According to a bunch of very angry people over on the AV Science form, and one Kotaku reader, the 1080p upgrade for the Xbox 360 doesn't appear to work on Sony's XBR2/XBR3 line of televisions. This is a big deal because the folks there claim it's considered to be one of the best 1080p televisions on the market.

News of the issue, which means you can't display a 1080p image on the television at all, has lead some to start wondering if this was a deliberate move on Microsoft's part, being that the television is made by Sony or if someone dropped the ball and a patch is coming for the 360.

Has anyone else had any issues with 1080p on the 360? I haven't my TV only goes to 1080I.

Read the angry letter on the jump. Brian Crecente

Official 40", 46" XBR2 Thread [AVS Forums]

Something fishy is going on with the 360's dashboard update from yesterday. Sony's XBR2/XBR3 line of televisions are pretty universally regarded as top of the line when it comes to 1080p displays, but despite that, the 360 will not display 1080p resolution, either with component cables or VGA. Via component, after selecting 1080p, the screen just turns to a distorted/static picture for a few seconds before reverting to 1080i. With VGA, the picture is severely cut off on both sides of the screen, and a prompt on the TV displays "Invalid Signal—Check Your PC Output." Several owners of the TV claim that it will NOT accept 1080p over component, so that should take care of that factor. However, there is no conceivable reason these two pieces of equipment shouldn't work together via VGA. Any other VGA device I've tested works fine on the set, and other competing sets (Samsung, Sharp) display the 360 in 1080p without any issu! es.

I don't want to throw the blame out before more is known, but I will say the Sony has been out for several months now, and the dashboard update is about 12 hours old at this writing, so it seems like the ball is in Microsoft's court. The XBR2/3 series is extremely popular so I don't buy that Microsoft "didn't test it" with one of those sets. If MS did intentionally sabotage it, this is easily on par with any scummy activity in the video game industry this year. If they didn't intentionally sabotage it but knew of the issue beforehand and didn't say anything, it's not much better.

I'm anticipating some finger pointing here, but I don't care who did what. I want my damn $4000 TV and my damn $400 video game console to work together like they should. This kind of news doesn't exactly help anticipation for the 360's HD-DVD player, and these kinds of scumbag tactics don't help either side. If it's confusing to the hardcore, imagine what it's like to clueless consumers.

-Nick