Softmodding my PAL Xbox (a.k.a. The 480p Revolution)

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Demiath

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Published on May 9, 2020 9:27:46 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIMTbXl_1IY

Duration: 6:26

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Recorded on real Xbox hardware.

When I bought a used Xbox several years ago modding the system wasn't even on the radar, but now that I'm playing games on it more regularly the inherent limitations with the console's unmodded state have started to become apparent. Specifically, the main problem with vanilla PAL Xboxes is that they are locked to 480i, despite having the hardware capability - just like their NTSC counterparts - to display 480p and even (in supported games) 720p and 1080i.

Thankfully, softmodding an original Xbox is much simpler than I had imagined and took less than 30 minutes once I had the necessary equipment and files. The most traumatic part of the experience was probably having to violate a pristine, sealed copy of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (not exactly a rare game and this was only the Classics edition, but still...), which is one of the exploit games used for the softmodding process.

Although the combination of my cheap capture device, the recording software's upscaling methods and YouTube's compression probably doesn't do it justice in this video, the transition from interlaced to progressive scan makes a substantial difference to the visual presentation. In the roughly 20 years since the console was first released I've never seen an Xbox outputting in 480p in real life before, and it truly feels like being lifted out of the fog and smudge and entering a brave new world of gloriously razor-sharp jaggies (rarely has the lack of anti-aliasing felt *this* good!).

On a side note, via the softmod interface I was able to confirm that my Xbox is indeed a late 1.6 model (MFG 2005-12-16); meaning that I should not have any problems with those infamous clock capacitors which are such ticking time bombs inside the earlier hardware revisions...

MrMario2011's excellent softmodding tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW6QsGXTrFQ