No HDMI for sure for old Xbox 360

Rumors started to run over the internets last week that a component-to-HDMI adapter was in the works to ensure the current Xbox 360 revisions can also jump on the HDMI hypewagon. Regrettably, the story was nothing more than some misinformed support folks spreading information to shut up complaining customers.

Engadget reported last week that one of their readers had ‘politely’ flung some names at Microsoft Support about his Xbox 360 Premium not supporting HDMI, and that the friendly recipient replied to this “promising an upcoming HDMI to component adapter for the ‘box to make his situation perhaps a bit more bearable.” As anyone with the slightest bit of technical knowledge can deduce, this response is at the very least highly unlikely for some very obvious reasons:

1. It already exists, with a sweet $299 MSRP, excluding required YPbPr-to-D-sub conversion cable.
2. It would rather destroy the whole point of HDMI if you first let the 360 convert to analog YPbPr signal and then convert back to HDMI including double conversion loss and inherent loss from converting to a lossy format.

Which only leaves the option of Microsoft releasing an HDMI cable to be plugged directly into the Core or Premium 360 units, but if that were possible, why aren’t there DVI-D cables out there already? Indeed, the 360 simply didn’t support it until the Elite’s mainboard changes, as Andre Vrignaud explains on his blog:

Unfortunately there will not be an HDMI adapter released for the original 360. The HDMI spec is basically a 2-way street and requires the specific port on both sides to be enabled. This is why we had to change the box.

Hopefully we can now put all these rumors to rest permanently, and resume the bitching about why Microsoft didn’t choose to support HDMI 1.3 like the PS3.

Thanks Colby for the submit.