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Emergence Day

What takes 4.7 million lines of code, partner teams from all over Microsoft, and millions of dollars to create?  The Xbox 360 system software?  Nope.  This is just the HD DVD player.

The Xbox platform team (us) is experiencing its own emergence day as of late; we've been hard at work for the past 8 months straight bringing the fall system update to fruition.  I haven't even posted since August.  Daryl's already gone over a lot of the features and changes that are in this release.  I've personally been working on the Xbox 360 HD DVD player (which, by the way, reached the #1 best seller slot on Amazon.com's video games category) and I thought I'd go over some of the technical difficulties it takes to bring HD DVD to market.

There's a perception that HD DVD is just DVD with HD content, but once you look at things more closely, it's clear that HD DVD is a different beast altogether.  The Xbox platform team became serious about HD DVD last year, when Microsoft as a company threw its endorsement behind the standard.

The Xbox 360 HD DVD Player, for the most part, is an entirely software based implementation.  Other players on the market have specialized chips (called DSPs) that decode things like H.264, MPEG, VC1, DTS, Dolby Digital, and other codecs.  Much like how backwards compatibility for Xbox 1 works on Xbox 360, the heavy parts of HD DVD are all done on Xbox 360's triple-core CPU.

If DVD is an audio/video pipeline with some navigation data (go to the menu, start playing, etc.), HD DVD can be considered a runtime environment where audio/video playback is just one major feature.  So let's break down that 4.7 million lines of code.  I don't have the numbers for each component, but each of these is a very significant chunk:

That's a lot of stuff.  Some of the acronyms may not be recognizable.  GDI is the Graphics Device Interface, which has been a mainstay of the Windows operating system for many years, providing facilities to draw stuff on screens.  MF is Media Foundation - a framework for audio/video pipelines that was being built for Windows Vista.  The Windows teams in charge of the above components all pitched in to make them work on Xbox 360 while continuing to work on other Windows projects (Vista, CE, etc.) - quite a task.

A lot of the codecs existed in code at Microsoft before the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player was being built.  However, it was all code that was optimized for PC platforms (windows/x86) and not Xbox 360's PPC core.  This meant doing a lot of optimization.  In this regard, the Xbox 360 implementation of H.264 can be considered a crowning achievement.  For this computationally expensive codec, a hybrid approach was taken.  Since GPUs are very good at parallelized workloads, stuff that could be parallelized is computed there, while the stuff that can't is better suited to the CPU and is done there.

Unlike DVD, where typical players pass the audio data from the disc through to your receiver, HD DVD requires that players mix sounds from menus and such in with the audio being played for the movie.  The 360 player software decodes all the above codecs in software, mixes anything that needs to go together, re-encodes it into Dolby Digital and then sends that to your receiver.  So, don't be alarmed when your receiver still says "Dolby Digital" even if you've selected DTS in the menus. 

All 6 of Xbox 360's hardware threads are hard at work while playing back an HD DVD.  At the moment, the player software pushes Xbox 360 harder than any other (save, perhaps, Gears of War during some particularly busy parts of the game).

If I'd have known how much work it was going to be bringing the 360 HD DVD Player out this year, I may not have signed up last year, but now that I can watch HD movies, it's hard to go back to crummy old DVD :)

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 03, 2006
    First, thanks for the hard work I am really looking forward to playing an HD-DVD soon via the 360.  Second, can you speak to audio quality available for HD-DVD on the 360?  I ask because I have read that SPDIF can't handle the bit rate necessary for multi-channel lossless audio?  Since there is no fall back to 6 channel analog on the 360 is it limited to standard DD bit rates?  If so what kind of quality loss is that versus the 6 channel analog or a HDMI 1.3 compliant HD-DVD player?  Looking forward to any info.

