Microsoft Shows Off 360 HD-DVD Drive

C|Net is reporting on a demo Microsoft put on, showing off their HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360. The unit, which is expected out for the Christmas season, is an external add-on for the company's next-gen console. From the article: "The device--about the size of a hardback book--played "The Phantom of the Opera" as Collins pulled up a menu bar to display a few of its navigation and interactive features that can be called up on screen while a movie is playing. Collins said Microsoft's HD DVD drive will be among the least expensive of the HD DVD players, but he declined to disclose the drive's retail price."

Comments

*Applause*

[p0tat03]

Kudos to MS I say, for giving consumers the choice. I for one can't care less about HD DVD, but I love my Xbox360, and I'm glad I didn't have to buy into some newfangled (and overrated) format that I would never use.

If I ever DO get an HDTV though, this might be a nice addon...

Re:*Applause*

[spyrochaete]

You can put HD content on ordinary DVDROMs but not on video DVDs. If you're playing a game there's no reason why they can't put HD video playback data on the DVD. It'll be a big file but how much video does there really need to be in a game?

However, maybe some devs will make alternative HD-DVD versions of some multi-DVD games. Switching discs mid-game is sooo Dreamcast. I don't think 360 owners will have to worry much about HD-DVD exclusive titles though. Sony is making a lower-tier PS3 as well and both companies have to be careful about alienating ground-level adopters.

Re:*Applause*

[Silverlancer]

Encoded in H.264/AVC, its quite possible with regular DVDs. And the Xbox 360 has more than enough processor power to decode it.

Re:*Applause*

[poot_rootbeer]

right up until they start releasing certain games only on HDDVD because the size is too large for a regular DVD.

I believe Microsoft has already stated that the HD-DVD drive will be used for movies only, though that's as subject to change as anything else in this world.

I'd love to play Lord of the Rings or Madden with HD cut scenes.

I would hate that.

It's already jarring enough on a title like LotR for PS2 when the graphics cut from DVD-Video cinematic cutscene to realtime rendered polygons. Making the cutscenes look even better would only make the in-game graphics look worse in comparison.

Re:*Applause*

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

I'd love to play Lord of the Rings or Madden with HD cut scenes.

It's nice to see an opinion from a non-gamer on slashdot!

Re:*Applause*

[Anonymous Coward]

Very, very unlikely. Publishers would much rather butcher a game to make it fit DVD than sell to the 30% of people who buy the HD-DVD add-on.

Re:*Applause*

[atomicstrawberry]

Just 6 minutes for a 12 fighter game is 72 minutes worth of HD video, I tried converting a couple things into the true HD standard with one of the codecs, for about 10 minutes worth of video the outputted file was over 500mb so even though they are dual layer dvd's they are still restricted by size.

If you know what you're doing, using H.264 it's quite possible to get 25 minutes of 720p video down to around 250mb without it looking too bad at all. Certainly you need a reasonable machine to play that back, but the X360 shouldn't have any issues whatsoever.

Re:*Applause*

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"You can put HD content on ordinary DVDROMs but not on video DVDs. If you're playing a game there's no reason why they can't put HD video playback data on the DVD. It'll be a big file but how much video does there really need to be in a game?"

This has already been done. You can buy a version of Terminator 2 that comes with an HD .WMF file.

Re:*Applause*

[gabebear]

You got the HD-DVD size backwards: HD-DVD is 15gigs/layer w/ 3 layers max, Blu-Ray is 25gigs/layer with 8 layers max. Currently you can only get 2 layer discs of either format.

Re:*Applause*

[marshallbanana6]

JRPGs for 360? I think not. XD

Re:*Applause*

[gabebear]

Blu-Ray R and RW discs are available in single and dual layer versions( here, and here.

I couldn't find any dual layer HD-DVD media for sale.

Price point

[The_Pariah]

Retail price is said, from MS, to be that of the lowest priced HD-DVD players at that time.

Being that all the movie processing is done thru the Xbox, the manufacturing has to be fairly cheap with a lot less hardware. And since HD-DVD players can be had at $500 today, I'm guessing a $200 price point. Take in mind MS would NOT want to sell their console and an aftermarket HD player that would cost MORE than a PS3 that has similar capabilities.

Props to MS if they sell the player under $200. Otherwise they're inviting the HD addicts who haven't bought next gen to purcahse the PS3 to get a "better" deal.

Re:Price point

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the problem with that, though - the PS3 is only a "better deal" if Blu-Ray wins the format war. What if Blu-Ray goes the way of the Betamax, and Sony's just screwed you by bundling something that's obsolete in their console for a few extra hundred bucks?

With the limited number of titles out there in *either* format, I'm not picking up either an HD-DVD or a Blu-Ray player until the dust settles and someone "wins" the format.

