The Xbox 360 HD DVD Player was a discontinued accessory for the

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the Xbox (console), original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detail ...

console that enabled the playback of movies on

HD DVD HD DVD (short for High Density Digital Versatile Disc) is an obsolete high-density optical disc format for storing data and playback of high-definition video.

discs.

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

offered the drive for sale between November 2006 and February 2008. It was initially sold for $199.

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...

announced during his keynote speech at CES 2006 that an external HD DVD drive would be released for the Xbox 360 during 2006. At E3 2006,

officially presented the external HD DVD drive. According to

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

's chief of Xbox operations, Yoshihiro Maruyama, Microsoft would not release Xbox 360 games in the new disc formats. On February 23, 2008, the Xbox 360 HD DVD player was discontinued by

. This decision came just days after

Toshiba is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...

's announcement to discontinue all HD DVD players and effectively end the

format war A format war is a competition between similar but mutually incompatible technical standards that compete for the same market, such as for data storage devices and recording formats for electronic media. It is often characterized by political an ...

between

Blu-ray Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-defin ...

and HD DVD. Two days later, the price of the HD DVD Player was reduced to a clearance price of $49.99. Peter Moore had stated that if HD DVD loses the format war,

may also release an external Blu-ray drive. This was later denied by

. All future iterations of the Xbox 360 console and dashboard maintained compatibility with the HD DVD player. Special black versions of the drive, along with black media remotes, were given to members of the Xbox 360 HD DVD development team. Unlike other black accessories which were created alongside the black ''Elite'' console, the black HD DVD drive was never made available to the general public.

Technology

The HD DVD player connects to the Xbox 360 using a mini

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

connection. All of the audio and video processing and output come from Xbox 360 itself. The unit can also function as a

USB hub A USB hub is a device that expands a single Universal Serial Bus (USB) port into several so that there are more ports available to connect devices to a host system, similar to a power strip. All devices connected through a USB hub share the ban ...

, with 2 ports on the rear. It also includes a clip for attaching the wireless network adapter to it, much like what Xbox 360 consoles of the time had. The device also has an integrated 256 MB memory unit which is used for storage of HD DVD data and is accessible to the user for saving other data such as saved games. The drive plays standard

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

s in addition to HD DVD titles; however it does not read Xbox or Xbox 360 game discs, Audio CDs or mixed media CDs. All Xbox 360 games continued to use

DVD-9 The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

media. No Xbox 360 with a built-in HD DVD drive was ever released.

Compatibility with PCs

The

optical drive used in the unit can read

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...

s and DVDs in addition to HD DVDs when connected to a host that supports reading these formats (such as a PC). As the drive communicates via a generic mass storage protocol over USB the drive can be used as a standard optical drive on computers and operating systems that support USB optical drives. The operating system must have a UDF 2.5 driver to read data from HD DVDs. In addition a software player capable of playing HD DVD titles is required for playback of video. The 256 MB internal Memory Unit on the drive which is used for storage of HD DVD features is also accessible by manually installing USB Mass Storage drivers. Once installed, this can be formatted for use as a storage device although it will no longer function on an Xbox 360 unless it is reformatted. Windows XP does not have a built in UDF 2.5 driver, instead requiring a third party one to be installed to access data on HD DVDs. Newer versions of Windows and Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" and later have native UDF 2.5 drivers. Mac OS X v10.5 introduced UDF 2.5 driver support for reading HD DVDs, but the included player software can only play HD DVDs authored by

DVD Studio Pro DVD Studio Pro is a discontinued high-end software tool published by Apple Inc. to allow users to create DVD masters to be sent out for replication at production houses. Its tight integration with other Apple applications allowed users to take Fi ...

In the box

The retail package of the HD DVD player contains the following: *Xbox 360 HD DVD Player *Setup disc *

AC adapter An AC adapter or AC/DC adapter (also called a wall charger, power adapter, power brick, or wall wart) is a type of external power supply, often enclosed in a case similar to an AC plug. AC adapters deliver electric power to devices that la ...

*USB cable * Universal Media Remote (full sized version) *Batteries *User manual *Free HD DVD Title (in certain areas): ''

King Kong King Kong, also referred to simply as Kong, is a fictional giant monster resembling a gorilla, who has appeared in various media since 1933. The character has since become an international pop culture icon,Erb, Cynthia, 1998, ''Tracking Kin ...

(US/Canada/Australia),

Batman Begins ''Batman Begins'' is a 2005 superhero film directed by Christopher Nolan, who co-wrote the screenplay with David S. Goyer. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, it stars Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne (Dark Knight trilogy), Bruce Wayne / B ...

(Mexico)''

Notes

1080p 1080p (1920 × 1080 progressively displayed pixels; also known as Full HD or FHD, and BT.709) is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the sc ...

HD DVD playback is only available via

VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the IBM PC compatible industry within three years. T ...

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary digital interface used to transmit high-quality video and audio signals between devices. It is commonly used to connect devices such as televisions, computer monitors, projectors, gam ...

cables. When connected via

component Component may refer to: In engineering, science, and technology Generic systems *System components, an entity with discrete structure, such as an assembly or software module, within a system considered at a particular level of analysis * Lumped e ...

or D-Terminal cables, 1080p content is downscaled to 1080i or lower. *Output of

Dolby Digital Plus Dolby Digital Plus, also known as Enhanced AC-3 (and commonly abbreviated as DDP, DD+, E-AC-3 or EC-3), is a digital audio compression scheme developed by Dolby Labs for the transport and storage of multi-channel digital audio. It is a successo ...

Dolby TrueHD Dolby TrueHD is a lossless, multi-channel audio codec developed by Dolby Laboratories for home video, used principally in Blu-ray Disc and compatible hardware. Dolby TrueHD, along with Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3) and Dolby AC-4, is one of th ...

, DTS-HD High Resolution Audio and

DTS-HD Master Audio DTS-HD Master Audio (DTS-HD MA; known as DTS++ before 2004) is a multi-channel, lossless audio codec developed by DTS as an extension of the lossy DTS Coherent Acoustics codec (DTS CA; usually itself referred to as just DTS). Rather than be ...

codecs A codec is a computer hardware or software component that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder o ...

, as well as multi-channel LPCM, is not supported on the Xbox 360 HD DVD player since the Xbox 360 itself does not support them. As a result, only conventional stereo LPCM,

Dolby Digital Dolby Digital, originally synonymous with Dolby AC-3 (see below), is the name for a family of audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. Called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1995, it is lossy compression (except for Dolby Tr ...

and DTS (optional feature available within the HD DVD audio settings) are available as output, although HD audio can be enabled when used on PC. *In the US, any purchases made between August 1 and September 30, 2007 included five free HD DVD movies. For the same SRP,

online retailer Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of t ...

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevu ...

increased the offer to a total of nine HD DVD titles when used with a mail-in rebate. *Following its discontinuation, the HD DVD Player was reduced to $49.99 in the US and £39.99 in the UK, and still included the $19.99/£19.99 ( SRP) Universal Media Remote, essentially making the price just $30/£20. On May 1, 2008

Xtra-vision Xtra-vision was a video, film and music retailer that operated across the island of Ireland. Founded in 1979, it had 200 shops at its peak before running into financial difficulties, changing ownership a number of times, and ultimately closing ...

reduced the price to £6.99.

References

{{High definition media HD DVD player HD DVD Video game console add-ons Video storage players Discontinued Microsoft products