Xbox One Won't Support SDTVs

[PrototypeC]

"What's that? You're not rich? Well we're rich. I don't see what the problem is." Um... classism?

I don't know... I feel like this is going to be a problem for enough people for it to... well, be a problem. What I see here is Microsoft once again just telling us to deal with it because it's more convenient for them. I'm really starting to feel like we've become the last thing on Microsoft(and Sony)'s mind. All of a sudden gamers are the secondary, or even tertiary, concern. Why is every announcement about these new systems making me want them less and less? Isn't it supposed to be the opposite? Weren't we nearly crapping ourselves in excitement when the current generation was first coming out?

Also, as I read this news article, I was wondering why it was trying to make poor jokes, and why most of what wasn't a poor joke was idle speculation. Then I realized it was Carter again.

 

[taciturnCandid]

Excuse me, my current primary tv is a very nice large screen SDTV. While I certainly could get a small tv for a couple hundred dollars, to get a hdtv of similar size would be over 1000 dollars. 1000 dollars to replace a perfectly functional tv I would then have no room for and have to get rid of. F*** you XBone.

Higher resolution means you don't need as large of a screen. That huge sdtv it takes to be able to barely read the text on current gen games isn't needed on an hdtv. The same goes for about anything an sdtv does.

The thing with it is that you can have that huge size as a luxury, but a smaller sized hdtv is actually a lot more effective and easier to see than a bigger sdtv

 

[bug_of_war]

Oh, well god damn! It does still play VCR tapes though, right?

Way to force everyone into your personal warped vision of the future Microsoft.

Well, as someone with ZERO HD TVs in my household, because they're all 90's era, big screen SD ones, this is certainly unfriendly news.

I actually think the last poll found that nearly 30-40% of TV owners still owned SD TVs as their primary television... so that seems like a lot of the market they'll still miss out on.

No shit. Couple this with the fact that they are screwing the used games portion AND the fact that you have to be online? They are seriously limiting their profits.

Also, I am so sorry for not being Rich, Microsoft. It isn't like I am trying to pay for College, Bills, and a one year study-abroad trip next year. Not to mention that there are probably many others worse off than I am.

Ugh, more and more info from this seriously pisses me off.

This is why I'm on the fence about the issue, these points all have validity to them. On one hand, Proverbial Jon is correct in the sense that they are simply moving forward with technology, as should be expected, as well as having previous examples of the requirements of new hardware being better. The VCR tape became the DVD, which in turn became Blu Ray. The Vinyl records became the Cassette tapes, which then became CDs. In Australia we've just recently lost all analogue signals in favour of digital, which basically forced people to get set top boxes in order to receive digital TV, and you know what? It went off without a hitch, everyone is still watching tv, and no one is really that put out.

HOWEVER, Darwin did once say, "If you specialise, you die" (paraphrased) and the Xbox One does seem to be making itself a very specialised unit which could become it's downfall. The whole needing a HDTV isn't a huge downer, but add in the need to connect once a day to the internet, basic eradication of the used game market, etc. it's starting to look very tough for the majority of people to get proper use out of it. While I wouldn't say Jim Sterling's comment in his recent video on which he said, "only the rich will be able to use the Xbox One" is true, I will say that it looks like it's going to be a very special group of people.

 

[Strazdas]

no SD TVs? fine. i mean sure a lot of peopel still use that since Xbox360 cant do better visual. Though if you want your console to run fullHD, you cant cram it into SDTV. so whiel the change is not a good thing, it is somewhat understandable from a new hardware perspective.

Dial-ups. About damn time, dialup is atechnology that died in the 90s and supporting it still is more of a restriction than a feature.

Punchcards. what is that? i never heard of one.

Also, I am so sorry for not being Rich, Microsoft. It isn't like I am trying to pay for College, Bills, and a one year study-abroad trip next year. Not to mention that there are probably many others worse off than I am.

If you are poor, paying for your studies and saving money for future studies, your not the one to buy new consoles anyway now are you.

So, not only are they making it a nightmare to try and set up on an older TV, they're also trying to tell machinima makers to fuck off? Well, I guess we'll oblige. Thank you microsoft, for telling us straight-up that you don't want anything to do with us. It seems the feeling is mutual.

How are they telling machinima makers to fuck off? care to elaborate?

I can't see the difference between HDTV and SDTV so I have my SDTV and enjoy it. Just another reason I'm glad I'm upgrading my PC this year.

Not trying to attack you or anything, but if you really cant see the difference (and not just extragarating to make a point) you should consider getting glasses or using a larger than 10" screen.

