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Nov 6 / Ozymandias

4.7 Million Lines of Code for the Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player

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Saw a post from Shaheen Ghandhi (of the Xbox Platform Team) describing the work that went into enabling Xbox 360′s HD-DVD player. Here’s a quick quote:

The Xbox 360 HD DVD Player, for the most part, is an entirely software based implementation.  Other players on the market have specialized chips (called DSPs) that decode things like H.264, MPEG, VC1, DTS, Dolby Digital, and other codecs.  Much like how backwards compatibility for Xbox 1 works on Xbox 360, the heavy parts of HD DVD are all done on Xbox 360′s triple-core CPU.

If DVD is an audio/video pipeline with some navigation data (go to the menu, start playing, etc.), HD DVD can be considered a runtime environment where audio/video playback is just one major feature.  So let’s break down that 4.7 million lines of code.  I don’t have the numbers for each component, but each of these is a very significant chunk:

Sure, the guys didn’t write every line themself, but you still have to take a pause when you think about the manhours in total that went into enabling that drive. Pretty amazing. Also helps explain why the 360 HD-DVD drive is a bargain to anyone who wants to get into high-def DVD playback.

Anyway, the whole post is a good read, so I’d suggest taking a moment.

Related posts:

  1. Joe Kane on Blu-ray Image Quality
  2. Fun with Video Codecs
  3. Xbox LIVE now at 23 Million Members
  4. My Wii Code
  5. [Edit] Xbox LIVE being discontinued for original Xbox

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  • Sean

    Can someone please get us the official launch date? Everyone is confused, is it this week, or nect?

  • PhillyRampage

    I try to search around the net to find an answer to this,  but I’m wondering if you can tell me

    1.) The fall update supposedly enable the 360 to upscale DVD through a VGA cable, but I didn’t see it in the list on Xbox.com, can you confirm this for me?

    2.) If the upscale is correct, do you think I can hookup a VGA to Component converter and still get the upscale capability? I don’t have a VGA hookup on my TV.

    Thanks

  • http://www.allgames.com Jason

    Im curious, should we be at all concerned with the fact that its an "emulation" of the playback capabilities and not truly a hardware thing (like all major dvd players/hddvd players etc).  Im not trying to bash or anything, I just truly dont know.  But, to me, it sounds sort of "not as good" to hear that software is running the output and not hardware.  Kinda like if i was comparing 2 game consoles, and one used a special piece of hardware to render the 3d in game, while the other used software emulation to create 3d (kinda like back in the day when some of us couldnt afford kick ass 3d cards, so played Quake 1 in software rendered mode – blech!)

  • http://quarem.blogspot.com Quarem

    If decoding of H.264 is enabled on the Xbox 360 for the HD-DVD player why not allow users to playback H.264 video files through the Dashboard?  This feature was implemented for WMV with the last Dashboard update, but as a Mac user having H.264 streaming and playback support on the 360 would be much more convenient.

  • Aedrin

    @Jason:

    The main difference that I can imagine is that using any other features of the 360 while watching an HD DVD could be slower than normal, since the 360 is busy decoding the signal. But you are watching a movie so that could be a minor issue.

    It’s not the exact same thing as the HD DVD module was designed to run in "software mode". Most games that come with a "software mode" are not designed to use it and are only a backup option. Since hardware is not really upgradable on the 360, this is a non issue mostly.

  • Bruce

    Jason,

    I have no direct answer to your question, but I think it is reasonable and worth asking/pondering.

    Some clues can be gathered from the blog Ozy links to.

    He states that this software pushes the XBox harder than most games, saying only Gears of War currently pushes it harder.

    He also states that because of the technical requirement to mix movie sounds with menu sounds, they remix everything into Dolby Digital, so if you are a fan of DTS, then you are going to loose some quality, as DTS records at a higher bit rate that DD (one of it’s selling points for audiophile movie-buffs) so DTS to DD means down-sampling.

    The best way to look at it (in my opinion) is that the Xbox is a computer, and as such can be programmed to perform the same roles as other proprietary devices, including a HD-DVD player.  But if it’s being a HD-DVD player, then it’s not being a Games Machine, at least, not until you stop playing HD-DVD’s and start playing games again.

    The PS3, no doubt, does use DSP’s to perform Blue-Ray playback, rather than using software.

  • Unmutual

    Surely if the 360 is being pushed pretty hard then that noisy fan is gonna be whirring away like mad?

