This week I got my XBOX 360 HD DVD player. In fact I got it two days before the official release here in Norway – February 23rd. This week I also updated my laptop to Windows Vista Ultimate. The Enterprise edition didn’t have the Media Center included. I haven’t really had the time to play with the final version of the Media Center or to try the XBOX with the HD DVD player. But I have booked the HDTV projector that we have at work, and will write a small review after that.

Hooking the XBOX HD DVD to a laptop running Vista is trivial. Vista detects the new hardware at once and you can download the neccessary driver.

xbox360 update

But sadly there is no way to play the HD DVD movies, for that you need a 3rd party application. With Vista I can only mount the disc and see the folders on the HD DVD discs and none of the content.

I don’t know of any free application, in fact I only know of one application, CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra. This version of the application can take both HD DVD and Blueray, but is sadly costing US $ 99,95.

What other alternatives are there?

autoplay hd_dvd