The whole thing started when a man, who calls himself “Magus,” in Atlanta, Georgia, went out to his local Target and bought himself a brand new Xbox 360 Premium for $350. After unpacking his new console, he noticed that there was something out of the ordinary on the rear of the console: an HDMI port, right alongside the standard component connection. Not expecting to discover this port, Magus snapped a few pictures and uploaded them to ShackNews.com. From there it wasn’t too long before almost every Xbox fanboy on the net found out about it, and asked the inevitable question: is it true?

Well, according to a Microsoft e-mail, it most definitely is.

Earlier this spring, HDMI already found its way onto the Xbox 360 Elite, but there was no mention at the time that the Premium console would soon sport the same feature. In an e-mailed statement, Microsoft told ShackNews that only the Premium model will have the HDMI port and that “retailers are gradually introducing HDMI-enabled Xbox 360s into the channel to meet demand.”

From the looks of it, Microsoft wanted to sneak this new update into market channels with as little fuss as possible. Probably because the Playstation 3 already had an HDMI port from the beginning, and as such this new addition to the 360 is a year late in comparison. In response to whether other changes were made, Microsoft responded that the company is busy “constantly updating the console’s more than 1700 internal components and therefore will not comment on details of specific components.”

HDMI might be all the rage, but please keep in mind that you might not see any visible improvements over your current setup. The two big draws of HDMI are improved image quality, and fewer cables; however, both of these claims might be a little exaggerated. Most will probably not notice the subtle image improvement, and that cable mess behind your TV will remain.

HDMI is capable of carrying both video and audio information over the same connection, but for the majority of setups you’ll still want multiple cables. For instance, if you have a Dolby Surround setup hooked up to a receiver, you’ll have to choice whether you want the HDMI cable to lead from the console to the TV or from the console to the receiver, and from there you’ll also have to decide how the other supplementary components will be invited into the loop. If I were to switch over to an HDMI-enable Xbox right now, I’d still need two cables to hook up both the plasma and the receiver; that would be the same number of cables I use to get the job done now.

Unless you are really keen on having a slightly better picture quality, you’ll be hard pressed to find a compelling reason to upgrade. And on another note, please keep in mind as well that the Xbox “Falcon” is slated for release this fall, and it will also feature an HDMI port on top of the new 65nm components. However, if are you planning on getting the new Premium, you can tell if it has the HDMI port by reading the spec information on the side of the box.

In short, many will be quite pleased with this addition, but if you can hold out a little longer, I’d suggest waiting for the “Falcon.”