MakeMHz has just released a new firmware for the Xbox HDMI mod + BIOS Upgrade called Project Stellar with a ton of really impressive video output updates. Their press release has all the details (and all my fellow video nerds should give it a read), but the basic overview is with the update, you now have full control over the video output. If you have a modern HDMI scaler, you can send it the raw signal, with the scaler doing any and all processing. Or you can access new modes where Project Stellar does the scaling for direct connection to a display without a scaler. Plus you can toggle some of the built-in Xbox scaling that may or may not be the look you’re going for. Once again, check out the post for all the info, as there’s far too much to include in this post:
Full Press Release: https://makemhz.com/blogs/news/project-stellar-firmware-update-1-8
Purchase Here: https://makemhz.com/collections/xbox
I think mods like this really show us the future of console video mods – While just the original digital-to-digital output from the Xbox was a good improvement, the ability to even disable internal Xbox smoothing, fix aspect ratios and do some serious deep-dive tweaking is really awesome. I wasn’t sure this would even be possible with the original Xbox, but here we are!
If you’d like to see the installation process and some demo’s, check out this video Tito from Macho Nacho Productions did awhile back:
