Xbox One gets a HD Streaming Boost with HEVC

Earlier this month, Larry Hryb tweeted that an Xbox One update would be going out with a few background changes to prepare for the future. The new update changes may be in regards to the coming Windows 10. But, who knows.

What we do know is that the new update that went out on June 5th, made a few changes to multiplayer and fixed a few problems with bundled games – all of this was released in the service notes on support.xbox.com. If there were any other changes made we may only hear about them in the future. However, the new update also details 10-bit HEVC support being added to the console. This isn’t a new feature per-say, but it may have been something worth actually mentioning to people. If you’re unsure what 10-bit HEVC support is and why you should take note of it, the support page had this to say:

“10-bit HD HEVC enables video streaming apps, like NetFlix, to use lower bandwidth to deliver HD quality video streams. 10-bit Ultra color increases the video color precision from 8-bits to 10-bits – with 8-bits you only get 16 million colors, but with 10-bit Ultra color precision you get 1 billion life-like colors that makes your video more vibrant.”

In layman’s terms that means that anyone that uses streaming services, such as Netflix, may see a boost in performance. The purpose of 10-bit HEVC is to increase data compression to allow for higher efficiency; which allows a better picture with a lower bit-rate. Alternately, if the data is transmitted on the same bandwidth, 10-bit HEVC can actually boost the quality of the image. This is good news for anyone that uses their Xbox as their entertainment hub. These changes should be appearing with the update this month. So, I am curious as to how it could be applied to future updates. I’m wondering if it’s the precursor to streaming between your console and PC that is supposed to be implemented with Windows 10.

Categories: NEWS, Xbox One

Tags: 10-bit HD HEVC, June update, streaming, Xbox One

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