Basic HD-DVD Question

[dunnry]

I have an XBOX 360 HDDVD drive (no XBOX however) and Media Center. I also have about 9 HD-DVDs. I would like to play the HDDVDs on my media center. I own AnyDVD HD as well.

Doing some research, it appears that I can no longer buy PowerDVD with HDDVD capability and WinDVD 9 has pretty bad reviews. I would prefer a free solution to read these discs anyways.

Is there a way to play the HDDVDs from the drive with free software? Or failing that, if I rip the HDDVD to disk using AnyDVD, is there a free software player that can play the decrypted contents? I don't really want to try transcoding them for now, I just want to watch them.

I looked around here, but didn't find anything, sorry if this is a FAQ.

[onesloth]

If you're willing to pay, Arcsoft TotalMedia Theater will play HDDVDs. Otherwise, you can use AnyDVD with eac3to to mux the contents into an MKV that can be played by free software media players. Gonna take some time though...

[dat720]

Ditto the eac3to method, that's how i used to do it....

[dunnry]

Thanks for the reply. I will give eac3to a shot.