This is good news indeed. Thanks for posting it. Slowly some things are converging. Maybe one day we'll be able to choose our technology according to its real strengths and weaknesses without having to prioritize worrying about which bloody files it'll play.
On 16 Apr 2007, at 01:58, Steve Watkins wrote: This news has been around a while now but I only just noticed. The Xbox site buried the announcement in a document that mostly focussed on Instant Messaging, but anyway the next update to XBox360 in early May will include: "# Added H.264 video support: Up to 10 Mbps peak, Baseline, Main, and High profiles with 2 channel AAC LC. # Added MPEG-4 Part 2 video support: Up to 5 Mbps peak, Simple Profile with 2 channel AAC LC." Hoorah, all my recent waffle with Rupert about this stuff & Windows Media Center is out of date, and it looks like I was wrong about how much microsoft would resist mp4 & h264. They are probably also showing off because the XBox360 has plenty of power so it can handle high-spec stuff. But it uses quite a lot of electrical power so Im not too keen to promote it a the best solution, and its a tad loud. Very good picture quality in HD modes when playing HD-DVD's so I expect the mpeg4 & h264 support to be equally good, I would guess its probably the same decoder thats already used if you have the HD-DVD addon for the 360, as both HD DVD and Blueray use h264. Anyway I dunno if the update will be available for UK Xboxers at the same time as the US, but when I get it I will report as to whether ipod & apple tv formatted vlogs play back on it ok, Id certainly hope/expect so. Cheers Steve Elbows [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
