Spot the HDMI-enabled Xbox 360 Premium at retail

by Christopher Grant on Aug 10th 2007 10:05AM

After discovering that some newly price-dropped Xbox 360 Premium units were packing HDMI ports – a feature previously reserved for the more expensive Elite model – we immediately wanted to know how savvy shoppers could track down these beasts at retail. Thanks to some pics snapped by anonymous Photobucketer "wonderkins" you can clearly see that the HDMI models are labeled as such. See, right there: "HDMI port."

The packaging has more details, however, on what exactly is inside the case. A label clearly refers to the model as "Zephyr" – the codename for the Elite motherboard. It would appear that the purported 65nm "Falcon" motherboard has yet to make it into stores so, for know, HDMI and an improved heatsink is all you're getting.

Source

Tags: HDMI, Xbox-360, Zephyr

Reader Comments (69)

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh YEA!!! Wut up wit the 65nm... Is that in there too.....

Did you even read the whole summary Brucie? The mind boggles.

Mind Bottling

I asked because it's not like joystiq knows!! I wanted to see if anyone has actually opened one up...
Mind Bending I Know...

BUT! The Core console now comes with a wireless controller.

Ooops... not a Core. But the console picture looks so very much like a Core (no HDD on the top/left, and no chromed front).

I'm still pissed I didn't get an HDMI port.

Yes I am really pissed I bought my 2003 year model car instead of a 2005. Are you kidding.

CRAP!

I have a theory: I'm willing to bet they over manufactured their Elite Mobos. I'm also willing to bet that the 65nm chips are still right around the corner. Therefore, the premiums are now getting the HDMI port to reduce the stock of the overmanufactured elite mobos in preparation for moving the entire line over to the falcon mobo.

Eh? Yes?

I think you're close. I think they stopped manufacturing the old non-hdmi mobos entirely once the zephyr ones were in full swing. They'll probably use the ones they have left on core systems and when they're gone, so is the core.

yeah, it'd definitely be more expensive to continue manufacturing two different motherboards just to sell a small number of elites.

thanks joystiq now im gonna warn the whole world!!!!

what seems to be the officer problem?

The triple digit head down here has slowly over-whelmed the air-conditioning in my apartment, and my poor 360 has begun to intermittently give me the Cirque du Rouge after too much HD movie playing or gaming.

When it finally gives up for good, Im sending it in for repair, then trading it in. Hopefully I can get me a Falcon-based Elite.

Chris:
Did you make that graphic in the Skitch Beta on a Mac? It's so easy and fast to do simple things in Skitch without having to open Photoshop. Interesting post too.

way to be relevant

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=macs_cant

Yeah, on skitch. It's really great for blogging. I actually opened this up in Photoshop to fix the levels and crop the images for comparison purposes better, but then added the text and arrow in skitch, cause I like the way it does 'em better.

Wow, that's barely noticeable, not that I expected it to be printed all huge on the box.

Went to Best Buy yesterday to take a look, and there were no consoles in stock at all. Went to another Best Buy closer to my house on the way home from work, same thing there. That's the first time I've seen that happen since April/May '06 when the consoles stopped being so hard to find. I don't even know if they were the HDMI models (and doubt that they were), but I guess the price drop seems to be having at least some effect.

I too noticed a lot of units selling at my local Fred Meyer's. They have these PS3's that aren't moving, and a constant resupply of Wii's but they are selling shelves upon shelves of 360's along with the HD-DVD drives. This happening before the price drop. Not sure what is going on, but the 360's and Wii's are definitely flying off the shelves.

Nice. Thanks for the heads up. I probably won't get mine until after the "300" contest is over though. I kinda wish Micro$oft went with selling that custom case over the Halo3 one. :\

Most likely they are using the old, non-65nmCPU Elite board... they had a contract with the supplier to produce x number of these boards, they would want to exhaust this supply before eventually jumping the 65nm specific board.

Great deal-- especially with Halo 3 coming out.

Ah, nice. Didn't know the box would list the codenames. That'll definitely make it easier to locate a 90nm, a 90nm+HDMI, or a 65nm+HDMI 360.

I wasn't trying to start up the whole Mac / PC debate, I was just wondering if he used Skitch on the graphic, because it looks like he did. And I've already read that post by Maddox, it's hella old now.

Anyone who uses the term "hella" in this day and age is as old a George Washington's Turds. :D

Set an example, 'Granted' and STFU yourself... Maddox? Yeah, what a ZINGER... Funny! ...If you're 14 and insecure!

What a waste of money.

MS releases a half-assed console and expects their customers to keep buying it over and over again.
(Until they finally fix the damn thing)

They should have just released the console "right" in the beginning. An all shit that's going on now, probably wouldn't be happening.

But of course the console would've cost around the same price as a PS3, if they did that.

So what's more important? Having a reliable console available to their customers? Or a having a console available that has a shit load of problems, but a least its cheaper than our competitors.

All Xbox 360s behave the same. They play the same games. They perform the same. Thank you for playing.

Having a console with lots of games I want to play.

Do all newly manufactured consoles have the new heatsink installed?

Yeah all the Zephr models have the new heat sink installed plus a three year warranty...You know what I might put my Xbox in he oven to make it Red Ring...You know cuz I can just get another one for free....LOL

Well it's the only system hardcore gamers have got. PS3 is going the way of the gamecube considering 3rd party game companies are going to put their priorites with systems that acutally sell.

And the WII is cool I guess but there is barely even online play yet, let alone even a decent fps.

Terra Brooks
Aug 10th 2007
10:55AMWhat a waste of money.

