So Xbox Scene basically confirmed the living hell out of this “rumor”. They have very high resolution pics of the case and motherboard, showing all the changes. The main change to the motherboard is replacing the “Ana” scaler chip with a “Hana” scaler chip. This can only mean that the current scaling in the 360 CANNOT produce a digital output, hence the redesign. Check out the video for yourself. I’m expecting announcements tomorrow at Bill Gates’ CES keynote.

Video after the jump
Hit the jump for more…

Engadget got their hands on a nice pic of the new version of the Xbox 360, code-named “Zephyr” which should be coming “soon” according to their insider. Check the pic below for what proves to be the biggest feature: a dedicated HDMI port. I guess this puts to rest all the rumors that the AV port could actually ouput an HDMI signal. Also reported to be included is a 120GB hard drive, which should ease the pain of running out of space all the time, which I’ve even done a time or two, and I haven’t even downloaded any movies or TV shows yet.

My big question is what is Microsoft going to do for everyone that already has a 360 that has been bitching about no digital video output? Are they going to say “Oh well” and make everyone buy a new one? How much is this upgraded box going to cost anyway. I know I would LOVE to have HDMI output on my 360 for the HD-DVD movies at 1080p and full HDMI uncompressed audio, but I don’t see myself spending another $400 on it. Microsoft better be offering some sort of major discount to current 360 owners, or even better, a trade-up program. Send them your old 360, pay a small fee, get a new HDMI 360.

UPDATE (from jmel): Xbox-scene now has footage and more details on this nice little present to 360 gamers that have listened to the xbox team play down hdmi since the consoles launch a year ago.

Pic after the jump
Hit the jump for more…

So I downloaded Gran Turismo HD on Christmas Day from the PlayStation Store. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much. One track, 10 cars, time trial and drift trial modes only. I fired it up for the first time and my fiance said, and I quote, “Holy fucking shit. There’s no way that’s a video game.” She hit it dead on. My impression was the same. WOW. This is the best looking driving game I’ve EVER seen. At 1080p with a slick framerate, the game looks fantastic. The lighting on the cars and car models are insane. The backgrounds on the course are the best I’ve ever seen. It puts Project Gotham 3 to shame.

The car handling is just as expected with an Gran Turismo game. Each car handles uniquely, and I can confirm that the Acura RSX Type S in the game handles very close to the real thing. You start out with the shitty car that can’t do more than 45mph, but as you beat the times in Time Trial mode, you unlock new cars up until you get the coveted Ferrari. By starting with a slow, shitty car, those new to the game get a feel for the realistic style of driving. It’s almost like a mini license test mode.

The drift mode is interesting, although I’m not a fan of it with this series. It’s always been about realistic racing, and I think adding drifting to the game brings the ghetto to it, which isn’t needed. That’s not what the series has ever been about.

I’m hoping they release some more tracks, hopefully free. I’m satisfied with the number of cars for a glorified demo. An extra track or two would be nice, but we’ll see.

The only gripe I have, which I’ve heard from other people, is that you can’t really customize your car like in the full game. It’s a demo, I know, but at least allow people to customize the parts on the car fully. I’d love to re-work the gear ratios and downforce on some of the cars to get tighter turns and better acceleration.

As a free demo, I give this a 9.5 out of 10. Can’t wait for the full game, but I’m expecting late 2008 or early 2009 for that. Poliphony Digital always takes forever to make their games.

So I decided to hook up my Xbox 360 with VGA cables to my new Samsung 1080p HDTV, since the only way to get 1080p from HD-DVD with the console is to use VGA. Yeah, absolutely retarded, I know. Can you say HDMI cable? Anyway, I am among the close to 100% of VGA users who are experiencing issues. You either get washed out colors, extremely soft picture, or both. I’m experiencing the ridiculously soft picture quality. You can tell right away with the text in the dashboard looking muddy. Another huge problem I have is that the picture doesn’t seem to truely be 1920×1080. When you first turn it on, the image doesn’t fill the screen at all. There’s a 1-2″ black border around the whole screen. I was able to zoom the picture with the TV menus, but it still is not the same picture as the component video cables. You can tell it’s not zoomed in as far.

I’ve read a couple places where Microsoft outputs in a non-standard way over VGA, which is why people are having issues with VGA. Seriously, why the bloody fuck can’t Microsoft just put out an HDMI cable? This would solve just about every issue people with 1080p sets are having right now. My guess, which I would wager a good deal of money on at this point, is that the hardware just isn’t there to output digital video. Unless they update the hardware, there’s no chance of getting HDMI output on the 360. And I know for damn sure I’m not buying another one. If they could do it, they would have released one already to combat the only thing the PS3 has going for them.

[Update] I know a lot of people have no problems with the VGA connection on a computer monitor. I was referring to TVs here.