HDMI premium at stores?

HDMI Xbox 360s will be in the next Weekly add according to the Retail Insider at Best Buy. :)

All employees of Best Buy are encouraged to sell all Non-HDMI xbox 360s to customers. However please keep in mind, you may buy an HDMI Xbox 360 at any time. Just ask a representative.

HDMI Xbos 360s are currently in all Best Buy stores. You may buy one at your convenience. :)

So I went to Best buy and Futureshop the other day and was hoping to buy a 360 premium with the new HDMI in it and after talking to some clueless clerks... I came to the conclusion that they did not have any. Has anyone bought one and got the HDMI in it and where do you live? I live in Toronto, Canada so maybe we get things a little slower than you guys?victor_y77

Clueless employees at Best Buy.......I don't believe it

these don't have the new 65nm Falcon chipset alsodo they?

[QUOTE="victor_y77"]So I went to Best buy and Futureshop the other day and was hoping to buy a 360 premium with the new HDMI in it and after talking to some clueless clerks... I came to the conclusion that they did not have any. Has anyone bought one and got the HDMI in it and where do you live? I live in Toronto, Canada so maybe we get things a little slower than you guys?mastercortana

Clueless employees at Best Buy.......I don't believe it

Maybe it was a clever act to get me to buy an old premium to clear stock?

And would having HDMI even make a noticable difference in picture quality?MickeyTheNinja

Just a smidge, nothing dramatic. And it's easier for 1080p tv owners to have HDMI for 1080p since that's what they mostly except 1080p from.

And would having HDMI even make a noticable difference in picture quality?MickeyTheNinja

On the GPU, the picture you see is initially rendered digitally. When it's time to output, you'd then have two options:

#1 - composite/S-Video/component/VGA - video signal is converted to analog in order to pass through the cable and to be decoded at the other side. No problem if you're dealing with a CRT/DLP/RPTV, or an LCD/Plasma with a really good video processor for dealing with analog inputs. Even so, with digital displays, they must reconvert the signal back to digital before you can see it on your screen.

#2 - HDMI/DVI (using an adapter cable) - video signal is passed in its original digital form, and is output as such on display.

Scenario #1 usually means two conversion steps (digital to analog, and analog to digital). Usually, Scenario #2 would hold no such conversion steps; at the most, rescaling to fit the display.

HDMI support is also handy as there are many HDTV's (particularly Sonys) that will not accept a 1080p signal from component video, even if the HDTV is 1080p, and even though component video cables are perfectly (mechanically) able to do so. HDMI also would imply HDCP support, so if you happened to purchase the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive, you can then basically watch any movie (even those that would have the ICT flag enabled) in 1080p without issue (provided your display is HDCP-compliant, of course), and DVD's can be freely upscaled to 1080p. VGA connection would allow 1080p for DVD's and HD-DVD's that do not have the ICT flag enabled. With Component, HD-DVD's are limited to 1080i, and DVD's to 480p (due to CSS constraints).

As far as picture quality improvement, it depends on what you are referencing against. Of course it'd be tremendous compared to someone that's been stuck using composite video or (ugh!) RF. From Component video or VGA, not so much, unless your display's analog video processor just really sucks. In the absolute worst case, you may not notice a difference other than that HDMI enables audio and video to pass through a single physical cable, and there is no quality loss.