait time, and a few clicks of buttons, you can communicate with your friends or perform your favorite tasks! In the olden days, you had to go through the "rigors" of sending a message, hitting "join party/game," or clicking on a single, confusing button to watch a video or perform a task. What a hassle. What a pain. What an antiquated way of doing things. Plus, someone, somewhere was not instantly aware that you've done something. The horror!

You need professional help. But don't worry, there's an app for that.



For me, everything.

It was.



They did.



You "can" or can't believe? In either case, I don't believe it was on purpose.

Also, I read Microsoft's thread for the beta testers for this particular problem was deleted. Bottom line, Microsoft knows and did something about it. Now were simply waiting on their "partners" to fix the issues on their end.


The only thing I'm unsure about now, is if 1080 is now really 1080. Maybe someone can do some independent tests.

As stated, I can believe it, since it didn't affect their Zune video player.

I just tested it and it hasn't been fixed.

All of the video apps were written to use Microsoft's Silverlight Smooth Streaming with their PlayReady DRM, which is why they all have to be updated. All of the apps were created using that initial SDK, so they all have to be patched to put in this new fix.

However, this update doesn't put things right. Video playback levels on the dashboard and video player are now correct. However, the picture viewer now clips black at digital 16 now as well, whereas it should be doing a conversion on picture files since they are 0-255 PC standard. This conversion WAS correctly done on every pre-Metro dashboard. To see the difference, load up Windows Media Center and it correctly displays images in 0-255 with full resolution. WMC also displays 1080p video in full resolution... but still with the incorrect 0-255 video levels. So basically, there is still no way to properly display 1080p video on the 360.

It's ridiculous that Microsoft, of all the companies, doesn't understand the simple math that goes on with this conversion.

And michaeltscott, I reported both the black/white level problem and 1080p downscaling on the first day of the preview program, and hundreds of people confirmed it. Microsoft deleted the threads or marked them as fixed, which is why Major Nelson got hammered with links to the Digital Foundry article that revealed these bugs to the world. That's the only reason you're even hearing about this being fixed... because it was one of the top ten reported bugs in the preview program and they ignored it, but none of us would let it go.

Speaking from experience... This is what happens when software developers get limited directions from domain experts on an algorithm, standard, or interface, and implement it as best they understand. Because they're not necessarily themselves domain experts, it's easy for them to write code that appears to fulfill the requirements, and passes all the testing, but is technically "wrong" when judged against an absolute standard. It may not be their fault at all, but somewhere along the line, there needed to be an independent evaluation of the behavior to confirm that it was "right".

I can't say this is definitely what happened in this case, but this problem seems to demonstrate all the classic signs of, "Nope, works as designed, not a bug!" until someone who has a deep domain understanding is able to look at it and explain the nuances of the issue.

I have to believe that there would have been a fuss about messed up video black levels whether it'd been reported during beta test or not.

Really? Because the vast majority don't calibrate their TVs and don't know any better... and if you saw all the comments on the sites that ultimately posted this issue as news after our NDA ran out, you would know that there were a TON of people who just couldn't tell a difference and were actually giving us crap for being picky. If it weren't for a group of us who were in the preview program actively pushing this issue, I seriously doubt it ever would have been fixed. Even when we posted pictures of test patterns and explained the issue to Microsoft's bug team, they marked them as "by design" and closed the bug reports.

Just saying... Of course, WE notice because we frequent enthusiast audio/video forums. But the vast majority tend to just accept what they're given and remain blissfully unaware that there are standards. Hell, the Xbox 360 STILL doesn't have a proper gamma curve, just a linear approximation. You'd think they would have fixed that by now too, huh?

There was a fuss about the same problem on the Roku 2; I don't know whether any of the people who fussed about that were in some kind of customer beta or not (such a beta would have included distribution of beta hardware). Out of the many millions of people using the thing a significant number would have noticed and complained.

I was a software engineer for over 30 years--surprisingly major problems are often discovered after you release it into the wild, where huge numbers of people use it in ways that you never thought of. Obviously this was detected in customer beta but often things slip but still get reported after.

At this point, I hope some will write articles about what still needs work. Such as the Picture Viewer and the 1080 resolution issue.

Of course, it would be nice if all this is passed onto Micorosft's "Partners." However I think we have to depend on Microsoft to do so.

It would be nice if Digital Foundry could do another follow-up article as they were the only ones who seemed to take these reports seriously (prior to MS fessing up) and have the actual technical background to do the appropriate testing. Who wants to volunteer to pester them again? Jeremy? LOL

I think I've bugged Richard enough for a while, man.

So after this latest (Feb) update, I'm seeing...

1) Windows Media Extender functionality has same black level as my PS3 (with is 16 to 235)
2) Zune video player functionality, used for watching purchased content, has messed up levels (0-255)

Ugh. Anyone seeing this?

... Altan

Yes. All of the video apps will exhibit this. As noted in Major Nelson's blog post, the apps need to be updated. Strange that MS didn't update Zune yet though...considering it IS their own in house app.

Another update just went out. I haven't seen any postings as to what it covers yet.

Voice recognition issues for non-English speakers.

I just wish they would include release notes with each update. It's not that hard.. sigh.

This update is taking forever......

What kind of connection speed do you have?