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XBOX 360 to support HD-DVD through USB accessory

Microsoft today announced, as long suspected, that it will be making HD-DVD available to the XBOX 360.  The interesting thing, however, is that the HD-DVD add-on will be available through the 360's USB port.  Microsoft claims that the new accessory will allow all current and future 360 HD-DVD titles to run at a full resolution of 720p.

HD-DVD is a competitor to Blu-Ray which will be featured in Sony’s PlayStation 3 console due out in the distant future. HD-DVDs features are similar to that of Blu-Ray however HD-DVD carries less storage space. One nice feature of HD-DVD is that it is backwards compatible if a distributor chooses allowing it to work on today’s DVD players.

Price or availability of the attachment is not yet known nor was it mentioned if Microsoft will include HD-DVD drives in future revisions of the 360 console.

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external HD-DVD?
By RamarC on 5/8/2006 3:58:34 PM , Rating: 2
hopefully that's a stop gap measure and they'll release a 360r2 with a built-in HD-DVD drive in time for this year's holiday season. 360r2 should include better cooling and a decent size clip-on hard drive (at least 80gb).




RE: external HD-DVD?
By ssvegeta1010 on 5/8/2006 6:16:21 PM , Rating: 2
Eh, I really doubt the bigger hard drive is needed, but the rest is a really good idea.


RE: external HD-DVD?
By IsDanReally on 5/8/2006 6:24:16 PM , Rating: 2
Why isn't it needed? My hard drive is constantly full, and I still want all the demos on it, as well as new ones that come out. I suppose I could delete them, and not play them, and never want to buy the full version of the game.


RE: external HD-DVD?
By Trisped on 5/8/2006 8:45:17 PM , Rating: 2
Increasing the HDD from 20 to 80 GBs will probably add over $50 to the production cost of the drive since they use laptop hard drives. Then add the already horrendous mark up and you can expect to pay $250+ for the drive. Personally I like the idea of buying one of the adapters (search DailyTech for 360 SATA or search go to http://www.360sata.com/) then download the Xplorer360 software from from http://www.360gamesaves.com. Copy what you want to keep to your computer's hard drive, then delete it. Later you can copy it back.


RE: external HD-DVD?
By RedStar on 5/9/2006 12:31:09 PM , Rating: 2
"I suppose I could delete them, and not play them, and never want to buy the full version of the game"

That doesn't make sense. You play the demo. If you like it...you buy it and delete demo. If you don't like the demo, you still delete it.


RE: external HD-DVD?
By miahallen on 5/8/2006 6:45:19 PM , Rating: 2
They make THIS XBOXr2....then count me in!


RE: external HD-DVD?
By miahallen on 5/8/2006 6:45:59 PM , Rating: 2
correction "360r2"


720P
By ViRGE on 5/8/2006 6:07:13 PM , Rating: 2
Does anyone know why MS is only supporting 720P? I would have expected them to support up to 1080P if they were capable of it.




RE: 720P
By Oxonium on 5/8/2006 7:03:05 PM , Rating: 1
If I had to take a guess, it might be that there isn't enough bandwidth over USB for 1080p. 720p needs roughly 1.5 Gb/s while 1080p needs about 3 Gb/s. USB 2.0 only provides a maximum of 480 Mb/s. Even with data compression, that's a lot of data to send over USB for 720p, let alone 1080p.


RE: 720P
By ViRGE on 5/8/2006 8:21:30 PM , Rating: 3
I really don't think that's it. The USB bus won't be passing the raw decoded signal, it will be passing the data stream off of the disc itself. And that's only a few MB/sec.


RE: 720P
By creathir on 5/9/06, Rating: 0
RE: 720P
By Trisped on 5/9/2006 1:09:09 PM , Rating: 2
After reading everything I could find it turns out that the launching players will not support 1080p, but that the disks will. This way starting prices are kept down, people don't buy more then they need (it is VERY hard to find a 1080p TV), and it gives people something to upgrade to in 3years+ when their TVs stop working or they want to replace their old DVD player.


RE: 720P
By jkresh on 5/8/2006 8:20:48 PM , Rating: 2
If you read the link they don’t say anything about not supporting 1080p, and I suspect that they will. I am curious as to what they are going to do about hdcp as it would be easy to release a DVI or even hdmi cable but without the hdcp chip as part of the machine even if a cable could be made that had the chips I don’t think that would be acceptable under the standard. Though at least for now it seems that the manufactures understand people don’t want hdcp and none of the first generation disks require it for hd playback.