  • Anonymous
    November 03, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 03, 2006
    PingBack from http://forums.macnn.com/89/macnn-lounge/295070/ps3-wii-or-xb360/32/#post3192319

  • Anonymous
    November 03, 2006
    Not having HDMI has resulted in you not delivering a good HD-DVD solution:

  1. No ICT support
  2. No TrueHD support
  3. No Dolby Digital Plus support
  4. No DTS-HD support And, your VGA output in the fall update doesnt appear to work to vga standards. Some computer monitors and tv displays wont work with 1080P over vga. I know the Sony SXRD, the frequency of the refresh is wrong and this garbles the display. If you had of provided HDMI none of these vga compatability issues would exist.
  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2006
    "All 6 of Xbox 360's hardware threads are hard at work while playing back an HD DVD.  At the moment, the player software pushes Xbox 360 harder than any other (save, perhaps, Gears of War during some particularly busy parts of the game)." Will the fans be running at full speed then?

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2006
    So, you make it downsample the DD+ and DTS-HD audio to DD5.1 and send it via the optical out? That's a bit dissapointing...would like true hd-audio.

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2006
    Perhaps you could "develop" some DivX support :P

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2006
    So does this mean even if i want to listen to the much better sounding DTS I can't!!!

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2006
    So you re-encode the audio to DD5.1 even if the user has selected one of the other formats? Won't this downgrade the quality of DTS etc., which are less compressed than DD? What about the situation where people have different EQ settings on their receivers for the various sound formats? (I often boost the surrounds for DTS because I find it fainter for example.) I can understand giving the option to re-encode for formats where there currently aren't compatible receivers (TrueHD for example), but it should be optional and you should enable pass through for all formats and support mixing the iHD sounds in any stream format. I hope I haven't misunderstood the statement, but this doesn't sound like good news to me.

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2006
    You should point out that the 360 HD-DVD addon is much faster then all of HD disk players in market today. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2006
    Wow. Just wow. 3 3.2GHz cores and a fast GPU, and you are pushing that thing to the limit? Why does it take so much horsepower - what am I missing?

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2006
    Wow, I hope that means you guys implemented 71.928 Hz and synched playback so that we get judder free playback for HD movies. That is the only way to watch HD films as at 60Hz you get the horrible horrible judder from trying to make 24 frames (well 23.976) fit into 60. By running at 71.928Hz you simply display each frame of video 3 times and get silky smooth artefact free playback. Of course for PAL you could just go 50Hz or 75Hz if the monitors would take it. All the guys with CRT projectors would become XBOX360 owners tomorrow if it supported 71.928Hz and IVTC.

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2006
    Neat article! I guess that also puts to rest the speculation of getting  the HDDVD drive work on a regular PC :P

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2006
    ...Dolby Digital?  The bottom of the barrel for surround sound?  That's a letdown. Personally, audio is secondary to me so it's not a deal breaker, but I've already seen people bailing on this attachment because the audio is no better than DVD.

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2006
    "Audio Codecs: Dolby Digital+, DTS, TrueHD, LPCM, MPEG" "So, don't be alarmed when your receiver still says "Dolby Digital" even if you've selected DTS in the menus." This confuses me a little bit - will playback be limited to only Dolby Digital even if the source is DTS? What other "changes" in playback does the software make to the source material?

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2006
    "So, don't be alarmed when your receiver still says "Dolby Digital" even if you've selected DTS in the menus. " I won't be alarmed but I am not happy, I prefer DTS.  I am curious though, what is being done to SACD audio?  I put a disc in the other day, it played but DD was being shown on my receiver.

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2006
    Very interesting post, thanks for giving us an insight into how big this task was/is. I have a question regarding Dolby+ and TrueHD.  Are you saying you decode those, then re-encode everything as Dolby Digital?  isn't that sort of missing the point of TrueHD?

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2006
    I'm very impressed that you have been able to this all completely in software. And what you have done with emulating the original xbox in software is also a major coding accomplishment. I can't wait to get my hands on the HDDVD drive as its a very affordable way of getting a HDDVD player. There is only one area I am worried about and it is your statement that all 6 of the hardware threads are hard at work  while playing back a HD DVD, does this also mean that all of the cooling fans will be at full power keeping the processors cool while playing a HD DVD which is fine if your watching Xmen, or King Kong with your surround sound all the up to 11 but what about quieter scenes.

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2006
    What is the official launch date? The 7 or 8th? or still mid month?

