Peter Moore Clarifies Xbox 360 HD-DVD Add-On

[Jeremy Charette]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://xbox360.vggen.com/news/news.php?id=212' target='_blank'>http://xbox360.vggen.com/news/news.php?id=212</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Speaking to GameSpot, Microsoft VP Peter Moore clarified a few lingering issues following last night's announcement of a HD-DVD accessory for the Xbox 360. Specifically, he confirmed that the device will be used for movies only and not games. He said, "Right now it's focused purely of movie playback. Think of the drive as something that lets you play high-definition movies on the Xbox 360. If you want to watch HD-DVD movies and if you own an Xbox 360, there will be no reason for you to go out and buy another player." Moore continues, "HD-DVD from the game play point of view is primarily about media storage as is of course Blu-ray. Our developers are very comfortable with the [Xbox 360's] storage options--I think they're utilizing Xbox Live very creatively, and, the hard drive, we have a very strong attach rate for the hard drive." Moore also confirmed that the company does not have plans to create a brand new Xbox 360 console based on the HD-DVD format, indicating that it would fragment the userbase even further."</i><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/peter_moore_xbox_360_2.jpg" /> <br /><br />So, it looks like the HD-DVD drive option will connect to the USB 2.0 plug(s) on the console. I'm still puzzled as to why they won't be supporting HD-DVD based games, as developers are already stating that they're reaching the limits of what they can store on conventional DVDs. The Xbox 360 is also going to have to support HDCP via DVI or HDMI output, and I'm still waiting to see how they plan to implement that. None of the reverse engineering I've see of the Xbox 360 shows an HDCP chip on the motherboard, so it will have to be done via software emulation (if it's possible at all). Then again, if they just decide to allow users to play HD-DVDs through the component video outputs...that could really shake things up! With more answers only comes more questions.

[Outlaw94]

I can recall reading somewhere that these first drives (for both HD-DVD and Blue Ray) would not read fast enough to facilitate game play.

Can anyone tell me if this is true?

If it were true then the drives wouldn't make a bit of difference for games.

[nklnch]

I'm still puzzled as to why they won't be supporting HD-DVD based games, as developers are already stating that they're reaching the limits of what they can store on conventional DVDs.

That's obvious. Because they don't want to fragment their user base between those who buy the external HD-DVD player and those who don't. It would also discourage people from the current console which has no HD-DVD capabilities.

[nklnch]

I can recall reading somewhere that these first drives (for both HD-DVD and Blue Ray) would not read fast enough to facilitate game play.

Can anyone tell me if this is true?

If it were true then the drives wouldn't make a bit of difference for games.

That's complete nonsense. Actually, quite the opposite: Blu-Ray has much faster transfer rates.

From Wikipedia

Blu-ray drives currently in production can transfer approximately 36 Mbit/s (54 Mbit/s for BD-ROM), but 2x speed prototypes with a 108 Mbit/s transfer rate are in development. [9] Rates of 8x or more are planned for the future.


For comparison:

DVD 1x speed: 1.3 MB per second
CD 1x speed: 150 KB per second

Source: (http://it.asia1.com.sg/reviews/storage/sto001_20030122.html)

[sevenredseven]

nklnch.

mbit or mbyte?

Blu-ray drives currently in production can transfer approximately 36 Mbit/s (54 Mbit/s for BD-ROM), but 2x speed prototypes with a 108 Mbit/s transfer rate are in development. [9] Rates of 8x or more are planned for the future.

108 Mbit/s = 13,5 Mbyte/s

The data transfer rate of a DVD drive is often given in multiples of 1352 KB/s, which means that a drive with 16x speed designation allows a data transfer rate of 16 × 1352 = 21640 KB/s (21.13 MB/s).

21.13 MByte/s?

no matter how fast hd-dvd is. dvd should have better seek times.