Excuse me, my current primary tv is a very nice large screen SDTV. While I certainly could get a small tv for a couple hundred dollars, to get a hdtv of similar size would be over 1000 dollars. 1000 dollars to replace a perfectly functional tv I would then have no room for and have to get rid of. F*** you XBone.

excuse me but anyone who has a SDTV with a large screen simply wasted his money, because there is aboslutely no reason to have huge screen on such small resolutions unless you are watching it from another room or trying to show TV to your neighboars through a window. It is not microsofts fault you have done a stupid decision to buying a SDTV instead of HDTV.

Frankly it should not be called HDTV anymore. Its not high definition, its standart definition, the SD shoudl stand for Small definition as it is actually very small. the world has moved on, its not 90s anymore.

If a person is truly interested and wants to get something, they will do what they have to do to get it.

Obviously, but there is a difference between someone who wants an Xbox and an HD TV, and someone who just wants an Xbox. It is foolish to cater to only one of these demographics, especially when you won't be profitting from the sale of HD TV's.

what is foolish is to think that anyone being sane woudl want a next gen games to be portrayed at SDTV resolution. If you are not getting a HD there is pretty much no reaosn for you to get xbox to begin with.

Theyr called ADAPTORS theyr CHEAP and EASY TO USE, i dont think there is even a point in all this discussion

What kind of adapters are you talking about? Just getting a box to convert from HDMI to VGA or Component will set you back about $100, and that's assuming you want to hook up to an HD monitor that lacks HDMI, and not downscale things to something an SD TV can work with. Most units like that also introduce input lag, which is bad for gaming.

my parents got an early plasma model and use a HDMI covnerter to VGA or w/e those 3 wires are. it cost them 60 LTL, which is around 20 dollars with current dollar prices.

I'm honestly surprised so many of you still have sdtvs. If any of you need a cheap alternative you can get a computer monitor with HDMI in for probably around $200 and it will be 1080p. It won't have speakers, but hey; it's cheap for a reason.

In fact, it might be worth checking to see if your PC monitor already has this feature!

I recently went looknig around thinking i may be buying a new tv/monitor (multipurpose usage). what i found shocked me, how small resolution mdoern new model TVs are. i expected something like 2000p by now, turns out that is for monitors only and 3 times larger TVs still support 720p only. i mean come on why TV manufacturers are that stupid? Ill end buying a mionitor and using it for both things.

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Its not so much agasint people like you who just enjoy what they enjoy. its more towards people like, say, if i lsitened to vinyl records, then a new album came out and i would cause an outrage that they didnt print it on vinyl and isntead used a CD, how dare they use newer technology than i like. because thats exactly whats happening in this post.

 

[Leg End]

Considering I only just got an HDTV in 2011, this is pretty shit news.
That is, for my several dozen friends still playing on SD CRT TVs. And me when I don't have access to my shinyscreen.

 

[Elamdri]

I mean, of all the legit things to whine about guys, we're going with "it doesn't support SDTV?"

I mean, yeah it sucks for people who don't have SDTV, but at some point the industry has to move on. HDTV is FIFTEEN years old. It's older than the Xbox and the Xbox 360. It's had plenty of time to get cheap; heck I bought a nice HDTV 2 years about for about 300 bucks. It's time to let SDTV fall to the wayside.

 

[Seanfall]

...Okay so now this with the new Xbox...they just don't want to sell any of them do they?

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Next thing you know we'll be seeing complaints about how Windows XP is no longer supported........oh wait

 

[Myndnix]

Oh. Well, shit.
I still use an SDTV because it works and I don't replace things until they stop working.
Not that I was planning on getting an Xbone anyway. Have you seen how crap those things are?

 

[ShirowShirow]

I still play on an SDTV.

Soooo... Yeah. Ad this to the long list of reasons the Xbone sucks.

 

[Belzera]

"The move has led to speculation that the console will likely be embracing High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP)"

So basically, if I understand this part clearly, the Xbone is going to be unfriendly to people wanting to use Capture devices? There are ways around it I suppose seeing as I have a capture card set up with the PS3 but still as for the HDTV aspect, please remember just because 2 thirds of people in america have HDTV's doesn't mean its the same across the world as for the line 'If you can afford this $X00 console you can afford a $X00 HDTV' for some people it comes down to a choice between the two on their budget.

But honestly this really is not a matter I should really be commenting on, I don't plan to get an Xbone there is nothing about it that attracts me and it seems like one of Xbones major selling point won't even work in the UK.

