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Hacking XBox 360 HD-DVD To Play On XP
Dan writes, "The XBox 360's affordable HD-DVD, with the help of some custom drivers and a specific player, has been hacked to work with any Windows XP machine. This may have created the cheapest HD-DVD player on the market to date."
Wow, the link is dead before the article is even up.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Xboxhacker forums has links that points directly to the files. http://localhostr.com/files/c46c39057dc3fbe73d9f.r ar
Xboxhacker points out that there is currently no available PC player for hddvd, so all you get is access to the dvd content.
Man, you sound like the anti-Baysian stuff I see at the bottom of spam nowadays.
(laugh, it's a joke
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
...most prophetic slashdotted domain name of 2006.
The site paints this to be a cool hack that MS never intended, but really, Microsoft may have always intended for this to happen officially in the future. They already officially support Xbox 360 controller use on Windows, for instance and have released drivers. This is the logical next step.
Really, it's part of their strategy to converge the 360 and Windows gaming worlds together... witness the recent reorganization into a single games division, for instance.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
"I've never even seen an actual computer monitor (not LCD TV/monitor) that can display in full HD"
You've never seen a computer able to display 1920x1080?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Saying that it's the cheapest HD-DVD player because you can hack it to work with a PC running Windows XP is as stupid as saying it's the cheapest HD-DVD player because you only have to connect it to your Xbox 360.
I'm only 10 years old...
Which means you obviously get out a lot to stores that'd have BluRay and HD-DVD titles. Y'know, some places put them way up on the third or fourth shelf, so you may not have been able to see them...
There was a post on AVS Forum by a member who works at MS not too long ago about using the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive on a PC. His reply that It isn't supported only in the sense that MS didn't test it for the PC, but there was nothing specifically being done to prevent it being used on a PC. So I'm really not surprised that it is being done this quickly to be perfectly honest.
Two Roommates and a Boyfriend, updates Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
HD DVD discs are outselling Blu-Ray discs by a large margin, at least at Amazon.
http://www.thedvdwars.com/index.cfm
I'm not sure it's even good for that. The content is encrypted differently than what is on a standard DVD so the current flock of rippers won't be able to rip them. I'm not even sure that there are some HD rippers in the works or what there status is.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
My Sony 19" G400 monitor from the year 2000 officially goes to 1800x1440. That's HD. It can 720p. It's just a little shy of 1080i/p, but then it's the wrong aspect ratio anyway.
From my personal experience, a Dell 2407 does HD. Not a bad price either. The controller chip has problems with a 1080 signal though, even though it supports the resolution. The recent BenQ FP241W can do 1080p, but it doesn't do 1:1 pixel mapping, and unfortunately stretches 16:9 1080p image to 16:10. Sounds like a firmware issue to me. These are popular affordable computer monitors. There are definitely computer monitors that can do this, unless you're living in a cave.
Is the drive priced low to act as a Microsoft subsidized loss-leader to help establish the HD-DVD format. Or, is the hardware really that inexpensive, and the vendors are milking the early adopters for all they're worth?
USB is an electrical interface, with some standard logical extensions. There are these things called "drivers" that are needed to get devices to work, if those drivers aren't built into the underlying OS. A USB plug in itself does not mean compatibility -- if you have any doubt of this, run down to a local computer store and look at all of the USB peripherals that specify what platforms and operating systems they will work with.
A "hack" is generally accepted to mean a clever approach to achieving something by bending the rules; by using things in ways they weren't intended; or by coming up with a more clever approach than what was previously accepted.
Now that you know all of that, I'm you'll agree that getting an HD-DVD drive that was intended for use on an xbox 360 to work on Windows does indeed qualify as a "hack." I hope this clears things up for you!
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
All in all, Xbox has lost $4+ billion for MS.
The XBOX division of Microsoft has lost a lot of money, but it can be argued that XBOX has actually helped Microsoft in the long run.
Think of XBOX as a combination of Marketing and Insurance. By selling the XBOX, Microsoft ensures that their name and their products will be in even more stores and homes. By including Media Center Extender features in XBOX, Microsoft has a better chance of selling the Media Center version of Windows XP. By taking a huge chunk of the game market, Microsoft weakens Sony and Nintendo.
And the big one:
Ensuring a strong Direct X following. Most, if not all, XBOX games use Direct X libraries. There are only two platforms that can use true Direct X: Windows and XBOX. By keeping programmers on Direct X, Microsoft ensures that games will remain on Windows/XBOX and will difficult to port to other consoles and other OSes. The last thing Microsoft wants is developers to begin using cross-platform libraries which could allow for an OS transition sometime in the future. Besides, XBOX simply helps promote Direct X. Think of it: "Use Direct X, easily run your games on the most popular desktop OS and the second most popular game console without a major re-write!".
XBOX has been $4 Billion well spent. Expect iZunes to be a similar venture.
As a side example, consider Firefox vs IE 7. If you find yourself spending a majority of your computing time using Web 2.0 applications via Firefox, why use Windows at all? At that point you may as well just use Linux or FreeBSD to host your Firefox client, no need to spend money on Firefox. However, if your web app only works on IE 7, or works best on IE 7, then you have a soild reason to remain on Windows/IE7 platform.
They took a device that was already hardware-compatible with a PC, found (not built, found) drivers to work with it, and called it a hack. You can call searching for drivers a hack if you want to but I don't buy into that definition. I lost the floppy disks for an old video card once and had to find drivers that didn't exactly match but were good enough. Was that a hack too? Not in my book.
You're right that HD-DVD is not Blu-Ray but HD-DVD is also not "just more layer on top of existing DVD format"
.1mm protective layer of of the substrate while HD-DVD is the same distance as traditional DVDs with .6mm of protective layer. being closer to the edge allows Blu-Ray's laser to view the data layer at a higher resolution and thus they can squeeze more data in there per layer. But with a thinner layer of substrate it leaves the disc more prone to physical damage which can also lead to lower production yields.
HD-DVD uses a blue laser just like Blu-Ray, the Video discs uses the same codecs as Blu-Ray. The biggest differences is the location of the data layer in the plastic substrate. Blu-Ray's is located closer to the edge with only a
HD-DVD has more in common with Blu-Ray then it does with DVD...
Collector's Edition