HD-DVD Playback - On the Xbox 360 & on NVIDIA GPUs
by Derek Wilson & Manveer Wasson on December 15, 2006 9:21 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Xbox 360 HD-DVD Drive
The first thing to note about the XBox 360 HD-DVD drive is the price. Microsoft's $200 solution is much more affordable than our $900 Pioneer Blu-ray drive, thanks to the fact that it's only a reader, not a recorder. Top it off with the fact that this is an external device that is easily portable and requires no drivers to be installed to use, and we have quite a compelling product.
The HD-DVD drive eats up one USB port on the 360 but gives you two more in return
The USB 2.0 connection provides plenty of bandwidth for movies, as no decoder is expected to handle 300+ Mbps video on any HD codec.
In the box, in addition to the drive itself (which looks like a mini Xbox 360) we get a remote, USB cable, power brick, and an installation disc. In order to use the drive with the Xbox 360, the installation disc must be placed in the 360's DVD drive (not in the HD-DVD drive).
After the software has been installed, the system will need an update from XBox live to bring Microsoft's HD-DVD player up to the latest version (the update won't be installed until the HD-DVD drive installation disc has been installed). After that, we can start using our HD-DVD drive with the XBox 360.
Playing an HD-DVD is done the same way we would select a game to play. When both a game and an HD-DVD are in the drive, we can select between the two:
The HD-DVD drive can't be used for games on the XBox 360, and is only really useful as a movie player; this is one of the downsides of selling the drive as an add-on.
From our navigation of the menus, watching movies, and playing with fast forward and rewind, we can easily say that the Microsoft HD-DVD player and the Xbox 360 do a good job of handling the content we've seen thus far - at least as well as our PC platforms. Since you're not really expected (or able in many cases) to multitask on your 360, CPU utilization doesn't really matter so long as the player doesn't drop any frames.
We didn't encounter any dropped frames in our HD-DVD tests on the 360 and things like fast forwarding/menu navigation felt the same as it did on our PC testbeds. The time it takes to play a movie was also comparable to our PC testbeds (light years faster than Toshiba's first-generation HD-DVD set-top box). Note that the Xbox 360 also uses GPU acceleration to playback HD-DVDs, in this case the GPU acceleration is handled by the ATI GPU in the 360 itself.
As an HD-DVD player, the Xbox 360 does just fine, but what sort of a PC do you need to get a similar experience? That's what we'll find out next.
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DerekWilson - Friday, December 15, 2006 - link
We would be using retail players if any were available, but they aren't. Currently the only way to get a copy of a player that supports HD-DVD or Blu-ray is to buy a system or a drive that comes with it. Cyberlink is currently only offering their software through OEM channels.ssiu - Friday, December 15, 2006 - link
Does VC-1 look worse than H.264? (If they are comparable, then why use H.264 when VC-1 takes so much less power to decode?)Are these 720p or 1080i or 1080p videos?
DerekWilson - Friday, December 15, 2006 - link
All of our HD video tests so far have been done using a 1080p tv with 1080p movies.It's hard for us to do a direct image quality comparison right now because HD movie players don't allow any image capture or video clips to be saved. From what we know about H.264, it has a high potential for image quality, especially on Blu-ray where disks are currently up to 50GB in size.
therealnickdanger - Friday, December 15, 2006 - link
Given the current releases on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, VC-1 has superior sharpness - H.264 tends to soften the image more than VC-1 at any given bitrate (hence the Blu-Ray nickname in some circles "Blur-Ray"). The implemetation of H.264 is more currently more complex and less efficient in many cases. Many argue the VC-1 codec to be superior only because it has the backing of Microsoft, who is working much harder behind the scenes to improve its functionality and efficiency, whereas H.264's support and tools are not as advanced. If and when H.264 receives the same treatment as VC-1 in terms of financial investment and support, then the more advanced features of H.264 can be realized. It's way too early to make a call on which codec will "win" in the end, but I don't think we'll know for a very long time. Lucky for us, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD support both... so the consumers win either way.plonk420 - Saturday, December 16, 2006 - link
where, pray tell, did you hear about this superior sharpness of VC-1? in reviews i've read, H.264 is pretty much identical PQ. the technology pools between VC-1 and H.264 overlap a good percentage, as well as even prosumer solutions having existed for at least year before the first BRD (or even HDDVD) players came out .. well, besides the piss-poor Quicktime.i can't say i can compare VC-1 vs H.264 on a standalone, but i've worked with both, including H.264 encoder betatesting and playing around with VC-1 a little bit as well...
rcabor - Friday, December 15, 2006 - link
I doubt its selling at a loss, since you dont need one for gaming, I cant see where microsoft would make any money with software.Xorp - Friday, December 15, 2006 - link
Good review cept, H.264 will probably more towards being equal with VC-1 in terms of releases. I don't think it's going to replace VC-1 in the long run.nicolasb - Friday, December 15, 2006 - link
Doesn't the fact that the XBox 360 has no digital video output rather limit its safety as a long-term investment for video playback? What happens when the disc publishers decide to switch on the protection flags that prevent output in any analogue format at any resolution beyond 960x540? Something with an HDCP-enabled digital output would surely be safer?ajira99 - Friday, December 15, 2006 - link
I think that by the time any content-protection flags are enabled (if ever), there will be affordable, standalone players that will do a better job than either the Xbox 360 or PS3. I'm pretty satisfied with the HD-DVD addon -- the 360 is an adequate DVD player when I'm away from my computer, and the PC compatibilty of the drive is a definite plus.Of course, Microsoft could just wait and put out an updated 360 console w/CPU die shrink and HDMI in a year or so.
Furen - Friday, December 15, 2006 - link
I believe the HDCP-requirement was scrapped from the spec, which is why MS can get away with having a non-HDMI solution.More importantly, I wonder if MS is in anyway subsidizing the cost of the drive... If so then Microsoft may be getting screwed pretty badly by people who buy the drive to use it on a computer.