Judas

It's been available for awhile now. Finding a BR-DVD optical drive may be a little difficult mind you but getting a Xbox360-HD-DVD drive isn't.

More and more people are getting these suckers, and trying to witness the excellence of HD.


However, Some people aren't to sure about how this all works, what the limitations are, what hardware does and does not work, etc.


I think it would be of great help for those that have experienced issues, capabilities problems, and overall thoughts on the matters related to it. Not only would it be interesting for us all, but assist those looking at perhaps getting a setup without having to worry about blowing money and not being able to use any of it.



Considering:

I got the drive, plugged it into a machine with a x1300 PCI-EX and using a DVI-VGA adapter, hooked up a HDTV (40" Samsung LCD). Using windows Vista, plugging in the drive and letting it find all the drivers couldn't be easier. Being a x2 4400+ and 2gb of ram, there shouldn't be any concern at all aside from knowing if the x1300 is up to the task of playing it back smooth enough.

I currently have PowerDVD 7.2 HD/BR Eddition software.

However, one thing i noticed with this software, you MUST hooked up the HD Drive FIRST before attempting to install the software, as by default, the software will install only the BR DVD portion, forcing you to have to uninstall and reinstall again. (sucks, but may cause sevear headaches for those not sure wtf is going on)

The x1300 Passed all the tests for the advisory EXCEPT for the Driver (which is apparently normal in vista)

I could playback a HD-DVD without issue, the HDCP was working properly (apparently? ). However the moment a 2nd monitor is enabled (using the other video out on the card) the Movie would emediately quit with an HDCP error. Ok no big deal there.

Next i tried it on a x800xl with the same set of vista drivers, being the machine was a Thoroughbred 2600+ CPU with 1gb of ram, i didn't think there would be any issues. However, HDCP would not pass (ok obviously forseen). The HDCP Compliant monitor was seen as failed even. Even bypassing the hdcp would result in audio playback only. So i'm guessing there is a hardware/software driver issue or something with the x800xl or the entire xXXX series of gpus for HD-DVD playback...

I had a x1600 as well, Playback was flawless on it.

My x1900's both wouldn't work though, but if i plugged in a VGA monitor, the movie would playback properly (using any DVI connection, playback would not work). I found this odd as the x1900's don't even have any HDCP codes or anything, although it may have the chip, they are saposed to be inert.


Most of what i've seen is that if you have use a VGA connection, things will playback fine, if you use a DVI connection, then you can run into issues if something doesn't meet the standards.

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Necrosis

Why aren't you using PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra?

Also I would love to pick up a HD DVD burner just to "convert" those Blu-Ray only movies over to HD DVD.

Judas

yeah that'd be pretty click.

I haven't gotten PowerDVD 7.3 because i was under the impression that it's more strict on the HDCP compliancy, and considering that my x1900 doesn't meet the HDCP but still plays HDCP content (odd? ) i don't want to break something lol.

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