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Necessary Hardware for Playback

I'm new to HD, but doesn't the Microsoft HD-DVD player work with the XB360 to play movies? Then I wouldn't need a fast PC with extra software.

I have read some things that seem to indicate the Xbox 360 does a poor job of playing HD-DVD movies, which is disappointing. I had considered keeping my HD-DVD drive and getting an Xbox to play the movies. I think the best solution is a PC because you can easily switch formats if one fails.

I am not a PC gamer but I would like to check out some DX10 games also. I have been very impressed with the trailers I have seen.
 
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Has anyone been able to play HDDVD on a MacBook Pro?

I recently bought an XBox 360 and the HDDVD drive. It plays very nicely on a Dell 24" monitor, showing all the pixels.

I hooked up the drive to my MacBook Pro 17" Core Duo 2.16 gHz, with ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card. I installed PowerDVD Ultra and AnyDVD HD under Bootcamp, but PowerDVD complains that it has an incompatible graphics driver, just like it did before I installed AnyDVD HD. Running the Cyberlink Graphics Advisor shows that it does not support HDCP (content protection). Standard def DVD's play fine.

Is this a problem with AnyDVD running on a Mac in Bootcamp? Or could it be my hardware configuration?
 
Has anyone been able to play HDDVD on a MacBook Pro?

I recently bought an XBox 360 and the HDDVD drive. It plays very nicely on a Dell 24" monitor, showing all the pixels.

I hooked up the drive to my MacBook Pro 17" Core Duo 2.16 gHz, with ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card. I installed PowerDVD Ultra and AnyDVD HD under Bootcamp, but PowerDVD complains that it has an incompatible graphics driver, just like it did before I installed AnyDVD HD. Running the Cyberlink Graphics Advisor shows that it does not support HDCP (content protection). Standard def DVD's play fine.

Is this a problem with AnyDVD running on a Mac in Bootcamp? Or could it be my hardware configuration?


I think you need a new video driver; check ATI's site. That was the same error I got with my NVidia 7800GS (on a regular PC) until I upgraded to the November 2006 driver.
 
Thanks John for the suggestion. I tried the new driver, and it says my notebook does not support it. So I guess I must wait for Apple to do something.
 
Out of curiosity, Is the e4300 overclocked? Apparently it can do up to or even greater than a 100% overclock.

Well when i tested it, it wasnt overclocked. Was running it as stock with stock intel cooler. As an FYI, I have it OC'd to 2.8ghz with no raise in voltages and simply changing the FSB. Its an unreal chip. Running at 45C idle.
 
Well when i tested it, it wasnt overclocked. Was running it as stock with stock intel cooler. As an FYI, I have it OC'd to 2.8ghz with no raise in voltages and simply changing the FSB. Its an unreal chip. Running at 45C idle.

Thats nice.... thinking about getting one. You should be able to get it to 3.2 Ghz with stock voltage and cooler.
 
I have read some things that seem to indicate the Xbox 360 does a poor job of playing HD-DVD movies, which is disappointing. I had considered keeping my HD-DVD drive and getting an Xbox to play the movies. I think the best solution is a PC because you can easily switch formats if one fails.

I am not a PC gamer but I would like to check out some DX10 games also. I have been very impressed with the trailers I have seen.

I thought it was the DVD player that displayed poor quality video (maybe fixed by a software patch)? I'm not a gamer either but I might wait for the new XB360 with hdmi/65nm/120GB/pvr model.:agree:

Now I can spend time researching 40+" LCDs with 1080p.
 
I thought it was the DVD player that displayed poor quality video (maybe fixed by a software patch)? I'm not a gamer either but I might wait for the new XB360 with hdmi/65nm/120GB/pvr model.:agree:

Now I can spend time researching 40+" LCDs with 1080p.

The Xbox does all of the processing for the drive so I am not sure if a patch could fix. I am also waiting to see if they come out with an HDMI equipped Xbox.
 
One has to wonder, given the fact that GPU hardware assistance is so vital in many cases, if nVidia and ATI / AMD will eventually try to use some form of SLI or Crossfire configurations to offload even more from the CPU. Its worth a shot from a marketing standpoint anyway. Even some of the fastest CPUs out there today will struggle without hardware assistance depending on how the disc is encoded so they really need all the help they can get.

Having said that though, a high-end typical gaming video card isn’t necessarily essential at lest not in the case of nVidia cards. This is according to an article on the subject here:

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/print.php?cid=11&id=2161

nVidia video cards using PureVideo_HD actually depend more on GPU clock speed then on GPU class so a lower end 7600GT (560MHz typical core clock) is supposedly more effective with respect to hardware assistance then a slower clocked 7900GT (450MHz to 500GHz typical core clock). Class, meaning high end to low end within the given line, for example the 7000 series.

In any case, there should be no guessing about recommended and minimum system configurations at this point because all printed recommendations seem to use Cyberlink’s PowerDVD Ultra specifications / recommendations verbatim. The problems, other then bugs, seem to stem from users second guessing or disregarding these recommendations. Regardless of the prowess of AnyDVD_HD, its probably best to buy a video card with functional HDCP support if you are buying a video card and don’t already have this support. The same is likely applicable to monitors. Video card drivers also should be kept up to date.

The first specs for PowerDVD Ultra that I read omitted the entry level Athlon 64 X2 3800+ altogether presumably because it wasn’t powerful enough for smooth performance with the way all HD DVD / BD movies are currently encoded. Now it seems that the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ has been grudgingly added into a minimum configuration category. VC-1 encoding seems to be less demanding and this is likely what they had in mind with the lower end Athlon 64 X2 3800+ part but current H.264 encoded titles may tax such a chip to quasi 100% even with hardware assist.

Its starting to look like an Intel Core 2 Duo + nVidia 7000 series (7600 preferably with HDCP support) is a cost effective, efficient combination.
 
I think you need a new video driver; check ATI's site. That was the same error I got with my NVidia 7800GS (on a regular PC) until I upgraded to the November 2006 driver.

:agree:

Thanks, I did eventually find the right driver (6-11-mobile_xp_dd_ccc_enu_37618.exe) and it now works like a champ on the Apple MacBook Pro.
 
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