Xbox HD-DVD comes at a heavy price?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Asher
"Better engineering"...if you knew what you were talking about, you'd see why MS' backwards compatibility through software emulation is far more of an engineering feat than Sony's lame excuse.

It's only an "engineering feat" because they deliberately did things the difficult/inelegant way (because of various circumstances surrounding the Xbox hardware, including AIUI the fact that they don't actually own the GPU and so it costs them a ****load).

[Asher]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
That seems like the sensible route to me.

It's not very sensible to me to add $40 in cost to your system for a feature most people will forget about.

Their long-term plan is to emulate a la MS, but their engineers are so skilled and the hardware so powerful they haven't figured it out yet.

It's only an "engineering feat" because they deliberately did things the difficult/inelegant way (because of various circumstances surrounding the Xbox hardware, including AIUI the fact that they don't actually own the GPU and so it costs them a ****load).

The problem is they don't own the design for either the CPU, the GPU, or the motherboard. If they used them, they'd cost a fortune.

But that's not the point -- the point is they're doing some pretty amazing things to get backwards compatibility working. If Sony put in a quarter of the same effort as MS did, they'd have 100% coverage seeing as they have the frickin' PS2 in the PS3.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Asher
The thing is, Microsoft basically has a technical marvel in how it pulled off its backwards compatibility. The 360 has to emulate the Xbox even though they are COMPLETELY different, down to the way the numbers are stored and the order of data.

Techical marvel = "they managed to pull it off DESPITE doing it the assbackwards way!"

[Asher]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Techical marvel = "they managed to pull it off DESPITE doing it the assbackwards way!"

Assbackwards? How do you figure?

It allows you to keep the unit smaller and cost far less. It also allows you to upscale old games into high-def and add antialiasing to them.

That's a step forwards, IMO. It's also far more innovative.

[Asher]

And does anyone else find it mildly amusing that for a box costing $600, the PS3 doesn't include any highdef cables (component or HDMI)?

Even the $299 Xbox 360 comes with component cables...

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Asher
It's not very sensible to me to add $40 in cost to your system for a feature most people will forget about.

It's perfectly sensible to add $40 in cost to your system to add functionality that earlier this year still sold for $130.

The problem is they don't own the design for either the CPU, the GPU, or the motherboard. If they used them, they'd cost a fortune.

Exactly. They made some dumb mistakes with the Xbox and so they have to go the hard way with the 360. Which isn't particularly impressive.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Asher
Assbackwards? How do you figure?

It's the hard, complex way versus the easy, simple way.

It allows you to keep the unit smaller and cost far less. It also allows you to upscale old games into high-def and add antialiasing to them.

You can do that either way, just intercept the output from the video card and upscale/antialias then. Both consoles have the horsepower to do that easily.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
It's perfectly sensible to add $40 in cost to your system to add functionality that earlier this year still sold for $130.

Do you really think that's sensible? That's crazy.

This is a company that's scheduled to lose what, $6B through May and you want to add more to that with stupid **** like this?

Hint: People aren't going to buy a $600 console to play PS2 games. It's a minor feature that isn't worth more than ~$5-10 in a console to deploy.

What's $40 times 6 million, Kuci?

Exactly. They made some dumb mistakes with the Xbox and so they have to go the hard way with the 360. Which isn't particularly impressive.

If you had any idea what you were talking about this would be a much more meaningful debate.

Given that the Xbox went from concept to launch in two years, there was no time to do anything but take off the shelf CPU + minor tweaked GPU. It was not feasible to do what they managed to do this time with custom silicon.

It wasn't a mistake they made, it was a cost of a short development cycle to take marketshare.

None of this diminishes the fact of the impressive work that was done into enabling backwards compatibility on the 360. I'm not sure why you insist on this.

[laurentius]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
Wow. Laurentius, I know you're just trolling, but jesus, you're making yourself look less intelligent than even the ilk on the WoW boards.

I'm just trying to have a conversation with Asher here. Maybe you should participate, instead of getting to know the WoW boards.

anyway are you the guy who wants to end the mankind?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
It's the hard, complex way versus the easy, simple way.

You're not going to make it in the business world...

"Easy, simple" here means "expensive" and "ugly". Ever played a PSX game on a 60" 1080p display?

"Hard, complex" here means "cheap" and "pretty".

One is technically ambitious and requires some serious brains to pull off, the other is what you do if you're Sony.

You can do that either way, just intercept the output from the video card and upscale/antialias then.

You've no fundamental concept how antialiasing works...

You're talking about taking the rendered framebuffer (consider it a BMP) and then "upscaling/antialiasing" it. Think about that.

[Asher]

Put simply, Kuci: the 360 renders Xbox games at 1280x720 (not 640x480), and then applies anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering.

There is absolutely no way to do this unless you replace the PS2's GS with new functionality. Which requires extensive emulation.

The game is still going to be talking to the "GS", the the "GS" isn't going to be doing any of the graphics work anymore. RSX would be doing it to upscale, antialias it, and apply anisotropic filtering. Thus the "emulation" part.

[laurentius]

You know Asher, that "news" about WEP is 1,5 years old. Nowadays PSP supports WPA.

Lets see how big flop Zune will be when peoples precious mp3s get erased by a virus written by some filipino teenager.

[Kuciwalker]

Hint: People aren't going to buy a $600 console to play PS2 games. It's a minor feature that isn't worth more than ~$5-10 in a console to deploy.

They're a lot more likely to buy said console if it plays a LOT of really good games, particularly if they didn't own a PS2. Hell, there are a lot of PS2 games I want to play, but I don't own one (or want to buy one at this point)...

If you had any idea what you were talking about this would be a much more meaningful debate.

Given that the Xbox went from concept to launch in two years, there was no time to do anything but take off the shelf CPU + minor tweaked GPU. It was not feasible to do what they managed to do this time with custom silicon.

Well, it certainly hurt them later when their costs didn't come down, as I understand it.

None of this diminishes the fact of the impressive work that was done into enabling backwards compatibility on the 360. I'm not sure why you insist on this.

I don't buy a console because of the talent of the programmers.

[Asher]

Originally posted by laurentius
You know Asher, that "news" about WEP is 1,5 years old. Nowadays PSP supports WPA.

Lets see how big flop Zune will be when peoples precious mp3s get erased by a virus written by some filipino teenager.

Lets see how big flop PSP will be when people's precious PSP are bricked by a virus written by some Finnish teenager LOL

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Asher
You've no fundamental concept how antialiasing works...

Antialiasing is a transformation applied to a rendered image, isn't it? Essentially blending between neighboring pixels? If that's not true then I concede that it can't be done with the output.

Upscaling, OTOH, is definitely a transformation applied to a rendered image, given that they do it to DVD's...