"MS releases a half-assed console and expects their customers to keep buying it over and over again.
(Until they finally fix the damn thing)

They should have just released the console "right" in the beginning. An all shit that's going on now, probably wouldn't be happening.

But of course the console would've cost around the same price as a PS3, if they did that.

So what's more important? Having a reliable console available to their customers? Or a having a console available that has a shit load of problems, but a least its cheaper than our competitors."

You are a looser. You Copy and paste the same thing on all posts. Get a life. Play you'r PS3 (I have one 2). Why are you so angre at the Xbox 360. It is a bad ass sistem

And to think I was going to buy one today.

I suppose I can wait another month so they can start throwing in the 65nm chips.

You're almost there with your hardware microsoft, now stop trying to rip us all off.

Hmm, what are the chances the 65nm motherboard will make it into the UK Elite consoles by august 24th?

I'd say slim to none.

I'll hold out for the Falcon board, also because I still have my launch box and it works fine! even though I nearly killed it using one of those stupid nyko intercoolers (1st gen with the plastic connection) it almost shorted it out, in fact it did burn the nyko and I had to pry it off. But once it was off still works just fine. kinda freaks me out lol but no complaints

Carry on the crusade Joystiq! Spread your beacon of light for all to see!

Evidently I missed reading something somewhere. What's the benefit of the HDMI?

1080p output for those of you with 1080p native sets that don't accept it over component, or don't have VGA. Also, DVD upscaling for those without VGA input.

Digital video and audio through one little cable. I don't think it's completely relevant right now (given the still-small HD penetration), but in a couple of years, I'd expect everything to use HDMI as the de facto standard.

Just about every HDTV manufactured in the last few years has HDMI. Simply put, it's the standard for HD content.

I would rather use displayport.

More bandwidth, higher resolutions, better color depth, longer cabling, and no licensing fees to get in the way.

Display port was designed primarly as a video connection. HDMI was designed primarly as a money making DRM licensing scheme. DisplayPort has been adopted as a VESA standard and is gaining a lot of support.

Samsung is just starting to get DisplayPort displays on the market, and ATI is preparing a DisplayPort equipped Video card. Hopefully we will get DisplayPort on our consoles and just leave the whole HDMI behind.

This is sweet, it doesn't affect my launch console but its great for new buyers.

So now lets see for what 350 we get a 20gb Hard Drive, HDMI port, Hidef cables(presuming HDMI cables since the Elite came with them I think.), Wireless Controller, Ether net Cable, Wired Headset. And the system with the best first part and multiplatform games and a kickin online system. This is really starting to make PS3 look bad.

Does anybody know if it comes with an HDMI cable? The PS3 doesn't, but the 360 Elite model does. My guess would be that since the Elite has one so does this one, but haven't seen anything to confirm that yet.

I don't think so. Aaron Greenberg intimated to me that the HDMI cable is the premium experience that the Elite offers, not the HDMI port. So, we have HDMI ports on the Pro console, but I suspect they don't have HDMI cables.

Oh, I want to be "that guy". You guys keep slamming sony for saying that nextgen didnt need rumble but now they are toying around with it. How about MS? They said that HDMI was not needed but looky here.

HDMI wasn't a standard back then. Even NOW its not that widespread. Most people still use regular old tv's. My parents just now bought an HDTV and only 1 for the living room.

There are two completely different things.

Do you remember 2005? When the 360 came out. When only the high end TV's had HDMI?

Yeah, they didn't need it. Still don't, technically, since most everything will take a VGA signal. But people wanted it, so they put it in.

Why are u even reading 360 news if ur just obviously a POS3 Fangirl, bored?? Waiting for KZ2 are u? Hahahahahahaha!! So much hype over that game. Dobt itll get a score over 8.5

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 50 Comments

Sorry, you must be logged in to leave a comment.

Breaking News

The most popular posts
in the last 7 days

Vita 'UMD Passport' won't be offered in US 218 comments
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning review: A tempting fate 151 comments
David Jaffe leaves Eat Sleep Play, layoffs hit developer [Update] 107 comments
Don't call it a remake: Final Fantasy X is a 'remaster,' to be clear 95 comments
Battleship movie adapted into FPS by Double Helix 92 comments

Spot the HDMI-enabled Xbox 360 Premium at retail

Reader Comments (69)

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:10AM Brucie B said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:35AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 1:18PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 1:57PM Brucie B said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:11AM LiqwidZero said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:14AM LiqwidZero said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:13AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 11th 2007 6:22PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:13AM Crono141 said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:38AM MooseMuffin said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:44AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:14AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:27AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:14AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:16AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:30AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:37AM chrisgrant said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:19AM KaneRobot said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 1:28PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:24AM foxhound said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:27AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:29AM Stevorino said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:35AM BPMOmega XBL PSN Steam said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:37AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 12:57PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 11th 2007 4:29AM ill trooper said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:55AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:01AM watership said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:04AM chuckrich81 said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:16AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 12:42PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 1:06PM kid said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 3:41PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 10:57AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:02AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:17AM Crono141 said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:42AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:18AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:41AM Endjin said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:48AM chrisgrant said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:49AM BPMOmega XBL PSN Steam said

Posted: Aug 11th 2007 1:59AM KaneRobot said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 1:27PM Ordeith said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:46AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:47AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:50AM chrisgrant said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:49AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:54AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 11:58AM Crono141 said

Posted: Aug 10th 2007 12:14PM (Unverified) said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

Double Fine's Kickstarter adventure surpasses $400K goal

Featured Stories

Rhythm Heaven Fever review: Crazy into you

Remedy not done with Alan Wake

The Joystiq Show - DICE 2012: David Jaffe and Kevin Dent

The most popular postsin the last 7 days

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW

The most popular posts
in the last 7 days