Respect Sakura

It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here - the new, shiny Xbox 360 system update which resolves previous issues such as glitchy downloaded video, XBLA titles taking all goddamn week to appear, glitchy downloaded video, allows you to stream video (WMV) from external sources, such as your PC, a removeable USB device (flash drives, etc), or a Zune (lol brown), and last but not least, it fixes the fucking glitchy downloaded video. Now such awesome features as the Brothers in Arms walkthrough, or the original DOAX2 :q: trailer (not the lower bitrate one they re-released to hide the glitchy downloaded video bug) can now be played back fine, and your eyes and ears won’t bleed from discomfort.

Of course, the real problem, the fragmented to christ hard drive, isn’t resolved, but with all the workarounds to speed the interface up, you shouldn’t notice the speed decrease from it at least until they release their next system update which may hopefully include a generic “maintenance” option which defrags the bloody hard drive. Maybe. Of course, you can also pay cash over fist for a bag full of 64MB Xbox 360 memory adapters, back up all your saved games and profile info, and format the drive once more. There’s even some slightly more technical but less expensive ways to back up your old data.

The second big thing, is the newly redesigned media functionality. Now, non-MCE owners can join us MCE owners and Vista beta testers in pissing and moaning about how the Xbox 360 still only plays back WMV files, despite adding support for HD-DVD, which allows for MPEG-4, MPEG-4/AVC (aka H.264) and MPEG-2, as well as VC-1, otherwise known as “That WMV codec”. So, if it is as trivial a thing to support as we expect, why won’t Microsoft allow other video formats to be played?

My guess is it’s the same reason the original Xbox was designed to only play DVDs when you had their DVD remote - licensing. Basically, when you buy the HD-DVD drive for the 360, you’re just buying a fancy external USB-based HD-DVD drive with a couple of extra USB ports thrown on. You may even find that getting an external 5.25 caddy and a HD-DVD ROM drive would cost you less for your PC. Well, some of those extra costs aren’t just lining up Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer’s pockets - it’s a fee to pay for all the assorted licensing costs and bullshit one has to hand out, for HD-DVD.

The other thing to worry about, is the fact that proactively allowing DivX and XviD AVI files to be played on the Xbox 360 would look bad in the eyes of Microsoft’s partners. Especially if they plan to have more than just gaming videos in that “video marketplace” some day. There isn’t much enticement for Joe Bloggs to pay for the latest BSG episode and download it on his Xbox 360, if he can just as easily crack open a torrent site and download it for nothing, and still play the same thing on the Xbox.

Having to reencode all your old :filez: is a pretty good piracy deterrent for the stupid. However, WMV is a pain in the ass as formats go, and things like the wonderful Haali Splitter cause WM Encoder 9 to crash, meaning that whenever you want to re-encode stuff, you’re going to have to uninstall CCCP or build a second machine, devoted to converting all your crap into WMV. If you’re a multiplatform guy like I am (Windows/OS X/Linux), the notion of locking all your files down to one OS simply isn’t an option. There’s got to be a better way than this.

So now we get to the “This is what I think Microsoft should do” part of this posting. Enter the MP4 container. The wonderful thing about MP4, is that it’s an open standard that’s more likely to be adopted by large companies and hardware manufacturers, rather than something like DivX or XviD. It’s supported on OS X natively, and also runs fine on both Linux and Windows with the appropriate free/open source software. It’s not nearly as difficult to make an ISO standard MP4 file than it is to try re-encode other stuff into WMV, especially if the machine you encode on is the machine you play back files on. It hasn’t got the stigma of piracy attached to it right now, and it still deters the stupid because anything beyond an AVI file is just too much for them to handle.

There’s still the issue of making all your DivX’s and other crazy formats into MP4 files, but unless I’m wrong, XviD can be played back by generic MPEG4 decoders perfectly fine, and DivX… well… fuck ‘em. Almost every non-H.264 video file I have was done in XviD anyways. Basically, what I’m getting at is that simply copying the XviD/H.264 video stream from your AVI and slapping it into an MP4 file shouldn’t be all that difficult, and should, by all rights, work. It’s not like the iPod where there’s hardware limitations to worry about - the Xbox 360 is far more powerful than most regular people’s home computers, and even some people’s primary gaming systems. At worst, you may need to reencode the audio stream into something else.

Another reason for Microsoft to support MP4, is because they already do - Microsoft’s new Zune player will play back MP4, and a lot of people are going to be pissed if they find that the fancy vidcasts they grab from the net will play fine on their Zune, but won’t stream to/from the Xbox 360. Plus, the ability to play back MP4’s from your iPod, and on your Xbox 360 will be an enormous kick in the balls for Apple as well. So much for your fancy pants iTV box - the 360’s already doing it (with unprotected MP4 at least).

As for the licensing hassles, well.. there’s three options there. Make it some kind of unlock ability with the purchase of the HD DVD player (people won’t like that) because you’re technically paying the licensing costs there, or pay MS points for a downloadable codec pack thing (like the iPod AAC support, only with a price tag on it - if people are willing to blow 4000 points on NFS Carbon, surely paying for something of use wouldn’t be too out of the question), or ultimately, Microsoft could suck it in, pay the licensing costs, and give Xbox 360 owners the ability to play back XviD/H.264 in MP4 containers for free.

In any case, allowing MP4 playback would surely be the best of both worlds - gives people choice in formats to play, and doesn’t attract the stupid horde of pirates overly much. There are tons of legitimate uses for MP4 without DRM attached to it - just look at the sheer number of video podcasts out there. Being able to play them back on your big ass widescreen TV with little or no effort would also kick Apple right where it hurts, if it’s provided before that iTV thing hits the shelves.

Lets just hope our Redmond-based overlords hear our cries.