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2006
    I am Japanese, and the machine translation is used. There is a law that prevents the false labeling in Japan. Why were "Xbox 360 HD DVD Player" and the name named to the HD DVD drive? It is not Player but it is a drive.

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2006
    Great work. Its really a pleassure to watch our own work do well. I think you are on top of the sky. :) Congrats for the work to the enire team.

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2006
    Would there be any point in setting the movie to DTS if it gets re-encoded to DD anyway??

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2006
    Hi this is very interesting especially the TrueHD codec, does this mean the 360 will have HD surround sound? If so how is this acheived if there is no HDMI cable? Can TrueHD surround sound be sent through the existing cabling? Also there is no option for TrueHD sound in the 360's sound settings will this option be available when plugging in the H-DVD player add-on?

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2006
    What is the Release Date for this Add-On no one has the same answer.

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2006
    That's one noisy Xbox when playing movies, running the console flat out....

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2006
    Saw a post from Shaheen Ghandhi (of the Xbox Platform Team) describing the work that went into enabling

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2006
    Can we get an official launch date for the drive? everyone is confused is it this week or next.

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2006
    Now if we just had a way for the XBox 360 DVD player to actually play back TrueHD soundtracks (cough HDMI cough) we'd be set.

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2006
    Impressive work, and thanks for the option to use the HD-DVD player.  However, since the H.264 code is now in the console, how come it's not enabled for streaming the video to it? For a machine that's meant to be so versatile, and the code is already there, this seems like an unecessary limitation.

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2006
    Hi, shaheeng. Last I evaluated the XBox DVD player, it didn't perform as well as I had hoped given the h/w in the unit. I figure you can't have it all and it is an evolving platform. At http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/shootout.cgi?function=search&articles=all&type=&manufacturer=31&maxprice=0&deInt=0&mpeg=0 is the technical benchmark that the home theater hi-fi guys do and it lists the benchmark tests the XBox 360's DVD passed and failed. Do you have an opinion on how the new HDDVD transport+software will do? Will I see similar pass/fail or is this HDDVD platform completely new?

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2006
    lol Its iHD, get it right MS! :o)

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    "4.7 million lines of code" Just Qooolllll...

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    A lot. 4.7 million lines of code for the HD player to work on an xbox 360 to be exact. I was glancing

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    Am I understanding this correctly? "The 360 player software decodes all the above codecs in software, mixes anything that needs to go together, re-encodes it into Dolby Digital and then sends that to your receiver.  So, don't be alarmed when your receiver still says "Dolby Digital" even if you've selected DTS in the menus. " Does that mean no DTS 2496 playback if we use the 360 for HDDVD playback?

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    So in your opinion, what displays the HD-DVD content better, a chip solution (like the other players you mention) or the software solution?  I'm just curious more then anything.

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    I am not sure, but this sounds little bit weird to me. :sigh:

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    The guys who work on the HD DVD player have posted some interesting behind the scenes details on the

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    Can you speak to how the sound is remixed and downsampled.  I assume everything is output a DD 5.1 (6.1?).  What bit rate?  I know that SPDIF can't handle the full bandwidth that HD-DVD offers.  Also since there is no 6 analog out I am curious what is quality?

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    You should take a long sabatical after all the hoopla dies down and the Holidays are through.Just make sure wherever you end up, that the roofs are made of straw,the front yard is sand and ocean,and the native woman wear bikinis 365 a year. You've earned it!

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    Wow!  I guess there is a bunch more than I had realized to getting the HD-DVD player up and running.  It's great to see that its coming out!  Now if you can just get the dash board guys to make the 1080p work on my Sony KDL-40XBR2.  Just kidding Great work!  Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    TruHD???  I thought this was not supported on the HD-DVD add on?

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    Daleph, I'm not sure home much things have changed but its worth noting that the 360 DVD playing software was substantially updated in the spring patch and that review you linked to predates that.

