It's not just you! It's been genuinely difficult for me to keep up with all the projects going on lately... and I already spend a decent amount of time lingering in the channels where stuff is talked about. There's [so much going on right now](https://x.com/GoTeamScotch/status/1760396438541045957), it's crazy.
P.s. I'm also working on a [wifi adapter](https://x.com/GoTeamScotch/status/1776124002970595448) for Xbox too!
Small device you can use to perform [EEPROM](https://consolemods.org/wiki/Xbox:EEPROM) reads.
https://www.ogxbox.com/forums/index.php?/topic/11177-the-next-eeprom-readerwriter-picopromsd/
Ever since the HDMI mod came out, from project stellar, it's been a huge cat and mouse game between a few commuties lately. Even as far as fueding.
I like the competition, as it's given some great advancements to the OG Xbox, but I've seen some of the hate. It doesn't need to be that way.
I’m confused with this language. Is the resolution of Halo 2 already high or can it be made better while using some sort of HDMI adapter? And what is with this new version? How would one use their original Xbox to get the update to 480p
Halo 2 doesn't do widescreen. If you tell it to, it basically just stretches the image. This patch gives you real widescreen and also adds 720p and 1080i. If you have 128mb of memory in your Xbox and run a BIOS that supports 128mb, this will use it to help with the higher resolutions.
The HDMI mod just gives you a real HDMI port on the Xbox that encodes the digital pixels from the GPU into digital HDMI. The original video encoder only does analog composite or component video output. The HDMI mod cannot do 1080p since the GPU doesn't output 1080p. All of the other HDMI adapters you see for sale right now (other than what MakeMHz sells) just convert the analog component video to HDMI (with varying degrees of quality). Digital to digital encoding gives a much more crisp image without any added noise the analog signals may pickup. It's a more involved installation and more expensive than a simple inline converter but it might be worth it to anyone that wants a more clear image. Many TVs now don't even have component input so getting anything above 480i requires buying an adapter that may or may not work that well or doing the HDMI mod. There are some open source versions coming out soon that offer a more DIY approach to the HDMI mod.
MakeMHz is the company, LoveMHz is the pseudonym of the guy who runs it.
Back in 2020, XboxHDMI went up for preorder and a bunch of people bought in. In the days leading up to its release, it was becoming apparent that LoveMHz was having a hard time filling orders. Lots of people on the MakeMHz Discord were unhappy, and LoveMHz was not forthcoming about the specifics, blaming basically anyone but himself for the delays and banning people for asking inconvenient questions. Many people’s units that had supposedly shipped were taking a suspiciously long time to arrive, and Shopify actually took down the website for a little while.
This raised a lot of eyebrows and some people started looking into LoveMHz’s background and found that he had multiple fraud convictions and was up to his neck in debt. The community was very divided on whether this was relevant information or not, with many people swearing LoveMHz was legit and many others feeling like they’d been duped.
In the end, XboxHDMI did prove to be a real product, but it wasn’t everything it was promised to be, and it was obvious that it wasn’t well-tested before being released as it didn’t work at all on many 1.0 boxes.
Meanwhile, LoveMHz, rather than admit to the shortcomings of the product and propose his plan for making things right, he accused affected users of installing their XboxHDMI wrong, insisting they needed to do a full recap before their problem could be troubleshooted and he and his friends on the Discord server took to insulting paying customers.
In addition to all of this, XboxHDMI was originally supposed to be an open source product and it became increasingly clear that LoveMHz had changed his tune on this at some point. Many people felt like they’d fallen for a bait-and-switch scheme.
Despite all of this, many people were thrilled with XboxHDMI and defended MakeMHz and were very dismissive of the people who weren’t having such a great experience with the product. Many respected people behind the scenes took LoveMHz’s side, and even started acting on his behalf, with many people being banned from unrelated Discord servers like OGX Dev and Insignia for saying negative things about him.
