Xbox 360 HD DVD Player

The Xbox 360 HD DVD Player is a discontinued accessory for the Xbox 360 console that enables the playback of movies on HD DVD discs. Microsoft offered the drive for sale between November 2006 and February 2008. It was initially sold for $199.

Bill Gates 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, Microsoft officially presented the external HD DVD drive. According to Japan'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 abandoned by Microsoft. This decision came just days after Toshiba's announcement to discontinue all HD DVD players and effectively end the format war between Blu-ray 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, Microsoft may also release an external Blu-ray drive. This was later denied by Microsoft.

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 connection. All of the audio and video processing and output come from Xbox 360 itself. The unit can also function as a USB hub, 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 DVDs 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 media. No Xbox 360 with a built-in HD DVD drive was ever released.

Compatibility with PCs
The Toshiba optical drive used in the unit can read compact discs 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.

In the box
The retail package of the HD DVD player contains the following:
 * Xbox 360 HD DVD Player
 * Setup disc
 * AC adapter
 * USB cable
 * Universal Media Remote (full sized version)
 * Batteries
 * User manual
 * Free HD DVD Title (in certain areas) : King Kong (US/Canada/Australia), Batman Begins (Mexico)