RE: 720P
By Trisped on 5/8/2006 9:02:58 PM , Rating: 2
It is believed that the 360 can not out put in 1080p since the monitor cable does not support this resolution or one comparable. It does support 1080i and 720p and 1280x1024.


RE: 720P
By ncage on 5/9/2006 1:33:26 PM , Rating: 2
I don't think Toshiba (creater of HD-DVD) supports 1080P with the first incarnation of HD-DVD anyways. 720p/1080i is good enough for me anyways. I bought a 50in plasma last year and unless you wanted to spend a ton of money you couldn't get a 1080p plasma.


Backward compatible?
By Optimizer on 5/8/2006 4:39:47 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
One nice feature of HD-DVD is that it is backwards compatible if a distributor chooses allowing it to work on today’s DVD players.


Um, don't you mean "today's TVs", as in, "if you don't have an HDCP compliant display/connection the signal is downscaled to standard definition".




RE: Backward compatible?
By KingViper on 5/8/2006 4:45:22 PM , Rating: 2
No, he means HD-DVDs can be backwards compatible. Both a standard DVD layer as well as high def layers can be put on the same DVD. That way, when you put an HD-DVD in a normal dvd player..it will play just as a regular dvd would.

I haven't read how compatible this is or even how many companies plan to actually implement this into their dvd's however.


RE: Backward compatible?
By Optimizer on 5/8/2006 5:29:21 PM , Rating: 2
No kidding? Well that'll be neat but I doubt anybody will do it when they can sell you the DVD now (since you haven't forked over the coin for an HD-DVD player yet) and then sell you another copy on HD-DVD later (you know, so you can keep your library up to date until they come up with a better format, hehehe).


RE: Backward compatible?
By Trisped on 5/9/2006 1:05:19 PM , Rating: 2
The point is to relase the DVDs for $20 and the HD DVDs for $20-30. Then people will look and see that the price is about the same, but the slightly more expensive one will play HD latter.

I haven't heard that the DVD layer will be limited to only one layer, as opposed to 2 as most DVDs have, but since the HD DVD players were designed with the DVD emulation in mind their won't be a problem playing HD DVDs with the first layers being DVD and the under layer holding the HD content.


RE: Backward compatible?
By Visual on 5/9/2006 10:55:34 AM , Rating: 2
problem is, one of the two formats (HDDVD or standard DVD) will have to have only _second_ layer. which will freak out most players and they still won't be able to play it.

also, with this hybrid disc HDDVD will be limited to one layer, so max capacity is only 15gb. makes you doubt if its even worth it over the normal dvd.

bluray/dvd hybrids can work too, and this time around both formats can have all their normal layers in their normal position - as they don't use the same disc depth. so in theory you can have duallayer dvd and duallayer bluray (even more could be possible, but so far it seems the printed bluray media will max at two layers, more are only for blanks)

in practice no studio has payed much interest in any of these hybrid options, so they've not been developed enough and will probably never be used.


New 360's?
By PitbulI on 5/8/2006 8:19:58 PM , Rating: 2
I think that Microsoft should have waited until now to release their XBox 360. The system would have HD-DVD built in, bigger HD and better cooling. I got one in March and am glad I got one of those extended warranties.

If they release a new XBox 360 revision that includes a bigger Hard Drive, faster/cooler CPU and a HD DVD for the same price or cheaper that what it currently is, a lot of 360 owners will be pissed. I myself would be pissed if my warranty wouldn't allow me to exchange it for a newer one if mine "Suddenly" breaks down.




RE: New 360's?
By Trisped on 5/8/2006 9:08:09 PM , Rating: 2
1. It was important to be first to market
2. The over heating problem is very rare, it probably won't hit you or anyone you know
3. The HD-DVD drive would have added a lot of cost to the system
4. The system is not projected to need more then the 9.4 GBs of a dual layer DVD
5. If a developer did need more then 9.4 GBs of space it would be cheaper for them to make 2 DL DVDs then 1 HD DVD
6. I am sorry you were tricked into buying the extended warranty. I hope your console does break so you can at least get your money's worth, but the odds are it won't or if it does it will be cause your brother broke the DVD tray and that isn't covered under warranty.


