|
|
Xbox Team about Developing the Xbox360 HD-DVD Addon Published by patto on Sunday, November 05, 2006
What takes 4.7 million lines of code, partner teams from all over Microsoft, and millions of dollars to create? The Xbox 360 system software? Nope. This is just the HD DVD player.
The Xbox platform team (us) is experiencing its own emergence day as of late; we've been hard at work for the past 8 months straight bringing the fall system update to fruition. I haven't even posted since August. Daryl's already gone over a lot of the features and changes that are in this release. I've personally been working on the Xbox 360 HD DVD player (which, by the way, reached the #1 best seller slot on Amazon.com's video games category) and I thought I'd go over some of the technical difficulties it takes to bring HD DVD to market.
There's a perception that HD DVD is just DVD with HD content, but once you look at things more closely, it's clear that HD DVD is a different beast altogether. The Xbox platform team became serious about HD DVD last year, when Microsoft as a company threw its endorsement behind the standard.
The Xbox 360 HD DVD Player, for the most part, is an entirely software based implementation. Other players on the market have specialized chips (called DSPs) that decode things like H.264, MPEG, VC1, DTS, Dolby Digital, and other codecs. Much like how backwards compatibility for Xbox 1 works on Xbox 360, the heavy parts of HD DVD are all done on Xbox 360's triple-core CPU.
If DVD is an audio/video pipeline with some navigation data (go to the menu, start playing, etc.), HD DVD can be considered a runtime environment where audio/video playback is just one major feature. So let's break down that 4.7 million lines of code. I don't have the numbers for each component, but each of these is a very significant chunk:
* Video Codecs: H.264, MPEG-2, VC1
* Audio Codecs: Dolby Digital+, DTS, TrueHD, LPCM, MPEG
* iHD: The HD DVD runtime engine.
* GDI: Drawing stuff like menus
* AACS: Cryptography/DRM stuff
* MF: Audio/Video pipeline
That's a lot of stuff. Some of the acronyms may not be recognizable. GDI is the Graphics Device Interface, which has been a mainstay of the Windows operating system for many years, providing facilities to draw stuff on screens. MF is Media Foundation - a framework for audio/video pipelines that was being built for Windows Vista. The Windows teams in charge of the above components all pitched in to make them work on Xbox 360 while continuing to work on other Windows projects (Vista, CE, etc.) - quite a task.
A lot of the codecs existed in code at Microsoft before the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player was being built. However, it was all code that was optimized for PC platforms (windows/x86) and not Xbox 360's PPC core. This meant doing a lot of optimization. In this regard, the Xbox 360 implementation of H.264 can be considered a crowning achievement. For this computationally expensive codec, a hybrid approach was taken. Since GPUs are very good at parallelized workloads, stuff that could be parallelized is computed there, while the stuff that can't is better suited to the CPU and is done there.
Unlike DVD, where typical players pass the audio data from the disc through to your receiver, HD DVD requires that players mix sounds from menus and such in with the audio being played for the movie. The 360 player software decodes all the above codecs in software, mixes anything that needs to go together, re-encodes it into Dolby Digital and then sends that to your receiver. So, don't be alarmed when your receiver still says "Dolby Digital" even if you've selected DTS in the menus.
All 6 of Xbox 360's hardware threads are hard at work while playing back an HD DVD. At the moment, the player software pushes Xbox 360 harder than any other (save, perhaps, Gears of War during some particularly busy parts of the game).
If I'd have known how much work it was going to be bringing the 360 HD DVD Player out this year, I may not have signed up last year, but now that I can watch HD movies, it's hard to go back to crummy old DVD :)
News-Source: Official Team Xbox Blog
( Subscribe via    
)
|
|
| |
 
'Paper Trail' Sets Course for Consoles, PC and Mobile Release on May 21st
Paper Trail, the award-winning paper-folding puzzle adventure game by Newfangled Games (@NewfangledGames) is coming to Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4|5, Nintendo Switch, PC, and Mobile on ..ESDigital Games and Storm in a Teacup team up r.. 'Realm of Ink' Reveils New Map Trailer, Invitin.. Puppet House creeps onto Xbox Series, PS5, and .. Toopan Games Unveils 2025 Release for 'Multiver.. |
|
Xbox 360 News | Submit News
|
|
Wednesday, May 01 | |  AAA Multi-IP Battle Royale “OPEN” confirmed f |
| Chrysolite announced for to Xbox Series, Play |
Tuesday, April 30 | | INDIE Live Expo Reveals First 2024 Showcase, |
Monday, April 29 | | Demolish & Build 3 is coming to Xbox, PlaySta |
Friday, April 26 | | Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game laun |
Thursday, April 25 | | Sleight of Hand launches Day One on Xbox Game |
| Space Invaders Deck Commander - The Board Gam |
Wednesday, April 24 | | devcom announces new venue, call for speakers |
Tuesday, April 23 | | Dune: Awakening Shows Off Stunning Unreal Eng |
Monday, April 22 | | Metro Simulator 2 is coming soon for Xbox and |
Thursday, April 18 | | Terminator: Survivors confirmed for Xbox Seri |
Wednesday, April 17 | | Build Your Empire: 'Rise of Industry 2' Comin |
Tuesday, April 16 | | Epic Fantasy RPG 'Dungeons of Hinterberg' is |
Monday, April 15 | | Delta Force: Hawk Ops gets a brand new traile |
| Perennial Order is set to bloom on Xbox Serie |
Friday, April 12 | | Umbraclaw hits Xbox, PlayStation, Switch & PC |
Thursday, April 11 | | TMNT: Wrath of the Mutants Hits XBOX, PlaySta |
| GIC’24 Early Bird Tickets Now Available |
Wednesday, April 10 | | Mars 2120 launches out of Early Access onto a |
Tuesday, April 09 | | Die by the Blade Slashes Its Way onto PC in M |
Monday, April 08 | | Strike Gold with the Call of Duty Gold & Silv |
| Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters Arrives May 21st |
Thursday, March 28 | | FALLEN LEAF Teams Up with STUDIOS EXTRAORDINA |
Tuesday, March 26 | | Explore the World of Ink Painting in Realm of |
Monday, March 25 | | JSAUX’S Black MODCASE for the ROG Ally Is Ava |
Friday, March 22 | | Barton Lynch Pro Surfing Update v1.07 is LIVE |
| RuneScape developer Jagex joins CVC Capital P |
Thursday, March 21 | | Paper Ghost Stories: Third Eye Open coming to |
Wednesday, March 20 | | Dark JRPG Graphic Adventure 'Neon Blood' debu |
Tuesday, March 19 | | Hauntii hits Xbox Game Pass for console and P |
See All Xbox 360 News | Xbox 360 News Archive
|
| |
HQ Network: 8,900 | 
Guests: 4727 |
Members: 0
