I bought CyberLink's PowerDVD Ultra as it claimed it would play HD-DVD movies. On my first try, it DID find and open the KingKong HD-DVD in my Xbox 360 player. It only played a second or so before it errored-out though. A check of their web site suggested that it WOULD work if I connected to my LCD via VGA instead of DVI. Sure enough, after changing cables to VGA and rebooting my PC, PowerDVD Ultra DOES play HD-DVD movies off the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive plugged into my VISTA Home Premium PC via USB.

That said, the playback is not pretty. My PC is a 3.0Ghz Pentium and my video card is last-generation. The software recommends at least a dual-core 3.2Ghz PC or better and a faster video card. Playing King Kong I would get perfect sound but miss 2/3 of the video frames. Very choppy, hard to watch. I have the standard DVD of King Kong and can play it smoothly at full screen on my 22" LCD at 1650x1050. Frankly, the standard DVD looks every bit as sharp and is MUCH easier to watch. Alas, I'll have to upgrade my hardware to be a true critic of HD-DVD. My PC just isn't quite up to the task.

Now if Microsoft had just put an HDMI output on that cheap HD-Xbox DVD drive I'd be in heaven. Of course it's a great idea and Microsoft is never quite up to being "great".