RE: New 360's?
By chuckabner on 5/8/2006 10:48:09 PM , Rating: 2
wansnt most of the overheating problems due to people being dumb with the power adapter? like placing it behind the system or in a place with no ventilation.


RE: New 360's?
By Trisped on 5/9/2006 1:11:52 PM , Rating: 2
Not really. As with most new products, there were some duds. This is why they have the warranties; they don't want a factory defect tarnishing their name. Usually these duds are less then 1% of the products, which is the case with the 360 (out of almost a million boxes only a hand full reported problems publicly and all of them were RMA by MS)


RE: New 360's?
By RamarC on 5/9/2006 12:45:24 PM , Rating: 2
"If they release a new XBox 360 revision that includes a bigger Hard Drive, faster/cooler CPU and a HD DVD for the same price or cheaper that what it currently is, a lot of 360 owners will be pissed. I myself would be pissed if my warranty wouldn't allow me to exchange it for a newer one if mine "Suddenly" breaks down."

Sorry, but I don't buy into that logic. If I get a car it first year of production, I don't get ticked when next year the engine puts out 20 more horses. And when I get a PC, I don't get pissed when 6 months later the same model includes a faster CPU, a faster GPU, a bigger hard drive, a free LCD monitor.

Now it would be nice if MS offered a way to swap/upgrade a 360r1 to 360r2. But I didn't see Sony giving away any of the slim line PS2s to placate folks with the fat-boy box.

It would have been really cool if MS had designed the box in such a way as to allow simple hardware upgrades. Not like with a PC where you still have to a little know-how, but truly plug-and-play components that don't take any more effort than swapping memory cards or controllers.



DIGITAL?
By peternelson on 5/8/2006 5:07:46 PM , Rating: 2

So they propose to have an external player that can send the data across USB to the console digitally?

So, the console still has ANALOGUE component output to the monitor, so no HDMI or DVI then and thus no using HDCP. Unless they plan to redo the 360 design and give it proper outputs like Sony PS3 will have. Therefore the output is likely to be subject to analogue noise especially at high resolutions.

I wonder if 1080i will be supported as well as the claimed 720p? And I think we know that 1080p won't be supported. Will everything be downconverted to 720p?

Plus I think this device is a player only rather than recorder.

One question I have is that if it is USB (2) interconnect, is it likely to be connectable directly to a conventional pc? If so it need not be specifically xbox branded.




RE: DIGITAL?
By adam92682 on 5/8/2006 5:33:17 PM , Rating: 2
I was wondering the same thing about weather or not it will be compatible with pc


RE: DIGITAL?
By Trisped on 5/8/2006 9:00:31 PM , Rating: 1
I play my 360 hooked up to my 23in CRT and there is no analogue noise. Yes it would be nice to have DVI outputs, but you don't need an HDMI out put if they don't set up the console to out put with HDCP.

1080p was mentioned on the XBox site, though the 360 is not believed capable of outputting at 1080p since that resolution or one comparable is not available using a monitor cable. The console does support true 720p and 1080i output, so those will definitely be there. 1080p may be possible, depending on the video card and decoding hardware on the 360.
quote:
Plus I think this device is a player only rather than recorder.
I don't see the relevance of that comment, there are no recorders being released for either format right now that I know of.

I hope that the player is WinXP compatible like the USB controller is. That would definitely increase the add-on's value.


RE: DIGITAL?
By Visual on 5/9/2006 2:26:02 PM , Rating: 2
HDCP matters for movie playback - as eventually HDDVD movie releases will be flagged as protection-compulsary and if you don't have HDCP, you'll get a downconverted signal

or so they say now - i'd rather think that hdcp will be a complete failure and when studios realise that they won't bother to flag their releases at all. but we'll have to wait and see


Cost and Bandwidth
By hstewarth on 5/8/2006 4:21:58 PM , Rating: 2
I am curious about 3 things.

What will be additional cost of this device? Could be almost the price of XBox 360? ouch!

Can you used HD-DVD that are not from Microsoft that support USB?

Does USB have enough bandwidth for transmitting high def video?




RE: Cost and Bandwidth
By littlepitel on 5/8/2006 4:51:13 PM , Rating: 3
The reason standalone players are so expensive (Toshiba), is because they need such high processing power to process the video/audio stream. I'm sure the addon won't be that expensive for the 360 because it already has that processing power available, all it really needs now is just a way to read the discs.


