X360 HD-DVD to use USB

If you can say with a staight face that they aren't being in any way disingenuous with that statement I can only answer with this: If you aren't currently in the legal field you've really missed your true calling.

 

BR players come on sale this summer, PS3 comes on sale in Nov...so the "starting price" of BR players will be determined this summer when the FIRST bluray players launch. Not 4 months later when the PS3 finally comes out. Seems very straightforward to me.

 

Taken out of context

they were not comparing it to the X360 add on price which would have validated your comparison of PS3.

they were comparing prices of stand alone players (Toshiba Hd DVD at $500) to stand alone Blu-Ray, for giving perspective of overall current costs of the format.

 

I disagree

painting yourself into a corner would have been releasing a system with a yet unproven media format at the beginning of a possible drawn out format war.

What MS did was release on a proven format and give themselves options for adding future formats.

hardly painted into a corner.

 

I wonder if the drive will also work on Vista, that would be an interesting wrinkle. It wouldnt solve the HDMI problem for the 360 but would be interesting nonetheless.

 

That's certainly what I'm anticipating. It's a no-brainer really.

 

The ICT includes all analog devices, so if you plug it into your VGA monitor or non-HDCP DVI monitor you get the same res you would have gotten from your TV.

EDIT: for clarity, ...if you plug your HD-DVD into your Windows box and it is connected to an analog or non-HDCP DVI monitor...

 

Everything on the 360 seems to be able to sinc with windows. I'd say the chances are pretty good.

 

Sure, i'm just saying that on a Vista/HDCP Certified computer you could potentially add HD-DVD for a low price.

Not to mention the fact that if you have Vista and buy the drive, you should be able to stream the movie to any 360 in the house. Buy 1 drive, upgrade multiple 360s...

Of course there still is that looming 360 HDMI question...

 

Or better yet, use the HD-DVD drive to transfer the movie onto your pc's harddrive, and share them throughout the house using some sort of DRM system. No disc swapping is required, and multiple people can view multiple movies at the same time.

 

I think this is the most likely scenario, judging by the conference where MS displayed hd-dvd, although I believe it is up to the publishers, but in that demo they had the different methods of "fair use", so you should be able to drop it to the hdd in your chosen format, one for streaming one for your video ipod (or whatever device they had there, can't remember). Right now, I stream my HD .ts streams to either of my 360s with no problems over my g connection. My Media Center PC found the second 360 after about 5 or 6 minutes on its own, and all the settings work across both 360s (as they are supposed to). IIRC the only reason we can't stream DVD is legal issues, which should not plague the new formats. I will definitely say though that the bandwidth for streaming over the wireless, only allows me to stream to one of the 360s, trying to go with two different streams to each box gives me the "Network Congestion" message on the 360s.

 

There have been quite a few PCs sold over the last 12 months that could decode HD. A lot of that has to do with the fact that NVidia/ATI have been including dedicated hardware in their GPUs to do it for awhile now. I dont recall the first series from each manufacturer to include the hardware but there will be quite a few of those systems out there by the time vista ships. Now HDCP is something else but i'm still not clear on what the requirements will be for that in the PC space.

 

You're disagreeing for no reason at all.

For starters, what you describe would only be painting oneself into a corner if the 'unproven' format fails for one reason or another. Second, why do we even care? It's just pieces of plastic. Better to concentrate on the important stuff instead, such as actual movies or games. Not the media they're stored on.

FWIW, the guy was referring to the video output method I believe, and not the type of optical drive used. Anyway, MS didn't use DVD because it was 'proven', but because it's cheaper to buy. Let's get our facts straight, shall we?

Oh, and before you'll start to disagree with the obvious, it's arguable BR is proven too, since it's been available commercially for what, at least a year or so. So let's not continue down that road, thanks...

 

yes, you may be right

well that was part and parcel to what I meant by proven

Edit:
oh and by proven I was not referring to the technolgy as much as I was the mass consumer acceptance

 

If the Xbox 360 having a HD-DVD results in DRM/ICT being pushed back by many years, I welcome it!

Look at the HD-DVD demo it was quite nice and I could just buy an addon for my xbox 360 at a decent price, I'll jump on it. I'm sure the IQ difference, if any, will be quickly known but if the IQ is the same and the price is cheap (compared to a standalone) MS should have a hit on their hands.

 

Yeah because we know add-ons sure become big hits.

 

Under the conditions that he proposed, why wouldn't it be?

The problem isn't that it's an 'add-on' and therefore won't become a big hit.

The problem is that his conditions (great IQ, cheaper price than stand alone players), most likely won't be met.

 

Theres a big difference between this and the doomed add-ons of years past. This provides an added funcitonality not related to playing the games on the system. It doesnt need 'developer support' nor does it fragment the userbase, big difference.

I understand the overall sentiment though, it sometimes appears like token support for the format just to put a checkmark in the 'plays HD optical movies' column. Hopefully we'll get all the ansers tomorrow.

 

this is not a game "add-on" in the sense of typical past failures. this is just another peripheral like an Eye Toy.

A premiere functionality OPTION added to an existing product to enhance the pleasure of certain users who choose to pay for it.

I don't undertsand the negativity toward it.