Xbox 360-If only Vegas could run on this...

Sonisfear wrote on 5/11/2005, 3:44 PM
The leaked specs (if true) confirm lots of the rumors we saw over the last few months.
The specs say the Xbox360 will have support for 4 wireless controllers and the console will have 3 USB2.0 ports. The DVD drive will be a 'simple' DVD9-drive, with support for these formats: DVD-video, DVD-Rom, DVD-R/RW, CD-DA, CD-Rom, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 cd, JPEG photo CD. The detachable 20GB HDD will be included by default from the information we received (atleast in the 'full' package). We also got some sources telling us the Xbox360 will come with Wi-Fi 802.11 A, B and G support.
The Xbox 360 face plates will be customizable to change the appearance.
All games will have full support for the 16:9 format , 720p and 1080i HDTV (Max resolution: 1920x1080) and anti-aliasing.

Xbox360's IBM CPU will have 3 symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each with 1 MB L2 cache. Each core has 2 hardware threads and one VMX-128 vector unit. Enough to boost an impressive 9 billion dots per second.
The ATI GPU will run at 500MHz with 10 MB embedded DRAM (256 GB/s memory bandwidth) and contain 48 parallel floating-point shader pipelines.
System memory will probably be 512MB of GDDR3 RAM (at 700 Mhz) with 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth and 21.6GB/s frontside bus bandwidth.
The Xbox360 will also have a mulitchannel surround output.

Comments

p@mast3rs wrote on 5/11/2005, 4:17 PM
I have seen mixed reports saying it will support WM9 HD/VC1. I would still prefer H.264 AVC but it would be nice to watch WM9 material on a TV.
Spot|DSE wrote on 5/11/2005, 4:19 PM
Wouldn't it be more fun if we could network them together and use their CPU's for rendering? :-)
p@mast3rs wrote on 5/11/2005, 4:31 PM
I just dont see how they can do this and keep the costs fairly low.

Netowrk rendering would be kick butt though.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 5/11/2005, 6:32 PM
they don't. Console companies (nintendo, microsoft, sony) loose money on the console & make the money on games. Each game has a liscence paid to the console maker. That's how they make $$$.

Console specs are basicly meaningless anyway. They are just used to make fanboys start wars with other fanboys.

It's interesting to note that when the X-Box came out, everybody said that the Intel CPU & Nvidia GPU were far superior to the Gamecube (released around the same time), but the gamecube used an IBM CPU & ATI GPU, just like the next X-box. Not so ironicly, those same people are now saying the IBM & ATI parts are now superior.

I just play games to have fun anyway. It could be a rat on a wheel powering it for all I care. :)
p@mast3rs wrote on 5/11/2005, 6:40 PM
So why not buy an Xbox and rip out the cpus and use them in another motherboard? Or can you not do that? Seems it would be an easy way to piece together a new system.
Xander wrote on 5/11/2005, 6:47 PM
It should all be confirmed if you watch MTV tomorrow:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4435725.stm
DJPadre wrote on 5/12/2005, 6:25 AM
hmmmmmm.......

well ATi has always been better for video display, however nvidia has always been a lil in front when it comes to manipulating that display...

as for the cpu and ram.. it waits to be seen..

as for having these specs available on a desktop, theys be stupid not to..., but knowing Microshaft... theyll prolly f*^# it up anyway..
JohnnyRoy wrote on 5/12/2005, 8:16 AM
> So why not buy an Xbox and rip out the cpus and use them in another motherboard? Or can you not do that?

Because there are no motherboards that support these IBM CPU’s. I assume they are IBM PowerPC architecture and not the IBM Cell processor that Sony is using for the Playstation 3 (which can support 9 cores!)

I agree, it would be way cool if we could use these bad boys for rendering. I know the Playstation 2 will run Linux. If you could get a Linux distribution for the Playstation 3 or Xbox360 and port the Vegas network rendering engine to Linux, we might actually have something.

