Will Microsoft Adopt Blu-ray?

Now that Toshiba has officially dropped HD DVD, rumors surrounding Microsoft's role in the high-definition format war have come front and center.

Microsoft was a main supporter of HD DVD with their external drive for the Xbox 360, but they do go with the market. One of their problems is that they have to architect their solutions to take them into the future, but they only can release "mainstream" products that can be supported well.

Look at their operating systems. Windows XP did not support DVDs natively very well, even though they were pretty mainstream by the time the OS was released. Windows Vista now does.

Vista, of which the core was designed originally five or so years ago, does not support HD DVD or Blu-ray formats natively. You can bet that the next release will have whatever it takes built into the OS.

The HD DVD add-on drive was an excellent approach for them. There was less effort to bring it to market than there would have been bringing out a Blu-ray option. The hard part is not just attaching the physical drive -- it's in writing the necessary codecs to support the new formats.

Microsoft had to add some four million lines of code for the 360 just to get the HD DVD side working. It also had to be optimized for the graphics engine and the way the threading model works for the 360's processor to get the best experience.

They already had the source to HDi in addition to their own development tools. It was a safe strategy with the least amount of obstacles.

There also was another "war" brewing: Mandatory Managed Copies. The Blu-ray camp had not decided how strict they were going to be with the BD-ROM features.

It took a while just for the BD camp to embrace the AACS approach, but they still left the option for no copies at all if the content provider wanted to enforce it.

Is Microsoft's Future Blu?

It wasn't until just recently that the BD camp finally came out with a finalized spec and solution. It would have been pretty tough for Microsoft to architect such a customized solution for the 360 when it was in such flux.

Times have changed. Now that the Blu-ray specs have been finalized, content providers are delivering media that leverages the new features.

You can bet you that Microsoft has been following this really closely and that they definitely have Blu-ray drives running on the 360. You probably can bet that they already have designed for support of it into their new Opus, Valhalla, and Orion iterations of the 360, too.

They never said that they were not going to deliver a Blu-ray drive. I believe they just had to wait until the BD backers settled down on something that they would be able to deliver without a ton of upgrades along the way.

Xbox 360 vs. PlayStation 3

From a different perspective, it's not just about the media.

One of the complaints real A/V lovers have about the 360 is its lack of support for the newer features that the high-def formats and HDMI 1.3 open up. The PS3 advertises HDMI 1.3 and has incorporated several of the features.

Where is Microsoft's support the new 1.3 features? Where is their deep color? Where is their support for the newer high-def audio codecs? Where is their 7.1 analog audio output to support the newer audio codecs?

They have some big fish to fry if they really want to move ahead with high definition media on both the 360 and the OS levels. They may be forced kicking and screaming to embrace the Java interactivity engine, but that is doable.

Having an internal Blu-ray drive on the 360 currently would be problematic though, because you would not be able to play games. Even the external HD DVD drive does not allow you to play games from it, so a "standard" Blu-ray probably would not either.

However, if I were Microsoft, I would consider getting a custom Blu-ray drive made that would….

But let's imagine Microsoft supports Blu-ray on the 360.

What are the remote control requirements for interacting with it? They never did get the four "required" buttons right across their product line for HD DVD.

Will the Blu-ray interactivity be the same? Will the buttons on the controls work or be mapped across the same? Is four even the right number?

Will we have to re-program customized remote controls?

There are a lot of questions to be asked before we come to an answer.

Derek R. Flickinger is vice president of R & D for Interactive Homes, Inc. (http://www.InteractiveHomesInc.com). He provides consulting and implementation services for manufacturers and consumer electronics installation companies on new technologies, products, and strategies related to standards-based Distributed Audio, Video, Communications, and Control (DAVCC) systems for the home and consumer market spaces. Derek’s long-term goal is to be instrumental in the development and deployment of entertainment systems on space stations and space colonies.