Where can I get a HD DVD internal drive?

[Jay]

So when Toshiba lost the format war last week, I immediately got a Tosh HD-A35 player and a ton of movies. Cheap.

I intend to rip these into XL. But, I'm having trouble finding an internal IDE optical drive; or even an external one.
Once I have one, I guess DVDFab will do the ripping. Haven't checked yet.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

TIA

[cmhardwick]

don't know the cost, but doesn't LG make an internal dual-format drive?

[Jay]

I'll look. Thanks.

[fletch]

I've also heard the external HD DVD drive add-on for the XBox can be used by a PC.

Aaron

[Jay]

Yes, I'll check that out. I understand Mr. Gates may have a few spares.

I just need the thing for ripping the collection I bought and I'm done with it. All will be Blue-Ray after that.

I don't suppose there's a way to use my Toshiba player to transfer to the hard drive, then decrypt? It does have a NIC and I can see it on my LAN.

<added> It's not that I MUST watch these thru XL, it's an insurance policy. Someday the Tosh player will fail and I'd love to have backups. </added>

[jji666]

I can confirm that the XBox 360 drive works as an HD-DVD drive in Win XP. I watch HD-DVDs via PowerDVD Ultra with the thing. It's external, but is plenty fast and works pretty well.

[Jay]

Excellent - thanks. I thought it needed a hack but I guess it's USB?

<added> Circuit City has them for US$ 49.00. Running Vista on my HTPC but after I see your response to my 'hacking' question, I'll certainly gamble for that price if it's a plug & play or minor hack.

[cooldog]

You'll probably want to buy a copy of AnyDVD to decrypt your HDDVD's for playback from hard disk. Also, newegg.com, clubit.com, and mwave.com are all good places to order the hardware from.

I've done several thousands of $$$ of business with them, and never had a problem.

[Jay]

Thanks jji666 and cooldog.

My question remains, other than the software, is the XBox drive simply connected by a standard USB cable and are any hardware hacks required?

[Jay]

OK. I found this useful.
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=32 ... pert&pid=3
Off to Circuit City

[Jay]

Installed to Vista out of the box. Can see all the files on the DVD.
Next to get player software.

[Jay]

I apologize for this way OT. Had forgotten the internal player doesn't support HD because of licensing issues.
Heck, that's why some combo hd dvd/blue ray hardware players are more expensive than separate units

May continue thread in MHT.

[jji666]

Sorry, I just saw the follow-up questions. I do recall there were some driver installs to get everything on the XBox drive working perfectly, but that it was very simple and easy and that it semi-worked even without the driver install. Sorry I cannot be more specific but it was a while ago. If you cannot find all the drivers, let me know, I probably have them. It's a perfectly good drive, just ugly.

[Jay]

I'm not sure... I installed the drive, then uninstalled PowerDVD7 and installed PowerDVD Ultra.

I stuck a HD DVD into the XB drive and had a horrible frame rate and the audio was 'ticking' - not intelligable in Ultra.
I tried a SD DVD and the video seemed OK but the audio "gargled" in Ultra.

The SD DVDs play fine in XL's player, VLC and WMP in the XB drive.

I do lose audio in my teleconferencing software with the XB plugged in. I need to fool with that.
The folks at Cyberlink want me to un/reinstall my audio & video drivers and PowerDVD Ultra.

I was just starting to do that.

So, this is why I wanted to continue in another forum. This is really OT for XL.

Any insight is appreciated.

[Jay]

FIXED. Gateway pointed me to a special Intel audio driver.
Fixed everything.