~jr
p@mast3rs wrote on 5/12/2005, 8:47 AM
"I agree, it would be way cool if we could use these bad boys for rendering. I know the Playstation 2 will run Linux. If you could get a Linux distribution for the Playstation 3 or Xbox360 and port the Vegas network rendering engine to Linux, we might actually have something."

Then Sony could actually port Vegas to Linux and I could be done with Windows altogether. Life would be perfect.
Sonisfear wrote on 5/12/2005, 3:02 PM
If you have't sceen WMV -HD dowload some HD samples from www.wmvhd.com

wow...

XBOX will be the first official HD media solution. While Sony, Blu ray and HD dvd were sitting around bickering microsoft came from behind and isgoing to steel the entire entertainment media market.

WMV means that we don't hafto get rid of our investment in DVD burners and buy expesive HD/blu ray drives and media. We can all put out HD porducts with Vegas and distribute them now on regular Dual layer DVD. and customers can watch it for free on their computers now or on the Xbox 360.

Its only a matter of months before DVD manufactures. take the same dvd hardware up the video output (most already have 720p or more capable video chips in them) and put the microsoft WMV decoder in it and voi la instant WMV HD players for $399.00.

its a simple software upgrade for these manufactures. Maybe at best a cpu/video chip upgrade.

So buy those HD cams

HD is here. the proof is on www.WMVHD.com and yes WMV HD is already support in Vegas 6.0

Hurrahhh
apit34356 wrote on 5/12/2005, 5:03 PM
I don't want to rain on your parade,Sonisfear, but MS is not going to win the Hd war that easily. Everyone, including Sony, has know about MS plans, no secret there. What stops MS from winning is that the movie houses haven't signed on for MS offer. The industry has no plans to turn their market over to MS, since MS has never dismonstrated a secured or fault-free operation in any product line. Can you image a DVD player that takes 5 minutes to warm up and another 5 minutes to load the movie...... then after 20 minutes in the movie, start dropping frames..... just remember MS software is not noted for "clean and fast" operations, especiality with limited memory.
farss wrote on 5/12/2005, 5:23 PM
I've heard that there's quite a few cinemas playing out from WMV and many TV network servers use WMV compression.
The ONLY thing holding back the studios is DRM, they're in the business of selling content, I doubt they give a rats about the technical stuff. If someone offers them the right deal to release a movie on wet string they'll sign off on it, so long as no one can copy what's on the wet string that is.

If you doubt this, remember most international flights give you 'free' movies and they're still mostly played off Hi8 and it's pretty shocking quality wise, many of the movies are heavily edited and it's rather unreliable. Do the studios give a damn about this, nah, it's a return to the shareholders.

Bob.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 5/12/2005, 7:59 PM
Are you talking about the X-Box (not 360)? People have modded that into a basic computer, upgraded the HD, etc. On the game end, NVidia is much better in OpenGL then ATI (which is more advanced in DX).

I just read today: the next gamecube will be Quad G5's & be much more efficient then the PS3 * X-Box 360. This makes sence: it's scheduled to hit shelved mid-2006. Nintendo also had a very favorible market nitch that Microsoft & sony don't care to be in: family oriented gaming. I wouldn't be suprised to see Sony & MS "evolve" their consoles into micro PC's & Nintendo be the only straight console system on the market within 10 years (and, as usual, about $50-100 lower then the competition).
Sonisfear wrote on 5/12/2005, 8:21 PM
Well apit, your right, I really don't know what the future has to say about HD but right now as a indi producer I am pushing for microsoft right now.
-The quality is way good enough for indi. (I know there is better out there but it looks damn good to me)
-Huge savings on bleeding edge tech.
-Its ready now. (it will take a while for Blu ray to penatrate the market but many people have decent enough PC's)
-As far as reliability hey its played well on my wifes laptop my 1.7 celleron machine. I don't see a problem with the demo (mind you I have been streaming from hard drives.
-and you hafto admit, it is pretty amazing data compression to output decent 1080p with 8-10Mbps datastream, even as a archeial format its worth it.

