Giving my Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive new life

I’ve had a home theater PC for probably about 7 years now.   I’ve never had a dedicated Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive for the PC.  I’ve honestly never needed it.  I’ve always had my PlayStation 3 for Blu-ray and my Xbox 360 for HD-DVD.

We all know the story about how HD-DVD lost the format war.   Yeah, I know.. rah rah blu-ray.  Go team!  So I’ve pretty much had my Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive and movies sitting in a box collecting dust since I moved into my house.  It was a bit rainy over the weekend, so I was bored and in the house.  What did I do?  I decided I would hook up my Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive to my HTPC running Windows 7 to see what would happen and if I could get it working.  I had heard there were hacks in the past to get it working with Windows XP and Vista, but I really hadn’t looked at anything for Windows 7.

I plugged the USB cable in the back of the HTPC and immediately I got a notice saying Windows had installed a new device.  I check My Computer, sure enough, new disc drive.  I throw King Kong HD-DVD (it’s terrible, I know, but it came free with the drive) in the drive, open PowerDVD and it won’t play.  Bummer.  I guess the new versions of PowerDVD don’t support for the, now dead, HD-DVD format.  However, I keep EVERYTHING so I start going through all my old install CDs and I find an old version of PowerDVD 8.  I install it, and guess what...HD-DVD now works.  I had to screw around with the software a bit to get it working, but all-in-all, pretty cool.

You might be saying to yourself, “who cares?  It’s a dead format that isn’t supported anymore.”   Well, there are a crapload of good movies on HD-DVD that cost next to nothing on eBay and Amazon compared to the Blu-ray version.

• Transformers HD-DVD - $0.99 (yes, less than a dollar!) VS Transformers Blu-ray- $16.49
• Army of Darkness HD-DVD - $1.98  VS  Army of Darkness Blu-ray - $13.99
• Top Gun HD-DVD $2.18  VS  Top Gun Blu-ray - $14.49
• 300 HD-DVD $2.67  VS 300 Blu-ray - $13.99

Plus, I seriously love my Heroes season 1 HD-DVD box set.  I know everyone bags on the later seasons, but the first season of Heroes was awesome!

PS – Yes, I know I could have just hooked it up to my 360 and been done with it, but my 360 isn’t hooked up to my home theater in a way I get surround sound.   This was more fun.