So was at the local car boot sale on Sunday past getting lead around by our 3 year old buying every motorbike toy he could find (bike mad). Anyway seen from a distance a collection of purple/brown (or whatever colour they are) DVD covers and went in for a closer inspection. So this girl was selling HD-DVDs. First impression was I'm not interested but having spent the past hour arguing with a 3 year old over half broken toys I thought I would take a minute and have a closer look. A few decent titles and a few sealed ones, hmmm brain is getting interested, then heard from the girl selling 'Those are £1 each or 3 for £2'. Before long I was the proud owner of 6 HD DVD titles. Bad news is my bluray drive in the PC won't read them, yes it was a long shot but thought being a PC multi format drive it might of had a go. So I now need to get a drive to read them. Was thinking the Xbox 360 drive might be the best bet as its plug n play on my PC. Any thoughts?

I have a Toshiba HD-A3 player running FW 4.0 which works quite well with the exception of boot time (it is way too long). There are other Toshiba models available on E-bay which maybe better. I would stick to a Toshiba player as they were built by the original manufacturer that introduced the format.

I cannot vouch for the Xbox playing HD-DVD's. I think that the likelihood that it could play them is slim.

Xbox add-on drive plays HD-DVDs. Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HR, DTS-HD MA aren't supported on this drive.

Playing/recording HD-DVDs on PC is a bit more complicated. You need to find software that can play HD-DVDs. Since HD-DVD is long dead, you won't find any current software that supports it. You are going to have to hunt down an older version of DVD playback software which supports HD-DVD playback. This is going to be a sw from 2007, no idea if it would work with Win8.

From what I have read the Xbox drives are toshiba made so that sounds like a good starting point.

I'm running windows 7 on the PC so software shouldn't be a problem.

Win7 won't play hd-dvds. You need to buy/pirate powerdvd type 3rd party dvd playback software which have to be from the hd-dvd era(2007ish). Later versions dropped hd-dvd playback support

OP, I can confirm the 360 HD DVD drive will run on a Windows 7 machine (as I've done it many, many times). It's actually quite easy to do and yes, you have to have the correct decoder/software to actually view it. Some decent ones are Easy DVD Player, older version of PowerDVD Ultra, Arcsoft Total Media Theater 3....etc... Here's the official word from Microsoft.... http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/ ... indows%207 .... And here's a small tutorial - http://www.question-defense.com/2010/08 ... dvd-player . Do a little searching and thou wilst be rewarded. Hope this helps!

I know the drive doesn't support all the extra codecs on a 360 because the 360 itself doesn't support them; the drive itself may be able to handle it on a PC.

Multi blu-ray burners like LG GGW-H20L can read hd dvd. Read, not burn.
(I would like to see or have a burnable hd dvd just for having it).

The only problem with the lg drives is that i think the quality is mediocre. I had several coasters burning cd's and some blu-rays. One blu ray BD-R after a few times wasn't readable anymore . (Ritek one)
I got the external LG BE06LU10. Hd dvd, it takes pretty long to mount (I've got only Bourne Ultimatum as my only title). You will see many .EVO files. (Not Evo 3D ones, lol) More kind of hd dvd .VOB's.

Then you will need TotalMedia Theatre 3 (version 3.0.1.195) , or WinDVD 9 prior to the updates that left hd dvd out and see if they will work on w8.1.

I have the LG GGC-H20L.
It can read BD and HD-DVD, but not burn them.
It can only burn CD and DVD, good enough for me.

MPC-HC can open .EVO files, but they wont play just like that
BUT! If you happen to have a software called "Any DVD HD", they
will play just fine in MPC-HC.
Explanation is most likely the AACS protection that keeps MPC-HC
from playing them just like that. Any DVD HD will deactivate that (and
will also have some nice tricks for Blu-Ray and DVD "problems").
Any DVD HD never stopped supporting HD DVD and even the most
recent version still has HD-DVD options right in the main menu.

To make sure I'm not posting bs I've just tested it again, .EVO files from
the TRAFFIC HD-DVD are playing just fine.
I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.

Some links:
https://mpc-hc.org/ <Free software
http://www.slysoft.com/en/ <Any DVD HD (this software costs money)

Thanks! Seems to work. I dragged the 2 features in mpc hc and now i have a picture as well.

If the codecs are installed would XBMC (or whatever its called now) play the HD-DVDs?