Microsoft’s Xbox 360 guru Albert Penello misses the point on HDMI

5 Jan 2007

Today I listened to episode #198 of Major Nelson’s podcast which had an interview with Albert Penello about 1080p support on the Xbox 360. In getting into the details about 1080p support and the truths of HDMI, I realized that Albert, at least for my needs, has totally missed the point on HDMI support for Xbox 360.

First I would like to give you some of the details he did provide about the 1080p support for the Xbox 360. The good news, the Xbox 360 has full 1080p support for gaming as well as HD-DVD movies. The bad news, as you have read previously, it’s VGA support. Although he does mention that it supports it through Component video, I know for fact that at least on my TV, you get a black screen when you set it to 1080p over component.

The Xbox 360 will up-convert any signals to 1080p for your TV so you should be good to go. My problem is that the Xbox 360 is NOT a PC. I already have a PC connected to my TV. As far as I know, no TVs have multiple PC inputs, so Microsoft is saying that you cannot use a PC and an Xbox at the same time unless you don’t want 1080p.

Albert Penello keeps saying that HDMI is not important because you can get 1080p with VGA. The point that is being missed is that a lot of us are using our VGA ports. Actually, I have had 4 different HDTV’s that have PC support and all of them were actually DVI, not VGA, so you still need an adapter to hook the cable to your TV anyway. I think he considers the entire problem to be about DRM, but I think the true problem is about system compatibility and connectivity.

Albert Penello (This is taken from a conversation so I did paraphrase a few spots where small tangents were taken) – What a lot of people were pushing for in HDMI was 1080p. There’s two things. There’s this belief that a digital connection is better, we could do a whole technical thing about the pros and cons of digital vs. analog connection but I think what people were really asking about was 1080p. I think for the majority of people we have solved one of the big issues that they have which is we can now do native, true 1080p. That was a big concern that Sony had and we didn’t. So now it becomes a concern of the digital connection and things like that. We’ve said, look, there is nothing that prevents us from doing it, I won’t say never, but I would not stop myself from buying an Xbox 360 because of it mostly because every HDTV that supports 1080p has a VGA plug (Editors note, most have DVI, not VGA) and we have supported VGA since launch, so all the people who have bought the console, they can take advantage of this feature, they can take advantage of 1080p if they want to upgrade their TV so I think we have taken a lot of steam out of the need for the port by enabling the feature of 1080p through VGA, but I am never going to say never.

So here again, I think for a lot of us it is not about using HDMI because it’s HDMI, there are a myriad of reasons. For example, my Sony receiver does HDMI switching, so I could connect my Xbox 360 and my Cable Box to my Receiver with HDMI and then connect the Receiver to the TV for a totally simple system. You also, to my extreme frustration, cannot connect a PC and an Xbox to the same DVI port!

I hope they get with the program and realize that this is not about a bunch of clueless users that think we should be using HDMI because Sony does. We know the capability is there with VGA, it’s just not the best or most practical solution. This is about making the Xbox more functional and connectable to the latest systems out there.

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