New HD DVD Player Suddenly Not Working

My former 360 HD DVD player died, and I bought a new one (never used, still sealed in box). After I installed it today, with the enclosed disc, I played one of the Harry Potter HD DVD movies,
no problem.

I tried another HD DVD, and I get the "Unplayable Disc. Can't read this disc. If this is a game, CD, or data disc, place it in your Xbox 360 disc tray" error. I then try a number of other discs that had no issue with the old player, and they all get the
same error.

I then retry the original Harry Potter HD DVD that worked without issue before, and
now that does not work. The player DOES play DVDs fine though.

What could be going on here?

I tried restarting the 360 with a power down, reconnecting the HD DVD player from the 360, no change. This seems crazy.

The only thing I can think of that changed was a HD DVD player update that I was prompted to download as I was playing the HP disc the very first time. Nothing worked after that.

Could this be the issue? And how do I delete that patch/update?

:)

 

XBOX 360 REGION ENCODING ACTIVATED ON HD DVD IN RECENT UPDATE???

Is anybody else having a problem that their HD DVDs no longer play on their console if they are not UK/USA region? I had various HD DVDs from Spain, and other European countries and they do not play anymore. My '2001 a Space Odyssey' suddenly stopped working
after a console update as did various other non UK HD DVDs. So to check this I bought the UK region HD DVD for '2001' and that worked fine but the one i had originally (from Spain) did not work. It just hangs when the player is trying to play it.

It appears that a recent update has enabled region encoding but the whole point about the HD DVD standard was that it was region free and region encoding should not be activated. Any ideas anybody?

Moved from: Music, Movies & TV / Xbox Video.

 

Getting HD to Work

The Xbox 360 does not have an HD-DVD player built in, you can no longer buy the addon new either as it was discontinued a while ago.

You do not need the HD-DVD player to play your games in HD, just an HD tv and preferably an HDMI lead to hook your console up to the tv.

 

Sorry to hear you're having issues. From what you've written, it sounds as though you've done some self repair of the console. This would be why the discs do not work.

Also, please be aware that self repair or modifications of the console is against the ToU and CoC of the Live service and void any warranty. The only way to get a working console now would be to purchase a new one.

If I am incorrect in the above statement and you purchased an external DVD player those were only for sale between 2006 and 2008 and were discontinued. The one you purchased may not have been new and you should speak with the seller about it.

As the external drives were discontinued there is no support for them.

 

No self-repair. Previously I had the external 360 HD DVD drive. It failed, and recently bought I new (completely new, never used) one. The console works fine, the HD DVD Drive is the issue.

 

Wow someone still uses the HD-DVD player, congrats I still have mine too.

Anywho, if you go to settings/ system/ storage on the Xbox with the player connected and powered on of course, highlight the HD-DVD player and press Y, select the delete all content option ( this removes the persistant storage in the flash memory on the
drive ), restart the Xbox and try your discs again.

 

Thanks, I did try that, but it didn't help. I have found out that a few discs will play, but the majority will not. I think the disc has to be absolutely perfect, pristine or it won't play.

 

Sorry that didn't work. However, I have to ask where you purchased the drive from? As I mentioned earlier they have been discontinued for around 8 years now. Unless you purchased directly from Microsoft the odds of it being brand new and never used could
be fairly slim. It's not unheard of for people to reseal a package and claim that it's brand new.