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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Microsoft looking into a new format for next generation xbox?

Untamoi on 29 May 2011
phinch1 said:
epicberserk said:

microsoft is on the blue ray assocation panel but they will not pay royalities for blue ray and their next xbox , i think their going to use Hddvd which will be cheap as hell


it only went cheap because it was a discontinued format, if it was bought back it would become expensive again, and not that I don't believe you can you link me to who is on the pannel for blu ray? i know sony pannasionic and a few others are on there


I don't believe Microsoft of the blu ray panel. But blu ray does have some Microsoft technologies. For example VC-1 codec is created by Microsoft and it is part of the blu ray standard. Also AACS is partly developed by MS. So even Microsoft gets some royalties from blu rays although they aren't part of blu ray association.

Blu ray doesn't cost too much for MS to be used. I doubt they have to pay more than any PC manufacturer for blu ray, perhaps even less. Blu ray association would be just happy if MS would use Blu ray. It would only benefit them because it would increase royalties. After all, business is just about money, nothing more.

Btw. I believe Sony is only minority in blu ray association. And even Sony regurally promotes MS software (practically all Sony PC's have Windows and some phones have had Windows Phone). So I doubt Sony have nothing against MS using blu ray.



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epicberserk on 29 May 2011
phinch1 said:
epicberserk said:

microsoft is on the blue ray assocation panel but they will not pay royalities for blue ray and their next xbox , i think their going to use Hddvd which will be cheap as hell


it only went cheap because it was a discontinued format, if it was bought back it would become expensive again, and not that I don't believe you can you link me to who is on the pannel for blu ray? i know sony pannasionic and a few others are on there


my mistake i guess microsoft has denied request to join them since 2008 with the last request was sept 2010  ,but here the list of blue ray assocaition and i stand by my hd dvd point

http://playstationlifestyle.net/2010/09/09/blu-ray-association-offers-olive-branch-to-xbox-microsoft-declines/

http://www.blu-raydisc.com/en/AboutBlu-ray/SupportingCompanies.aspx

 



richardhutnik on 29 May 2011
osamanobama said:
richardhutnik said:
osamanobama said:

2) since DVD9 is being used by the xbox 360 this gen, and the max resolution a DVD movie can have is Standard Def, how does the xbox produce HD visuals? also even though in game visual can be HD, isnt it impossible for cinamatics/cgi cutscenes to be in HD for it? or am i wrong again about this? and if i am wrong how do they make the cutscenes in HD when movies cant be?

The most efficient  way to do cutscenes today, which also assists with the immersion factor, is to do it with the in game engine.  La Noire has done this.  Rockstar coulde of decided, "Let's do the game with the engine, but film live actors and show Full-motion video for the cutscenes".  Would that of been a better way to do it the old way, where the cut scenes were pre-canned and read off the disk?

thats not what i was asking.

also no, in in game, in engine cut scense doesnt make it better. i personally really like the cutscenes in GOW3, UC2, 1, and KZ3 (though not all of them are "pre-canned"). i dont understand the stigma some people have against these type of cutscenes. they act as if they some how arent as good/make the game worse is they use cgi.

For IMMERSION factor, using an in game engine is better.   Take an early scene from Metal Gear Solid on the PS3.  You have one weapon in your hand playing, then the cutscene shows you holding a different weapon.  The idea is to use the in game engine, even if it is run in maybe higher detail, in a context where it makes sense.  Uncharted 2 I believe also uses the in game engine for the cut scenes.  It doesn't use a different engine for rendering the game.  The idea is to also keep the art style the same, when doing the cut scenes and intro, so people are used to the game world.  If you go to filming actors live action, it doesn't work.

As I was saying, when you render the cut scenes with the engine, it uses less resources.  That is how you can fit cut scenes on a smaller disk.  If you decide to film them and stick them on a disk, then you get bloat.  Also, compression gets used a lot to.



osamanobama on 29 May 2011
trasharmdsister12 said:

osamanobama said:

1. im not saying your wrong, not in the slightest, but im still confused.

2. if it is just a matter of Storage, why is the max resolution of Blu-ray 1080p.

3. doesnt it also have to do with speed, or bit rate or what ever (im not a very technical person so i dont know much about thi stuff)

1. No worries. I'll try my best to keep the discussion non-technical and try to explain the technical bits in an easy to understand manner.

