Industry Insiders Q&A Thread: only Questions to insiders please - Page 87  

You guys are not alone. Imagine we could use the upcoming xBox 360 HD-DVD addon drive as external USB drive for our PCs - and all that for 199 bucks. That would be huge. My fingers are crossed!

But I was asking Amir so many times about this already without getting any response yet that I doubt we will know before somebody actually tries it and connects the xBox addon to a PC.

Well, after the US announcement, I'm sure he can more about the Xbox addon. I'm already trying to pick my first movie to watch. When I got my SD6200 Toshiba back in 1999 or 2000, the Matrix DTS was first. Bourne maybe?

insider questions:

1. when OCUR cards becomes available with Vista and we can record cable QAM with whatever security model Vista and the cable industry settle on, will these be playable on 8634-based network media players? (i.e. is the 8634 being designed to work with the Vista/OCUR security model?)

2. while the 8634 is showing up in recent high rez DVD players, how close are 8634 based networked media players to commercial availability? are any available now?

3. are there other chips out there (or that have been announced) that will power next-gen networked media players and inter-work with Vista/OCUR?

thanks

Amir, can you verify whether this statement from Shane Kim, corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios, should be interpreted to mean that MS CAN provide an HDMI solution on the current 360 (software and "hardware") when and if they choose to?

Amir, could you confirm/deny whether HDMI output is possible on current Xbox 360 consoles in light of what Shane Kim recently said? I have read the HDMI specs and it seems rather clear that proprietary connections are not allowed. This is seen at the beginning of section 4.1 which says: "A device’s external HDMI connection shall be presented via one of the three specified HDMI connectors, Type A, Type B or Type C. This connector can be attached directly to the device or can be attached via a cable adapter that is shipped with the device."

doesn't this bolded portion allow it to be just about anything...proprietary on one side and hdmi connecto on the other...

but i wouldn't expect that to be the issue but instead whether the box/drive could satisfy all of the other requirements for hd over hdmi...?

Amir (or anyone else who knows),

With the XBOX360 supporting 1080p (and for other reasons), is there any news about when we might be able to get larger hard drives than 20GB for the XBOX360?

--Darin

Many people are having problems with digital displays and native resolutions.
I hope MS adds the red resolution in table below to the VGA support of the XBOX360.
Would fix huge numbers of customer problems.

http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/3765/vgamx7.jpg

Review of the XBOX360 motherboard traces from the AV chip to the AV connector has shown that a digital connection is not possible on the current version of the XBOX360.

That is only for devices that ship with an adaptor. Remember that when it says "shipped with the device" it means the device that has the non-standard HDMI output. As such if the device in question is a game console than it either has to have a HDMI output, or ship with an adaptor cable for HDMI.

now that superman Returns has been announced for both formats can CJ comment on bitrate used

This will be Warners first BD-50 and they are using vc1 for the movie. Will the Special Features be in HD? Also will the Bitrates be higher on the Blu-ray?(because of BD-50). Also why isn't there a better audio track for the Blu-ray since you guys have the space for it.

Blu-ray Disc - SRP $34.99 - disc config: BD-50, VC-1/1080p video (2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen), Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (English, French, Latin Spanish), special features (ALL Two-Disc DVD features will be included, but likely not in high-definition), subtitles: English SDH, English, French and Spanish, Closed Captioned

I'd second that question.

I'd also like to ask if this means the HD-DVD disc content exceeds 25GB and whether this is the reason that Warner have chosen a BD50. If the HD-DVD does exceed 25GB, does this make it one of the first discs where the 'extras' if they are either HD or huge amounts of SD stuff, are compromising the main feature by restricting it to a rather less than HD soundtrack. Surely a 'blockbuster' like this ought to be sporting a lossless main soundtrack. And on a BD50, presumably that could even be a 24bit one at that.???

well the hd dvd add-on hasn't yet shipped...are you trying to interpret that language to mean that they cannot provide an adapter with the hd dvd drive but instead had to have shipped the adapter last year with the xbox360?

amir, could you comment on this as neither i nor rich qualifies as an insider...thanks.

btw, my understanding is that the issue with not doing hdmi lies not in the absence of a physical hdmi port on the xbox but with the electrical design...is this correct amir or can you not answer this question?

here is something i just thought of, could the xbox simply provide an hdcp compliant dvi port?

it could also carry audio, couldn't it? the new zektor switch carries the full hdmi signal on a dvi connector...then you just need a dvi-hdmi adapter plug...

