Enlarge (credit: Marseille ) Well, this is a turn-up for the books. Normally an HDMI cable that claims to improve your picture quality would be just so much audiophool [editorial standards prevent me from using an appropriate noun here]. HDMI cables carry digital signals, and bits are bits, right? Add to that a “directional” claim—you’ve gotta plug the right end into the TV—and normally our eyes would be rolling. But the Marseille mCable Gaming Edition appears to be a working, legitimate product. It’s an HDMI cable that makes the kind of claims that we’ve come to expect from audiophile con men, but there’s a key difference: Marseille isn’t making its performance claims on the basis of specious nonsense about construction, materials, and chakras. Rather, this cord works because the Gaming Edition HDMI cable has a microchip in it. That microchip performs anti-aliasing of the signal passed through the cable. The cable is intended for console gamers. While the Xbox One X is set to shake things up a bit when it’s released later this year, the consoles currently on the market are, especially from a GPU perspective, relatively underpowered. While PC gamers can readily achieve 1080p or better with a wide range of anti-aliasing options—which offer all kinds of trade-offs between performance, image quality, and the visibility of jagged edges—console gamers have far fewer options. Their graphics processors just aren’t strong enough to offer the same kind of flexibility and image quality. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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This $120 HDMI cable claims to make your picture better… and it does
According to an exclusive report from Windows Central, Microsoft’s upcoming “Project Scorpio” gaming console will feature an internal power supply unit (PSU), similar to the Xbox One S, and 4K game DVR and streaming at 60 frames-per-second (FPS). From the report: In Microsoft’s efforts to make Project Scorpio a true 4K system, it will also feature HEVC and VP9 codecs for decoding 4K streams for things such Netflix, just like the Xbox One S. It will also leverage HEVC for encoding 2160p, 60 frame-per-second (FPS) video for Game DVR and streaming. Microsoft’s Beam streaming service has been running public 4K stream tests for some time, and it’s now fair to assume it will not only be PC streamers who will benefit. Project Scorpio’s Game DVR will allow you to stream and record clips in 4K resolution with 60FPS, according to our sources, which is a massive, massive step up from the 720p, 30FPS you get on the current Xbox One. With every bit of information we receive about Project Scorpio, the theme of native 4K keeps appearing — not only for games, but also console features. We now believe Scorpio will sport 4K Game DVR, 4K Blu-ray playback, and 4K streaming apps, but the real showstopper will be the 4K games Microsoft will likely flaunt at E3 2017. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
