Xbox360 HD DVD drive recognized as optical drive on PCs

October 13, 2006

This could be interesting, especially if you have a HTPC. It seems Gizmodo was in attendance at a
Microsoft-Toshiba demo of the Xbox360 HD DVD player and Toshiba 2nd gen HD DVD players. The article said that at the demo, the reps there had some new HD DVD movie discs that blew away the ones sold at retail at the moment as far as quality goes. They said the films played over component connections were of a stunning quality. Interestingly, the output to the display from the external HD DVD drive was of course 1080i, but they said it was de-interlaced by the 50" Pioneer 1080p display and it looked great. But, read below for a tantalizing tidbit, that is even more fun to ponder about:

Some things I found out, and can talk about is the 360 HD-DVD drive can be plugged into a PC and it will be recognized as an optical drive, but will not play HD-DVD movies. I asked what if you have the proper HD-DVD software on the PC, to that [redacted] said that he didn't know, it hadn't been tried yet- maybe there's something there...

Well, wouldn't it be interesting if these $199 dollar HD DVD external drives would work on a PC with a software addition? It might entice some home theater PC owners to make the leap to HD optical! Most already have a 720p or 1080i display and I bet there are some component connections available for such a device.

Source: Gizmodo