Microsoft’s Xbox Team has offered up a little insight into the development effort that went behind the launch of the HD DVD player. 4.7 million lines of code seems a bit much, but knowing that all of the audio and video codecs had to be developed in software puts this complexity into context. According the the Xbox Team, all of the following had to be implemented in software for the HD DVD to play back discs.

• Video Codecs: H.264, MPEG-2, VC1
• Audio Codecs: Dolby Digital+, DTS, TrueHD, LPCM, MPEG
• HDi: The HD DVD runtime engine.
• GDI: Drawing stuff like menus
• AACS: Cryptography/DRM stuff
• MF: Audio/Video pipeline

According to the team, the HD DVD decoding software utilizes all six Xbox 360 hardware threads to play back video, possibly pushing the console harder than any other software title besides Gears of War. While one can appreciate the effort that Microsoft has made in bringing the HD DVD player to market, one also has to note the all of the additional complications that next generation video formats seem to hold for the average consumer.