4 ms·

I don't think it makes sense to compare the Xbox One to Google TV, Google TV is very much a side project for Google which is obvious because they aren't putting

I don't think it makes sense to compare the Xbox One to Google TV, Google TV is very much a side project for Google which is obvious because they aren't putting much effort behind it. While many people already use their Xbox for streaming Netflix and Hulu, the HDMI passthrough is an extension of that.

georgemcbay 13y ago
I think it makes sense in that the base technology is exactly the same. There is really only so much you can do with HDMI + IR blaster (or for the lucky few with very new TVs and/or set-top boxes) HDMI with CEC. There are tons of edge cases you run into when you don't have full control of the tuning stack. As one example (I can think of dozens easily): Family has a single-tuner old school Scientific Atlanta DVR (still very popular with cable operators despite being horribly obsolete). They set it up to record a show, it is currently recording said show, person interacting with the Xbox One does something to change the channel to one different than the one being recorded on... oops! There is no way for the Xbox One to know this is a potentially destructive operation for the DVR. At worst the DVR changes the channel and loses half your show, at best the DVR is smart enough to prompt you about this and stop the channel change, but how does the Xbox One know this occurred? There are some high-end DVRs with APIs that exist in an attempt to deal with situations like this but they are very few, very far between and there are no standards for them. Corner cases like this present themselves all the time with these HDMI-in/HDMI-out devices like Google TV and they are inherent problems with the current state of set-top box technology. No matter how many resources Microsoft throws at this, the end result will still be kind of lame a lot of the time and a far cry from the seamless experience you see in the on-stage demos.
- meta 13y ago
  I agree with you but for discussions sake... What if this wasn't classified as a corner case? As you said - most MSOs are running either an old Moto or old SA as their standard box. Because headends are either Moto or SA there are actually very few unique STBs in the field. And of those, they are all versions of the same OS that either Moto or SA have been using for a long time. If MS just threw a bunch of resources at common SA and Moto boxes to enumerate and add special code to handle these cases... could it work? Would it be a better experience? Is it worth it?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - shock-value 13y ago
      Don't they have to decode the HDCP stream anyway? Just getting basic scaling to work would require access to the raw pixel data, right?

georgemcbay 13y ago

I think it makes sense in that the base technology is exactly the same. There is really only so much you can do with HDMI + IR blaster (or for the lucky few with very new TVs and/or set-top boxes) HDMI with CEC. There are tons of edge cases you run into when you don't have full control of the tuning stack. As one example (I can think of dozens easily): Family has a single-tuner old school Scientific Atlanta DVR (still very popular with cable operators despite being horribly obsolete). They set it up to record a show, it is currently recording said show, person interacting with the Xbox One does something to change the channel to one different than the one being recorded on... oops! There is no way for the Xbox One to know this is a potentially destructive operation for the DVR. At worst the DVR changes the channel and loses half your show, at best the DVR is smart enough to prompt you about this and stop the channel change, but how does the Xbox One know this occurred? There are some high-end DVRs with APIs that exist in an attempt to deal with situations like this but they are very few, very far between and there are no standards for them. Corner cases like this present themselves all the time with these HDMI-in/HDMI-out devices like Google TV and they are inherent problems with the current state of set-top box technology. No matter how many resources Microsoft throws at this, the end result will still be kind of lame a lot of the time and a far cry from the seamless experience you see in the on-stage demos.

meta 13y ago
I agree with you but for discussions sake... What if this wasn't classified as a corner case? As you said - most MSOs are running either an old Moto or old SA as their standard box. Because headends are either Moto or SA there are actually very few unique STBs in the field. And of those, they are all versions of the same OS that either Moto or SA have been using for a long time. If MS just threw a bunch of resources at common SA and Moto boxes to enumerate and add special code to handle these cases... could it work? Would it be a better experience? Is it worth it?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - shock-value 13y ago
    Don't they have to decode the HDCP stream anyway? Just getting basic scaling to work would require access to the raw pixel data, right?