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Friday, March 07, 2008 4:06 PM

What did you do in the Format War, Daddy?

My kids are 2 and 4 yrs old so have little concept of what Daddy does, though they do know the words DVD, Xbox, and Lightsaber. However in a decade or so they might be able to understand what Daddy did in the format war, so here’s how I plan on explaining
Posted by andypennell | 11 Comments
Wednesday, February 20, 2008 11:33 AM

Why HD DVD Really Lost The Format War

It's all my fault. I'm terribly sorry. Something critical happened in October 2007 that I forgot to add to yesterday's Diary posting . Before CES 2007 I was going to do it, but I was worried that something bad might happen at CES so I didn't. After the
Posted by andypennell | 7 Comments
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Tuesday, February 19, 2008 4:51 PM

Diary of a High Definition Format War

Here are my personal highlights (and lowlights) of the format war, from down in the trenches of the HD DVD team at Microsoft. To make it a bit clearer, here is a graph of the peaks and troughs of the last three years: April 2005: I join the Profession
Posted by andypennell | 16 Comments
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Thursday, January 17, 2008 11:57 AM

Come see HDi at the Sundance Film Festival

If you are attending the Sundance Film Festival, please drop by the Microsoft House on Main Street and say Hi to representatives of the HDi team and see some cool demos and movie screenings. I'll be there myself from the 24th to the 26th, and someone
Posted by andypennell | 1 Comments
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Tuesday, January 15, 2008 11:52 AM

Using the Media Center Remote from Windows

To save you the pain that I had recently, of trying to hook up simple support for the MCE remote control in your app, here is the important info that I found incredibly hard to locate via MSDN search: A C# article called "Using Alternate Input Devices
Posted by andypennell | 2 Comments
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 9:39 AM

Xbox 360 HD DVD Version List

Here I will try and document the various releases of the Xbox 360 HD DVD player, in reverse chronological order. Major releases are in bold (a major release either has new features or has a boat-load of changes, minor releases are pure bug fixes). To
Posted by andypennell | 35 Comments
Thursday, December 13, 2007 5:58 AM

Now Available: HD DVD Emulator for Xbox 360

As of this morning the product I have been focused on for much the last year or so has at last been released: the Xbox 360 HD DVD Emulator . This is based on the Xbox HD DVD player, but designed for content authors to test and debug their titles without
Posted by andypennell | 4 Comments
Thursday, November 15, 2007 1:31 PM

Vote for HD DVD

Its November and its time to place your vote. No, not for US Presidential candidates, but for the optical high definition format you want to be the winner in the format war, which of course for me means HD DVD. This holiday season might be the last chance
Posted by andypennell | 9 Comments
Thursday, October 25, 2007 4:00 PM

Xbox 360 HD DVD Drive: Movie Specific Known Issues

The purpose of this post is to highlight the most common current title issues and, where possible, supply work-arounds. For general troubleshooting see the previous post first : the most common problems are described there. Items will be listed in reverse
Posted by andypennell | 102 Comments
Thursday, October 25, 2007 3:55 PM

Xbox 360 HD DVD Drive: General Troubleshooting

I thought it might be useful to post about general troubleshooting on the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive. For issues with specific movies, see my other post , this one covers the more general case. (I use the term "title" which you can read as "movie", its a habit
Posted by andypennell | 25 Comments
Monday, August 20, 2007 9:38 AM

Tide is turning: Paramount declare HD DVD only

An important day in the next-gen DVD format war: Paramount have announced that they are going HD DVD only, an important change from their previous neutrality. "Blades of Glory", "Transformers" and "Shrek the Third" are the initial announced titles. The
Posted by andypennell | 2 Comments
Friday, August 03, 2007 7:50 AM

Vista Compatibility: My Personal List

Following the travails of my Vista install at home (and subsequent success ), I will be listing my success (and failures) as I gradually re-install my old software and hardware onto this new operating system. As I am running the 64-bit version I frankly
Posted by andypennell | 0 Comments
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Sunday, July 29, 2007 9:54 PM

My First Program (circa 1980)

I recently discovered my first real program(*): from 1980, it was my attempt at Space Invaders for the RML 380Z. This was the government-subsidized computer for schools, my school ( Chatham House Grammar School ) was lucky enough to have one. One, yes,
Posted by andypennell | 1 Comments
Friday, June 29, 2007 8:11 AM

Installing Vista: From Hell to Heaven

I am pleased to announce that I am typing this on a freshly installed Vista64 installation, on the same exact machine that I had so much trouble with recently! A genius Tester in Windows contacted me with a theory and a possible work-around, and he was
Posted by andypennell | 8 Comments
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Wednesday, June 27, 2007 11:38 AM

My personal take on the iPhone: deja vu

I paid $500 for a smartphone with a touchscreen, music player, email, web browser and a camera. No, this wasn't an iPhone I got before tomorrow's launch, it was a Sony Ericsson P800 and it was almost five years ago . The iPhone hype is really getting
Posted by andypennell | 4 Comments
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