Xbox HD-DVD add-on [merged]

kaisersose77

Just check out www.xbox-scene.com

mcgovern

kaisersose77 wrote:

Just check out www.xbox-scene.com

Some other interesting things there. 50 games by June would be nice.

danbhala

would many be bothered with the external HD-DVD? would you say its a must have if you got a hdtv? dont really see the big deal really.... but i agree those 50 games by june would be lovely and those 20 downloadeable demo's by march sound deadly...

Ri_Nollaig

if its not too pricey (who am i kidding?) then this cud b fairly handy
i think its better this way then if it had delayed the console and increased the price by about another 100eur... this way we can actually get it if its needed otherwise forget about it

projectmayhem

appears this'll be only for movies, no hd-dvd games

kaisersose77

probably have to stick the drive in your pc and stream stuff to your 360! if it was used for games, then most americans would sue them for having to buy the new drive

KTRIC

Yes, you heard me. Uncle Bill has announced that there will be an add-on HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360 this year.

http://www.oxm.co.uk/articles/news/hardware/microsoft_confirm_xbox_360_hd-dvd_drive

I could start complaining about why it wasn't in the machine when we bought it last December, but I couldn't be bothered because that will get us nowhere.

All I can say is HAH HAHAHAHA BLOODY STUPID SONY FANBOY'S, SHOVE THIS UP YER ARSE !!!

PowerHouseDan

Exactly 4 Threads down it has already been posted

KTRIC

PowerHouseDan wrote:

Exactly 4 Threads down it has already been posted

Erm Oops,

Just got caught up in the moment.

Furp

Anyone seen any details on this how will it connect to the 360, USB? or through the HDD port.

It will be interesting to see this drive and what way it will connect to and add to the 360's appearance.

FuzzyWuzzyWazza

projectmayhem wrote:

appears this'll be only for movies, no hd-dvd games

The games are already on DVD and in HD, if thats what you mean.

It might be a nice add-on, if you have a HDTV, and want to watch HD movies from the 360.

antifyre

This is only precautionary, for discs etc....

Microsoft claim they have a huge announcement to make on the 1st Birthday of 360 (Nov 28th 2006)...Current rumour is the announcement is for Streaming HD content to the HDD's, for Movies and possibly games.( Probably leading to bigger HD's being released, the real reason for the detachability: Upgrade)

Sounds pretty tasty to me...

rfoley

K-TRIC wrote:

All I can say is HAH HAHAHAHA BLOODY STUPID SONY FANBOY'S, SHOVE THIS UP YER ARSE !!!

Shove what up their arse? The fact that you need to buy an add-on to get the full functionality of the machine you already forked out a fortune for? When the PS3 will actually ship with the drive it's supposed to?

The fanboys must be jealous seeing you get ripped off!

monkeyfudge

Hmm... it's an external drive... I might as well just buy a regular HD-DVD player that I don't have to plug into the Xbox to use.

ShiverinEskimo

antifyre wrote:

This is only precautionary, for discs etc....

Microsoft claim they have a huge announcement to make on the 1st Birthday of 360 (Nov 28th 2006)...Current rumour is the announcement is for Streaming HD content to the HDD's, for Movies and possibly games.( Probably leading to bigger HD's being released, the real reason for the detachability: Upgrade)

Sounds pretty tasty to me...

..or that we'll see the ending of halo 2.

Dont be at yourself

Considering you can stream movies from USB harddrives, could you do the same with USB HD-DVD drives? (if such a thing will exist)

Is this Xbox branded hd-dvd drive going to be nothing more than a glorified, overpriced standard usb drive? I mean, they did the same with the XBox link cables - took a vanilla crossover cable, slapped it in a green box and charged €35 for it.

KTRIC

rfoley wrote:

Shove what up their arse? The fact that you need to buy an add-on to get the full functionality of the machine you already forked out a fortune for? When the PS3 will actually ship with the drive it's supposed to?

The fanboys must be jealous seeing you get ripped off!

If you are referencing the vaporware "PS3" , then when it does eventually get manufactured, we'll wait and see what's the best value. At least we are being given the opertunity to buy the HD-DVD drive as an add-on, unlike if the PS3 comes out you will have to buy it.

projectmayhem

K-TRIC wrote:

If you are referencing the vaporware "PS3" , then when it does eventually get manufactured, we'll wait and see what's the best value. At least we are being given the opertunity to buy the HD-DVD drive as an add-on, unlike if the PS3 comes out you will have to buy it.

yeah because we all know sony are reconsidering releasing the ps3 :rolleyes:

KTRIC

projectmayhem wrote:

yeah because we all know sony are reconsidering releasing the ps3 :rolleyes:

The PS3 is supposed to be released in March. No-one has actually seen one working and there has been no mention of it going into production.

zAbbo

guess we'll just have to wait until March 2006 for the supposed release date, wait a minute, thats 2 months away.

