Microsoft unveils Xbox 360 HD DVD drive emulator
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To the HD disc format what IE is to the web? Microsoft yesterday launched software that emulates on a PC HD DVDs played on its Xbox 360 add-in drive. It's a move that could give the software giant de facto control of the next-gen optical disc format.â¦
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Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O on   Wednesday announced U.S. and European pricing and availability   for its Xbox 360 HD-DVD player and a new video game partnership   with the Academy Award-winning husband-and-wife creative team   behind "The Lord of the Rings."
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Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday it would  launch the advanced version of its Xbox 360 game console, Xbox  360 Elite, on October 11 in Japan, a country where sales of its  game gear trail far behind rival machines from Nintendo Co.  Ltd. and Sony Corp.
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Core dumped Microsoft has taken the wraps off its latest and cheapest Xbox 360 console, dubbed the Arcade. The model replaces the Core edition, and is set to hit UK shops this week.â¦
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Microsoft announced at its E3 press conference late Tuesday that the Xbox 360 Elite will be coming to Europe on August 24. The souped up game console features a 120GB hard drive and HDMI connector. Microsoft also said it had no plans to drop the price of the Xbox 360.
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Console to get 1080p support with software update Microsoft will ship the Xbox 360's eagerly anticipated external HD DVD drive to Japanese consumers on 17 November, the software giant revealed today at the Tokyo Games Show. The announcement paves the way for similar declarations concerning the peripheral's launch in the US and Europe.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft is increasing the range of video formats that PCs running its Windows software can pipe to televisions around the home, with support for a new range of Extenders for Windows Media Center devices from hardware manufacturers. It expects companies such as Cisco Systems, D-Link, and Niveus Media to reveal new set-top boxes next month that can play videos or music stored on a PC running the Home Premium or Ultimate editions of Windows Vista. Microsoft's software will stream video in previously unsupported formats such as DivX and Xvid, delivering it to devices around the home over wired or wireless networks. The new Extender devices could even be capable of streaming "protected" high-definition (HD) video over the latest 802.11n wireless networks, Microsoft said Thursday. Vendors or broadcasters of HD content can protect it from piracy by using DRM (digital rights management) software to restrict the devices on which it can be displayed or stored. Microsoft's reasoning in developing these capabilities is that customers want to access the content on their multimedia PCs when they're not in front of the PC. AppleÂ realized this in 2004, when it released the diminutive AirPort Express Wi-Fi router with an audio-out socket for streaming music over a Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection from a Macintosh or PC running its iTunes jukebox software, but the following year Microsoft went one better with an add-on pack called Windows Media Center Extender allowing its Xbox game consoles to stream music and video from a Windows Media Center PC. Manufacturers and buyers have been slow to take an interest in Microsoft's Windows Media Center Extender platform. The best-known Extender is Microsoft's own Xbox 360 game console, of which market-watchers estimate Microsoft has sold around 10 million since its November 2005 launch. By comparison, D-Link said in June 2006 that it had sold just 100,000 of its MediaLounge wireless media players in the first 18 months they were on sale. But Microsoft is still pushing the idea, now rebranded Extenders for Windows Media Center, collaborating with Cisco, D-Link, and Niveus to link their set-top boxes to Vista PCs. In the future, the company plans to work with a broader range of vendors to incorporate the same capabilities directly into other devices such as DVD players and televisions. There's more to it than a change of name, though: in its Windows Media Center Extender FAQ, Microsoft warns that devices based on the old specification, developed to work with Windows XP, will no longer work with the new system for Windows Vista.
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Microsoft's new Virtual PC emulator lets an Apple computer run Windows XP amazingly well. It's a great product for those occasions when you must sully your Mac with a Windows-only application. By Leander Kahney.
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TOKYO/LOS ANGELES  - Microsoft Corp. said on   Wednesday it would launch an HD DVD player for its Xbox 360   game console on November 22 in Japan for 20,790 yen ($177),   matching rival Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 in high-definition   DVD functions.
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Hard drive-based audio player will get a new look and a lower price.
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KAWASAKI, JAPAN - Engineers at NECÂ have developed a prototype optical disc drive that supports the new HD-DVD format and is also compatible with CD and DVD formats, they said Wednesday.
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In a move to draw non-gamers to its platform, Microsoft launches a movie and TV download store for Xbox 360s
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Dual-layer disc to smooth hi-def format adoption
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HD DVD or die! Microsoft today stressed that it believes HD DVD is the best optical disc for consumers and that it has no plans to support Blu-ray Disc on the Xbox 360, despite recent comments from company staffers that it might.â¦
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Toshiba will begin selling later this week the first laptop computer to feature a rewritable HD DVD optical disc drive, the company said on Monday.The PC will be in its Qosmio multimedia laptop range and is firmly aimed at users who want to enjoy high-definition video on their PCs. There are two digital HDTV tuners so that one station can be recorded while watching another and the laptop comes with 400G bytes of hard-disk drive recording space. The 17-inch widescreen display has a resolution of 1,920 pixels by 1,200 pixels so is suitable for watching HDTV in full resolution.The HD DVD-R/RW drive can be used to transfer recorded TV shows or content from a high-definition video camera to disc for archiving. The drive also supports the new HD Rec format that allows for recording HD content on conventional DVD discs. With the price of blank HD DVD media still relatively high, the ability to use cheap DVD media could be a welcome feature for users. However, the capacity of DVD discs is lower so only about 24 minutes of video can be stored on a single-layer DVD.The PC is based on a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo processor and there&#39;s a NVidia GeForce 8600 graphics processor. Other features include a harman/kardon 4-speaker sound system, 2G bytes of memory and 802.11 a/b/g wireless LAN.As to be expected from a multimedia PC with such a large screen, the Qosmio G40 is a heavy laptop. It weighs about 4.8 kilograms, so isn&#39;t the most portable machine in the world, but likely consumers will be people who live in small apartments and who want a PC, TV and video recorder all-in-one to save space.The machine will cost around &#165;400,000 (US$3,500) and it will go on sale in Japan only on Friday. Toshiba didn&#39;t announce overseas launch plans. Previous models of Qosmio PC have been put on sales overseas after the Japan launch.
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Electronics giant confirms its upcoming console will use the a high-capacity medium, and that it is working on backwards-compatible DVD/CD/BD-ROM reader.
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And Peter Jackson planning more Halo games Microsoft will ship the eagerly awaited external HD DVD drive for its Xbox 360 console into the US mid-November, the software giant has announced. The drive will set console owners back $200 and bundle the 2005 King Kong remake.â¦