@polishkid99 said:
What benefit is their of hooking your 360 up to your one?
Actually, hooking up anything to the Xbone adds slight latency/lag which I noticed on twitch games like fighting games and FPS matches, there is audio limitations (audio degradation like limited/no uncompressed sound, 7.1 and beyond, some bugs on certain STB's, etc ) and the Xbone HDMI port caps the resolution of the additional machine to lower resolutions and upscales them (PC, 360, PS3, PS4, Blu-Ray player, etc). Some resolutions in fact, aren't even supported. Think of it this way, The Xbone features lag due to the fact it is running all the video thru another layer of the operating system for these games running on another OS. In fact, the HDMI port was for TV viewers, but even then they are risking a:
- Loss of fine picture detail commonly expected with an HD signal (you may notice the grass for instance as being more fuzzy)
- Significantly darker picture, like a filter or shade was over the screen
- Image stuttering in fast or complex motion sequences (action movies especially)
As I have done with my Xbone, you can calibrate and make adjustments to remedy some of these issues (but not all), however it should be well known by now that pass-through image quality likely will never be 100% the same as the direct-to-TV signal. That's just for TV, after my lengthy game testing, I certainly wouldn't advocate hooking my gaming systems to the Xbone...and I did so at first until I noticed within minutes the issues of the HDMI port on the Xbone. It's pretty immediate if you are used to a higher quality. With surround sound for instance, It apparently down-samples to 2.1 and then tries to split that signal back out to 5/7.x in software. I'm an AV enthusiast though and I realize many in SW are not. A lot of people may not even own a quality AVR. The point is, you should take this information accordingly and decide if you care about these limitations or not. These limitations are also documented on various trusted sites and magazines.
Here's one of many links: http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/20/5117320/microsoft-xbox-one-review
"But while the ideas are great, the execution just isn’t there. For starters, passing my TiVo through the XbOne darkened the picture and stripped the signal of its Dolby Digital audio encoding, taking away surround sound. There’s an option to transcode Dolby into DTS or PCM audio, but it didn’t seem to work for me, and Microsoft says it might cause additional video distortion with some cable boxes. If you have a home theater system, this is an immediate deal breaker; I wouldn’t let the Xbox One near your cable box until it can pass the signal unmolested."
The issue at the time was the Xbone didn't support Dolby, but only DTS/PCM. If you feed it Dolby, it attempts (and sometimes fails) to transcode it. Does audio even matter to users playing through TV speakers or a soundbar? No, probably not. To them though, they may be more concerned with the visual degradation or unneeded Xbone use. In general, the more you daisy chain, the more the degradation.
Furthermore, your Xbone now has to be turned on all the time even when it's not going to be used. That puts added stress on the machine that is unnecessary unless you honestly don't have another HDMI port, I wouldn't recommend it. My Xbone is fired up when I'm ready to play Xbone. All electronics burn out, and these new machines are an unknown commodity. You may burn out your Xbone faster than your friends who own one and don't use the Xbone to play the extra HDMI. Was the machine designed to be turned on all the time, even when you are playing games on the Xbone? That's what we are lead to believe, but ultimately you have to put your faith in Xbox engineering. I had 4 RRODs last gen, 1 E74 error. I don't have that confidence. Hell, I have had so many machines burn out across companies and worked on electronics I know these things have a limited lifespan. To me, it's not worth subtracting years from the Xbone's life for to play another device through it.
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