PS3 = Vaporware

antifyre

I do remember a cool article I read from J Allard, that they first thing he said when theysaw the PS3 mock-up models was.....'it's 6 months away from release, and they still have'nt got an external fan grid in the casing??'

Made me laugh...


I don't even think we will see PS3 released in Japan until Sept - Dec, never mind over here.....(Summer 2007)

ShiverinEskimo

The sooner the better til this console war kicks off properly. Prices won't be long plummeting when there's a good old competition war on again. I'll buy a 360 for Halo 3 but even then it'll be tough to justify (i LOVE halo games) since I've spent well in excess of 2 grand on me PC.

monument

FuzzyWuzzyWazza wrote:

The games are already on DVD and in HD, if thats what you mean.

He said HD-DVD, it’s a disk format, it's not normal DVD.

HD-DVD, like Blu-Ray, is a disk with a more room on it. Allowing what some say is "true" HD content to be stored on it. Other, like Sony would argue that only Blu-Ray, and not even HD-DVD does this.

FuzzyWuzzyWazza wrote:

It might be a nice add-on, if you have a HDTV, and want to watch HD movies from the 360.

Only if it's cheaper then a stand alone player.

skywalker

K-TRIC wrote:

If you are referencing the vaporware "PS3" , then when it does eventually get manufactured, we'll wait and see what's the best value. At least we are being given the opertunity to buy the HD-DVD drive as an add-on, unlike if the PS3 comes out you will have to buy it.

So going by that logic this external drive is vaporware too then?

KTRIC

skywalker wrote:

So going by that logic this external drive is vaporware too then?

I doubt MS would make the silly mistake of showing us a fake mockup of the HD-DVD drive add-on, unlike what another company did.

steviec

I don't like the idea of some extra drive sitting on top of the 360 and attached by USB cable... If it's like that I'd be more tempted by a standalone player, but if it integrates nicely(like, say, the gameboy player for gamecube) I'd be more tempted, although apart from the USB ports there's only the hard drive slot isn't there?

Of course it depends what happens on the blu-ray/hd-dvd front. I have a HDTV and I will be getting a PS3 so this will only be necessary if a lot of titles are HD-exclusive, which I'm not sure will happen.

Dont be at yourself

K-TRIC wrote:

I doubt MS would make the silly mistake of showing us a fake mockup of the HD-DVD drive add-on, unlike what another company did.

As opposed to a real mock-up?

Those PS3 units were shown back in May, which is just shy of a year away from their projected release date. If you're going to make an issue of this, what, pray tell, did Microsoft show of the 360 a year out from launch? I was at a trade event about 4 months from the launch of the 360, and all they could show were some in-game movies and pass around an empty xbox360 case.

We know nothing about this external drive at the moment, other than it's on the way this year. We don't know the price (though judging of the price of other HD-DVD drives announced, it's not going to be cheap), we don't know the release date, and we don't know what it looks like, or how it's going to attach to the console.

KeRbDoG

NekkidBibleMan wrote:

Considering you can stream movies from USB harddrives, could you do the same with USB HD-DVD drives? (if such a thing will exist)

Is this Xbox branded hd-dvd drive going to be nothing more than a glorified, overpriced standard usb drive? I mean, they did the same with the XBox link cables - took a vanilla crossover cable, slapped it in a green box and charged €35 for it.

Currently the Xbox360 can't play movies from any USB devices. Thats not to say that they wont use it and throw in a dash update.
I can see it being something that will use the HDD slot in the site of the 360, making the HDD piggy back or something

Clank

Thats the only way I can see it working, piggybacking on the HD or something like it.
The USB slot at the back is meant for the wireless adaptor, they will not want to ruin the aesthetics of the machine.

I mean it makes sense for Microsoft to allow consumers to do this rather than make an internal HD-DVD 360 available, but its going to look a bit pants with another drive hanging off.
Its going to have to be very cheap aswell, im thinking €150 and below(im dreaming I know, im just thinking in terms of PS3), they wont sell many if its above that as youll be hitting PS3s price territory, and they dont want that.

Dont be at yourself

The cheapest standalone hd-dvd player unveiled at CES will retail at $500, and only at that price due to significant discounting. So this drive is probably not going to be cheap. I'm not sure who it's going to be marketed at, because the people who are going to have that kind of money to buy it, will probably want to buy a standalone player.

The cheapest Blu-Ray standalone? €1000. Which is going to make the PS3 extremely attractive for those wanting to jump on the blu-ray bandwagon.