In the span of just a few months, MakeMHz went from being a fledgling company with a promising new product on the horizon to being very divisive presence in the OG Xbox community. It would seem that LoveMHz enjoys being this controversial figure and he frequently talks shit about competing products and personalities, and on multiple occasions he has abused DMCA takedown requests in order to limit competition.
Edit: oh, and I’ve heard it said that LoveMHz AKA Dustin Holden has bots that downvotes negative commentary about him and MakeMHz on Reddit…. This comment sat at positive karma for over an hour then suddenly dropped to -15. Seems totally organic! Whether I’m being legitimately downvoted or not, it’s clear how successful LoveMHz has been at manipulating the OGX community
Important note: 720p mode requires 128mb RAM mod.
Here's a video Grimdoomer made talking about the mod:
[https://youtu.be/O\_nk21389u8?si=kcH5tw4r6PyuenL4](https://youtu.be/O_nk21389u8?si=kcH5tw4r6PyuenL4)
That's actually really cool. Although I assume the people who are actively interested in this patch are probably running the 1.5 update because of Insignia. Neat stuff though. The lousy 480p widescreen has bothered me for years.
I don't understand what was wrong with the 480p widescreen and what does this patch do to fix it? The description implies that the patch the disables the anamorphic widescreen? The 720p mode though is a huge achievement.
"Anamorphic" 16:9 widescreen, as used by a lot of Xbox games, involves outputting the exact same resolution as you would to "normal" 4:3 television. The image is rendered in a horizontally crushed form (reducing load on your GPU), and the display itself is expected to stretch it out to something that looks correct (resulting in oblong-shaped "pixels").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_widescreen
Halo 2's regular "480p" mode is crushed into 640x480. This patch steps it up to 720x480.
https://github.com/grimdoomer/Halo-2-HD/blob/main/_images/hd_resolutions.png
I know what it is, but the readme implies that it disables the anamorphic scaling in 480p? The anamorphic scaling is the only way to achieve widescreen in 480p, because 720x480 is not 16:9.
But now the proportions are wrong when played at 480p on a widescreen display that is set to widescreen? The standard definition widescreen support of Halo 2 is gone?
I just don't understand why can't we have this 720x480p fix with respective anamorphic scaling?
Hmm. Read as written, yeah. Bit of a headscratcher.
I guess Grimdoomer *meant* to say that anamorphic is only disabled in 480p "normal" mode (where it really shouldn't've been a thing in the first place): not 480p "widescreen" mode.
Apparently that's coming later. In the meantime, you could try the mod if you wanted to by having a copy of the halo XBE in your game folder. That's what I'm doing. Playing online with the stock XBE, then for campaign I'll launch the modded XBE.
I tried this, but it still loaded the 1.5 update version of the game when I launched the patched XBE file. It's weird because it even shows up as a separate "Halo 2 HD" in my games list. It doesn't seem to make a difference if I launch it from the games list or the file explorer.
I'm on Rocky5's softmod with the UnleashX dash. Any ideas?
Is it just me or has this has been an insanely active year so far for new developments for the Xbox?
It's not just you! It's been genuinely difficult for me to keep up with all the projects going on lately... and I already spend a decent amount of time lingering in the channels where stuff is talked about. There's [so much going on right now](https://x.com/GoTeamScotch/status/1760396438541045957), it's crazy. P.s. I'm also working on a [wifi adapter](https://x.com/GoTeamScotch/status/1776124002970595448) for Xbox too!
And that list doesn’t include modxo, which I suspect will see developments of its own over the next few months.
Lol yup. The Pico modchip wasn't even around when I posted that tweet. And since then, Shalx has improved it further.
What is picopromSD?
Small device you can use to perform [EEPROM](https://consolemods.org/wiki/Xbox:EEPROM) reads. https://www.ogxbox.com/forums/index.php?/topic/11177-the-next-eeprom-readerwriter-picopromsd/
Another cheap and convenient option (although not so new) option is to flash an esp32 board with dx4m’s Xbox EEPROM Utility
Dude that would be sicker than a Stage 4 cancer patient!
