This is certainly not the first blog to talk about using the XBOX 360 HD-DVD drive with Windows, nor will it probably be the last. That said, some new information is available about using the XBOX 360 HD-DVD with Windows since the folks at Uneasy Silence initially documented the possibility back in November 2006. Since that time, there have been a couple of changes. First of all, you no longer need to download the third party drivers to run the XBOX 360 drive under Windows XP. As with Vista, when you plug the drive into your computer and the “Find New Hardware” dialog pops up, let it look on the Internet for drivers and it will automatically load them. Looks like Microsoft has quietly made these drivers available.

The second change is that there is now more software available to play HD movies. While Intervideo does make a version of WinDVD that supports BlueRay (and provides the player with BlueRay drives, they do not currently offer a version for general sale. Cyberlink offers PowerDVD Ultra for $99.95. If you don’t own a software player, this is probably not a bad deal, but it seems a bit steep to pay if you already own a DVD player application and only want to add HD support. Interestingly, Cyberlink does not even offer an upgrade price if you own a lower version or older version of their software. Not only that, but unlike the rest of their products, no trial version of Ultra is available either. There is a relatively recent alternative. Nero offers a BlueRay/HD-DVD plug in to their Nero 7 Ultra for $25. Granted you already have to own a copy of Nero 7, but many people do and even if you do not, you can pick up a copy for about $50 if you look around hard enough. The nice thing is that if you purchase any full version of Nero 7, you can download and use the absolute latest version from Nero’s home page.

8/13/07 Update – Nero does not properly support hardware HD-DVD decode on NVidia 8600 cards. For this reason, I would recommend the PowerDVD application. See my August 2007 update here

I tested the Nero player under both Windows XP and Windows Vista Home Premium. There is one very interesting and significant difference between these two platforms that is directly related to my hardware. More details on that in a moment, but the important point is that I am using a Component Video connection from my NVidia 8800 GTS graphics card to my LCD Projection TV. Recall that Component Video does not support HDCP (High Definition Copy Protection). My TV is too old to have a digital connection, so I thought that this could be a problem with Vista. It was. While Nero played HD-DVDs under Windows XP without problems, the minute I tried to do the same with Vista, I got an error stating that I did not have a secure connection to my TV. There was no option to downsample or anything – Vista simply refused to play the HD-DVD.

To deal with this, I turned to an old friend – SlySoft’s AnyDVD HD I have used the non-HD version of this software in the past when I wished to make an archive of my personal DVDs. It works transparently doing CSS decoding on the fly and allows a program like Nero’s Recode MP4 encoder to create MP4 files of DVDs. The HD version adds support for decoding the AACS encryption used on HD-DVDs. Not only would it allow you to rip an MP4 version of a High Def movie, but you can also use it in conjunction with either Nero or PowerDVD to play HD movies over an unsecured connection between the player and the TV. Once I had AnyDVD HD installed, Nero was able to successfully play the movie.

So, what was the performance like? Well, first of all, the specs of the hardware:

• Windows XP Media Center 2005 and Windows Vista Home Premium
• AMD Athlon XP 4800+ dual core processor
• 2 GB RAM
• 500 GB SATA 7200 RPM drive
• eVGA NVidia 8800 GTS 320 MB Video Card
• PanasonicLCD Projection TV

8/13/2007 Update: the 8800GTS card has been replaced with an MSI 8600 GT card