WinDVD 8 HD Upgrade pack priced, tested
By Richard Lawler 
posted Dec 21st 2006 1:59PM
posted Dec 21st 2006 1:59PM
DL.TV has a clip up showing a preview of the HD Upgrade pack for the Intervideo WinDVD 8 player. Although the software was slated to be available already, it's still not up on Intervideo's website. The Blu-ray / HD DVD playing add on is priced at $26 and the DL.TV guys hooked up the cheapest HD DVD drive they could find to test it out. They confirmed you'll need a pretty powerful PC to play back movies smoothly, and they weren't able to get it working over non-HDCP connections (no word on if they tried VGA) at all. While Sony BWU-100A owners got their Cyberlink upgrade recently, other HD drive owners will have to find a player by other means until the HD Upgrade is available.
Intervideo WinDVD 8 Platinum works great with home-brew HD-DVD's. Maybe they didn't use the right version?
I use standard 4.7GB and 8.5GB *red laser* media to encode in HD-DVD format, ULEAD DVDMF 8 to create the HVDVD_TS folder and Nero 7 Platinum to burn them. They play perfectly on the PC using WinDVD 8 Platinum and in the new Toshiba HD-A2. My guess is that adding a xbox HD-DVD player to the PC is all that is needed to watch commercial HD-DVD media. Best to use analog connections if you don't have a HDCP video card and a HDCP monitor/TV.
AVS Forum has a great thread on how to create these hybrid HD-DVD's from high def mpeg2 transport streams (.ts .tp).
Anyone find that the video is super choppy? (it's Flash too!). I've tried the direct link from ExtremeTech and the link above, and both drop frames after about 5 seconds...