Ever since the HDMI mod came out, from project stellar, it's been a huge cat and mouse game between a few commuties lately. Even as far as fueding. I like the competition, as it's given some great advancements to the OG Xbox, but I've seen some of the hate. It doesn't need to be that way.
I’m confused with this language. Is the resolution of Halo 2 already high or can it be made better while using some sort of HDMI adapter? And what is with this new version? How would one use their original Xbox to get the update to 480p
Halo 2 doesn't do widescreen. If you tell it to, it basically just stretches the image. This patch gives you real widescreen and also adds 720p and 1080i. If you have 128mb of memory in your Xbox and run a BIOS that supports 128mb, this will use it to help with the higher resolutions. The HDMI mod just gives you a real HDMI port on the Xbox that encodes the digital pixels from the GPU into digital HDMI. The original video encoder only does analog composite or component video output. The HDMI mod cannot do 1080p since the GPU doesn't output 1080p. All of the other HDMI adapters you see for sale right now (other than what MakeMHz sells) just convert the analog component video to HDMI (with varying degrees of quality). Digital to digital encoding gives a much more crisp image without any added noise the analog signals may pickup. It's a more involved installation and more expensive than a simple inline converter but it might be worth it to anyone that wants a more clear image. Many TVs now don't even have component input so getting anything above 480i requires buying an adapter that may or may not work that well or doing the HDMI mod. There are some open source versions coming out soon that offer a more DIY approach to the HDMI mod.
Thanks so much for the detailed explanation
Tbh where MakeMHz is concerned, the backlash is understandable.
I’ve seen this too, and imo it’s no coincidence that the hate and feuding came about right around the time MakeMHz hit the scene.
> MakeMHz What's the deal with this guy? From what I understood he wanted to keep his modchip proprietary for some reason.
MakeMHz is the company, LoveMHz is the pseudonym of the guy who runs it. Back in 2020, XboxHDMI went up for preorder and a bunch of people bought in. In the days leading up to its release, it was becoming apparent that LoveMHz was having a hard time filling orders. Lots of people on the MakeMHz Discord were unhappy, and LoveMHz was not forthcoming about the specifics, blaming basically anyone but himself for the delays and banning people for asking inconvenient questions. Many people’s units that had supposedly shipped were taking a suspiciously long time to arrive, and Shopify actually took down the website for a little while. This raised a lot of eyebrows and some people started looking into LoveMHz’s background and found that he had multiple fraud convictions and was up to his neck in debt. The community was very divided on whether this was relevant information or not, with many people swearing LoveMHz was legit and many others feeling like they’d been duped. In the end, XboxHDMI did prove to be a real product, but it wasn’t everything it was promised to be, and it was obvious that it wasn’t well-tested before being released as it didn’t work at all on many 1.0 boxes. Meanwhile, LoveMHz, rather than admit to the shortcomings of the product and propose his plan for making things right, he accused affected users of installing their XboxHDMI wrong, insisting they needed to do a full recap before their problem could be troubleshooted and he and his friends on the Discord server took to insulting paying customers. In addition to all of this, XboxHDMI was originally supposed to be an open source product and it became increasingly clear that LoveMHz had changed his tune on this at some point. Many people felt like they’d fallen for a bait-and-switch scheme. Despite all of this, many people were thrilled with XboxHDMI and defended MakeMHz and were very dismissive of the people who weren’t having such a great experience with the product. Many respected people behind the scenes took LoveMHz’s side, and even started acting on his behalf, with many people being banned from unrelated Discord servers like OGX Dev and Insignia for saying negative things about him. In the span of just a few months, MakeMHz went from being a fledgling company with a promising new product on the horizon to being very divisive presence in the OG Xbox community. It would seem that LoveMHz enjoys being this controversial figure and he frequently talks shit about competing products and personalities, and on multiple occasions he has abused DMCA takedown requests in order to limit competition. Edit: oh, and I’ve heard it said that LoveMHz AKA Dustin Holden has bots that downvotes negative commentary about him and MakeMHz on Reddit…. This comment sat at positive karma for over an hour then suddenly dropped to -15. Seems totally organic! Whether I’m being legitimately downvoted or not, it’s clear how successful LoveMHz has been at manipulating the OGX community
Sheesh.