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    Hello, great to know these details before product launch, it looks like  a ton of work. Specially that mixing and re encoding of all the sound. I do have some issues here, but I guess it all is because the Xbox 360 can only output Dolby Digital from those standards supported.  It is a shame it has no DTS support at least for output, but could it be possible in the future or the licensing issues are too big to overcome and we'll have to stick to DD? Like daleph  above I also made some tests to the DVD player on my 360, and indeed the deinterlacer is quite average. What can we expect playing dvds from this device? I'd guess that the HD-DVD subsystem wouldn't be used at all in such situation, but I hope that it is since I'd like to see a good scaler and deinterlacer implemented there.

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    You guys are the best! Thanks for making 360 the best console ever!

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    So does this now mean that an XBox 360 with HD-DVD drive cannot output a DTS bitstream? Or just that while in menus (and not the main feature) it will mix to Dolby Digital until it kicks over when the film is played?

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    Wow, thats amazing, but i was wondering, how is the HD-DVD player going to plug into the xbox, im thinking that it will probaly be plugging into the regular audio/video slot, and then take the audio/video cables and then plugging them into the back of that, it seems logical to me, it just doesnt seem like the USB port could handle the HD-DVD, but hey i could be wrong, let me know, my email is wood_pusher182@yahoo.com , Thanks

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    Wow, thats amazing, but i was wondering, how is the HD-DVD player going to plug into the xbox, im thinking that it will probaly be plugging into the regular audio/video slot, and then take the audio/video cables and then plugging them into the back of that, it seems logical to me, it just doesnt seem like the USB port could handle the HD-DVD, but hey i could be wrong, let me know, my email is wood_pusher182@yahoo.com , Thanks

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    Disappointing that it will only be Dolby Digital. That's bottom-of-the-barrel at this point, besides plain ol' stereo.

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    Wozzas!!! Looks like a ton of work went into this thing.  I Can't wait until I get mine, hopfully they'll figure out the 1080p thing for the sony XBR series TVs so I can rock HD-DVD on my TV.  Thanks for you hard work man!

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    When you say audio is re-encoded into Dolby Digital does that mean that the bit rate of an DTS stream at 1.5mbs is reduced to the 448Kbs of Dolby? Or does the xbox output a 1.5mb Dolby stream and would many older amps handle such a stream that goes beyond the expected 448 or 6xx? Thanks guys

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    i dont know about this dvd rom, cuz ive been through two of them cuz they will stop reading my games, even when they are brand new!!

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2006
    I have to say I am a bit disappointed in one aspect. Specifically the audio formats. The player supposedly supports DTS, etc. However one of the big benefits of DTS over Dolby Digital is it's higher bitrate. So, basically, what you're doing is taking one compressed format, mixing it with other stuff, then encoding the whole thing into an inferior, lower bit-rate format, thus negating any advantage to be had by using the better format in the first place. It's sort of like taking a 256 kbps MP3 file and reencoding it into a 96k WMA file. No matter how you slice it you just negated any advantage in audio quality you may have had in the 256kbps file. VERY disappointing.

  • Anonymous
    November 08, 2006
    My only question is this: 4.7 million lines of code compaired to what?  How about a comparison to the entire code base of the 360's dashboard.

  • Anonymous
    November 08, 2006
    How about region codes? I have a Japanese Xbox 360 and I am wondering if the american HD-DVD player will work? Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    November 08, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 08, 2006
    Thanks for all the hard work guys on the HD DVD :) I'm sure we'll all enjoy it in the end :)

  • Anonymous
    November 08, 2006
    How many more lines would it take to make it upconvert DVDs to 720p or 1080i?

  • Anonymous
    November 09, 2006
    With the release of the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive, I thought people might like to know how it compares

  • Anonymous
    November 11, 2006
    I really hope you can help us HD CRT owners who suffer from horrible black levels on HD videos and games under 720p or 1080i. (although most games have brightness sliders) the xbox live videos and HD-DVD unit do NOT! PUT IN A UNIVERSAL DASHBOARD brightness SLIDER Please! Your game developers know this to be an issue with differnt types of TV's, the Launch game perfect dark zero even named its brightness system by the names of the kinds of displays. Some games dont have them so im literally left in the dark on those! I would love to hear back with an email from a developer as I feel talking to 18004myxbox doesnt get me much of anywhere. Thank you for your time See my URL above for my email -Jason

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2006
    WHY DOESN'T MS DISTRIBUTE THESE CODECS AS ADDONS FOR WINDOWS VISTA? MAYBE ULTIMATE EXTRAS?

