Bill Gates announces external HD DVD drive for Xbox 360

[Paco]

I never thought i'd see the day where MS just blatently comes out and says "...and once people buy our thousands of dollars worth of equipment our brand will dominate your entertainment lifestyle".

This stuff seems to be just a high end option for people with way too much money and time on their hands. If you already have the set up then great, but otherwise this just seems stupid to me

I agree, however I think in time it will all prove its worth.

Windows Vista will be out by the end of this year and Media Center is said to be fully integrated and improved. Movies and tvshows (Microsoft has an agreement with DirecTV plus there are already other movie services for web download, Starz Vongo and Movielink), music (Microsoft partnered with MTV to create a new music service, URGE), and then of course photos and other media. It makes sense to keep all this stuff in one place where you can organize and edit it. It's inevitable that Vista will have a large userbase as it's practically a given as people continue to buy PCs.

HDTV will be the standard in time. They are getting cheaper and HD content will be in demand. Not that you need a HDTV to take advantage of of the PC+360 extendability.

The 360 acts as an interface between the two. Imagine accessing all your saved tv shows, photos, family videos, music, etc from your couch as you flip through it with a remote and watch it all on your TV.

From what I understand you don't need a 360 to get your PC content to stream to your TV, just that you'd still be controlling it from your PC. Then the 360, I suppose, becomes an accessory for the PC if you're not interested in games.

The name makes more sense now. It really does encompass all of the entertainment media. That and the core makes more sense, too.

I think it's all really neat. Expensive right now because it's all relatively new, but it'll all come down in price over the years.

EDIT: There are alread Media Center extender hubs available for around $200-300. The 360 acts in the same way, but with games. I suppose this is part of that casual crowd Microsoft was talking about reaching out to.