Gizmodo was reporting this morning that MS is going to announce the long-rumored $100 add-on HD-DVD drive at E3. The page is now gone - did anyone else see this? thoughts?

If its only a $100 its a steal. If I had an Xbox I would definitely get the add on. Can't use it for games, but it would be nice to have the option for movies.

same here - in a heartbeat. It has been talked about for a while, but nothing has been confirmed. Gizmodo ususally edits posts if there turn out to be fake or wrong - this is the first time I've seen a post actually deleted, which leads me to wonder....

The reason the page is gone, is because that rumor was dispelled last week when it first ran.

If you think Sony will be taking huge losses on the PS3, just imagine how much Microsoft would lose on each one sold.

makes sense. I still find it odd that the post was made this morning and then removed several hours later.

I still think Microsoft will deliver a HD-DVD add-on, just at a steeper price.

Does anyone know the cost of the optical drive? I would imagine that the 360 could handle the video processing, it would just need the drive. I'm still not sure how HDMI would be implemented, not to mention analog out HD-audio.

The drive will have to have the HDMI built into it and I agree the $100 price seems very low. However, Microsoft may do it just to give a boost to HD DVD. I think $199 is more likely though.

Since it would need its own HDMI connection and and its own HD Audio decoders, how would it not be a stand alone player? How will it connect to the 360?

The whole idea of this add-on really bothers me. Implementation of the idea is really difficult when you are seriously lacking hardware on the 360.

The 360 has an internal DAC right before the output, so unless they are going to allow you to crack open your system, forget about attaching an HDMI cable to your 360. You obviously need a new drive. So you need the beginning on the process and the end of the process. So will you need have the drive read the data off the disc. Send that info to the 360. The 360 will process the data and then send it back. Which can then be output through HDMI. That is an awful lot of work with so many potential holes. It just doesn't make sense.

Just as a heads-up, keep the discussion about the (potential) HD-DVD add-on, and don't steer this into a debate about the 360 as a console.

A $100 price tag is extremly unlikely. Wheres the profit angle. Sony can afford to give Blu-Ray away at a huge loss since they recieve royalties on all Blu-Ray discs sold. Microsoft recieves no royalties on HD-DVD software so the only reason to sell this drive is to make a profit off them. The HD-A1 costs over $400 to produce so Toshiba isn't making any hardware profit off them but unlike the Playstation 3 no losses. The majority of the cost of the player is its laser diodes and Microsoft has to make a profit. Therefore a $200 price tag is the very cheapest this can sell and even thats a bit optimistic. Therefore its likely that an HD-DVD capable Xbox 360 will cost more then the Playstation 3.

Oh yeah? So why aren't they?

Since the Playstation 3 will sell Blu-Ray with full 1080p ability (aka better picture then any HD-DVD player availble) plus next gen game console for only $500. That is a huge hardware loss.

The 1080p routine is being debated elsewhere, but even then, just because a player can output 1080p doesn't mean it's inherently superior. Build quality, the quality of decoding, etc. are far, far more substantial than 1080i vs. 1080p. We don't know for sure that it's $500, although give or take a hundred bucks, that probably will turn out to be the case.

They actually do receive royalties for VC-1 and iHD. If Blu-Ray would have selected iHD instead of BD-J, Microsoft would be singing an entirely different tune.

I have always thought the HD-DVD add on was just something they were doing to be able to say, "See? We can do it too! Neener, neener, neener." It has never really made much sense other than that. If it won't play games, it is essentially a stand alone player. The only reason to do it is if you can offer it at a huge discount to a stand alone player. But I don't think that they have any motivation to take a loss on hardware that they don't get some money from the software on.

That is what I had been trying to do, since I was interested in it for this very purpose.

Well even without taking a loss this will certainly be cheaper then a stand alone player. Almost half the cost of a stand alone player is processing the discs and displaying the high def. This drive will have to do nothing except read the discs. So they can price this far below standard players without taking a loss.

As for VC-1 and IHD Blu-Ray uses VC-1 in the spec as well and will likely have more VC-1 titles then HD-DVD so royalties on this would not make sense. There is IHD but I don't think the royalities on IHD can possibly make up the hardware losses from a $100 price tag. I think a $200 price tag sounds about right.

I've been reading a lot of articles lately that Microsoft is going to release an external HD-DVD player for the Xbox 360. It is suppose to come out at around a $100. Has anyone heard an official release date yet? Will the Xbox 360 finally have HDMI with this?

there's a thread on this same page with discussion already about this topic. I would post in that one.

Lets not get ahead of ourselves. $100 was posted somewhere and then copied around (originally written in SPANISH I believe). Microsoft has made no announcement on price or when it would be available.
No WAY I SAY. More like $300+. Just wanted to bring everything back to earth. I'd be SHOCKED if it showed up as a nice working product for $100. Controllers are $50 people, hard drive is $100. That said, if it happens I would be thrilled.

Yeah, let's disregard the $100 price tag.

Anyways, it seems like this would HAVE to be a seperate drive. I thought I read something like it would connect via USB somehow, not sure how that would work. I wish I knew how the video would be...use HDMI or Component. And the audio could be an issue.

IF...IF, it was an add-on, one would think it would run off the 360's current hardware/video/audio.

I'm sure we'll see more with E3 around the corner.

What I always kept hearing was around $200 this holiday season.

So, any new news yet? I know E3 will probably give us the full details, just seeing if anything was leaked....I may take the plunge if it's cheap enough.