GEOFFREY MORRISON BLOG

The people at Microsoft are complete idiots. No, that’s not exactly true. They’re charlatans. They are purposely misleading the public. They recently announced a software upgrade will be available soon that will allow the Xbox 360 to output 1080p.

That’s all well and good, but if you remember, the 360 only has component outputs.

Essentially no current TV will accept 1080p/60 over component inputs. So this little upgrade is essentially useless.

It’s pretty obvious Microsoft is trying to steal some of Sony’s thunder by saying their box can do 1080p too. The problem is that there are going to be a lot of confused and disappointed consumers when they find out their TV can’t accept this “higher” resolution.

Also, games have to be written to be 1080p. All current and most likely nearly all future games are going to be 720p. This rendered 720p is upconverted internally to output 1080i or 1080p. This isn’t true 1080p any more than an upconverted DVD is HD. I have a sneaking suspicion that the PS3 might do the same thing. So I call bull on this from Microsoft. The handful of people that can actually accept 1080p over component aren’t going to see any difference compared to their TV upconverting the signal anyway, unless there are more 1080p games. My guess is that it will be like the 1080i output from the PS2. There were, what, two games that took advantage of that?

Maybe if Microsoft finally gave everyone the HDMI output people have been after for a year this wouldn’t be as much of an issue. But no. Their obstinateness and obtuseness is astounding.