First Official Photos of the Xbox 360 HD DVD Drive

[Jeremy Charette]

http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/03.jpg

http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/01.jpg

The mini-USB port is used to connect the drive to the Xbox 360, and the other two USB ports allow the drive to act as a USB hub. The only other connector is for power, as the video and audio will be output through the Xbox 360. The HD DVD drive will also include the Xbox 360 Universal Media Remote. No word yet on release date, pricing, HDCP compliance, or an HDMI cable for the 360.

[Philip Colmer]

According to The Register (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/05/10/ms_shows_xbox_360_hddvd_drive/), the drive will be available for Christmas.

Does anyone else feel that if the drive was going to have HDMI and support copy-protected output, MS would have something to say about that in order to end all of the speculation? After all, this is potentially something that they can laud over Sony.

The fact that they are keeping very quiet about this, and pricing, suggests to me that they haven't (yet) got anything good to say about either point.

So, to turn around a question that Jeremy asks on another front-page posting, if you had a choice between a games console with an HD-DVD drive and no HDMI support, and a games console with a Blu-Ray drive with HDMI, which would you pick?

Or is it going to come down to the games, shock horror, and not movie playback?

--Philip

[Felix Torres]

Does anyone else feel that if the drive was going to have HDMI and support copy-protected output, MS would have something to say about that in order to end all of the speculation? After all, this is potentially something that they can laud over Sony.

The fact that they are keeping very quiet about this, and pricing, suggests to me that they haven't (yet) got anything good to say about either point.


Or, it could be that there is no *need* for them to say anything because there is no *mandated* need for HDMI output in the HD-DVD spec anymore. It was dropped over a month ago. What they are providing is all that is needed in the market today.

Currently-shipping HD-DVD players are supposed to output full-res HD video over component, which is why the XBOX drive is going to be dirt cheap.

The rumor-mill suggests $99-129 starting in September.
(http://www.oxm.co.uk/articles/news/hardware/pre-e3_rumour_explosion!)

Some of the items in the note at xbox360news.com about this look dubious, but they actually nailed the GTA4 exclusives, so... <shrug>

Anyway, the whole blue-laser drive thing is mostly spec-manship at this point in time. Unless the movies themselves come down in price *a lot*, it really isn't going to impact the purchasing decision of all that many people: the fanboys will buy the brand they favor regardless of the price (Sony is right as far as *that* goes), dedicated gamers will end up buying one of each anyway, and the casual gamers, mom-n-pop buyers... Well, *those* folks tend to be price-sensitive and while they tend to go with what the kids want, they do not profile as early adopters anyway. So if they are buying this year, they're more likely to go with the cheapest box they can get which will be the 360 Core (especially after the price cut) or the Wii.

Sony is simply packing too much weight onto the PS3 (it has to sell games, downloadable music, and BD-ROMs, all against some pretty fierce opposition--MS, Toshiba/NEC, Apple, Disney, Fox, MTV, etc) and they may have just simply overloaded the hardware. And some of the choices on the gimp-model look odd... No memory card slot at all? *That* is going to hurt...

As much as I would *love* to have seen the 360 come out with a digital video port and a bigger HD (to say nothing of PC-less media center functions), I do understand that adding those features has a price on both the hardware and the back-end investment, as well as the retail price. MS chose not to push the envelope Sony is pushing.

Eventually, we'll see who got it right.

[ChrisL01]

Full resolution output can ONLY be through digital connections, this being 1080p. You can output 1080i though analog (component) if ICT is not set. We are all having great luck with current titles and ICT. However, if ICT is set video will be output though component at 540p. You cannot output full resolution (being 1080p) over component, AACS does not allow it.