I can't comment on title-specific BR's. The HD disc for Superman Returns will be a 30/9 combo as that's pretty much public now. I think it'll have a surprise or 2 for you, though, besides that.

BTW, with all of Bracke's reviews showing Warner discs to now be equivalent to their HD counterparts (Swordfish, House of Wax, Firewall, etc.), what makes you think they'll update the audio for BD's release to 24-bit? I'm not saying yes or no, but have they done something for BD that didn't happen for HD that I'm not aware of? I'd love to see that, but they've exhibited no behavior to show favoritism towards one or the other past the MPEG-2 releases of yore (okay, only a month ago, not really "yore") that I'm aware of. You'll probably have 20GB of empty space on the BD50 for this title as well as any other BD50's.

Cjplay.

Take a first generation D5 tape and copy it on another. Then copy that one etc. After how many generations has the picture broken down and compression noise is very obvious? Assume an average 35mm feature film is on the tape.
What happens if you use HDCAM SR instead at 440 Mbit/s? 880 Mbit/s?

but why then would they use the more expensive bd50 if they are going to just leave 20gb on the table?

as for the surprises on hd dvd, are we talking *interactivity* surprises?

I'll second that question.

Does it have anything to do with BDA wanting to help the studios "land" a BD DL 50, no matter what for?

I would think becasue of the extra space they would add extra audio Tracks.

Like why would they give Dolby Digital plus to HD-dvd and Not to Blu-ray.

if they are going up to 30GB with movie and soundtracks... on HD-DVD, to use same encoded VC-1 movie they need to go with BD-50

and I am sure movie will be over 25GB alone....

Marek

Amir, pleeeeeeeease... ;)

I doubt the movie will be over 25GBs alone. Troy is a 160+ minute movie and HD DVD released that with TrueHD and IME on a 30GB DL. Superman returns is only 154 mins long. Obviously I'm not an insider so I'd like an insider to answer if what I wrote is correct or not.

Thanks

CJplay

Can you please confirm if the Warner HD-DVD release of Charlie And The Chocolate track will have a DD+ EX track. The SD DVD had a DD EX track, and it was properly advertised on the cover. But the specs and backcover shot for the HD-DVD only list legacy 5.1.

Is that a misprint? Can it still be fixed if so. I mean it just sucks to have wrong information on the cover, so dow the road when I (and lots of people I'm sure) just won't enable the EX decoding simply because we'll have forgotten that it's a proper EX mix

Can not speak for D5, for HDCam the proper way to make a clone/dub using a studio deck is to use a special dubbing board. It takes the error corrected data from one machine and feeds it to the second machine (this may be included in recent machines). As long as there is no errors in the data then the number of generations should be many.

Every time you retrieve and save a computer file you are performing a similar process. Error correction is the key element to most digital storage processes. Take some of your CD,s and back light them. You have a good chance of seeing a pin hole(s). That will mean a chunk of data being lost but with error correction processes the data will be fully recovered in most cases.

Logically I think that is the only interpretation that makes sense though I would like to hear Amir's comments on this.


Unlikely but possible, and this is also something that I am curious about.


No, DVI was never made to carry audio and that is one of the main reasons HDMI was made.

what is Zektor doing with their HDVI5 switch:

http://www.zektor.com/hdvi5/index.html

i suspect this requires hdmi chipsets?

Yep

Gary

Thanks. That means HDCAM SR can do digital clones. D5 can not as far as I know. There is a decompression and recompression step for every copy. Or is that not correct? Can digital clones of D5 tapes been made?

No to both. Our mode is PCs streaming to 360, not the other way around.

We currently do not have plans to support the 360 HD DVD drive being hooked up to media center PCs.

I appreciate the interest :). But at this time, the drive is to provide HD DVD functionality for the 360. For PC playback, I recommend buying one of the new PCs annoucned with such support until stand-alone drives are supplied at retail.

That is what it means. Although if you are willing to spend some money, you can buy a VGA to component transcoder.

Note that I am not aware of hardly any TVs that accept 1080p on component, whereas many computer monitors do so on VGA.