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journal: fun
Xbox 360 HD DVD Player
There are two kinds of TV owners in the world: HDTV owners and everybody else. HDTV owners know how much high definition enhances the TV viewing experience. It’s so good that many HDTV owners (myself included) will watch practically anything as long as it is in HD. Daytime soaps, the 10 o’clock news, even mindless reality fare—shows one would never even consider watching previously—suddenly become riveting entertainment, solely for the fact that they are in high definition. That’s how compelling High Def is.
But what HD owners really want to watch on their expensive TV sets are movies, and lots of them. The HD movie selection on cable is meager at best, and DVD’s don’t offer the capacity to deliver movies in HD on a large scale. Enter HD DVD. This next-generation optical disc format uses a blue laser to greatly increase the capacity of a disc (DVD’s top out at 9.6GB whereas the smallest 12cm HD DVD’s start at 15GB) and next-generation video codecs to enable HD movies on a disc the same size as a regular DVD. Both HD DVD and its competitor Blu-ray Disc use the same blue laser technologies, and consequently, both require consumers to go out and buy new hardware to play those respective formats. But the hardware is expensive, with HD DVD players starting at $450 and Blu-ray players going for a wallet-emptying $999. Not exactly mass-market prices.
The Xbox 360 HD DVD Player
Microsoft thinks it has a solution. It has released the Xbox 360 HD DVD player that, for $200, allows Xbox 360 owners to watch HD DVD movies through their consoles. When one gets right down to it, the HD DVD player is a fairly unremarkable device. It is literally just a 2x ATAPI HD DVD drive, inside a USB enclosure, with a USB hub included. All of the decoding and movie playback is accomplished on the Xbox 360 itself using the bundled software package (the HD DVD player software apparently has 10 million lines of code and pushes the Xbox 360 harder than any game yet). This characteristic of the player is responsible for both its most compelling advantages and its primary drawback, but more on that a little later.
As mentioned, the HD DVD standard uses new, blue-laser technology to greatly increase the capacity of a 12cm optical disc, with capacities starting from 15GB. This in itself would be enough to deliver HD movies in a compelling format using existing technology, but the standard goes further by taking advantage of next generation video compression formats, MPEG 4 Part 10 (also known as H.264) and Microsoft’s VC-1 format which is based loosely on WMV 9. The HD DVD standard also supports MPEG 2 for legacy compatibility. The result is the ability to deliver feature length movies in the highest available HD resolutions with barely-discernible compression artifacts. HD DVD also boasts beefed-up audio, with support for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD surround sound formats, making for cleaner, fuller audio than with regular DVD’s.
For interactivity, HD DVD uses iHD, which is based on standard Web technologies, to provide animation, menus and other features. These interactive features can play on a layer above the movie as it plays, unlike the current DVD format which requires you to pause the movie and bring up a dedicated menu screen. HD DVD players also include two decoders for picture-in-picture support, an ethernet port for Internet content downloads, and a hard drive to store those downloads. This means in future, movie publishers could introduce new content such as new commentary tracks or behind-the-scenes featurettes, which would be downloaded to your HD DVD player and integrated into the movie experience.
For the most part, the Xbox 360 HD DVD player handles everything with no fuss. Setup is a breeze; simply unpack the unit, insert the enclosed software disc in the Xbox 360 and hook up the player. After a brief installation process, it’s ready to go. You’ll be watching your first movie less than 5 minutes after opening the box. In use, it quickly becomes clear that Microsoft made a concerted effort to make the HD DVD player as unobtrusive as possible. The software makes no changes to your Dashboard, save for a small adjustment to the “Play Disc” command, which is now divided into two sections, one to play the disc inside the Xbox 360 and the other to play the disc inside the HD DVD player. Game discs must play from the 360 itself and HD DVD’s must play from the HD DVD player, of course, but DVD’s and audio CD’s can play from either drive, which lets you set up some interesting two-disc scenarios. For example, if you have a DVD movie that spans two discs, simply put one in each drive and enjoy.
The Xbox 360 Universal Remote,
included with the HD DVD player.
