HD-DVD Drive works on PCs and MACs

Microsoft has just released the Xbox360 HD-DVD drive which they market as a non-stand alone HD-DVD movie player, but it will actually work in your home PC. This accessory connects to your Xbox360 via USB cable and sends the data from the HD-DVD into the Xbox360 for processing and display. So unlike an HD-DVD deck you would buy for your home video setup that does the decoding and display, the Xbox360 HD-DVD player is basically just a Toshiba HD-DVD Rom reader.

For $199.99, the Xbox360 HD-DVD drive is fairly inexpensive compared to a stand alone HD-DVD deck for $600, but when you consider that it's just an external HD-DVD Rom drive, the price is about where it should be.

So since this accessory is essentially just an external USB HD-DVD Rom reader, shouldn't it work with a PC? The answer is yes it does! For Windows XP, you can download generic drivers from Toshiba that will let you use the HD-DVD drive via a USB2.0 port. Once you install the drivers and connect the HD-DVD device to your WindowsXP computer, it will show up as a drive letter and you can browse the HD-DVD file structure. There is also a version on WinDVD 8 that will play HD-DVD movies and it has been successfully tested to work and play back an HD-DVD movie on WindowsXP.

If you're a movie ripper, there are no consumer level dual layer HD-DVD writers out there yet. So for now it may be possible for you to grab the data off the HD-DVD and encode it as a DivX avi. Dual layer HD-DVD's are 30 gigs in size though so it will take some effort to handle that amount of data with todays ripping tools.

If you're using a beta of Windows Vista or are planning on upgrading in the future when Vista comes out, you will not need any drivers. The Xbox360 HD-DVD drive is instantly recognized by Vista once you connect it up and power it on. There is currently no way to do HD-DVD playback on Vista but that problem will no doubt be fixed sometime after Vista is released and 3rd party developers like InterVideo release Vista products.

Perhaps the biggest surprise yet is that the HD-DVD drive is actually recognized on Mac OSX. Much like Windows Vista, the HD-DVD drive was mounted and could read the media. Playback however wasn't possible due to lack of software to play back HD-DVD movies. Again this seems like a 3rd party solution could easily bring HD-DVD playback to MacOSX.

So far I have not heard of any tests on Linux for the HD-DVD drive. I imagine given the nature of open source though that there's plenty of talented people out there who could get the drive to mount and play back HD-DVD content.

Microsoft seems like they're the first ones to the table with a generic HD-DVD drive that's cross platform. Could this be their secret plan to help HD-DVD dominate over BluRay? I have to admit, the HD-DVD drive didn't interest me that much but knowing it's a generic Toshiba Rom Reader in there with multi-platform support has definitely peeked my interest.