With my impatience being the real issue, I finally popped in my HD DVD copy of Nine Inch Nails Beside You In Time to see its top-level menu.

Again, since I don't have a remote yet, I have no ability to proceed from here.

So, that's the end of this saga until I can emulate the Toshiba HD DVD Player remote (model SE-R0285, I believe). With how slow this player is, I'm not sure this will ever find a permanent home on my shelves. But it's been fun to get explore the inner workings, even if that was totally unnecessary.

#HDDVD #ElectronicsRepair #NineInchNails

The dozens of other owners of this HD DVD player may already be aware of my issue and laughing at me. Reading the manual revealed a hint with this block of "keep your expectations low" wording. The problem isn't hardware at all. Though I'd still argue it shouldn't be as bad as it is. (Why can't I eject the disc until it's fully booted!?)

Hooking it up to a display for the first time, it eventually showed the clock setting page. (The equivalent to blinking 12:00 on an old VCR, I guess.) This page took probably 30 seconds to show up on my TV's HDMI input. At this point, you can finally eject the disc tray.

Of course, since I don't have a remote, I have to skip this.

#HDDVD #ElectronicsRepair

So, the initial symptom was that it wouldn't eject the disc tray. At the thrift store, first it would just say "Welcome" forever and the eject button just beeps. After unplugging and trying again, the eject button doesn't even beep.

Being me, my first thought was to take it all apart to make sure it doesn't have any obvious physical obstructions. Took it down to being able to see inside the drive, but nothing obvious causing issues (and no free disc this time).

#HDDVD #ElectronicsRepair

Technically, I already have a way to play HD DVD discs, but it's the Xbox 360 drive I picked up from eBay for cheap: "parts/untested", but worked fine and even came with a movie.

It's just USB, so you can rip movies [slowly] using that drive on Windows with MakeMKV. And I have an Xbox 360 console, which means I can properly experience the interactive menus and such.

#HDDVD #Xbox360

@raccoon Microsoft merely half-assed #HDDVD with #FUD, so in the end, #Netflix or rather #Streaming won the #HD #FormatWar - just as Microsoft wanted!

So yeah, I doubt #Valve will subsidize the #SteamMachine at all, but sell it at cost knowing that less than 10% will even think going beyond #Steam and less than 1% actually install a different OS…

@raccoon granted, #Valve did already commit themselves to it being "open like a PC" so they can't sell at a loss. They at least need to break even in terms of cost to avoid businesses like datacenters to go: "Hey, that's pretty good!" and order like 1000+...

• My University did that with the #PS3 and ran them as clusters becaude even tho #YellowDogLinux and any #OtherOS only gets 2 threads, the #Cell was still a competent and affordable #ppc64 machine that one could use #MPI and do #clustering at full blast without breaking a sweat. And mind you #Sony lost out €100+ just in parts cost on every PS3 phat sold at launch because winning the #FormatWar with #BluRay against #HDDVD was more important long-term.