Scooped one up last night at Best Buy. I had some birthday cash as well as some Reward Zone certificates from our DLP purchase so I was able to walk out with a game, the drive and 3 movies (only one was HD-DVD) with not much out of pocket.

I was actually in the store for a while contemplating, do I put the money towards a Wii, or buy the HD-DVD and some discs? Well, turns out they were sold out of the Wii. Then I though, maybe put it towards a PS3? They had one 60gb on the shelf. Well, someone bought it about 10 minutes after I looked at it... so I let them have it. I barely have enough time as it is to play the 360, so I don't need another console.

So I got home last night and hooked everything up. I bought Happy Gilmore and it came with King Kong. I must say it looked pretty sweet. The sound, especially on King Kong, was awesome. One thing I did notice is that BluRay had more movies I liked then did HD-DVD. It could have been just the stock they had at the time, but I didn't see anything I wanted. Even Happy Gilmore was kind of a buy it just to have another HD-DVD movie purchase. That was very disappointing. But the PQ is awesome. After I hooked up the HD-DVD drive I changed the setting of the 360 to output 1080p and just sat back and enjoyed. We'll probably sign up to Netflix soon so we can sample some other HD-DVD content... but I'm glad I got the drive over a new console since we will watch movies more then I'll play with another game system.

Anyway, if you're on the fence with this, I'd say go for it. If you like watching movies/TV... for $200, it's a good deal...

 

^^ yeah i'm thinking about the same thing....not worth it to get a ps3 because i don't really have that much time to play my xbox as it is......although a wii would be a decent purchase....but the HD-DVD drive is so cheap. decisions, decisions. or maybe i should start saving up for the iphone....to many choices!

BTW, if you are going to sign up for netflix, check out games n flix, its like netflix, but it also lets your take out games...i think its like $1 cheaper than netflix as well.

 

I agree, it's well worth the money.

BUT, "the sound was amazing"? What? You're the first person I've heard say that. The Xbox has a serious problem with HD-DVD sound right now. Not only can the Xbox ONLY put out Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks from HD-DVD's (down converting any Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD tracks to 5.1) but it also has a serious problem with the dynamic range of the track.

The one big downfall of the Xbox HD-DVD drive right now is that the sound from HD-DVD is WAY worse then the sound you'd get from an identical regular DVD.

Thankfully though, they do plan to fix it with a firmware update. I'm getting tired of waiting though.


As for BestBuy's HD-DVD vs Blu-ray stock, ya, I've noticed the same thing. Both BestBuy & CircuitCity are carrying more Blu-ray then HD-DVD. I'm not sure why. Maybe just because, on average, they're able to charge twice as much for Blu-ray discs as HD-DVD's? heh


Nonetheless, for $200 or less, the HD-DVD add-on is well worth it. Once they get all the software bugs worked out it'll be even better.

 

Hey bean, how come we never see you on Xbox Live?

 

Noob question. How does this thing attach? Its certainly tempting for the price but I think I'll wait a tad longer to see where HD-DVD goes, if anywhere.

 

USB cable from the HD-DVD drive to the Xbox.

Oh, and you're missing out

 

BTW, the HD-DVD/Blu-ray war isn't going to be resolved this year, so you'll be waiting for awhile.

 

I know but I'm only on 720P so I'm not missing as much.

So a USB cable can carry a 1080P signal?

 

Of course.

USB2 is 480 megabits per second. 1080p video on HD-DVD discs is only about 15-20mbps. It's just bits. USB doesn't care what kind of bits they are, it's an open pipe. You could stream dozens of 1080p videos over USB at the same time.

 

Well, I went from the RCAs to an optical audio just recently (cable just arrived yesterday), so the sound is 100x better now. I probably should have mentioned that originally so you knew where I was coming from




We had some warranty work done (whole first floor hardwoods replaced... See my topic in H&G ), so everything has been disconnected and packed up since the 1st week of December. They finished the floors right before the holidays (like 12/20), then we were out of town from 12/21 until the new year... then again the next weekend... so only recently did I have a chance to hook everything back up (they're actually still here today working, but only on the trim work... so nothing messy or major). So last night I rewired everything, added the optical audio, hooked up the HD-DVD, and reconnected the network cables... so I should start showing up online a little more often now

 

Cool, I'll check it out. Thanks!!

 

Anyone know how well you are able to use the xbox hd-dvd drive with a computer (through usb)? I know that the 'hd-dvd aacs hack' used the drive, but can you actually use it to play movies on a computer?

 

yes, you can. i havent used it personally, but theres plenty of tutorials on how to use your HD-DVD drive over your PC in "3 minutes or less"

 

This may help you:

http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2006/11/8303/

Drivers: (these are linked to in the article above)

http://rapidshare.com/files/3149367/...Print.rar.html

 

I got the HD DVD unit for the 360 yesterday and I'm very happy with the purchase. For $200, it's a no brainer if you have a 360. "Casablanca" on HD DVD is incredible.