Despite Microsoft’s efforts, there are a couple of maddening ways in which the HD DVD drive doesn’t quite mesh with the rest of the Xbox 360 experience, and this is the device’s first disadvantage. The Xbox 360 has a setting which lets you choose whether to start a game or movie automatically on boot. I have this turned off, because I usually want to go to the Dashboard, check my messages or play an Arcade game first. This works fine most of the time, but maddeningly, if the HD DVD drive has a disc inserted and the 360 does not, it will start the HD DVD disc automatically, regardless of the auto-start setting. Another small but telling nitpick is there is no way to eject the HD DVD disc from your couch. The included Universal Remote has an eject button, but it only opens the Xbox 360’s disc tray, not that of the HD DVD player.
The HD DVD drive is also limited by the Xbox in a couple of technical ways. The Xbox 360 does not have an HDMI port (or a DVI port, for that matter). This means there is no way to get a pure digital signal to your new digital TV. Microsoft thinks the Xbox 360’s VGA adapter can serve as an adequate replacement for it, and for the most part, it is just that: adequate. To be sure, VGA does deliver a great picture, as does component output, but nothing replaces the convenience of HDMI, and there’s the ever-present worry that the movie studios will clamp down and require HDMI for full quality HD DVD or Blu-ray viewing. The studios have said they will not impose this requirement until the next decade at the very earliest, but you never know, and if and when they do decide to require it, the Xbox 360 HD DVD player will be reduced to a glorified, expensive standard DVD player, incapable of transmitting any HD signals.
The other limitation is the 360’s lack of support for any next-generation audio formats. All HD DVD audio gets internally converted to Dolby Digital 5.1 or Dolby Pro Logic II (for digital or analog transmission, respectively.) No Dolby TrueHD, no DTS-HD, not even regular DTS, which some say is better than Dolby Digital. Unfortunately, I don’t yet have a 5.1 surround system to test on (I know, I need to drag myself into this century 
) so I can’t speak much to the sound quality of the HD DVD player.
The HD DVD drive looks ugly next to the 360, no matter how you position it.
But perhaps the most obvious flaw is decidedly non-technical. The drive just plain looks ugly. I don’t know what Microsoft’s industrial designers were thinking when they came up with this thing, but there is absolutely no way to arrange it so it looks attractive next to your Xbox 360. Microsoft has released several beauty shots showing the drive standing up next to a vertical 360, but it just doesn’t work. It looks like some ugly oversize hardback book hanging off the side of your sleek 360. To make matters worse, the HD DVD drive requires its own power supply and its internal fan adds to the already-considerable racket the Xbox 360 makes at high load.
With all the flaws and gotchas, you probably think it would be hard to recommend this device. And you would be right, if it were not for one minor detail: the picture that comes out of this thing is nothing short of stunning. This is what your HDTV was made for. All of those cable and network HD shows you thought were so special before were just appetizers; this is the main course. The included movie, Peter Jackson’s King Kong, is a great showpiece for everything that HD DVD can do. Closeups of Kong’s face reveal intricate and extremely fine scars, and the fur on Kong’s skin is exquisitely detailed, with each strand waving slightly in the breeze with its own life and character. Even fast action scenes, such as Kong’s race through New York—studded as it is with Jackson’s trademark sweeping aerial shots of the cityscape—remain rock solid, never disintegrating into the telltale blocky mess that signifies the video codec giving up the fight. Color gradients, such as the sunrise-tinged sky framing Kong perched on the Empire State Building, never banded or turned blocky, instead staying smooth and natural. And fast scrolling scenes never tore up or revealed any interlacing problems. Put simply, the HD DVD drive delivered the best video quality I have ever seen in my home, period.
The HD DVD drive can also connect to a PC and, with a quick driver download and HD DVD player software purchase, can be used to play HD DVD movies on your computer monitor. It supports the Mac, but as far as I know there are no HD DVD player applications available for the Mac at this time. Realistically though, this device is tied at the hip to Xbox 360, and that characteristic is both its only blessing and its primary curse. It is a cheap and functional way for Xbox 360 owners to get into HD DVD movie viewing, but you shouldn’t expect it to replace more expensive standalone players, any of which will do a better job than this unit.
