Eurogamer has pieced together a rather interesting article about a rather significant issue that arose as a result of the latest Xbox 360 dashboard update, dubbed "Metro." Apparently, the Metro update turned 1080p native videos into upscaled 720p messes.
The article continues on to note that the lack of 1080p is not just limited to video playback through the device. They found that services that typically offer up 1080p video are only allowed to offer 720p video at 60fps through Metro. Services such as Vudu typically offer playback at 1080p (24fps) through their HDX service are limited to 720p through the Xbox 360. Another issue includes washed out color when compared to other media players.
It's unclear as to what the cause of the problem is, but it's speculated that third-parties were given a crippled SDK to work with that limits video to 720p only. Microsoft has reportedly acknowledged this giving a feeble note that the customers' complaints will be under "consideration for future releases."
These issues were first reported on by Digital Foundry.
Unfortunately, reports that the dashboard video player's 1080p mode has been nerfed appear to be on the money. Video calibration tools put together by the AVSForum demonstrate conclusively that, while the Xbox 360 has no problem whatsoever decoding 1080p video, it is no longer being rendered in native resolution. To illustrate the issues, here we see the same full HD video being run on an older NXE dash at 1080p, and the new Metro offering at both 720p and 1080p. As you can see when clicking on the thumbnails, just about all the detail is being resolved on the older front end, but the Metro dash's 720p and 1080p images are effectively identical in terms of core resolution.
The inclusion of PlayStation 3 provides an interesting reference. We set the XMB to full-range RGB and that's exactly what was delivered at both 720p and 1080p, but the same can't be said for the Xbox 360. A couple of points of interest arise here. Firstly, histogram analysis of the Metro renderings show that while 720p shows the basic 16-235 limited-range RGB playback, capture in 1080p shows that the colour range is different again - this time information does seem to be in the 0-16 range.
The inclusion of PlayStation 3 provides an interesting reference. We set the XMB to full-range RGB and that's exactly what was delivered at both 720p and 1080p, but the same can't be said for the Xbox 360. A couple of points of interest arise here. Firstly, histogram analysis of the Metro renderings show that while 720p shows the basic 16-235 limited-range RGB playback, capture in 1080p shows that the colour range is different again - this time information does seem to be in the 0-16 range.
The article continues on to note that the lack of 1080p is not just limited to video playback through the device. They found that services that typically offer up 1080p video are only allowed to offer 720p video at 60fps through Metro. Services such as Vudu typically offer playback at 1080p (24fps) through their HDX service are limited to 720p through the Xbox 360. Another issue includes washed out color when compared to other media players.
It's unclear as to what the cause of the problem is, but it's speculated that third-parties were given a crippled SDK to work with that limits video to 720p only. Microsoft has reportedly acknowledged this giving a feeble note that the customers' complaints will be under "consideration for future releases."
These issues were first reported on by Digital Foundry.