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2006
    So does tht mean all digital sound formats are down-coverted to standard DD (640kb)? How about DD+ and DTS?  A dashboard option should exist to allow conversion into these higher bitrate formats.

  • Anonymous
    November 13, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 17, 2006
    So when will it be integrated into the Xbox 360

  • Anonymous
    November 17, 2006
    Just picked this drive up yesterday, and I have to say within a couple of minutes of playback I was aware of the dynamic range constriction. Without doubt, the dynamic range meta data in the original dolby digital bitstream is not making it to the amp, as proved by the amps dynamic range selection having no effect. This is a deal breaker for me. I have emailed tech support, and await a response, but if this isnt fixed in a few days, I'll be returning it. Clearly it could be resolved in a software update, but unfortunately, not too many people are observant enough to notice this issue. Fingers crossed. Dave

  • Anonymous
    November 20, 2006
    The HD-DVD drive is great!  But can someone add a zoom feature (like on the DVD player software) so I can zoom 2.35:1 movies (like King Kong) so I don't have black bars on the top and bottom of my plasma TV?

  • Anonymous
    November 20, 2006
    For some reason, HD-DVDs look the best on my 720p display when I setup the Xbox360 to output 1080i.  However, games look the best when set to 720p. Is there any chance of a future dashboard update having a seperate video output setting for HD-DVDs?  I'd really like not to have to manually change the resolution each time

  • Anonymous
    November 21, 2006
    Hi, Great info. However, why do all sound codecs downgrade to DD? What about the higher bandwidth DD+ ? I appreciate DD HD requires HDMI but what about DD+ and DTS? A 360 dashboard option should be included to allow user selection of the HD DVD sound decode (e.g. DD - DTS - DD+).

  • Anonymous
    November 23, 2006
    To put forward one software DivX Subtitle Displayer: <a href="http://www.qweas.com/download/video_dvd/video_players/divx_subtitle_displayer.htm"> <b>DivX Subtitle Displayer</b></a> - DivX Subtitle Displayer - Play DivX movie with well displayed subtitle !

  • Anonymous
    November 24, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 24, 2006
    Audio MP3 WAV WMA OGG Converter Convert Audio Files MP3, WAV, WMA, OGG from One Format to Another Directly. homepage: http://audio-converter.com

  • Anonymous
    November 24, 2006
    Audio MP3 Sound Recorder is used to record any audio streaming through your sound card into audio formats MP3 or WAV file. homepage http://www.mp3-recorder.biz

  • Anonymous
    November 24, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 24, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 25, 2006
    I hope that the problem with the DTS audio can be solved in the new firmware.

  • Anonymous
    December 05, 2006
    I know its been said before but it is important, please enable DTS streaming, its just soooo much ritcher than DD. We shouldn't have to ask it should be in the option's

  • Anonymous
    December 13, 2006
    M4A to MP3 Converter can convert M4A video or audio files to MP3 files. M4A to MP3 Converter can also convert other media files to MP3 files, these media files may include WAV, OGG, WMA, WMV, ASF, ASX, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MP4, M4A, AAC, MOV homepage: http://www.m4a-to-mp3-converter.com/

  • Anonymous
    December 13, 2006
    M4A to MP3 Converter can convert M4A video or audio files to MP3 files. M4A to MP3 Converter can also convert other media files to MP3 files, these media files may include WAV, OGG, WMA, WMV, ASF, ASX, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MP4, M4A, AAC, MOV homepage: http://www.m4a-to-mp3-converter.com/

  • Anonymous
    December 15, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 20, 2006
    Given that HDMI is probably not feasible, how feasible is it to enable 5.1 analog output?  I believe the output connector has a few unused pins and if the motherboard was already designed for that capability, then it's just a matter of writing up the code and a new cable to make it work.  Is this possible?