Re:Price point

[Quino]

Here's what makes me think Sony went about this the right way (despite the constant lamenting I hear on Slashdot): if you're the backer of Blu-Ray, you have to like your worst-case scenario. This is that Sony (your partner in the format war) bombs out badly with the PS3, selling only single digit millions of PS3 units.

That's still millions of Blu-ray players out there, vs. how many HD-DVD players?

I'm not saying by a long shot that the format war is essentially over and Blu-ray won, but at this point I have to say that I like its chances much much better than HD-DVD.

Of course, if Sony's PS3 doesn't bomb out, then things only get better for the format.

I agree with you that there is little incentive right now to go out and buy the MS add-on, especially since the results of the format war aren't clear.

* of course, the flip side of this is that the new video format is adopted so slowly (say, in 10 years people are still selling good ol' DVDs and DVD players, and Blockbuster is still primarily renting DVDs), in which case Sony's positioning with Blu-ray and the PS3 is moot. Then Sony will have paid a high price for higher-capacity storage for games (maybe in itself, and independently of video playback and video formats, not a bad tactical decision -- who knows)

Re:Price point

[Quino]

Let's say that I agree with your statement that "studios like certainty". They will have that certainty; in what format are videos selling? and in what format are videos being rented in? -- that's their certainty, not "how many of these add on units does MS sell"?

If I own an Xbox and a PS3 and I have an HD TV and I want to test out the "next-gen" video format, do you really think there's a greater than zero percent chance that I'll end up renting/buying an HD DVD video instead of using the Blu-ray player I already own?

If I'm an owner of a PS3 and not of an Xbox 360, same thing applies.

Again, I'm not saying that therefore Blue-ray already won, but I do think that Blu-ray has an big advantage in trying to elbow itself in as the new format. If Sony can make sure that studios see that Blu-ray movies are 10 times more likely to get rented/purchased than a HD DVD version of their same movies (or a 100 times, I don't know what these numbers might look like, but it's hard to imagine they won't reflect the numbers of Blu-ray players in the wild vs. the number of HD DVD players in the wild), then the push would be to make sure studios take a side and stop making both formats. If by pre-packaging Blu-ray players Sony helps make the blu-ray format become the standard (which is all I'm saying is happening -- Blu-ray definitely has a big leg up over HD DVD *out of the gates*), this might snowball and in return, help sell PS3 units.

This assumes a lot of things, of course: mainly that technically Blu-ray and HD DVD, for the purpose of watching movies, is transparent to consumers and it's just a matter of which "flavor" the thundering herd goes for. Also, I'm curious to see what tricks MS and company have for pushing back with their format (they did think things through, one would assume).

Sony's play on the format has been obvious for some time -- what's MS's play going to be? Or did they forsake the format war just to be able to come out first with the next gen gaming system? Was their choosing of HD DVD simple naysaying to Sony's Blu-ray? That's the sort of thing I'm wondering ...

This MS "add-on" HD DVD pack, to me, seems sort of a weak reply, in the sense that Sony's customers are 1) already commited to one format as opposed to 360 customers and 2) provide an early market of early adopters (more likely to have cash and HD TVs) for Blu-ray movies -- something the HD DVD format, as far as I can tell, lacks.

I Wonder

[MBCook]

I've read that the drive only does the reading, all the processing takes place in the 360. That's kind of interesting. However, I read a comment some where that I'd like to reprint (paraphrased or so):

I wonder if they will let you play games with it?

Now they've said "no games on HD-DVD" (which frankly I expect them to change in a few years). But what about normal XBox games in there? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to put one game in the 360 (like Dead Rising) and another in the HD-DVD drive (like PGR3)? Then you could choose either one when the console starts up. I'd love to be able to do that with my PS2 and Guitar Hero. It would save me quite a bit of disc swapping.

And there is no technical reason they couldn't.

Re:I Wonder

[DarkDragonVKQ]

The only problem is that game developers trying to make a game for a console want a standard so they know what they can do when designing it. So having some people with an HD-DVD drive and others not makes it hard to make a game that way.

But yes that's how a drive typically works. Its usually done by software or the CPU. Compared to a player where its dedicated hardware doing the work (which is much more efficient).

Re:Cheapest HD-DVD player

[laxcat]

Seriously though, unless the addon is less than $200, (which it almost cirtainly won't be), Microsoft is going to loose their ability to knock the PS3 as being overpriced. I understand its nice to give gamers the choice, but if you actaully want an Hi Def DVD player (I do, and I don't think I'm alone), the PS3 will actaully look like a really good deal in comparison to the 360+HD-DVD.

Who knew I'd ever use the words "PS3" and "good deal" in the same sentence?

