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Xbox 360 Spring Update Includes H.264/MPEG4 Support

Apr 9, 2007 at 1:04pm in Media

Xbox 360 media lovers rejoice! In the release notes for the upcoming Spring 2007 Dashboard update, Microsoft has a few interesting lines:

- Support for streaming WM-DRM protected content from a PC
- H.264 video support: Up to 15 Mbps, Baseline, Main, and High (up to level 4.1) Profiles with 2 channel AAC LC and Main Profiles.
- Added MPEG-4 Part 2 video support: Up to 8 Mbps, Simple Profile with 2 channel AAC LC and Main Profiles.

What does this mean? The Xbox 360 is finally becoming a media powerhouse. Xbox 360 owners will be able to watch protected WMV files, H.264 files such as podcasts, and basic MPEG-4 videos. While DivX/Xvid support still has not been added, the new codecs greatly increase the number of videos the Xbox 360 supports. Also, the inclusion of H.264 allows for easier transcoding on platforms such as OS X.

The Xbox 360 Spring 2007 Dashboard update will hit the Marketplace on May 7 for the low, low price of free.

2 Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Xbox 360 Spring 2007 Update Review · cavemonkey50.com
    on May 9, 2007 at 4:38 pm

    [...] Spring 2007 update had to be H.264 / MPEG-4 support. I covered my opinion of the additional support in a previous post, so I’ll stick mainly to the [...]

  2. Top 5 XBOX360 Spring Update Wishlist
    on May 21, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    [...] video to something that the Xbox wouldn’t pull its face at. Along with Divx, support for the H.264 codec also came which is great and again allowed a lot more video to be played. The trouble with the [...]