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Another Port Bites The Dust: Xbox Series X Drops S/PDIF Audio

posted by Fnord666 on Friday March 20 2020, @10:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the any-port-in-a-storm dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Xbox Series X will be missing the optical S/PDIF audio output that was present on the Xbox One and Xbox 360 hardware lines.

[...] The removal will mainly impact players who use a small subset of high-end gaming headsets and audio systems that rely on the optical audio connection instead of audio sent over HDMI or Microsoft's wireless standard. Some users will be able to use S/PDIF passthrough output from their TV-set as a replacement, though. And Windows Central reports that wireless headset makers like Astro are already working on solutions to make existing Xbox One-compatible S/PDIF products work on the Series X.

Microsoft has also confirmed that the Series X will be missing the IR extension port that was present on the back of the Xbox One and the IR blaster that was present on the Xbox One S. Those features were only really useful in extremely limited circumstances, such as for Xbox users who wanted to use the system's TV remote control functions without plugging in a Kinect sensor.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 20 2020, @03:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 20 2020, @03:41PM (#973528)

    If you need it, you have your hdmi from your console to your reciever and the reciever breaks it out to spdif (if it's not HDCP encoded and refuses to output via S/PDIF.)

    Normally (although it is technically possible in the protocol) the audio packets are not encrypted when HDCP is in use. So you can get audio splitters with whatever connectivity you want and they will work... although some of the cheapass splitter devices are likely fine at ~150MHz FHD but will fail horribly at higher clock rates. If you need it, good stuff that works reliably at high rates is available but can be somewhat expensive (e.g., look for extron gear on ebay).