xbox 360 hi def player compatible with pc ;-)

dafloppyone

dafloppyone

dafloppyone

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PCPerspective has posted a review of the Xbox 360 HD-DVD accessory today for your viewing pleasure. Here's a taster:
Now for the fun part, and the part that I wasn't expecting when I went out to buy this drive. It turns out, thanks to the standard USB connection that the Xbox 360 uses, you can use the external HD-DVD drive on your PC; and it's easier than you might think. Simply plugging in the USB cable to the HTPC system will present you with the standard "New Hardware Found" wizard. Clicking next through the process will not find any drivers and you'll be left with the above results in the device manager on your system. What is important to note though is that even though the Xbox 360 HD DVD Memory Unit devices do not have drivers, the Toshiba DVD/HD X807616 USB Device is showing up as a working device in the DVD/CDROM drives section.

Looking at the drivers in more detail, you can see that the device that DOES have drivers and installs correctly on Windows XP shows settings like DVD Regions that indicates some functionality. It turns out, that even without a driver for the external device, the ability to read the data on the discs is native to Windows XP. Now, that being said, you WOULD need a driver to read the data structure of HD-DVDs, if you wanted to look at the data on the disc in Windows Explorer for instance. But to just play the HD-DVD movies, all the software required is built into Windows and the HD-DVD playback software.

Speaking of that software, here I was able to get my hands on a copy of CyberLink's PowerDVD HD-DVD Edition to give this test a shot. Actually, the HTPC system that I have the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive connected to also has a standard HD-DVD drive in it that I am using for some other testing, to be published later. This software was included on it and worked perfectly with the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive. ​
It looks like the 360 HD-DVD is completely compatible with your Windows PC. You do have to have a HTPC compatible video card to watch movies but it's good news none the less.
 
Suddenly the prospect of buying a HD drive becomes a lot closer, if the drives become available over here for under £200 then I might pick one up if there's a good selection of films available.

Jokester

Edit: Looks like there's a lot of stuff just away to get released.
 
I can see these drives selling so fast that they will be rarer than Rocking horse muck for the first few months.
 
Rumours are that the HD-DVD drive add-on may come with a free HD-DVD disc of King Kong when it's released in the UK.

*edit*

I'd also heard the same £129.99 quoted
 
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hd dvd drive can be had for 116.99 :) and it does come with king kong.


this is rather rather tempting.. but i;ll have to look into it a tad more.

just a q:
what would you need (monitor wise, im using a 21inch crt which does hd quite nicely) and what does the hd-dvd player output in? (widescreen yada yada?)
 
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Psypher5 said:
hd dvd drive can be had for 116.99 :) and it does come with king kong.


this is rather rather tempting.. but i;ll have to look into it a tad more.

just a q:
what would you need (monitor wise, im using a 21inch crt which does hd quite nicely) and what does the hd-dvd player output in? (widescreen yada yada?)
Click to expand...

Widescreen output ratio will dpend on the disc being played.
This unit will output 1080i as that is the limit of the hardware.
The initial HD-DVD discs will be 1080i.
Toshiba will have a 1080p capable player available & 1080p discs will be released over here by early next year. However they will still played on 1080i players, downscaled obviously.
 
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