Author’s note: This article originally stated that HD DVD uses a variant of Adobe Flash for interactivity. That was incorrect, and the article has been amended to reflect that.
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| UnnDunn | comments | views |
thinkback
Great review, Undunn. High definition movies do look amazing. I saw one on a $7,000 57” LCD TV the other day and it blew me away. It was much better than the movie theatre.
I think the decision to make the HD DVD player separate from the console is going to bite Microsoft in the butt. I think this was a huge mistake. I doubt many developers will develop a game for the 360 that utilize the HD player if a small percentage of 360 owners even have an HD player. This will create a disparity between the quality of the games on the PS3 and 360.
Every PS3 comes with a hard drive and a BlueRay drive. Resistance: Fall of Man uses 22 gigs already.
It’s $600 for the 360 with a 20 gig hard drive and external HD player. Add another $80-$100 for WiFi. No Bluetooth.
The $599 PS3 comes a 60 gig hard drive, BlueRay, Bluetooth 2, WiFi, HDMI (2).
And Sony’s online network is free.
| Dec. 31, 2006 | ||
| 8:52 am |
For interactivity, HD DVD uses a variant of the popular Adobe Flash format to provide animation, menus and other features.
No, it uses iHD which is a combination of HTML, CSS, Javascript, and XML.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IHD_Interactiv e_Format
and if and when they do decide to require it, the Xbox 360 HD DVD player will be reduced to a glorified, expensive standard DVD player, incapable of transmitting any HD signals.
The 360 will still be able to playback any HD-
DVD’s that were produced with the hd flag turned on, which is basically any dics made from now to then.
I think the decision to make the HD DVD player separate from the console is going to bite Microsoft in the butt. I think this was a huge mistake. I doubt many developers will develop a game for the 360 that utilize the HD player if a small percentage of 360 owners even have an HD player.
Microsoft doesn’t allow developers to make games utilizing the HD-DVD player. Remember, that’s why Microsoft can sell their machine at a profit (per iSupply) now while still charging less to the customer. In addition, Microsoft can drop prices on the Xbox much sooner than Soony will be able to do so.
This will create a disparity between the quality of the games on the PS3 and 360. Every PS3 comes with a hard drive and a BlueRay drive. Resistance: Fall of Man uses 22 gigs already.
No it won’t. Sony’s development tools and process are pretty different from what microsoft is using. Sony doesn’t have many of the technological advantages, like procedural synthesis and better compression, that Microsoft has so their games will always be much larger even for the same title (assuming both are optimized for both platforms).
A good comparison to Fall of Man would be Gears of War and the latter doesn’t even fill a DVD-9. Procedural synthesis on the 360 and windows can easily make the space require to store textures 10 to 20 times less than normal.
Besides, there’s very little harm in doing two discs in many cases. The PS1 and PS2 used multiple discs for many titles: Syphon Filter, Metal Gear, Gran Turismo etc. and it didn’t seem to hurt anything.
For interactivity, HD DVD uses a variant of the popular Adobe Flash format to provide animation, menus and other features.No, it uses iHD which is a combination of HTML, CSS, Javascript, and XML.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IHD_Interactiv e_Format
and if and when they do decide to require it, the Xbox 360 HD DVD player will be reduced to a glorified, expensive standard DVD player, incapable of transmitting any HD signals.
The 360 will still be able to playback any HD-
DVD’s that were produced with the hd flag turned on, which is basically any dics made from now to then.
You are right about the iHD. I’ve edited the article to reflect that. Thanks!
There is a provision in both the HD DVD and Blu-ray standards that requires players to down-res the quality of analog outputs on all movies starting in 2013, and to disable analog outputs completely starting in 2014. When that happens, the Xbox 360 HD DVD player, as it stands now, will be for all intents and purposes, useless.
| UnnDunn | Dec. 31, 2006 | |
| 1:57 pm |
Remember, that’s why Microsoft can sell their machine at a profit (per iSupply) now while still charging less to the customer.
I don’t see the relevance of Microsoft’s profit nor do I see how a $399 360 compares to the $599 PS3. Yes, products with fewer features can cost less. Maybe I’m missing your point.
