Xbox Extras: Look, Mom, No Controller!
Microsoft’s push to make the Xbox 360 a core home-entertainment accessory — one that’s far cooler than a cable set-top — continues.
The company teased several new tricks for the Xbox 360 at the E3 gaming conference Monday, including 1080p HD streaming video to launch this fall; Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm on the TV; and a “controller-free” way to control a videogame.
With Project Natal (pronounced “nuh-tall”) Microsoft is trying to do Nintendo’s Wii motion-sensitive controller one better: The system uses a camera to sense your full-body movements and facial- and voice-recognition software to let you kick a ball, steer a race car, or literally call in a football play. (Watch a video demo on the Xbox site or on YouTube.)
Microsoft expects the Project Natal system (named after a city on the northeastern coast of Brazil) to be available next year but didn’t indicate how much it would cost.
But if it actually works, it might be the next great leap forward in TV interfaces — perhaps hunting for the remote control, or replacing batteries, would go the way of the rotary phone. (See our May 25 cover story, Remote Revolution.)
Meanwhile, Microsoft announced that Xbox would deliver “instant on” 1080p HD movies and TV shows with 5.1 surround sound over the Internet to consoles connected to compatible HDTVs. The company didn’t name specific titles but promised a “broad selection” starting this fall.
Microsoft also announced Xbox Live Party for movies, which allows people across the country to watch the same movie at the same time. The feature will be available through the Netflix-on-Xbox feature, to let users watch and share supported movies with up to seven friends. You can “recommend your favorites to friends and see your virtual you as an avatar on the silver screen.”
And in partnership with BSkyB, Xbox 360 users can now watch live or on-demand TV, including Sky Sports, available to subscribers across the U.K. and Ireland.
Oh, yeah: Microsoft also debuted 10 new games, including “Halo 3: ODST” and “The Beatles: Rock Band.”
Mr Codec commented:
BEFORE MS do anything, they will need to upgrade the existing Video and audio Codecs to allow far better AVC/H.264 and AAC+ playback at better than its current 10Mbit/s playback at H@L4.1 with a mere 3 reference frames, and only able to play sterio AAC,inside a generic .MP4 container, thats a joke these days.
ever tryed using the generic and free x264 encoder or the Mkv tools to re-encode your AVC DVDs/BR collections for high quality streaming, the current 360 codecs just cant cope with todays standard
Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 8 frames
Muxing mode : Container profile=Unknown@4.1
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 1mn 1s
Bit rate : 4 691 Kbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 528 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 2.424
put simply, MS NEED to put this masive error in judgement right ASAP as the ps3 can play these average personal AVC re-encodes for HD streaming...
just ask MS "benwaggoner2 and the other Doom9.org pro users and developers what people really want in their AVC/H.264/x264 video and audio codecs capabilitys.
basicly if the MS 360 internal firmware codecs cant do H@L4.1 AAC 6 5.1 at better than 20Mbit/s then its not good enough and you need to rewrite then for better use of the 3 PPC/Altivec SIMD+ cores TODAY, please pass this information on directly to the 360 codec devs and read the many AVC/H.264/x264 ttp://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?f=77 threads