Sega?
By Jimmybones on 5/8/2006 5:02:21 PM , Rating: 1
Does anyone else have a strange feeling the Xbox360 is turning into a Sega console ie, Sega CD.

Soon Microsoft is going to release the 360x to double its processing power and your going to have a console the size of a small elephant.

I wish MS would have held off a bit and done the console properly. I don't want to buy add on after add on.




RE: Sega?
By Panurge on 5/8/2006 5:07:28 PM , Rating: 2
There's a difference between adding an HD-DVD drive for watching movies and adding a CD drive for playing games.

Microsoft didn't want to step into the console wars with a type of DVD that might not win. In addition, despite what people say, the year extra of selling and game design time is going to be huge for Microsoft. Had they waited for HD-DVD, they wouldn't be out until mid to late this year, since HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are both still not technically 100% complete.

I think Microsoft did good on this waiting to see which will win. It's a lot easier to take the hit on an optional HD-DVD drive that only some people would take to watch movies than the hit from a console using a standard that isn't supported (sch as PS3 might end up being).


Title change perhaps?
By Tebor0 on 5/8/2006 5:38:46 PM , Rating: 3
"MS To Support HD-DVD Over USB for XBOX 360"

So we're getting HD-DVD instead of USB? :p




HD-DVD VS. Blu Ray
By ViperROhb34 on 5/9/2006 6:42:02 PM , Rating: 2
It seems like both are good formats.. the blu ray has more storage space.. but for the price I'm not sure its worth it.

1st off lets consider more people here are tech types.. both my cousin and I are pretty avg Americans.. we're both around mid 30k a year incomes.. This war is going to be won by the masses.. most people didnt buy VCR's until they hit 500 dollars.. I have a Toshiba HD widescreen.. and out of my entire family only my uncle ( who has a Mitsubishi Widescreen ) even has a TV that supports High Def.. Most Americans don't even have cable tv that supports High Def.. and if they do most Americans at this point don't want to pay the extra cash for the extra 6 channels that will give you that High Def.. Now lets not discount the fact that the average mom and dad have a 27 to 32 inch tv at home that doesnt support high def so why would that care about recording in High Def ?

My cable box/ DVR has a built in 30 gig hardrive.. I have 3 HD movies off HBO taped on it and 30 percent free space. I know my dad and alot of other avg working class people who won't be interested in HD DVD much, let alone Blu ray. Who needs to record in high def ( let alone worry about 50 gigs versus 30 gigs recording on a single disc ) when most of America probably wont have HD cable for another 3 or 4 yrs.

If HD DVD disc only cost 10 percent more to manufacture.. you could be talking an HD-DVD disc would be 8 to 10 dollars if you could get Two or three of those disc for the same price as One Blu ray disc then the whole storage point becomes Moot worthless.. after we are talking about disc you'll be able to buy in bulk..

Seriously the two formats are going to be so close in quality most everday people won't care.. they'll simply buy the cheapest and it won't hurt that the everday person will be happy that old DVD's will play on new players and that New bought HD-DVD movies would play fine on your current DVD player until you can afford to buy a 500 dollar HD DVD..

I had a PS2 until it broke, but Im not sure I'll get PS3 because the low end one is 500 dollars..and I'd only opt for the high end and I cant see spending 600 .. I currently have a XBox360 which I have set at 1080 on my Toshiba and the games look awesome .. honestly though.. in movies its hard tell the difference between 720 and 1080 on my 54 inch HD..

More then once a format has succeeded if only do to its price point and whom it reaches. Beleive this.. less people will buy a 500 dollar PS3 no matter what features it has then people who bought the $299 PS2.. We all can't be well off people with unlimited resources so many of us know several moms who will not likely buy an Xbox 360 ( maybe the cheaper one ) let alone the PS3 for their kids.

This war will be one not by the 30 million who buy the more expensive product.. but by the 100 million who can afford the other...

.. Even so.. most of those people still have to go buy HD TV's and get HD cable before they worry !!




780p
By obelisk45 on 5/8/06, Rating: 0
RE: 780p
By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 5/8/06, Rating: 0
"So, I think the same thing of the music industry. They can't say that they're losing money, you know what I'm saying. They just probably don't have the same surplus that they had." -- Wu-Tang Clan founder RZA









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