Ciaran500

But its only the drive part that you need to buy, I would assume the players are expensive cause of the amount of power needed to process and output the HD signal.

hottstuff

well now if i wanted a HD DVD player ill wait and buy a proper system , if the quality justifies it.
not sure i want to start changing my collection

but yes an external HD DVD drive for the 360 is pointless
and @ over €100 i feel is a waste of money

shabbyroad

there's a lot of assumptions being made here about how the drive will connect to the console and how it will all look.

after all the time, money and effort that has gone into the design of the console does anyone really believe that Microsoft is just going to knock out a crappy looking drive ?

GrumPy

hottstuff wrote:

well now if i wanted a HD DVD player ill wait and buy a proper system , if the quality justifies it.
not sure i want to start changing my collection

but yes an external HD DVD drive for the 360 is pointless
and @ over €100 i feel is a waste of money

if i wanted to enjoy hd movies, id buy the upgrade, rather than an entire new system at over €500+, i doubt the addon will cost anymore then €200.

Dont be at yourself

shabbyroad wrote:

there's a lot of assumptions being made here about how the drive will connect to the console and how it will all look.

after all the time, money and effort that has gone into the design of the console does anyone really believe that Microsoft is just going to knock out a crappy looking drive ?

If Microsoft spent so much time, money and effort into the design of the console, why does nobody - not even Microsoft at this point apparently - know how the drive is going to connect to the 360, let alone how it's going to look, or sit alongside the not-very-stackable design of the console? The fact that it's a concave shape are going to make it a major headache for designing the drive, and then there's the issue of the console being able to stand on it's side to consider too.

It'll be interesting to see how well they get around these problems.

KTRIC

Here's the prototype

Xbox 360 is on the right

kaisersose77

Its not as if there wasnt talk of the xbox360 with a HD-DVD drive before they officialy mentioned it. So they hardly are gonna start coming up with idea's now. As soon as they though about having a HD-DVD and how it would effect the cost of the 360 if the drive was included, they probably started coming up with prototypes of an external drive and that wasnt last week! The fact that they officially announced it after saying there would be no HD-DVD drive before the 360 was released, makes me think they have come up with a prototype there happy with.

shabbyroad

NekkidBibleMan wrote:

If Microsoft spent so much time, money and effort into the design of the console, why does nobody - not even Microsoft at this point apparently - know how the drive is going to connect to the 360, let alone how it's going to look, or sit alongside the not-very-stackable design of the console? The fact that it's a concave shape are going to make it a major headache for designing the drive, and then there's the issue of the console being able to stand on it's side to consider too.

It'll be interesting to see how well they get around these problems.

Do you think they're idiots ? Of course they know exactly how it's going to look and connect. They've just not told anyone yet. :rolleyes:

setanta5

kaisersose77 wrote:

Its not as if there wasnt talk of the xbox360 with a HD-DVD drive before they officialy mentioned it. So they hardly are gonna start coming up with idea's now. As soon as they though about having a HD-DVD and how it would effect the cost of the 360 if the drive was included, they probably started coming up with prototypes of an external drive and that wasnt last week! The fact that they officially announced it after saying there would be no HD-DVD drive before the 360 was released, makes me think they have come up with a prototype there happy with.

You're right there was talk of there being a HD dvd drive in the 360. This was all part of the HD-DVD vs Blu-ray format war. Rumour was that in the interest of getting the machine out on time there would be different variations of the machine with the HD-DVD being included later when the drive became available. MS obviously didn't want to hurt the release sales of the machine by people waiting for a "new-improved" 360, which probably wouldn't be ready until after the PS3. That would defeat the purpose of releasing the machine early which is to get market penetration. In fact at the time Microsoft came out with a statement that they may in fact include a Blu-ray drive...or at least that they weren't ruling it out. Seemed a bit weird as MS were firmly on the HD-DVD side of the format war.

At the consoles release though they did make a good point that few of the DVD games on the original xbox used even half the capacity of a standard DVD. I know this is only being talked about as a movie add on but that again could be to prevent people saying they will hold off and see what happens. Which by the way is exactly what i am going to do.

I've always had my console on release date going back to the original PS, N64, PS2 and xbox. THis time i can't be bothered to be honest. The games out at the moment...while they look good, are little more than repolished versions of games that could easily have beeen done on last gen hardware. Take Kameo..this was originally a gamecube title. My advice to anyone...wait a little. IF for no other reason than the shops are being complete W****rs about the game prices and "compulsory package" deals. They get away with it only because people are desperate enough to have one.

Sorry i'm gone off topic a bit and i'm ranting...need to calm down.

