Hacking XBox 360 HD-DVD To Play On XP

Dan writes, "The XBox 360's affordable HD-DVD, with the help of some custom drivers and a specific player, has been hacked to work with any Windows XP machine. This may have created the cheapest HD-DVD player on the market to date."

Astounding

[hal2814]

Someone got a USB device to work on a computer with USB ports! What will they think of next? Can we have a new word that means what "hack" used to mean?

Hardly surprising, really

[Samir Gupta]

The site paints this to be a cool hack that MS never intended, but really, Microsoft may have always intended for this to happen officially in the future. They already officially support Xbox 360 controller use on Windows, for instance and have released drivers. This is the logical next step.

Really, it's part of their strategy to converge the 360 and Windows gaming worlds together... witness the recent reorganization into a single games division, for instance.

Cheapest HD-DVD player? What?

[Yvan256]

This may have created the cheapest HD-DVD player on the market to date.

Excuse me, but last time I checked, a computer running Windows XP wasn't free. Some people have Macs, others have PCs running Linux/BSD/etc.

Saying that it's the cheapest HD-DVD player because you can hack it to work with a PC running Windows XP is as stupid as saying it's the cheapest HD-DVD player because you only have to connect it to your Xbox 360.

Re:Hardly surprising, really

[gEvil (beta)]

I have a hunch that if this were to happen, it would only be supported under Vista.

Re:it's all in the pricing

[UnknowingFool]

Like all things Xbox, MS is taking a loss in order to gain market share. That's the only way MS thinks that it can take on Sony which in already entrenched. If Xbox was a separate company, it would have gone bankrupt by now. All in all, Xbox has lost $4+ billion for MS.

Re:Cheapest HD-DVD player? What?

[Control Group]

This is a fair point, and you're certainly not wrong. But I think there's some value in the comment, since I'm pretty sure the penetration of computers running XP is three orders of magnitude higher than the penetration of the XBox 360.

So, yes, it's only cheapest if you already own a PC running XP, but that includes an awful lot of people - most of whom don't have 360. So, for them, it could be the cheapest HD-DVD player available.

Nonetheless, you're right; presenting it as an absolute statement is poor logic.

Re:Application available to public

[Red Flayer]

This is the part everyone is missing. Allowing the USB HD-DVD drive to work on your PC buys you absolutely nothing at the moment.

This is the part that you're missing... this allows you to play HD-DVDs on your PC... since there are no PC HD-DVD players, this is a new capability.

As to

The importnat parts are all done in software on the 360.

Well, of course, unless you intend to watch a HD-DVD movie. The point isn't the games, it's the other HD-DVD content.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

XBOX "loses" money for Microsoft

[green pizza]

All in all, Xbox has lost $4+ billion for MS.

The XBOX division of Microsoft has lost a lot of money, but it can be argued that XBOX has actually helped Microsoft in the long run.

Think of XBOX as a combination of Marketing and Insurance. By selling the XBOX, Microsoft ensures that their name and their products will be in even more stores and homes. By including Media Center Extender features in XBOX, Microsoft has a better chance of selling the Media Center version of Windows XP. By taking a huge chunk of the game market, Microsoft weakens Sony and Nintendo.

And the big one:

Ensuring a strong Direct X following. Most, if not all, XBOX games use Direct X libraries. There are only two platforms that can use true Direct X: Windows and XBOX. By keeping programmers on Direct X, Microsoft ensures that games will remain on Windows/XBOX and will difficult to port to other consoles and other OSes. The last thing Microsoft wants is developers to begin using cross-platform libraries which could allow for an OS transition sometime in the future. Besides, XBOX simply helps promote Direct X. Think of it: "Use Direct X, easily run your games on the most popular desktop OS and the second most popular game console without a major re-write!".

XBOX has been $4 Billion well spent. Expect iZunes to be a similar venture.

As a side example, consider Firefox vs IE 7. If you find yourself spending a majority of your computing time using Web 2.0 applications via Firefox, why use Windows at all? At that point you may as well just use Linux or FreeBSD to host your Firefox client, no need to spend money on Firefox. However, if your web app only works on IE 7, or works best on IE 7, then you have a soild reason to remain on Windows/IE7 platform.

Re:Application available to public

[CerebusUS]

No, see you missed it again.

this allows you to play HD-DVDs on your PC

The only HD DVD content there is right now? Movies. There's NO software available for your PC to play those movies. So you can hook up the drive, you can access the drive, you can look at the data structure on an HD-DVD movie, but you can't actually play the movie that's there.

When you buy this device, it comes with an installation disc for your 360. That installation disc loads the software HD-DVD player onto your 360... the drive itself doesn't know anything about how to play those movies. Hooking this drive up to your PC will not let watch that HD-DVD King Kong movie you rented from netflix.

Clearer?

Re:DVD-HD or Blu-ray

[ystar]

dumb kid? browsing /. at 10 (even if it's just for ps3 info - there's still some exposure to the rest of the tech world) probably means this kid is tech-savvy enough to trounce a lot of the adults I know (and, i'm afraid, with better spelling too). ps dude, i go to sucky old harvard (pleeeease don't consider this showing off, that would be like gloating about being incarcerated) and i don't even meet folks here that would correct us "young adults" with the callousness you seem to be coming off with (which i'll give you the benefit of the doubt over, as sometimes it's hard to infer tone from the interweb), but even if you're annoyed by a kid, wouldn't you feel worse if you made his or her day bad by acting upon that emotion? cmon, nobody wants to ruin a kid's day.

Re:No doubt MSFT will "patch" against it

[Sancho]

Except that allegedly, there's no benefit to the 360 HD-DVD drive for gaming. The sole purpose is so that you can watch HD-DVDs. If Microsoft isn't making their money back on licensing and peripherals (which is how they can sell the 360 at a loss and still end up making a profit). It's unlikely that they're selling the HD-DVD drive at a loss since there is no peripheral market specific to the drive+360, nor will they get revenue from licenses for developing for the drive+360 (because games aren't supposed to use this drive).

It boils down to this: Microsoft is either releasing the drive at a loss to compete with Sony/promote HD-DVD over Bluray, in which case they shouldn't care what people connect the drive to, or they're selling it at a price point where they can make a profit on it, in which case they shouldn't care what people connect the drive to.