No lossless sound for Xbox 360 Elite system

[Anthony1]

Amir of AVSforums has confirmed my worst fear in regards to the Xbox 360 Elite. No lossless sound when used with the HD-DVD add on unit. For those that have no idea what the hell lossless sound is, it works like this:

When movies are put on DVD, the original audio has to be compressed to fit onto the DVD. Dolby Digital and DTS are two of the known compression routines. They sound incredible, but it's still a known fact that the sound is compressed. With the advent of HD-DVD and Blu Ray, along comes much greater storage capacity and the ability for movies to include the lossless (or uncompressed) soundtrack. As good as Dolby Digital 5.1 might sound, the lossless version of it sounds considerably improved. To get lossless sound from a HD-DVD or Blu Ray player, you need one of two things:


1. HDMI output

or

2. Analog outputs for each channel


It was thought that HD-DVD add-on owners would finally have a way to actually experience the improvement of lossless audio. The Xbox 360 Elite system has a HDMI output. Unfortunately, Amir from AVSforum dashed those dreams. Amir works directly for Microsoft, and was one of the lead people involved with the HD-DVD add-on unit, and explained in a recent post that the HDMI output for the 360 isn't meant for much more than video. Apparently it's some kind of hardware limitation with the 360. It seems that adding the ability to output lossless sound to the Xbox 360 Elite would have required a major re-working of the audio subsystem of the Xbox 360, and that it just wasn't worth it for MS to do that. He explained that the main reason for the HDMI output, was for people with 1080p TV's that lacked a VGA input that accepts 1080p. The Elite allows these people to see 1080p video via HDMI.


As a HD-DVD add-on owner myself, I'm very dissapointed with this bit of news. I'm very interested in hearing lossless sound in movies (and on certain PS3 games). I don't have a receiver that can handle lossless sound yet, but I'm planning on adding one in the very near future. I was hoping I would be able to hear lossless sound for both Blu Ray and HD-DVD movies, as well as certain PS3 games (Resistance, Lair). At this point, I'm thinking maybe I should sell my HD-DVD add on, and pick up a standalone HD-DVD player instead. I've heard some of the HD-DVD standalone players are going to get a pretty big price drop pretty soon. Well, I guess on the bright side, instead of spending unnecessary cash upgrading to the Elite, I can sell my HD-DVD add on, and add some money to that, and just get a standalone when the price drops.