Xbox 360 Spotted at IDF - Xbox 360 to have HDMI?

The guys over at TrustedReviews.com went to the IDF (Intel Developer Forum) in the Moscone Center, San Francisco. As you all know already the Xbox 360 is powered by IBM PowerPCs, so they were pretty surprized when they saw an Xbox 360 at IDF.
A pre-production Xbox 360 hooked-up to a Samsung DLP rear projection TV has shown as part of the Microsoft Media Center demonstration. The Xbox 360 was streaming 720p HD video content from the MCE PC, but Microsoft assured 1080i would be possible too.







The Xbox 360 was connected via component video to the HDTV, but what's more surprizing is that a Microsoft representative told TrustedReviews the Xbox 360 can ouput over HDMI, but that the cable isn't available yet.

That's news for me ... so far Microsoft has never announced HDMI (or any digital video output for that matter).



Will it work on the 1st version of the retail Xbox360 or will this need a new Xbox 360 with modified video-encoder (afaik it can only output an analog signal in its current state)? A digital video output certainly would put an Xbox360 version with HD-DVD (or Blu-Ray) much closer, as the next-gen DVD formats require digital outputs as part of their copyright protection. This HDMI-news is not confirmed for now. We'll report back when we have more about this.