XBOX 360 HDMI in Action

Here's a bit more about the news published earlier about the Xbox 360 'Zephyr' prototype with HDMI port. It's the 2nd time a HMDI picture leaked (1st time here if you missed it) and it looks like there are still many people that don't (want to) believe it ... so I guess it's time we come clear because Microsoft doesn't and we think you as customer has the right to know what's coming.

Microsoft still refuses to acknowledge it ... this is what they replied today to several news outlets:

"We have seen all types of claimed leaked photos like this show up online and as a standard policy we don't comment on speculative items."

We managed to get some exclusive High-Resolution pictures for x-scene of a 'Zephyr' prototype with the HDMI port. No, it's no retail Xbox360, it's a prototype board ... but Microsoft had to design a new scaler chip named 'HANA' (replacing the (analog-only?) 'ANA' chip found in current retail and dev Xboxes), I doubt they'll do that effort for nothing. You will also notice several other changes to the motherboard.

Microsoft always refused to answer any question about a possible HDMI-cable for the Xbox360 (even when asked for explicitly), but this HANA chip probably confirms the current 360 can only output an analog signal, so an HDMI-cable for the current 360 probably won't be possible (sure they could design a cable/box that reconverts the analog output to digital, but that makes no sense and is not the point).

Note: we can't tell/confirm you if the HDMI port, 65nm CPU and larger (120gb) HD are linked to each other. They might or might not be released together. The 65nm CPU is coming anyway for all Xbox models (confirmed by MS and Chartered long time ago + delay news). And it's also pretty obvious (with current demand and video marketplace) that MS will release a larger HD sooner or later, this requires no change to the motherboard.