picked up an hr ago on lunch break, tried out King Kong HD-DVD and some of my standard def DVDs, Scarface SE, X-Men 3, Batman Returns My TV: old 1080i Toshiba Cinema Series Rear projection 42inch King Kong HD-DVD on 1080i looks better than ANYTHING on my TimeWarner HD Cable ( I use DVI/HDMI for that) If you compare King Kong vs an HBO HD movie, its not even close the colors pop out and the resolution is so sharp My standard dvds look better than on my Sony progressive scan player. I think the Xbox upconverts DVDs through the HD-DVD Drive, but I dont have any resolution checker. Everything is much cleaner, no artifacts. Also ultra fast accessing scenes etc. HD-DVD b****es!
$199, i preordered it at EB Games. I heard that Circuit City has them. Im curious on how this looks with Xbox360 owners with VGA cables on 1080p sets.
$199 external drive? How does it ork? Do you plug it in your xbox and then run it to the tv with an HDMI cable? I'd have to spend $400 on the machine and another $200 on the HD-DVD...That's about what the PS3 costs...
Are you guys surprised by the price? I thought you guys knew about it from the past threads...in fact, here are 2 threads where it was mentioned (although at that time, $200 was just a strong rumor): http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=116660 http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=116458 It is a good price though (assuming you have a 360).
the compression used on HD DVDs is better than BluRay. My Xbox360 HD DVD looks BETTER than Time Warner Cable through HDMI NO ARTIFACTS and the Picture is just SOLID.
you plug the thing in with USB and it has extra USB ports so you can use it as a USB hub. Gamz, before you think about PS3, go find a friend with Gears of War. That'll answer any questions you have on which system to get.
I'm not really surprised. It's just that we already have the 360, and I've looked at prices for stand alone HD and Blu-Ray players, so $200 bucks just struck me as something I could trot down to BB and get, without having to go through the "Honey, we just HAVE to have this new technological marvel! We HAVE to have one!" "How much is it?" "Uh... I'll get back to you." Marriage... it's wonderful, but you have to jump through hoops sometimes to get the goods, lol!
I'll probably pick one up today. I wipe my butt with twenty dollar bills anyway so what is $200 in chump change.
The bitrates used in HD-DVD and Blu-ray are a lot higher than any HD broadcasts AFAIK (not to mention that they have better codecs). I haven't kept up on it, but I think a few studios are putting out their Blu-ray movies using the same compression they used for their HD-DVD movies. I remember seeing a review that said they looked about the same (maybe some minor differences due to the players). BTW, forgot to mention this earlier, but I thought you could get the 360 to upconvert DVDs by using VGA cables, no HD-DVD drive necessary? In fact, I think that is true since IGN noted some disappointment when they learned that the PS3 wouldn't do so (the 360 could, so why not the PS3?).
Baiter, I put my standard DVD into the HD DVD drive and it looks much better. I can't tell if its upconverting or its just does a better job of cleaning up artifacts and overall image quality, but it much "cleaner".
Did you have it hooked up with VGA cables? If you don't, it won't upconvert. This might be part of a XBL update too, not sure. I guess I need to check out what exactly the HD-DVD drive does. If the 360 is doing all the work, I don't know why it would look better if you put a DVD in the HD-DVD drive versus the 360's DVD drive.