And that's not to mention all the other superior fetures... bigger hard drive, more advanced CPU, HDMI, etc, etc, etc. Could it be that "crazy ol' Sony" actaully took the right path in this high end market? I doubted along with the rest, but seeing Microsoft present the alternative really makes me wonder.

Meh

[pedropolis]

So, $399.99 for a new 360 with HDMI output (needed for the ubershizzle HD-DVD) plus another, what, $199.99 for the HD-DVD player? Wow, comes to the same price as a PS3 - only that's an all-in-one system with complete compatability with both PS1 and PS2 games. If Sony takes a beating over that price point, then it's only fair to batter MS for arriving at the same price. Oh, and if that snazzy HD-DVD player costs more than $199.99, then it's game over man.

Re:Meh

[MHolmesIV]

Aah, but you're counting wrong, see. For 10 million people out there (by November), the HD DVD addon will not cost them the price of the 360 + the addon, they already _have_ the 360. So which is easier, paying $600 over 2 years, or paying $600 all at once, for me, I could justify the $400 cost of the 360 last year, and I can easily justify the cost of a ~$200 HD DVD drive this year, but I could not justify the $600 cost of a PS3, it's just too much all at once.

So for the millions of people who already have a HDTV and a 360, they're not looking at $600 to get started watching movies, they're only looking at $200, which is a pretty small barrier to entry, and for the people who don't have a 360, they're not looking at $600 to watch a movie (They can buy the Toshiba for between $400-$500), and they're not looking at $600 to play a game (the 360 is $400).
For the PS3, no matter what you want to do, you're looking at $600, up front. Too rich for my blood.

I love options

[The_Pariah]

Next gen games don't NEED higher capacity discs than DVD9 discs.

Therefore, I LOVE the option of deciding if I _want_ the fancy movie player or _just_ the game console.

Sony doesn't give me that option. I'm FORCED to purchase the integrated drive to play HD movies, although the games themselves don't require them.

right and wrong

[the computer guy nex]

"So, $399.99 for a new 360 with HDMI output (needed for the ubershizzle HD-DVD) plus another, what, $199.99 for the HD-DVD player? Wow, comes to the same price as a PS3 - only that's an all-in-one system with complete compatability with both PS1 and PS2 games. If Sony takes a beating over that price point, then it's only fair to batter MS for arriving at the same price. Oh, and if that snazzy HD-DVD player costs more than $199.99, then it's game over man."

Yes, it does come to the same price as a PS3. Only one difference - most people could care less about HDDVD or BR and would rather just play games.

The Blu-Ray drive does not fit a market. Gamers are usually younger and do not have the HD capabilities for the movies. Home theater enthusiasts with the proper setups will be buying a professional high definition player from a different vender. How many home theater enthusiasts out there use the crappy DVD player from an xbox or a ps2??

Ohhh they're clever...

[GfxGeek]

Those marketing guys at MS are shrewd... they know full well that the World Record for staying awake during "The Phantom of the Opera" is 10 minutes. This reduced the chance of someone seeing a lockup to almost zero.

Re:SEGA

[oahazmatt]

Dosent anyone remember sega CD? Nintendo learned their lesson before they made the N64 DD I heard there was even talk of having one for the SNES. If MS wants to take over the living room they better not clutter it up with an add on HD-DVD drive.

If MS wants to take over the living room, they will need either an HD-DVD or Blu Ray player.

And some people do allocate extra space for future purchases. My entertainment system holds my PS2, my Gamecube, my DVD player, my Famicon knock-off, and has room left over.

This is also a more sensical PR move on their part. Sony isn't offering a choice with the Blu Ray player, and the cost is being passed along to the consumer. In this case, Microsoft is merely offering an additional component, not forcing it on anyone. However they are trying to gain footing in the HD market through persuasion. If the pricing is reasonable, someone with a 360 may pass up a standalone HD-DVD player in favor of a cheaper add-on component that will accomplish the same task.

The only thing I'll criticize is the aesthetics of the device.

Really?

[SuperKendall]

C'mon MS! Make a $499 "Ultimate" model that has the premium unit plus the HDDVD drive integrated. I'll buy one now no questions asked.

Funny, when Sony does that exact thing people say no-one will want to buy it.

Guess they were wrong.

Re:Cheapest HD-DVD player

[mrchaotica]

Could it be that "crazy ol' Sony" actaully took the right path in this high end market?

HD isn't the "high end" market; HD is the "dumbass sheep who don't realize they're being screwed by DRM" market.

Not the same thing

[xswl0931]

MS has learned the lesson and the difference is that this HD-DVD add-on is ONLY for movies. Games will not play on it. This means that developers won't be creating different games if you have the HD-DVD add-on or not.

Re:There is no lower-tier PS3

[Duds]

You're assuming they'll support memory card readers in those slots rather than selling you the Sony PlayAdapter for $29.99