Hi, i can now buy the xbox external HD drive for £24 from amazon and have read that you can plug it into a PC, could i use it with my Windows XP pc if i upgraded my graphics card and play it on my HDTV. I know that HD has lost the format wars but if this can be done could anynne advise me on hardware and software needed and the HDCP issue if any. I've read contradicting accounts from impossible, need a hack and just plug it in with this software and it works? I'm building a media based pc and thought at this price and the fact there's many cheap dvd's in HD i want that it might be worth it.
It'll definitely work on your PC. WinXP will likely recognize it, if not there are drivers available online. As for video cards, an ATI 2600XT will work fine to offload the decoding. A nVidia 8600 is OK as well but for an XP system the 2600 works a bit better. For Vista, either is A-OK. They're pretty cheap now. There are some video cards especially designed for HTPC systems like the ATI 3450 and 3650. I haven't used any of these. There should be reviews at Newegg and the AVS Forums. You still need a decent CPU. Dual core like the AMD 3400 or Intel equivalent or higher works best. You'll also need a software player like PowerDVD Ultra or Total Media Theater. Windows Media Player Classic can be kludged to play HD DVDs as well. I have a Vista AMD 5000+ dual core system cranked to 3GHz with an ATI 3870 graphics card. I also have a AMD 3400+ dual core with an ATI 2600XT. Both play HD and Bluray without problems. I like the ATI cards since their DVI-HDMI adaptor also passes sound to the TV. HDCP problems can be eliminated by using AnyDVD HD from Slysoft. My HDCP problems arose from an older HDTV not recognized as HDCP compliant. No problems with AnyDVD HD running. If your HDTV is HDCP compliant, you won't need AnyDVD as long as your video card is also compliant. You might also consider getting the LG dual format drive. It reads both HD DVD and Bluray and burns regular DVDs. It's a little expensive though. Bluray-only readers are going for around $130 here. I paid $160 for my LG combo drive. I also have an xbox HD DVD external that I use on my second HTPC.
Thanks for the reply, it contains everything i needed to know, i'm currently upgrading my pc to a daul-core 4200+ or bigger and i was going for the HD3650 graphics card but may wait and get the HD3850 just in case i wanted to try some games later. Will play back be smoother the higher i go with graphics card or wouldn't you notice the difference and pardon my ignorance but what does kludged mean when it comes to the software side? This is my main consideration as adding the price of the software to the Xbox HD player or drive makes me wonder if it's worth all the trouble, but if there's some free software then it's a big saving. I can get the Lite-on daul HD Blu-Ray drive for £99 and i could go for the new GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard as it can play HD and Blu-Ray smoothly with it's onboard graphics the HD3200 and a cheaper 3600+ daul core chip. I have a Sony Bravia KDL32S3000 LCD tv, would this be HDCP compliant, i guess it must be but don't know for sure, thanks again for your advice and time.
The Sony should be HDCP compliant but PowerDVD Ultra sometimes doesn't see some TVs as compliant even if they are. AnyDVD to the rescue. I have an AMD motherboard with onboard Radian 1250 graphics and HDMI with an AMD 5000+ running at 3GHz. This board will smoothly playback some titles, but not all. It would not play back the Transformers HDDVD and the titles it did play back taxed the CPUs to the limit. I added the ATI 2600XT to offload the HD decoding. Your board will probably do better but unless it has hardware decoding on the board it'll still tax the CPU, so check that out. Buy as much CPU as you can afford whether Intel or AMD. Higher frame rates generally mean smother playback, but HD doesn't require anywhere near the framerate as some games. It's the faster hardware decoding of the HD video that's provided by the video card that aids smooth playback. There's going to be some dropout on some titles sometimes. It's just the nature of the beast in my experience. By kludging software, I mean playing around with registry settings and making some mods. This is necessary to enable Classic to play back HD titles. See here. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=892527 PowerDVD Ultra used to be $70 downloaded from Newegg.com in the States. An OEM version of PowerDVD Ultra comes with the LG HDDVD/BD combo drive and most of the Bluray DVD ROM drives sold here in the States. Some may be bundling the Arcsoft TotalMediaTheater software instead now. These will be OEM versions and not the full versions. There really isn't any reason you can't have both the addon and an internal Bluray ROM in your system.
Hi, and thanks again for your help and time, i managed to find these files on afterdawn: XBOX360.HD-DVDRom.UDF.Reader.v2.5.WindowsXP-BluePrint. I followed the instructions and i can play normal dvd's through the xbox HD player through my pc to my tv but it keeps asking me for drivers. The new hardware device comes up all the time, are these the drivers or just a way for the pc to recognise the xbox HD player. I'm lucky as i've managed to borrow a friends CD version of PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra and tried to play a HD dvd, it asked me to download an update to play HD dvd's which i did but no play back at the moment. My motherboard and onboard graphics are capable of playing HD content with the old sempron running at 100% but it only just managers to, so not sure if it's my hardware or the program. I thought it might just show me a sign if it would play with this software as it's quite expensive if it doesn't work but as you say there's lots of factors involved in playing HD dvd's through a computer, will have to wait until my new pc build. I just tried PowerDVD Ultra 7.3 again, there was some sound that stuttered as the blue bar scrolled across at the bottom, and i just tried the trail version of AnyDVD HD, is this a media player as i got this when i tried it: Summary for drive E: (AnyDVD 6.4.3.2) TOSHIBA DVD/HDX807616 MC08 10/03/06 Drive (Hardware) Region: 2 Media is a HD DVD. Booktype: hd-dvd (version 3), Layers: 2 (opposite) Size of first Layer: 5800896 sectors (11329 MBytes) Total size: 11601792 sectors (22659 MBytes) Video HD DVD label: PLANET_EARTH_D1 Media is AACS protected! Removed AACS copy protection!
AnyDVD is a driver level program that operates in the background that removes all copy protection from both Bluray and HD DVDs as well as from all standard DVDs. It makes all disks region free. It also bypasses HDCP for noncompliant hardware. When using PowerDVD, the monitor you want to view the HD content on must be set as the primary monitor, otherwise you'll just get a black screen. Your old board and onboard graphics likely have no native decoding built-in and the CPU is doing all the decoding. This is where one of the newer graphics card comes into play as the graphics card will do all the decoding in hardware, freeing the CPU. The sempron will not be able to handle any very rigorous HD or Bluray. That may also be the issue with the sound--not enough horsepower for both video and audio, but I'm only guessing re the sound problem.
Thanks for all the help and time in replying, it's been much appreciated and i've learned a lot, sorry for my long posts, i just wanted to cover everything as i my be offline for a while, thanks.
You're very welcome. Arcsoft did have a free trial available for theit TotalMediaTheater HD playback software. I'll see if I can find a link to it. Here you go: http://www.arcsoft.com/support/downloads/downloadnow.asp?downloadid=384
