A while back I threw my Xbox 360's external HD-DVD drive in a box with a couple HD-DVDs I got replaced, thinking I'd never pull them out again.  Since I recently bought a nice 24" Dell 1080p monitor I figured maybe I could use the drive to watch movies on my PC.  My basement PC does not have a DVD drive, it's eight years old and is still hanging on now that I'm the only user.

Well I pulled out the HD-DVD drive and amazingly XP recognized the device and installed the correct drivers.  What I don't understand is when I placed an HD-DVD into the drive it failed to start the movie.  Windows popped up with some message about not being able to read the disk.  At fist I thought this was because I didn't have software to play DVDs installed.  Turns out that's not the issue.

I'm now looking at specific software that says it can play HD-DVDs on Windows XP.  This very well may solve my problem but do I really want to pay $90 to see if this fixes my problem?  What I started looking into was system requirements.  I haven't upgraded my CPU on my computer but I have upgradded my RAM, HD, Video Card and network card.  I'm now wondering if I should invest in a new motherboard, CPU and RAM to bring my computer into the modern era.

 

Do I really want to spend a couple hundred bucks just to play some stupid HD-DVDs?  I'm realizing that I'm probably better off dumping my PC if I want to go to that extreme.  I tend to think there is probably a better way to spend my money...like on a cool Android phone.