We noticed over at ActiveXbox there was a link to a new FAQ at the official support site for the Xbox. Among the interesting items were these:
Can the Xbox hook up to a Computer Monitor?
The Xbox video game system is intended for use with television sets. This focus allows gamers to enjoy the superior visual and sound capacity of high-definition and high-resolution television sets.Can I play games on a network?
In the future, the broadband adapter will allow you to connect to online gaming sessions for multi-player gaming across the Internet.
Broadband capability is scheduled to go live in the summer of 2002. For more information, visit http://www.xbox.com.
Nothing here that is a real shock-- we've known for awhile that online support wouldn't be for awhile. However, the answer for the first question, while it doesn't come right out and say no , doesn't seem to say yes . It seems to be trying to say that televisions, or at least High Definition televisions, are superior to monitors, which is... interesting, to say the least. Maybe it's my eyes...
Comments
no7orious
Do you smell something? I do, I think it smells like BS!!!!!!
No, The xbox is for use with display devices. Also the assumption that most owners of the xbox will have HDTVs. I would be willing to bet that you would find a lot more people with monitors, than you would HDTVs.
I'm not even going to comment on HDTVs giving out superior sound capability... okay I lied, Do they meant that HDTVs make noise when they operate? I certainly hope not. If they are implying that Owners of HDTVs should use the included speakers, then that is gay... most speakers included with HDTVs imo are crap. If you can spend $1000 on a TV, then you can get a decent surround system.
Claude Errera
Nothing stopping you...
...from adding a TV tuner with S-Video input to your computer.
Seems like a cheesy change, though - from the very beginning, they'd said they were supporting VGA output; why the flip-flop at this late date?
vector40
Re: Nothing stopping you...
In reply to: Nothing stopping you...Claude Errera wrote on Wednesday, 10/17/2001 - 14:32:
: ...from adding a TV tuner with S-Video input to your
: computer.
:
: Seems like a cheesy change, though - from the very
: beginning, they'd said they were supporting VGA output; why
: the flip-flop at this late date?
Who says this is even correct?
narcogen
Re: Nothing stopping you...
In reply to: Re: Nothing stopping you...vector40 wrote on Wednesday, 10/17/2001 - 21:24:
: Who says this is even correct?
I don't know. It is a direct cut and paste from the official site, though.
You'd think if the answer was "yes, you may hook up a monitor, even though we think it's better on HDTV" they'd have said it.
They don't say yes... but they don't say no.
I'm not really sure what to think, really. I can't imagine there are significant engineering issues to be worked out making what is, in essence, a simple dongle.
If I had to be pessimistic, I'd suggest that what is really going on here is that they've found that games running on production Xbox hardware don't perform well at higher resolutions or just don't support them at all, and perhaps they have disabled or are considering disabling VGA output in order to prevent this from being revealed to the consumer; stop PC gamers or other fringe elements of the Xbox consumer base from complaining about low framerates at high resolutions and possibly generating bad press for the box.
Other than that, I can't really think of a good reason.