  • imaginedbug

    Do what I do when I’m watching a movie or playing a game; crank up the volume to overpower the vacume cleaner sound coming from the 360.

  • veto

    MS’s software stikes sonys hardware for massive damage.

  • Anonymous

    Actually, I’d virtually guarantee the PS3 is not going to use DSPs to do BluRay playback. It would be a massive waste of money to put DSPs in there when the Cell is more than capable of doing the decoding on its own. Set-top players use DVDs because it’s cheaper than to put a general purpose processor with enough power to do the decoding (not to mention programming it). If you already have enough general computing power (as both PS3 and 360 do), then using a DSP is just a waste of money.

    And to answer an earlier question, no, software decoding is not inferior to hardware decoding. In fact, it’s better in some ways, since the software can be upgraded over time with better decoding techniques, while hardware decoders are fixed. OTOH, software decoders are intensive to write and optimize. This is why 360′s DVD player, while it could theoretically be written to top most every other DVD player out there, is only average, as the time required to get it to that point is not worth the payoff.

  • Porktree

    hehe, is it me, or should the fact that the same folks that brought us win95 had to use that much code to enable hd-dvd playback be more than a little scary? And since when is emulation ever better?  

  • Bruce

    Anonymous, do you know that for a fact or are you just theorising?  I’m not so sure that it would be a wate of money to use DSP’s.  You need to factor in the proprietary development costs of enabling Blu-Ray playback via a software-only solution that at the end of the day is only going to run on a PS3 -How is that cheaper/more economical than using a generic processor that is almost certainly already available?  Weve just witnessed that it took more than 4 million lines of code to make HD DVD playback happen on the 360.  How much would that have cost?

  • MH4

    The player is not "emulating" anything. It’s doing a real video decode of real content. The only difference is the decode is happening on a CPU, and not on a single purpose chip.

  • http://www.madprops.org/cs/blogs/crucible crucible

    Uh, you guys do know that DSP chips are software, right?

    So what we’re saying is we’re emulating software that is pre-programmed and read only on a chip, with a piece of software running in-memory on a multipurpose CPU.

    Sure there are differences in the software, because of the processor and hardware being used… but you’d think the decoding and viewing of the HD-DVD would be exactly the same.

    And as Mr Anonymous said, you can over time upgrade the software with codecs, with changes, heck bug fixes if need be… so it’s more flexible and adaptable.

    And is anyone complaining about having to run it on your XBox and not do anything else?  I’d find it hard to play Dead Rising while watching a movie on the same TV Set, with the same graphics cards, same processor etc anyway.

    Gotta be realistic here folks…

    But as was stated there is nothing inferior about software decoding to hardware in this instance.

    Why then is hardware decoding better on your PC?

    Because that way the games logic and processing is handled faster on your CPU, while all your visuals are being done on another chip on the graphics card…

    In this case though, you’re not doing any games processing (multiple character, etc), it’s all going to be dedicated to decoding and showing on the screen.

    So software emulation is definately not bad.

  • Bruce

    Of course it’s not bad, I’m not suggesting that it is.

    But if you are being realistic, then realistically a software only solution for HD-DVD playback is symptomatic of a retro-fit.

  • http://www.madprops.org/cs/blogs/crucible/ crucible

    I don’t see how you could say that it is symptomatic of a retro-fit… not entirely true.

    They could have easily done it in hardware.

    They made the choice to do it in software, because it is an add-on to the Xbox 360.

    The hardware that exists in the 360 is more than capable of doing the job, so they decided rather than create specific chipsets to embed into a device, they’d use the hardware of the 360.

    It comes out cheaper to consumers, because they didn’t have to manufacture extra hardware components, and they can upgrade the "firmware" (ie software in the system, where firmware would be software baked on chips) over Xbox Live without much of an issue.

    All in all it’s a win/win not a retro fit.

  • Bruce

    This is turning into pure semantics.  If it walks and quaks like a duck, chances are that is what it is.

    1) There’s no HDMI, so what happens regards HDCP compliance?  Although I guess it could be useful as a loop hole for future hi-def pirates

    2) It was stated DTS is down-sampled into DD (via the software based blayback).  That’s not a win/win.  That’s a compromise.

    If I really wanted to commit to HD-DVD, I doubt I’d be satisified with the HD-DVD Xbox360 add-on as my final solution, although it would make a nice stop-gap, especially given the cheap price.

    It’s my honest opinion that full integration/commitment to next-gen HD media devices means it’s truly integrated into the unit, not just as a means to deliver movies, but also in a way that  can be levergared by games.