 

i would have go the wii over the hd dvd addon lolll, that shit is fuckin badddd assss played the boxing drunk as hell the other night.... funn shit with two controllers...

is it me or do the movies on bluray offer a more detailed background than an hd dvd,
at the ccity i work at, we got a sony bluray hooked up to the 60" sxrdxbr2, and a HD-a2 hd dvd player hooked up to a mitsu 57" and they were both playin Aeon Flux (the movie sucked balls, but its a good movie to show the detail that these new formats are capable of) both seemed basically identical, except the bluray showed more detail in the background...i dunno? then again it was hooked up to two different tvs, so its not comparing apples to apples

what you think?

 

^ If the Wii was in stock I likely would have gone that route... but A) it was not and B) I don't need another console right now as the 360 is keeping me busy. So those were really the deciding factors.

As for the comparo... not sure. Like you said, I've never seen players hooked up to the same TV, so it's hard to do a fair comparison...

 

No.

Like you said, it's the TV's. More so, different TV's with different display settings.

Blu-ray & HD-DVD are IDENTICAL in terms of picture now that Blu-ray is using the same codec as HD-DVD.

There is no difference between the two, picture quality wise, now.

Studios who distribute their movies in the same format write the same exact encodings onto each disc.

 

I haven't purchased HD for the 360 or a blue ray player because.

1. Want to see who wins the war (VHS v Beta)
2. Prices will come down as with all things tech related.
3. Enjoy copying dvd's I get from blockbuster...can't do that with HD yet.

So with over 900 movies and growing, I can live with 5.1 audio and 480 res.

 

Yes you can.

AACS was cracked weeks ago. You can already find ripped HD-DVD's online, only problem is they weigh in at 30GB each

 

Well that is interesting. One small problem I have now is that the blank DVD-R's I purchase are 4.7gb and regular DVD's often have close to 10gb on them. So in some cases I have to copy the movie only (leave menus, previews, extras out, etc) to keep the resolution good. I can only imagine what kind of disc you would have to buy, what it's cost would be, and then how you would compress it to have anything worth watching.

Why is DVD's are so easy to crack but not video games????

 

I have the playstation 3 and the 360 and I have to tell you if I had to get rid of one of them right now it would definitly be the ps3. The era of high definition hasn't impressed me as much as I thought it was going to especially with games. When it really comes down to it I might as well get a gameboy that has pretty much every classic game that was so fun to play.

 

noob question...do you have to have the 360 console to get the HD player or can you just get the HD player and hook it up straight to the tv? i might be getting this today... thanks

 

Perhaps I missed this somewhere, but does the HD-DVD player upconvert the 480 DVDs?

 

yes, everything is upscaled to 1080p. the 360 currently has one of the best hardware scalers in the world, so it looks really nice.

 

Do you need the external HD-DVD drive, or does the internal drive get upscaled? I would suspect it doesn't matter since it would be upscaling the image, regardless of where it comes from?

I checked my TV UG, and found that when you select the RGB/VGA input, you pick between PC or STB type input. I suspect this allows the TV to expect a different set of RGB ranges, so you don't get the washed out whites and blacks.

 

The XBOX360 HD-DVD drive is an attachment for the 360. So yeah, if you have no intentions of configuring it through your PC as others mentioned you'll need the 360 console itself to be able to use the XBOX360 HD-DVD drive.

 

FWIW, I went back to BB today to get a new surge protector and scooped up Apollo 13 on HD-DVD. They had a MUCH better selection this time around. When I bought the HD-DVD drive I really needed to look for a movie I wanted. Today I could have walked out with an additional 3-4 movies easily...

 

Good to hear they've more stock, doesn't change the fact that HD-DVD's current line-up by-and-large sucks and their release schedule for this quarter doesn't look much better.

This format war really sucks. If you want HD video discs, you really do need a dual-format player.

Ugh.

 

^

I'll admit that there are many more BluRay discs I want then HD-DVD discs... but for now I'm happy with my HD-DVD. If/When Sony ever gets their act together I'll get a PS3 and then I'll have both... but for now, HD-DVD is working out well.

 

Even on 720P, the difference between high def, and regular dvd is startling.

 

Will either the blue ray or DD-DVD players from Sony and Xbox play regular dvds that have been copied to DVD-R's? With movies so easy to copy with DVD-shrink, it would be hard for me to switch if it meant not being able to watch these.

 

so if the xbox 360 hd-dvd drive upscales regular dvd to 1080p, then what is the need to buy hd-dvd's?

 

the PS3 does

 

I don't think you can watch a regular dvd at 1080p what would be the point of HD...