In any case, the prices of these consoles will shake out over the next year or two and the long term success will be based on features, game selection, graphics quality, game quality.
No it won’t. Sony’s development tools and process are pretty different from what microsoft is using. Sony doesn’t have many of the technological advantages, like procedural synthesis and better compression, that Microsoft has so their games will always be much larger even for the same title (assuming both are optimized for both platforms).
Don’t take offense if I don’t take your word on that. I’d be happy to look at some articles on this, though, if you have some links.
Besides, there’s very little harm in doing two discs in many cases. The PS1 and PS2 used multiple discs for many titles: Syphon Filter, Metal Gear, Gran Turismo etc. and it didn’t seem to hurt anything.
I don’t know about that. I remember reading about how that’s something developers want to avoid and will scale back their game to fit on one disc if they can.
You are right that a game spanning 5 discs will be as complex as the same game on a BlueRay disc. However, I think the point is more games will not be as complex to avoid spanning multiple discs.
But I understand your point. I still think it’s a big mistake to not include HD with the 360.
| Dec. 31, 2006 | ||
| 5:29 pm |
Hmm, I noticed some of these things are comments on what I’ve covered as well.
| Rosyna | Jan. 01, 2007 | |
| 5:45 am |
Hence the reason I posted that link, it’s designed for such pointless arguing
| Rosyna | Jan. 01, 2007 | |
| 3:08 pm |
The relevance of profit to the discussion is obvious. You said it was a mistake to not include a blu-ray or HD-DVD drive in the 360. Since Sony is losing 300+ dollars per machine and MS is making money on their machine then it would seem that it isn’t a mistake (at least so far). That Blu-ray drive also cut into Sony’s ability to manufacture consoles which will limit game and accessory sales too.
You can google procedural synthesis and how it works with DX/360 development as it’s slighty different from other implementations. But here’s one great example of it saving tremendous amounts of disc space:
http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2 006/01/procedural_synt.html
Rosyna is just wrong about it not saving disc space… you can google it an see that easily. Or you could even fire up the the MSDN developement tools (among others) and try it out if you want.
What did UnnDunn just say?
Nonetheless, you’re completely ignoring blue dragon that takes up 3 discs or other games that use multiple discs on the Xbox 360. You say silly things like “procedural synthesis saves tremendous amounts of disc space” but then ignore the fact it wasn’t designed for that. It was designed to make multiple objects (like trees in a forest) have a different look, rather than using the same model and spending money on artists to make the different models.
But still, Blue Dragon occupies 3 discs.
| Rosyna | Jan. 02, 2007 | |
| 3:17 pm |
Kuaidang,
You continue to be completely full of shit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_gen eration
Accordingly, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 have impressive procedural synthesis capabilities.
The Cell processor contains an implementation-dependent number of vector processing units called SPEs. PlayStation 3, to date the largest use of the Cell processor, will contain 8 SPEs, only seven of which are active. The eighth is to be used in the event that another SPE malfunctions. The SPEs can stream data to each other, with each SPE performing a different operation on a large set of data, thus creating a highly efficient chain which performs a sequence of operations on a data set of arbitrary size (they are virtually assembled in a “hyper-pipeline”, allowing high amount of parallelism). Each SPE can execute a different task in the algorithm and pass the result on to another SPE which does the next piece of work. The cell can thus generate game objects very quickly by dividing the algorithm into smaller tasks and setting up a chain of SPEs to do the work on an arbitrarily large number of objects.
For example, to generate a boulder, an SPE may initialize the basic vertex positions to a spherical object, a second SPE may displace those points to add randomness, a third to generate normals, tangent and binormals for bumpmapping while a fourth SPE may add volume texture coordinates (possibly in parallel with the third SPE). Note that this example assumes the compiler can guess correct parallelism opportunity.
The Cell’s counterpart to Xenon “cache locking” is each SPE’s 256 KiB local store, essentially L2 cache memory which can be accessed directly, rather than being used to speed up access to main memory. This approach has both perks and flaws, as it allows each SPE to work extremely quickly, but only on a small subset of the total data of a program. There is also a direct 35 GB/s link between the Cell and the PS3’s “Reality Synthesizer” GPU, allowing objects to be sent directly to the GPU to be rendered as soon as they are generated.