  • Anonymous
    December 28, 2006
    Honestly I believe for this add on to be even close to worth a purchase it has to be able to output audio at trueHD somehow or its just a waste of 200 dollars that could be invested into a standalone.  Sure its a bargain but you end up losing money in the long run by having to sacrifice audio quality.

  • Anonymous
    December 28, 2006
    I know the author hasn't responded at all, but I think you guys are slamming him pretty hard. Here he posts to you guys because he's proud of what his team has managed, and all you can do is complain about his work? The only thing I don't understand is disallowing DTS streaming. All this nonsense about how "ridiculous" it is to have to convert Dolby+ and Dolby TrueHD down is garbage. The dev team doesn't have a choice. The console can only put out 2ch Analog or SPDIF. Bravo to you guys. Nice work. Take a break and watch some movies on that nice piece of software. The XBOX 360 seems almost limitless in terms of performance. I am extremely impressed. Sadly, I won't be buying the HD-DVD drive because my TV only really supports 1080p through HDMI (the manufacturer claims otherwise, but so far no luck.)

  • Anonymous
    December 31, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 02, 2007
    If it has to be recomplied anyway compile it back into at least DTS 5.1 or at least have that option.  My reciever has 7.1 DTS why can't Microsoft use what we already have.

  • Anonymous
    January 12, 2007
    DTS Please, don't leave it until the spring dashboard update roll it out now, please again!

  • Anonymous
    January 16, 2007
    how about doing an update to close the hd dvd drive if the 360 is turned off with the drive open??

  • Anonymous
    January 19, 2007
    Yeah, just read them all. For sure I want to wait on the xbox360 purchase untill the HD-DVD is integrated and the CPUs run much smarter, cooler and quiter. An HDMI output is also necessary. peace.

  • Anonymous
    January 23, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 24, 2007
    Hi, Any updates on progress with the HD DVD sound fix (i.e. option to decode to highe bitrate/quality format -  DD+, DD HD, DTS HD --> DTS) ? Many early supporters are getting frustrated and are moving to stand alone players. Shame as the picture quality, speed etc of the implementation are excellent. Any updates would be much appreciated.

  • Anonymous
    January 26, 2007
    Just got mine......works great but the lack of DTS is disappointing. Most DTS tracks have bigger bass and often offer immersive atmosphere... It must be added later through dashboard update.... Keep up the good work

  • Anonymous
    January 29, 2007
    Speaking of audio codecs why doesn't the Xbox360 play HDCDs, MS owns the codec?  DVD-Audio would be great as well.

  • Anonymous
    January 29, 2007
    What a glorious day it was when 360 hit the shelves.

  • Anonymous
    January 29, 2007
    So it pushes the Xbox 360 harder than any other game (save GoW)? Time to ship Xbox 360s with cooling fans that run on for a short while after you switch the machine off, I think.

  • Anonymous
    January 31, 2007
    A friend of mine installed the software that came with the xbox360 HDDVD on his xbox360 console.  Since then, he can no longer access his xbox live account.  How come? More info: he has the fall 2006 update on his console before he installed the HDDVD software that came with the HDDVD.  Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2007
    im pretty sure that AACS is the worst thing to ever happen in the electronics world. and Vista is just a bloated piece of dog doo anyways.

  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2007
    mmm.. nice design, I must say..

  • Anonymous
    February 22, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2007
    Lavoro eccellente! ..ringraziamenti per le informazioni..realmente lo apprezzo: D

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2007
    The information I found here was rather helpful. Thank you for this.

  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2007
    Where I can find if Xbox 360 HD DVD player supports multi-region system?

  • Anonymous
    March 28, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 09, 2007
    A friend of mine installed the software that came with the xbox360 HDDVD on his xbox360 console.  Since then, he can no longer access his xbox live account.  How come?

  • Anonymous
    April 17, 2007
    I think this is a great piece of equipment at a fair price.  It is mind boggling that this was just "an idea" a little over a year ago.  You and your team are to be commended for a job well done.  I note the complaints about the lack of advanced sound options, however, I have to say that I am still happy with DD 5.1.  Keep up the good work!