BBC reports: the new Xbox 360 Elite, coming in April '07

Back from the eye doctor, and 'though I thought my vision was off... Black is the new black: this just in from the BBC on th enew Xbox 360 Elite... "Xbox revamp aims at digital home."  

"The long-awaited revamp of the Xbox 360, designed to store and display high definition video, has been launched.

"The black Elite console has a 120GB hard drive and will go on sale in the US in April for $479.99 (£255). No details of a UK release were announced.

"...Microsoft has said it will include the necessary cables with its Elite machine. But users will have to pay extra for a high definition HD-DVD player...

Perhaps we'll also see an improvement of the media playback software as well, allowing the now-larger HDD to aid over-the-home-network viewing to content, or better, allowing me to designate the Xbox 360 Elite HDD as a repository of TV content from my Media Center PC.

More on the Xbox 360 Elite is now available on Xbox.com at https://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/xbox360elite/default.htm.
 
Although there's no mention of the Xbox 360 HD DVD player on this new Elite page, the BBC reports it will continue to be an add-on.

Does that mean we'll see both a white and a black HD-DVD peripheral on store shelves?

Perhaps to drive the interest in HD-DVD one might think that you would include it in the Xbox 360 hardware. But given the price premium still for HD-DVD playback, this certainly leaves room to have a follow-on Xbox 360 system SKU at a future date that includes HD-DVD playback: as there are more titles, the players will undoubtedly appear in more places, including in PCs (in what has commonly been slotted for DVD). That would drive me to buy a new Xbox system for Christmas 2007... just one less piece of CE hardware in our collection of devices.