Procedural synthesis is a term I wasn’t familiar with until I read about it at Wiki. It’s the same old procedural technology I’ve been using for decades in 3D applications.
I’ve used it for decades when creating textures and lighting shaders. Now every 3D application uses it with models for the creation of trees and even armies.
Basic 3D applications use procedurals. It’s not new and it’s definitely not exclusive to the 360.
To state that the 360 has some magic wand that the PS3 does not is the typical BS Kuaidang spouts.
Heck, the game Elite from 1984 uses procedural synthesis. I played it on a Commodore 64 while in high school.
Rosyna made really good points about the benefits of a hard drive and having the BlueRay standard.
Your argument about the profit margin of a PS3 doesn’t at all relate to what I said, which was about the disparity I speculate will occur between the 360 and PS3 games. I say the PS3 games will end up being better and you tell me that the 360 sells for a profit. OK. Great. Good for them.
| Jan. 02, 2007 | ||
| 4:06 pm |
What did Unndunn say?
I am so sick and tired of this site serving as an outlet for people from XvsXP--both current and former members--to play out old grudges and ongoing debates here. This is a different site with a different focus. Don’t pull that same old crap here!
| Nick | Jan. 02, 2007 | |
| 6:01 pm |
All I did is express my opinion that it was a mistake for Microsoft to not include the HD DVD player in the Xbox 360. I was respectful to Undunn in my comment. Kuaidang replied with complete fiction. I was initially very respectful to him too, giving him the benefit of the doubt. Who is the troll in this thread, Nick?
| Jan. 02, 2007 | ||
| 7:31 pm |
Firstly, I was making a general note directed at all participants in the thread.
Second, I really don’t give a shit who the troll is. When Unndunn requested that people keep the discussion on topic, you should not have continued the off-topic discussion, regardless of what others said. Be the bigger man.
| Nick | Jan. 02, 2007 | |
| 11:07 pm |
You are right about the iHD. I’ve edited the article to reflect that. Thanks!
There is a provision in both the HD DVD and Blu-ray standards that requires players to down-res the quality of analog outputs on all movies starting in 2013, and to disable analog outputs completely starting in 2014. When that happens, the Xbox 360 HD DVD player, as it stands now, will be for all intents and purposes, useless.
LOL, sorry but not everyone waits for dooms day.. And 2013 is how long away? Do you really think the 360 will be around in most gamers hands? Come on bro have a little commen sense, 7 yrs for a DVD player is long enough and I would’ve replaced it years before that…
LOL, sorry but not everyone waits for dooms day.. And 2013 is how long away? Do you really think the 360 will be around in most gamers hands? Come on bro have a little commen sense, 7 yrs for a DVD player is long enough and I would’ve replaced it years before that…
I agree, it’s not that big of a deal, but it is worth mentioning. Just to be thorough.
| UnnDunn | Jan. 17, 2007 | |
| 3:53 pm |
Mac Fan you obviously missed the part about:
You can google procedural synthesis and how it works with DX/360 development as it’s slighty different from other implementations
Procedural synthesis is a general term, much like the other advantage I named: Compression. There are different types of procedural synthesis and compression. There’s also a difference in WHAT you are using procedual systhesis on (say textures vs geometry) and whether or not there is specific hardware in the machine built for such a purpose. And of course, just like compression, there are different algorithms too.
Saying the PS3 and Xbox 360 both have procedural synthesis is like saying both MPEG-4 and MPEG-1 feature video compression.
If you bothered to read the arstechnica article then you would have noticed that Microsoft does have some fairly unique elements in their implementation of procedural synthesis. In fact, they filed for a patent:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser? Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u;=/ ;netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html &r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01 &s1=20050099417&OS=20050099417&RS=20 050099417
1.
UnnDunn, that’s an excellent review.
Thorough, well-thought-out, objective and well written.
You should definitely think about tech reporting or writing in the future (as a full-time or part-time gig.)
Kudos!