H.264/MPEG-4 on the Xbox 360

Most of the attention has been on the Windows Live Messenger support that will be added to the Xbox 360 during the next update (Spring Update, 7 May). But hidden (well not really) amongst the list of updates is the added support for H.264 video and MPEG-4 video:

  • H.264 video support: Up to 15 Mbps 10 Mbps, Baseline, Main, and High (up to level 4.1) Profiles with 2 channel AAC LC and Main Profiles.
  • Added MPEG-4 Part 2 video support: Up to 8 Mbps 5 Mbps, Simple Profile with 2 channel AAC LC and Main Profiles.

The H.264 support is fairly good, the 15 Mbps limit should be high enough for HD video. No multichannel audio is a shame though. MPEG-4 support is limited to SP (again no multichannel support). Better than nothing, I suppose. Still no DivX/XviD support, but at least it’s better than converting everything to WMV.

There are also a whole bunch of other video related improvements, such as improved skip forward/back (video is divided into 10 chapters automatically), switchable aspect ratios (Letterbox, Zoom, Stretch, Native). You can read the whole list here.

 

One Response to “H.264/MPEG-4 on the Xbox 360”

  1. The Perfect Pitch » Blog Archive » H.264 on the Xbox 360 Says:

    […] on from my previous blog entry on Xbox 360 H.264 playback, I’ve finally had the chance to test it out when the Spring Update was released […]


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