 

[Xarathox]

I can't see the difference between HDTV and SDTV so I have my SDTV and enjoy it. Just another reason I'm glad I'm upgrading my PC this year.

I have a Phillips SDTV I bought back in 2003 (when HDTVs were still insanely expensive). Just recently my dad upgraded to an HDTV, and to test it out we hooked my 360 up to it via HDMI just to see how "pretty" my games would look on it. Turns out 360 games look like absolute shit on it. The only upside was that I no longer had to squint to read in game text, but the picture quality was highly pixelated, compared to my SDTV which the picture quality was crystal clear but text is a headache to read (literally).


The cause to the problem we later found out, is that not all HDTVs work well with the 360 due to the DVD-9 format it uses. Even after manually setting both the TV and the 360 to whatever output(s) your games support (720p, 1080i, 1080p is the norm) they'll still look like first gen Xbox graphics on certain brands. The PS3 doesn't have that problem it seems, because of the Blu-Ray format with most manufacturers supporting that these days over DVD. Though, that's just what I've been told, so no idea how accurate that is.

 

[taciturnCandid]

I'd like to note that if it were to support sdtvs, then you wouldn't see a difference graphics wise from the current generation. The reason why the current gen actually looks okay on an sdtv is that usually the actual resolutions of the games is a bit higher than 480p and slightly below 720p. They scale them up on higher definition tvs. Which is why there really isn't a huge difference between playing many xbox or ps3 games on a 720p tv or a 1080p tv. On games that are actually native 1080p the difference is pretty large

On games that aren't scaled the difference between playing on an hdtv and a sdtv is huge.

There is no point in buying a new console if they won't see any difference in display. There is more than a big enough library of games to play in the current generation that look just great on sdtvs.

Even if they did supply it you would complain that there isn't enough of a difference between the current generation and the next one.


for example

Take this

Spoiler

and compare it to this

Spoiler

That isn't even that high fidelity of a game and you can see a huge difference between them. And on both of them all settings are to max except resolution.

It gets even worse when it has to be stretched out further to match a bigger screen.

compare this

Spoiler

With this

Spoiler

And that is with everything but resolution maxed out.

For a further comparison try

Spoiler

with this

Spoiler

To really understand the difference you have to view the images fullscreen zoomed in (copy the image link and then follow it to imgur. There you can zoom in your view until it takes up all of your screen) enough to take up your whole screen. If your screen is that low res i'm sorry there is nothing I can do to help you.

The image should look good if you keep it small, but when you force it to take up the whole screen you can easily see the difference.

The lower res images were taken at 720x576 and the higher at 1920x1080 resolution. That is the comparison between playing a modern game on standard resolution vs high definition at max settings. That means with all the detail they put, without the resolution behind it, it doesn't look that great.

Basically if you buy a ps4 and play games on your sdtv with it, you will only see a few little details better than what you get with your ps3. It definitely will not be worth the price you pay for the console.

Microsoft shouldn't be catering to people with sdtv because if they do they will just get complaints that there isn't enough improvement to justify the costs

 

[TheZooblord]

Its not so much agasint people like you who just enjoy what they enjoy. its more towards people like, say, if i lsitened to vinyl records, then a new album came out and i would cause an outrage that they didnt print it on vinyl and isntead used a CD, how dare they use newer technology than i like. because thats exactly whats happening in this post.

I can see that. I personally am not going to whine or bellyache. I'm just not gonna buy an XBox One lol. Still, would be nice if the elitist hate on people behind the curve died down a little bit.

Some people seem to think that having older/newer tech somehow makes people inferior/superior to each other. It's so arrogant and... meaningless? Lol

Some people have old technology. Some, new. Doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.

 

[Matthi205]

Two things come to mind immediately:
a) It's called standard definition for a reason.
b) CRTs are known for supporting gigantic resolutions of up to 3 times their standard. This can only be achieved at very low refresh rates.

 

[taciturnCandid]

Its not so much agasint people like you who just enjoy what they enjoy. its more towards people like, say, if i lsitened to vinyl records, then a new album came out and i would cause an outrage that they didnt print it on vinyl and isntead used a CD, how dare they use newer technology than i like. because thats exactly whats happening in this post.

I can see that. I personally am not going to whine or bellyache. I'm just not gonna buy an XBox One lol. Still, would be nice if the elitist hate on people behind the curve died down a little bit.

