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Late Night Consoling

by jason bergman, Dec 05, 2001 8:30pm PST
Related Topics – LucasArts, Games: Console

I received a ShackMessage from -=Kodiak=-, who says his Xbox system doesn't have any subwoofer audio support. This is the first that I've heard of it...Can anyone confirm that this is a defect with the system? It's possible that this is a cabling issue, not a sound chip problem, but really your guess is as good as mine. I'll see what I can dig up.

Console Game of the Evening (continuing Good Licensed Games Week): Spiderman for the PSOne, Dreamcast, PC and N64. The old Genesis one's pretty good, but this one's a great deal of fun, and it's from the same developer who brought you Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.


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Comments

16 Threads | 81 Comments
  • #71
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    By: traxx x
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    OooohkeyÂ… Video 101 for everyone:

    Composite/RCA: Combines all video signals into one stream, worst method of video transfer. ~420 scanlines w/ DVD/PS2/X.
    S-Video: Separates chrominance and luminance (color and B&W), reduces dot crawl and video artifacts. ~475 lines
    Component: RGB-esque signal for best color reproduction and highest resolution. ~550 lines.

    Interlacing: Part of NTSC broadcasting (for VCRs, cable TV, camcorders, DVDs, etc etc), method of drawing horizontal scanlines to the screen by combining odd and even fields of the video input, at 60hz. It's a bad thing. Get up close to that nice big Wega TV (any TV will do fine, though), look at those horribly dark and obvious black horizontal lines, and the jaggedness around the edges, loss of clarity. All analog TVs have this effect, but no one notices or cares because that's the way it's always been.

    Progressive: Part of HDTV broadcast (to some degree) and newer DVD players. Instead of doing odd/even every 1/60th of a second, it draws one full, entire frame every 1/30th (twice as much or twice as fast depending on how you want to look at it). Results in a more vivid and higher resolution picture. Progressive scan DVD players output a simulated HDTV format (480 lines in progressive format), so HDTVs make movies in those type of players look a great deal better.


    whew...

    Most TV's wont have component video, which is the only way to get a progressive signal to the TV. Those who have a Sony Wega (or basically anything with a pureflat screen) will have it, but it may or may not do anything for you, as far as picture quality is concerned. A progressive scan signal on an analog TV won't be a dramatic difference (probably wont notice anything at all). A progressive scan signal on an HDTV, though, is an easily noticeable thing.

    All this crap about the consoles having what output and such doesn't really matter, as most people dont have HDTV sets, heh.

    Bottom line: XBox and PS2 games/DVDs will look the same on an analog TV, using component video. The XBox will look alot better than the PS2, with the same cabling, on an HDTV; because it outputs the progressive signal, whereas the PS2 does not.
    Dec 06, 2001 1:22am PST

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