Introduction

This week Microsoft officially released the highly anticipated external HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360 console.  You might be wondering why we are looking at an external console accessory on PC Perspective, but I can assure you the information that you'll find in here is going to be just as impressive to PC users as it is to Xbox 360 owners. 

Since MS first announced their intentions to release an HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360, and at a $200 price point, there has been a lot of expectation from the community for it.  At that price level, it marks the cheapest high definition next-generation DVD option on the market; the Toshiba set top boxes are going to run you about $500 and the Blu-Ray players are going for $1000 or so.  And good luck finding a PS3 to use as a Blu-Ray device...

What you get for $199

So what can you expect to get when you head to your local gaming store to pick up one of these Xbox 306 HD-DVD drives?  Surprisingly, you get a pretty good package for a component that is already priced low (comparitively). 

The boxing for the drive gives away some of the surprise, including mention of a free copy of King Kong on HD-DVD, though this is probably a limited time offer for the initial run of drives. 

Inside the box you'll find a user's manual, a quick setup guide, a firmware update disc for your Xbox 360 to use during initial setup and that free copy of King Kong in a retail packaged HD-DVD. 

Also included is a remote for the Xbox 360, so even if you already have the premium system that came with a remote, you'll get this updated one to go along with the HD-DVD drive and its new features. 

The drive itself is actually pretty big, as you'll see when we compare it to the size of the Xbox 360 itself.  As far as included cables, you get a power cable with an external power block and a small USB cable for connection to the system.  Yes, that's right, all of the data transfer between the HD-DVD drive and the system is being run over a single USB 2.0 cable.

A closer look at the front of the drive, in its stand-up position which is acceptable for use, shows us that Microsoft has stayed true to the design of the Xbox 360 as the finish and drive bay are basically identical to that of the console itself.

Laying down, the drive has an appearance of being the Xbox 360, just shrunk.  Maybe a new revision of the system will be out in the future that is this size or smaller, ala the last revision of the Playstation 2?

On the rear of the HD-DVD drive, you'll see the power connection on the left, the small USB connection (used for connecting the drive to the system) and two additional USB ports that you can use just as you would a USB hub -- connecting additional devices to your system. 

Here is the HD-DVD drive sitting on top of my Xbox 360 in my personal gaming setup at home.  You can see that the drive is still somewhat large, in fact bigger than the new Nintendo Wii system.  It does sit between the ventilation holes on the Xbox 360 console and won't cause any overheating problems that I can see. 

Next Page - Using the HD-DVD Player

Installation of the drive is really quite simple: connect the power, connect the USB cable and insert the Xbox 360 console update disc.  The update process takes just a few minutes, is completely automated and configures the system for your new drive. 

The external drive works just like the drive bay on the console; pushing the eject button to the left opens the drive bay like this. 

As I already own a Toshiba HD-A1 set-top box, I own several HD-DVDs so I just popped in a copy of "The Bourne Supremacy" and sat down to see how the experience went. 

With a disc installed, notice the eject button illuminates; makes it easy to find in the dark as well, if it matters. 

When the console boots up into the Dashboard, I noticed that the bar at the bottom that usually lists "Play DVD" or "Play Game" now has two options, one for the main console drive and one for the new HD-DVD drive.  You can see that by using the lower selection, we can choose to "Play HD DVD".

Taking pictures of movies on my DLP TV is really just an impossible task, so these images shouldn't try to showcase the image quality at all, but rather just proof that the drive works and the features you expect on HD-DVDs will work on the Microsoft HD-DVD drive.

Here I have also pressed the "info" button on my TV to show you that I am outputing this HD-DVD from the Xbox 360 over the VGA output, to a VGA input that my Samsung HL-S5687W TV supports, at a full 1920x1080 resolution at 60 Hz.  Even the current HD-A1 set-top box from Toshiba doesn't support 1080p output.  To be fair, I can't be sure whether or not the disc is being decoded at 1080p or if it is being decoded at 1080i and then upconverted by the Xbox to output at 1080p.  I'll be doing some more research to find out for sure though.

Just another shot of The Bourne Supremacy in action...

As for the image quality coming from the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive, I have to say I was impressed.  Having been familiar with the HD-DVD systems already in my home theater, I could tell that the Xbox 360 was outputing a nearly identical picture with no image quality degradations that I could find.  And thanks to the support for optical output on the Xbox 360, the audio was impressive as well.

Now for the fun part, and the part that I wasn't expecting when I went out to buy this drive.  It turns out, thanks to the standard USB connection that the Xbox 360 uses, you can use the external HD-DVD drive on your PC; and it's easier than you might think.

Here you can see the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive sitting on top of an HTPC near my television, plugged in and connected to the rear of the system with the USB cable that came with it.  The HTPC in use here uses an MSI NVIDIA 7600 GT video card with HDCP support (which is of course still required for HD-DVD playback on a PC) and an HDMI output. 

Simply plugging in the USB cable to the HTPC system will present you with the standard "New Hardware Found" wizard.  Clicking next through the process will not find any drivers and you'll be left with the above results in the device manager on your system.  What is important to note though is that even though the Xbox 360 HD DVD Memory Unit devices do not have drivers, the Toshiba DVD/HD X807616 USB Device is showing up as a working device in the DVD/CDROM drives section. 

Looking at the drivers in more detail, you can see that the device that DOES have drivers and installs correctly on Windows XP shows settings like DVD Regions that indicates some functionality.  It turns out, that even without a driver for the external device, the ability to read the data on the discs is native to Windows XP.  Now, that being said, you WOULD need a driver to read the data structure of HD-DVDs, if you wanted to look at the data on the disc in Windows Explorer for instance. But to just play the HD-DVD movies, all the software required is built into Windows and the HD-DVD playback software.

Speaking of that software, here I was able to get my hands on a copy of CyberLink's PowerDVD HD-DVD Edition to give this test a shot.  Actually, the HTPC system that I have the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive connected to also has a standard HD-DVD drive in it that I am using for some other testing, to be published later.  This software was included on it and worked perfectly with the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive.

Here I have placed the same copy of "The Bourne Supremacy" in the drive while connected to my HTPC and everything is working well.  Image quality is as good as we have seen on the Xbox 360 and set-top boxes and performance was very good as well.  In truth, performance will depend on your CPU and GPU being used, but that discussion will be coming later in the week as I look at NVIDIA's PureVideo HD technology. 

This ghetto-looking HD-DVD setup might just be the cheapest and most versatile next-generation DVD configuration.  Adding an Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive for $200 (also available at Newegg for $199), to a $150 NVIDIA HDCP-enabled graphics card (or other GPU with hardware acceleration from ATI too) on a PC is less than the price of the HD-A1 set-top boxes of about $500, less than a new Xbox 360 and HD-DVD drive ($400 + $200) or even a new Playstation 3 for $500-600.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I am really impressed with the new Microsoft Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive.  When pairing it with the Xbox 360 console that is connected to an HDTV, adding HD-DVD support is a breeze to setup, easy to use and brings next-generation movie image quality to users at a reasonable price.  What's more, finding out that the external drive is compatible with Windows XP out of the box without any hacking or drivers, makes it by far the most inexpensive (and actually the only currently available) HD-DVD solution for home theater PCs.  Now to take the chance and rip the external unit apart to see if I can make it fit INSIDE the case...

If you are looking for an inexpensive way to enter the HD-DVD market, the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive might just be the best choice you'll have all year.