Tuesday, October 3, 2006
Hands-On With the Xbox 360 HD-DVD
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 11:30 AM
"...I’m super-excited about the Microsoft HD DVD drive I just played with. MS announced that the thing would ship in November at a retail cost of $199 US, and will include the fancy multimedia remote, as well as a bundled copy of Peter Jackson’s King Kong. Doesn’t matter if you own it already, since you NEED the HD version if you’re buying the drive, right? The HD DVD drive is very, very quiet, and since the 360 drive doesn't run while playing HD DVDs, the whole thing is relatively silent (lord knows the 360 can make a noise when everything is running all at once). It has a small, laptop-style external supply, but that is not final. I assume that means the final one will be smaller, if anything. And I don't know if it will even definitely be external. I assume so, but it’s tiny, and the drive connects to your 360 with a simple USB cable. Speaking of which, it also has two USB ports on the back, so that you can re-attach your wireless adapter to the drive and not have to sacrifice the space on the back of the 360. The thing starts up, from disc insertion to movie playing, in less than 10 seconds. This will be interesting news to owners of existing HD DVD and Blu Ray players, some of which had startup times of up to a minute! Ouch. The fast built-in OS of the 360 seems to be the deciding factor here."
KPaul, a Bungie employee, has some interesting notes on the Bungie blog about the forthcoming HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360. It's fantastic to hear that it's so quiet - that's my #1 gripe about the Xbox 360: it's too damn loud when spinning discs! I probably won't line up at 6 am to get the first HD-DVD drives, but I'll sure snap one up when I can.
KPaul, a Bungie employee, has some interesting notes on the Bungie blog about the forthcoming HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360. It's fantastic to hear that it's so quiet - that's my #1 gripe about the Xbox 360: it's too damn loud when spinning discs! I probably won't line up at 6 am to get the first HD-DVD drives, but I'll sure snap one up when I can.
