If you have Windows Vista on a machine with an HD DVD drive (just taking a little travel forward in time here…), can you Managed-Copy (I’m making it a verb) an HD DVD and then stream it to an Xbox 360 for playback?

That’s the question Chris Lanier tackles in a recent entry. He basically comes up with some words and rearranges them to look like this:

I’m not sure what the plan is for streaming the content around (in terms of the format), but if on-the-fly converting to WMV9 could be done I would think that would be choice for bandwidth considerations. I don’t know if WMRM can be applied if the content isn’t ASF/WMV, it will be interesting to see and again it’s still going to be a bit before all details are released. The Xbox 360 is going to have to get a software update (unless it’s already in place: InterVideo?!) when Microsoft releases the External HD DVD Drive since it will need to be able to decode MPEG-4 AVC, in addition to MPEG-2 and VC-1.

The way I’m reading things you still need HDCP output to get full resolution playback, so Microsoft is going to have to release a new dongle which will most likely have HDMI in order for the Xbox 360 to output full resolution. Unprotected output with WMRM is not allowed from what I can see.

You know, it might be better just to read the whole entry:

Chris Lanier’s Blog - HD DVD’s Managed Copy with Xbox 360 Extender