Reply To: Xbox component to HDMI and black crush issues

June 29, 2020 at 9:27 AM #39324

Participant

Wow that’s great info to know about the Xbox revisions. I’ve seen people say the Xbox does YCbCr 4:4:4 but it’s good to know that only applies to some of the revisions. Or is it that they always output YPbPr 4:4:4 over component, but some revisions internally work in YCbCr 4:2:2 and some 4:4:4?

I assumed my console was an older revision because it had save data for some ’03 sports games, but then I looked at the manufacturing date and it says July, 2004 (serial: 320115242806). This guide says it’s a version 1.6 from Taiwan.

I read that newer revisions had worse component out but got better SCART out. Is that true? Or are both better in the newer revisions? Does it depend on if you’re doing 480p or 480i over component? I’m just now testing Ninja Gaiden on my Xbox at 480p over component vs on an X360 set to YCbCr601, forced to 480p. Besides the extra AA the X360 does, the quality and colors look about the same to me. So am I missing something or is the 1.6 with Xcaliber not actually bad, at least at 480p over component? Sometimes I read 1.6 looks bad over component, one report says ok at 480p but not 480i over component, and the majority just repeat that they’ve read someone else say something so it’s a lot of regurgitated info. Maybe it depends on the component cable quality? Maybe the power supply or outlet power quality? For example, the Pound HD Link was adding banding to some Xbox 1.4 revisions with a specific power supply or sometimes bad caps, solution was often to plug in the USB power on the HD Link.

If someone with a 1.6 Xbox wants to explain exactly what they see wrong with 480p over component I would love to hear from you. The games I currently have access to are Ninja Gaiden, Halo 2, Fable, Voodoo Vince and Grabbed by the Ghoulies. Let’s find a spot and compare what we see because I’m really interested. Again, the only difference I see between the Xbox and the Xbox 360 (set to 480p/YCbCr601), which theoretically should have much better output since it’s newer tech and all digital, is that the X360 applies very light anti-aliasing. I don’t see any banding, ringing, artifacting, bad colors, etc. Only artifacts would be from aliasing and is visibly the same type on both consoles, just slightly less on the X360 due to AA.

And a question about the OSSC, why does the junkerhq wiki say all processing is done in RGB with no conversion to YCbCr available, but then there is a feature to output YCbCr in the HDMI mode? Is that just a remnant from pre-v0.83 firmware not having YCbCr output?