I played my Xbox One X in my 1080p projector before I upgraded to my 2160p UHD one, and there was an immediately noticeable difference. Yes, this is in part by some games that ran under 1080p before, but it was just as noticeable on 1080p games because it actually had more to do with the free anti-aliasing offered by rendering at a higher resolution and downsampling from that. This is a regular technique called FSAA. FSAA will be free for Series S on a 1080p TV, so you're not exactly just wasting all of these pixels. It's a $300 console, so FSAA out of the box is a positive, and I'm not sure why you think it isn't.
If you're unclear why
FSAA and digital photography's equivalent called
Spacial anti-aliasing are a thing, it all really comes down to
Nyquist Theorem. This is actually regularly used in professional audio, and also by the motion picture industry. It's why older movies were already transferred to cinema 4K masters, since it is well over the previous cinema 2K standard (by 4X). There is a common myth that "Native" rendering is better with digital content, but it's actually completely untrue. Digital content is ALWAYS better if it's sampled from higher sources. Actually, so is analog, but it's less perceptible due to the precise nature of digital. It's just as important, but not as easily measurable.
We still haven't heard on how the upscaling will be handled by these Xbox consoles, so you might want to just hold your horses before judging that one, also.
gizmodo.com