Chips will get faster and cheaper, I hope manufactures catch on an start with WMV and progress to Bluray later. Planned obsolences. I feel going to an expensive player and media right now will shock the consumer. Let them warmup with WMV first and a cost effective DVD/wmv player and then when all the kinks are perfected with bluray on 2006/07 then up the anti with better looking HD.

plus gives me a chance to ramp up moe money to afford more and better gear :^)
apit34356 wrote on 5/12/2005, 8:35 PM
Farss, one issue is the gaming dollar, Sony is not going to give it up, nor is Sony giving up on its large movie investment. Sony has some serious large partners in this area. This does not mean that dvd players won't play MS WMV, or that WMV is a bad codec or WMV won/t be used with blu-ray. The world market generates more money for Sony and Sony's partners than it does for MS, they are giving up that market to MS without a serious fight. MS is walking down a pathway that depends heavy on other companies tech. IBM will not let MS set cost of manufacturing and IBM knows MS design weakness, plus IBM and wall street remembers the 80's with MS.
farss wrote on 5/12/2005, 9:09 PM
I guess I can see some cross over of interests there, if the studios gave access to the movies to MS then that may boost MS sales of the XBox. Yes I agree the games market is not one to be overlooked, but I think the money is mostly in the games, not the boxes.
Thing is though, just look at Sony, they sell VAIOs with everything but Vegas on them, hells bells they have web sites saying they recommend Pinnacle products. In the world of Sony do you think they'd give up revenue on movie sales just to save sales of their games consoles?

I could be wrong of course, if I am it'd be great if some of the interdepartmental concern spead to the Vegas world.

Bob.
apit34356 wrote on 5/12/2005, 9:35 PM
Farss, Like many large corps, depts do not march to the same drum / goal, except for the profit margin. The gaming and movie interest sony has is massive, forcing a new join view of the market, but the media software, vegas, does not even show up in this picture as a player, maybe a distant relative. Sony can not lose any more of the big line items in this new media market. Sony is still in the dark about how they lost the digital camera market they started,( actually, they have figured it out, just been slow at fixing it), don't forget about the Walkman,............. The new shift in management was to force a join marketing goal. Hopefully, vegas also will gain from it and I believe that it has already, just from the fx1 camera coverage.
Sonisfear wrote on 5/13/2005, 8:24 AM
Sony should of invested more in making ther own compression standard instead of relying so heavily on other companies. Jess Wmv looks great for the same data rate of Mpeg2 Standard def. Am I missing something, why hasen't Mpeg camp improved thier codec.

Or is that the job of Mpeg 4,

If so can some direct me to some samples that I can compare

FuTz wrote on 11/18/2005, 5:02 PM
Just a "bump it up" to emphasize (celebrate for a few of us?) the 360 release...
DavidMcKnight wrote on 11/18/2005, 7:19 PM
Celebrate? Not until we can use them in a render farm....
Padre wrote on 11/20/2005, 8:35 AM
what WOULD be interesting would be for Sony to release a turnkey PC based on PS3 Architecture, with as many "cores" as one needs, but with a basic unit at a similar price as the actual console, however being a turnkey system, allow the user to allocate as many cores as one needs and as much storage capacity as one needs...
If sony created a Dept to deal with this, alongside their Vaio dept which already exists, theyd make a killing..

Now with this, Sony would make some SERIOUS money considering the realtime and rendering power that this unit would have.. on top of that, theyre keeping it in the family...

The only real thing thats turning people off vegas (to this day even) is the fact that were working in Render City...
Imagine working on a HD project for a corporate client and they need the job the same day.. this way u can do it.. but with the current technology, ur rendering and wasting time....
Nat wrote on 11/20/2005, 8:46 AM
Fairly difficult for Sony to turn the Xbox in a render farm for Vegas, it uses PowerPCs and a lot of the code is optimized for the x86 architecture... It would probably be easier to port FCP than Vegas...