Xbox 360 HD DVD Player musings

TeamXbox.com has a piece on why the HD DVD peripheral is the "real Xbox 360 Killing Application".

First, I think they meant "killer application", as opposed to "application that will be killing your Xbox 360". Really bad headline.

Though that is a concern of mine. This nugget from Microsoft software engineer Shaheen Gandhi, gave me pause:

"All 6 of Xbox 360's hardware threads are hard at work while playing back an HD DVD. At the moment, the player software pushes Xbox 360 harder than any other (save, perhaps, Gears of War during some particularly busy parts of the game)."

I'm a bit nervous about this. Why? Because it's been marathon gaming sessions that have, on occasion, killed my Xbox 360. Sometimes for a day or two.

So is this Xbox 360 Killing Application, utilizing "100% of the hardware resources, all the time" going to kill my Xbox, during the all-engrossing ice skating scene in Peter Jackson's King Kong? Say it isn't so!

That said, one thing I am curious about is whether the HD DVD peripheral can play games. If so, and if it's quieter, that would rock. It's the DVD drive that's freaking loud on the console, and if I could quiet that down while playing Gears of War, how great would that be?

Of course, that also depends on the seek speed (and seek optimization) of the HD DVD drive versus the built in DVD. That would be a version of the PS3 Blu-ray seek problem (but they get to count on a hard drive being there ... freaking Core SKU decision ...).

We shall see ...