360 Elite Poll

We need a "I don't give a crap about the Elite" option.

The elite gives you black color, HDMI (with no visual gain over component), and a 120g HD upgrade.

No 65nm.
No cooler running.
No quiet dvd drive.
No quieter system.

I'll stick with my Premium.

zero2dash said:

HDMI (with no visual gain over component)

Click to expand...

There most certainly is... if you're watching HD DVDs (on a 1080p TV). Otherwise I agree.

But yeah, that alone isn't enough to get me to upgrade from my Premium. At least, not until I have a 7.1 receiver/surround system and can justify the price on the grounds that it'll let me play Dolby TrueHD tracks off said HD DVDs, at which point I'll probably just have a stand-alone combo player anyway, so who cares?

zero2dash said:

We need a "I don't give a crap about the Elite" option.

The elite gives you black color, HDMI (with no visual gain over component), and a 120g HD upgrade.

No 65nm.
No cooler running.
No quiet dvd drive.
No quieter system.

I'll stick with my Premium.

Click to expand...

What he said. I think MS just wanted something to compete with the PS3 in the mainstream market. Give it the Name "Elite" and give a couple of shiny feats.

Then they go and announce the smaller chip system. 360, bridging the gap between console and PC gaming.

Still no Blu-Ray or HD-DVD drive internally--thus additional cost/space/cabling to get high-def movies, and also no games that use the extra space, as will eventually happen on the PS3.

Throw in the 360's reliability record and the fan noise/heat, and I'm tempted more by Wii--with a possibility of PS3. There aren't enough games for ANY of the three right now, though--not ones that I'm interested in more than the Mac games I still haven't completed!

zero2dash said:

We need a "I don't give a crap about the Elite" option.

The elite gives you black color, HDMI (with no visual gain over component), and a 120g HD upgrade.

No 65nm.
No cooler running.
No quiet dvd drive.
No quieter system.

I'll stick with my Premium.

Click to expand...

(This is purely a Xbox 360 HDMI rant, not a console war rant thingy)

Don't forget the big one for me:

No multichannel LPCM over HDMI.

HDMI has always supported multichannel LPCM, PS3 supports it, HD-DVD and Blu-ray players support it, why can't the Xbox? I'll tell you why, the HDMI output was a quicky hack, it literally just muxes the existing video and audio streams, offering no improvement. Microsoft also went as far as to say that Sony put HDMI in when the spec's weren't final, even thought:

a) HDMI 1.3 was finalized before the PS3 came out.
b) The PS3 has HDMI 1.3 while the Xbox has 1.2 ( )
c) The PS3 can output multichannel LPCM via HDMI, Xbox cannot.
d) The PS3 can output the new lossless bitstreams for external decoding, guess what, that's another thing that the HDMI output of the 360 doesn't offer.

If you can not tell yet, I am very displeased with Microsoft on this console.

HDMI and a larger HD isn't worth it for me, I just stream all my music to my 360 anyways.

killmoms said:

There most certainly is... if you're watching HD DVDs (on a 1080p TV).

Click to expand...

http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/26/xbox-360-elite-vs-classic-the-test/

But finally we are able to answer the question: is an HDMI-enabled Xbox 360 capable of outputting noticeably higher quality gameplay and movies? We compared our classic Xbox 360 (manufactured 12/08/2005) with our spankin' new 360 Elite (manufactured 3/4/2007). Ready for the face-off? Check out the gallery, and read on for our conclusions.

We tested the consoles with a Sharp 46D62U (46-inch) 1080p LCD and a 5.1 surround system -- we went HDMI vs component, since it's safe to assume the majority of people don't have VGA inputs on their HDTVs (including us). We played the first stage of Gears of War (on casual, so what?), and then plugged in our HD DVD drive and watched a few scenes from Batman Begins.

Click to expand...

snip

HDMI 1080p vs component 1080p/i
We're going to be totally honest here, we hardly noticed a damn difference at all. We figured the best visual test would be playing in 1080p on both HDMI and component video, and we were right. What little difference we did notice, we noticed it with that test. In a couple of darker scenes in Gears there seemed to be a little more depth to the blacks (and a bit more distance detail because of it). But to tell you how subtle it was, we didn't even notice it until we literally started flipping back and forth as fast as we could. Fast motion, spinning, action, all the rest -- it looks almost identical on both consoles.

When watching an HD DVD in 1080p on HDMI and 1080i on component, we definitely didn't really notice anything different. The age old question though, right? Is 1080p actually noticeably different? Not to us, and probably not even if you have a 720p set -- assuming you're viewing on anything less than a massive, massive display. By the way, before you make any judgments about perceived visual quality based on our screen caps, please remember that those were taken with a regular camera, not pro screen capturing tools . In other words, what you may think is a big difference in quality may actually just be a small change in light metering or exposure. In other words, you'll kind of have to take our word for it when we say it looks almost identical.

Click to expand...

I'm not saying I don't believe you, killmoms...but they have pictures to demonstrate.

After looking over their article and the pictures, I see little to no difference HDMI v component. /shrug

Microsoft has turned the 360 into a 'milk it for all its worth' system IMO. I'm not frowning upon their desire to make money, but for the love of god...the nickel and diming is really pissing me off.

Whenever I read about the Elite I take out my iPod and think "same price way better, thats why I keep buying more". You don't make whats essentially the same product dearer, you keep the feckin price the same!

I sold my 360 Premium to buy the elite. Oddly enough, not because of HDMI, the black color or even the 120GB hard drive. I sold it because Microsoft replaced my original 360 (May 2006) with a refurbished "launch" console.

The refurbished console has the loud(er) DVD-ROM and makes more noise than my original unit.

It only lasted three months. So Microsoft sent me ANOTHER "launch" console with the same problems.

At least now WHEN the Elite breaks, I'll get a refurbished Elite model.

I love how they used the same loud drive as the regular 360 and use the same 90nm process and still brick the systems...I'll stick with my original launch system and not tempt fate by picking up another one of MS's QA gems.

why would anyone possibly upgrade? seems rather pointless to me. that price is not worth it.

I want the bigger HDD, but I guess that don't matter as it would seem as if Europe has fallen off the world map...

I know some people who bought an Elite even though they have a regular 360. I don't see the sense in this. Sure it has HDMI but if you want it so much, atleast trade in your old 360 to save some money . Plus, if I was in the position, I'd just save up another $100 and get the PS3

I saw something on engadget about a hack whereby you could swap the stock 20 GB HD for a specific 120 GB HD. A lot cheaper than spending another $180 on a hard drive or $480 on a 360