The Vacuum Tube

And There Was Much Rejoicing: XBox 360 to Support H.264 and MP4

This XBox 360 update just gets better and better.  Overshadowed by the fact that IM and communications will be unified on the 360 platform, less noise has been generated by what is, in my opinion, a much more significant feature.  Yes folks, your prayers have been answered!  Xbox 360 finally has more codec support!  Why is H.264 support great?  Afterall my entire collection of movie "backups" are in Divx or Xvid.  Does this mean I will be able to play them?  Likely not crossing my fingers.  But considering the future of content distribution coupled with the power of hardware coming out it will now be possible to use a 360 to be a major alternative for viewing user-generated video, not to mention better bang for buck than AppleTV cmon, give me iTunes support, sorry WMP team. 

*UPDATE - After some discussion on the internal Microsoft distribution lists, it seems that Divx, Xvid and Nero support should be there!  I made the mistake of assuming that all three of those codecs use ASP (advanced simple profile) by default.  As it turns out, all ASP means is that the encoder will use B-frames, 1/4 pel motion-compensation, GMC and a few other advanced encoding techniques.  None of these tend to be enabled by default.  Much of my legacy content on my drives use codecs that are mpeg-4 compliant, so most likey they will all work.  It will be interesting to see if the 360 will even attempt to read any ASP-encoded files, I know I have a few that use B-frames.  The hardware certainly is capable of decoding ASP considering h.264/AVC requires 2-3 times the processing power to decode.  However, the downside of all this is that the codec support will only be available via the 360 Dashboard, NOT through Media Center Extender (MCX) Xbox 360 Fall Update???.  All in all, this is still great news!

**UPDATE - Sorry, apparently I jumped the gun.  Divx and Xvid will not be supported if you are using the AVI container format.  You will have to demux the video stream using a program like VirtualDub and repackage the audio and video streams into the mp4 container format.  Pretty easy to batch process AND quick too, though it is an inconvenience.  Most front-end encoders give the option to create an mp4 output file rather than avi.  Of course the information regarding SP and ASP still apply to the video stream.  Thanks Ashley!

What's So Big About User-Generated Content?

Right now, if you're like me, you don't have many options to store high quality video, whether they be home videos, clips bittorrent downloads, or amateur films Hellboy.  Some of my Microsoft collegues would say WMV.  I'll pass, not because its not a great codec--afterall, VC-1 is part of the HD/Bluray spec--but because WMV is not fully supported by Microsoft on other platforms.  I would much rather compress my content using Divx or Quicktime/AVI H.264.  The problem that arises is that I can't stream either of these formats to my Xbox without recompressing using a tool like Transcode360.  The main culprit here is the cost of licensing.  It would be prohibitive and likely passed on to the consumer.  With a plethora of platforms like AppleTV,PSP, and now Xbox 360 supporting H.264, it will be much easier to transport and access content in an agnostic manor, just don't go over 5Mbps, AppleTV is a little picky.  Here is specifically what 360 owners are getting with this update:

• The name of game in tray is now displayed in the dashboard.
• When the user is in the dashboard and an Xbox 360 game is in the console then the name of the game is displayed in the tray icon of the dashboard. If the user highlights the tray icon then achievements and gamer score are displayed for that game based on the signed in user. Xbox1 games show the name and image of the game.
• Integrated support for the new Xbox 360 text input device. Note that this device includes a new wired headset.
• Playback progress bar indicates download completion.
• Switchable aspect ratio now available during video playback (Auto to Letterbox, Zoom, Stretch, Native).
• Player and friends lists now quickly show session presence information for quick identification of users that are joinable.
• H.264 video support: Up to 15 Mbps, Baseline, Main, and High (up to level 4.1) Profiles with 2 channel AAC LC and Main Profiles.
• Added MPEG-4 Part 2 video support: Up to 8 Mbps, Simple Profile with 2 channel AAC LC and Main Profiles.
• Show folder hierarchy for video content played from all devices.
• Bookmarks are stored for each video that the user plays remembering the users last location in the file as well as the aspect ratio that the user choose for that file.
• Video trick modes (fast forward, rewind, chapter skip) can now be used while downloading Video Marketplace content.
• Skip forward and backward functionality has been improved to skip to the next or previous chapter. Each video is divided into 10 “chapters” allowing you to quickly skip around video content.
• The information bar that is turned on via the On Screen Display (OSD) now shows you exactly where you are in the playback of the video file.  In addition it will also show for Video Marketplace content how much of the file has been downloaded and where the “chapters” exist in the file.
• Windows Media protected content (WM-DRM) can now be streamed from the PC to the console. If the WM-DRM license is missing or corrupted then a specific error message is displayed to the user. Bookmarking is also stored for protected content.
• When a user selects an item for download from Marketplace then the system will determine if there is sufficient disk space for the item and, if not, will ask the user to delete content on the HDD. The system provides a sorted by size list of videos, game trailers, demos and arcade content to aid the user in the deletion process. The same list of items are also available from within memory so that users can quickly see which items are consuming the most disk space.
• The console will block the user who attempts to download content onto a storage device that will never have the capacity to store the item without deducting any points associated with the content item.
• The screensaver is disabled when playing photos from any source

Kudos to the Xbox team once again for delivering!  Now I just need to batch process all my TV shows AVIs *see UPDATE* into H.264.

Stay tuned!  I'm sure there will be more news as the May 7th date approaches.