Dont be at yourself

kaisersose77 wrote:

Its not as if there wasnt talk of the xbox360 with a HD-DVD drive before they officialy mentioned it. So they hardly are gonna start coming up with idea's now. As soon as they though about having a HD-DVD and how it would effect the cost of the 360 if the drive was included, they probably started coming up with prototypes of an external drive and that wasnt last week! The fact that they officially announced it after saying there would be no HD-DVD drive before the 360 was released, makes me think they have come up with a prototype there happy with.

So, a stream of denials about any such drive being in development, an announcement containing no price, design or details on how it'll connect, and th vaguest of release dates ("this year"), leads you to believe that they've 'come up with a prototype there [sic] happy with'?

To me, it suggests that they're trying to shoehorn extra features into the Xbox360 that were deemed not worthwhile during it's design, it suggests they've not settled on a single design at the moment. If they had, surely we'd have at the very least some information on it, if not a mock-up itself. Basically all we know right now is that it's on the way - if Microsoft are as far along in design as you think, you'd imagine they'd be shouting it from the rooftops, particularly with a big announcement from Sony due regarding the PS3.

To me, this announcement is a response to criticism about Microsoft's use of xbox 360's HD capabilities as a USP, as the PS3, on paper, appears to do HD a lot better (in terms of having a blu-ray drive for input, and higher quality output). The existance of this drive [albeit in development] will allow Microsoft to refute Sony's claims that it's the only true HD system, as it has 'all the links in the chain' (to borrow a phrase from gamesindustry.biz).

FuzzyWuzzyWazza

NekkidBibleMan wrote:

(in terms of having a blu-ray drive for input, and higher quality output).

Just out of curiosity, how does it have higher quality output?

Laguna

The format holds more data, therefore more image quality information can be stored on the disc and not need to have to be compressed. It's as simple as that really.

FuzzyWuzzyWazza

Oh, so it's just for movies then, I thought NekkidBibleMan was talking generally about the consoles' output.

cheers.

Dont be at yourself

The PS3 will be capable of outputting a 1080p resolution, compared to a maximum of 1080i on the XB360. That p stands for progressive scan, as opposed to interlaced, and results in a smoother picture. The PS3 can also simultaneously output to two HD displays.

From Wikipedia:

HDTV standards such as 1080i (1920x1080, interlaced) in most cases deliver a poorer subjective quality than 720p (1280x720, progressive).

But in truth, it won't make a difference to John Public. It's real use for Sony is in taking the gloss of Microsoft's push for xb360 as a HD device (which was pretty much all they talked about before the PS3 was unveiled).

FuzzyWuzzyWazza

Oh yeah, I forgot about the dual output. 1080p kewl, but is there many TV's that can take that res. at the moment.

Dont be at yourself

FuzzyWuzzyWazza wrote:

Oh yeah, I forgot about the dual output. 1080p kewl, but is there many TV's that can take that res. at the moment.

I guess not. But as I said, it's useful to win over all those people who get hot and bothered over the stats of a console, as opposed to the games. And I guess it'll be nice to have built-in, when 1080p TVs are more common, which probably won't be too long now.

wayne040576

I don't think I'd buy a player for either format just yet until one seems to be coming out on top. I think it is a bit early to be introducing a new format after DVD. And that is going to keep the price up for these systems for a while until the non geek public catches up.

Also the HD DVD demo had some trouble at CES :

http://working.canada.com/components/printstory/printstory4.aspx?s_id=DkoBEcOpw1Hv0WhQMX%2bgondb%2fhj2gx%2bFV5CNoqTZv5geHLgmO6D3sQ%3d%3d

Ciaran500

The external Toshiba HD-DVD drive shown at CES, hopefully something like this could be molded into the Xbox.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

wayne040576

daveirl wrote:

This post has been deleted.

Which is why the prices will stay higher as I said in my previous post. You'll be paying early adopter prices for quite some time. The general public won't buy into a new format so soon after regular DVD has become the standard for home entertainment. Video cassettes were the standard for a long time and it still took a few years for DVDs to take over. While people who are going to be buying a new system anyways will probably buy a HD-dvd (or blu ray) compatible system, others who have no plans at the moment, are not going to rush out and buy these things replacing the dvd player they already have just to have HD.
Plus I wouldn't rush out and buy anything just yet until a clear winner in the format war is known.

Dont be at yourself

I guess the PS3 is going to do for Blu-Ray what the PS2 did for DVD. It wasn't optional, so it put a DVD player into every single home that wanted the PS2.

Everyone's sitting on the fence to see what way this HD format war turns out, so not many people are going to go out and buy this drive, or other standalone drives (either blu-ray or HD). However, the fact that blu-ray is standard in PS3 is going to put it into a lot of people's hands quite quickly. HD-DVD is going to have a tough battle on its hands to reach that kind of saturation in such a short space of time as blu-ray will once the PS3 hits.