pheggie Posted February 21, 2007 Share Posted February 21, 2007 http://www.pcw.co.uk/personal-computer-wor...ox360-hd-dvd-pc XP driver http://rapidshare.com/files/3149367/XBOX36...ePrint.rar.html After connecting the drive to a USB 2.0 port on your computer, the Windows XP hardware wizard will pop up. Close this and download the 2.5MB Toshiba driver from rapidshare instead. Download HD DVD Advisor from http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/support/bdh...t/diagnosis.jsp Use PowerDVD 7 Ultra Edition when available. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sulimo Posted February 21, 2007 Share Posted February 21, 2007 I actually looked at that, but the impression I had was that you need a PC with vast amounts of power to playback discs. One anandtech article noted that even with a PC that had a top of the line Core2 CPU and a Nvidia 8800GTS videocard the playback of h.264/AVC encoded discs maxed the whole thing out and anything less dropped frames. Its a shame no-one has put out a PC kit with hardware decoder like Creative did in the early days of DVD. That was my first DVD player. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewW Posted February 21, 2007 Share Posted February 21, 2007 I actually looked at that, but the impression I had was that you need a PC with vast amounts of power to playback discs. One anandtech article noted that even with a PC that had a top of the line Core2 CPU and a Nvidia 8800GTS videocard the playback of h.264/AVC encoded discs maxed the whole thing out and anything less dropped frames. I call rubbish on that. My PC is three years old, 2.8Ghz Northwood, 2Gb ram and a X800Pro. Happily plays my HD DVDs that I've ripped from the 360 addon drive. Unfortunately I can't play them direct from the drive, as I don't have an HDCP compliant video card or monitor. Andrew. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pheggie Posted February 22, 2007 Author Share Posted February 22, 2007 I call rubbish on that.My PC is three years old, 2.8Ghz Northwood, 2Gb ram and a X800Pro. Happily plays my HD DVDs that I've ripped from the 360 addon drive. Unfortunately I can't play them direct from the drive, as I don't have an HDCP compliant video card or monitor. Andrew. Do you use Java based HD-DVD Decrypter or something else? What program do you use for the rips playback? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewW Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 Do you use Java based HD-DVD Decrypter or something else?What program do you use for the rips playback? backupHDDVD to do the rip. PowerDVD7 for the playback. I've only done this for a couple of discs, more of a proof of concept than anything. I'd much rather watch the movies on my Home Theater than my pc. Andrew. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IanD1503559705 Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 I call rubbish on that.My PC is three years old, 2.8Ghz Northwood, 2Gb ram and a X800Pro. Happily plays my HD DVDs that I've ripped from the 360 addon drive. Unfortunately I can't play them direct from the drive, as I don't have an HDCP compliant video card or monitor. I believe most HD-DVDs are encoded with VC-1, which requires much less decoding grunt than H.264/AVC, so it is perhaps not surprising you had no difficulty playing ripped HD-DVD with a modest PC. I get 45% CPU load on a C2D @ 2.4GHz with ATI X300 via VGA for HD-DVD material. The Anandtech article mentioned indicated extreme CPU/GPU processing required for H.264. From article http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2886&p=4 and using an Intel X6800 CPU: H.264 CPU Utilisation (interesting how even a top of the range GPU doesn't reduce CPU load that much). Or for a comparison of CPU/GPU requirements: H.264 CPU/GPU Utilisation (interesting that an E6700 with no GPU support is just capable of playing back H.264, and an X1950 GPU only reduces CPU load by 4%) I am curious why you could play ripped HD-DVD but not direct from the drive: is this PowerDVD enforcing a strict limitation with the drive setup? Also, I could not get PowerDVD7 to work in playing decrypted HD-DVD with an ATI X300, but PowerDVD 6.5 works fine. I was told by someone on AVS Forum that you need X1600 HDCP or better to use PDVD7. Would be very interested how you go in trying to play from drive with the new AnyDVD HD version. Bugger: how do you actually embed images in posts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattis Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 I call rubbish on that.My PC is three years old, 2.8Ghz Northwood, 2Gb ram and a X800Pro. Happily plays my HD DVDs that I've ripped from the 360 addon drive. Unfortunately I can't play them direct from the drive, as I don't have an HDCP compliant video card or monitor. Andrew. I would guess for one that since you've already decrypted the movies you are saving CPU strain there also. Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nullack1503559755 Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 The reason that people are getting different results in playback of HD-DVD footage is down to differences in post processing of the footage and differences in not having DRM overheads (apart from obvious differences in hardware config and efficiency of drivers). When HD-DVD footage is ripped to HDD, it is no longer encrypted and flagged as premium content and as such, the operating system has alot less to do with playing back this type of media. There is a significant cost associated with decrypting and all the polling go on with playback of premium drm content. The other major difference is that some are doing simple deinterlacing and simple scaling to get it right for display, while others are doing complex multi tap laczos transform type scaling along with motion and edge adapative detinerlacing algorithms. Also when it comes to decoding AVC there is other things in post processing video footage such as in loop deblocking that will have a dramatic effect on required processing power if it is enabled in the decoder. The truth is that to do it all in a high quality way playing back from a premium DRM source like HD-DVD its really only cutting edge machines that can do it without frameloss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wheelz Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 Happily plays my HD DVDs that I've ripped from the 360 addon drive.Unfortunately I can't play them direct from the drive, as I don't have an HDCP compliant video card or monitor. Andrew. Andrew with slysofts anydvdHD you dont need to have a HDCP compliant card or monitor to play back hd dvds ,i put a link in another thread but here it is again,try the 21day free trial http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewW Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 Andrew with slysofts anydvdHD you dont need to have a HDCP compliant card or monitor to play back hd dvds ,i put a link in another thread but here it is again,try the 21day free trialhttp://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html ahh, I hadn't bothered looking at it because I just assumed it was a ripper like backupHDDVD. I will have a look tonight. It would be much nicer to not have to rip 20Gb to HD to be able to watch a movie (that I have paid for ...) Thanks, Andrew. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wheelz Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 Andrew they also have a new forum which is great and well worth a read thru. http://forum.slysoft.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MeWhoElse Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 nVidia drivers have been somewhat lacking on full implementation of H.264/AVC support... I believe more recent versions have better support, meaning the GPU should give more clock cycles back to the CPU to do what it needs to do... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IanD1503559705 Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 Is anyone considering, or in a position to, organise a group buy for the HD-DVD addon? Barring that, does anyone have any local sources of supply or indication of which retailers might provide the earliest source of supply and/or best price? Would also be good to know any warranty implications of purchasing interstate. I can't even get a fixed release date from the usual suspects retailers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewW Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 Is anyone considering, or in a position to, organise a group buy for the HD-DVD addon? It's only $250, hardly worth the effort of organising a group buy. Just swing by your local Hardly Normals or EB on the 23rd of March. Andrew. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IanD1503559705 Posted February 27, 2007 Share Posted February 27, 2007 It's only $250, hardly worth the effort of organising a group buy. Mr Wilcockson, Why do you feel it's necessary to patronisingly dismiss my inquiry with: "It's only $250"? Maybe to you $250 is nothing, but to me the price is important. Might I inquire why you didn't pay RRP for the PS3 in Australia: after all it's "only" $995? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewWilliams Posted February 27, 2007 Share Posted February 27, 2007 If $250 is significant, I would wonder why on earth you'd be buying a HD-DVD drive. As much as I love the format and think it was better thought out than Blu-ray, it's on very shaky ground right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewW Posted February 27, 2007 Share Posted February 27, 2007 Andrew,Why do you feel it's necessary to patronisingly dismiss my inquiry with: "It's only $250"? Maybe to you $250 is nothing, but to me the price is important. Might I inquire why you didn't pay RRP for the PS3 in Australia: after all it's "only" $995? Oh ffs, some people have thin skins. I never said $250 is nothing, please point out where I said that ? I was merley pointing out that group buys are usually only effective on items with a high price and therefore a high margin that can be reduced for the group buy. But by all means go for your life, who am I to stop you ? Nice bit of logic there with the PS3 btw, I saved $370 over buying the Aussie version, which is 37% off. Good luck getting 3.7% off the 360 addon, let alone 37% Andrew. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IanD1503559705 Posted March 1, 2007 Share Posted March 1, 2007 An EB Games salesperson informed me today that the Xbox360 HD-DVD player now has a date of 1/5/07 on their system. Hopefully he read the wrong item, otherwise it looks like the release date is slipping all the time: originally it was supposed to be Feb. BTW, since I found out about http://www.xpmicro.com.au selling the Xbox360 add-on, their website has been unreachable. Maybe they were inundated with enquiries and their server tanked as their $202 price was the best I have seen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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