80GB Xbox 360 drive leaked? Oh, and the HD DVD retail box, too.

We knew we weren't crazy. Looks like at least one Xbox 360 was outfitted with a larger-than-normal drive at one of Microsoft's two fall HD download / update / launches event this evening (that'd be SF and NY). Which is good because if when Xbox Live Video goes, um, live on November 22nd and there isn't a larger drive, we have a feeling certain Microsoft customers (namely us) will start rioting and looting Redmond. Ok, maybe not -- but seriously, of all the rumors to track closely, how much longer do we have to keep watching for a freaking bigger hard drive? Oh, and click on for the HD DVD retail box -- this Plaid Ninja guy got it all.

[Thanks, Dean]

[Harper @ Nov 7th 2006 3:10AM]

Now i can put all my movies on the 360 :D

[Phillip Donley @ Nov 7th 2006 3:15AM]

Not going to get too many HD movies on a 70 GB HD. WEAK...

[mprobins @ Nov 7th 2006 3:22AM]

How much do you want to bet that screenshot came from a devkit?

[Me @ Nov 7th 2006 3:37AM]

Considering movies are rental not to buy and are only 5-6gb i dont see you watching more than 11 movies at once.

[Sean DL @ Nov 7th 2006 3:44AM]

Well it'd be a 80GD HD...since I doubt the HD is 100% free....

[I @ Mar 29th 2007 5:52AM]

what the heck are you talking about, your average pc only has around 60GB so having an 80GB hard drive on a games console should be just fine so be happy with what is there.


ps. if a 20GB HDD is $100 then wouldnt a 80GB HDD be around $400+? Happy spendings!

[potato @ Nov 7th 2006 3:23AM]

I'm hoping for a price drop on the movies. 320 MSP translates to a bit over $5 CDN, which is a tad expensive for a 24-hour movie rental, no?

It's also the same price to buy a TV episode. That I consider to be a much more worthwhile price - since I can reacquire and rewatch that as many times as I'd like. At the same time though, it's hard to convince me to do that when, at $5 a pop, a 20-episode season will cost me a full $100.

I can go to my local Best Buy and pick up the DVD sets when they come out for $40-60, depending on show. And I get the advantage of not waiting for it to download.

IMHO, the movies need to come down to 160-200 MSP each... then I'd buy into it.

[Me @ Nov 7th 2006 3:38AM]

The movie rentals are 14 day rentals, not 24 hour.

[Old Biddie @ Nov 7th 2006 3:45AM]

You have up to 14 days to START viewing them, once you've started you only have 24 hours to watch it.

http://www.xbox.com/NR/rdonlyres/AD89D387-A1FE-47F3-8012-27BB9219063A/0/vidPegasusExplainerHi.asx - watch listen and learn.

[Tech^Cellfish @ Nov 7th 2006 3:47AM]

70GB ..that's two good 1080P movies

lame

give me the 2TB raid through the USB port or something

[Me @ Nov 7th 2006 4:57AM]

Riiiight and are you gonna sit there for days while it downloads from overloaded live servers?

I think not.

[shadowprophet @ Nov 7th 2006 4:10AM]

Standard Definition - 500MB to 1.5GB
High Definition - 5GB to 6GB

What the video above your comment for more details.

[narco @ Nov 7th 2006 4:10AM]

I know this is off topic, but those Canon ads on the Engadget home page are super annoying. Not sure if it's my browser, but it seems as though the only way to get rid of them is to refresh the page.

[LordPaul @ Nov 7th 2006 4:15AM]

"70GB ..that's two good 1080P movies"

How long would that take to download?

Think, McFly, think!

[Vanillacide @ Nov 7th 2006 4:16AM]

Using VC-1 codec, as per HD DVD, two hour long 1080p24 movies can come in at less than 15GB and have superior picture quality to MPEG-2 movies that are 25GB in size -- simply check out the numerous Blu-ray versus HD DVD movie reviews to see that HD DVD's VC-1 gives consistently great picture quality.

VC-1 is three times as efficient as MPEG-2 which is very impressive, furthermore, the automatic optimization passes when encoding (using Microsoft's Pro Encoder) are apparently second-to-none and retain very high "master transparency" with lower bit-rates than previously thought possible.

Therefore you can get more than two good 1080p movies on 70GB drive.

[S.A. @ Nov 7th 2006 4:23AM]

Did they announce the prices yet? According to the first post they are 320 points for movie rentals or to purchase TV shows. That means $4. To me, that is quite a bit for movies since I normally rent movies for a dollar at the local drugstore. But it seems reasonable considering PPV and such is the same price. But $4 for a TV show is a ripoff. Isnt it only $2 on iTunes? I would not pay more than $1 for a 1/2 hour tv show.

