HD Cable - XBOX ONE S Cable Signal Upscaling vs. Native 4K TV upscaling

Tetsuwan Atomu · Sep 2, 2016

I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I'm one of the few that greatly enjoyed having my cable box running through my XBOX via the One Guide. I recently upgraded my system with the S, a Sony XBR-55X930D, and a 4K capable AVR (Sony STR-DH770). I noticed
a significant degradation in the cable picture (Comcast/Xfinity) when running my original setup that I had pre 4K HDR (cable -> XBOX ONE S -> AVR -> TV) the picture looked pretty bad, with lots of noise, made me sad. When plugging the cable directly into the
TV, or through the receiver and then TV I get much better results.

My theory is two-fold, either the XBOX ONE S doesn't handle 4K upscaling as well as advertised (particularly when compared to the TV), or something gets screwy when the TV reads the source as a 4K signal from the XBOX ONE S when the cable source is 1080P.
But also made me think, given that most UHD 4K TVs that are compatible with XBOX ONE S do a good job upscaling, why would the XBOX ONE S try to upscale the cable signal. I'm just wondering if there's a setting where I can set the cable signal to pass through
the XBOX to the receiver as a native 1080P signal vs having the XBOX upscale and then shooting it back to the TV. I know it's a silly question, but it feels like another lost feature as I enjoy using the voice commands and One Guide with the XBOX.

Any suggestions? Or did anyone experience similar issues?

:)

LuvOfThaGame · Sep 2, 2016

Why does TV look like garbage on the Xbox One?

XFistsClenchedX said: L: ↑

My cable channels look the same whether they're going through the Xbox One or not.Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Mine too. I don't understand how there could be a problem. Isn't the cable just passing through the Xbox? Mine looks the same as it did before.Click to expand... I used to have DTV. If you don't select native in settings, the signal will get upscaled before it goes out to the xbox. Depending on channels, it can get upscaled twice which will make the signal look terrible. For example; ESPN is 720p. Depending on settings, dtv would upscale that to 1080i. Then the Xbox would upscale that to 1080p. The best picture would be to have native out so dtv sends signal at 720p and Xbox upscaled to 1080p. Most of the tv picture issues stem from this. Never scale an image twice.
Click to expand...

CoiledTomb38 · Sep 2, 2016

Xbox One and 4K output

If you own a Sony 4K tv you'll want to make sure you don't have the Xbox doing any upscaling. If a game is native 720p set the Xbox to 720p as well. The Sony 4K set will upscale it to 4k from there. Otherwise you are upscaling on top of upscaling which is
not good.

SmartriX · Sep 18, 2016

I experienced this same thing and thought I was crazy, very noticeable degradation in picture quality on cable since going to the X1S.

Russell Shaw · Nov 2, 2018

I found on normal Xbox one, the HDMI passthru was significantly worse than by passing Xbox.

So maybe the up scaling is fine, it is just the signal gets degraded too much before the up scaling step happens.

SmartriX

I experienced this same thing and thought I was crazy, very noticeable degradation in picture quality on cable since going to the X1S.

Russell Shaw

I found on normal Xbox one, the HDMI passthru was significantly worse than by passing Xbox.

So maybe the up scaling is fine, it is just the signal gets degraded too much before the up scaling step happens.

ArminatorX

On the Xbox One S games have to be upscaled to 4K. UHD BluRays and 4K digital video streaming will be output in native 4K on the Xbox One S.

Check with the HiSense support, why your TV would not detect a 4K signal from the console. Also make sure that your HDMI cable that you use is able to sustain the higher data rate of 4K video. If you have an older HDMI cable that is not HDMI2.2 compliant,
the cable might induce errors in the data stream, and the TV can't make any sense of the erroneous data coming through the cable.

SwordofWhedon

Your television is already upscaling it to 4K, it doesn't matter if the Xbox does it. Everything is displayed in 4K at the native resolution of the panel

Just keep in mind that upscaling is not real resolution, the TV is reporting the input signal, not what it does with it.

XBF Javier R

Hello Jdonnelly,

Information about 4K and 4K upscaling can be found on our What is 4K? support article, which contains this piece of information:

Native 4K vs. 4K upscaling

When you set your console resolution to 4K UHD, everything on the console—Home, games, and apps—will display at 4K. On Xbox One X, 4K content is displayed in its native 4K resolution, and other content (like games encoded for 1080p) is upscaled to 4K. Games
on Xbox One S also get upscaled to 4K. While typically smoother and more detailed than native 720p or 1080p, upscaled 4K is not as rich and detailed as native 4K.

To set your resolution and upscale everything to 4K, press the Xbox button to open the guide, go to
System > Settings > Display & sound >
Video output. For TV resolution, select
4K UHD.

Try checking this article and let us know if this helps.

Best wishes!

HD Cable - XBOX ONE S Cable Signal Upscaling vs. Native 4K TV upscaling