Xbox 360 Elite Lacking
Nicholas Deleon at Crunchgear discusses the lack of HDMI v1.3 support, forced 1080p and what the future has in store for Elite owners:
The absence of HDMI 1.3 means that Dolby’s super mega high def audio format TrueHD is nowhere to be found. This PCM audio format, which is lossless, is present on certain big money HD DVD titles, such as V for Vendetta and Batman Begins. Microsoft, we’re trying to like you. Omissions like this don’t make it easy. Neither does that fact, when using the HDMI connection, the video signal will always be in 1080p. Poor working stiffs like me (or early HDTV adopters) only have 720p/1080i capable monitors. Rather than just letting us be happy with 720p, we’ll be dealing with downscaled 1080p for the rest of our days.
That sounds about right as Microsoft should have been “skating towards the puck will be” when designing the Xbox 360 Elite. The fact that the Xbox fanboys are pointing out that no such receiver (at least within an affordable price range) with support for HDMI v1.3 currently exists is a moot point. As with all consumer electronics, economies of scale and other factors will always reduce technology to the point where it will be affordable to most consumers.
Looks like I’m sticking with my first-generation 360. Noisy fans, overheating and all.