How Does The Xbox 360 HD DVD Work? November 7, 2006
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Did you know the code for the Xbox 360 HD DVD player is 4.7 million lines? In comparison, Windows XP has 40 million lines of code, and the old Windows NT 3.1 has around 4-5 million lines of code. So yes, the software to play back HD DVD movies has the same amount of code as your operating system from 1993. Why? Because all the decoding, playback, and other functionality is software based.
Fun False Fact: Did you know half of that 4.7 million lines just goes to inserting frames of porn in Disney HD DVD movies?
In actuality, a lot of the functionality traditionally done in DSP (digital signal processing) chips or other hardware components in regular HD DVD players has to be emulated in the software for the Xbox 360. The intricacies after the jump:
Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
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Comments
Uhh, where are you getting this info from? My PC decodes 1080p H.264 & VC1 in realtime with about 10% CPU usage. Its a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo. I have a hard time believing that the Xbox 360's CPU is taxed doing this. Perhaps they are merely taking advantage of all three CPU Cores in the 360 which is a smart move, but to claim they are all running at a high level of utilization is just bad journalism. How do you know each core (or all 6 threads) aren't running at 1-2% utilization each?
"Finally, the promised HD DVD Player for XBOX 360 is here..."
HD DVD Player for XBOX 360