On May 15th, an HD-DVD player update became available for the Xbox 360 accessory. Unlike Xbox 360 software updates which automatically download and prompt for installation, you’ll only get a prompt for the HD-DVD player update when you try to play any HD-DVD. This was confusing to me, as I knew of the update, but didn’t know why the console hadn’t automatically downloaded it. After I popped in an HD-DVD, I was asked to install the update.

A reason I was excited about this update was because of important sound fixes and updates. For starters, Dolby Digital (DD) surround always sounded rather lackluster compared to my other DVD player. It turns out that there has been a bug which caused HD-DVD DD output to be stuck in “night mode”, which is essentially dynamic range compression. So, rather than full dynamic range transferred at 640Kbps, the bitrate (and sound quality) was lower. Thankfully, this update fixes the problem and enables the full 640Kbps bitrate by default, and provides an option to enable dynamic range compression (night mode).

My favorite feature of this update; however, is the ability to output all HD-DVD audio in DTS 5.1 at 1.5Mbps. Enabling this was also a bit counter-intuitive to me at first, but makes sense in the end. I thought navigating to the System tab from the Xbox 360 dashboard would allow me to set DTS from within the audio settings. Nope. It does make sense that the option is not here because these audio settings are for the main console, and the DTS feature is specifically for HD-DVD movies.

To enable DTS output, insert an HD-DVD movie, and from an XBox remote (like the one that came with the premium console package, or the HD-DVD player), press the ‘Display’ button. 

You will then see menu options specific to the HD-DVD player:

Choose the ‘Digital audio settings’ menu option to specify the audio output format from the HD-DVD player regardless of what audio format is on the disk.

You only have to set this once, i.e. it is a setting for the HD-DVD player, not any particular movie. Because of this, I would be a fan of moving the HD-DVD player settings into the system blade. Finding this feature was sort of like an Easter egg hunt. Once set, all HD-DVD movies will output audio in the DTS 5.1 format at 1.5Mbps bitrate. I can definitely hear the difference. While Dolby Digital is louder at lower volume levels on my system, DTS is more crisp.

I’d like to see DTS support for regular DVDs and for Xbox Live Video Marketplace. I wonder why this feature is specific to HD-DVDs? Anyone know?

I’ll be in Los Angeles the week of 5/14 for the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC). If you’re in the area and want to chat, speak up. My schedule is getting slammed, but I’m always up for a good conversation. There are lots of interesting talks surrounding Media Center Extender and other Vista enhancements. If there’s something of interest you want me to post about, let me know. Check out the link for more details and the agenda.