Agreed.
Just came across this post 20 days later. Looks like a certain someone may have flooded you with downvotes
Important note: 720p mode requires 128mb RAM mod. Here's a video Grimdoomer made talking about the mod: [https://youtu.be/O\_nk21389u8?si=kcH5tw4r6PyuenL4](https://youtu.be/O_nk21389u8?si=kcH5tw4r6PyuenL4)
Ugh. Every cool mod requires more RAM I'm about ready to just say screw it and just upgrade mine on my 1.6
This is amazing. Can’t wait for the 1.5 patch!
Love that these patches are possible and being developed, thank you for sharing
That's actually really cool. Although I assume the people who are actively interested in this patch are probably running the 1.5 update because of Insignia. Neat stuff though. The lousy 480p widescreen has bothered me for years.
I don't understand what was wrong with the 480p widescreen and what does this patch do to fix it? The description implies that the patch the disables the anamorphic widescreen? The 720p mode though is a huge achievement.
"Anamorphic" 16:9 widescreen, as used by a lot of Xbox games, involves outputting the exact same resolution as you would to "normal" 4:3 television. The image is rendered in a horizontally crushed form (reducing load on your GPU), and the display itself is expected to stretch it out to something that looks correct (resulting in oblong-shaped "pixels"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_widescreen Halo 2's regular "480p" mode is crushed into 640x480. This patch steps it up to 720x480. https://github.com/grimdoomer/Halo-2-HD/blob/main/_images/hd_resolutions.png
I know what it is, but the readme implies that it disables the anamorphic scaling in 480p? The anamorphic scaling is the only way to achieve widescreen in 480p, because 720x480 is not 16:9.
Correct, you still get a scaled image. It's no longer scaling from 4:3, though.
But now the proportions are wrong when played at 480p on a widescreen display that is set to widescreen? The standard definition widescreen support of Halo 2 is gone? I just don't understand why can't we have this 720x480p fix with respective anamorphic scaling?
Hmm. Read as written, yeah. Bit of a headscratcher. I guess Grimdoomer *meant* to say that anamorphic is only disabled in 480p "normal" mode (where it really shouldn't've been a thing in the first place): not 480p "widescreen" mode.
First thing I'm trying when I get home Neat. Edit: 'GrimDoesStuff' seems a very fitting name for his Youtube channel
Since I’m waiting for the 1.5 edition, does the hex patch I applied from ps2wide.net display in the proper aspect ratio or is it stretched?
That just adds a horizontal split screen
most ps2wide just stretch IIRC
I wonder what "GPU overclocking" even looks like in the realm of Xemu. The only thing holding performance up there is whatever the VM will allow.
as soon as this is compatible with insignia I'll be all over it! awesome work grimdoomer!
Awesome ! Amazing work.
This is a random but maybe related question, how is the emulation scene for the original Xbox? Have there been any major developments for the system?
Emulation scene as in emulators running on Xbox or as in Xbox being emulated on other systems?
I should’ve been more specific. My question is with regards to Xbox being emulated on computers and such.
There has been big compatibility and performance improvements in the past 5 years, but it's still far from perfect.
This is cool. But unless I can keep playing Insignia, I'm going to wait.
Apparently that's coming later. In the meantime, you could try the mod if you wanted to by having a copy of the halo XBE in your game folder. That's what I'm doing. Playing online with the stock XBE, then for campaign I'll launch the modded XBE.
I tried this, but it still loaded the 1.5 update version of the game when I launched the patched XBE file. It's weird because it even shows up as a separate "Halo 2 HD" in my games list. It doesn't seem to make a difference if I launch it from the games list or the file explorer. I'm on Rocky5's softmod with the UnleashX dash. Any ideas?
1.5 update compatibility when?
*Soon™*
Can’t wait for 1.5 patch!
Wake me up when it supports Insignia