2.  The 1080p resolution is just a standard. Pretty much the industry got together and decided that that was a sweet spot based on where TV technology (and prices) were heading, how much storage (and how costly) it was going to be, etc. It's just a standard resolution. If the industry wanted they could store (less) higher resolution content on a Blu Ray disc but they have the standard so that all the TV's, Blu Ray players, etc. are compatible with one set of rules. I'm trying to think of a standard in a non-tech realm... hmm... How about the beverage industry. There's a standard can size for soft drinks. Sure somsone could make a bizarre triangle based prism as their can but the standard around the industry utilizes the cylindrical base, which is why cup holders are cylindrical and vending machines are designed to dispense such a form factor.

3.  Yes, bit rate is also a concern of playback. Pretty much you can't put more cars on a highway than there is road on the highway... unless you mean to create disaster. I'll speak more on this below when I comment on the Wikipedia stuff but they've (the movie industry) pretty much created a standard top bit-rate for audio/video on DVD movies so that all DVD players can play all the content.

And now I'm pretty much going to repeat what I just said for the Wikipedia stuff

As for what Wikipedia had to say, it's simply listing best practices and standards of audio/video (content) quality on DVD's (medium) for the movie industry in order to maintain mass compatibility. These standards are huge in the movie industry so any dvd (or blu ray which has its own set of movie industry standards in terms of max bit-rate/resolution) player can play all the content that it is meant to play with no problems. These playback devices are highly specialized and designed to perform certain tasks very efficiently (and the standardization also makes them cheap to build as parts are made in bulk to perform these tasks). A game console doesn't have to follow these same restrictions and guidelines for audio/video in the context of a game. So the video/audio quality of cutscenes in games don't follow these guidelines as they aren't being played back by any random home DVD player.

thanks

so the reason many of its cut scenes arent HD (like FF XIII) is soley because they are saving disk space, etc.



Rainbird on 29 May 2011
osamanobama said:

thanks

so the reason many of its cut scenes arent HD (like FF XIII) is soley because they are saving disk space, etc.

Exactly. The limits you posted for the DVD are purely for standardization in the movie industry, and have little relevance for what can be done with DVDs on the 360. Any storage device can deliver HD material so long as it is big enough to hold said material.



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osamanobama on 29 May 2011
trasharmdsister12 said:

osamanobama said: 
thanks 

so the reason many of its cut scenes arent HD (like FF XIII) is soley because they are saving disk space, etc.

Anytime! Glad I could help.

As for cutscenes being HD, that depends on one's definition of HD. Some say anything higher than SD and some say nothing lower than 1920x1080. But the reason is true. Video and audio are compressed to save disk space. Whether that compression is noticable or not depends on the technique used and the care put into selecting proper techniques. Unfortunately in the case of the 360 version of FF XIII "Bink Video" was used... which was an incredibly poor choice given Bink's poor performance with high speed action and FF cutscenes focusing on said action.

As for game assets being compressed to save space, this can be done using lossy or lossless compression. In my final year of undergrad I took an Image Processing course which covered some techniques of image compression and it's remarkable how much you can reduce the size of an image with virtually 0 loss. I'm currently doing a bit of my own research on the side just for fun. It's really neat stuff!

 

thanks again.

and i consider anything 1280x720 (720p) and above to be HD.



M.U.G.E.N on 29 May 2011

Great thread..and some really good informative posts..hats off to you guys I learned some stuff about formats today :D



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phinch1 on 29 May 2011
Seece said:
phinch1 said:
Seece said:
phinch1 said:
scat398 said:

It won't be costly at all as MS will use blu-ray.  Blu-ray was clearly not needed this gen and MS will make the appropriate move next gen to meet the needs of storage and development.


I'm pretty sure they might have to buy into blu ray, its not just as simple as saying they are going to use it next gen which leads me back to my point, it will be costly for them next gen

MS believe DD is the way to go, they'll simply use a beefed up HDDVD, as long as it play DVD's it's fine.


I don't believe DD is the way to go, Sony found out the hard way it doesnt do so well, and that's with small psp games, imagine the size of files for next gen games, I'd believe the gen after we would be ready for it, but not many countries have strong internet conections, yes main countries do, but if they want strong WW sales they will have to wait for DD i believe

Doesn't matter what you and I think, it'll be Microsoft's call, and they have more of an idea on this than you and I.

If they wen't DD they woud severley limit there market to countries of wealth, no one would want to download a 30gb game, it would take hours on an average internet conection in the UK not to mention people with limited monthly download sizes, Sony already made a costly experiment with this and others should learn from it

it took me 55 mins to download FF7 of the PSN on a 10mb connection which is about 1.67gb.....30gb would just be madness, on some of the highest internet speed in the world with 50mb it would take nearly 3 hours.



osamanobama on 29 May 2011
trasharmdsister12 said:

osamanobama said:

1. im not saying your wrong, not in the slightest, but im still confused.

