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Microsoft's newest version of the popular Xbox 360 gaming console, the Xbox 360 Elite comes with significantly bolstered specs, including HDMI capability and improved movie playback in high definition. The Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite was released at the end of April 2007 and the beginning of May 2007, in the form of a gorgeous sleek black version of the original Xbox 360, but with more than a couple of simple cosmetic alterations. The Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite comes with several updated specifications, including a 120 gigabyte hard drive and the capability for HDMI through an HDMI 1.2 connector which works splendidly with today's high definition television sets. These extra specifications mean that Xbox users will have more room for storing their digital content, as well as a much better way to view their content in high definition television.
For people who are already using the older Xbox 360, upgrading to this new Xbox 360 Elite may not necessarily make sense, but the HDMI high definition capability is enough to make the Elite much more enticing, especially if you do not have an Xbox 360 Core or Premium bundle yet. The new console originally went on sale for $480 on April 29, which makes it significantly cheaper than the Playstation 3 and even a little bit cheaper than the Xbox 360 Premium.
My first impressions of this new rehash of a fairly recent gaming console release are pretty positive, especially when it comes to the integration of the Xbox 350 HD DVD player which has been dramatically improved, as well as the improvements in the image quality which have been facilitated by the inclusion of HDMI support. The differences in picture quality are visible, although perhaps not as striking as one would expect.
HDMI or High Definition Multimedia Interface is the latest and greatest when it comes to digital audio and video connections. The HDMI cable is being bundled with many new devices, including DVD players and High Definition Televisions (HDTV), Set-Top Boxes for Cable or Satellite, Media Center Edition Computers, Sony's Playstation 3 gaming console and now the Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite. There are many advantages to using the HDMI cable for digital video and audio, including but not limited to the following:
- HDMI provides a path that is all-digital just like DVI and FireWire, which works for both standard and high-definition signals for video.
- HDMI provides high-bandwidth. High Definition Multimedia Interface can support data signals traveling as quickly as 5 gigabytes (GB) per second! What this means is that HDTV can be handled by HDMI with extra room to spare! High definition TV (HDTV) actually only uses about half of this bandwidth level, which means that there is no reason for the HDTV signals to be compressed because there is plenty of bandwidth to go around.
- HDMI supports many different HDTV variants, including 720p, 1080i and even 1080p. All of these variants run just fine using an HDMI cable. Most Xbox 360 games have been coded in 720p resolution, and most HD DVD movies are encoded in 1080p, and both of these high definition television variants work fine using the Xbox 360 Elite console's HDMI cable.
- HDMI can carry as many as eight digital audio channels and what that means is that a single HDMI cable can carry both your HDTV, and your 7.1 channel surround sound system. What this means is that a single HDMI cable can greatly reduce the tangle of cables that you keep behind your entertainment system.
Based on some informal tests that I performed, the high definition DVD image quality for the games and the movies that I tested using the HDMI connection were definitely at least slightly improved from the quality that was delivered by the original Xbox 360 Core and Premium bundles. When I tested the Xbox 360 Elite's HDMI cable it was over a 1080p resolution, while I could only use a 1080i resolution with component video on the standard Xbox 360 console. The images on the Elite console are much sharper than the images which were produced on the original Xbox 360 using 720p resolution for video games.
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Mary Murtha
Last update : 31-03-2008 02:31
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