Dead format rises from the grave

My friend bought both formats, and he likes them both. He's been snapping up HD-DVD movies at the bargain prices since Toshiba capitulated to the BDA.

The only reason to "chuck discs" is if they're bad. Oh and your headline is foolish, the format isn't rising from the grave at all. Most of these dual-format drives were in R&D for quite some time.

Are the drives in media PCs actually quiet? Obviously yeah a CD and DVD player has a drive that doesn't make a noise when it's in operation, but thus far I've found all drives bought for PCs are really noisy.....

are they still all as noisy as say, my X360 optical drive is? and if so, why then doesn't anyone sell the drives like are in DVD and CD players, as separate drives....

on that topic, why is the X360 so noisy just being on anyway; my PS2s are only noisy when they play those blue-backed discs (makes them sound like they're about to die).

Zupakomputer there are tools available to force the cd/dvd drive in a pc to run at a slower speed i.e X1 which should greatly reduce the generated noise.

The drives arn't different, (well they are to some extend, dvd drives not having to read huge amounts of data quickly) - however, they are made for different purposes - dvd drives are made for reading a constant stream of data from a disc (eg movie) and so spin at a constant and low rate - in contrast, dvd drives in pc's or game consoles have to deal with larger amounts of data and at much higher speeds and so spin quicker - therefore making more noise -

Don't know about this drive, but my internal LG combo Blu-Ray / HD-DVD drive is very quite. Like get freaked out in "I am Legend" quiet.


The issue with the 360 noise is the speed of the DVD drive. This is why it is loud when a game is being played (playing at 12x speed), but quiet when watching a movie (playing at 1x speed).

It is a common "mistake" for "people" to talk about the Xbox's noise level when watching movies, as it only really gets loud when the disk is spinning in the 12x mode.

Misleading titles don't do anyone any good. Where is Ed. when you need him?

You can freely download programs that can control the speed that your CD/DVD/BD/HD drive runs at as to play a movie (on a good quality disk) the drive only needs to be ticking over. The best of these programs by a mile is AnyDVD by slysoft however it does cost money. 

Your xbox 360 makes loads of noise because it has 3 processors compacted into a small space that require a large amount of cooling so after a while you will hear a brrr as the fans kick in to keep it cool. I can't remember if they moved to a 45nm fab though which might have solved this problem.. plus the old xboxs had a habit of scratching disks which will make the drive spin faster

With the PS2 i can only guess that the blue backed disks have a worse coating on them so they get scratched more easily, so the drive is spinning faster to try and read the same data over and over again some kind of cyclic redudnancy check or something

zupakomputer, just do a little research before buying. http://www.silentpcreview.com/ lists a number of quiet drives, and for instance Plextor drives have an utility to reduce the read speed for near-silent operation (very useful when watching dvd movies on your computer as the extra read speed isn't needed).

Isn't it funny how people want a tiny mini-computer to play HDTV for which you need a screen the size of the wall.

Oh and zupakomputer, you can get (also for free) utilities that switch your optical drives to 2x speed or such to force them to be quiet during playback.
Perhaps you even already have such, if you have Nero it comes with something called 'nero drivespeed' (also available separately, for free) that does that for you.

not really risen from the dead more like necrophillia since they no longer are releasing new media but many of the best brand drives for pcs are dual format from the start so is a no brainer that it would have HD DVD support

and in reference to zupakomputer

a drives noise is relevent to its spin speed a regular dvd player with be quiet in comparison to a pc drive as they are only required to read at 1 - 2x dvd speed so are spinning relatively slow compared to the 8 - 20x speed of a pc and xbox360 drive plus xbox360 drive seem to stupidly rush to keep the media at max speed so it is ready for any points in the game when data is required to reduce lag

unsure abotu the ps2 thing would guess that a higher read speed is required to read that type of media but unsure think its to do with copy protection on those type of disc

and in further reference to the ps3 being quiet is that the read head has a far higher read speed in comparison to a regular dvd due to the smaller appature size of the read layer for a blu ray disc so more data is read at a higher rate at a slower RPM in comparison to a dvd

Theinquirer Reported 18 months ago that upcoming DTV is merely already existing 5.1 surround sound put into new spectrum, that being 500-600 mhz/s just auctioned off.
Problem is theres NO difference from todays DTV Signal, If you live in Country, UHF nature won't get that far, so you need something else. Why NOT HDTV, Widescreen, 7.1, Umm Luxury. 
Their gonna be LOTS of Dissapointed NEW TV Buyers, unless you hook e.g. above: Shuttle up to it, for measely Few bucks More than conversion box, you can have all that intresting Detail, for real. 
Yet, NOT with Over Air Broadcasts in Next Decade. Its real Screw on Public, like 56k modems where.

Also tried Server 2008 64 bit, it
will do DVD for 15 minutes(after adding codecs & player),itunes 64 bit Vista blew it out too, once learns to turn off, it stays turned off.So Go Figure. Also its $800, So I am Stopping All Chatter about HOW Good Server 2008 is, Now that ULTIMATE has SP1 & hundreds of Updates its much better than server 2008 for Public.

Still Mr. Kingsley likes Ultimate 64, in spite of NO Flash drivers for 64, Ever?, So No Streaming in 64, 64 bit is wave of Future. Ultimate 32 has media center that is updated to 100% functional & of course, home ?premium? gets around problems by NOT Including them. I Still Defiantly STATE: XP is for LOSERS.

DTV is also for people whom wish to LOSE Plenty of CASH next year, TRY HD/BLU Ray for BEST Widescreen Picture on Best Screen for BEST Time.
Thomas Drashek

why bother?

For the benefit of zupakomputer and Dave, blue PS2 discs are actually CD's, rather than DVD's (silver discs with watermarks).

Due to the lower data density, these discs must be span much faster to get close to the transfer rate of DVD's, hence the increased noise. The same is true on a PC. On my computer, if I read a DVD, it's near silent. If I read a data CD, suddenly I have a jet taking off in my front room!

Oh the joy of taking one's time.