2. if it is just a matter of Storage, why is the max resolution of Blu-ray 1080p.

3. doesnt it also have to do with speed, or bit rate or what ever (im not a very technical person so i dont know much about thi stuff)

1. No worries. I'll try my best to keep the discussion non-technical and try to explain the technical bits in an easy to understand manner.

2.  The 1080p resolution is just a standard. Pretty much the industry got together and decided that that was a sweet spot based on where TV technology (and prices) were heading, how much storage (and how costly) it was going to be, etc. It's just a standard resolution. If the industry wanted they could store (less) higher resolution content on a Blu Ray disc but they have the standard so that all the TV's, Blu Ray players, etc. are compatible with one set of rules. I'm trying to think of a standard in a non-tech realm... hmm... How about the beverage industry. There's a standard can size for soft drinks. Sure somsone could make a bizarre triangle based prism as their can but the standard around the industry utilizes the cylindrical base, which is why cup holders are cylindrical and vending machines are designed to dispense such a form factor.

3.  Yes, bit rate is also a concern of playback. Pretty much you can't put more cars on a highway than there is road on the highway... unless you mean to create disaster. I'll speak more on this below when I comment on the Wikipedia stuff but they've (the movie industry) pretty much created a standard top bit-rate for audio/video on DVD movies so that all DVD players can play all the content.

And now I'm pretty much going to repeat what I just said for the Wikipedia stuff

As for what Wikipedia had to say, it's simply listing best practices and standards of audio/video (content) quality on DVD's (medium) for the movie industry in order to maintain mass compatibility. These standards are huge in the movie industry so any dvd (or blu ray which has its own set of movie industry standards in terms of max bit-rate/resolution) player can play all the content that it is meant to play with no problems. These playback devices are highly specialized and designed to perform certain tasks very efficiently (and the standardization also makes them cheap to build as parts are made in bulk to perform these tasks). A game console doesn't have to follow these same restrictions and guidelines for audio/video in the context of a game. So the video/audio quality of cutscenes in games don't follow these guidelines as they aren't being played back by any random home DVD player.

i just realized i still dont understand the benefit of faster bitrate and such. does bluray have a higher theroretical bitrate, what does that mean for its visual quality.

which brings me to my next point.

cnet.com had a recent article about different 3D tech, and they said that bluray is the only way right now to get full 1080p/24 3D (i know no ps3 game can do this). as it has a much higher bandwidth than broadcast TV, and i assume DVD. So it can do framepacking 3d (2 frames stacked on top of each other, each at 1080p/24). while broadcast Tv does either side by side or top and bottom 3D, which severly cuts down the resolution.

So i was wondering, with the recent rumors of xbox having an update to be able to finaly do true stereo-scopic 3D.  how will it be able to do framepacking 3D, like the PS3 can (though obviously its not 1080p) due not only to bluray, but also due to it higher bandwidth HDMI 1.3b port. xbox uses DVD and HDMI 1.2. so can DVD do framepacking, does HDMI 1.2 even allow for that.

if DVD can do it, why have there been framepacking, stereoscopic 3d for DvD(as far as i know).



Dodece on 30 May 2011

Sony has projected the lifespan of the BluRay to be ten years. The DVD did a little better, but media format development has increased in the last decade. With many companies vying to produce the next disc format, and frankly probably the last disc format. Once you get into terabytes of storage there just isn't going to be a demand for anything bigger. That is more then sufficient to store entire movie, game, and music libraries onto a single disc.

Right now we are coming into the territory of holographic media. Which should be fully backward compatible with all of the previous formats. Given that Microsoft has spurned BluRay it is probably likely that they are already involved in one or more joint ventures to implement one of these formats. Probably with General Electric which intends to release their new format in 2013. Microsoft probably intends to jump the current format generation entirely. Which would allow them to have a very obvious hardware advantage, and to seriously pressure the BluRay format.

Microsoft seems rather earnest in not supporting BluRay, and has actively searched for alternatives. Supporting a newer format seems to serve their interests. Not only that, but full backward compatibility would mean that they wouldn't have to make a actual choice. It is easier to support a legacy, because it isn't a validation. Supporting old or outdated formats is to be expected.

So yeah the NextBox will probably play BluRay movies, but it probably will not be using a BluRay drive, and there is just no reason to expect that such a drive would become obsolete for decades. Well until something supercedes television as the conveyance.



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