Some people seem to think that having older/newer tech somehow makes people inferior/superior to each other. It's so arrogant and... meaningless? Lol

Some people have old technology. Some, new. Doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.

For me it isn't that I think I am superior to someone who who doesn't have high definition stuff, it is that i'm trying to point out two things.

One is that there is good reason behind this move and that catering to sdtv hurts the console itself. That this hate towards microsoft for this move shouldn't be hated as it is only sensible. If you look at the differences in the appearance of things at hd resolution and standard def res at the same settings, you can can see why increasing details won't really improve the graphical quality because of the lower resolution. In fact, you won't be able to make out a lot of those details and effects because it would be blurry or pixelated.

the other reason is to bring down some of the hype so that way when things do release people won't be near as disappointed. There is a lot of information that seems impressive, but really isn't. From looking at the specs and not knowing what they mean, you could think this would be top of the line technology, but the numbers lie.

 

[taciturnCandid]

Two things come to mind immediately:
a) It's called standard definition for a reason.
b) CRTs are known for supporting gigantic resolutions of up to 3 times their standard. This can only be achieved at very low refresh rates.

A. Because it was what was standard 15 years ago?

The vast majority of people in the US have hdtv. The people who have 480p and below are now a minority that just keeps shrinking.

B. Yes you can. But the pixels are just more spread out. you aren't getting a higher resolution, but rather an upscaled one.

Take a picture and stretch the shit out of it and you have a new resolution that was scaled from the old one. The overall resolution is larger, but the core resolution the image is based on didn't change.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Sorry, at this point I can only laugh at Microsoft. My bet is that by the time of release they'll have narrowed their target audience to one person. Who'll probably work at Microsoft.

 

[Racecarlock]

Sure, why don't you let me pull the money for that out of my ass as well.

If this is the wave of the future, then fuck the wave of the future. I just moved my Wii up to my room, so I think I'm going to enjoy mario galaxy and brawl for the next few months. Then I might get bioshock infinite, will get SRIV and GTA V, then that'll be it. Also I'm getting an ouya. They give a shit about money costs.

It appears I'm a retro gamer. Who knew?

"BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GREAT NEW GAMES?!"

Yeah, let me know what those are. Forza? Rigs of rods simulates crashes way better, and I've got plenty of other driving games? The new sports games? I can just get some old ones and it'll barely matter. Quantum break? It looks like a david cage interactive thing only without david cage. Plus I haven't seen actual gameplay of it so I have no reason to be excited. Call of duty? I'll just get 4 and be satisfied.

Plus all this bullshit about backwards compatibility and used games and this TV thing. I have no reason. Everything I've heard just makes it look worse. So fuck them, I'm not buying it.

 

[spartandude]

This honestly doesn't surprise me either. Anyone that gets pissed about this is kind of a dinosaur at this point. Even the current gen consoles look like crap on an SDTV. Asking for it to be compatible with an SDTV is asking a bit much, in my opinion. At a certain point, you have to move forward with technology, not hold on to the past.

Well, as someone with ZERO HD TVs in my household, because they're all 90's era, big screen SD ones, this is certainly unfriendly news.

I actually think the last poll found that nearly 30-40% of TV owners still owned SD TVs as their primary television... so that seems like a lot of the market they'll still miss out on.

Sorry, but for the people who actually want to use next gen consoles anyway, you'd be in the extreme minority if you wanted to use it on an SDTV. So let's talk about that poll, eh? 30-40% is statistically a large spread of difference. I'd be curious to find out when/where that poll was conducted and how accurate its numbering is, because 30-40 just isn't an accurate enough figure - it leaves a lot of wiggle room, because that 10% difference could be a LOT of people.

im sorry in a time of low economic growth in quite a few western countries people dont have the money to get HDTVs. but that poll is about people using their primary TVs, like the ones in their living rooms where the family sits around and watches tv
but think about the tvs in the kids rooms where a console will likely end up
if i may use experience from quite a few of my friends (yes i know anecdotal evidence isnt great but i imagine its fairly common) lets say the TV in your living room is HD as expected and youv likely got plugged in their you TV box (sky or virgin media for example) then you dvd player and quite likely a Wii.
now as money is tight for a lot of people these days chances are this is an older HD TV and can probably only suppoer these three things plugged into the back. so you buy your kids a tv for their room(s) to play their xbox or playstation but dont have the money for an HD so you get them an SD..... you are seeing the problem here right?

and while i do agree its much better for people just to upgrade to HD, but for quite a few people this isnt an option yet and likely wont be able to save for TV upgrades and a new console at the same time.