Microsoft"s Dashboard update for the Xbox 360 console was launched worldwide earlier in December. Now there are reports from users that the update has caused the video playback quality of the console to actually become worse. Eurogamer"s Digital Foundry division has looked into the reports and posted up word that, in its opinion, the reports are justified.
In order to test their hypothesis, Digital Foundry took a number of game screenshots and encoded them into a WMV file. The video was then run on an Xbox 360 with the Dashboard update and one which had not had the update installed. According to the article seeing the screenshots in motion makes it clear that there is something wrong.
The article states:
The washed-out nature of the colour does indeed suggest that limited range RGB is kicking in, and while in most cases the effects could be seen as minor, the fact is that video compression artifacts are considerably more noticeable due to the error in decoding: macroblocking that would be otherwise be less apparent within darker colours is now more readily visible.
The issues with the Xbox 360"s video playback seem to occur with both the component video connections and the HDMI-based video port of the Xbox 360 console. So far Microsoft has not even acknowledged that there is an issue with the video playback nor is there any word on plans for a software update to fix the issue.