[Vanillacide @ Nov 7th 2006 4:29AM]

Microsoft are using 720p for download service, not 1080p -- so downloads are 6GB or less -- and you can fit many movie rentals on a 70GB drive.

[aobk84 @ Nov 7th 2006 4:43AM]

Go ahead and let Bill earn your money.. At the end of the day, ps3 is much more worth it..

[splurge @ Nov 7th 2006 4:46AM]

if we get the drive as an upgrade how would all the content, game saves etc we already have go across to the new one?

I'd like to see some sort of online storage system as well for that.

[Ireney Berezniak @ Nov 7th 2006 4:48AM]

It says 70MB free ... that doesn't mean that the HDD is 70MBs, it means 70MBs are left on it ... or am I missing something here? During the demo, it is probably reasonable to expect that a few movies or TV shows are already stored or had been downloaded to the HD, therefore, it could be a larger drive ... no?

ib.

[Chris George @ Nov 7th 2006 7:07AM]

Ireney Berezniak :

You might want to put your glasses on. It says 70 GB. Not 70 MB.

[Hasan @ Nov 7th 2006 5:09AM]

glad that MS is giving people these options

[Ryan @ Nov 7th 2006 7:15AM]

To those complaining about price. A little food for thought. If I go into a local Blockbuster store I am paying $3.77 for a movie rental. Now I may not have to download it, and it may last longer, but it is not in HD. Now if I buy an HD DVD it is anywhere between $20-$30. At least with this it is cheaper and I can rent.

TV shows at $4ish seems steep at first I agree. However figuring on iTunes a episode of a TV show is $2 and not in HD, the price isn't to bad. This allows buying a show that you can watch on you TV instead of PC/iPod and in a much higher resolution.


Just something to think about.

[Matt B. @ Nov 7th 2006 4:26PM]

It's a screenshot from a debug kit. they all have 80GB drives. get over it. we'll get bigger HDDs when MS is good and ready to put them out.

[TexRob @ Nov 7th 2006 8:13AM]

The issue of needing more than 80gb can be debated to death, but I think it's plenty. If you are that into TV, get a DVR, for HD rented movies, what most of us will use it for, 80gb is perfect. Do the math, the rentals are only useful for 24 hours, it's not perfect, but there is a reason: price. I gaurantee you the external HD will come out at $100, and the 20 will drop to $70-80, and then when sales slump in the coming year, 80gb HD included. I would be shocked if MS didn't have a roadmap for all of this planned out. It's all about cheaper components and production costs. It's the same reason we will see a HD DVD drive inside the 360 before the end of the 360s life.

[Jason @ Nov 7th 2006 8:42AM]

It's a dev kit.

[MikeEv @ Nov 7th 2006 9:11AM]

Can't you just pry open the 20 GB drive casing and swap out the laptop drive in it? Has anyone tried this? I thought I saw some report that it's possible when the 360 first came out...

[James J. Hubbard @ Nov 7th 2006 9:22AM]

but you have to wonder how you would get all your data from your old drive to your new drive....

[Idk @ Nov 8th 2006 8:49PM]

You can buy a 360GB HDD for your pc for around $80 or less. I picked up mine for $60 after a $40 rebate a while back. I know that 2.5" HDDs cost a lot more since it cost me over $150 for my laptop's 120GB drive. But I bet that M$ is going to charge people about $200+ for only a 80GB drive.

DVD movies are usually over 4GB HD movies are usually over 15GB (assuming that my 360 can accept VC-1 videos) Even so, there isn't a whole lot of space in only 80GB.

[Wei @ Nov 7th 2006 9:30AM]

I may have missed this during the announcement of the fall update, but can we queue more than 6 items for download now? It'd be annoying to have to keep queuing things up for download if you're downloading a whole TV series. Also, it'd be nice if the 360 can detect when we're playing online games that need major bandwidth and pause the download during those times.

[Krono6 @ Nov 7th 2006 10:03AM]

I call a fake to the HDD.
If you look around on mod sites and such, it's pretty damn easy to get a SATA-to-XB360 converter, or to IDE even. The fellow could have simply bought one of those.

[JW @ Nov 7th 2006 10:15AM]

Krono6,

Read the entire story before you post. The specifically state that this was viewed at a publicized event put on by MS in both NY and SF. This isn't a picture submitted by some guy playing with computer components in his mother's basement.

Wel,

Clearly you have never played a live-enabled game while downloading content. The dashboard automatically pauses any downloads while you attempt to play an online-enabled game.

I think everyone needs to read the story and not just the headlines before posting comments.

Unknown,

How is the PS3 more worth it in the end? You cannot place a worth on a technology that has yet to be adopted by the public. Nor can you place worth on a product whose soul claim is providing True HD when the product itself does not come with the ability to view that HD contect right out of the box. These arguments are folly and people should really think before they post such unfounded comments.

