Xbox 360 review: best buy for game play online - Windows Media Center Extender Interface for HDTV

Xbox 360 combines game playing online, also acts as a Windows Media Center extender for HDTV

The Xbox 360 from Microsoft has arrived, in time for the Christmas season. It also comes at a time when many of us are installing high resolution HDTV large screen systems in our homes, so it is appropriate that we can also run games in the high definition environment. 

According to the official Xbox website, the built in DVD player will upscale regular DVD from 480p to 720p (progressive scan 16:9 aspect ratio at 1280 x 720 pixels), so it's a natural for home theater systems (direct quote from the website: "screen DVDs in 720p"). It's not a particular advantage for me, though, because we already have the very affordable Zenith DB318 that does a great job of upscaling regular DVD to 1080i.

Other audio visual capabilities include 'video camera ready' inputs if you create your own digital video content. The sound processing is also very potent and worth noting - the Xbox 360 features multi-channel surround sound that supports 256 channels of 48 KHz, 16-bit digital audio, and up to 320 independent compression channels. Here's the official website statement:

"In layman's terms, this equates to a substantial leap in ambient world sounds (birds chirping, leaves rustling in the wind, gunfire from afar on a battlefield), allowing for a much more immersive experience, as more audio can be compressed without the loss of quality. If you like to think in terms of numbers, munch on this statistic. The new technique (called XMA compression) allows for a compression ratio of 6:1 on the low side and up to 14:1 on the high side. Compare that to the Xbox 3.5:1 compression ratio and you get some idea of its significance."

The Xbox is optimized for instant access to Xbox Live

The specifications are impressive, including a 20GB hard drive, high-def game support and a 500MHz ATI graphics processor. The Xbox 360 processor core features three IBM PowerPC CPU chips running at 3.2GHz each, coupled with 1MB of L2 cache. Each CPU can execute two threads at the same time, and the Xbox 360 processor core is capable of executing six threads simultaneously. The Xbox 360 is definitely high performance computing by anybody's standards, and rivals that of stand-alone gaming PC's.

The Xbox 360 features wireless connectivity for up to four 2.4GHz wireless controllers that use a "frequency hopping spread spectrum" technique that keeps the controllers from interfering with other wireless devices or other controllers. It does not support Bluetooth connectivity like the Sonny Playstation 3. The Xbox 360 also includes a media remote that allows you to control the dashboard functions, DVD drive, and power functions from up to 30ft away. In addition, an optional wireless networking adapter can be used to connect your console to a wireless home network, and thus act as an extender for the Windows Media Center.

Here's a summary of the Xbox 360's system performance specifications provided by Microsoft: 

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU
• Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
• Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total
• 1 MB L2 cache 
• Polygon Performance: 500 million triangles per second
• Pixel Fill Rate: 16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA 

(For a full list of specifications, see our Xbox 360 specs page.)

I say that the Xbox has arrived in time for Christmas, but it's tough to buy one anywhere. Retailers like Amazon and Best Buy were warned that the supply will fall short of the demand from gamers determined to purchase one. Some players were so eager to guarantee delivery of an Xbox, they pre-ordered their console in the summer. Nevertheless, some people are holding off until the Sony Playstation 3 comes out next year - it's going to be an interesting competition.

Amazon.co.uk (and other retailers) announced they would not honor orders for multiple units: "During this time of limited supply from the manufacturer, we want to ensure that as many of our customers as possible receive a console. Therefore, regretfully, we can only supply one Xbox 360 console per customer account at this time." A spokesman for Amazon.co.uk said the restrictions only applied to the "enhanced" pack and that some people had placed orders of up to 20 consoles.

Our interest in the Xbox lies more with the entertainment capabilities as an extension of the Windows Media Player PC platform (essentially a superset of Windows Remote Desktop), and we'll be installing one of these systems to see how well it works. Since one of my primary goals is to set up a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) for time shifting TV programs like a TIVO does, we'll be getting the HTPC for this before we get an Xbox (we already have the Zenith DVB 318 DVD player that upscales to 1080i, so we don't care about DVD playback features). 

I'll probably use the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE dual tuner card, with Beyond TV time shifting software from Snapstream, depending on whether I get the Windows Media Center OS (which does time shifting), or stay with XP for a while longer until the new Microsoft Vista OS comes out (which has Windows Media Center built into the core). One key point about the Hauppauge tuner cards is that they have an IR output that can be used to change channels on our cable converter and satellite receiver - a must have. There is also a device available (IR Blaster) that can provide the functionality if you don't have a tuner with IR output. Decisions, decisions, decisions!

I'll be exploring the use of this PC as a gaming system as well, using specialized components like the new ATI Radeon^®/ X1800 Series super high performance video card. An important point: the Avivo™ video display section of this card can output 1080i component video for our BENQ PB6200 DLP projector. 

The Xbox Media center extender turns your Xbox into a Media Center PC, giving you control over the same features and applications that you have on your Media Center PC. Imagine the possibilities: Mom is in the kitchen trading stocks online, Dad is in the den playing Halo online with his buddies, and Junior is in the living room watching an HDTV documentary.

Exploring the online gaming capability should also be an interesting part of the experience, especially the Xbox Live^® online capability where you can compete with friends over the internet. There are some truly fantastic games available for this system, like Peter Jackson's King Kong, not to mention the Lord of The Rings game.

There are other alternatives we'll be considering ... Xbmc (a free program) on a regular Xbox will play a wide variety of different movie formats that can be streamed from networked computers running many different operating systems (including Win XP). XBMC can also upscale regular 480p DVD movies.

The Xbox 360, on the other hand, will play only a few limited formats (and not the popular ones like divx), which can only be streamed from a PC if it is running the Media Center version of Windows, which cannot be purchased unless you buy a new computer with MC installed.

Nevertheless, the DVD player in the Xbox 360 can screen DVDs in 720p (according to the official Xbox website), so it could be a good choice for those that need to purchase a DVD player anyway, as you could subtract a few hundred bucks off the price of the Xbox as a sort of discount. That would be the typical cost of just a DVD player that upscales regular DVD, like our Zenith DVB 318, but the Xbox doesn't upscale to 1080i like the upscaling Zenith DVD player does, and there is some question regarding the ability of Xbox to upscale regular DVD at all. 

Stay tuned!