JW

[DA @ Nov 7th 2006 10:08AM]

@MikeEv : Tried it, didn't work. The system does not recognize the new drive, my guess is the HD file system is formatted in a Proprietary format.

[jason @ Nov 7th 2006 10:08AM]

Chances are that was a debug unit, which have ALWAYS had larger drives than retail units.

[DA @ Nov 10th 2006 12:25AM]

hmmm if what Krono6 is saying is true I may want to give it another try.

[Kelioos @ Nov 7th 2006 10:31AM]

JUST IN

A LEAK OF 700GB HD!!!!!!

http://img468.imageshack.us/img468/2554/700yk0.jpg




seriously folks, that 70gb screen has to be one of the worst photoshop attempts i have even seen and you guys are buying into it.

[asif5th @ Nov 7th 2006 11:04AM]

Yeah people, this is just photoshopped. Look at the bar underneath the 70GB....ITS EMPTY. Usually, there's a green bar indicating how much space you got left. This guy just took it down to 0, hence no green left, and then added a 7 in front. He just showed the picture of the HD-DVD to make himself seem more credible. Wow...and I thought people we're smart in here.

[donlphi @ Nov 7th 2006 8:59PM]

I guess I didn't really want to waste that much time INVESTIGATING it. Sorry about my lack dedication.

[donlphi @ Nov 7th 2006 4:04PM]

I guess I didn't really want to waste that much time INVESTIGATING it. Sorry about my lack of dedication.

[Plaid Ninja @ Nov 7th 2006 12:00PM]

While I did do some brightness/contrast editing on some of the photos I posted last night, this photo was untouched since it was easy enough to see what was going on. I saw an opportunity for a good photo and took it. Simple as that. Its not like my camera was under the influence of my cuervo & coke.

[joe smith @ Nov 7th 2006 11:46AM]

Hate to burst any bubbles, but the dev kits and test kits all have big drives in them. If this was a press event showing unreleased games, then they had to be using dev or test kits which all have 80GB drives.

[J Low @ Nov 7th 2006 11:58AM]

I can verify the units they use at these events are modified dev kits. They do have larger HDD and the SDK on them, amongst some other goodies. They were like this at X06, and they were like this at the Live Arcade Party in San Francisco several months ago.

Nothing to see here. Move along now.

[Drew @ Nov 7th 2006 12:19PM]

Its not a devkit. Xbox 360 devkits have a 60GB drive, with some taken up already out of the box.

This is the most credible evidence of a larger drive coming for the 360.

[The Jeremy @ Nov 7th 2006 2:59PM]

Perhaps Microsoft should scrap their current HD DVD add-on and redesign it to include a higher capacity hard drive. Hard drive prices are dropping, and they'd have more success at boosting the profile of the Marketplace (for purchasing movies) AND HD DVD by combining both after market accessories into one unit.

[Adam @ Nov 7th 2006 8:16PM]

This is probably too late. But I work at a Game publisher and the xbox dev kits have an 80 gig hard drive.

Thats probably what that picture is of.

[EastLight @ Nov 7th 2006 8:51PM]

100GB+ drives have been available to developers since the devkits were available to them. These type of drives are probably what people are seeing out at these various shows (how embarassing to show off something and have it go "oops, you're out of memory!"). Granted, MS could be gearing some of these drives for the general public, I wouldn't put too much stock into until they make an official announcment.

[slowerpig81 @ Nov 7th 2006 9:45PM]

The green bar is to show how much space is used. For example: I have a reg 360 HDD. you get like 13 GB, so when you use 6.5 GB, the bar is half full. When you use 9.75 GB, the bar is 3/4 full.

[John @ Nov 8th 2006 8:37AM]

...But Henson says that the good thing is that consumers can use Xbox Live itself for storage, rather than their own machines. Hence, if someone buys the entire library of South Park shows, they could download them at any time to the hard drive. If someone erases a show and then wants to view it again later, Xbox Live will allow them to do so...

[Justin @ Apr 17th 2007 9:32AM]

hmm.. VC-1 is okay, but blu-ray supports it too, mpeg-2 requires alot less cpu power to decode, hence it is used in bd players to reduce the cost, slower cpus in the players, but on a higher capacity disc means cheaper players for consumers, and btw, h.264 is considerably older than vc-1, isn't proprietary, and is just as good if not better. and as for 1080p being 15gb, thats still a sizable download just to rent a movie for 24 hours

[Justin @ Apr 17th 2007 9:50PM]

oh, sorry for double posting, i missed that 2nd last comment, 60gb average in PCs? maybe if you are talking about the bottom of the line 2-3 year old pc, most people have some common sense, and buy something mid to low-mid range to get the best value for money and keep a low budget. 320gb hdds are the best value for money here at the moment, and have been for the past 6 months, oh, and where did u get that 60gb figure from? any particular source?